I appreciate how strongly people feel about the recommendation to
Preston City Council to demolish the bus station and car park, but the
council has a real problem on its hands.
It’s an historical fact
that, whether it was right or wrong, the council agreed over 10 years
that the bus station building should be demolished and incorporated into
the Tithebarn development scheme.
At a time of a booming
economy the developers were certain they would need the site of the bus
station for their ￡700m retail scheme. Consequently repairs were kept to
a minimum.
As the council leader faced with the consequences of
that decision, I have a dilemma. Ten to 12 years of lack of investment
have taken their toll and the repairs have piled up. The car park facade
is stunning but the building itself is huge; the length of two football
pitches and with nine levels. Is it any wonder that the basic repairs
bill will be ￡5.5m over the next few years?
The council has
tried to keep the building standing now it’s no longer needed for
development. We asked officers from Preston City Council and Lancashire
County Council, with a team of external specialists, to examine the
feasibility of modernising the bus station and car park for 21st century
travel needs.
They have spent the past few months doing this
and their detailed research shows that a complete refurbishment,
including modern health and safety needs and disability requirements,
would be very costly.
The technical advice is that to bring the
building up to this standard would cost a minimum of ￡17m and perhaps as
much as ￡23m. Its interesting that to refurbish St Pancras station in
London cost ￡800million.High quality stone mosaic tiles.
It’s
just not feasible for the public sector to come up with this sort of
money, particularly as the remaining design life of the building is
fewer than 20 years. Lancashire County Council won’t pay, as this is
hardly good value for money for the council taxpayer, and Preston City
Council can’t pay.
Preston City Council has ￡5m for city centre
development but we are committed to a regeneration of the market. We
can’t contemplate investing ￡5.5m in fairly basic repairs over the next
few years as we can’t spend that money twice.
The council has
dwindling financial reserves and is struggling. We are facing further
huge and savage Government cuts over the next decade, with announcements
expected on December 20. We have to prioritise and do what we can to
protect front-line services. Demolition will save us ￡297,000 a year -
currently the cost of running the building even with profits from the
car park. Don’t believe me? We have placed all the reports and figures
on the website so that people can see for themselves the magnitude of
the problem.
Lancashire County Council will not invest in the
current bus station building but we have an assurance that should the
City Council take a decision to demolish the building, then they would
work with us to build a new smaller bus station for Preston.
A
modern bus station in the same location that offers improved facilities
and is cheaper to run and maintain than the current building. It is
simple maths. The decision to demolish and rebuild offers better value
for money to taxpayers. That is why that option is being recommended to
cabinet as a way forward.
That’s not to say we wouldn’t welcome
private investment in the building. We have talked to developers and
they could not make it pay but we are happy to talk to anyone about
investing in the current bus station building – as long as they are
serious investors with money to invest.
But they need to be
quick. The declining state of the building and moreover the diminishing
state of the council’s finances means that a decision has to be taken
soon.Find detailed product information for howo spareparts and other products.
The 2013 Toyota Prius V is rated at 42 mpg combined, far higher than Toyota's only hybrid crossover,The howo truck
is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry, the Highlander
Hybrid, and just 15 percent below the record 50-mpg rating of the class
Prius hatchback. The most direct competitor to the Prius V is the new
2013 Ford C-Max Hybrid, which is slightly smaller inside, but more
powerful, more fun to drive,The howo truck
is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry, and rated at 47 mpg
combined--although drivers will have great trouble achieving real-world
economy much above 37 to 39 mpg in the Ford.
Inside, the driver
sits higher than in a Prius liftback. The new interior has familiar
Prius cues--the high-mounted Multi-Information Display at the base of
the windshield, for example, with its random array of icons, diagrams,
readings, and symbols--but is considerably more practical than the
stylish but annoying "flying buttress" design of the liftback. There's a
center bin with an elbow rest, and lots of trays, cup holders, bins,
and other storage compartments that families may quickly fill.
The
feel, sound, and performance of its 98-horsepower 1.8-liter
four-cylinder engine will be familiar to Prius drivers, though the
removed and vague driving feel may be new to first-time buyers.
Unfortunately, the added weight of the larger wagon--about 300
pounds--makes the Prius V slow to accelerate when heavily loaded,
especially on long hard uphill climbs or at high freeway speeds.
Drivers
can pick from four drive modes--EV, for all-electric drive at low
speeds; Eco, for better fuel economy; and Power, for those steep
hills--as well as the default hybrid mode. The Power setting helps on
those steep hills, somewhat, but the Eco mode is best used only in flat
terrain and by drivers not surrounded by impatient horn-honkers.
With
the rear seat folded down, the Prius V offers 67 cubic feet of cargo
space. Most families will keep the seat up for kids, though, and because
it slides back and forth, space in that configuration varies from 34 to
40 cubic feet. Not only does it fold down and split 60/40, as well as
sliding fore and aft, it also reclines from 15 to 40 degrees--a rarity
in wagons. Toyota is to be commended for keeping the load-floor space
between the wheel wells at a wide 39 inches, making the cargo bay truly
useful for a great variety of objects.
The Toyota Prius V comes
with seven airbags, the usual array of electronic safety systems, and
the ratings reflect that. While the NHTSA has not yet issued ratings for
the Prius V, it's rated a Top Safety Pack by the IIHS, with the top
score of Good on front, side, and roof-crush tests, and rear crash
protection.
The base model of the Prius V range has fabric
seats, a tilting and telescoping steering wheel, and automatic climate
control. The three trim levels are confusing named Two, Three, and Five,
and the car starts at roughly $27,500 with delivery. Other features on
the base Two model are keyless entry and an integrated backup camera
that displays in the audio screen.Trade platform for China crystal mosaic manufacturers
The
mid-range model, the Prius V Three, adds audio controls, Bluetooth, and
climate controls mounted in the steering wheel, plus voice-activated
navigation on a 6.1-inch central touchscreen that includes display
audio, along with Toyota's Entune cloud-based infotainment system.
Finally, at the top of the price list, the Prius V Five adds fog lamps, a
smart-key system, 17-inch, 10-spoke alloy wheels, LED head lamps, and a
six-way adjustable driver's seat with adjustable lumbar support plus a
four-way adjustable front passenger seat. Each of those seats is heated
and trimmed in SofTex fabric.
2012年12月17日 星期一
Reese Tells Grads To Use Their Voice
Already an established professor and published writer, Jim Reese
walked into his first day of a creative writing workshop at the Yankton
Federal Prison Camp and quickly realized he was in for a challenge.
Re-tooling his approach to the course,High quality stone mosaic tiles.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. Reese eventually spent seven months with the prisoners that first session — a “hardcore writing process,” he calls it — and helped them eventually develop a book.
“Everyone wants to be a writer, but they have to earn it,” said Reese, the commencement speaker at Saturday morning’s Mount Marty College fall graduation ceremony at Marian Auditorium. “They have to come up with something that really matters, something from the heart.”
Speaking to just more than 50 graduates, Reese reflected on his time with the inmates. He said that more than simply showing them how to craft sentences and construct paragraphs, he tried to go deeper.
“The thing about prisoners is, you can teach them a trade in prison, you can teach a person to be a plumber,” he said. “That’s all great and good. But unless you can teach that person to tap into the emotional instabilities that brought them to prison in the first place, you’re just going to send an angry plumber right back out into society.”
Reese, who also serves as director of the Great Plains Writers’ Tour at Mount Marty and editor-in-chief of Paddlefish (MMC’s literary journal), said that while “tension was present” in his session with inmates, he is confident that he was able to break through. He shared with the graduates a class reflection that one inmate wrote at the conclusion of the session.
“‘I have learned so many wonderful things about creative writing from the teachers and the writers that we’ve had the pleasure to meet,’” Reese said, quoting Smith. “’I now understand the actual mechanics of writing and sculpting involved in developing a good piece of literature. I now write every day, and although it’s work, it is work that I now find very enjoyable.’”
It’s that enjoyment that was a prevalent theme in Reese’s nearly 10-minute speech Saturday.
Following the statement, “Don’t ever underestimate the power of your own voice,” Reese said that the first essay he has his beginning writing class students tackle is to share an example of how they use their voice to make a difference.
