heehaw lissa: August 2012

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

home improvement | DIY HVAC maintenance

Keeping your HVAC system properly maintained is the key to keeping it running efficiently. Keeping up on the regular maintenance will also help you spot problems before they become major issues, thus reducing your costs.

Plan on doing a bi-yearly maintenance check-up on your entire system. The best time to do it is in the spring and fall so you?re sure that everything is working correctly before going into the seasons of heavy use. Also, HVAC contractors tend to get busier in the winter and summer; by doing your maintenance check in the off-season, a technician should be more readily available.

When it comes to your HVAC system, we do not recommend attempting maintenance for which you are unqualified. Do the proper upkeep of your system, but when it comes to testing or servicing the equipment, you will want to call in the professionals. In fact, if you have a newer system, it may have come with a basic service agreement so check your documentation or talk to your contractor. And don?t forget, beyond regular maintenance, if you have problems with your system, many issues are covered under warranty.

Filters ? This is the most important and simplest do-it-yourself maintenance step for your heating and air conditioning system. Dust, dirt, debris, allergens and pollutants can all clog up your system?s filters meaning that your system would have to work harder to push the air through and use more energy. The harder your system has to work, the more wear and tear will be sustained.

Clean or change your air filters regularly, as per the manufacturer?s recommendations to ensure that there is good airflow and your system is not working overtime to get past the dirt. In most cases, you can vacuum the filter monthly and change it every three months or when it looks dirty. However, this does depend on the type of filter in your system so be sure to follow the instructions carefully or ask your HVAC contractor to show you how to do it the first time.

Air Vents ? As with your filters, dust and debris can accumulate in your air vents causing your heating and air conditioning system to have to work harder and blowing all that dust into your living environment. Your air vents should be cleaned on a monthly basis by dusting and vacuuming them out. This will, of course, improve your indoor air quality and will also reduce the burden on your HVAC system.

Performing basic DIY maintenance on your HVAC system and calling in the professionals when necessary will ensure that your system remains efficient.

Related post: Improving the Efficiency of Your Heating and Cooling System.

Tagged as: air conditioning Dayton, air conditioning Ohio, air filters, air vents, DIY, do-it-yourself, do-it-yourself maintenance, heating Dayton, heating Ohio, HVAC contractor, HVAC Dayton, HVAC Ohio, HVAC system

Source: http://www.my-home-improvement.com/2012/08/13/diy-hvac-maintenance/

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Sunday, August 12, 2012

Rivals chip away at China dominance in weightlifting

LONDON (Reuters) - The rise and fall of steel-loaded barbells on the London Olympic weightlifting platform decided 15 gold medals, rewrote eight world records and revealed a challenge to China's dominance.

Five titles put China on top but after winning eight in Beijing, losses to North Korean and Kazakh lifters will rankle in a squad where anything less than gold is a disappointment.

After winning China's fifth and final gold medal, women's super heavyweight champion Zhou Lulu summed up the team's performance: "Mission unaccomplished."

North Korea's 20-year-old Om Yun-chol threw down the gauntlet early, winning the first of his country's three gold medals with a stunning world record 168kg clean and jerk lift that beat China's Wu Jingbiao on the second day of competition.

On their way to winning four gold medals, Kazakhstan produced the only lifter from Beijing to retain an Olympic title, when the flamboyant Ilya Ilyin put in a flawless performance to set two world records in the men's 94 kg class.

"I love my life, I love to work, I love training and I give it everything," he said.

"All this makes the athlete which is Ilya Ilyin. I give my life to the sport and I love bringing joy to people."

LIGHT LUNCH

In a sport usually determined by speed, technique and raw power, the margins between success and failure are often slim but none more so than for Poland's Adrian Zielinksi who scooped gold by virtue of his lighter bodyweight.

When tied with Russia's Apti Aukhadov on total weight lifted, he won his country's first weightlifting title for 40 years because he weighed 130 grams less than his opponent - equivalent to a chicken fillet or a small cup of water.

Those fine margins, and the combination of athletes pushing their physical capacity to their limits with 200kg weights, also mean that when something goes wrong, it can really go wrong.

No one knows this better than Germany's Matthias Steiner who, on the final evening of the competition, buckled under a lift and received a heavy blow to the head from the 196 kg barbell, leaving him briefly stricken on the platform.

But the former Olympic champion left the stage on his feet and waved to the crowd packed into London's ExCel arena to see the headline event - the battle for the title of strongest man at the Olympics.

