Taking a peek inside Galatoire's new building

Interior designer Jeanne Barousse was explaining the color scheme for the new upstairs private dining rooms at Galatoire’s when a brassy trumpet fanfare interrupted her in mid-sentence, drowning out her description of the buttermilk walls.

Curious, the three of us – Barousse, public relations spokesman Marc Ehrhardt and myself – walked onto the balcony overlooking Bourbon Street. Here’s what we saw:

The U.S. Navy Band, in inky blue uniforms, had fallen into formation in front of the restaurant, bisecting the road, horns on one side, drums and cymbals on the other.

Inside Galatoire’s, the Friday lunch was at full tilt in the downstairs dining room. Cocktail-soaked conversations were raising the room’s decibel level. But it was no match for the horn section outside.

Diners flowed out into the street. A woman in a dime-store tiara and Diane Von Furstenberg dress held a champagne flute aloft. Construction crews working nearby silenced their saws. On the balcony next door, a stripper in fishnets, craned over the railing.

Carnival season in full swing. Friday lunch at Galatoire’s. Needless to say, it was very hard to go back to work.

After the hubbub – word was that the Navy band was there to play for the Krewe of Pontchartrain’s pre-parade lunch – Barousse, Ehrhardt and I returned inside, where I was getting a tour of 215 Bourbon St., the new addition to Galatoire’s.

Last year, the hidebound, 108-year-old restaurant bought the vacant, three-story building next door.You must not use the laser cutter without being trained. The space had been empty since Mike Anderson’s Seafood was shuttered in 2005 following Hurricane Katrina.

The plan is to use the building three ways: the third floor will be a wood-paneled wine room, the second floor will be additional Galatoire's private dining space, and the first floor will be a long bar facing Bourbon Street with a separate, new restaurant behind it.

The renovation is still a work in progress, but the new bar – at this point just called Galatoire's bar – will debut this weekend, and some well-heeled Super Bowl visitors will get their first sit-down dinner in the second-floor rooms this week.

The second-floor banquet room was the most complete on my visit. It’s located just behind the existing upstairs bar at Galatoire’s. A small passageway connects them.

We passed through it – squeezing by a birthday party clad in cocktail attire at 2 in the afternoon – and into a quiet, plushly carpeted space.

The aesthetic is genteel ballroom – mushroom velvet drapes with Greek key trim, buttermilk walls, alabaster light fixtures – and it's complementary, rather than a carbon copy of the original restaurant’s fin de siècle design.

Barousse purposefully didn’t just roll out a facsimile of Galatoire’s black-and-white mosaic tile floors and call it a day. To avoid an uproar, the construction hasn’t duplicated, or even touched, Galatoire’s first-floor dining room, a place where change is never welcome.

“We’ve taken great pains to make this feel like an extension of Galatoire’s,” Barousse said. “We’re not trying to replicate it.”

The third floor is a masculine, clubby space, with dark wood, a golden rug and seating for 18 surrounded by wine racks. During my tour,Learn how an embedded microprocessor in a smart card can authenticate your computer usage and data. chef Michael Sichel poked his head in the room. “Look at this attention to detail,” he said, marveling at the marble bathrooms.

Galatoire’s owners haven’t yet divulged their plans for the new restaurant's menu, but Barousse talked a little about the look. It will have wood-beamed ceilings, brass and crystal chandeliers and a series of historic Louisiana maps framed on the walls.

The space was still a hard-hat construction zone during my visit. But broad windows looked out onto Bourbon Street, and the the frame for the long bar was in place. It doesn’t take much imagination to envision the sweating Sazeracs soon to come.

Mr. Chan is often called in when collaboration is required. Take the Opus project, whose architecture Mr.We've had a lot of people asking where we had our make your own bobblehead made. Chan likens to a dynamic envelope—"the envelope changes, and it's very exciting." For three years Mr. Chan worked on its interior layout, which he compared to a cauliflower in that "every floor is different." Since each apartment, occupying an entire floor, was "an open space, like a gallery, a museum space," the challenge was to make sense of it for prospective buyers, dividing it into practical living areas "so people can understand it," he says.

Originally from Hong Kong, Mr. Chan, 52, says he stumbled into architecture after failing as a pre-med and economics student in California. He moved to New York in the early 1980s, where he studied at the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies, followed by Rhode Island School of Design and later Columbia University. Back in Hong Kong, he spent close to a decade working for local architecture firms before establishing BTR,Ein innovativer und moderner Werkzeugbau Formenbau. which today employs some 40 staff members based in the industrial district of Kwun Tong. Its clients include big-name developers such as Sun Hung Kai 0016.Where you can create a custom lanyard from our wide selection of styles and materials.HK -0.39% and Hong Kong Land, as well as powerful individuals and families such as the Tiens, whose patriarch is James Tien, a politician and businessman.

Colorfully deforming reality

The Rudolfinum's ongoing exhibition "Butterfly Effect?: The Image as a Multidirectional Deconstruction of the Whole" presents the current work of five Czechs and one Slovak who, through the traditional media of oil and acrylic on canvas, manage to keep classical painting current and even raise its aesthetic value.

"The selection of the artists for this exhibition was not random," Rudolfinum Director Petr Nedoma said. "There are certain connecting points. These painters cross borders and point to what contemporary painting can give us."

The artists whose work is on display - Ji?í Petrbok, Martin Gerboc, Lubomír Typlt, Daniel Pitín, Vladimír Véla and Adam ?tech - have all exhibited in a number of solo and group exhibitions.

"We still live with the feeling of insecurity," Vaňous says. "The fear of what is happening around us is also a main connecting topic at this exhibition. We are not able to identify the causes; we are part of the theory of chaos. The picture is a view of the complex, but the complex is falling into pieces."

Visitors to the Rudolfinum can see six different ways of presenting and deforming reality. For example, Adam ?tech, one of two artists in the exhibition born in 1980, starts with a digital collage compound in a computer from generally known classical paintings and some diverse objects, abstract or details from films.Learn how an embedded microprocessor in a smart card can authenticate your computer usage and data. Then he paints it in oil or mixed media. The results are absurd combinations and incoherent creatures.

Ji?í Petrbok, born in 1962 and the exhibition's senior artist, also uses this idea of creating a new reality by putting different objects together in works painted especially for this exhibition. He set up a new imaginary interior filled with strongly colored sculptures compiled from details from works by artists ranging from the medieval painter Paolo Ucello to the American prankster Jeff Koons to Petrbok's Czech contemporary Kri?tof Kintera. "Some pictures may seem very tragic with the skulls and dragons," Petrbok says. "But I mean it to be more comical. In fact, it is just fun."

The opposite of what can be called fun are the motives for Martin Gerboc's paintings. He reacts to the anachronisms established in our society and to the increasing pseudo-intellectual ballasts by addressing very provocative and open subjects in his art. Gerboc, born 1971, paints pictures full of political and sexual violence,We've had a lot of people asking where we had our make your own bobblehead made. misused religious symbols, criminals, pornography, etc. It doesn't leave the viewer calm; it forces us to think about the content.

In the same room, on the opposite wall,Where you can create a custom lanyard from our wide selection of styles and materials. hang the pictures of Lubomír Typlt, born in 1975. These works show a small baby and little girls,Ein innovativer und moderner Werkzeugbau Formenbau. but they are far from being dispassionate. "I use a contrast of complementary colors,You must not use the laser cutter without being trained." Typlt says. "My aim is to create very aggressive paintings that would drag the viewer inside. It is the same reason for the multiplication of the object. Twelve variations of crying babies' heads should causes some tension."

The next artist in the exhibition is Daniel Pitín, born in 1977 and presenting imaginary interiors here. He specializes in creating nonexistent architectural constructions, reminding the visitor of a theater stage background or even a highly immaterial dream. Pitín plays in a very original way with illusion and reality.

Vladimír Véla, the other artist born in 1980, who opens the exhibition in the first room, works with a big surface covered with color. He remakes chronically known symbols to create a clear picture, open for the viewer.

"Six author-based, conceptually different approaches to an image open up the fundamental question of what the current possibilities of painterly reflection are in today's day and age in the context of the space in which we live - a period that carries within itself a variety of cultural impulses, traces and layers whose origin cannot be easily identified," says Vaňous, the curator. "A period for which the disappearing act of any sort of unity, subliminally perceived as a common security is also symptomatic."

"The Butterfly Effect?" is the second of three consecutive and connected exhibitions at Rudolfinum. The first one was "Beyond Reality. British Painting Today." "The Butterfly Effect?" presents the Czech scene. Next and last will come "Nightfall: New Tendencies in Figurative Painting," which opens March 29 and will present the works of more than 20 artists from nine countries and focus on topics such as social crisis and uncertainty, loneliness, confusion and isolation and the tension between nature and civilization.