“Sometimes they look at me oddly. Some say, ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever used my voice to make a difference,’” he said. “I reassure them that they have. And with time and further discussion, they produce some wonderful writing.”
The classroom can be a “haven” for creativity and a place where ideas can eventually be turned into words on a page, Reese said. He encouraged the graduates to “read and write frequently, never a day without a line.”
“I find it imperative to help students find their voice through extended practice writing and speaking, discovering and developing uses for writing that will serve them personally, professionally and academically,” Reese said. “I encourage students to use writing as a form of thinking and as a mean to take part in public discussions.”
Reese’s speech began with a light-hearted poem that he and fellow professors Rich Lofthus and Dana De Witt crafted toward students.
Entitled “Composition 103: No Shoes Required,” the poem details how students like DVD’s more than books and the way they arrive to class (down to the Victoria’s Secret “I Love Pink” pajama bottoms and a cowboy with a holster for his BlackBerry).
A simple question from a student in the front of the class — “Are we supposed to be taking notes on this?” — prompts a pop quiz with four choices to describe the basis for the Hundred Year’s War. The first three choices are logical ones, but the fourth is a long-winded answer about how professors surrender control of the classroom.
Professors, Reese read, “finally recognizing the unalienable rights of students to text 24 hours a day, seven days a week as a natural right, based on loose construction of Thomas Jefferson’s pursuit of happiness clause in the Declaration of Independence.” The result, the poem says, is a “dramatic decline in the production and sale of hooded sweatshirts across all of Christendom.”
The punch line to the poem is when one student finally breaks the silence with the question, “Is this supposed to be some kind of joke? History? I didn’t sign up for that.”
Following the conferring of degrees,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. Betty Bisgard from the Mount Marty Alumni Association talked to the graduates about being active alumni members. She also added, “Please be generous with us.”
By integrating pickchain into handling and conveyor equipment, different tasks can be carried out concurrently, such as loading and unloading, stacking, gluing, clamping, turning, drilling and so on.
Conventional handling and conveyor applications in production use, which use linear motions for pick and place tasks, tend to be inefficient due to the continuous back and forth movements. By comparison, the igus pickchain operates with a continuous circular motion with no wasted start and return runs. By implementing pickchain into their equipment, machine and handling builders can realise an increase in output by as much as 30%.
“The compact pickchain concept gives engineers scope for new ideas in handling machine construction,” says Justin Leonard of igus UK. “Several beta-testers of our pickchain already intend to integrate the innovative conveyor chain in their equipment soon.”
The new pickchain system is vibration-free, moving smoothly at a continuous speed of between 2 and 3m/s. The conveyor chain has sturdy teeth and is driven by a double-toothed belt. Maintenance-free travel of up to 30m. The permissible load per transport chain link is around 5kg and each link can be controlled individually.
The pickchain can be equipped with grippers, suction cups, sensors, cameras and any other tools that receive their respective signals to work accordingly. This allows transport, machining and control to be carried out in one movement,Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. for example, with direction of movement and cycle times being controlled easily by the operator.
pickchain can be installed horizontally, vertically or side mounted according to the customer’s requirements. Areas of application include; pick & place robots, feeders, packaging,Thank you for visiting! I have been cry stalmosaic since 1998. tooling and woodworking machines, embossing presses and equipment used within the semiconductor and solar industries.
Re-tooling his approach to the course,High quality stone mosaic tiles.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. Reese eventually spent seven months with the prisoners that first session — a “hardcore writing process,” he calls it — and helped them eventually develop a book.
“Everyone wants to be a writer, but they have to earn it,” said Reese, the commencement speaker at Saturday morning’s Mount Marty College fall graduation ceremony at Marian Auditorium. “They have to come up with something that really matters, something from the heart.”
Speaking to just more than 50 graduates, Reese reflected on his time with the inmates. He said that more than simply showing them how to craft sentences and construct paragraphs, he tried to go deeper.
“The thing about prisoners is, you can teach them a trade in prison, you can teach a person to be a plumber,” he said. “That’s all great and good. But unless you can teach that person to tap into the emotional instabilities that brought them to prison in the first place, you’re just going to send an angry plumber right back out into society.”
Reese, who also serves as director of the Great Plains Writers’ Tour at Mount Marty and editor-in-chief of Paddlefish (MMC’s literary journal), said that while “tension was present” in his session with inmates, he is confident that he was able to break through. He shared with the graduates a class reflection that one inmate wrote at the conclusion of the session.
“‘I have learned so many wonderful things about creative writing from the teachers and the writers that we’ve had the pleasure to meet,’” Reese said, quoting Smith. “’I now understand the actual mechanics of writing and sculpting involved in developing a good piece of literature. I now write every day, and although it’s work, it is work that I now find very enjoyable.’”
It’s that enjoyment that was a prevalent theme in Reese’s nearly 10-minute speech Saturday.
Following the statement, “Don’t ever underestimate the power of your own voice,” Reese said that the first essay he has his beginning writing class students tackle is to share an example of how they use their voice to make a difference.
“Sometimes they look at me oddly. Some say, ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever used my voice to make a difference,’” he said. “I reassure them that they have. And with time and further discussion, they produce some wonderful writing.”
The classroom can be a “haven” for creativity and a place where ideas can eventually be turned into words on a page, Reese said. He encouraged the graduates to “read and write frequently, never a day without a line.”
“I find it imperative to help students find their voice through extended practice writing and speaking, discovering and developing uses for writing that will serve them personally, professionally and academically,” Reese said. “I encourage students to use writing as a form of thinking and as a mean to take part in public discussions.”
Reese’s speech began with a light-hearted poem that he and fellow professors Rich Lofthus and Dana De Witt crafted toward students.
Entitled “Composition 103: No Shoes Required,” the poem details how students like DVD’s more than books and the way they arrive to class (down to the Victoria’s Secret “I Love Pink” pajama bottoms and a cowboy with a holster for his BlackBerry).
A simple question from a student in the front of the class — “Are we supposed to be taking notes on this?” — prompts a pop quiz with four choices to describe the basis for the Hundred Year’s War. The first three choices are logical ones, but the fourth is a long-winded answer about how professors surrender control of the classroom.
Professors, Reese read, “finally recognizing the unalienable rights of students to text 24 hours a day, seven days a week as a natural right, based on loose construction of Thomas Jefferson’s pursuit of happiness clause in the Declaration of Independence.” The result, the poem says, is a “dramatic decline in the production and sale of hooded sweatshirts across all of Christendom.”
The punch line to the poem is when one student finally breaks the silence with the question, “Is this supposed to be some kind of joke? History? I didn’t sign up for that.”
Following the conferring of degrees,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. Betty Bisgard from the Mount Marty Alumni Association talked to the graduates about being active alumni members. She also added, “Please be generous with us.”
By integrating pickchain into handling and conveyor equipment, different tasks can be carried out concurrently, such as loading and unloading, stacking, gluing, clamping, turning, drilling and so on.
Conventional handling and conveyor applications in production use, which use linear motions for pick and place tasks, tend to be inefficient due to the continuous back and forth movements. By comparison, the igus pickchain operates with a continuous circular motion with no wasted start and return runs. By implementing pickchain into their equipment, machine and handling builders can realise an increase in output by as much as 30%.
“The compact pickchain concept gives engineers scope for new ideas in handling machine construction,” says Justin Leonard of igus UK. “Several beta-testers of our pickchain already intend to integrate the innovative conveyor chain in their equipment soon.”
The new pickchain system is vibration-free, moving smoothly at a continuous speed of between 2 and 3m/s. The conveyor chain has sturdy teeth and is driven by a double-toothed belt. Maintenance-free travel of up to 30m. The permissible load per transport chain link is around 5kg and each link can be controlled individually.
The pickchain can be equipped with grippers, suction cups, sensors, cameras and any other tools that receive their respective signals to work accordingly. This allows transport, machining and control to be carried out in one movement,Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. for example, with direction of movement and cycle times being controlled easily by the operator.
pickchain can be installed horizontally, vertically or side mounted according to the customer’s requirements. Areas of application include; pick & place robots, feeders, packaging,Thank you for visiting! I have been cry stalmosaic since 1998. tooling and woodworking machines, embossing presses and equipment used within the semiconductor and solar industries.