In that contest, Iran's colossal Behdad Salimikordasiabi did not disappoint the expectations of a nation where strong men are held up as idols, winning super heavyweight gold and reinstating an Iranian at the top of the Olympic weightlifting tree.

For all the competition's colorful and noisy support, nothing rivaled the flag-waving chants of "Ir-an, Ir-an" that reverberated through the arena and spilled out onto the venue's concourse.

"In Iran I know they're all partying in the street already," Salimi said.

In London they were too.

(Editing by Ian Ransom)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rivals-chip-away-china-dominance-weightlifting-021931040--spt.html

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Friday, August 10, 2012

Romney compares California's economy to Greece

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) ? Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney took a potshot at California's bedraggled economy, comparing it to the crisis in Greece, as he warned voters on Wednesday that Barack Obama is leading the nation down a similar path of huge debt.

"Entrepreneurs and business people around the world and here at home think that at some point America is going to become like Greece or like Spain or Italy, or like California ? just kidding about that one, in some ways," he added, to laughter from his audience in Iowa.

The remark seemed likely to bruise egos in a state wrestling with the prospect of tax increases and painful budget cuts. But Romney may have little to lose there ? polls show Obama with a comfortable lead in California, where Democrats control the governorship and the Statehouse.

A spokesman for California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, disputed Romney's assessment. Gil Duran said the state's credit rating has improved under Brown and that borrowing costs, a major issue facing Italy and other financially struggling European nations, have dropped by hundreds of millions of dollars.

"This is just a paper-thin Republican talking point that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny" Duran said. "He should get some better speechwriters who actually know what they're talking about."

Romney is focused on Iowa's six electoral votes in a state race that both parties think could be close. He told Iowans that Americans have to show investors worldwide they are serious about reining in the nation's spending and debt.

"If they think we are going to get to a point of massive deficits and the potential for economic challenge, why, they're going to have a tough time investing in America," he said.

As Romney and his Republican allies denounced Obama as too far left to be re-elected, they held up an unlikely presidential role model ? Democrat Bill Clinton.

Obama is "the anti-Clinton," declared former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, bolstering a line of attack taken up by Romney in speeches and a TV ad as part of a hard sell to working-class voters.

Obama also was pitching to those voters Wednesday, and reaching out to women, whose support is essential to his prospects in November. The president was bound for Colorado to promote wind energy and appear with college student Sandra Fluke, whose congressional testimony became a flashpoint for arguments over contraception, abortion and women's health care.

At a morning rally in Iowa, Romney repeated his charge that Obama is stripping work requirements from welfare and instituting changes to "make America more of a nation of government dependency."

Obama's campaign says Romney is misrepresenting a change that simply gives more freedom to states that requested it to help deal with paperwork. But Gingrich, whose own bid for the GOP nomination was quashed by Romney, argued that the administration's willingness to weigh state requests for waivers amounts to a back-door maneuver to undermine the 1996 law signed by Clinton.

"Clinton was trying to move the party to the center," Gingrich told reporters, referring to the Democratic Party. "Obama is trying to move it to the left."

The former president himself weighed in. Clinton said in a statement Tuesday that the assertion in Romney's ad was "not true."

The effort to cleave Obama from a popular policy of Clinton's presidency comes just weeks before the former president is scheduled to appear as a crowd-rousing, marquee speaker at the Democratic National Convention. Gingrich ? who pushed through the 1996 welfare bill and later led the charge to impeach Clinton ? said he wanted to remind Americans "how much weaker and less effective a president Obama is than the man who is nominating him."

The welfare issue as pushed by the Romney campaign appeared to be aimed at blue-collar whites in a weak economy and suggested that Obama might be gaining ground politically with his position on taxes.

After the Des Moines rally, Romney was headed to New Jersey to raise more money for his already sizable campaign accounts. On his way to the airport, the former Massachusetts governor stopped to visit a corn field and talk with a farmer about the severe drought gripping much of the nation.

Obama was heading westward to Colorado to make his case to working-class voters and women on Wednesday.

Obama plans to spend three days in Iowa next week, a signal that his advisers see the Midwestern state as fertile soil for his political message, especially his support for wind energy. Wind turbines dot the Iowa horizon and employ thousands of voters. Romney often mocks Obama's support for so-called green energy projects, a position that puts him at odds with Republican leaders in the state.

Obama is launching a two-day, four-city swing through Colorado on Wednesday. His events are expected to focus on the economy, including his call for Congress to extend tax cuts for families making less than $250,000 a year while letting the cuts for higher-income earners expire.