Phil Romano is known for creating concepts such as Macaroni Grill, Fuddruckers and eatZi’s Market & Bakery. But recently, he has been creating cutting-edge masterpieces. “I like to create restaurants,” he explained, “so, when I’m not creating restaurants, I’ve got to create something. So, I got a paintbrush and I started painting on canvases.”

Romano and artist J.D. Miller opened the Samuel Lynne Galleries in 2008. The art that is on display is a new movement that Miller created, called Reflectionism. “As Reflectionists,” Miller said, “we have taken it to the 21st Century and we have captured the entire three-dimensional envelope of life. So, not just the light, but sound, taste, touch — the spirit that you’re surrounded by — and translating that into art.”

Ordinance To Ban Downtown Bars

Tuesday, Feb. 5 the Greensboro City Council is scheduled to vote on a proposed ordinance that will affect all of the property in the Central Business District. But on Tuesday, Jan. 29, if downtown property owners wanted to take a look at the ordinance to see how it would affect their property, it was not available on the city website. In two calls to the Department of Housing and Community Development, no one available in that department could find a copy. I was told that I had to wait for Zoning Administrator Mike Kirkman to get back because he knew where the ordinance was.

The city manager's office kindly directed me to the city clerk's office where I was told the city was depending on Downtown Greensboro Inc. (DGI) to publicize the proposed ordinance. It may be on the DGI website somewhere, but I couldn't find it and neither could City Councilmember Nancy Vaughan.

Downtown property owners I have talked to have not been informed of this ordinance. If they had, it seems councilmembers would be hearing from them. It's all about aesthetics,We've had a lot of people asking where we had our make your own bobblehead made. and it is the aesthetics of Mayor Robbie Perkins and the city Planning and Community Development Department that count. The proposed ordinance states repeatedly that the planning and community development director makes the determination on whether a building is in compliance with the ordinance or not.Learn how an embedded microprocessor in a smart card can authenticate your computer usage and data.

Some people like quirky old buildings that are not perfect. Perkins – who recently moved his own company out of the downtown because of the expense and inconvenience mainly caused by difficulties parking – doesn't appear to have much use for old buildings. What Perkins promotes are new buildings and strip shopping centers. It is his often-stated goal to have the downtown run like a shopping center. The planning department has in the past tried to do the same thing.

As always with ordinances, the devil is in the details, and this one has a whole bunch of details.Ein innovativer und moderner Werkzeugbau Formenbau. Peeling paint, cracked windows and loose bricks not repaired by the property owner can be fixed by the city and the bill sent to the property owner.

Vaughan questioned whether the city would repair buildings up to historic standards. She noted that if an original window is removed and replaced it can destroy the historic significance of a structure and make the building ineligible for historic tax credits.

Another note, the city charges homeowners $500 and more to cut their yards if the grass is overgrown.Where you can create a custom lanyard from our wide selection of styles and materials. How much would the city charge property owners to fix a cracked window or to repaint a building?

A great number of buildings in the downtown are out of compliance because this ordinance makes having boarded up or barred windows illegal. One building the city might want to take a look at is the new police headquarters. It appears to be out of compliance with this ordinance because of the bars on the basement windows. However, Assistant City Attorney Tom Carruthers, who wrote the ordinance, said that in his opinion the new police headquarters would not be out of compliance because the barred windows face the police parking lot. But he agreed that the city attorney's office is not going out in the field to make the determination of whether buildings are in compliance or not. You can bet that whoever makes that decision for the city will find that the new police headquarters are in compliance. Some of the more notable buildings downtown are clearly out of compliance,You must not use the laser cutter without being trained. but it doesn't matter because the law

doesn't apply to them. They include the L. Richardson Preyer Federal Courthouse, the Old Guilford County Court House, and the new Guilford County jail. The AT&T building on Eugene Street appears to be out of compliance and the ordinance could be interpreted so that even West Market Street United Methodist Church, which has bars across its entrance, is out of compliance. But, of course, the city is not going to find West Market Street United Methodist Church out of compliance. However, walking around the downtown there are countless small businesses and office buildings that are out of compliance.

On Commerce Street between West Market Street and West Friendly Avenue there are two office buildings – one with boarded up windows and one with barred windows – that are out of compliance, and that is one small block. Until I walked around looking for them I had no idea how many boarded up and barred windows there were in the downtown. It is so common to with basement windows have some kind of covering or bars that I hadn't noticed. The Greensboro Police Department, as well as dealing with their own building, might want to weigh in on taking all the bars off windows in the downtown.

DGI is supporting this ordinance because DGI's vision of the downtown appears to fall right in line with Perkins' vision of a strip shopping center. Will DGI start reimbursing downtown property owners when the bars and boards are removed and their buildings are repeatedly broken into?

It might shock the Planning and Community Development Department and DGI to learn that the bars are there for a reason. A bunch of downtown property owners didn't wake up one morning and say, "Wow, wouldn't bars look great on basement windows?" Bars to keep people from breaking in are not only common in downtown Greensboro, but are common throughout the world. In Norway and Sweden, where basement windows are covered up with snow nine months out of the year, bars might not be so common. But in some countries they can be found on virtually every window.

BBC Radio Gets a Facelift

The British Broadcasting Corporation operates a number of radio and TV networks throughout the U.K. The jewel in the BBC’s crown is Broadcasting House, once described as “that elegant stone battleship sailing proudly down Regent Street” — a reference to its striking architecture and imposing edifice. But time moves on.

At the heart of the new building is a large, open-plan newsroom and production area beneath an eight-story atrium, with acres of glass as the dominant architectural feature. “We have restored our original home and expanded it to create the largest live broadcast center ever,” said former BBC Director-General Mark Thompson just after the new building was opened.

The complex contains six TV studios and 140 acoustic spaces, as well as specially conceived zones for discussion and interaction.

But the numerous glass surfaces, which provide an open, airy atmosphere with excellent sight lines between newsroom staff on various floors, posed a number of acoustical challenges. The floor that houses BBC World Service’s news preparation areas and on-air studios — recently relocated from its long-time home in nearby Bush House — contains a variety of different-sized production and air studios designed by London-based Munro Associates.

As Andy Munro, the firm’s founder and chief designer, recalls,Learn how an embedded microprocessor in a smart card can authenticate your computer usage and data. “We were given the task of developing a completely modular studio format that could be positioned anywhere in a standard office environment without placing demands on the building’s complex infrastructure; the construction equivalent, if you will, of ‘plug-and-play’ radio.”

The BBC management expressed a strong preference for an “open, visually connected structure that was originally described to me as ‘studios without walls,’” he said.

Because Munro Associates was tasked with building a total of 30 studio areas in just six months, he opted for a modular construction technique. “Several companies offer interlocking, pod-type constructions but none of them could achieve the sound insulation and complete transparency that, from the start, was the client brief,” the seasoned designer continued.Other companies want a piece of that iPhone headset action

“The only option was a completely new design from the ground up. It was also decided to build several prototypes and test every element of the structure before going into full production.”

In addition to several standalone areas, a total of 18 larger facilities are built into clusters of two and three studios with integral control systems that allow them to function independently or interact with one another to accommodate different program formats.

Two main design obstacles immediately presented themselves: sound insulation and acoustic conditioning.Did you know that custom keychain chains can be used for more than just business. “These are difficult to perfect at the best of times,” Munro acknowledged, “but we had to achieve broadcast quality in a room with all glass walls, glass doors and without physical support from the main building.”

His solution was to construct a rigid floor platform with sufficient strength to support a steel frame that contains sealed-glass panels for the surrounding walls. “Ceiling panels would be locked into place by jacking them up to the underside of the frame beams, which allowed access to the various pipes and cabling located in the main ceiling voids.”

To avoid sound transmission into the production spaces from the surrounding newsrooms and control centers, each modular structure was floated on anti-vibration mounts.

For ventilation, a plenum system pulls cool air from the ceiling and circulates it within the space. “The main building has the chilled-beam ceiling with a water supply temperature of 61 degrees Fahrenheit that mixes incoming fresh air and ambient air to give an inflow to the glass boxes of around 65 degrees,” he said.

“We expect the rooms to work at 70 degrees Fahrenheit, with a heat load of the equipment and bodies being 400–700 watts. Since that means we have to pull in enough air to give the required cooling effect, our fan speed can be varied accordingly.We've got a plastic card to suit you. Fan noise is the limiting factor and we designed our plenums to reduce this to NR25.”

Because most of the heat-producing equipment racks are located outside each studio, Munro said, the heat load of each room is no more than the same space occupied by the news teams.Where you can create a custom lanyard from our wide selection of styles and materials. “So the net demand on the building is unchanged. To install these studios with no gain in energy demand was an achievement of which we are particularly proud.”

To balance the acoustic performance of each room and achieve “neutrality” without impacting the available views into or out of the studio areas, Munro came up with an innovative solution. “We opted to use trapezoid geometry,” he said, “whereby all the internal reflections are guided to a single row of hanging ‘sausages’ that have very high absorption. They also hang inside the room and so absorb reflections back from the glass, as well as the initial impact.”