Best Buy 'hold' policy puts pinch on debit card user
He visited the Best Buy website and selected a few items for his
siblings. The bill came to $117, and Harper, 18, paid for the purchases
with his debit card.
"I didn’t really think twice about using my debit card," said Harper, an environmental science freshman at the County College of Morris. "I used it because it’s the only card that I own and I figured that Best Buy would be safe … and I didn’t think that they could go in and freeze my money like they did."
Best Buy put a $117 "authorization hold" on the Long Valley man’s account, a common practice when debit cards are used.
When a merchant places a "hold" on the amount of the purchase, it basically puts that money to the side, on reserve and out of your checking account,High quality stone mosaic tiles. until the purchase is finalized.
It’s a common practice for restaurants. Eateries do this because when you present your card and the business runs the transaction through, it’s often not the final amount of the bill, as many consumers choose to add a tip to the card.
Debit transactions are typically a two-step process. First, an authorization hold for a transaction is placed on the account at the time of purchase. Later, usually at the end of the day, for purchases that are completed, the merchant processes a batch transfer and funds are actually transferred, said Tom Feltner, director of Financial Services for Consumer Federation of America, an association of nonprofit consumer organizations.
"It can take around one business day for the authorization hold to fall off the account balance," Feltner said. "While this temporarily reduces the availability of funds, the authorization hold doesn’t mean that those funds were transferred to the merchant."
But they’re not available for the account holder, either. Subsequent transactions could be rejected or result in an overdraft, as the Harpers feared.
OC Transpo has contended with hundreds of reports of fumes on its buses this year, according to a log released to the Citizen last week under access-to-information legislation. The Citizen filed a request for the document after a driver of a double-decker bus was sickened by fumes from his own bus, leaking into the cabin from a faulty gasket.
The exhaust systems on OC Transpo buses are fully inspected at least twice a year, the agency’s Jim Greer said Monday by email.
“Of note is the fact that, to meet its daily service commitments, OC Transpo performs over 8,500 trips while using 816 buses twice daily and 1,500 operators. All reported fumes/odors incidents are documented through OC Transpo’s Control Centre and are either reviewed by its mobile service trucks or scheduled for further inspection at a maintenance facility,” he wrote. By implication, the 337 fume reports logged by OC Transpo’s own operators in 2012 aren’t a sign of a serious problem.
The president of OC Transpo’s drivers’ union said last week that clogged ventilation filters don’t necessarily keep out all the contaminants they’re supposed to, including exhaust fumes that get sucked in particularly when buses are stuck nose-to-tail on the Transitway at rush hour. Greer wrote that they’re actually not supposed to screen out fumes from other vehicles.
“Fresh air filters are installed on every OC Transpo bus, however their purpose is to stop the ventilation system from bringing in dust and dirt into the system, not to stop fume ingress or purify the air,If you have a fondness for china mosaic brimming with romantic roses,” Greer wrote.
The KAFD Portal Spas, by the architectural firm WORKSBUREAU, are a duo of diaphanous, polygonal structures--one for men, one for women--that are going to raise the bar on decadence. Because between services, pampered patrons will make their way through meadowlike gardens growing within the building--a three-story tower of life within a massive, light-flooded atrium. Indeed, while they’re called “spas,” the buildings may be the most striking greenhouses you’ve ever seen.
A large part of what makes the effect possible is an outer shell fitted with Tessellate panels, a technology created by Chuck Hoberman. They’re built from four layers of perforated titanium, two of which are kinetic, driven by small linear motors. “As the layers overlap,The MaxSonar ultrasonic sensor offers very short to long-range detection and ranging. the result is a kaleidoscopic visual display of patterns aligning and then diverging into a fine, light-diffusing mesh,” Hoberman tells Co.Design. “In the extreme climate of Saudi Arabia,Argo Mold limited specialize in Plastic injection mould manufacture, with its incandescent solar intensity, the screens will allow a dappled,A wide range of polished tiles for your tile flooring and walls. softened light--like that of a forest canopy-- to diffuse into the spaces during the day.”
The PNC tower is designed to be a warm, inviting place--as much as an impersonal skyscraper can be. Located in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh (AKA the Golden Triangle), the tower will engage the community around it with an open lobby (Ko describes it as "a living room for the city"), retail space at the base of building, and a 300-person auditorium and theater that can be used by the general public outside of business hours. Local partners and consultants are being used whenever possible in construction of the building. The tower will also quite literally be transparent. "The last thing [PNC] wants to do is hide behind a fortress," says Ko.
Each two story "neighborhood" will contain office spaces on the bottom floor and a common area on the other with a space for a pantry or coffee station. Bathrooms will also be located in this space. "It’s about bringing people together, creating spaces that encourage people to have chance encounters," explains Ko.
Comfort is also emphasized in the design; 91% of the building will be lit by daylight, and nearly 100% of the spaces where people spend their time will have enough natural light so that only desk lamps are necessary. The building "breathes" with a double-skin facade: a natural ventilation system that has a glass outer weather and air barrier and an inner layer with automated air vents, a wood curtain wall, and manually operated sliding doors. A series of automatic sensors on both layers open up the building for air when the weather is nice.
Building denizens can step out onto a ledge between the two skins if they want even more air. "If people have control of the environment they’re in, they’re going to be more content, they’re happier, and because they’re happier they’re more comfortable," says Ko. And if people are more comfortable, studies have shown that they’ll be more efficient.
When you open a door or window in other double-skinned buildings, it feels like air is being pushed out, but Gensler has managed to design the PNC tower so that workers instead get the sensation of air coming in. The secret is a system that creates natural suction at the center of the building, so that when a person opens up a door, air moves inward--not in gusts, but gently.
A solar chimney will draw exhaust and warm air up and out of the building, while the double-skin will pull air in--a technique that can dramatically cut down on energy use. A solar photovoltaic array will lie on top of the chimney. Passive natural ventilation can be used for 42% of total working hours in the building, and the abundance of natural light will cut down on energy use even further.
PNC plans on sharing much of the data that the building yields, much as the high-performance buildings around the world that Gensler visited while planning the project shared their own data. Ko wrote in an email: "PNC has not discussed what they will share in specific, but based on our experience with them and their history, I would expect a real transparency of information that includes building performance metrics on energy consumption and water conservation. What I would hope we can talk about too is employee satisfaction and worker productivity numbers. It would be great to have 'scientific data’ that shows how a building like this improves the human experience and thus positively impacts an organization."
"I didn’t really think twice about using my debit card," said Harper, an environmental science freshman at the County College of Morris. "I used it because it’s the only card that I own and I figured that Best Buy would be safe … and I didn’t think that they could go in and freeze my money like they did."
Best Buy put a $117 "authorization hold" on the Long Valley man’s account, a common practice when debit cards are used.
When a merchant places a "hold" on the amount of the purchase, it basically puts that money to the side, on reserve and out of your checking account,High quality stone mosaic tiles. until the purchase is finalized.
It’s a common practice for restaurants. Eateries do this because when you present your card and the business runs the transaction through, it’s often not the final amount of the bill, as many consumers choose to add a tip to the card.
Debit transactions are typically a two-step process. First, an authorization hold for a transaction is placed on the account at the time of purchase. Later, usually at the end of the day, for purchases that are completed, the merchant processes a batch transfer and funds are actually transferred, said Tom Feltner, director of Financial Services for Consumer Federation of America, an association of nonprofit consumer organizations.
"It can take around one business day for the authorization hold to fall off the account balance," Feltner said. "While this temporarily reduces the availability of funds, the authorization hold doesn’t mean that those funds were transferred to the merchant."
But they’re not available for the account holder, either. Subsequent transactions could be rejected or result in an overdraft, as the Harpers feared.
OC Transpo has contended with hundreds of reports of fumes on its buses this year, according to a log released to the Citizen last week under access-to-information legislation. The Citizen filed a request for the document after a driver of a double-decker bus was sickened by fumes from his own bus, leaking into the cabin from a faulty gasket.
The exhaust systems on OC Transpo buses are fully inspected at least twice a year, the agency’s Jim Greer said Monday by email.