A new Quinnipiac University poll shows Obama and Romney tied among voters in Colorado households earning between $30,000 and $50,000 per year ? an important target. Obama leads among voters with lower incomes; Romney is favored by those making more.

Obama planned to emphasize women's health issues at his first event in Denver. The president was to be introduced by Fluke, the Georgetown University student who gained notoriety after conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh called her a slut because she supports the Obama health care law's requirement that insurance companies cover contraception.

In an online opinion piece Wednesday, Fluke cited Romney's "dangerous promises" to roll back Obama's health care law. She also noted that Romney hadn't denounced Limbaugh's name-calling.

"If Mr. Romney can't stand up to the extreme voices in his own party, we know he'll never stand up for women and protect the rights that generations of women fought so hard to ensure," Fluke wrote for The Huffington Post.

The president has been running television advertisements in Colorado highlighting his health care overhaul's benefits for women and warning that those benefits could be taken away if Romney wins. On Wednesday the campaign released a video in which actress Elizabeth Banks describes her personal experience with Planned Parenthood and criticizes Romney for promising to eliminate its federal funding.

Both Obama and Romney see women ? particularly suburban women from their 30s to their 50s ? as crucial to the tight contest in Colorado.

___

Pace reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Steve Peoples in Chicago, Juliet A. Williams in Sacramento, Calif., and Kasie Hunt and Connie Cass in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/romney-compares-californias-economy-greece-185358845.html

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Obama and Romney agree that gay Boy Scouts are OK

President Obama and Mitt Romney have found some new common ground -surprisingly - on an issue of gay rights.

Obama today joined Romney in publicly disagreeing with a controversial ban on gay members of the Boy Scouts of America, one of the nation's largest and most well-known youth development groups.

"The president believes the Boy Scouts is a valuable organization that has helped educate and build character in American boys for more than a century. He also opposes discrimination in all forms, and as such opposes this policy that discriminates on basis of sexual orientation," said White House spokesman Shin Inouye in a statement to the Washington Blade, a LGBT newspaper

It's the first time Obama, who was named honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America in 2009, has publicly taken a position on the issue.

Romney first voiced support for gay scouts back in 1994 - a position that his campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said remains his position today.

"I feel that all people should be allowed to participate in the Boy Scouts, regardless of their sexual orientation," Romney said in the video from 1994 recently re-surfaced by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. He added at the time that he supports "the right of the Boy Scouts of America to decide what it wants to do on that issue."

Last month, the group affirmed its ban on openly gay scouts and leaders after a two-year review of the policy, prompting the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to call on Obama to "reconsider" his honorary post.

White House press secretary Jay Carney today repeated the earlier White House statement that Obama "opposes discrimination in all forms" including the Boy Scouts policy. But he said the president would not step down from his honorary Boy Scouts position - suggesting that Obama, like Romney, choose to rhetorically oppose discrimination on one hand but still embrace an organization that practices it.

Every U.S. president since 1910 has held the honorary BSA post during his term in office, the group says on its website.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

NASA mission gives a peek of rover's Mars journey

This image released on Tuesday Aug. 7,2012 by NASA shows the first color view of the north wall and rim of Gale Crater where NASA's rover Curiosity landed Sunday night. The picture was taken by the rover's camera at the end of its stowed robotic arm and appears fuzzy because of dust on the camera's cover. (AP Photo/NASA)

In this frame provided by NASA of a stop motion video taken during the NASA rover Mars landing, the heat shield falls away during Curiosity's descent to the surface of Mars on Sunday, Aug. 5, 2012. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

This image released by NASA on Tuesday Aug. 7, 2012 shows where Curiosity and its supporting hardware: Sky crane, Curiosity, Back shell, Parachute, and Heat Shield landed on the Martian surface after its successful landing last Sunday. (AP Photo/NASA)

Michael Watkins, MSl mission manager, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), left, Ken Edgett, Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) principal investigator, Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, center, and Sarah Milkovich, HiRise investigation scientist, JPL, smile as an overview image shows the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, left, where Curiosity and its supporting hardware landed on the Martian surface, during a news briefing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Michael Watkins, MSl mission manager, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, adjusts a model of Curiosity's mast during a news briefing at NASA's JPL in Pasadena, Calif., Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2012. The arm and the remote sensing mast of the Mars rover Curiosity each carry cameras, science instruments and other tools for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission.(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) ? NASA's latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape.

It opened a window into the trip itself, from video footage of the landing to a photo of the rover hanging by a parachute to a shot of discarded spacecraft hardware strewn across the surface. And the best views ? of Mars and the journey there ? are yet to come.