According to Oliver Giese from VCS’ projects department: “SADiE digital audio workstations and the LRX2 digital audio mixers have long been the mainstay of the broadcast community, thanks to their editing and location recording capabilities. SADiE is renowned for its speed and ease of use, making it ideal for radio drama production and news, where the emphasis is on a quick turnaround.”

All production and air studios feature a programmable intelligent display system from U.K.-based systems integrator IPE that uses conventional Ethernet LAN/WAN links to connect desktop IDS control touchscreens, in addition to a number of large screen displays throughout the complex. IP-based table lamps also provide status alerts, while other panels handle remote infrared control for studio TVs via the touchscreens.

The BBC’s Radio 1 pop music channel operates various studios and a live performance space — The Live Lounge — on the eighth floor of the new building, in which other floors also house the World Service and BBC News. IPE Systems equipped the new Munro-designed glass studios used by World Service and the BBC’s domestic news output with five more traditionally constructed general purpose studios and the six on-air studios shared between Radio 1 and its digital twin 1Xtra and two Newsbeat studios.

Interestingly, to ensure sound compatibility between recording channels and air studios throughout its radio services, and to reduce the costs of spares inventory, the BBC uses only three types of vocal microphone: Neumann KM 184 and AKG C414, plus the Neumann U 47 for Radio 1 DJs.

To ensure adequate sound isolation in the glass studios between the open plan newsroom and the smaller production areas that lack a separate sound lock, Munro sourced a novel door-closure system with dual-pane glass. “We specified cam locks that pull the door firmly into the frame and provide a full acoustic seal. We also specified longer door handles to provide easy access to handicapped staff and guests in wheelchairs.” The design offers between 40 dB and 47 dB of sound isolation, the designer said.

And to alert staff of the current status of each production area, large tricolor LED panels are illuminated above each cubicle. “Blue/white indicates that the area is powered,” Munro explained, “while amber indicates that it is ready for transmission, and red that the studio is live to air.” IDS DMX interfaces control the LED lighting.

Bullying exists outside of schools

“A recent study by the Family and Work Institute reported that one-third of youths are bullied at least once a month, while others say six out of 10 American teens witness bullying at least once a day. Witnessing bullying can be harmful, too, as it may make the witness feel helpless — or that he or she is the next target.” I retrieved this from the Internet, but I do wonder if I am the next target to be bullied in some shape or form.

We all get pretty upset when we hear about bullying in school or about a young person who has been so bullied on the Internet that he/she commits suicide. I am totally opposed to all kinds of bullying. I grew up in an age when the word was used infrequently because in my small school and in my small world, it seemed we cared about one another.

So what about bullying in Fort Collins? Does it exist? Do we tolerate it? Do we even recognize it? I, like many others in Fort Collins, do not want to see eminent domain used with the Big Guy who owns the mall, using it against Sears. Really? Are we too sophisticated to have a Sears in our mall? It has been good enough to stay and remain an anchor while other stores have pulled out.

And then there is the University of Colorado Health System using its mighty power to become a monopoly, thus threatening the existence of doctors’ private practices and even the offices and parking lot in the Harmony Campus Medical Center. Really? There is not enough land near MCR or even the existing building that we must drive the “little guys” out of the parking lot and out of the building? Come on,Comprehensive Wi-Fi and RFID tag by Aeroscout to accurately locate and track any asset or person. now.

Once a steamroller starts going full steam ahead, it is mighty hard to stop, especially by a much smaller entity. I challenge all of us to think, “What if I am the little guy someday? Will they steamroll over me all in the name of progress and better service?”

AN investigation that may reveal if the administration of the late President Musa Yar’Adua and that of his successor, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, actually splurged $67 billion is set to be carried out by the House of Representatives.

The probe is coming on the heels of an allegation by former Vice President of the World Bank, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, that the two administrations mismanaged $45 billion in Nigeria’s foreign reserve as well as another $22 billion excess crude fund left by the government of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.We've got a plastic card to suit you.

Also, apparently reacting to public criticisms of the judgment by the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court, Abuja, in the case of Mr. John Yakubu Yusufu and others undergoing trial for over N38 billion Police Pension Fund fraud, the House of Representatives has urged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) to immediately appeal the decision.

Besides, the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) Wednesday handed the Federal Government a seven-day ultimatum to either organise a public debate between the Minister of Information, Mr.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet? Labaran Maku or any other official and Ezekwesili as demanded by her or issue a public apology to her in acceptance of her allegation.

Ezekwesili made the allegation during her convocation lecture of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The former Minister of Solid Minerals and later Education lamented the “squandering of the significant sum of $45 billion in foreign reserve account and another $22 billion in Excess Crude Account being direct savings from increased earnings from oil that the Obasanjo administration handed over to the successor government in 2007.”

She stated: “Six years after the administration I served handed over such humongous national wealth to another one, most Nigerians but especially the poor, continue to suffer the effects of failing public health and education systems as well as decrepit infrastructure and battered institutions.”

In a statement issued yesterday in Abuja, the CNPP National Publicity Secretary, Osita Okechukwu, described as unjustifiable, the Federal Government’s reactions to Ezekwesili’s allegation and challenge as a deliberately calculated albeit unsuccessful effort to bring the Jonathan administration to disrepute

He noted that for the avoidance of doubt, many public commentators and anti-corruption crusaders, as well as the CNPP had severally bemoaned the pervasive corruption in the land, which included the culture of impunity which had existed in the country in the last 13 years.

The CNPP said that this debate was absolutely necessary and a matter of urgent national importance based on the fact that Ezekwesili was not only a former vice president of the World Bank,Wear a whimsical Disney ear cap straight from the Disney Theme Parks! but she also served as a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and once headed the Bureau of Public Procurement in the country.

The CNPP also noted that the fact that Maku had also levelled allegations of monumental corruption against the former minister had added more urgency to the debate.Laser engraving and laser laser cutting machine for materials like metal,

“It is our view that a public debate challenge of this nature must not be overlooked by the Federal Government, especially bearing in mind that even the ex-president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo under which Mrs. Ezekwesili served, had serially labelled the President Goodluck Jonathan regime as incurably corrupt. We are deeply concerned that the splash of mud on the image of the country can only be wiped out if the government musters the political will to convoke the public debate as requested.

Keep West Baton Rouge Beautiful

You won’t hear it from Mary Delapasse, but the 5-foot 1-inch executive director of Keep West Baton Rouge Beautiful is a big reason for renewed interest in recycling in the parish.

“She’s very modest,” said Leigh Harris, executive director of Keep Louisiana Beautiful.

In 2011,Wear a whimsical Disney ear cap straight from the Disney Theme Parks! Harris nominated Delapasse for a national award that had her competing with 50 other young affiliates (chapters) nationwide.

Delapasse, 54, is persistent in going after grant money, Harris said. “She mentors other communities. People gravitate to her.”

An office budget of $59,000 pays Delapasse’s salary, office supplies and advertising material. Delapasse works three days a week. She’s paid by the towns she serves and the parish.

In addition to Keep Louisiana Beautiful grants, she’s received grants from companies that include a $20,000 grant from Dow Chemical and $10,Comprehensive Wi-Fi and RFID tag by Aeroscout to accurately locate and track any asset or person.000 from Anheiser-Busch that bought recycling cans for baseball, football and recreational parks.

Delapasse, though a Master Gardener, didn’t consider herself particularly “green” when she took the Keep West Baton Rouge Beautiful job more than four years ago.Laser engraving and laser laser cutting machine for materials like metal, She’d been the manager of a periodontist’s office.

Delapasse first worked from a tiny office in the parish Governmental Building. Her present 9-by-12-foot office is big by comparison.

Delapasse and a desk share space with a huge body puppet named “Louie,” yard signs, stacks of pamphlets, tote bags, a costume made of woven plastic bags and plastic containers for recycling batteries. Two sheds accommodate the overflow.

“The response to battery recycling stunned me,” said Delapasse, who tears up sometimes when she talks about recycling.

Delapasse passed out 900 cigarette butt kits at drugstores in the parish. The campaign asked smokers to put their cigarette butts in metal-lined, plastic containers instead of throwing butts from car windows.

Delapasse tendered a card captioned “Cigarette Butt Fast Facts”.

The card said cigarette butts are “the world’s greatest environmental litter problem.” More than 176 million pounds of cigarette butts are discarded every year in the United States,Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet? according to the card.

“Wind and rain often carry cigarette butts into waterways where the toxic chemicals in the cigarette filters leak out ... Cigarette butts have been found in the stomachs of fish, birds, whales and other marine creatures.”

At least five companies pick up recycling and garbage at residences and businesses in Port Allen, Addis,We've got a plastic card to suit you. Brusly and in the parish.

