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Chromobotia macracanthus
Clown Loach
SynonymsTop ↑
Cobitis macracanthus Bleeker, 1852; Botia macracanthus (Bleeker, 1852); Botia macracantha (Bleeker, 1852)
Chromobotia: from the Greek khroma, meaning 'colour', and the generic name Botia in reference to this species bright colour pattern.
Order: Cypriniformes Family: Botiidae
Native to the Greater Sunda Islands of Borneo and Sumatra. In the former it's restricted to river systems of Kalimantan Barat (West Kalimantan), Kalimantan Tengah (Central Kalimantan) and Kalimantan Timur (East Kalimantan) provinces in the Indonesian portion including the Kapuas and Kayan.
In Sumatra it's found in eastern and southern drainages of Jambi, Sumatera Selatan (South Sumatra) and Lampung provinces including the Batang Hari, Musi and Tulang Bawang.
The type series was collected from 'Palembang' and 'Kwanten' on Sumatra, the former most likely referring to the Musi River and the latter to modern day Kuantan Singingi, Riau province meaning the Indragiri River basin was the probable collection locality.
Populations from the two islands are known to exhibit differences in genetic structure, patterning (see 'Notes') and adult size (see 'Maximum Standard Length'), and it's been suggested that these may turn out to be distinct species if a detailed study was conducted.
Mostly inhabits main river channels but migrates upstream into smaller tributaries to spawn during the wet season, when some areas become temporarily flooded.
The fish are therefore found in different habitat-types depending on the time of year, and the habitats themselves also vary; water flow and depth tend to increase significantly during the wet season, for example. Turbidity and pH typically also rise during this time while water temperature drops.
Age also plays a part, with juveniles remaining in the floodplainbreeding grounds for several months whereas the adults typically return to the main rivers post-spawning with very old individuals probably not migrating at all (see 'breeding').
The majority of its native rivers contain soft, tea-coloured water and pass through areas of rainforest, although much of what once existed has now been degraded.
In the floodplain swamp forests marginal vegetation is normally thick with shade provided by the forest canopy above. Substrate consists largely of detritus and leaf litter with submerged tree roots, trunks, patches of previously emerse vegetation, while the water tends to be almost still.
Fish species diversity in these zones is typically quite high as many move here to feed and spawn, and in an article published in 2009 by the German magazine 'Amazonas' Hans-Georg Evers recorded no less than 40 in the floodplain of the Sungai (river) Pijoan, part of the lower Batang Hari drainage.
Among these were several known to the aquatic trade, including Brevibora dorsiocellata, R. einthovenii, Trigonopoma pauciperforatum, Trigonostigma hengeli, Betta falx, Luciocephalus pulcher, L. aura, Nandus nandus, Chaca bankanensis, Mystus spp. and many more.
In the main river channels the story is rather different; these can flow swiftly during the wet season, less so during the dry months, and submerged vegetation is uncommon. Here larger, pelagic species from genera such as Barbonymus, Labeo and Pangasius can be found.
Maximum Standard Length
Supposedly exceeds 400 mm but reports from its native rivers suggest an average adult size between 200 – 305 mm, borne out by the largest aquarium specimens we know of.
It's possible that very old female individuals might grow bigger but this is likely to take a long time since growth tends to slow down considerably once the fish reach 150 – 200 mm.
Aquarium SizeTop ↑
A tank with base measurements of 180 ∗ 60 cm or equivalent is the absolute minimum required to house a group, and young specimens should only be grown on in smaller aquaria if several partial water changes are conducted each week.
All botiids need a well-structured set-up although the actual choice of décor is more-or-less down to personal taste.
A natural-style arrangement could include a substrate of sand or fine gravel with lots of smooth, water-worn rocks and pebbles plus driftwood roots and branches.
Lighting can be relatively subdued and plants able to grow in such conditions like Microsorum pteropus (Java fern), Taxiphyllum barbieri ('Java' moss) or Anubias spp. can be added if you wish. These have an added benefit as they can be attached to pieces of décor in such a way as to provide useful shade.
Otherwise be sure to provide plenty of cover as botiids are inquisitive and seems to enjoy exploring their surroundings. Rocks, wood, flower pots and aquarium ornaments can be used in whichever combination to achieve the desired effect.
