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The transformation of Tata Motors into a highly successful, well-diversified, and globally ambitious automobile giant represents one of India's most remarkable corporate-success stories in recent times.
Six years ago, after a decade of strong revenue and margin growth, Tata Motors plunged into an unprecedented crisis when demand for its trucks suddenly collapsed. The lost sales—compounded by heavy investment for its entry into the passenger car business, the cost of complying with new emissions standards, and an increasing threat from overseas competitors—caused Tata Motors to shock the markets with a 5 billion rupee ($110 million) loss for the fiscal year ending March 2001.
Drastic action was required. Over the next two years, the company shaved around 8 billion rupees from its cost base and nursed itself back to corporate health. Even while keeping a tight grip on costs, Tata Motors moved to the offensive by refocusing its investments on less cyclical products, including light commercial vehicles, buses, and spare parts; making a successful entry into passenger cars; and responding to opportunities presented by favorable social and economic trends. These included the new mobility of young Indians, the government's substantial road-building program, and generally buoyant GDP growth.
Today Tata Motors ranks as the world's fifth-largest manufacturer of medium and heavy trucks—it has a 61 percent domestic market share in this segment—and has taken the number-two position for sales of passenger vehicles in the Indian market. It has also built a significant global presence, both through sales efforts in overseas markets (such as the former Soviet republics, the Middle East, South Africa, South Asia, and Turkey) and through acquisitions such as the takeover of Daewoo's commercial-vehicle business in South Korea and the purchase of a 21 percent stake in the Spanish bus manufacturer Hispano Carrocera. In addition, Tata Motors has formed a joint venture with Marcopolo, the Brazilian bus manufacturer. With an agreement in early 2006 to distribute Fiat cars in the Indian market and a more recent memorandum of understanding with Fiat to establish a joint manufacturing facility near the Indian city of Pune, Tata Motors has embarked on a wide-ranging global partnership with the Italian group—an arrangement that both sides expect to flourish.
Ravi Kant, the managing director of Tata Motors and former head of the company's commercial-vehicle business, recently met with McKinsey director Gautam Kumra. In this interview, Kant told Kumra about some of the key lessons of the transformation.
The Quarterly: Can you start by describing the impact on the company of the 2001 crisis—and what caused it?
Ravi Kant: Seven years ago, Tata Motors was predominantly a manufacturer of commercial vehicles, and that is a very cyclical business. At the time, we were making huge investments in car manufacturing to move away from that cyclicality. But while we were in the middle of this diversification, the commercial-vehicle market in India shrank by more than 40 percent, with massive consequences for both the top and, more particularly, the bottom lines of the company. The 5 billion rupee loss in 2001 was the first time something on this scale had happened in the company's history, and it really shook everybody within the organization.
In my experience, you either get knocked over by something like this or you do something about it. Our reaction was to try to understand what had gone wrong and to create a path for the future to ensure that we never got into such a situation again. The good news, at least, was that we still retained our leadership position and our market share, albeit in a much smaller market. So in 2001 we decided on a recovery strategy that had three distinct phases, each of which was intended to last for around two years—six years in all.
Biography of Tata Motors' Ravi Kant
The Quarterly: How did you characterize the main theme of these three phases?
Ravi Kant: Phase one was intended to stem the bleeding, since we just couldn't ignore the fact that our sales volumes were still falling with the shrinkage of the overall market. Costs had to be reduced in a big way, and that was going to be a huge challenge for a company that was not only the market leader but had been used to operating in a seller's market and employing a cost-plus approach to pricing. Phase two was to be about consolidating our position in India, and phase three was to involve going outside India and expanding our operations internationally.
The Quarterly: What were the main achievements of the first phase?
Ravi Kant: The key objectives were to move to a system of market pricing and to reduce our break-even point, both of which called for major reductions in costs—variable costs, fixed costs, and interest costs. We used many approaches to cost reduction, including bench-marking our rivals. For example, we took apart vehicles to see what we could do to modify our products and to lower costs. We went in for e-sourcing, which was then very new, but today we are the largest company doing e-sourcing in India and one of the leading ones in the automobile industry worldwide. In two and a half years, we reduced our break-even from nearly two-thirds of capacity utilization to around one-third, which meant that even if the market shrank by close to 60 percent, we would still be in the black. The whole organization really got together to ensure that the bleeding stopped.
The Quarterly: It's clear that the second and third phases of the transformation—domestic consolidation and overseas expansion—have restored the health of Tata Motors and reignited top-line growth. Did you simultaneously plan for these during the first phase?
Ravi Kant: Absolutely. The concentration in phase one was indeed on cost reduction, but while this was going on we had to think about taking action in areas that would have an impact during the other phases. For phase two, the concentration was on improving product quality and upgrading product features so as to make the products more competitive. We also started work on new products that would be required by the market after three to five years and strengthened our position in the marketplace by setting up a new sales-planning process, tightening credit norms, improving the liquidity and profitability of the dealers, reorienting toward customer satisfaction, and extending the reach of our distribution network. For phase three, the concentration was on starting work on international markets by identifying key markets and segments and developing a comprehensive plan to improve our competitive position so as to get a respectable market share. We also started looking at opportunities for inorganic growth.
The Quarterly: What sort of opposition did you encounter generally to the cost reduction phase? And how did you deal with it?
Ravi Kant: I certainly learned that the wisest approach is not to give orders but to sell new ideas internally. Generally, people with greater experience, especially in a successful company, are often resistant to change because they have been successful doing things the way they have been used to, not realizing that the context has changed. This process of selling new ideas took longer, of course, but unless people are convinced about what you are asking them to do, they are not going to make it happen. Therefore, one had to keep reasoning and get people to come to their own conclusions. When you force people to confront the issues themselves, most of them realize that there is actually no other option; you have to do it in the manner suggested. But when you are used to doing things in a certain manner, it takes a long time to orient yourself to a different way. That's entirely human.
Our people are very dedicated, but the organization had become very inward looking. The trick was how to expose people to the outside world to allow them to see what is happening there rather than drilling change into them through speeches and letters. We felt that would be very artificial and would upset intelligent people. The most effective way to sustain change is to make those involved internalize it rather than just getting somebody to come and talk about it. For example, we had our people listen to customers talk about the problems they were facing and the suggestions they had for product improvement. We exposed our people to products of competitors by tearing those products apart and analyzing the good and bad and comparing them with our own, thereby making people see why customers buy someone else's products rather than ours.
The patience and confidence that our chairman, Mr. Ratan Tata, displayed toward the entire management—simultaneously exhorting them to stretch themselves—ensured that the organization, though depressed, did not lose its confidence.
The Quarterly: You mentioned colleagues with experience. Were they the most resistant?
Ravi Kant: The most frozen layer in any organization, I think, is the people with experience who think they know best, who believe that nothing can be changed, and who typically exhibit a not-invented-here syndrome. When we started to connect with what we call the younger high performers, on the other hand—people in their late 20s and early 30s—it was very different. We would have breakfast meetings with a dozen of them, and we would invite them to give very, very frank views. We soon realized that they were suffocated and that they wanted change. So we started picking out some of these individuals and giving them challenges.
In fact, the whole cost initiative came from one of the breakfast meetings at our operation in Pune. Everyone had been talking about cost reductions and thinking in terms of one-half of a percent or 1 percent, but these young employees indicated that they thought a target of 10 percent was possible. They were all from different disciplines, so I said to them during the meeting, "I am in Pune for the next four hours, and I want you all to get together now as a team; I don't want you to go back to work. But before I leave, I want you to make a presentation on how it can be done."
We then made the senior people sit in on the presentation, and it quickly became clear that our 10 percent target was indeed achievable. After this, we urged the young employees to put together a bigger team from Jamshedpur and Lucknow, to include representatives from sales and marketing, and to spend ten days working on the plan. That was the defining moment. If we had tried to go only through the top, we might not have succeeded as well, and the transformation might have taken much longer.
The Quarterly: So were these young people acting as role models?
Ravi Kant: Yes, in a way. As a means of accelerating change, we identified individuals who would serve as examples to others. For example, I asked one young person if he would take over our new small-truck project. I had to sell the idea to him and encourage him to take the risk. As things turned out, the project became a phenomenal success and he did a fantastic job. A lot of other young people now want to take on this sort of challenge. Now people are saying that if you respond to challenges and take risks, you can cut through the hierarchy and rise up in the organization.
The Quarterly: How did you sustain the energy needed to continue the transformation beyond the initial phase?
Ravi Kant: After the initial two-year phase, during which we turned the 5 billion rupee loss into a 5 billion rupee profit, we found that further cost reductions were not forthcoming. The feeling was that there was little scope to do more. At this point, we injected new discipline, put back on the table difficult ideas that earlier had been considered and dropped, and renewed our determination to go for further cost reductions. This became especially important as commodity prices were going through the roof. Steel moved up by 50 to 70 percent, followed by nonferrous metals, rubber, and tires, driven in large part by Chinese consumption. This put us somewhat on the back foot, and our break-even crept back up to 40 percent, from the 33 percent of capacity utilization that we had earlier achieved. We were able to partially offset that increase by the cost reductions, partially by a mild revision in prices, and partially by taking a 1 to 1.5 percent hit on our EBITDA1 margins.
In phase two we did several very important things. Apart from reducing the breakeven, we worked very hard on reducing the impact of our cyclical business. We found that the market was not homogeneous; heavy vehicles were very cyclical, light ones less so, and buses hardly at all, since 60 percent of purchases were made by state governments. So we decided to increase our exposure to light vehicles, buses, and nonvehicle businesses like spare parts and maintenance contracts and to set up separate lines in the marketing department for all of them. This helped sharpen our focus on individual customer categories and facilitated a tailored approach to each one, given that the competition in each case was different.
Despite initial hiccups, we succeeded in establishing a strong presence in the car market through the launch of the Indica hatchback, followed by the Indigo sedan and the station wagon. Today we are the second-largest manufacturer of passenger vehicles in India. This has been achieved in an environment of intense competition with most well-known brands in the world.
The Quarterly: Can you tell us why international diversification was such a key part of the transformation strategy?
Ravi Kant: It was all part of, first, reducing the impact of domestic cyclicality—cyclicality is present across the world but in different phases in different places—and, second, seeking new geographies for growth in the face of the limitations of the domestic market, especially in commercial vehicles, where we enjoy a very high market share of over 60 percent. If you have market-leading products, you can leverage them internationally. By identifying about 12 countries as priority markets, rather than the 60 to 70 countries we were trying to tap previously, we have grown our international sales to some 50,000 vehicles, against 7,000 to 8,000 four years ago.
The Quarterly: As the leader of a major transformation, what have you found to be the biggest challenge?
Ravi Kant: The speed of change is increasing very substantially, and the fact that we are still not able to exceed that rate is certainly a cause for concern. We still have a lot of catching up to do, and therefore we need to work on a response time such that we accelerate our speed.
We are riding high at the moment because the market is in a growth phase, but I am cautioning everybody not to be complacent. A lot of our success is due to a favorable environment. What would happen if the environment turned against us tomorrow, which certainly could happen in a cyclical industry? We should assume we are already in a crisis situation and therefore look at things from that perspective.
In a broad way, Tata Motors has been silently transforming itself for a long time—and this will continue. The company started manufacturing locomotives, then concentrated on heavy trucks before moving to light trucks, multi-utility vehicles, passenger cars, and buses. We continually have to reinvent ourselves. We should see ourselves as being in the business of providing transport solutions. The important thing is to keep looking at external changes in the marketplace and to respond to these changes appropriately while continuing to retain our values, which have been our beacon for the past 60 years. Tata Motors used to be an engineer's organization that needed to understand more about profits, costs, and contributions. Now people at all levels realize it doesn't make sense to just manufacture anything, that products must sell to make a healthy contribution, and that market share must continually be increased to sustain growth.
The Quarterly: Do you see people as a constraining factor?
Ravi Kant: No and yes. No because we have one of the strongest pools of competent people any organization in the country could have. Yes because we need to have an even larger pool to meet the challenging objectives we have set for ourselves.
The Quarterly: What aspirations are you setting to keep the momentum going in the year ahead?
Ravi Kant: We want to see ourselves as one of the most respected companies not only in the automobile industry but also in India's economy as a whole. Of course, we want to grow and produce a healthy bottom line, necessary for sustained growth. But in doing so, we want to be seen as an innovative company breaking new ground and going into uncharted territories successfully. Finally, we want to achieve this the Tata way—transparently, ethically, and meeting our corporate social responsibility. We want to make India proud.