“And there are niche markets for metals and cardboards,” said Karla Swacker with Allied Waste Services, one of the companies serving municipalities in the parish.

Over the years, if a service provider frequently failed to empty recycling receptacles on pickup day, residents lost interest in recycling, said Terry Pattan, administrative coordinator of utilities in Port Allen.

Because of Delapasse’s campaign, recycling is picking up in the parish, said Pam Keowen, office supervisor of the West Baton Rouge Parish Natural Gas and Water System.

“We love West Baton Rouge, but people don’t understand if they put trash in the back of a pickup the trash blows out,” she said.

“I tell children about contaminating recycling trucks and recycling dumpsters,” Delapasse said. “If there’s more than 15 percent that isn’t recyclable — food, styrofoam — the contents can’t be recycled. They have to go to the landfill.”

When a recycling company stopped taking plastic bags, Delapasse found herself with 60,000 plastic bags collected by children. A Baton Rouge church took the bags to weave into mats for homeless people.

New technology will deter bank card fraudsters

In order to issue chip cards, banks are required to independently source them from suppliers or service providers and upgrade their card Management systems to be EMV compliant. The same goes for EMV/chip acceptance. Banks should ensure that their devices, point of sale terminals and automated teller machines are EMV compliant. This is an investment that many commercial banks are dealing with at the present.

EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, a global standard for inter-operation of chip cards,Like most of you, I'd seen the broken buy mosaic decorated pieces. point of sale terminals and ATMs, for authenticating credit and debit card transactions.

It is a joint effort between Europay, MasterCard and Visa to ensure security and global interoperability so that Visa and MasterCard cards can continue to be accepted everywhere.

“Although there is no market-specific hard deadline for EMV compliance but financial institutions globally- including Kenyan banks- have until 2015 to migrate from the current magnetic chip to the new technology,” said Jabu Basopo, Visa Country Manager for Southern and East Africa.

“EMV chip cards are embedded with multifunctional microchip which has superior security features unavailable on the magnetic stripe.Wear a whimsical Disney ear cap straight from the Disney Theme Parks! Chip technology, both embedded in the card and the acceptance device increases the safety and security of the transaction,” said Basopo.

At present, Kenya plastic money stakeholders among them VISA have joined hands to urge banks to migrate from old ATM cards to high security chip and PIN card technology. These security features include strong authentication levels,The 3rd International Conference on indoor positioning system and Indoor Navigation.Comprehensive Wi-Fi and RFID tag by Aeroscout to accurately locate and track any asset or person. which use cryptograms in order to validate the cardholder, the card and the transaction. This makes chip cards the most secure instrument for card payments. The microchip is virtually impossible to ‘crack’ or replicate hence it is a deterrent to fraudsters.

Markets within Asia Pacific have adopted EMV technology and have seen a drastic decline in both counterfeit fraud and cross order fraud.

“Fraudsters often take advantage of markets where there is low EMV acceptance and commit widespread cross-border fraud – that is using foreign issued EMV cards on domestic non-EMV terminals,” said Basopo.

Within Africa, there are countries such as Nigeria, which aggressively adopted EMV technology and reaped the immediate benefits of enhanced security through a reduction of their fraud by over 90 per cent within one year.

Paybefore Awards, now in its seventh year, is the most prestigious recognition of excellence in the worldwide prepaid and emerging payments industry. The awards are presented annually by Paybefore, whose publications are the leading source of industry information for alternative payments executives.

"We are honoured to be a recipient of this prominent industry award," commented Keith McKenzie, President of SelectCore. "As the first instant-issuance EMV card and benefits disbursement program, SelectCore addressed a burgeoning need for government agencies to provide a secure and cost-effective method of funds delivery, while at the same time delivering important benefits to recipients.With superior quality photometers, light meters and a number of other solar light products. This award clearly demonstrates our leadership and innovation in the prepaid industry."

The City of Toronto City Services Benefits Card was selected by a panel of five industry experts who served as judges for this year's competition, which - once again - included a record number of entries from around the world.

"Paybefore Awards were created to honor the companies and individuals that are at the forefront of innovation as well as successful market implementation across the globe," said Loraine DeBonis, Paybefore editor-in-chief and chair of the judging panel. "It's a dynamic time in electronic payments as companies like SelectCore continue to innovate to solve payments problems," she continued. "We are proud to recognize its contributions to advancing the prepaid and emerging payments industry."

"As the world changes, so do the payment and money management needs of individuals, businesses and government agencies," added Marilyn Bochicchio, Paybefore's CEO. "Paybefore Awards recognizes the organizations that use financial services to make people's lives better, which is why it is so exciting for us to honor those who champion innovation and excellence."

The City Services Benefits Card is the first program of its kind in North America. SelectCore's payment solution enables Toronto residents to instantly receive their Ontario Works social assistance benefits through an EMV chip and PIN prepaid MasterCard card that offers ATM access and can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted at over 29.4 million locations worldwide.

Micromax A110 Superfone Canvas 2 review

With big screen phones, popularly known as phablets, gaining prominence, and the increasing demand for budget alternatives, Micromax decided to upgrade its Canvas line-up, within two months of launching its first 5-inch phone, the A100. The successor to the A100, the A110 or Canvas 2 features a Dual Core processor,With superior quality photometers, light meters and a number of other solar light products. an IPS panel, and an upgraded 8-megapixel camera. Here's our review of the device.

The front of the phone looks strikingly similar to the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Note II, except for the absence of a physical home button. The chrome speaker grill, front camera and sensors are positioned similar to that of the Note 2. There are markings for three capacitive touch buttons below the display. There's no Micromax branding on the front of the phone. There's a chrome trim around the phone that was a little too shiny for our liking. On the right side, there's a big power key, while the volume rocker sits on the left hand side. Both these keys also sport a chrome finish, but kind of lack refinement, in our opinion.Site describes services including Plastic Mould. The Micro-USB port and the 3.5mm audio ports sit on the top of the phone. The back cover is made of plastic and has a matte finish. The material used feels durable, and offers a good grip. The camera lens, however, protrudes out towards the top, and feels awkward. There's a dual LED flash besides the camera. The back also sports Micromax branding and a speaker.

The Micromax A110 is a dual-SIM smartphone and supports GSM SIM card in both the slots. The SIM Card slots and a slot for the micro SD card hide behind the back cover just above the battery slot. Unfortunately, the SIM cards and the Micro SD cards are not hot-swappable and you'll have to take the battery out if you want to replace either of them.

The Micromax A110 comes with a 5-inch 262k colour capacitive touch screen with an IPS panel sporting a resolution of 480x854 pixels. We found the screen resolution to be pretty low for a device of this size, and the graphics and text appeared to be less sharp. The viewing angles looked good, and the under-sun visibility on the phone was decent, though we found the screen to be highly reflective.

The 8-megapixel autofocus shooter takes decent images in daylight, although we feel that colour reproduction could have been better. Also, we observed that pictures taken in low-light conditions and indoors (without the use of the LED flash) were a bit grainy. The dual-led flash fulfills its intended purpose.We sell 100% hand-painted oil paintings for sale online. The quality of videos captured through the back camera was average. Overall, we feel that the phone's good for casual photography.

Micromax has also included some of its own apps including its own apps and content store, M! Store, and services store, M! Zone, in addition to its messaging app, HookUp, and friends locator app, M! Buddy and a few games (Fruit Devil, Cricket Fever). The handset also offers FM Radio.

The handset sports three capacitive buttons - a Menu key,The 3rd International Conference on indoor positioning system and Indoor Navigation. Home button and a Back key. Long pressing the Home key opens the app-switcher for switching between open/previously accessed apps. To be honest, we find the menu button redundant. Perhaps, Micromax could allow users to use the menu button exclusively as the app-switcher, on the lines of newer HTC phones.Also, the phone could do with stock icons, and we're not sure why Micromax decided to skin them. We also noticed that Micromax's app store was offering apps such as Viber and Nimbuzz, which are otherwise free, as paid apps.We checked with Micromax and they informed that their app store offers ad-free versions of the apps.

During our use of the phone we noticed some minor lag, especially while playing games, but other than that, we'd rate our overall experience as above average. We expected a bit more from a phone that runs on a dual-core processor. We're not sure if the phone would get updated to Jelly Bean, which offers a smoother user experience compared to ICS.

The phone is powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor that is a MediaTek chip, and has 512MB of RAM on board. We did not encounter any crashes while working on the phone and multitasking was comfortable. We did notice some lag while navigating through the menu, and while playing some games. We were not able to play 1020p HD video clips, and 720p clips also stuttered. The phone also doesn't support .avi videos natively, but that can be easily fixed by downloading third-party video players.

The phone comes with the native Android browser and renders all webpages well. The phone doesn't come with Adobe Flash. The speaker on the phone delivers good quality sound but volume levels are low. Also, since the speaker is located at the back, the volume levels further decrease when the phone lies on its back. The phone surprisingly doesn't include an ambient light-sensor, so there's no setting for automatic brightness, and the user would need to manually set brightness levels for the screen.