“Of note is the fact that, to meet its daily service commitments, OC Transpo performs over 8,500 trips while using 816 buses twice daily and 1,500 operators. All reported fumes/odors incidents are documented through OC Transpo’s Control Centre and are either reviewed by its mobile service trucks or scheduled for further inspection at a maintenance facility,” he wrote. By implication, the 337 fume reports logged by OC Transpo’s own operators in 2012 aren’t a sign of a serious problem.
The president of OC Transpo’s drivers’ union said last week that clogged ventilation filters don’t necessarily keep out all the contaminants they’re supposed to, including exhaust fumes that get sucked in particularly when buses are stuck nose-to-tail on the Transitway at rush hour. Greer wrote that they’re actually not supposed to screen out fumes from other vehicles.
“Fresh air filters are installed on every OC Transpo bus, however their purpose is to stop the ventilation system from bringing in dust and dirt into the system, not to stop fume ingress or purify the air,If you have a fondness for china mosaic brimming with romantic roses,” Greer wrote.
The KAFD Portal Spas, by the architectural firm WORKSBUREAU, are a duo of diaphanous, polygonal structures--one for men, one for women--that are going to raise the bar on decadence. Because between services, pampered patrons will make their way through meadowlike gardens growing within the building--a three-story tower of life within a massive, light-flooded atrium. Indeed, while they’re called “spas,” the buildings may be the most striking greenhouses you’ve ever seen.
A large part of what makes the effect possible is an outer shell fitted with Tessellate panels, a technology created by Chuck Hoberman. They’re built from four layers of perforated titanium, two of which are kinetic, driven by small linear motors. “As the layers overlap,The MaxSonar ultrasonic sensor offers very short to long-range detection and ranging. the result is a kaleidoscopic visual display of patterns aligning and then diverging into a fine, light-diffusing mesh,” Hoberman tells Co.Design. “In the extreme climate of Saudi Arabia,Argo Mold limited specialize in Plastic injection mould manufacture, with its incandescent solar intensity, the screens will allow a dappled,A wide range of polished tiles for your tile flooring and walls. softened light--like that of a forest canopy-- to diffuse into the spaces during the day.”
The PNC tower is designed to be a warm, inviting place--as much as an impersonal skyscraper can be. Located in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh (AKA the Golden Triangle), the tower will engage the community around it with an open lobby (Ko describes it as "a living room for the city"), retail space at the base of building, and a 300-person auditorium and theater that can be used by the general public outside of business hours. Local partners and consultants are being used whenever possible in construction of the building. The tower will also quite literally be transparent. "The last thing [PNC] wants to do is hide behind a fortress," says Ko.
Each two story "neighborhood" will contain office spaces on the bottom floor and a common area on the other with a space for a pantry or coffee station. Bathrooms will also be located in this space. "It’s about bringing people together, creating spaces that encourage people to have chance encounters," explains Ko.
Comfort is also emphasized in the design; 91% of the building will be lit by daylight, and nearly 100% of the spaces where people spend their time will have enough natural light so that only desk lamps are necessary. The building "breathes" with a double-skin facade: a natural ventilation system that has a glass outer weather and air barrier and an inner layer with automated air vents, a wood curtain wall, and manually operated sliding doors. A series of automatic sensors on both layers open up the building for air when the weather is nice.
Building denizens can step out onto a ledge between the two skins if they want even more air. "If people have control of the environment they’re in, they’re going to be more content, they’re happier, and because they’re happier they’re more comfortable," says Ko. And if people are more comfortable, studies have shown that they’ll be more efficient.
When you open a door or window in other double-skinned buildings, it feels like air is being pushed out, but Gensler has managed to design the PNC tower so that workers instead get the sensation of air coming in. The secret is a system that creates natural suction at the center of the building, so that when a person opens up a door, air moves inward--not in gusts, but gently.
A solar chimney will draw exhaust and warm air up and out of the building, while the double-skin will pull air in--a technique that can dramatically cut down on energy use. A solar photovoltaic array will lie on top of the chimney. Passive natural ventilation can be used for 42% of total working hours in the building, and the abundance of natural light will cut down on energy use even further.
PNC plans on sharing much of the data that the building yields, much as the high-performance buildings around the world that Gensler visited while planning the project shared their own data. Ko wrote in an email: "PNC has not discussed what they will share in specific, but based on our experience with them and their history, I would expect a real transparency of information that includes building performance metrics on energy consumption and water conservation. What I would hope we can talk about too is employee satisfaction and worker productivity numbers. It would be great to have 'scientific data’ that shows how a building like this improves the human experience and thus positively impacts an organization."
2012年12月12日 星期三
A New Storage Paradigm for Big Data
You can’t open either a technology or business
journal these days without seeing an article on the tremendous opportunity Big
Data offers in driving new sources of revenue and efficiency. What’s the BIG
deal? Yes, data has value. That’s hardly a new concept. Since the time of the
first shop, businesspeople have been saving their customer lists, product
specifications, and key employee data on stone tablets, papyrus, paper and now
digital storage.
The BIG deal is the disruptive value caused by the advent of high performance digital data capture. This technology has made data collection almost free. Internet-based marketing systems auto-magically capture masses of information about prospective customer preferences. Flash-enabled digital movie cameras can be emptied every night and re-used, a far cry from the film model in which every frame was burned on expensive media — which then had to be manually processed and edited. Digital capture systems also enable capture of exponentially more data per event. Social media sites and businesses increasingly create, store and analyze HD video instead of text, at ten to one hundred times more granularity of data per customer or product. The availability of compute power to manipulate this data to create business advantage enables companies like WalMart to maintain and frequently utilize multi-petabyte databases to analyze customer patterns and speed decision making.The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. For the first time, solutions are also becoming available which allow for productive analysis of video as well. Finally, the resulting content is being stored forever: after all, that terabyte per day per oilfield of 3D seismic data being collected today might turn into the next decade’s oil find; or today’s genomic profile might be tomorrow’s cure for cancer.
As a result of this “free” data capture, increasing information granularity, more frequent usage and extended data value, businesses, research institutions and governments are growing enormous stores of large unstructured data (increasingly video) that needs to be stored and managed. This result presents a number of challenging data storage problems: extreme scalability; affordability (in general); managing the balance between cost and easy online access; maximizing application and user access; and assuring data durability.
Like the cavalry, a new set of “wide area storage” solutions based on second generation object storage are arriving just in time to help enterprises manage these issues. Object storage is a unique storage architecture utilizing a kind of valet parking ticket system to store and retrieve data. The creator of a piece of data (an object) hands the object to the storage in exchange for an object identifier (the digital equivalent of a valet parking ticket). When the data is later needed, the user hands the system the object identifier, and data is returned. The power of this model is that it is highly scalable — many objects can be stored and retrieved in parallel — and retrieval can be independent of the original application or physical location. Any application or user who gains authorized access to the electronic key can use the data. Historically, this technology has been used to store data in large, containerized archives, but these were limited by the size and performance of the object storage “box.”
What makes the latest generation architecture different is its ability to copy and disperse objects very efficiently across large numbers of independent processing and storage elements, which can even be distributed widely — geographically providing disaster recovery protection without the need for traditional replication. This wide area storage essentially frees object storage from the constraints of a box or even a site.High quality stone mosaic tiles. Wide area storage is similar to storing data in the internet or cloud — data is freed from the traditional boundaries of expensive storage hardware and processes. This results in capabilities which are perfectly suited to the challenges of Big Data: almost infinite scale; low cost per petabyte; the ability to afford 100 percent online data storage; global multi-application access; and a content store which can live forever without ever needing to endure a disruptive data migration.
How does it achieve this? Well first, as previously described, the underlying object storage is natively extremely scalable; unlike systems with centralized indices, if you want to add more data to a wide area storage system, you simply add more objects, which are then dispersed across more scaled out components to add access, performance or storage. And the hardware architecture is scale-out,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. which means if you need more storage, more performance or more communications bandwidth, you just plug in more pre-packaged storage, processors or network capacity, and the system takes care of the rest. Growth is simple.