Bear in mind that they like to squeeze themselves into small gaps and crevices so items with sharp edges should be omitted, and any gaps or holes small enough for a fish to become trapped should be filled in with aquarium-grade silicone sealant. A tightly-fitting cover is also essential as these loaches do jump at times.
Although botiids don't require turbulent conditions they do best when the water is well-oxygenated with a degree of flow, are intolerant to accumulation of organic wastes and requires spotless water in order to thrive.
For these reasons they should never be introduced to biologically immature set-ups and adapt most readily to stable, mature aquaria. In terms of maintenance weekly water changes of 30-50% tank volume should be considered routine.
Water Conditions
Temperature: 24 – 30 °C
pH: 5.0 – 7.0
Hardness: 18 – 215 ppm
Appears to be chiefly carnivorous they will also eat vegetative matter if available, often including soft-leaved aquatic plants. The natural diet comprises aquatic molluscs, insects, worms, and other invertebrates.
In captivity it's a largely unfussy feeders but must be offered a varied diet comprising quality dried products, live or frozen bloodworm, Tubifex, Artemia, etc., plus fresh fruit and vegetables such as cucumber, melon, blanched spinach, or courgette.
Home-made foods using a mixture of natural ingredients and bound with gelatin are also highly recommended.
Chopped earthworm can also provide a useful source of protein but should be used sparingly, and while it will also prey on aquatic snails it should never be considered the answer to an infestation since it is not an obligate molluscivore.
Once settled into an aquarium it's a bold feeder and will often rise into midwater at meal times.
Behaviour and CompatibilityTop ↑
Not especially aggressive but don't keep it with much smaller fishes as they may be intimidated by its size and sometimes very active behaviour.
Slow-moving, long-finned species such as ornamental bettas, guppies and many cichlids should also be avoided as trailing fins can be nipped.
More suitable tankmates include peaceful, open water-dwelling cyprinids, while in larger tanks members of Barilius, Luciosoma, Balantiocheilos and Barbonymus become options.
In terms of other bottom-dwellers it will do well alongside most other bottids. Some cobitid and nemacheilid loaches are also possibilities as are members of Epalzeorhynchos, Crossocheilus and Garra and many catfishes.
As always, thorough research prior to selecting a community of fishes is the best way to avoid problems.
C. macracanthus is gregarious, forms complex social hierarchies and should be maintained in groups of at least 5 or 6 specimens, preferably 10 or more.
When kept singly it can become withdrawn or aggressive towards similarly-shaped fishes, and if only a pair or trio are purchased the dominant individual may stress the other(s) to the extent that they stop feeding.
That said it seemingly requires regular contact with conspecifics, a fact exemplied by a number of behavioural rituals which have been recorded consistently in aquaria (see 'Notes').
Sexual Dimorphism
Adult females are normally fuller-bodies and larger than comparably-aged males. Some theories suggest that males also possess a more deeply forked caudal fin but this is unproven as far as we know.
In nature this species is a migratory spawner, moving from the main river channels into smaller tributaries with surrounding, temporarily inundated flood plains during the rainy season.
These movements usually begin in September with spawning typically occurring in late September/early October, though the timing of this is beginning to shift with the changing climate (Evers, 2009).
The eggs drift and come to settle in the riparian vegetation and there the initially pelagic larvae spend their early days feeding on micro-organisms. Some drift too far, enter the main rivers and are eventually swept out to sea, and modern-day native fishermen have come to take advantage of this phenomenon (see 'notes').
The remaining fry stay in the flooded areas until the waters begin to recede at which point they typically measure around 30 mm SL.
They then move into the smaller tributaries until large enough to complete their passage into the major channels where they remain until sexually mature and able to undertake spawning migrations of their own.
There exist reports suggesting that the Bornean populations inhabiting permanent waters such as the Danau Sentarum lake system do not perform such migrations although we've been unable to confirm this definitively as yet.
At one time all traded fish were wild-collected, mostly from Sumatra, but these days the situation is less clear. While many thousands of wild specimens are still caught and sold annually, farmers in Southeast Asia have been artificially breeding the species via the use of hormones for several years.
More recently breeders from the Czech Republic and other parts of Eastern Europe have perfected a similar technique which has seen the price of the once-expensive captive-bred fish drop considerably.