"Spectacular," mission deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said of the footage. "We've not had that before."

Since parking itself inside an ancient crater Sunday night, the Curiosity rover has delighted scientists with views of its new surroundings, including the 3-mile-high mountain it will drive to. It beamed back the first color picture Tuesday revealing a tan-hued, pebbly landscape and the crater rim off in the distance.

Locale aside, Curiosity is giving scientists an unprecedented sense of what it took to reach its Martian destination. The roving laboratory sent back nearly 300 thumbnails that NASA processed into a low-quality video showing the last 2 1/2 minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the thin Martian atmosphere.

In the video, the protective heat shield pops off and tumbles away. The footage gets jumpy as Curiosity rides on a parachute. In the last scene, dust billows up just before landing.

NASA twice tried to record a Mars landing. In 1999, the Mars Polar Lander carried similar gear, but it slammed into the south pole after prematurely shutting off its engines. Another effort was aborted in 2008 during the Phoenix lander's mission to the northern plains when mission managers decided not to turn it on for fear it would interfere with the landing.

"It's too emotional for me," said Ken Edgett of the Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the video camera. "It's been a long journey and it's really awesome."

The full high-resolution video will be downloaded when time allows and should give the first peek of a landing on another planet.

Curiosity's journey to Mars spanned eight months and 352 million miles. The rover gently touched down Sunday night after executing an elaborate and untested landing routine. The size of a compact car, it was too heavy to land using air bags. Instead, it relied on a heat shield, parachute, rockets and cables to lower it to the ground.

During its seven-minute plunge through the atmosphere, Curiosity shed the spacecraft parts. On Tuesday, scientists got their first view of the castoffs. The eagle-eyed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had circled over the landing site and spotted Curiosity and the scattered parts.

"It's like a crime scene photo," said Sarah Milkovich, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist.

The parachute appeared to be inflated, and the rocket stage that unspooled the cables crashed 2,100 feet from the landing site.

Earlier this week, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught Curiosity sailing through the Martian skies under a parachute. It was only the second time a spacecraft has been photographed on a parachute; the first was Phoenix during its descent to the surface.

The nuclear-powered, six-wheel Curiosity will spend the next two years chiseling into rocks and scooping up soil at Gale Crater to determine whether the environment ever had the right conditions for microbes to thrive. It will spend a chunk of its time driving to Mount Sharp where images from space reveal signs of past water on the lower flanks.

It'll be several weeks before it takes its first drive and flexes its robotic arm. Since landing, engineers have been busy performing health checkups on its systems and instruments. Over the next several days, it was poised to send back crisper pictures of its surroundings including a panorama.

The rover was "still in great shape," mission manager Michael Watkins said.

___

Follow Alicia Chang's Mars coverage at: http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

___

Online:

http://apne.ws/NgTON8

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-08-07-Mars%20Curiosity/id-aeaf170c06f3498e83f73df4d8425a8b

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Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Tech Blogs by BIS.: Activities For Team Building

In a company, people from different families, states, or cities come and work under one roof together. When people from different groups come closer to each other, they get a chance to learn new culture, tradition and even languages of each other. But, for some people, it becomes difficult to develop such friendship quickly and thus, it makes them feel isolated. A feel of isolation makes a person feel bored and he does not develop interest towards his job. Ultimately, it leads to that person to find new job and thus, neither an employee nor an employer benefit from one another. To eradicate such issues from employees' life, there is a great necessity of organizing team building activities in today's era for organizations.

Organization's Life Depends On Employees

There is no doubt that without employees an organization has no life. It is only employees that support an organization and invest their manpower, hard work, skills and ability by which gradually a company stands and works. So, if a company does not worry about employees and their goodwill, it will lead to big crisis for employer's life. Therefore, an employer should seriously take up some steps to keep employees feel better and comfortable while working in a company.

Team Building Develop Team Spirit In Workers

For a company's growth, it is necessary that all employees should work like a team and that is why; they should have team spirit in them. This team spirit can grow only if workers of an organization involve in team activities. So, companies should compulsorily consider this essential step for their worker's goodwill. Working in a team increases overall performance and also develop interest in people towards their responsibilities. They start involving in organizational works and ultimately, it turns to exceptional benefits to a company.

Employees Should Be Given Corporate Team Building Training

As the benefit of team building activities is not hidden to modern companies, so they should provide Corporate Team Building Training to each and every employee. In training, they should be learnt about the benefits of such training. To make these trainings successful, one should organize some interesting activities or games in which employees would feel pleasure and also everyone should participate in them. Taking part in such activities will help employees to explore their inner talent and thus, they will feel comfortable at work as well.