Call quality was good. The phone is a dual-SIM GSM phone with support for one active and the other in active-standby mode.

The Micromax Canvas 2 comes with a 2000mAh battery and we were satisfied with the backup that it offered. We were able to get around 7 hours of video playback, even with the display on full brightness levels. With intermediate usage during the day,Like most of you, I'd seen the broken buy mosaic decorated pieces. including playing games, a few calls, and e-mail and Twitter notifications turned on, we were able to get about one-and-a-half days of backup. The phone would easily give 7-9 hours of usage on a single charge.

'Superimpose' at Twelve21 Gallery

The best group shows are not explicitly themed, but merely by juxtaposing the work of two or more artists, expose a parallel or create something new from the dialogue between works. Superimpose, opening Friday at Twelve21 Gallery, gathers work by three artists that explores the notion of juxtaposition itself.

Seattle's Weston Jandacka, Gainesville's Victor Perez and Orlando's Brian Phillips all show paintings in a fairly traditional figurative style,Compare prices and buy all brands of solar panel for home power systems and by the pallet. though poppy and graphic. The conceptual work takes place in your head, as you make the connection between disparate items or apprehend the ironic gap between image and title.

Perez's superflat acrylics smash together conflicting elements with a jokey force – a long skinny red balloon twisted through the empty eye sockets of a skull, a condom skinned down over a cactus. In the better pieces, the contradiction isn't just a visual pun, but also a pithy expression of emotion – a painting titled "Conquest" (right), an astronaut whose helmet is being stove in by the leg of an ornate red couch, is as potent an illustration of the fear that domesticity will strangle one's freedom as I've seen in a while.

Phillips' small oils also survey the intersection between domesticity and disturbance, perhaps somewhat more literally, in images of burning houses ("Under the Illusion of Exploration Learning What Should Simply Be Recognized," below) and a series of fiery-haloed eclipses.

Jandacka uses a masking technique to transpose cutout lettering over his landscape, superimposing the commentary over the very image – or forcing his imagery into the mold of his sardonic titles: "It's to Die For" (oil on wood) subverts the implied fabulosity of that phrase with the blunt force of a firing gun.

It's not all death and destruction, though; even the darkest ironies and most bitter puns show a lightness – a grin at the abyss rather than a falling tear. Superimpose, while not exactly lighthearted, is a fun show, a blithe, zero-fucks-given shrug at the doomsayers.

A quick Google search for “Chinese art reproductions” or “Chinese oil paintings” leads to a fascinating tour into the world of art reproduction. After clicking through some of the top sites that pop up – Refine Oil Painting Art Gallery, China Oil Painting Gallery, Oil Paintings China – it becomes apparent that Chinese oil painters are the masters of copying the Masters from Europe.

From Cezanne and Goya to Monet, Renoir and Rubens, spot-on replicas of the West’s most treasured works on canvas can be purchased and delivered at the click of a button for as little as U.S. $20. Take this hand-painted,we sell dry cabinet and different kind of laboratory equipment in us. 8”x10” Da Vinci mock-up, for example.

While it’s easy to link China’s copying of artistic masterpieces to its copying of technology and myriad other issues associated with copyright and creativity, there is still a high level of skill involved in hand-painting a facsimile of Velasquez’s Portrait of Felipe IV in five days flat,wind turbine as Chinese Artist Yang Feiyun has done.

In a report by Agence France-Presse, we are given a glimpse of this process in action. According to the report, a group of respected Chinese artists are now on a two-week excursion to Madrid’s Prado Museum to get up close and personal with the bona fide originals many reproduction painters in China will never see.Totech Americas delivers a wide range of drycabinets for applications spanning electronics.

Yang, seen putting the finishing touches on his copy of 17th century Spanish King Felipe IV by Velasquez, told AFP, “I have been painting my whole life, ever since I was a child, and Velasquez is a master among painters. He is known in China for his great depth.”

But Yang is no art hack. The head of oil painting at the state-controlled Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, he explained that the real point of his work in Madrid is not for profit but education.

“Our aim is to learn a lot and have these works as teaching material in China,” he said. “There is not a long history of oil painting in China – just the past 100 years or so. We are in a learning period.”

Other artists on the Prado tour represent the prestigious China Academy of Art. Each of the artists has made it their mission to copy at least two works from the museum’s extensive collection during their time in Madrid. Some of the paintings they’re eyeing include Rubens’ The Three Graces and The Third of May 1808 in Madrid by Goya.

Upon their return to China, their paintings will be shown in Beijing and used to train artists.Which Air purifier is right for you? Many in the West may not relate to this approach to developing creative expression, but in China this tradition stretches back millennia.

UNR stuck amid federal, state weed laws

Walk past Kim Phillip’s art gallery in San Diego, or, go ahead, walk inside. You’ll see walls adorned with student paintings that Kim is more than willing to sell you,Totech Americas delivers a wide range of drycabinets for applications spanning electronics. even though the art world is not Kim’s forum of business. Show her your green card, and you’ll get access to the real store: a dispensary hidden between yoga and dance studios in plain sight, selling medical marijuana to customers ranging from 21 to the their 80s, from reputable lawyers to dread-headed hippies.

“With my last business, (the federal government) sent a letter to the owner of the building saying that they would take over the property,” Kim said. “What they do is threaten the owners. For a while they were closing down everything, but we just keep re-opening again.”

Kim is one of the many dispensary owners and marijuana users caught between contrasting federal and state laws regarding medical and recreational marijuana.Compare prices and buy all brands of solar panel for home power systems and by the pallet. In northwestern Nevada, devoid of dispensaries, the fight has been driven to federally funded institutions obliged to obey national laws to keep their funding – including the University of Nevada,wind turbine Reno.

One of Kim’s customers is her daughter Tori Phillips, a Truckee Meadows Community College student transferring to UNR in the fall. She does not have a medical marijuana card but receives medical marijuana through the dispensary that her mother owns in San Diego.

When Tori’s gallbladder was removed three years ago, she knew the pain was going to be intense, but she had no idea she would be crippled by the corrosive vat of acid her stomach became when her liver was her only line of defense.

“The shit that gives you heartburn? That goes right into my stomach,” Phillips said. “Western medicine is the worst thing for shit like this. I don’t have insurance right now, and weed helps! It helps my stomach calm down, and I’m not in pain afterward.”

Tori Phillips is one of many students who smoke for medicinal purposes, many of whom have Nevada or California medical marijuana cards they frequently try to defend themselves with to Campus Police.

At UNR, medical marijuana cards also lose their leverage. Carol Millie, Coordinator of the Office of Student Conduct, explained that while under federal funding, college campuses are subject to federal laws, which is difficult to explain to cardholders who try to justify using marijuana in the residence halls or elsewhere on campus.

“Our college campus is federally funded,” Millie said. “We have to abide (by federal law) to keep student-loan funding. We can’t jeopardize other student’s ability to get funding. The Supreme Court has already decided that.”

Methods for apprehending marijuana users on campus are not limited to catching students in the act or even with marijuana on them.

“I think smell is now the number one thing to an incident,” Millie said. “Be it in the dorms or out … at Manzanita Bowl: the odor of marijuana is the key telling fact.”

After students have been accused, they have the option of going to take a drug test at a testing center downtown. Students are not allowed to supply their own drug tests. However, marijuana can be in one’s system for more than 30 days depending on the frequency of use, making some students question whether the process is in place to prevent students being high on campus.we sell dry cabinet and different kind of laboratory equipment in us.

“That’s completely subjective,” said Jeff Hemig, a 19-year-old information systems major. “I can come to campus completely sober and have the smell lingering on my coat. That’s way too much. It does more harm than good.”

The OSC has taken further steps to combat marijuana use on campus, largely due to surveys conducted by the OSC that indicate marijuana and alcohol users are less likely to graduate. A sharp rise in students who use marijuana, also indicated by the survey, caused the OSC and Campus Police to seek stricter enforcement. Students who admitted to smoking marijuana within the past year rose from 26.5 to 40 percent between 2006 and 2012, and those who admitted to smoking within the past month rose from 18.3 to 21 percent.Which Air purifier is right for you?

“Twenty-five percent of those who receive A15 violations (campus substance violations) do not return to campus,” Millie said. “Plagiarizing, cheating, fighting — they all had higher retention rates. The data shows that younger students who are smoking pot are not making it to class. Of course, there are those who can, but, overall, that is the trend.”

Hemig is one student quick to dispel any direct correlation between marijuana use and poor scholastic performance. He has been using marijuana recreationally since the age of 16 and graduated from high school with honors.

“Its not the smoking (that inhibits academic performance),” Hemig said, “It’s that kids who are more likely to smoke are already people who are less likely to take on responsibility.”