text: In an earlier paper the writer discussed the system of plane cubics with a given quadrangle of inflexions. The nine points of inflexion of any one cubic offer a number of ways of choosing four points which form a quadrangle, but among these quadrangles some have vertices in common. It follows that all the cubics with a given quadrangle of inflexions in common with one inflexional set form a configuration with notable geometric properties. The first part of this paper gives the results of a study of the real cubics contained in this configuration. The second part is devoted to a discussion of cubics with three real inflexions given.

subset: commoncrawl


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Story highlights
The bill passed on a 17-14 vote, and the president has said he will sign it into law
Opponents say they will push for a referendum on the measure
The bill says abortion seekers must go to a doctor, who will refer them to a panel
There will be a five-day waiting period afterward
The senate of the tiny South American nation of Uruguay, the current standard-bearer on progressive policies on the continent, on Wednesday passed a bill legalizing abortion.
Leftist President Jose Mujica has said he will sign the bill into law, which will make it the latest in a number of laws in the region that go against the grain of the traditionally very Catholic, socially conservative Latin America.
With Mujica's signature, Uruguay will become just the second nation in Latin America where abortion is legal.
But the debate over abortion in the country is far from over.
Sen. Jose Amorin, a critic of the bill, said that opponents will begin collecting signatures in an effort to force a referendum where the public could vote down the measure.
The senate approved it in a 17-14 vote.
A similar bill had passed before under a previous congress, but then-President Tabare Vazquez vetoed it.
Under the new measure, abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy becomes decriminalized, and becomes a procedure that clinics can carry out.
A Uruguayan seeking an abortion will first go to a doctor, who in turn will refer her to a panel that includes gynecologists, psychologists and social workers who must explain all of the possible outcomes, the bill states.
There is a five-day waiting period afterward, and if the woman still seeks an abortion, the procedure will be carried out immediately, according to the measure.
Uruguay will join Cuba as the only Latin American countries where abortion is legal outside of cases of rape, incest of danger to the mother's life.
Uruguay has been at the vanguard of the liberalization of social policies that traditionally have been influenced by the Catholic Church. In 2009, the country became the first in Latin America to allow same-sex couples to adopt children.
Uruguay is also proposing a law that would legalize marijuana.
CNN's Rafael Romo and journalist Dario Klein contributed to this report.


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[Illustration to] Part I. Fable XVIII. [The Painter Who Pleased Nobody and Every Body] [and] Fable XIX. [The Lion and the Cub]
Bentley-Blake Collection
1 leaf : illustrations ; 24 x 15 cm
Rare Books
Plate opposite page 48. Gay, John, 1685-1732. Fables.
Frontispiece and plates facing pages 65 and 129 (Fables 25 and 48) signed: "G. Neagle sc[ulp].", remaining plates unsigned: "plates ... very closely copy ... those in the 1793 Stockdale edition ..." which has plates signed by Blake and others.--Cf. Bentley.
Two octavo editions exist with the same title-page and virtually the same type-setting, page for page, except for the spacing between lines and the setting of leaf A2. In the smaller edition, the last line of text on A2 recto (page [iii]), excluding footnote, ends "as he pro-" and the catchword is "bably"; in the larger octavo edition, the last line ends "is not known." and the catchword is "The". In the smaller edition pages 138, 142 and 143 are misnumbered 140, 144 and 145 respectively and leaf Q3 is unsigned. In the other octavo edition pages 138, 142 and 143 are numbered correctly, but page 242 is misnumbered 422 and leaf Q3 is signed. Leaf R4 is unsigned in both editions.
Blake Suppl. no. 461 is the large octavo edition.
See Catalogue Link below for full Victoria University Library catalogue record.
Blake Suppl. no.461
Public Domain
Blake, William, 1757-1827, association, Gay, John, 1685-1732, author
Art print


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What, another polka dot post?! Yes, indeed. You can never have too many polka dots. This 1950s outfit reminds me so much of "I Love Lucy," my all-time favorite TV show!
My Ginger Rogers moment, dancing atop a picnic table.
Last night, I whipped up a crinoline to wear underneath the dress to make it fluffy. I still have to add a few more layers of tulle to make it puffier.
dress // gift from my cousin
jacket // gift
shoes // payless
clutch purse // thrifted
dress crinoline // made by me
What do you like about 50s styles?
Have you ever worn a crinoline under a skirt before?
Do you like "I Love Lucy?"


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With the release of OS X Mountain Lion in 2012, Apple brought iOS's Notification Center feature to the Mac. As with its iOS counterpart, OS X's Notification Center alerts you when something is happening (or has happened) on your device. On iOS it's flawed but indispensable; in Mountain Lion I've found it to be eminently dispensable.
In recent years, Apple has shown a predilection for improving operating-system features in their second iterations—think Time Machine and FileVault, to name just two. With OS X Mavericks, Apple is doing the same for Notification Center. But while the result is more useful, it still doesn't feel as organized as it should be.
Interactive bubbles
Notification Center comes in two forms: Floating notification bubbles that appear on your screen when you need to know something, and a notifications list that slides out from the right side of your screen when you click the Notifications icon at the far right side of the menu bar. (The bubbles come in two forms: Banners and Alerts. Banners eventually fade away if you ignore them, while Alerts stay on screen until you act on them.) In a year of using Mountain Lion, I have come to appreciate the floating bubbles, but I've rarely, if ever, used the sidebar list.
In Mavericks, those bubbles have become much more useful, mainly because they're now more interactive. When you receive a message in Messages, for example, you can reply directly from the bubble: Click on the Reply button, and the bubble expands to reveal a text area. Type a reply and press Return to send it.
There's similar functionality when it comes to Mail alerts: You can reply directly from the notification bubble, or opt to delete the message you've just received. Deleting messages from a notification bubble might seem a bit extreme, but if you've set Mail to alert you every time you get an email, there will probably be some spam you want to get rid of in there. It would be nice if you could flag or archive messages from the bubble, too, but Mavericks doesn't offer those options.
Incoming FaceTime calls are likewise heralded by a notification bubble. You can answer or decline from the bubble, or even reply with an iMessage explaining why you don't want to take the call right now.
Since Mavericks includes the option to automatically update your Mac App Store apps, Notification Center also now alerts you about apps that have been updated, and warns you if an update requires you to quit an app or restart your system. There's also a Later button that allows you to set when Notification Center will bug you again about installing that update.
Some other system alerts have moved into Notification Center, too: Warnings about a dying battery, a failed Time Machine backup, and ejected disks that would previously have spawned a big warning dialog box instead create a Notification Center bubble.
I set my Mac to automatically lock when I put it to sleep or after a certain amount of inactivity. When I wake the Mac up but before I log in, Notification Center will display some basic information about things that have happened since I went away, including any email alerts I've received.
This might be handy, but it also seems like a security flaw, since someone could view potentially sensitive information without entering a password on my Mac. Fortunately, settings in the Notifications system preference pane in Mavericks can address this: App by app, you can decide which notifications display when your Mac is locked. For Mail and Messages, you can separately opt to show or not to show the contents of the message you're being notified about. It's great that these features exist, though I'd prefer an option that would globally prevent such notifications so I didn't have to go through a list of all my apps and uncheck the boxes one by one.
One interesting new feature that I haven't been able to test lets websites send push notifications to my Mac even when Safari's not running. Websites will need to use Apple's existing push-notification infrastructure to support this—it's not just a matter of few lines of JavaScript to a webpage. But the prospect of my favorite websites pinging me on my Mac when something big happens is exciting. The question will be just how many sites will implement this, and when.
The semi-hidden Do Not Disturb feature introduced in Mountain Lion (if you scrolled all the way up in the Notification Center sidebar, you found an option to silence warnings until the next day) has been fleshed out in Mavericks. A new Do Not Disturb setting in the Notifications preference pane in System Preferences lets you mute notifications at particular times, as well as when your display is sleeping or when your computer is attached to an external display. You can also squelch FaceTime alerts using this preference.
As I say, I don't find myself using the Notification Center sidebar very often; it's usually full of lots of old junk and gives me no way to filter or quickly clear it. I wish it was better organized and took a broader overview of what was going on (a la the forthcoming Today view in iOS 7). It provides too much information, and I find myself accidentally triggering it via an inadvertent trackpad swipe more often than purposefully opening it.
Those complaints aside, one thing I do like in the new Notification Center is the ability to send instant messages from within it (not just Twitter and Facebook posts, which you could do in Mountain Lion). Just as you can reply to a message you receive directly from within the notification bubble, you can start a conversation with a friend by clicking on the Messages icon at the top of Notification Center. This seems like a great idea, especially for people who don't keep Messages open all the time.