Second, much like the systems we’ve all read about at Google, wide area storage systems are built under the assumption that individual hardware components will fail. Because objects are copied and dispersed across many storage and geographic resources, a multitude of components can fail while data is continuously available. This “failure-assumed” model allows for wide area storage to operate on lower cost, off-the-shelf disk and processor technologies, which translates to much lower capital cost than traditional disk storage. The ability to defer replacement of failed components also results in lower support and operating costs. And because multiple users and sites can share the system in common, the overhead of storage and disaster protection is shared across all users. No archive silos.
Third, the native cloud-like access model of these new offerings embeds the capability for “wide” geographic and application access, supporting a wide range of uses – from streaming data (like video, sensor information, and genomic sequences) to parallel processing (like Hadoop for analytics). Some solution vendors are also providing easier access for existing applications, including policy-based tiering from traditional disk or the ability to appear like a NAS archive.
Finally, and perhaps most intriguing, these new solutions offer the capability for content, once stored, to never need to be migrated again. This may be the most critical element of all. For any user or technology manager who has endured the pain of unloading a broken, filled or obsolescent NAS or traditional block storage array in order to migrate to the next big thing, with next generation object storage, you never need do this again. This is going to be critical when your Big Data store is holding hundreds of petabytes of high value data.The MaxSonar ultrasonic sensor offers very short to long-range detection and ranging. Forever.
Last June's derecho storm left thousands of travelers stranded along West Virginia highways, due to a lack of power to pump gasoline from filling stations.
In late October, thousands more were stranded when superstorm Sandy swept through the state, dumping heavy snow and toppling trees.
On Tuesday, thousands of additional travelers spent hours winding their way through a series of detours after a natural gas pipeline exploded along Interstate 77 near Sissonville, sending a wall of flame across the freeway.
A free new information system designed to held travelers cope with such extreme scenarios, as well as more routine encounters with traffic congestion, accidents and severe weather, was unveiled Wednesday by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and state Transportation Secretary Paul Mattox.
The new 511 Traveler Information System is accessible by phone by dialing 511, via the Internet at www.WV511.org,This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. by downloading the free WV 511 Drive Safe mobile app for Android and iPhone, or by following WV 511 on Twitter.
By dialing 511 from any landline or mobile phone, travelers can receive traffic information, reports on road and weather conditions, and connect with 511 systems in neighboring states. They can also connect with the state Department of Tourism, and be updated on public safety alerts.
The www.WV511.org website allows users to navigate an interactive map posting the locations of traffic incidents, construction projects and weather advisories. Images from the 20 traffic cameras located across the state can also be viewed, along with the messages and alerts posted on electronic roadboard signs.
The new WV 511 Drive Safe mobile application uses the speakers and GPS capabilities of smartphones to provide audible travel advisories for areas in the traveler's vicinity, allowing drivers to keep both hands on the steering wheel.
The new 511 system makes use of roadway moisture and temperature sensors, traffic cameras, State Police incident reports, reports from DOH maintenance crews and Courtesy Patrol drivers, and data from roadside meteorological stations to provide information to drivers. By having immediate access to such information, drivers can "save time, save money, and maybe even save lives," Mattox said.
"The theme of this system is to 'Know Before You Go,'" Tomblin said. "Having access to real-time information on traffic and road conditions provides advanced warning of road conditions and congestion that can be crucial in increasing safety."
The BIG deal is the disruptive value caused by the advent of high performance digital data capture. This technology has made data collection almost free. Internet-based marketing systems auto-magically capture masses of information about prospective customer preferences. Flash-enabled digital movie cameras can be emptied every night and re-used, a far cry from the film model in which every frame was burned on expensive media — which then had to be manually processed and edited. Digital capture systems also enable capture of exponentially more data per event. Social media sites and businesses increasingly create, store and analyze HD video instead of text, at ten to one hundred times more granularity of data per customer or product. The availability of compute power to manipulate this data to create business advantage enables companies like WalMart to maintain and frequently utilize multi-petabyte databases to analyze customer patterns and speed decision making.The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. For the first time, solutions are also becoming available which allow for productive analysis of video as well. Finally, the resulting content is being stored forever: after all, that terabyte per day per oilfield of 3D seismic data being collected today might turn into the next decade’s oil find; or today’s genomic profile might be tomorrow’s cure for cancer.
As a result of this “free” data capture, increasing information granularity, more frequent usage and extended data value, businesses, research institutions and governments are growing enormous stores of large unstructured data (increasingly video) that needs to be stored and managed. This result presents a number of challenging data storage problems: extreme scalability; affordability (in general); managing the balance between cost and easy online access; maximizing application and user access; and assuring data durability.
Like the cavalry, a new set of “wide area storage” solutions based on second generation object storage are arriving just in time to help enterprises manage these issues. Object storage is a unique storage architecture utilizing a kind of valet parking ticket system to store and retrieve data. The creator of a piece of data (an object) hands the object to the storage in exchange for an object identifier (the digital equivalent of a valet parking ticket). When the data is later needed, the user hands the system the object identifier, and data is returned. The power of this model is that it is highly scalable — many objects can be stored and retrieved in parallel — and retrieval can be independent of the original application or physical location. Any application or user who gains authorized access to the electronic key can use the data. Historically, this technology has been used to store data in large, containerized archives, but these were limited by the size and performance of the object storage “box.”
What makes the latest generation architecture different is its ability to copy and disperse objects very efficiently across large numbers of independent processing and storage elements, which can even be distributed widely — geographically providing disaster recovery protection without the need for traditional replication. This wide area storage essentially frees object storage from the constraints of a box or even a site.High quality stone mosaic tiles. Wide area storage is similar to storing data in the internet or cloud — data is freed from the traditional boundaries of expensive storage hardware and processes. This results in capabilities which are perfectly suited to the challenges of Big Data: almost infinite scale; low cost per petabyte; the ability to afford 100 percent online data storage; global multi-application access; and a content store which can live forever without ever needing to endure a disruptive data migration.
How does it achieve this? Well first, as previously described, the underlying object storage is natively extremely scalable; unlike systems with centralized indices, if you want to add more data to a wide area storage system, you simply add more objects, which are then dispersed across more scaled out components to add access, performance or storage. And the hardware architecture is scale-out,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. which means if you need more storage, more performance or more communications bandwidth, you just plug in more pre-packaged storage, processors or network capacity, and the system takes care of the rest. Growth is simple.
Second, much like the systems we’ve all read about at Google, wide area storage systems are built under the assumption that individual hardware components will fail. Because objects are copied and dispersed across many storage and geographic resources, a multitude of components can fail while data is continuously available. This “failure-assumed” model allows for wide area storage to operate on lower cost, off-the-shelf disk and processor technologies, which translates to much lower capital cost than traditional disk storage. The ability to defer replacement of failed components also results in lower support and operating costs. And because multiple users and sites can share the system in common, the overhead of storage and disaster protection is shared across all users. No archive silos.
Third, the native cloud-like access model of these new offerings embeds the capability for “wide” geographic and application access, supporting a wide range of uses – from streaming data (like video, sensor information, and genomic sequences) to parallel processing (like Hadoop for analytics). Some solution vendors are also providing easier access for existing applications, including policy-based tiering from traditional disk or the ability to appear like a NAS archive.
Finally, and perhaps most intriguing, these new solutions offer the capability for content, once stored, to never need to be migrated again. This may be the most critical element of all. For any user or technology manager who has endured the pain of unloading a broken, filled or obsolescent NAS or traditional block storage array in order to migrate to the next big thing, with next generation object storage, you never need do this again. This is going to be critical when your Big Data store is holding hundreds of petabytes of high value data.The MaxSonar ultrasonic sensor offers very short to long-range detection and ranging. Forever.
Last June's derecho storm left thousands of travelers stranded along West Virginia highways, due to a lack of power to pump gasoline from filling stations.
In late October, thousands more were stranded when superstorm Sandy swept through the state, dumping heavy snow and toppling trees.
On Tuesday, thousands of additional travelers spent hours winding their way through a series of detours after a natural gas pipeline exploded along Interstate 77 near Sissonville, sending a wall of flame across the freeway.
A free new information system designed to held travelers cope with such extreme scenarios, as well as more routine encounters with traffic congestion, accidents and severe weather, was unveiled Wednesday by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and state Transportation Secretary Paul Mattox.