It's a well-known saying that no plan survives the first contact with the enemy. Not that your remote team is the enemy, but the idea is the same: having a process in place doesn't mean people will use it, the results will be what you think they'll be, or that you won't have to constantly adjust and adapt.

Surely most project managers would agree. So, we have come up with guidelines for putting a team communication plan in place that will survive in the real world. After all, business communication is not just about how the organisation talks to external sources, it is also about interpersonal communication within the organisation.

Have the team build plan and commit to it

Top-down plans are doomed for failure. Getting the team to talk about what's important to them and then gaining their commitment is critical to building trust and making sure what's really important gets covered. A great example is response time. It's one thing to say ?all messages returned within 12 hours', it's quite another to say ?when you leave a message, state what's important so that people can prioritize their responses'. This way, the important things get handled first ? that's a good thing in any plan.

Post it where they can see it and refer to it constantly

The communication plan needs to be properly built and launched. But it also needs to be the way you work as a team. If people use it well, broadcast that success with the team. If it failed in an instance, ask the team why and find out if it was a one-time problem or there's a bigger problem. If people aren't using it, find out why, now.

There are plenty of reasons why a plan fails in a specific instance. Maybe the person got distracted and forgot to answer that question. Maybe they were out of town and forgot to post their status. Maybe thatfancy SharePoint system is such a pain they can't be bothered. Track your team's performance against the plan from the beginning. If it's a ?people' issue, coach them right away. If it's a system or equipment problem, fix it and show your commitment to the team's success. Enforcing rules that are counterproductive or defy the laws of physics can damage team morale. Maybe it's the plan that needs fixing, not the people.

When choosing technology, think of the outcome

Technology is critical to remote teams, but only if it helps get the work done. When deciding on the tools you'll build into your plan, start with what work needs to be done. ?We need to have quick access to the latest version of that document, so use the shared files' is a good idea. ?We have this new shared file system, so learn to use it for version control' is the same idea, but sounds like IT jargon to people out in the field. If a tool isn't getting the job done, find out why it's not working.

Source: http://blog.softwarehouse.co/2012/08/activities-for-team-building.html

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Sample The Region's Finest At Taste Ayrshire - Scotland Food and ...

New food festival is announced for September 1st ? 9th

Date:

Tue, 07 Aug 2012

Source:

Taste Ayrshire

Regarding the festival, Taste Ayrshire had this to say:

?Taking place between the 1st and the 9th of September 2012, the first ever Taste Ayrshire Food Festival is a long overdue celebration of the fantastic array of food and drink produced across the region.? Journeying the iconic coastline stretching from Ballantrae to Largs, sailing the sea to Arran, and wandering inland to the hidden gems of Catrine, Kilbirnie and Maybole we have worked with local producers, retailers, restaurants, schools, hotels and markets to bring you an astonishingly diverse listing of events, visits and special menus featuring the very best Ayrshire has to offer.?

?Join us for delicious dining experiences, watch and listen to the experts in food production and preparation, get 'hands on' with practical workshops and visit our stunning hotels and restaurants to sample beautifully prepared and presented local food.? There's something for everyone and so much to experience and enjoy.

?The Food Festival has been organised by the Food Tourism Marketing Group Taste Ayrshire and has been made possible by funding from Ayrshire LEADER Programme. Please look out for brochures or visit our website for full festival listings www.tasteayrshire.co.uk .?

Source: http://www.scotlandfoodanddrink.org/news/article-info/3874/sample-the-regions-finest-at-taste-ayrshire.aspx

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Agriculture production cause farm element damage ...

Among the services offered under the Hongxing Solutions banner is the cone crusher Equipment Protection Plan, under which Hongxing assumes responsibility for repairing or replacing all components for a period of five years or 10000 hours of operation.
Finding it unusual that arsenic would be at an asphalt site, DHEC officials say they learned that a fertilizer plant had operated on the same land in the early 1900s. Further soil sampling turned up the lead, Templeton said. She gave no immediate details on the levels of the contaminants found.
"That?s a big deal," she said.

According to the EPA, ingesting too much arsenic can lead to skin damage, circulatory issues and increased risks of cancer. Lead consumption, per the agency, can cause physical and mental developmental delays, kidney problems and high blood pressure.