Unfortunately this practice has been taken to a different level in recent years with an apparent hybrid between a Botia species (probably a form of B. histrionica) and C. macracanthus appearing on the market as well as others with questionable body shapes or markings.
Aquarium breeding by private hobbyists remains unheard of and undocumented which given the complexity of the species' natural reproductive cycle is perhaps unsurprising.
It's often been said that the reason for the lack of success is that immature animals were being used and that the species requires many years to become sexually mature, but this would appear not to be the case.
In nature the specimens undertaking annual spawning migrations average 120 – 200 mm SL, and the species seems to become sexually mature at 120 – 150 mm. Larger individuals appear not to migrate and remain in the primary river channels year-round, suggesting they don't spawn beyond a certain age.
The only substantial observations in private aquaria we know of were made by SF member Colin Dunlop who noticed his group of four adult fish (three males and a single female) swimming in a 'diamond' formation with the female at the head in one of his large stock tanks.
The fish were removed and placed in a separate, smaller tank with plastic grating covering part of the base and some lengths of plastic piping. Water temperature was 78.8°F/26°C and pH 4.5, the latter lowered using hydrochloric acid.
After several days Colin noticed "thousands" of eggs on the base of the tank, and on close inspection all four fish were found to be crammed into a single piece of piping out of which hundreds more eggs were falling.
The vast majority fungussed immediately with the others proving infertile shortly after, the general consensus being that moving the fish stressed them and caused the female to expel the eggs without being prompted by the males.
NotesTop ↑
This species is arguably one of the most misunderstood in the hobby since it's wholly unsuitable for smaller aquaria despite its ubiquitous availability.
Most retailers sell it without providing what should be considered essential information regarding long-term care and most specimens undoubtedly fail to reach their potential in captivity. The purchase of a group is also a considerable investment given that if properly cared for typical life span is in excess of twenty years.
Populations from Borneo and Sumatra are documented to exhibit slight differences in patterning, the most obvious being the presence of black colouration in the pelvic fins of Bornean fish, almost completely black in some specimens.
In contrast the fins of Sumatran examples are a uniform reddish colour. The black band on the caudal peduncle also tends to terminate closer to the fin itself in Bornean than Sumatran fish.
A further observation is that in some Bornean individuals the dark bands on the body develop thin, pale borders although we're unsure if this is specific to fish inhabiting a particular river drainage, an artefact of age or something else.
The two populations are thought to have diverged from one another around 9.5 million years ago and 'reintroduction' of specimens from Sumatra to Kalimantan in order to rebuild stocks may have already resulted in hybridisation within the native populations there.
It's now illegal to collect large specimens in Indonesia and annual catches of smaller fish have declined greatly, so native fishermen in some areas have been forced to change their tactics in order to keep trading. Traditionally the most common collection technique involves using lengths of bamboo with openings cut into each segment.
These are normally weighted with stones to make them sink and hung from overhanging or marginal vegetation. The loaches take refuge in these at night and the fishermen return during hours of darkness to collect them.
Smaller specimens of 20 – 80 mm have been collected in this way for many years, usually during the month of February, but numbers have fallen away sharply since the turn of the century.
In the Batang Hari river, Sumatra, a different technique now represents the most productive method of collection.
Here C. macracanthus appears to spawn not only in the flooded tributaries but in the plains surrounding the river itself, and local fishermen now collect the pelagic larvae which drift into the main river channel and grow them on to sell to middlemen or larger distributors. Perhaps as many as 10,000,000 specimens are raised and shipped from the area in this way each year.
C. macracanthus was for many years included in the genus Botia, but in 2004 Kottelat moved it into the new genus Chromobotia in order to tidy up a loose end left open by earlier studies, particularly one published by Nalbant (2002).
He had already split four of the putative monophyletic lineages within the family Botiidae into distinct genera but failed to address this species which is clearly different to all other members.
The main distinguishing features useful to aquarists are the unique colour pattern and adult size but it's also identifiable by a combination of characters given as follows by Kottelat (2004): mental lobe developed in a barbel; fronto-parietal fontanelle large and elliptical; anterior chamber of gas bladder partly covered by bony capsule, posterior chamber large; top of supraethmoid very broad; optic foramen rather small; suborbital spine not strongly arched and bifid; head naked.