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In the category of must read, this piece on Grantland by Jane Leavy is one the mouth-breathing, booger-eating, Neanderthal types who thing science is ruining the game, should become acquainted with (if they can even read). Dr. McKee and people like me are not trying to take away the sports you love. In fact we are trying to save them, football included.
Dr. McKee is a fan, just like most of us;
Every football Sunday, she parks herself in front of the TV in her authentic Packers foam Cheesehead ($17.95 at packersproshop.com) and Rodgers's no. 12 jersey and prays that none of the men on the field end up on a dissection table. To date, she has found ravages of CTE, the neurodegenerative brain disease that has become her life's work, in over 70 athletes, nearly 80 percent of those she has examined. Among them: 18 of the 19 NFL players she has autopsied; three NHL enforcers; and a boy just 17 years old. McKee, who received $1 million in funding from the VA as well as a home for her lab, has also documented evidence of CTE in combat veterans exposed to roadside bombs.1
"The coolest thing about Ann is she spends all day doing autopsies on NFL players and can't wait for the weekend to put on her Packer sweatshirt and climb into bed with a big bag of popcorn and a beer," says Gay Culverhouse, former president of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who now advocates on behalf of former players.
"Well, I don't usually do it in my bed," McKee says.
Dr. McKee relishes her job, no matter how anyone sees it; Continue reading


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Way up on a ladder in downtown Ganges.
Way up on a ladder in downtown Ganges.
Photographs of Salt Spring Island and areas reachable by ferry and road (and sometimes off-road).
It's my goal to continue providing this service without ads through year nine. Help keep this website going by purchasing one custom print each year.
For high quality commercial photography of buildings and architectural spaces, people and their passions, artist portfolios and the Salt Spring Island area, click here to contact me.
Thank you — John Cameron


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Force Me to Blog for 24 … no, 30 … no, 36 Straight Hours at the Trade Deadline
You folks have cost me a lot of sleep the last couple years. And I love you for it.
That's because at each of the last two MLB Trade Deadlines, your support of Bleacher Nation forced me to blog for 24 hours straight at the 2011 deadline, and then for 30 hours straight at the 2012 deadline. Those Blogathon events raised money to help run this here site, and I left each experience overwhelmed by your support, your energy, your participation, and your eagerness to watch me wilt in a sleep-deprived pile of goo.
I also left each experience feeling unbelievably blessed to be able to write at Bleacher Nation as a full-time job, and be a part of such a special community. We've developed a nice little corner of the Cubs' online world, and I feel very privileged to be a part of it.
Because I have been so blessed by your support, and because we have all been blessed to be part of a very cool community, I think we should use this year's BN Trade Deadline Blogathon fundraiser to do some real, tangible good out there. Specifically, I'm asking you to help give children special, Chicago Cubs-related wishes.
This year, Bleacher Nation is partnering with Make-A-Wish® Illinois. The mission of Make-A-Wish is to grant the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions to enrich the human experience with hope, strength and joy. Make-A-Wish cannot accomplish that mission without the help and support of others, and that's where you come in. Together, our goal this month is to sponsor the wish of a young Chicago Cubs fan.
I'm going to do a Blogathon at the Trade Deadline, but it's up to you to really get me there. So let's make a deal.
I'll commit right now to blogging for 24 hours straight leading up to the Trade Deadline on July 31. No breaks. No sleep. Constant coverage. Writing. Tweeting. Commenting. Kvetching. The run-up to the deadline is among the most important times in the baseball season, and I intend to go crazy covering everything out there during the BN Blogathon. You're getting 24 hours right now, guaranteed.
But who wants 24 hours when you can have 30 hours? Or 36 hours?
If you folks collectively donate $6,000 – the cost of sponsoring a child's wish – by July 30, I'll step that 30 hours straight. And if you really dig deep, and we go over that $6,000 mark, I'll tack on an additional hour for every $1,000 you generous folks donate. Although I'm going to cap the Blogathon at 36 hours (which would be a total of $12,000 raised – the cost of two wishes), there's no limit on the amount we can raise together. Every dollar raised will go straight to Make-A-Wish with the intention that it be used to grant a wish to a child who wishes for an experience related to the Chicago Cubs. We all love the Cubs, and it would be pretty amazing to help a child do something that will deepen his/her own love of the Cubs.
It's up to you to make this happen.
Here's how you donate: go to the BN Blogathon fundraiser page, and make your donation there.
Make-A-Wish is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, so, to the extent you were wondering, financial contributions may be deductible for federal income tax purposes. Just throwing that out there.
This is win-win for you, my friends. By giving whatever you can, you not only help change the life of a fellow Chicago Cubs fan, but you also ensure ridiculous, over-the-top coverage at the Trade Deadline. Seeing if I can make it to 30 or 36 hours without posting pictures of cats dressed as unicorns is just a bonus.
I know that some of you will still want to use the Blogathon as a mechanism to support Bleacher Nation, and I thank you very much in advance for your spirit. But let's save the dollars for Make-A-Wish and young Cubs fans. If you still want to support this site directly as you have in the past, you can do so without any money at all. You could tell your friends and family about this fundraiser. You could spread the word about it on Twitter or Facebook. You could finally follow BN on Twitter or like it on Facebook, and tell your Cubs fan friends to do the same thing. You can help make this fundraiser hugely successful for a special young Cubs fan, and you would be helping Bleacher Nation in the process just like you have in the past. Let's spread the word about this fundraiser, and make it a huge success.


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Photography – KatjArt
I couldn't resist sharing these breathtaking pics of a frosted hydrangea bloom. I adore these flowers. My hydrangea is a periwinkle blue and it waves at me each morning in the spring and summer while I drink my coffee and gaze out the window. Its sweet clusters of flowers always makes me smile. I shall look forward to their appearance as the sun warms and our gray world blooms once more.
p.s. The colors in these photos make me melt too…lavender, gold, ivory and ice blue….so lovely.


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The most famous painting of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso's "Guernica," commemorates the bombing of the small Spanish town on April 26, 1937, by the German air force, in support of General Francisco Franco's fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Hard to believe, but this was history's first extensive bombing of a civilian population.
In his book "Postwar," the late historian Tony Judt pointed out that more civilians died in World War II, of various causes, than did soldiers. That was not true of World War I or most earlier conflicts.
Guernica was a German dress rehearsal for the London blitz, the destruction of Warsaw, and so on. Soon to come on the Allies' side were the destruction of Dresden, the firebombing of Tokyo and, of course, the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today when we think of war, bombing from the sky is one of the first images that come to mind.
One consequence of this and other developments in warfare has been a blurring of the distinction between soldiers and noncombatants. Wars used to be conducted on battlefields, between soldiers in uniforms lined up in rows, bayonets ready. People famously took picnic baskets to watch the first battle of Manassas, thinking that the U.S. Civil War would be like that. It wasn't.
Unmanned, Unnoticed
The War on Terrorism's contribution to this unfortunate history has been the drone: an unmanned plane that can aim at and hit a target with enormous precision. And, as with earlier developments, we're getting used to it. The eye passes right over headlines such as "Yemen: Drone Strike Kills 2" buried inside the newspaper. Right now, we have more or less a monopoly on drones, which won't last any longer than our monopoly on nukes did.
The advantages of using drones are obvious. No American lives are put at risk, and the precision minimizes collateral damage, including the deaths of innocents who happen to be nearby.
The disadvantages follow from advantages. When a military option seems less painful, it is more likely to be resorted to. The ability to strike at the enemy with absolutely zero risk to your own people must be especially appealing to politicians such as President Barack Obama, for whom the decision to put Americans in harm's way is surely the toughest one to make.
But drones also highlight a terrible anomaly of civil- libertarian societies: the contrast between how we treat killing — state-sponsored killing — in battle, and how we treat killing in civilian life. There are no Miranda warnings in the trenches. In fact, the entire edifice of protections against convicting the innocent is irrelevant in battle. You kill the other guy because he's trying to kill you, and unless you're raping women or slaying babies, you're going to get a medal, not criticism. Collateral damage — including the deaths of complete innocents — comes with the territory.
Once upon a time, these two spheres were separate, with one set of rules — if that — for the battlefield, and one for normal times and places. Now every place is the battlefield. The World Trade Center, for example.
Why is it not only OK but praiseworthy for the U.S. government to aim at Anwar al-Awlaki and kill him because he is an al-Qaeda "operative" who may not actually have killed anyone directly (though no doubt he would have liked to), while Adam Lanza, who shot and killed 20 schoolchildren and seven adults, including his mother, before killing himself, could have had a trial that lasted weeks and cost millions of taxpayer dollars?
What about the other person riding in Awlaki's car who was killed with him? What about Awlaki's 16-year-old son, who died in a drone attack two weeks later? Awlaki was a U.S. citizen and his child was born in Colorado, if that makes any difference.
Legal, Secret
The Obama administration's position is that it has looked at this carefully, and there's no legal problem with drone assassinations for reasons that regrettably must remain secret. U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon's wonderfully acerbic decision, issued last week, reluctantly acknowledges the administration's right to maintain this absurd position.
A "thicket of laws and precedents," she wrote, "effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusions a secret."
As is so often the case, Stalin may have said it best (if, indeed, he really said it): "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." The deaths of Awlaki and Lanza may not be tragedies, but the differences in how we think about them deserve better than a "because we said so" — especially from a liberal Democratic administration led by a former president of the Harvard Law Review.
I wonder especially about the teenage son killed in a separate drone attack, and the two killed just before New Year's Eve because, according to Reuters, they were "suspected of being insurgents linked to al-Qaeda." Is that good enough for you?