The new 511 Traveler Information System is accessible by phone by dialing 511, via the Internet at www.WV511.org,This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. by downloading the free WV 511 Drive Safe mobile app for Android and iPhone, or by following WV 511 on Twitter.
By dialing 511 from any landline or mobile phone, travelers can receive traffic information, reports on road and weather conditions, and connect with 511 systems in neighboring states. They can also connect with the state Department of Tourism, and be updated on public safety alerts.
The www.WV511.org website allows users to navigate an interactive map posting the locations of traffic incidents, construction projects and weather advisories. Images from the 20 traffic cameras located across the state can also be viewed, along with the messages and alerts posted on electronic roadboard signs.
The new WV 511 Drive Safe mobile application uses the speakers and GPS capabilities of smartphones to provide audible travel advisories for areas in the traveler's vicinity, allowing drivers to keep both hands on the steering wheel.
The new 511 system makes use of roadway moisture and temperature sensors, traffic cameras, State Police incident reports, reports from DOH maintenance crews and Courtesy Patrol drivers, and data from roadside meteorological stations to provide information to drivers. By having immediate access to such information, drivers can "save time, save money, and maybe even save lives," Mattox said.
"The theme of this system is to 'Know Before You Go,'" Tomblin said. "Having access to real-time information on traffic and road conditions provides advanced warning of road conditions and congestion that can be crucial in increasing safety."
Mr Big's gangsters ransack homes of slain Ryan's pals
The family homes of two
close associates of murdered Real IRA terror boss Alan Ryan have been ransacked
by thugs connected to gang boss 'Mr Big'.
Sources have revealed that gangsters broke into the two properties and caused thousands of euro worth of damage.
The development has led to increased fears of a major escalation of the feud between Mr Big's drugs mob and dissident Republicans.
"The fellas broke into the houses and completely wrecked them -- it seems the criminals were trying to make a statement to what's left of Ryan's RIRA faction.
"They are challenging the dissidents -- trying to make the point that they are the top dogs in the feud.Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. It is a very worrying development,The howo truck is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability." a source said.
The Herald revealed yesterday that 'Mr Big' returned to Dublin last week and was arrested by gardai after they found balaclavas and cable ties in a car that he was travelling in at the south inner city.High quality stone mosaic tiles.
The attacks on the two homes happened after the crimelord's return from Spain, where he has been based since September's murder of Alan Ryan.
The properties that were attacked are located on Dublin's northside. The occupier of one of the houses is a well-known sportsman.
A source said: "Both of these individuals would have been close to Alan Ryan but not necessarily involved in any form of terrorist activity."
The return of Mr Big -- who is understood to be hiding out in hotels and staying with pals -- has heightened tensions in the criminal underworld after last week's killing of crime godfather Eamon Kelly.
'Mr Big', considered one of Ireland's biggest drug traffickers, is suspected of organising Alan Ryan's murder with a close associate who is on the run from gardai after a warrant was issued for his arrest last week.
This older criminal is a Tiger kidnap mastermind who has been striking fear into the criminal underworld for years.
Gardai have carried out a number of searches in Cavan and Dublin over the past week to try and locate the veteran criminal who is facing serious charges in the courts.
'Mr Big' was stopped by officers from Kevin Street Garda Station in the south inner city during a routine traffic stop on Tuesday night of last week.
The feared crimelord was in the company of a notorious hood when detectives pulled over the car in the Marrowbone Lane area. Cable ties and balaclavas were discovered.
Shipping, seismic surveys for oil exploration and even the installation of offshore wind turbines all produce underwater noise that has been shown to increase stress levels of wildlife. This can affect the long-term health of marine animals, creating a negative impact on the marine food chain and the fishing industry.
The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive aims to protect the marine environment by assessing levels of indicators including noise pollution and defining what constitutes “good environmental status.” Once the baseline levels of underwater noise have been defined, legislation will be used to set standards to reduce the levels by 2020.
The researchers at Bath, in collaboration with Ocean Networks Canada, looked at different statistical methods of measuring underwater noise and assessed which method was most relevant to measuring potential impacts on marine life.
Nathan Merchant, a third year PhD student from the university’s Department of Physics, explains,Quickparts builds injection molds using aluminum or steel to meet your program. “It has been shown that whales have increased stress hormones in their blood when they are exposed to high noise levels. This could have a negative impact on the health of whales (as it does in humans), and could ultimately contribute to population decline of endangered species.
“Noise also affects other sea creatures such as crabs and fish, which could have a knock-on effect for the rest of the food chain and the fishing industry. The new EU legislation aims to measure trends in underwater noise levels from year to year. The challenge for us was to identify a robust technique to calculate the average noise levels over the year in a way which reflected levels of potential impact on marine animals.”
The researchers looked at a range of statistical methods used to process noise data collected over four months by an underwater microphone located in the Strait of Georgia, near Vancouver, a major shipping route for western Canada.
The research was made possible by funding from the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and labor and equipment from Ocean Networks Canada and Ocean Sonics.
Nathan Merchant says, “Noise is measured in decibels, a logarithmic unit of measurement. This means deciding whether to take an average of your data before or after conversion into decibels can make a big difference to the end result. Our study recommends using the mean average of the data before converting it to decibels because it best reflects the way that marine mammal hearing responds to noise exposure.”
Sources have revealed that gangsters broke into the two properties and caused thousands of euro worth of damage.
The development has led to increased fears of a major escalation of the feud between Mr Big's drugs mob and dissident Republicans.
"The fellas broke into the houses and completely wrecked them -- it seems the criminals were trying to make a statement to what's left of Ryan's RIRA faction.
"They are challenging the dissidents -- trying to make the point that they are the top dogs in the feud.Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. It is a very worrying development,The howo truck is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability." a source said.
The Herald revealed yesterday that 'Mr Big' returned to Dublin last week and was arrested by gardai after they found balaclavas and cable ties in a car that he was travelling in at the south inner city.High quality stone mosaic tiles.
The attacks on the two homes happened after the crimelord's return from Spain, where he has been based since September's murder of Alan Ryan.
The properties that were attacked are located on Dublin's northside. The occupier of one of the houses is a well-known sportsman.
A source said: "Both of these individuals would have been close to Alan Ryan but not necessarily involved in any form of terrorist activity."
The return of Mr Big -- who is understood to be hiding out in hotels and staying with pals -- has heightened tensions in the criminal underworld after last week's killing of crime godfather Eamon Kelly.
'Mr Big', considered one of Ireland's biggest drug traffickers, is suspected of organising Alan Ryan's murder with a close associate who is on the run from gardai after a warrant was issued for his arrest last week.
This older criminal is a Tiger kidnap mastermind who has been striking fear into the criminal underworld for years.
Gardai have carried out a number of searches in Cavan and Dublin over the past week to try and locate the veteran criminal who is facing serious charges in the courts.
'Mr Big' was stopped by officers from Kevin Street Garda Station in the south inner city during a routine traffic stop on Tuesday night of last week.
The feared crimelord was in the company of a notorious hood when detectives pulled over the car in the Marrowbone Lane area. Cable ties and balaclavas were discovered.
Shipping, seismic surveys for oil exploration and even the installation of offshore wind turbines all produce underwater noise that has been shown to increase stress levels of wildlife. This can affect the long-term health of marine animals, creating a negative impact on the marine food chain and the fishing industry.
The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive aims to protect the marine environment by assessing levels of indicators including noise pollution and defining what constitutes “good environmental status.” Once the baseline levels of underwater noise have been defined, legislation will be used to set standards to reduce the levels by 2020.
The researchers at Bath, in collaboration with Ocean Networks Canada, looked at different statistical methods of measuring underwater noise and assessed which method was most relevant to measuring potential impacts on marine life.
Nathan Merchant, a third year PhD student from the university’s Department of Physics, explains,Quickparts builds injection molds using aluminum or steel to meet your program. “It has been shown that whales have increased stress hormones in their blood when they are exposed to high noise levels. This could have a negative impact on the health of whales (as it does in humans), and could ultimately contribute to population decline of endangered species.
“Noise also affects other sea creatures such as crabs and fish, which could have a knock-on effect for the rest of the food chain and the fishing industry. The new EU legislation aims to measure trends in underwater noise levels from year to year. The challenge for us was to identify a robust technique to calculate the average noise levels over the year in a way which reflected levels of potential impact on marine animals.”