Construction?equipment sales in China fell -37% in the first half of the year to 196,370 machines, compared to 314,090 units in January to June 2011, according to a new report by Off-Highway Research. The specialist forecasting company says the market is expected to fall -30% in total this year to 343,190 machines, compared to 2011?s record volume of 487,800 pieces of equipment.
Members of the nearby Rosewood neighborhood have hired Columbia attorney Dick Harpootlian to represent their interests, and DHEC says a public meeting will be held next month. A local high school has several sports facilities in the area, and an urban farm is within one mile of the plant.

It was immediately clear how many people live in the footprint of the old fertilizer plant. Templeton said officials would be notifying residents later this week and asking for permission to test their soil for contaminants.

Among the high volume equipment types, the downturn has been most severe in mobile cranes, where volumes were down -45% compared to a year ago, at 12,600 units for the first six months of 2012. Hydraulic excavator volumes meanwhile were down -41% to 64,000 units, while wheeled loader sales have fallen -35% to 87,500 machines. The compact equipment sector was less severely affected, with a -20% fall to 20,000 machines.
"We want to start knocking on the doors of the residents who live in the footprint of the former fertilizer plant to see if we need to test their soil," Templeton said.

Sam Cannon, vice president of operations for Associated Asphalt, said in an email that his company discovered arsenic at the plant in May and promptly notified DHEC regulators. Cannon said neither arsenic nor lead are used in the production of asphalt, nor are they a byproduct of the ball mill production process.

Source: http://articlereference.net/business/agriculture-production-cause-farm-element-damage.html

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Avatar Officer Installed at Arizona-Mexico Border Station

News | Technology

A new kiosk is expected to streamline applications for frequent traveler benefits, freeing up human officers to catch drug smugglers

By Larry Greenemeier ?| August 6, 2012

AVATAR AGENT: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) is installing an updated kiosk in Nogales, Ariz., to test its ability to help enroll applicants in its Trusted Traveler program at the Mexican border. Unlike its predecessor, the new Nogales kiosk speaks and understands both Spanish and English (rather just English) and wears a tie rather than a black T-shirt. Image: Courtesy of BORDERS/University of Arizona

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People crossing the Mexican border into Nogales, Ariz., this week will have a chance to meet U.S. Customs and Border Protection's newest officer?a polite yet no-nonsense bilingual gatekeeper with a thick shock of black hair and a striped gray tie. He may not have a name or join his fellow officers for coffee or lunch breaks, but his presence will likely be welcomed both by them and the commuters who regularly pass through this southern Arizona outpost on their way to and from Mexico.

That is because the new recruit is an avatar, a virtual border patrol officer residing in a kiosk developed by researchers at the University of Arizona to facilitate border crossings.

CBP is actually installing an updated version of the University of Arizona's kiosk?the original was tested at the station from December to March?to determine its ability to help enroll applicants in its Trusted Traveler programs at the Mexican border. The programs, also available for airline passengers, were? created after 9/11 at various ports of entry into the U.S. to expedite preapproved, low-risk travelers through dedicated lanes and kiosks. All Trusted Traveler applicants must voluntarily undergo a background check against criminal, law-enforcement, customs, immigration, agriculture and terrorist databases. The process also includes biometric fingerprint checks and an interview with a CBP officer.

In Nogales, human CBP officers monitor the avatar-administered pilot-test interviews, which provide them with automated feedback uploaded wirelessly to an iPad tablet that these officers can use to conduct follow-up interviews. Exchanges that the avatar flags as questionable and worthy of follow-up interrogation?using its speech recognition and voice anomaly?detection software?are color coded green, yellow or red to highlight the potential severity of questionable responses. Everyone who applies for Trusted Traveler status at Nogales ends up speaking with an officer after her or his avatar interview. One of CBP's goals is to implement several kiosks that can administer preliminary interviews that save time by making the follow-up, face-to-face interviews more efficient.

The kiosk is not designed to indicate that an interviewee is lying or to diagnose that person's intent, says Aaron Elkins, a University of Arizona postdoctoral researcher in the Management Information Systems department who helped develop the kiosk. Instead the kiosk analyzes an interviewee's voice for anomalies that may prompt a border officer to probe deeper into a particular response.

Anomaly detection is based on vocal characteristics?changes in factors such as rate, volume, pitch and intonation?that may be related to different emotional, arousal and cognitive states. An inflection in one's voice may indicate uncertainty, or a pause might imply that an interviewee may have been devising a deceptive answer, Elkins says. The kiosk's speech recognition software monitors the content of an interviewee's answers and can flag a response indicating when, for example, a person acknowledges having a criminal record.