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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Some 46,000 Iraqi refugees returned to their war-torn country last month, a sign of hope that the massive population flight since the 2003 U.S. invasion could be reversed, an Iraqi commander said Wednesday.
Iraqi refugees line up at the Iraq-Syria border in September.
Brig. Gen. Qassim Atta said he attributed the return to an improved security situation in Baghdad, where a crackdown has been in place since February.
"We are simply living in a better and obvious security situation," he said, citing the return of families to several Baghdad neighborhoods.
About 10,000 internally displaced families have gone back to their homes in the Iraqi capital, said Sattar Nawruz, spokesman for Iraq's Ministry of Displacement and Migration, also pointing to better security.
The Iraqi officials' assessments contrast with gloomy findings from the U.N. refugee agency and Iraqi Red Crescent Organization documenting an increase in displaced populations in recent months. The latter counted nearly 2.3 million internally displaced people in Iraq during September, a figure that has grown steadily this year.
In addition to the thousands of internally displaced people, more than 2.2 million Iraqis have fled to neighboring countries, mostly to Syria and Jordan, the U.N. refugee agency said. Those countries' social service agencies have been stretched by the presence of the refugees, and they have adopted tougher rules on the refugee flow.
Nawruz, who cited statistics that don't include the Kurdish region, said the number of Iraqi families internally displaced since February 2006 stands at 140,000, which amounts to at least 700,000 people since Iraqi families often average five to six people.
He said "accurate data" indicates that forcible displacement in Baghdad has stopped in the past three months and ministry data indicates that 10,000 families have returned to their homes in the city since the start of the security plan in February.
A U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees official said the agency is checking the ministry's figures.
Nawruz said Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a grant of 1 million Iraqi dinars, about $700, to families returning to their homes. He said 3,231 families have received the money and more than 6,000 have applied for the funds.
The ministry on Tuesday started paying displaced families $120 per month for six months.
Nawruz attributes the differences in numbers between the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization and his ministry to dissimilar methods of data collection.
Iraqi Red Crescent President Said Ismail Hakki agreed the organizations' methods of data collection are different but stood by his group's figures.
In a report issued Sunday, Hakki's organization said that nearly 2.3 million people had been displaced by the end of September, a sharp increase from the August figure of 1.93 million and part of a steady rise this year.
"Children less than 12 years [old] comprised more than 65 percent of the total number. The majority of the displaced people [63.6 percent] were in Baghdad governorate," the report said.
The percentage of displaced people who are children has risen from 51.3 percent in August, the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization said.
Hakki attributed the increase to a "lack of services, lack of jobs and despair among the Iraqi people of the whole overall what's happening in Iraq." He said the displacement problem has persisted over the years but spiked with the February 2006 bombing of Al-Askariya Mosque in Samarra.
Baghdad and the Kurdish region were among the worst-hit areas, Hakki said, citing the deterioration of families and suffering of children, whose mothers have abandoned them in some cases "because they're becoming a liability."
He said he believes the "security situation in Iraq is improving at a very good speed" but adds that the lack of social services and jobs are factors in the displacement of people.
He said the increase in the number of displaced children presents new challenges for his organization, including problems of education and the trafficking of girls and boys alike.
"It's a social-economic problem. People are in despair now," Hakki said, adding that he hopes the Iraqi government will make improvements in jobs and social services to reverse the instability. E-mail to a friend
CNN's Jomana Karadsheh, Jennifer Deaton and Saad Abedine contributed to this report.
All About Iraq • United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees


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North Korea successfully launched a missile early Wednesday—a big step toward achieving the capability to hit targets in the United States.
Under the transparent public cover story of a satellite launch, North Korea tested a missile that is the same as an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Even though the missile was not armed, the launch violates U.N. Security Council resolutions.
And the country has been claiming that it is close to arming this type of missile with a nuclear warhead that could reach U.S. territory.
Bruce Klingner, Heritage's Senior Research Fellow for Northeast Asia, wrote this morning that "The international community must take firm action against North Korea's provocative act."
The U.N. Security Council will consult on the launch today, and Klingner says the U.S. should submit a new resolution that "allows for enforcement by military means. This would enable naval ships to intercept and board North Korean ships suspected of transporting precluded nuclear, missile, and conventional arms, components, or technology." This would be in addition to other sanctions:
Washington should lead the charge for more comprehensive international sanctions against Pyongyang as well as the banks, businesses, and countries that facilitate North Korean nuclear and missile proliferation. The U.S. should also work with its allies toward a comprehensive integrated missile defense network in Asia.
As Klingner notes, coordinating the response with the United Nations will be a challenge for Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., who has been in the hot seat since her media appearances on the Benghazi terrorist attack. She has been rumored a favorite of President Obama's for Secretary of State in his second term. One of Rice's main problems will be the Administration's China policy, Klingner explains, because "Beijing has been the principal roadblock to meaningful action. China blocked any meaningful U.N. action in 2010 in response to North Korea's two acts of war against South Korea and Pyongyang's unveiling of a uranium enrichment facility."
North Korea's aggression should drive home the necessity of robust missile defense systems for the U.S. and South Korea. Klingner says:
The United States should encourage South Korea to deploy a multilayered missile defense system. This system should be interoperable with a U.S. regional missile network to provide for a more coherent and effective defense of allied military facilities and the South Korean populace. The U.S. should also encourage Seoul to engage in trilateral missile defense cooperation and exercises with the U.S. and Japan.
>>> 33 Minutes: The time it could take for a missile to hit the U.S.
The international community will be watching closely. While the missile launch was timed to mark important dates in North Korea—the December 17 anniversary of the death of previous leader Kim Jong-il and the ascension to power of new leader Kim Jong-un—it will also have broad effects in the region, as both Japan and South Korea have national elections in just a few days.
It is clear that the young leader Kim Jong-un is taking an aggressive stance toward the rest of the world. The international response should be just as clear.
North Korean Missile Launch Challenges U.S. Foreign Policy by Bruce Klingner
Quick Hits:
- President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) are trading secret offers on the fiscal cliff.
- "In a major win for Second Amendment rights, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Illinois's virtual ban on the carrying of any guns, whether concealed or otherwise," reports Heritage's Hans von Spakovsky.
- "18 Democrat senators and senators-elect have asked for 'a delay in the implementation' of the Obamacare medical device tax," according to Americans for Tax Reform.
- The Small Business Optimism Index, based on a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business, plummeted in November.
- What does it mean when the U.S. trade deficit increases? Heritage's Bryan Riley explains.


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For Information: 800-782-1967 or
Notify me when this becomes available:
This stylish, energy-efficient flushmount fixture features a custom made Giclee style shade with a pattern printed on high-quality, translucent canvas. An acrylic diffuser at the bottom prevents glare from the two included CFL bulbs. The canopy and accents are in a brushed nickel finish. Flushmount style ceiling light. U.S. Patent # 7,347,593.


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When you color granulated sugar, you can add a small amount of liquid food coloring to the sugar, mix it in and let the excess moisture evaporate. It is much more difficult to dye powdered sugar because it is so fine that it clumps together almost immediately after any kind of liquid is added. To make matters worse, it dissolves very easily if you mix it around at all, so stirring it in is quite the challenge when you compare it to granulated sugar. As a result, I tend to keep my confectioners' sugar white. Wilton recently launched a series of colored dusting sugars in blue, pink and green that allows for much more colorful presentations than white sugar alone.
There are is no hassle to trying to use these sugars (unlike trying to make your own), just pretty pale colors to use as accents. They stand out well on a dark background, but are perfectly visible on a light colored cake or frosting. You can simply sift the colorful sugars on top of cakes, cookies or brownies, just as you would with regular sugar, but they add a new element to cake and cupcake stencils when you use them to make different designs.