The researchers looked at a range of statistical methods used to process noise data collected over four months by an underwater microphone located in the Strait of Georgia, near Vancouver, a major shipping route for western Canada.
The research was made possible by funding from the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and labor and equipment from Ocean Networks Canada and Ocean Sonics.
Nathan Merchant says, “Noise is measured in decibels, a logarithmic unit of measurement. This means deciding whether to take an average of your data before or after conversion into decibels can make a big difference to the end result. Our study recommends using the mean average of the data before converting it to decibels because it best reflects the way that marine mammal hearing responds to noise exposure.”
Nature that goes beyond its course
The easiest way to describe this exhibition is
"The meeting of two Mets," with the Metropolitan Museum of Art Tokyo serving as
a venue for 133 works from its much more renowned New York version, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art,This is my favourite sites to purchase those special
pieces of buy mosaic
materials from. known simply as "The Met."
But despite all its fame and grandeur, and the copiousness of a collection that includes more than 2 million works, the New York institution shares the major defect of American culture, namely an all-embracing universalism that works against a unique and easily marketable cultural identity.
Exhibitions drawn from the collections of the Louvre, Prado, or Tretyakov, instantly evoke their countries' rich cultural histories. This is much less true of the Met, where the global clearly eclipses the national.
In order to give this exhibition a more characteristic and appealing identity, it has therefore been themed around the idea of nature, with the rather unwieldy portmanteau title of "Earth, Sea, and Sky: Nature in Western Art: Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art."
This straggling name suggests two thingsthat at least two separate committees had to sign off on it,they wanted a theme that would allow almost anything to be slotted into the exhibition.
The broadness of the theme is stretched even wider by interpreting "nature" in the loosest possible terms. For example, the word apparently includes cityscapes, as we are treated to two rather lovely views of Venice, one by J. M. W. Turner, the other by Canaletto. There is also a close-up of a pelvic bone painted by Georgia O'Keeffe.
By these standards anything with a bit of sky or water in it, or any organic matter at all, can be considered "nature." This then raises the question of which 1 percent of all paintings are not connected to nature. This may sound like quibbling, but the fact is the show lacks a clear identity and will be liable to fade from visitor's memories.
The main problem is that there is so much unconnected variety. Most visitors seemed to be reduced to staggering from one uncomprehending encounter to another. As an example of this, opening the catalogue randomly at three different pages produces the following: a silver Art Nouveau punch bowl with anthropomorphic figures of Night and Morning from 1901; a bull's head ornament from ancient Mesopotamia, and a Dutch landscape, "Grainfields",The oreck XL professional air purifier, by Jacob van Ruisdael.
While it seeks to encompass most of human history, the exhibition invariably leaves massive gaps. If the mental gear changes and amplitude of background knowledge required to fully appreciate each consecutive object are taken into account, then diversity is certainly not this exhibition's strength.
But the curators have not been entirely negligent. One point of mild interest is the echoes of composition and subject matter that exist between various pairs of works. The most obvious is Paul Gauguin's "Tahitian Women Bathing" and Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "Figures on a Beach" (1890), which both feature standing and sitting women in a coastal setting. This similarity throws their stylistic divergence into sharp relief. Renoir's feathery brush strokes capture the breezy atmosphere of the French beach. This contrasts with Gauguin's fat blocks of color that serve to focus our attention on the exotic nudity of his figures.
These occasional "visual chimes" however are not enough to bring coherence to the exhibition.We specialize in howo concrete mixer, To counter the note of bewildering randomness that prevails,High quality stone mosaic tiles. the visitors are forced to thread together their own narratives. The most intriguing one for me was that concerning American artists. They are comparatively few, but there are enough of them and they are spread widely enough throughout the exhibition to tell a continuous story.
As essentially a European colony, America has historically had a cultural inferiority complex. This means that American art usually falls into three categories — art that defers to Europe, art that rejects Europe, and art that does neither and therefore expresses a true American spirit. Most "serious" American art is included in the first two categories, while the third category is dominated by naive and folk art.
The Met started out as an institute that enshrined this inferiority complex, striving to acquire the best European masters. The magic of Claude Monet's seascape "The Manneporte"and Vincent van Gogh's "Cypresses" demonstrate the power of the best European artworks.This is my favourite sites to purchase those special pieces of buy mosaic materials from. These then served as models for aspiring American artists. Most of the American artists represented here fall into this deferential category. For example Thomas Cole's landscape "View of the Catskills: Early Autumn" transposes Claude Lorrain's idyllic Arcadianism to upstate New York.
Edward Hopper's "The Lighthouse at Two Lights" by contrast has an atmosphere of self-consciously trying to be "American." The composition, clean surfaces, functional shapes and clear sky infuse the painting with a brash, breezy, almost puritanical Americanism. Set defiantly atop its windswept ridge, the lighthouse seems to tilt its hat and snub its nose at Europe, far, far away across the water.
But despite all its fame and grandeur, and the copiousness of a collection that includes more than 2 million works, the New York institution shares the major defect of American culture, namely an all-embracing universalism that works against a unique and easily marketable cultural identity.
Exhibitions drawn from the collections of the Louvre, Prado, or Tretyakov, instantly evoke their countries' rich cultural histories. This is much less true of the Met, where the global clearly eclipses the national.
In order to give this exhibition a more characteristic and appealing identity, it has therefore been themed around the idea of nature, with the rather unwieldy portmanteau title of "Earth, Sea, and Sky: Nature in Western Art: Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art."
This straggling name suggests two thingsthat at least two separate committees had to sign off on it,they wanted a theme that would allow almost anything to be slotted into the exhibition.
The broadness of the theme is stretched even wider by interpreting "nature" in the loosest possible terms. For example, the word apparently includes cityscapes, as we are treated to two rather lovely views of Venice, one by J. M. W. Turner, the other by Canaletto. There is also a close-up of a pelvic bone painted by Georgia O'Keeffe.
By these standards anything with a bit of sky or water in it, or any organic matter at all, can be considered "nature." This then raises the question of which 1 percent of all paintings are not connected to nature. This may sound like quibbling, but the fact is the show lacks a clear identity and will be liable to fade from visitor's memories.
The main problem is that there is so much unconnected variety. Most visitors seemed to be reduced to staggering from one uncomprehending encounter to another. As an example of this, opening the catalogue randomly at three different pages produces the following: a silver Art Nouveau punch bowl with anthropomorphic figures of Night and Morning from 1901; a bull's head ornament from ancient Mesopotamia, and a Dutch landscape, "Grainfields",The oreck XL professional air purifier, by Jacob van Ruisdael.
While it seeks to encompass most of human history, the exhibition invariably leaves massive gaps. If the mental gear changes and amplitude of background knowledge required to fully appreciate each consecutive object are taken into account, then diversity is certainly not this exhibition's strength.
But the curators have not been entirely negligent. One point of mild interest is the echoes of composition and subject matter that exist between various pairs of works. The most obvious is Paul Gauguin's "Tahitian Women Bathing" and Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "Figures on a Beach" (1890), which both feature standing and sitting women in a coastal setting. This similarity throws their stylistic divergence into sharp relief. Renoir's feathery brush strokes capture the breezy atmosphere of the French beach. This contrasts with Gauguin's fat blocks of color that serve to focus our attention on the exotic nudity of his figures.
These occasional "visual chimes" however are not enough to bring coherence to the exhibition.We specialize in howo concrete mixer, To counter the note of bewildering randomness that prevails,High quality stone mosaic tiles. the visitors are forced to thread together their own narratives. The most intriguing one for me was that concerning American artists. They are comparatively few, but there are enough of them and they are spread widely enough throughout the exhibition to tell a continuous story.
As essentially a European colony, America has historically had a cultural inferiority complex. This means that American art usually falls into three categories — art that defers to Europe, art that rejects Europe, and art that does neither and therefore expresses a true American spirit. Most "serious" American art is included in the first two categories, while the third category is dominated by naive and folk art.