The family Botiidae has been widely considered a genetically distinct grouping since Nalbant (2002), having previously been considered a subfamily (Botiinae) of the family Cobitidae. Nalbant also moved some previous members of Botia into the new genus Yasuhikotakia based on a number of morphological characters.
Later Kottelat (2004) made further modifications to the taxonomy, raising Chromobotia for B. macracanthus and confirming that species previously included in the genus Hymenophysa should instead be referred to Syncrossus.
The former alteration was based on colour pattern plus some morphological characters and the latter because Hymenophysa not only represents a spelling mistake (McClelland's original spelling was Hymenphysa) but is a junior synonym of Botia.
More recently Kottelat (2012) erected the genus Ambastaia to accommodate A.nigrolineata and A. sidthimunki, two former members of both Botia and Yasuhikotakia.
As a result of these works the family Botiidae is thus divided into two tribes within which Botia appears to be the most basal lineage:
Tribe Leptobotiini – Leptobotia, Parabotia, Sinibotia.
Tribe Botiini – Ambastaia, Botia, Chromobotia, Syncrossus, Yasuhikotakia.
Phylogenetic studies by Tang et al. (2005) and Šlechtová et al. (2006) have largely confirmed this system to be correct although the latter disagreed with the placement of Sinibotia, finding it to be more closely related to the tribe Botiini.
Ambastaia nigrolineata and A. sidthimunki were found to be more closely-related to both Sinibotia and Syncrossus than Yasuhikotakia, despite being considered members of the latter at the time. Šlechtová et al. also proposed the use of subfamily names under the following system:
Subfamily Leptobotiinae – Leptobotia, Parabotia.
Subfamily Botiinae – Botia, Chromobotia, Sinibotia, Syncrossus, Yasuhikotakia.
Within these Botia appears to be the basal, i.e., most ancient, lineage and in a more-detailed phylogenetic analysis Šlechtová et al. (2007) confirmed the validity of the family Botiidae with the genera listed above as members rather then being grouped into subfamilies. This more recent, simpler system is the one we currently follow here on SF.
Some behavioural routines exhibited by botiid spp. have been recorded often enough that they've been assigned non-scientific terms for ease of reference.
For example during dominance battles (these occur most frequently when the fish have been introduced to a new tank, or new individuals added to an existing group) the protagonists normally lose much of their body patterning and colouration, a phenomenon that's come to be known as 'greying out'.
Such displays will sometimes also happen within an established group as individuals seek to improve social ranking but are usually nothing to worry about.
Interestingly some observations suggest that the character of the highest-ranked, or alpha, fish appears to affect that of the whole group though it must be said that scientific studies of botiid loach behaviour are virtually non-existent.
It certainly seems that they display a degree of 'personality' with some specimens being naturally bolder or more aggressive than others, for example. The alpha is normally the largest specimen within the group and often female.
'Shadowing' is an interesting behaviour in which younger individuals swim flank-to-flank with older, mimicking their every movement. Some keepers report that more than one smaller fish may shadow a larger simultaneously, with even three or four on each side!
The reason for it is unknown; it may relate to a group staying in touch with one another when rivers swell during times of flooding, perhaps reducing drag by swimming 'in formation' or having some other communicative function.
It's been observed in aquaria with both high and low water flow and seems to be habitual to the extent whereby some individuals will shadow other fishes if no conspecifics are present.
Sound also appears to be an important factor in communication since these loaches are able to produce audible clicking sounds, these increasing in volume when the fish are excited. The behavioural aspects of this phenomenon remain largely unstudied but the sounds are thought to be produced by grinding of the pharyngeal (throat) teeth or subocular spines.
A further curiosity is the so-called 'loachy dance' which involves an entire group swimming in a constant, restless fashion around the sides of the tank, usually utilising the full length and height.
The reasons for this are unknown and reports as to when it occurs vary but the most common triggers appear to be the addition of food, fresh water or new conspecifics, and it can last anything from a few minutes to a day or more.
Botiids also often settle at peculiar angles, wedged vertically or sideways between items of décor, or even lying flat on the substrate. This is no cause for alarm and appears to be a natural resting behaviour.