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TC-5619 as Augmentation Therapy to Improve Cognition in Outpatients With Cognitive Dysfunction in Schizophrenia
|The safety and scientific validity of this study is the responsibility of the study sponsor and investigators. Listing a study does not mean it has been evaluated by the U.S. Federal Government. Read our disclaimer for details.
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01003379
Recruitment Status : Completed
First Posted : October 28, 2009
Last Update Posted : September 13, 2013
- Study Details
- Tabular View
- No Results Posted
- Disclaimer
- How to Read a Study Record
Schizophrenia affects approximately 1% of the population worldwide, and in about 80% of cases, it is a lifelong, disabling illness. It is a multi-dimensional disease that is associated with symptoms that have been characterized as positive, negative, and cognitive. CDS is a core feature of schizophrenia, and most individuals with schizophrenia exhibit cognitive impairment. Attention disorders, slow information processing, working memory disorders, and lack of flexibility for adaptive strategies are symptoms of cognitive impairment that have a devastating impact on the function, employment, and social status of patients with schizophrenia.
Older typical neuroleptic medications (e.g., haloperidol, fluphenazine) do not improve cognition. In fact, haloperidol has been shown to induce cognitive impairment in schizophrenic patients.
Novel atypical antipsychotics, such as risperidone, clozapine, and olanzapine, seem to produce gains in cognition. This improvement may reflect a diminution of extrapyramidal side effects of the typical high potency neuroleptics. Alternatively, it might reflect more effective symptom reduction by the novel antipsychotics, or direct cognitive enhancement through the effects of the newer agents on a variety of neurotransmitters, their receptors, and gene expression. Even when the newer antipsychotic medications improve cognition, they do not normalize it.
Presently, there are no approved therapies for CDS. However, in schizophrenic patients, nicotine improves multiple cognitive domains, including working memory and attention. Furthermore, based on a strong body of evidence ranging from genetic mapping to clinical trials, the alpha7 NNR subtype has emerged as a primary therapeutic target relevant to CDS and other core symptoms of schizophrenia
|Condition or disease
|Cognitive Dysfunction Schizophrenia
|Drug: TC-5619 Drug: Placebo
|Phase 2
|Study Type :
|Interventional (Clinical Trial)
|Actual Enrollment :
|184 participants
|Intervention Model:
|Parallel Assignment
|Quadruple (Participant, Care Provider, Investigator, Outcomes Assessor)
|Primary Purpose:
|Official Title:
|A Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled, Multicenter, Fixed Dose Study to Assess Efficacy, Safety, and Tolerability of TC-5619 as Augmentation Therapy to Improve Cognition in Outpatients With Cognitive Dysfunction in Schizophrenia
|Study Start Date :
|October 2009
|Actual Primary Completion Date :
|November 2010
|Actual Study Completion Date :
|December 2010
Experimental: TC-5619
TC-5619 capsules will be administered once a day in a forced titration scheme at 1 mg for 4 weeks, 5 mg for 4 weeks and 25 mg for 4 weeks (12 weeks total).
Drug: TC-5619
TC-5619-238 will be provided as hard gelatin capsules in strengths of 1mg, 5mg, and 25mg.
|Placebo Comparator: Placebo
Drug: Placebo
Placebo will be provided with exactly the same shape, size and appearance.
- To assess the efficacy of TC-5619 as augmentation therapy to quetiapine or risperidone, to improve cognition in stable outpatients with Cognitive Dysfunction in Schizophrenia (CDS), using the GML test of the CogState Schizophrenia Test Battery (CSTB). [ Time Frame: Day 1 - Week 4; Week 4 - Week 8; and finally Week 8 - Week 12. There will be a 2-week follow-up period following the end of the treatment period. ]
- Assess the efficacy, safety and tolerability of TC-5619 administered adjunctively with quetiapine or risperidone, evaluate the pharmacokinetics of TC-5619 and plasma levels of quetiapine and risperidone/9-OH-risperidone. [ Time Frame: Day 1 - Week 4; Week 4 - Week 8; and finally Week 8 - Week 12. There will be a 2-week follow-up period following the end of the treatment period. ]
Choosing to participate in a study is an important personal decision. Talk with your doctor and family members or friends about deciding to join a study. To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contacts provided below. For general information, Learn About Clinical Studies.
|Ages Eligible for Study:
|18 Years to 60 Years (Adult)
|Sexes Eligible for Study:
|Accepts Healthy Volunteers:
Inclusion Criteria:
- Diagnosis of schizophrenia, per DSM-IV TR criteria, as aided by the MINI International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI)
- Controlled schizophrenia, on same dose of quetiapine or risperidone for no less than 2 months prior to screening
- Age 18 - 60, male or female
- Stable schizophrenia as documented by lack of psychiatric hospitalization for 2 months prior to Screening
- Clinical history of stable psychotic symptoms for 1 month prior to Screening
- Stable positive symptoms of schizophrenia for 4 weeks prior to Day 1, as shown by score ≤ 4 on PANSS for items related to delusion, hallucination, conceptual disorganization, and unusual thought content, at Screening and at Day 1
- Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia score < 6
- Outpatient with stable housing, and presence of an informant who sees the subject at least 4 times weekly
- Able to understand and sign informed consent
Exclusion Criteria:
- Diagnosis of schizoaffective or schizophreniform disorders 1 year prior to Screening
- Patients at significant risk of suicide or of danger to themselves or others
- Antipsychotics other than quetiapine or risperidone, or a change in dosing of these within 2 months of Screening
- Treatment with mood stabilizers, antidepressants, or anxiolytics (short-acting hypnotics permitted)
- Treatment within 1 month using cognition-affecting agents other than the above, as listed in Appendix 3 (e.g. CNS stimulants)
- Use of other prohibited concomitant medications
- Other concomitant medications that have been changed within 1 month prior to Screening
- History within past 6 months of alcohol or illicit drug abuse
- Use of smoking cessation therapy within 1 month prior to Screening
- Tobacco users with no detectable urine cotinine level; and tobacco non-users with a detectable urine cotinine level
- Unable to comply with study procedures in opinion of investigator, including CogState battery
- History of significant other major or unstable neurological, metabolic, hepatic, renal, hematological, pulmonary, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, or urological disorder
- Myocardial infarction
- Seizure disorder
- Type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM); type 2 DM that requires medication (diet-controlled allowed, with HbA1C < 7.3)
- Electroconvulsive therapy within 2 months prior to Screening
- Uncontrolled hypothyroidism, vitamin B12 or folic acid deficiency
- Current TB or known systemic infection (HBV, HCV, HIV)
- Clinically significant finding on physical exam that could be a safety issue in the study
- ALT or AST levels > 2.5 times the upper limits of the laboratory reference range
- Clinically significant lab or ECG abnormality that could be a safety issue in the study, including QTcF > 450msec (males) or QtcF > 480msec (females)
- Women of child-bearing potential and men unwilling or unable to use accepted methods of birth control
- Women with a positive pregnancy test, or who are lactating
- Participation in another clinical trial in last 3 months prior to Screening
- Involvement in planning or conduct of the study by site staff
To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contact information provided by the sponsor.
Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier (NCT number): NCT01003379
|United States, California
|Synergy Clinical Research Center
|National City, California, United States, 91950-7628
|Collaborative Neuroscience Network, Inc LA County
|Torrance, California, United States, 90502
|United States, Georgia
|Altanta Center for Medical Research
|Atlanta, Georgia, United States, 30308
|United States, Kansas
|Clinical Research Institute
|Wichita, Kansas, United States, 67211
|United States, New York
|Neurobehavioral Reseach, Inc.
|Cedarhurst, New York, United States, 11516
|New York State Pshychiatric Institute, Columbia University
|New York, New York, United States, 10032
|United States, Texas
|Community Clinical Research, Inc.
|Austin, Texas, United States, 78754
|Sravani Polyclinic and Mental Health Care Centre
|Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India, 522001
|Asha Hospital
|Hyderabaad, Andhra Pradesh, India, 500034
|Dept. of Psychiatry, Owaisi Hospital & Research Centre
|Hyderabaad, Andhra Pradesh, India, 500058
|Brain Mind Behaviour Neuroscience Research Institute
|Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India, 530002
|Government Hospital for Mental Care
|Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India, 530017
|Adhit Khan Neuropsychiatric Centre
|Mangalore, Karnataka, India, 575002
|Dept. of Psychiatry, JSS University
|Mysore, Karnataka, India, 57004
|Mahendru Psychiatric Centre
|Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, 208005
|Dept. of Psychiatry, CSM University
|Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India, 226003
|Principal Investigator:
|Jeffrey Lieberman, MD
|New York State Psychiatrii Institute, Columbia University
|Responsible Party:
|Targacept Inc.
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
|Other Study ID Numbers:
|First Posted:
|October 28, 2009 Key Record Dates
|Last Update Posted:
|September 13, 2013
|Last Verified:
|December 2011
cognitive dysfunction
Phase 2
Cognitive Dysfunction
Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders
Mental Disorders
Cognition Disorders
Neurocognitive Disorders