Unlike its predecessor, which conversed only in English, the new Nogales kiosk speaks and understands both English and Spanish. The researchers also enhanced the speech recognition software. One of the problems with the first kiosk was that interviewees sometimes began answering a question before the avatar was finished asking it, causing the kiosk to miss the initial portion of the answer. The newer version is designed to more quickly detect when an interviewee is speaking and can prompt interviewees to repeat an answer if it does not understand a response.

The idea that physical cues can be used to determine intent often enough for a system to be both fair and effective remains unproved. This is why the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) program has caught a lot of flack from privacy watchdogs, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). FAST proposes that travelers be subjected to an array of sensors measuring pulse rate, skin temperature, breathing, facial expression, body movement, pupil dilation and other physiological and behavioral factors to determine whether they are a security risk. The DHS has tested the technology, in the works since 2007, but its future remains unclear.

CBP contacted Elkins and his colleagues last year because it needed help processing a backlog of applications for its Trusted Traveler Programs. Although CBP gave them only about a month to build their first working prototype, the researchers jumped at the chance to take their "embodied conversational agent," as Elkins calls it, out of the lab and into a real-world setting.

Nogales is as real as it gets. In March Nogales Station officers on patrol seized more than 80 kilograms of hard narcotics from two Mexican men, including more than 77 kilograms of cocaine worth almost $2 million and five containers filled with three kilograms of methamphetamine worth nearly $86,000. In May CBP arrested a 43-year-old Mexican national in a wheelchair at Nogales Station for attempting to smuggle more than three kilograms of cocaine worth more than $65,500 into the U.S. in the chair's seat.

Elkins and his colleagues have spent the past few years developing software for analyzing vocal and written responses to questions. The researchers found that an avatar makes a significant difference in how interviewees answer questions. In lab tests prior to the avatar, "it was like they were talking to Moviefone," he says. When an avatar was added, people treated it almost like a person, at times even referring to it as "sir."

For now, the kiosk uses the same avatar regardless of whether it speaks Spanish or English, although the voice is different depending upon the language. "We are still researching the effects of changing how it looks right now, and the cultural implications, so we were reticent to make any major changes," Elkins says.

The researchers are hoping this second phase of the Nogales pilot test will include more than 1,000 interviews. After the kiosk's performance is analyzed, Elkins would like to add a feature that lets interviewees scan their passports and other documents into the device. Another option might be to equip the kiosk with some other sensors?such as video analyzers, eye trackers and thermal or infrared cameras?that could offer additional means of analyzing interviewees.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=f65f11c57e47e9c4be71aa5f5e03d4f8

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Tuesday, August 7, 2012

RolePlayGateway?

Hello everyone,

It's not totally off-topic to roleplaying but I figured I'd post here to be on the safe side.

Anyway, I wanted to do my part in helping an awesome project at kickstarter to succeed. Shadowrun Online is a tactical MMO for PC (Windows & Linux), Mac, Ouya and Tablets, with a deep, rich story, co-op gameplay, and player vs. player action, in the unique and persistent world of Shadowrun. And they need your help. You'll be well rewarded! See yourself as a character in the game, get Shadowrun campaign books and figurines, or receive many in-game packages.

Browse to shadowrun.com/kickstarter and help them to make Shadowrun Online a reality.

If anyone is interested, I'll be happy to provide further information. And so will be the community over at the kickstarter or at shadowrun.com . You can always send a PM to the developers on kickstarter too. I'll leave it at this short summary so people don't go TL;DR

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RolePlayGateway

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Icon health & fitness - HEALTH, BEAUTY & FITNESS

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Monday, August 6, 2012

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Saturday, August 4, 2012

Health and Fitness Marketing Program

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://ginmillerfitness.com/2012/08/health-and-fitness-marketing-program/

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Smart wireless power outlets

ScienceDaily (Aug. 2, 2012) ? Many homeowners dream of being able to wash a load of laundry when the photovoltaic panels on the roof are delivering a maximum of electricity, even when they are not at home. A new Internet-enabled power outlet will soon allow users to control household appliances via their smartphone, and reduce their energy costs into the bargain.

Soon there will be no need for special timers to switch lighting on and off or operate household appliances when the homeowner is absent. In future, all this can be done by means of a smartphone or PC, thanks to Internet-enabled wireless power outlets that support the new IPv6 Internet protocol. The smart socket was developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication Systems ESK in Munich in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM in Kaiserslautern and the industrial partner embedded brains GmbH. "We have been able to connect the power outlets wirelessly using the IPv6 protocol," says ESK research engineer G?nter Hildebrandt. "All household appliances plugged in one of the sockets can be switched on and off remotely using an IPv6-compatible device such as a smartphone or laptop PC -- from anywhere."