C. macracanthus also possesses sharp, motile, sub-ocular spines which are normally concealed within a pouch of skin but erected when an individual is stressed, e.g., if removed from the water. Care is therefore necessary as these can become entangled in aquarium nets and those of larger specimens can break human skin.
Botiids are also susceptible to a condition commonly referred to as 'skinny disease' and characterised by a loss of weight. This is especially common in newly-imported specimens and is thought to be caused by a species of the flagellate genus Spironucleus.
It's treatable although the recommended medication varies depending on country. Hobbyists in the UK tend to use the antibiotic Levamisole and those in the United States Fenbendazole (aka Panacur).
- Bleeker, P., 1852 - Natuurkundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië 3: 569-608
Diagnostische beschrijvingen van nieuwe of weinig bekende vischsoorten van Sumatra. Tiental I - IV.
- Evers, H-G., 2009 - Amazonas 24: 18-27
Auf nach Jambi! Prachtschmerlen in ihrem natürlichen Lebensraum.
- Evers, H-G., 2009 - Amazonas 24: 28-37
Neue Wege - Prachtschmerlenfang einmal anders.
- Kottelat, M., 2004 - Zootaxa 401: 1-18
Botia kubotai, a new species of loach (Teleostei: Cobitidae) from the ataran River basin (Myanmar), with comments on botiinae nomenclature and diagnosis of a new genus.
- Kottelat, M., 2012 - Raffles Bulletin of Zoology Supplement 26: 1-199
Conspectus cobitidum: an inventory of the loaches of the world (Teleostei: Cypriniformes: Cobitoidei).
- Nalbant, T. T., 2002 - Travaux du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle 'Grigore Antipa' 44: 309-333
Sixty million years of evolution. Part one: family Botiidae (Pisces: Ostariophysi: Cobitoidea).
- Nalbant, T. T., 2004 - Travaux du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle 'Grigore Antipa' 47: 269-277
Hymenphysa, Hymenophysa, Syncrossus, Chromobotia and other problems in the systematics of Botiidae. A reply to Maurice Kottelat.
- Tang, Q., B. Xiong, X. Yang and H. Liu, 2005 - Hydrobiologia 544(1): 249-258
Phylogeny of the East Asian botiine loaches (Cypriniformes, Botiidae) inferred from mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequences.
- Šlechtová, V., J. Bohlen, J. Freyhof and P. Ráb, 2006 - Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 39(2): 529-541
Molecular phylogeny of the Southeast Asian freshwater fish family Botiidae (Teleostei: Cobitoidea) and the origin of polyploidy in their evolution.


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More Kostka Numbers
First let's mention a few more general results about Kostka numbers.
Among all the tableaux that partition , it should be clear that . Thus the Kostka number is not automatically zero. In fact, I say that it's always . Indeed, the shape is a single row with entries, and the content gives us a list of numbers, possibly with some repeats. There's exactly one way to arrange this list into weakly increasing order along the single row, giving .
On the other extreme, , so might be nonzero. The shape is given by , and the content gives one entry of each value from to . There are no possible entries to repeat, and so any semistandard tableau with content is actually standard. Thus — the number of standard tableaux of shape .
This means that we can decompose the module :
But , which means each irreducible -module shows up here with a multiplicity equal to its dimension. That is, is always the left regular representation.
Okay, now let's look at a full example for a single choice of . Specifically, let . That is, we're looking for semistandard tableaux of various shapes, all with two entries of value , two of value , and one of value . There are five shapes with . For each one, we will look for all the ways of filling it with the required content.
Counting the semistandard tableaux on each row, we find the Kostka numbers. Thus we get the decomposition

subset: commoncrawl


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For the four-and-a-half years I lived in London, The Guardian was the newspaper to read for quality investigative journalism as well as for its famous spelling mistake howlers.
Writing for Accountancy Age magazine in Soho, I'd read the business sections of The Guardian, alongside the other broadsheets (the Financial Times, The Independent and Daily Telegraph) for possible story ideas in the morning and then, like everyone else, would seek out The Sun and The Mirror in the afternoon for the salacious gossip, page 3 girls and Premier League football stories.
Lately there has been extensive coverage of the launch of a digital Australian edition of The Guardian (announced in January) with news of top Fairfax journalists like David Marr and Lenore Taylor jumping on board with the site to be edited by The Guardian's deputy editor Katharine Viner.