To combat marijuana use on campus, the OSC employs Cannabis Screen and Intervention for College Students. These are funded by Justice Assistance Grants, federal money from the U.S. Department of Justice allotted for crime prevention programs at state, local, and tribal levels. The program consists of two sessions where students come in and meet with counselors to learn about potential health risks.

“As the adult, they try to understand whether marijuana helps or hurts the student,” Millie said. “One thing that grosses me out is that a lot of dispensaries are in houses with rats. Rat poison gets in your pot. Some analysis even finds black mold spores from the pot being grown in enclosed spaces.”

University of California, Davis veterinary scientists presented evidence last July that rat poison used by marijuana growers may be pushing the fisher, a rare forest carnivore, toward extinction. Marijuana advocates such as High Times magazine discourage smoking moldy weed, particularly of the toxic, black mold variety, Still, many students defend the marijuana they use as superior to the toxic crops that CASICS warns against.

“We have students saying, ‘Oh, my weed isn’t like that. I use hydroponics. It grows in the forest next to a waterfall’ and that may be true,” Millie said. “There’s still evidence that before the age of 24, it does keep your brain from developing appropriately.”

Although marijuana is more difficult to test for than alcohol, safety issues related to public intoxication are still viable. Even marijuana advocates think a line needs to be drawn with impaired driving.

“If you got pulled over, it happened for a reason,” Kim said. “You’re still under the influence. It’s not the same as drinking, but if you can’t function, you shouldn’t be driving.”

Whether campus enforcement comes across as intrusive or genuinely compassionate about the health of students, Millie insists the efforts are not a political statement but a matter of following the law.

“Many individuals make the decision (following their incident) to not be a part of the (UNR) community,” Millie said. “I can respect that. They’re saying, ‘I understand your rules, but they’re not working for my lifestyle.’ If they decide or if the law decides different – you bet we want them back.”

Tiger Woods' Torrey Pines win a great forecast for his 2013

The weather in La Jolla, Calif., made a mess of things over the weekend for the PGA. It turned what should have been a Tiger Woods Sunday into a Monday coronation.we sell dry cabinet and different kind of laboratory equipment in us.

Things should go back to normal the rest of the year—weather permitting, of course. His coronations will proceed on their regularly-scheduled dates.

No, not so much because we now have a definitive answer to the ubiquitous “Is Tiger Back?” question.Which Air purifier is right for you? (It’s just getting fun to type that five or six times a year now, although not as much fun lately as typing “Are the Lakers Back?”) We don’t have an answer to that, not in January.

We only have history to guide us. History is on Woods’ side.

Monday’s virtual walkover—a 4-stroke victory at 14-under—finished off Tiger’s seventh victory (eight overall, counting the 2008 U.S. Open) in the annual Tour stop at Torrey Pines (formerly the Buick Invitational, now the Farmers Insurance Open). A win there, early in the year, has been an omen for success for him every time, going back nearly to the beginning of his run.

In each of the previous six years he’s won this tournament (1999, 2003 and 2005-08), he has finished the year with at least five victories. In five of those seasons, the win total has included at least one major. The exception was ’03, during what was then considered a catastrophic, career-altering “slump”—10 straight majors without a win, with the ’03 shutout aided by late ’02 knee surgery.

The then-Buick win was his comeback tourney. Even without a major, he won Player of the Year that season, as he did five other times in seasons in which he won at Torrey Pines.

In ’08, of course, he won there twice. Not that anyone needs to be reminded of that, or of his new definition of “slump.’’ His drought now stands at 0-for-his-last-18.

For what it’s worth, and in case another parallel to the good ol’ days is needed, part of his renaissance during the post-surgical 2003-04 speed bump involved a re-tooling of his swing. He’s been re-tooling it again over the past two-plus years, with a different coach, the often-scorned Sean Foley.

There hasn’t been a lot of scorning of Foley lately, or of Woods’ swing, or of anything else about his game. There certainly was none of that going on over the weekend at Torrey Pines. Day by day (except Saturday, naturally), Woods rolled on, padding his lead with a combination of his spectacular play and his competition’s inability to rise to the challenge.

He weaved in his usual supply of “wow” moments—a great, fist pump-inspiring chip on No. 4 on Sunday, and on Monday a sensational save from behind a tree, off a driveway out of bounds on No. 9, and later a bunker shot onto the green from another cartoonishly contorted stance on No. 11.

The most cartoonish part of the day, and of the entire tournament, was the fact that down the stretch, Woods had an 8-shot lead, actually padding his own score and the distance between himself and his hapless competitors. He didn’t hold onto all of it, but, of course, it didn’t matter.

It’s also worth pointing out that Rory McIlroy did not play this tournament. Graeme McDowell didn’t either—yet he still got off the line of the week from the other side of the Atlantic, on Twitter: “Was thinking of adding Farmers Open to my schedule next year. Maybe need to reconsider. Tiger owns the place.”

They’ll all meet soon enough—McIlroy and McDowell and Adam Scott and the other contenders. Brandt Snedeker will be around, and the solid tourney he had at the Farmers likely will mean more than it did this time,Compare prices and buy all brands of solar panel for home power systems and by the pallet. when he disappeared from sight behind Tiger.

Phil Mickelson will be there, too, although, on the course that he, like Woods, calls his home turf, it was as if he was never there this weekend. His 2-under total never came close to getting it done.

Azul Systems, the award-winning leader in Java runtime scalability, today announced that it has formed a partnership with jClarity, a provider of Java performance analytics solutions for enterprise and Cloud-based environments. Under the collaboration agreement, jClarity will optimize their tools for Azul's Zing? Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and will recommend it to customers as a component of its Cloud toolkit.

Leveraging their work in the Java and Open Source community over the last five years, the founding members at jClarity create products that allow developers to quickly identify where a performance problem is within an application and what steps need to be taken to resolve it. The tools are designed to analyze the system as a whole without compromising the running system. Azul's Zing is a 100% Java-compatible high performance JVM and the only solution that delivers low latency, large in-memory datasets without performance penalty and elastic resource sharing in the Cloud.

Ben Evans, CEO at jClarity, said: "As the representative for the London Java Community on the JCP Executive Committee, I met Azul Systems and quickly recognized the benefits of the solution and how it complements the performance analytics of jClarity. Both companies specialize in Java and fully appreciate how predictable performance levels can deliver tangible commercial results."

Evans continued: "One of the key Azul stand-outs for me is its C4 garbage collection technology. It ensures consistency of response times - the ideal result when analyzing garbage collection impact on an application. Azul's technology also recognizes more subtle performance influencers such as queuing on the network, which is highly impressive as other JVMs do not do this. If you ignore these subtleties you end up with results which are misleading and ultimately could impact business results.wind turbine"

Scott Sellers, president and CEO of Azul Systems, said, "Being a member of the JCP Executive Committee means that we are at the forefront of Java development and interact with the leading innovators in our field.Totech Americas delivers a wide range of drycabinets for applications spanning electronics. It is very gratifying for a fellow member to recognize the engineering advances we've made and actively want to partner with us. Both firms are heavily involved in the low latency markets so we anticipate working with jClarity extensively to deliver high-value add solutions in this area."

Petraeus And A New Kind Of War

Central to the story are ideas of counterinsurgency. Kaplan says that while counterinsurgency is not a new kind of warfare, it's a kind of war that Americans do not like to fight.

"We tend to call it irregular warfare even though this kind of warfare is the most common," Kaplan tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. Kaplan, who writes the War Stories column for Slate, explains that Petraeus and a number of his West Point peers were interested in the writings of counterinsurgency theorists who believed that "insurgencies grow out of something. They don't grow out of a vacuum. ..A ridiculously low price on this All-Purpose solar lantern by Gordon.. They respond to people's needs in a country where the government is not satisfying those needs. And so, what you have to do is not merely capture and kill the insurgents, but change the social conditions.Ein innovativer und moderner Werkzeugbau Formenbau. ... It was a different kind of warfare that required not just fighting, but what we now call 'nation building' [and] that required cultural sensitivity to the people around them, required living among the people, protecting the population, earning their trust so that they, in turn, will tell us who the bad guys are."

Petraeus implemented these theories with some success in Iraq, but less so in Afghanistan, where he lacked the familiarity with the country he had had in Iraq.

"The problem was, by his own admission, he knew nothing about Afghanistan," says Kaplan. "He'd been in Iraq three times. He knew that place well. He comes in and what's in his mind is Iraq. ... I was told that in a meeting with President Karzai once, Karzai laid out a problem and [Petraeus] said, 'Well, you know, in Baghdad we did it like this ...' to the president of Afghanistan. And the aide who was with Petraeus in the room — who had been both in Afghanistan and Iraq — when they were walking out he said, 'You know,wind turbine it might be an interesting intellectual experiment for you to not even think about Iraq,' and Petraeus said, 'I'm working on it.' "

"He vetted candidates for an election; he held the election; he opened up the economy; he brought in fuel trucks from Turkey; he opened up the university; he opened up the border to Syria in northern Iraq all on his own initiative. ... There were no orders. So it worked for about a year and he was rotated out and a brigade half the size of his division came in with commanders who had spent the previous three months bashing down doors and killing and arresting people in Tikrit, and that's what they did in Mosul and the operation fell apart for another year or two."