The wireless power outlets are a component of the HexaBus home automation system that was developed by the ITWM as part of the mySmartGrid project (www.mysmartgrid.de). "The HexaBus components make the smart home of the future a reality. They enable household appliances to be controlled intelligently, thus optimizing or reducing electricity consumption. For example, the householder can start the washing machine during cheap-rate off-peak hours, or run the dishwasher when the photovoltaic panels on the roof are generating sufficient power," says industrial engineer Mathias Dalheimer of the ITWM, who leads the SmartGrid project and is its chief programmer.

Intelligent control and measurement of power consumption

In addition to the wireless power outlets, the HexaBus system employs a specially designed USB stick that plugs into any compatible, off-the-shelf router. The user enters the command to switch on an appliance via a standard web browser or an Android-compatible smartphone app. The router and stick then forward the data to the power outlet. This two-way communication function also allows the wireless power outlet to send data to the smartphone, informing the user how much power various appliances are consuming at any given time. Thus, the user can optimize their power consumption. "The combination of parallel control and measurement functions is an entirely novel feature that no other wireless power outlet has offered before," says Hildebrandt.

Because the HexaBus system is based on the IPv6 data communication protocol, a separate IP address is assigned to each power outlet, and thereby to each connected appliance, enabling them to be accessed directly. But how did the researchers go about integrating Internet functionality in the wireless power outlets and USB sticks? To do so, Hildebrandt and his team developed special protocol software and an extension to the Contiki operating system that enables it to handle the 6LoWpan (IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Network) communication protocol. Contiki is an open-source operating system for networked embedded devices such as the microcontrollers incorporated in wireless power outlets and USB sticks. A linked web browser protocol enables users to assign a separate name to each power outlet -- such as "washingmachine.basement."

Guaranteed data security

Users have no need to worry about the security of their data -- all information is transmitted in encrypted form. To make this possible, the experts modified Contiki to enable it to operate with the AES-128 advanced encryption standard. Wireless control signals are transmitted in the 868-MHz frequency band. "This permits users to remotely control a widely distributed network of appliances. The distance between the power outlet and the router can be as high as 30 meters," explains Hildebrandt.

The HexaBus power outlets are ready for commercial application. Their manufacture has been entrusted to embedded brains GmbH, the industrial partner that was also responsible for the hardware development of the power outlets and USB sticks. Meanwhile, the researchers have a new idea up their sleeves: they want to enhance their system with multihop networking capability. By linking together a series of power outlets, the router will be able to pass messages from one to another, thus extending the range of the communication system -- a solution that could be of interest to businesses for their office buildings and industrial sites.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/ShusI5RZn08/120802111346.htm

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Wednesday, August 1, 2012

How a Franchise Ownership Develops Your Business Skills

What is a small business? Do you think of a franchise in your definition? You should. The franchise owner, to be successful, must learn the same skills as other business owners.

Whether you?re part of a small family business or the CEO of a nationally known brand, there are core business skills you must use in order to have a successful operation. The stand-alone business owner has to learn these things the hard way; the franchise owner has professionals to offer advice.

As a new business owner you can leverage the knowledge and expertise of a franchise operation in a growing industry?a gym for kids. A franchise system has established the necessary tools and business resources for their franchise owners. They provide training and marketing skills, customer services and a support network of other owners of the franchise.

When you join a franchise program there is no confusion; the corporate office provides the outline for each step.

As soon as the potential buyer has been qualified and accepted into the franchise, the corporate team begins to work with the new franchisee. Support is provided on financing, business location along with a wide array of education and training from experts in the business world. If there are questions bout specific issues or best practices, there is a qualified expert available to assist. The corporate office has a vested interest in the success of its franchisees and works to provide resources and business consultants to help each new business owner succeed.

The kids gym franchise attracts mean people who want to start a new business.

It requires general skills and a love of working with kids and people in general. The corporate franchise office helps new owners with instruction on how to implement the programs and how to use their professionally developed curriculum.

As part of franchise operations, you?ll learn to work with budgets, hire, train and supervise staff and all the other aspect of running a successful business. The training is one of the main benefits of franchise ownership. You?ll be able to turn to corporate leaders for help at each step of your business venture.

Source: http://small-business.ezinemark.com/how-a-franchise-ownership-develops-your-business-skills-7d37977d83da.html

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