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Hatchell fights leukemia, hopes to coach this year
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Sylvia Hatchell is fighting to get back to her North Carolina women's basketball program as quickly as possible.
The recently inducted Naismith Hall of Fame coach has been away from sideline duties since October while receiving treatment for leukemia. She spent a month in the hospital for the first round of chemotherapy with more ahead as she holds out hope of getting back by conference tournament time.
"You don't realize, especially after all this time, how much something means to you until you don't have it," Hatchell said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"It was like a tsunami hit me and all of a sudden it's taken away. But that's my motivation, to get back out there."
Hatchell, 61, said she feels great and even attended Saturday's win against High Point, the first time she watched her No. 10 Tar Heels play in person this year.
She returns to the hospital Friday for her next five-day round of chemotherapy, the second of at least three and maybe four "consolidation" sessions to complete her treatment. Her chances of returning this year depend largely on how her immune system recovers each time.
Dr. Pete Voorhees, the oncologist overseeing her treatment at UNC's Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, said last month physicians were "extremely pleased" with her progress.
"I haven't had one test come back and knock me down, so the only thing I've got against me is my age," she said with a laugh.
Hatchell, in her 28th season at UNC, has more than 900 career victories, eight Atlantic Coast Conference tournament titles, three Final Fours and the 1994 NCAA championship. With longtime assistant Andrew Calder leading UNC on the sideline, Hatchell has remained involved by reviewing practice and game video, conferring with her staff and meeting with her players.
This is the first time she's missed games since missing two in January 1989 due to the birth of her son, Van.
"Coach Hatchell still makes the decisions," said Ivory Latta, UNC's career scoring leader and a first-year assistant coach. "She definitely still calls the shots. We still play the way she wants us to play."
While she misses her team, Hatchell said she's blessed because her illness was caught early. She works to stay positive as she would coach her players to do and leans on her faith.
"I've had moments," she said. "The biggest thing is in the mornings when I open my eyes, sometimes I'll close my eyes again like, 'Wake up, this is a bad dream.'"
The trouble started after a routine physical shortly before her Naismith induction in September. A test showed a low white blood cell count, though Hatchell felt fine and stuck to her busy schedule full of recruiting visits and speaking engagements.
She eventually developed a sore throat, though doctors weren't able to find the cause of her low white count in subsequent tests.
Hatchell soon started feeling fatigued and contacted the Lineberger Center - she's been a supporter and donor for years - to get the bone marrow test that found the answer.
Voorhees told her to report to the hospital the next day, staying for a week of heavy chemotherapy followed by three weeks of recovery.
She tells people asking what they can do for her at Christmas to donate blood and platelets as well as to get tested for bone marrow matches for transplants - which she might need one day if her cancer returns.
For now, she's filling her time by watching old TV shows and spending extra time with her golden retriever, Maddie.
And these days of waiting can't go by fast enough.
"My doctors are very encouraging and very confident that they're going to get me back out there," Hatchell said. "It's just going to take some time."
She stayed with her exercise regimen to minimize the side effects, walking laps around her hospital wing or using strength bands and weights in her room. She wouldn't get in bed other than to sleep. She refused to wear a hospital gown, opting to stay in team apparel down to slippers that look like athletic shoes.
When she started losing her hair, Hatchell had her head shaved - pausing long enough to see herself with a Mohawk - while some of the friends who took shifts staying overnights with her in the hospital took photos and videos in a makeshift party. She's wearing a wig as her hair grows back.


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The Koenigsegg Trevita is one of the fastest, rarest, and hardest-to-pronounce supercars in all the land. And with a price over $2 million, it's also one of the most expensive ever made.
So why was one just sitting in an underground garage in Zurich for over a month, parked like an asshat?
Zurich is one of the richest cities in the world, which means it has a selection of incredible cars all over town. In a town where Porsches and Maseratis litter the sidewalks and Ferraris are common, the Koenigsegg actually stands out as a rarity.
The car, which has been in the parking space for at least a month, looks to be in perfectly fine condition, so we doubt it's broken down. Supposedly, the owner of the car is a wealthy executive (surprise surprise) that lives in the Swiss state of Schwyz. Reader hakki.alexander saw the car in the parking garage and snapped a few pics.
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There are fingerprints accumulating on the car, as it seems a few passing gearheads haven't been able to keep their hands off the car.
We're willing to bet that the parking ticket, which is supposed to be well over 1,000 Swiss Francs, is probably pocket change to him. Also, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that he didn't even take the time to park the car between the lines.
What the hell?
Photo Credit: Alexander Hakki Google Plus


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(CNN) -- As a large silver balloon floated its way over Colorado, millions of Americans spent hours glued to their televisions wondering if 6-year-old Falcon Heene, assumed to be inside the contraption, was alive.
That night the boy, who had actually been hiding in his family's house, was asked on CNN's "Larry King Live" why he'd stayed hidden.
"You guys said we did it for the show," the boy told his father, Richard Heene.
In the era of reality TV, YouTube, and social media "friends" and "followers," it seems that everyone wants to be a star. People will perform outrageous acts on camera and revel in the attention of strangers.
But what, then, is driving this need for attention from thousands -- or even millions -- of spectators?
The desire to be famous comes from a basic human need to be part of a group, said Orville Gilbert Brim, psychologist and author of the new book "Look at Me! The Fame Motive From Childhood to Death," out this month from the University of Michigan Press.
"It's a yearning to belong somewhere that causes us to seek the fulfillment of attention and approval of strangers," he said.
The Heenes are no strangers to television. They had been chosen for the 100th episode of the reality TV show "Wife Swap," which Lifetime recently announced it would not reair.
Falcon's mother told authorities last Friday that the balloon episode was a hoax. Robert Thomas, who worked with Richard Heene last spring, told CNN he used to write down Heene's ideas and proposals for reality-show pitches, one of which closely resembled the balloon incident.
Monday, investigators presented their case against the boy's parents to representatives of the district attorney's office of Larimer County, Colorado, according to CNN affiliate KUSA.
The desire for attention may date back to the days of early humans, who lived in small groups. Those who were not approved by a group that protected all of its members would genetically disappear and die off, he said.
"You're left with the population in which almost everybody wants acceptance and approval," he said.
Wanting to feel special and sensation-seeking are probably top motives for trying to become famous, said Susan Fiske, professor of psychology at Princeton University.
Getting a lot of attention gives some people a rush of adrenaline, the "fight or flight" chemical, said James Bailey, psychologist and leadership professor at George Washington University's School of Business. When people experience this "high," they want to have it again and will engage in sometimes extreme or illegal behaviors to try to replicate the feeling.
This need for recognition isn't necessarily negative, and studies have shown that everyone has it in varying degrees, although there is some cultural variation, Bailey said. It becomes problematic when the desire for fame becomes dysfunctional and all-encompassing, he said in an email.
The quest for fame may get out of hand when sudden fame -- like a sudden chunk of money for lottery winners -- has an "intoxicating effect," and suddenly people can't imagine life without fame, he said.
"It shifts one's self-perception of who and what one is and what one deserves, and there's little we humans won't do to perpetuate our positive self-concepts," he said.
Still, some surveys show that it's a minority of the population that places fame ahead of all other priorities in life.
Brim examined data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research in Storrs, Connecticut, on how important becoming famous is to people. The surveys were conducted over the past four decades. Consistently, about 2 percent of respondents said that fame is the most important thing in life.
That means the proportion of people whose primary life motivation is fame isn't getting larger over time, even though opportunities for people to try for their 15 minutes have exploded through the Internet and reality TV shows, Brim said.
But there is a perception that far greater numbers of people are fame-seekers. A 2006 survey from the Pew Research Center aimed at 18- to 25-year-olds found that 51 percent cited being famous as either the first or second most important life goals for their generation.
Fiske and Bailey said the plethora of opportunities for minor fame on the Internet probably has made more people want to be recognized in that way. "Access to the rarefied air of celebrity is more available," Bailey said.
Fame by way of YouTube and reality television is usually temporary, unlike honors for doing good deeds, Brim said. The number of great achievements to bring about fame have not increased -- what have increased are the "look at me" spectacles that have no other goal than to draw attention, he said.
A desire for fame may also come from being rejected early in life, perhaps by parents, Brim said. But the problem is that no matter what level of acceptance these people achieve, it's never enough.
"That need remains unfulfilled and they can't handle it, and so they turn to trying to become famous as a substitute for the satisfaction for this basic need," he said.
Experts agree that celebrity culture also offers something for people to feel connected to, although Bailey cautioned that recognition is different from relationships. Still, the rise of Internet portals on which people can become minor celebrities are partly driven by the need to create and maintain relationships, he said.
The fame motive and the desires for money and power are distinct, although they are often connected, he said. The fame motive can be a way to get money and power, and vice versa, Brim said.
Many people whose primary motivation in life is fame are met with much disappointment because they always want more, and few can be recognized as widely as they want, he said.
"It ends up being kind of a damaged life if you seek to be famous because you can never get there, really, and you can never can get rid of it, and it spoils your days trying," he said.