His whole MO and his entire life was that he had overcome the odds. That he had defied expectations. You know, everybody knows the story that at one time when he was an assistant division commander he had been shot in the chest by a fellow solider whose gun accidentally went off in a live-fire exercise. He recovered much more quickly than the doctors said. He jumped out of a plane once, the parachute ripped, he free-fell for 60 feet, broke his pelvis. He recovered. His surge worked in Iraq ...Which Air purifier is right for you? to a degree that nobody had anticipated, and so he went into Afghanistan leery, but thinking that, 'Well, maybe I can pull this off.' "

"He always wanted to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but anybody who knows the military bureaucracy knows that that can be an exceedingly powerful position. .Totech Americas delivers a wide range of drycabinets for applications spanning electronics... Petraeus was distrusted by many members of the Obama White House. They thought that he boxed President Obama in on troop options ... in the discussions about Afghanistan. The perception was, this guy was too clever; he was too powerful. You didn't want a powerful general to be given such a powerful position. And so, in December in 2010, Bob Gates comes to Afghanistan, tells Petraeus, 'You're not going to get the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, what would you like [instead]?' and [Petraeus] came up with the idea of CIA director."

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. For 10 years now, Americans have become accustomed to seeing American soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our guest Fred Kaplan says that while America fought those wars, an internal conflict raged within the military about how to fight them.

When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, top commanders knew how to wage a conventional land war with devastating effectiveness. But they discarded long-studied principles of counterinsurgency: How to deal with a conflict in which the enemy lives and fights among the population, when the battle is more for the allegiance of civilians than for territory.

In his new book, Kaplan describes the efforts of civilian strategists and younger officers to turn U.S. military thinking around and pursue a more nuanced approach to the fighting in Iraq. Kaplan says the officers succeeded in selling their strategy, and while it helped in Iraq, it failed in Afghanistan. Fred Kaplan is a veteran national security journalist. He writes the War Stories column for Slate and has written three previous books. His latest is "The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War."

Well, Fred Kaplan, welcome back to FRESH AIR. After the debacle of the Vietnam War, you might think that strategists in the American military would decide that they need to focus on how you engage in limited war, how you fight guerrillas, how to more effectively, you know, engage in one of these limited conflicts. But you write they did almost the opposite.

FRED KAPLAN: Right, the generals decided they would never fight another war like this ever again. By coincidence, at the same time the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union were increasing their conventional armies in Europe, and so they turned their attention to that theater, and it was the kind of theater that they were comfortable with fighting, wars that depended on firepower and amassing men, and machines, and metal and dropping bombs and that sort of thing.

All We Need is Growth

Another day, another article arguing that we shouldn't be focused on deficits when the real problem is economic growth. EJ Dionne argues, drawing on Bruce Bartlett, that much of our deficit is driven by "one time factors" like the Bush tax cuts and the financial crisis. Return to economic growth, and our problem goes away.

The logic is, of course, absolutely correct. Though I try not to use too many household metaphors when talking about national finance, here's one that fits. There are two ways to pay off $30,000 worth of credit card debt on a $40,000 income: radical austerity, or increasing your income. Of the two, adding income is probably less painful, which is why Dave Ramsey frequently advises listeners to pick up a newspaper route or deliver pizzas for a while.

With robust economic growth, our debt-to-GDP ratio will start to decline, our tax revenues will start to rise, and the rolls of programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps will start to fall. All sorts of problems start looking easier with robust economic growth.

So why are people focusing on the tedious and painful business of austerity, when growth would be so much better? For the same reason you've probably opted to pay off the Mastercard, rather than waiting until you have time to publish a bestselling novel: it's not so easy to deliver robust economic growth on demand. Whatever you may have heard, no one has a plan in their pocket to increase the trend rate of economic growth--indeed, so far we've failed to get it back to the levels that preceded this "one time factor". Telling budget wonks that "we need more growth" is a bit like telling a cancer patient "you need more health". I mean, yes, Dr. Insight, but can you be more specific?

To be sure, we do know how to boost growth in the short run: borrow a bunch of money and throw it into the economy. But this is exclusively a short term strategy. Moreover, stimulus doesn't fix our budget problems; it increases them. The current federal tax take is somewhere south of 20% of GDP. That means that for stimulus to pay for itself, budget-wise, it needs to have a multiplier of 5--which is to say that every dollar the government spends must generate $5 worth of GDP growth. Recent estimators of the multiplier during the Great Recession were more like 1.5, which means that for every dollar we spent on stimulus, we generated an additional 10 cents in tax revenue. This is not a financing strategy that can be kept up forever. A lot of liberals seem to be thinking of stimulus the way that some conservatives think of tax cuts: as a sort of perpetual motion free money machine. There is no such thing.

There's always a risk of another "one time factor". No one saw this one coming. If we have another, the debt we're accumulating now will leave us in a worse position to pay for it. Of course, we could have a happy growth surprise too--but it's not unreasonable to say that we should prepare for emergencies, not unexpected growth. Presumably, if it materializes, we'll have little trouble spending it.

High levels of debt (and the taxes needed to pay for it) have a negative effect on growth. By the end of this year, the federal debt held by the public will probably be something like 78% of GDP. That may not be high enough to exert a serious drag on growth, but it's getting pretty close.Like most of you, I'd seen the broken buy mosaic decorated pieces.

Just an aside, because I know what you're thinking: infrastructure! But at this point, infrastructure isn't going to turbocharge growth, because we already have a lot of infrastructure. In Vietnam, putting in a paved road and a modern port facility can easily pay for itself in higher growth, because right now, it's very hard for goods to move or factories to be built. But the United States already has paved roads and modern port facilities. Infrastructure investments here are often repairs or replacements, not radical capacity improvements. That's not to say that we shouldn't do them. But this spending is in the category of "keeping ourselves from getting poorer", not "making ourselves richer"; we shouldn't expect it to raise the trend growth rate. Even things that could actually improve productivity, like some of the smart grid innovations,Provides more protection than regular Safety goggles. are not going to deliver an extra 1% of trend growth every year. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't spend money on needed infrastructure. But we should not act as if this is a substitute for sensible budgeting.We provide payment solutions in the USA as well as high risk merchant account. It isn't--any more than buying a house was a good substitute for saving in 2005.

I believe, along with a lot of economists, that there's no particular reason to hurry austerity. The US still borrows on easy terms, so we can afford to ease into it while the economy recovers.

However, I also believe, along with a lot of economists, that eventually, the US needs to get its books in order. And the easiest way to do that is to start planning now. If we wait until the market forces us into it, all the ugly adjustments that we'd rather not make will have to be undertaken at the maximally painful time, in the most brutal possible way.

Products manufactured by Eastern include industrial and vehicular hardware such as latches and locks for the trucking and military vehicle industries; lightweight composite paneling systems used to create sleeper cabs for the trucking industry, as well as in other applications; consumer and luggage locks of all shapes, sizes and descriptions; coin collection and smart card products; and a proprietary line of mine roof expansion anchors used to secure the roofs of underground coal and metallurgical mines.

The bottom line is Eastern products can be found everywhere -- from mines to airports to military bases. Their latches and hardware can be found in school bus doors. Their locks and hinges can be found in the crossbed and wheel-well tool boxes and chests that are standard equipment on many pickup trucks. Their hard plastic tills can be found in cash registers all over the world.

The security products group also includes a number of lock companies -- including Illinois Lock Co., CCL Security Products, Royal Lock, World Lock Co. Ltd. and World Securities Industries Ltd. -- that sell to both the OEM industrial market and the consumer retail market. These companies make electronic and mechanical locking devices, both keyed and keyless, for the computer,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. electronics,We offer over 600 landscape oil paintings at wholesale prices of 75% off retail. vending and gaming industries. They also supply locks to the luggage, furniture, laboratory equipment and commercial laundry industries.

Audi's self-parking car

I am standing outside the luxury Mandarin Oriental hotel in Vegas, and up pulls a high-end Audi A7, a car that bristles with technology. Nothing very remarkable about that, but the car doesn’t have a driver.We've had a lot of people asking where we had our make your own bobblehead made. No, though it looks totally stock, this car can both park itself and then, with a click of a smartphone app, be summoned from the lot and pull up in front of the hotel entrance. We watched it do all of this stuff.

Demonstrations like this can make it seem that self-driving cars are right around the corner, but in fact it’s made possible by sophisticated (though commercially available) sensors both in the car and along the route that help it pinpoint an exact location, detect obstacles and other vehicles. Because of that, this A7 can’t just take off across town to pick up the milk, though Audi has a license to do that in the state of Nevada and has other vehicles — bristling with expensive cameras, sensors and lasers — that can run up Pikes Peak and handle public highways.