The Met started out as an institute that enshrined this inferiority complex, striving to acquire the best European masters. The magic of Claude Monet's seascape "The Manneporte"and Vincent van Gogh's "Cypresses" demonstrate the power of the best European artworks.This is my favourite sites to purchase those special pieces of buy mosaic materials from. These then served as models for aspiring American artists. Most of the American artists represented here fall into this deferential category. For example Thomas Cole's landscape "View of the Catskills: Early Autumn" transposes Claude Lorrain's idyllic Arcadianism to upstate New York.
Edward Hopper's "The Lighthouse at Two Lights" by contrast has an atmosphere of self-consciously trying to be "American." The composition, clean surfaces, functional shapes and clear sky infuse the painting with a brash, breezy, almost puritanical Americanism. Set defiantly atop its windswept ridge, the lighthouse seems to tilt its hat and snub its nose at Europe, far, far away across the water.
2012年12月10日 星期一
Entrepreneurs leap aboard data revolution
Carl Partridge never planned to become an entrepreneur. But the
comedy writer saw an opportunity when Transport for London announced it
was to publish live data from the capital’s buses.
London buses are fitted with GPS devices transmitting location information. This made it possible for Mr Partridge to create a real-time bus map accessible via mobile phones – a blessing for many commuters.
A year later, the app he hurriedly created – Bus Checker – has gone nationwide and generated “six-figure” revenues. He is looking for office space and considering hiring staff. He is in talks to launch the app overseas.
Mr Partridge is part of a wave of British entrepreneurs trying to seize the potential of businesses that can manage and make sense of digital data,High quality stone mosaic tiles.High quality stone mosaic tiles. ranging from health records to house prices and weather information.
In an attempt to harness the nascent sector, the government launched the Open Data Institute last week, billed as the world’s first official body aimed at helping start-ups use data. The initiative fits the coalition’s broader efforts to promote technology investment as an engine of economic recovery.
The ODI will receive ￡10m of public funding over the next five years and aims to raise an equal amount from private donors. It has already attracted $750,000 (￡469,000) from Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, the auction website.
The institute was the brainchild of the renowned British computer scientists Nigel Shadbolt and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web.
“It feels like 1994 with the web,” said Gavin Starks, the ODI’s chief executive. “We’re not quite sure what shape this new industry will take, but we know it will be transformational.”
Research by Deloitte consultancy shows that the UK is establishing itself as a leader in the field of data use, aided by moves to make government data available for research and enterprise.The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. Government data are used more widely by technology entrepreneurs than the equivalent information released by the US or France, Deloitte has found.
“The UK was one of the first countries to open up its government data for use by developers and businesses,” said Murray Rowan, a web development consultant formerly with Yahoo!. “Other governments around the world .?.?. are playing catch-up.”
In an effort to stay ahead, Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, has appointed Stephan Shakespeare, co-founder of the market research group YouGov and a government adviser on digital strategy, to lead an independent review of how to make better use of public data.
Health data are seen as an especially promising area. “Nobody has a data set of patients as we do in the NHS,” said Mr Shakespeare. “This could be of incredible economic value as well as helpful to the health of the nation.”
Gareth Williams, chief executive of Skyscanner, an Edinburgh-based website that “scrapes” airline data to find cheap flights, says the government could still do more to free up the information.
“There has always been a problem in the UK around postcode data and Ordnance Survey maps,” he said. ”Making those data sets available will increase the chances of a British company succeeding in the global market for maps.”
Mr Partridge says any data created using public money should be opened to developers and businesses. “In future, people will demand to have public data at their fingertips. It will be seen as being as essential a public service as providing a clean water supply.”
"For many students and teachers, the hassles of traditional computing often prevent them from making the most of technology in the classroom," Sheth wrote. "Schools that have adopted Chromebooks, however, have been able to bring the web’s vast educational resources – whether it’s conducting real-time research or collaborating on group projects – right into the classroom. Chromebooks are fast, easily sharable, and require almost no maintenance."
Here's out it works: Navigate over to Donorschoose.org and set up a project page with your location and the number of Chromebooks you're requesting for your classroom. Hit the goal by December 21, and Google will sell you the Chromebooks at the $99 subsidized price.
Alternatively, if you're a donor interested in helping to give a few Chromebooks to a public school in your area, you can browse active projects here.Trade platform for China crystal mosaic manufacturers
In a recent review of the Series 5 Chromebook, Jared Newman of Time said the machine performed pretty well, for the price.Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals.
"It’s not the best laptop you’ll ever use. It’s not even the best Chromebook you can get," Newman noted. "But it’s thinner and lighter than many other notebooks on the market, it gets you into Google’s Chrome browser in practically no time, and it handles the desktop web deftly. If all you ever do on your computer is hang out in a web browser anyway, this $250 Chromebook does the job at a price that borders on miraculous."
London buses are fitted with GPS devices transmitting location information. This made it possible for Mr Partridge to create a real-time bus map accessible via mobile phones – a blessing for many commuters.
A year later, the app he hurriedly created – Bus Checker – has gone nationwide and generated “six-figure” revenues. He is looking for office space and considering hiring staff. He is in talks to launch the app overseas.
Mr Partridge is part of a wave of British entrepreneurs trying to seize the potential of businesses that can manage and make sense of digital data,High quality stone mosaic tiles.High quality stone mosaic tiles. ranging from health records to house prices and weather information.
In an attempt to harness the nascent sector, the government launched the Open Data Institute last week, billed as the world’s first official body aimed at helping start-ups use data. The initiative fits the coalition’s broader efforts to promote technology investment as an engine of economic recovery.
The ODI will receive ￡10m of public funding over the next five years and aims to raise an equal amount from private donors. It has already attracted $750,000 (￡469,000) from Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, the auction website.
The institute was the brainchild of the renowned British computer scientists Nigel Shadbolt and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web.
“It feels like 1994 with the web,” said Gavin Starks, the ODI’s chief executive. “We’re not quite sure what shape this new industry will take, but we know it will be transformational.”
Research by Deloitte consultancy shows that the UK is establishing itself as a leader in the field of data use, aided by moves to make government data available for research and enterprise.The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. Government data are used more widely by technology entrepreneurs than the equivalent information released by the US or France, Deloitte has found.
“The UK was one of the first countries to open up its government data for use by developers and businesses,” said Murray Rowan, a web development consultant formerly with Yahoo!. “Other governments around the world .?.?. are playing catch-up.”
In an effort to stay ahead, Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, has appointed Stephan Shakespeare, co-founder of the market research group YouGov and a government adviser on digital strategy, to lead an independent review of how to make better use of public data.
Health data are seen as an especially promising area. “Nobody has a data set of patients as we do in the NHS,” said Mr Shakespeare. “This could be of incredible economic value as well as helpful to the health of the nation.”
Gareth Williams, chief executive of Skyscanner, an Edinburgh-based website that “scrapes” airline data to find cheap flights, says the government could still do more to free up the information.
“There has always been a problem in the UK around postcode data and Ordnance Survey maps,” he said. ”Making those data sets available will increase the chances of a British company succeeding in the global market for maps.”
Mr Partridge says any data created using public money should be opened to developers and businesses. “In future, people will demand to have public data at their fingertips. It will be seen as being as essential a public service as providing a clean water supply.”
"For many students and teachers, the hassles of traditional computing often prevent them from making the most of technology in the classroom," Sheth wrote. "Schools that have adopted Chromebooks, however, have been able to bring the web’s vast educational resources – whether it’s conducting real-time research or collaborating on group projects – right into the classroom. Chromebooks are fast, easily sharable, and require almost no maintenance."
Here's out it works: Navigate over to Donorschoose.org and set up a project page with your location and the number of Chromebooks you're requesting for your classroom. Hit the goal by December 21, and Google will sell you the Chromebooks at the $99 subsidized price.
Alternatively, if you're a donor interested in helping to give a few Chromebooks to a public school in your area, you can browse active projects here.Trade platform for China crystal mosaic manufacturers
In a recent review of the Series 5 Chromebook, Jared Newman of Time said the machine performed pretty well, for the price.Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals.
"It’s not the best laptop you’ll ever use. It’s not even the best Chromebook you can get," Newman noted. "But it’s thinner and lighter than many other notebooks on the market, it gets you into Google’s Chrome browser in practically no time, and it handles the desktop web deftly. If all you ever do on your computer is hang out in a web browser anyway, this $250 Chromebook does the job at a price that borders on miraculous."
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