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6 March 2017
In response to the request of UNESCO member-states to provide support in countering extremism in the framework of teacher education, UNESCO has developed a guide for teachers on prevention of violent extremism (2016).
Material has been reviewed by international education experts and Associated Schools Project Network(ASPnet) schools and students of the Teachers College of Columbia University. This publication is one of the first contributions of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's Plan to Prevent Violent Extremism.
Read Teacher's Guide on the Prevention of Violent Extremism
Permanent link: http://en.unesco.kz/teacher-s-guide-on-the-prevention-of-violent-extremism


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Review our current visitor policy ›
See our inclement weather updates and location closures ›
In the video below Christopher Yang, M.D., otolaryngologist and head and neck surgeon at Swedish Medical Center, talks about the diagnosis of and treatment options for obstructive sleep apnea and CPAP users.
Treatment of OSA requires close work between sleep medicine physicians, sleep surgeons and sleep dentists in developing optimal care plan. There is no one size fits all therapy and each patient requires individualized evaluation and treatment plan.
Treatment strategy should include avoidance of alcohol or other sedative medications, weight loss and positional therapy. However, these methods alone will not relieve sleep apnea for most and further treatment is required.
CPAP is the first line treatment of majority of patients with OSA. CPAP is short for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure where pressurized air is administered using a nasal or face mask to deliver positive pressure to overcome airway obstruction. The pressure of the air is adjusted in order to maintain adequate pressure to overcome airway obstruction. When used, it is highly effective and when used properly will completely eliminate OSA.
Many patients discover immensely satisfactory sleep and energy for the first time. Some patients however find CPAP cumbersome, difficult to use, or incompatible with their lifestyle. Close evaluation and support is needed to maximize tolerance and troubleshoot potential problems that interfere with optimal tolerance. This requires evaluation by medical and surgical providers to identify and treat potential barriers such as nasal obstruction.
Despite best efforts, some patients will not be able to tolerate CPAP and will opt for airway surgery.
Oral appliance therapy involves use of a oral device to hold the lower jaw and or the tongue in the forward position to prevent collapse. There are many different types of appliances from inexpensive boil and bite types to more customized appliances. Overall, these devices are typically more effective when the level of collapse is limited to the lower part of the throat. Excessive salivation can be a problem. Patients with TMJ problems may have trouble with the device and dental movement and orthodontic problems may result from prolonged use.
The structures of the human upper airway is complex and is responsible for handling numerous functions including breathing, eating, communications, taste, and sensations. More often than not, airway collapse occurs at multiple levels in the throat and may require multiple procedures to effectively treat OSA. As such, airway surgery requires delicate balance between needs of the airway while maximizing preservation of other functions. Close and detailed examination of upper airway features is paramount in evaluating levels of obstruction.
Nasal obstruction leads to interference of nasal breathing both day and night. It can also be a contributing factor in OSA. Treatment can also improve ability of some patients to better tolerate CPAP therapy. The most common procedures include septoplasty, turbinate reduction, sinus surgery and nasal valve surgery.
For patients with mild sleep apnea, pillar procedure and somnoplasty may offer minimally invasive treatment option. The procedure is performed under local anesthesia and is similar to techniques employed in treatment of snoring as previously described.
UPPP has been the traditional surgery for OSA. The procedure involves both tissue removal and tissue repositioning to enlarge specific part of the airway. When tonsils are still present, they are usually removed at the same time. Over many years, thousands of patients have been treated with this technique with some improving and others not. We are now better able to assess which patients are better suited for this technique based on anatomic features. Some patients will be determined poor candidates for this procedure and others may be a good candidate. The procedure is done in the hospital under general anesthesia and most patients are able to go home the following day.
The tongue is a common site of airway obstruction in the lower part of the throat called the hypopharynx. Excessive bulk or relaxation of the tongue can result in obstruction in the hypopharyngeal region.
In this technique, radiofrequency energy is delivered using a radiofrequency probe to the base of tongue region to create a controlled lesion which then becomes absorbed over time resulting in tightening of tissue and reduction in size of the treated area. The treatments can be performed in the operating room or under local anesthesia. Most patients should expect need for several treatment sessions.
Lingual tonsils are much like tonsils we can see on the sides of our throat in our mouth. However, lingual tonsils are located on the back of the tongue. In some patients, excessive enlargement of the lingual tonsils can contribute to obstructive sleep apnea. The procedure is performed in the operating room under general anesthesia.
In some patients the tongue is excessively enlarged that it results in airway obstruction during sleep. In these cases, it may be beneficial to remove a portion of the back of the tongue using this technique. This procedure is performed under general anesthesia in the operating room. After mapping out the major vessels of the tongue, the central and posterior portions of the tongue is partially removed.
The largest muscle of the tongue, the genioglossus is anchored to the front, inner aspect of the lower jaw. The procedure involves capturing this area of attachment and advancing it forward. By advancing this anchor forward, the space behind the tongue is enlarged. The procedure is performed under general anesthesia and involves an incision in the inner aspect of the lower lip. A rectangular piece of the lower jaw is cut capturing the anchor point of the genioglossus muscle. This segment is then pulled forward and secured to the lower jaw.
Obstructive sleep apnea surgery is a constantly evolving field. Our division is involved in evaluation of latest cutting edge therapies and research to deliver highest quality care to our patients.
Our division is involved in investigation of new novel therapies including hypoglossal nerve stimulator and transoral robotics surgery.


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|The Thinker
Musée Rodin, Paris
Auguste Rodin on of my favorite sculptors was born in Paris today in 1840. He began his art study at 14 in the Petite École and in the school of Antoine Barye, earning his living by working for an ornament maker. In 1863 he went to work for the architectural sculptor A. E. Carrier-Belleuse, who had a great influence on him. From 1870 to 1875 he continued in the same trade in Brussels and then briefly visited Italy. In the Salon of 1877 he exhibited a nude male figure, The Age of Bronze (1876; Paris). It was both extravagantly praised and condemned; his critics unjustly accused him of having made a cast from life. From the furor Rodin gained the active support and patronage of Turquet, undersecretary of fine arts. His Age of Bronze and St. John (1878) were purchased for the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris.
The government gave him a studio in Paris, where he worked the rest of his life with growing fame. From 1880 on Rodin worked intermittently on studies for a huge bronze door for the Musée des Arts décoratifs. It was inspired by Dante's Inferno and was to be called the Gate of Hell. He never finished it. Among the 186 figures intended for it are Adam and Eve (1881; Metropolitan Mus.), The Thinker (1879-1900), and La Belle Heaulmière (both: Paris). These, together with his group The Burghers of Calais (Calais), completed in 1894, are among his most famous creations.
|The Age of Bronze
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Other ambitious works are his monuments to Balzac (1897; Paris) and to Victor Hugo (1909; Paris). Rodin is also known for his drawings, his many fine portrait busts, and his figures and groups in marble, such as Ugolino (1882), Danaïd (1885), The Kiss (1886), and The Hand of God (1897-98) in the Rodin Museum, Paris, and Pygmalion and Galatea and The Bather in the Metropolitan Museum, N.Y.C. He is best represented in the Rodin museums of Paris and Philadelphia, but fine examples of his work are included in many public collections throughout the world.
Rodin's work is generally considered the most important contribution to sculpture of his century, although some recent critical opinion has found his allegorical works pretentious. Realistic in many respects, it is nevertheless imbued with a profound, romantic poetry. The Gothic, the dance, and the works of Dante, Baudelaire, and Michelangelo were major sources of inspiration. Rodin considered his work completed when it expressed his idea, and as a result his sculpture is varied in technique; some is polished, some is gouged and scraped, and some seems scarcely to have emerged from the rough stone. He worked long over his more important works, returning to them again and again but without injuring their essential vitality.
See biographies by F. Grunfeld (1987) and R. Butler (1993); studies by R. M. Rilke (1902 and 1907, rev. tr. 2004), S. Story (rev. ed. 1966), A. E. Elsen (1963, repr. 1967), R. Descharnes and J. F. Chabrun (tr. 1967), I. Jainu (1967), Y. Taillandier (1967), C. Lampert (1987), K. Varnedoe (2001), and A. E. Eisen (2003).
|The Walking Man
Art Institute of Chicago
The Three Shades


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The attached video is based upon a true story, and I feel is worthy of sharing with my readers. The Government of the Republic of Macedonia's Ministry of Education & Science created this thought provoking clip. It was used as part of a social advertising campaign aimed at promoting religious education. The Headline for this commercial reads:
"Religion is knowledge, too."
The concept is clear. The lack of light brings darkness. One of the great Latter-day Saint (Mormon) prophets of this century spoke on evil just one month following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Here were his words regarding evil:
" [As] wonderful as this time is, it is fraught with peril. Evil is all about us. It is attractive and tempting and in so many cases successful. Paul declared:
"This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come…Having a form of godliness; but denying the power thereof: from such turn away" (2 Tim. 3:1–5).
We see today all of these evils, more commonly and generally, than they have ever been seen before, as we have so recently been reminded by what has occurred in New York City, Washington, and Pennsylvania…. We live in a season when fierce men do terrible and despicable things. We live in a season of war. We live in a season of arrogance. We live in a season of wickedness, pornography, immorality. All of the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah haunt our society. Our young people have never faced a greater challenge. We have never seen more clearly the lecherous face of evil.
And so, my brothers and sisters, we are met together…to help and lift one another, to give encouragement and build faith, to reflect on the wonderful things the Lord has made available to us, and to strengthen our resolve to oppose evil in whatever form it may take… Our strength is our faith in the Almighty. No cause under the heavens can stop the work of God. Adversity may raise its ugly head. The world may be troubled with wars and rumors of wars, but His cause will go forward." Gordon B. Hinckley, Oct. General Conference, 2001