Annie Lien, a senior engineer with the company’s research lab, calls what the A7 does “piloted parking.” She doesn’t expect tech like that to be commercialized until about 2023, but she does see applications like that coming — part of the incremental push toward autonomous driving. Lien is actually worried that valet parkers could lose their jobs.wind turbine

Working with suppliers like Bosch, Audi is looking at nearer-term applications such as traffic jam assist, which could let your car inch forward on your own in gridlock conditions while you relax with the daily paper. Closer still is technology that will allow the car to change lanes on its own, after you indicate intent with the turn signal.

Scott Winchip, a chassis control executive at Bosch, points to a current system that can mitigate collisions (by pre-tensioning seatbelts and pre-charging brakes, then intervening directly to apply the brakes if the driver doesn’t respond). Video cameras can help with another existing system, lane departure warning, which sends signals when you start to wander, and then, if needed, steers you back in line.

I also like the sound of systems that detect drowsiness (by, among other things, noticing that you’re not moving the steering wheel). A coffee cup icon warns you to stay awake, Winchip said. I tried out all these systems in a Bosch driving simulator that was amazingly successful at imitating forward movement. Its animated scenarios said Florida but looked like Europe.

Audi, meanwhile, is looking for new challenges. “We’ve already done Pikes Peak,” Lien said. “We wanted to show off something that was closer to production.” The technology in the self-parking A7 isn’t prohibitively expensive, but the hurdles to this and other sooner-than-later self-parking applications are more legal and regulatory. Plus, people have to get used to the idea of cars that park themselves.

The company with the most road miles in autonomous vehicles isn’t an automaker — instead it’s Google, whose motivations in the space are somewhat mysterious but always interesting. Dr. Christina Simon, Audi’s self-parking project chief, said, “Google is doing good work, and they have millions of miles of on-road experience.Site describes services including Plastic Mould. But we bring an automaker’s know-how to the table.” And that means automakers (GM and Volkswagen are also players) are getting serious about cars without drivers.

Since Baton Rouge and Baker voters approved a tax to support the buses in April, the system has been subject to quarterly accountability meetings.

"The system has lacked good service for such a long time, and this is an opportunity to turn that around. So that's what we're committed to," said CATS CEO Brian Marshall.

Marshall promises even more improvements for the long-struggling system. In addition to technological updates to bus security systems, he says buses are much more timely. A recent study suggests CATS could be even more effective if they contract management from private companies. Marshall believes that to be an unnecessary expense.

"We've been dedicated to the city.Manufactures and supplies laser marker equipment. We've been dedicated to the system, and everybody who works at CATS really wants to see improvement and we're working hard for that kind of improvement," said Marshall. "We're not spending those dollars on administration. We're spending those dollars on the street."

Bus riders say they hope those dollars will be used to make the buses they rely on more reliable.

"I'm still waiting for them to come with out with the GPS tracking system, so we know where they are. I mean that's the bad thing about it is we don't know where the bus is, and we've got to wait a whole hour or two hours," said Ladda Bounnavong, who has been riding CATS buses for 18 years.Laser engravers and laser engraving machine systems and supplies to start your own lasering cutting engraving marking etching business.

"It's more convenient when you know where you stops is, but now it's much harder," said Michelle Stewart, another bus rider. "They changed them."

Marshall points out that in about a year from now, CATS will launch a new route structure, along with new buses.

"For those who felt like they weren't feeling an expansion of the transit system, we know that December 31st we will prove them wrong. They will be so proud of our city. They will be happy users of a good transit system," said Marshall.

Legislator's query doesn't make the grade

In the same spirit as the Indiana General Assembly, which seems bent on assigning A to F grades to public schools and labeling teachers, I think it is only fair to give our elected officials letter grades. I am a lifetime public school educator, and I recently had a chance to grade state Rep. Tim Wesco's homework when he sent a survey to my house. After reading his survey, especially those questions regarding teacher unions, I felt that he needed some feedback ... so here is his report card.

I noticed in the question itself, it appears that Wesco copied his work from the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce regarding how the teacher union dues are collected. His premise that union dues are automatically withdrawn without authorization is just wrong! Had Wesco done his research,We've had a lot of people asking where we had our make your own bobblehead made. he would know that there is already a law addressing this issue.This existing law says that a school employer may only deduct professional association dues after having written authorization from the employee.

As an elected lawmaker, Wesco should not jump to conclusions and should work harder to find the facts before making statements.

Unfortunately, Wesco also failed to read and study the existing laws regarding political contributions. If he had done his homework, he would know that not one penny of Indiana State Teachers Association dues is sent to political candidates. If Wesco really wanted to find the truth about PAC money, he would have discovered that ISTA follows the same PAC rules and regulations as other organizations -- including the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce, which is the sole organization behind the dues question in the first place.

It troubles me that, with the serious economic and social issues facing this state and nation, Wesco's devotion in his questionnaire to what amounts to a routine bit of software operations for most school corporations, was more than a little "off topic." He should stick to the subjects he was elected to address, the welfare of Indiana residents.

So, due to the lack of creditability, originality and real effort on his part, I have no choice but to give Wesco the grade for his work -- F.

I hope that every politician learns from this lesson and makes a stronger effort to stay focused on the real issues facing our state, to stop attacking Indiana public school teachers and to not be distracted by special interest groups such as the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce.

Ranked among the world′s top 5 cities of Mercer′s Quality Living Ranking for four years, Vancouver is pursuing a Green City Plan to address urban challenges including the optimization of transportation over a 30 year period. To achieve its Green Transportation goal of accomplishing 50% of all trips by foot, bicycle or public transportation, Translink asked US systems integrator Cubic to create an efficient, secure and future-proof transit system powered by NXP’s MIFARE? technology.

Vancouver is introducing the Compass Card, which will enable passengers to enjoy fast, convenient and secure transactions across buses, sky trains and ferries using just one contactless smart card. In addition, passengers can add travel products or values to their Compass Card at vending machines, online, by phone, or at a walk-in customer service centers. The new MIFARE DESFire EV1-based transport scheme including NXP‘s infrastructure solutions is currently being installed.

“Vancouver has identified smart contactless ticketing as a key way to expand the appeal and convenience of its citywide transportation network. Its selection of MiFare DESFire as the technology to deliver this further expands NXP’s footprint in smart cities around the world. ABI Research forecasts the consumption of secure smart card tickets in transportation to grow by 86% by the end of 2017”,wind turbine said John Devlin, group director security and ID with ABI Research.

“With urbanization being a significant megatrend in the 21st century, one of the greatest concerns for modern cities is ensuring that residents, vehicles and the economy itself is able to keep moving,” says Ulrich Huewels, vice president and general manager,Site describes services including Plastic Mould. card security business line, NXP Semiconductors. “NXP solutions can address this challenge by optimizing public transport systems and individual traffic. NXP provides a complete end-to-end solution validated by more than 650 cities worldwide, and used by up to 1.2 billion passengers per day in megacities such as London, Moscow, Los Angeles or Beijing.”

The MIFARE DESFire open architecture platform is based on open global standards for both air interfaces and cryptographic methods.Laser engravers and laser engraving machine systems and supplies to start your own lasering cutting engraving marking etching business. In addition to offering data transfer rates of up to 848 kbit/s, MIFARE DESFire utilizes a triple DES, 3K DES, and AES hardware cryptographic engine for securing the data on the smartcards and data during transmission. Further, the MIFARE DESFire platform enables seamless extensions of ticketing solutions on banking cards or on NFC-enabled mobile devices both working with NXP’s SmartMX? high security microcontroller technology, leveraging NXP’s leading position in the overall Identification market as well as in market segments such as transport ticketing, access, banking,Manufactures and supplies laser marker equipment. e-government or NFC.

“FrontStream is excited to offer MobileTransact as a fully compatible mobile payment solution to our customers,” said Nina Vellayan, Chief Executive Officer and President of FrontStream Payments. “We believe that businesses of all types should have access to smart solutions that make doing business seamless and enhance the end user experience.”

Familiar card swipe process provides customers with ease of use and eliminates concern over handwritten credit card information identity theft.

Lowers merchants’ cost of accepting credit cards by eliminating card-not-present fees.
Prevents missed sales opportunities caused by not taking credit or debit cards remotely. Data coverage is available for 98% of the US population.

Security. Credit card fraud and data breaches are on the rise. FrontStream’s proprietary ArgoFire Payment Gateway is PCI compliant, and provides “end-to-end” encryption, a unique encryption key per swipe, immediate card data tokenization and card authentication. This protects customer information from the moment a card is swiped.

Reporting. With FrontStream Payments, you can access detailed reporting on all of your payment and donation activity, with portable data that easily integrates with existing CRM, donor management and accounting systems.