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Thorny Parts Delay Quick Action On Immigration Changes
This is MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. Good morning. I'm David Greene.
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
Passing major legislation in the United States is a little like solving a Rubik's cube. If you don't solve everything, you've solved nothing, and all the pieces have to come together in the exactly the right way.
GREENE: And the puzzle gets even harder in a time of brutal partisanship. The big question in Washington is whether that Rubik's cube moment has arrived for immigration law.
INSKEEP: It would be the first lawmakers have solved the puzzle in a quarter century. President Obama and top lawmakers are pressing for change, each for their own reasons.
NPR's Ari Shapiro is following the debate.
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: Previously, on immigration reform...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: We can get this done.
SHAPIRO: In Washington, a bipartisan group of senators presented a plan. And the next day in Las Vegas...
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Now's the time.
SHAPIRO: President Obama offered his proposal. Meanwhile, a bipartisan group in the House was quietly working on its own plan. Now members of a House panel are adding their voice to the mix.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Today, we hold the first hearing of the Judiciary Committee in the 113th Congress.
SHAPIRO: So as the Senate, the president, and the House of Representatives try to come together, the biggest sticking point is how to handle more than 10 million people who are in the country illegally. The Senate and White House plans include a path to citizenship. In the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, though, it's a tough sell.
At yesterday's hearing, committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte described citizenship as an extreme option. Congressman Spencer Bachus of Alabama said it shouldn't even be part of this debate.
REPRESENTATIVE SPENCER BACHUS: I think we would agree on that that's a more toxic, contentious issue, granting full amnesty.
SHAPIRO: Still, the tone seemed less combative than past immigration debates have been. Many Republicans on the committee searched for what they described as a compromise between citizenship and deportation, something like permanent legal status.
But progressive and labor leaders say they're not going to budge. A group including Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO met with President Obama at the White House yesterday.
RICHARD TRUMKA: We have pretty broad consensus on what we want to do. And it starts around citizenship.
SHAPIRO: The activists seemed enthusiastic as they gathered on the White House driveway after the meeting.
Janet Murguia of La Raza described the president as very upbeat and confident about the prospects of a deal, with a real sense of urgency.
JANET MURGUIA: We turned a corner after the November elections, and we feel that we are moving from a position of strength.
SHAPIRO: In November's election, Obama carried almost three-quarters of Latinos. And so the president's supporters have every reason to push for citizenship. It could amount to millions of new Democratic voters. For the same reason, Republicans are wary. They don't want to give Democrats a political gift. At the same time, they don't want to further alienate Hispanic voters.
REPRESENTATIVE ERIC CANTOR: While we are a nation that allows anyone to start anew, we are also a nation of laws.
SHAPIRO: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor delivered what he described as a major policy speech yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute. It was an effort to broaden the appeal of the Republican Party. While Cantor did not endorse eventual citizenship for undocumented workers, he didn't rule it out, either.
CANTOR: We've got to balance respect for the rule of law, and respect for those waiting to enter this country legally - with care for the people and families - most of whom just want to make a better life and contribute to America.
SHAPIRO: There are some areas in this debate where the parties seem to agree. Everyone says border enforcement should be a top priority, and they all say the U.S. needs to make it easier for highly-skilled immigrants to stay and work here. Those provisions might be easy to pass on their own, but a comprehensive plan includes the thorny parts, too.
Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson says most business leaders are encouraging President Obama to tackle the whole thing at once. Sorenson supported Mitt Romney in the election, and he was one of a dozen CEOs who met with the president yesterday afternoon.
ARNE SORENSON: It's clear that immigration reform is an opportunity that really arises out of this last election. It would be great to see the political leaders from both sides seize that opportunity, grab it and pass something which is comprehensive.
SHAPIRO: There is undoubtedly movement in that direction, even if the path to that comprehensive bill is not yet clear.
Ari Shapiro, NPR News, the White House. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Vase Candle
$24.99 $38
These candles are all handmade for decorative purposes using soy wax. Remember to place your candles on a heat proof dish if you wish to light them. Never leave your candle unattended. Please note that the use of soy wax can sometimes cause frosting to occur on the candle over a period of time. As candles are hand-poured you may see some minor imperfections/variances.
- 100% Soy Wax
- Phthalate and paraben free
- Eco-friendly wicks
- 300g


text:
There are numerous facts to consider while you are deciding on the professional to do any paving or some other relevant solutions around your home or business. It is vital to acquire written estimates from a number of contractors. You may usually discover a list of companies in your neighborhood over the internet or perhaps a neighborhood phone book.
The building contractors should appear and look at the overall site conditions, along with acquire specifications, and have together with you about inquiries or issues that they probably have. The professional should be able to offer you a qualification of insurance for both general culpability and worker's settlement coverage. This will help protect your house and resources in the event someone is harmed while dealing with your house.
Your contractor also need to be capable of provide you with a listing of personal references from prior tasks done. Lastly, it is always smart to receive an knowledge of the type of material that will be employed for the task. This will help make sure you are assessing "apples to apples" and having exactly what you will be investing in.
Once your contractor has become selected, it really is now time for you to go over the arranging along with the estimated period of time essential to complete the job. Remember that devices will be utilized for your paving venture. Therefore, you have got to make all plans for short-term vehicle parking or a achievable want to re-route feet website traffic to your house or organization.
And finally, make sure your professional requires a utility track down before any digging or excavation happens. This will aid to ensure that no power line is cut which services are not interrupted.
Through taking these easy steps, your Concrete Paving Service provider that you may have chosen should be able to provide you with a high quality services.
Inspired by: ezinearticles


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Dynamic Management Views are a very powerful tool that are part of Analysis Services in 2008 and 2008 R2. They give you the ability to monitor Analysis Services usage and metadata.
MSDN articles on SSAS DMVs – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms126079.aspx
Good post on using SSAS DMVs – http://dwbi1.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/ssas-dmv-dynamic-management-view/
A report developer could leverage the capability to read Analysis Services metadata to build a report that can dynamically change the type of information that is displayed on a report.
Let's walk through a basic example of how we can Dynamic Management Views to build a dynamic Reporting Services report. I'm starting with a basic report that has already been built off of an Analysis Services cube that looks like this:
As you can see it shows Internet Sales by category over several calendar years. The MDX query used for this is pretty standard as you can see.
[Measures].[Internet Sales Amount] ON Columns
,NON EMPTY ([Date].[Calendar].[Calendar Year]
,[Product].[Product Categories].[Category]) ON Rows
[Adventure Works]
I start by changing the query to use an in session calculation with the WITH clause so I can basically alias it to [Measures].[Generic Measure]. By aliasing the measure it will make since more later because the field name doesn't identify with any specific measure.
Member [Measures].[Generic Measure]
AS STRTOVALUE("[Measures].[Internet Sales Amount]")
[Measures].[Generic Measure] ON Columns
,NON EMPTY ([Date].[Calendar].[Calendar Year]
,[Product].[Product Categories].[Category]) ON Rows
[Adventure Works]
The next step is to create a parameter in the report so I can pass in the measure name to the query dynamically. Eventually I will populate this parameter using a DMV but for now I'll just have it as a text field that I can type in the measure name.
Now to make this query dynamic with my newly created @MeasureName parameter I replace the dataset query with an expression that looks like this:
="With "
+" Member [Measures].[Generic Measure] "
+" AS STRTOVALUE("""+Parameters!MeasureName.Value+""") "
+"Select "
+" [Measures].[Generic Measure] ON Columns "
+" ,NON EMPTY ([Date].[Calendar].[Calendar Year] "
+" ,[Product].[Product Categories].[Category]) ON Rows "
+"From "
+" [Adventure Works] "
You'll notice that I've basically changed the query to a string in the expression except for the measure name which I've changed to use my new parameter. This report will now work dynamically but the user would have to type in the measure they would like to see in the report. Not only would they have to type it but they must know the MDX for it. For example, users would have to type [Measures],[Internet Tax Amount]. Obviously, that's not going to happen so we need to make this simpler for the user.
This is where Dynamic Management Views help. We can use the mdschema_measures DMV to return back a list of measures from our cube. The following query will return back all my measures names, MDX, and format:
SELECT Measure_Name, Measure_Unique_Name, Default_Format_String
FROM $System.mdschema_measures
WHERE Cube_Name = 'Adventure Works'
ORDER BY Measure_Name
Unfortunately, not all format strings translate to Reporting Services but this could be manipulated using expressions. Using this query we can create a new dataset and have that dataset populate our @MeasureName parameter. The dataset cannot be used in entered into a dataset using the Query Builder because it's not really MDX. So you must select to build an expression on the new dataset and paste in the query. It does not require an actual expression so remote the equal sign before the query.
With the dataset completed go back to the @MeasureName properties and change the available values to use the Measure_Unique_Name and Measure_Name fields to populate the parameter dropdown box.
Now that the parameter dropdown box it populated with the DMV query go ahead and preview the report. You'll see you can select any measure front the dropdown box and it will change the information shown on the report as shown below:


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ANAHEIM, Calif. – Saturday's historic UFC 157 event scored an announced attendance of 15,525 and a live gate of $1.4 million.
UFC President Dana White confirmed the estimated totals following the event, which took place at Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif. Official figures will be available from the California State Athletic Commission in the coming days. White said the event was a sell-out
UFC 157, which saw Ronda Rousey (7-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) submit Liz Carmouche (8-3 MMA, 0-1 UFC) with a first-round armbar in the headliner, aired on pay-per-view following prelims on FX and Facebook. It marked the UFC's first women's bout and title fight.
In the lead-up to the event, White said a late surge in ticket sales, aided by increased media interest in UFC 157, had the event nearing sellout status. Of the UFC's six Honda Center events to date, UFC 157 did the largest attendance, drawing more than UFC 121 in October 2010. But the live gate was just the fifth best of the six shows thus far in Anaheim.
The UFC's full list of events at Honda Center (previously Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim) include:
- "UFC 121: Lesnar vs. Velasquez" – $2,237,000 gate (14,856 attendance)
- "UFC 59: Reality Check" – $2,191,450 (13,814)
- "UFC 76: Knockout" – $1,985,000 (13,770)
- "UFC 63: Hughes vs. Penn" – $1,582,370 (12,604)
- "UFC on FOX 1: Velasquez vs. Dos Santos" – $1,072,187 (11,607)
For the latest on UFC 157, stay tuned to the MMA Events section of the site.


text: One of my favorite crochet books is Simple Crochet by Erica Knight (it's in my sidebar under "Favorite Crafting Books") Her designs are easy and uncomplicated but produced from unusual fibers that really emphasize texture. One of the fibers she uses is jute and I've been wanting to try it out and make a basket. It's not very comfortable to work with, obviously scratchy, but not too bad for a small project. The basket is my design - just single crochet worked in the round. I filled it with our latest rock collecting finds - the black rocks are obsidian!