A colleague of mine at Private Media, Oliver Milman, will be joining the Guardian Australia as a Melbourne-based environment reporter alongside other new signings of journalistic talent announced this week.
They've already leased offices for journalists and other staff in Surry Hills, Sydney, so it's clearly a serious venture for a publication, which is the fourth biggest newspaper website in the world with a monthly audience of 30.8 million users behind Mail Online (45.3m monthly readers), the NY Times's (44.8m) and USA Today (34.6m) according to National Readership Surveys September 2012 figures.
So, eager to find out more, I searched for 'The Guardian Australia' on Google.
The first result was this page (below), with picture of a koala bear and a billabong and a host of stories, videos and commentary about Australian issues:
This, I know, is not the new Guardian Australia edition, but the long-running Australia page of The Guardian UK with the giveaway being The Guardian store offers in pounds while the Guardian jobs section are all British roles:
So I clicked on the third link on my Google search – www.theguardian.com.au which sounded like the most likely address for the new digital Guardian Australia edition.
And bingo, I came across a newspaper website full of Australian stories with a masthead in similar font to that used by The Guardian.
So was this The Guardian Australia edition?
Clearly not, since it says its owned by Fairfax.
When I clicked on the "About Us" page, the confusion abated. It reads: "The Guardian provides the latest news from the Swan Hill region, northern Victoria and NSW Riverina."
This is another Guardian Australia – a regional newspaper dating back to 1888.
Perhaps its only coincidence the fonts are so similar, but it surely must have caught the attention of those in corridors of power at Fairfax, and not just because they've got the URL, but also the Facebook address: www.facebook.com/GuardianAU.
As luck would have it, Twitter suggested I follow Lenore Taylor, the recently appointed political editor of The Guardian Australia edition and so I did and duly asked her what form the new publication would take:
"Frontage" – is a new term I'd never heard before, but I assumed it meant something on The Guardian's front page, so that's where I went.
After a little bit of a look around, I came across this button at the top of the website, which allows you to choose between the UK and Guardian US version:
So presumably, at some point when it all goes live, there will be an extra item added to this menu bar with the word "Australia" and when you click on it there will be an Australian version, similar in format to the current American edition:
Website address issues aside, it's going to be interesting to see how The Guardian performs in Australia.
As someone pointed out to me, it's going to go from being a UK publication writing about Australia for British readers to one written by Australians for Australian readers, with a UK editor.
This it has done somewhat successfully with its US edition, which now has around 8 million viewers a month.
But it's been a bumpy ride for The Guardian US, which first launched in 2007 as GuardianAmerica.com, then folded back into the UK edition in 2009, with staff laid off, before launching its US edition (or 'frontage' to use Lenore Taylor's term) in September last year, also accessible via the URL: http://www.guardiannews.com.
While no doubt the journalism produced by The Guardian Australia will be of the highest calibre, it will face challenges from a host of established left-wing publications like Crikey.com.au, The Global Mail (founded no less than by BRW Rich Lister Graeme Wood, the primary investor in The Guardian Australia), the ABC's online presence and Fairfax's own stable of publications, to name just a few.
Which means making money from The Guardian Australia will be an even bigger challenge.
The Guardian Media group has been the exact opposite of a cash cow of late reporting huge losses in recent years (£75 million loss in the 12 months to August 2012) as it tries to transition its business model to one that taps into its huge online audience, a difficult task that neither Fairfax nor News Limited nor any media organisation have yet fully realised.
And it has another challenge.
As Crikey writer Guy Rundle pointed out, The Guardian has a reputation for being the worst of the UK newspapers when it comes to writing stores with an anti-Australia slant.
It's reporting on the Ashes and British Lions tours later this year will be fascinating to say the least – if you can find the website!


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Oracle's ongoing lawsuit against Rimini Street has not deterred the latter company from announcing another addition to its lineup of lower-cost support options for Oracle's software.
Rimini Street will begin inking contracts with a small group of E-Business Suite charter clients in April 2011 and roll out broader availability in January 2012, CEO Seth Ravin said in an interview during the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Monday. Supported versions will include 11.5.9 through 12.0, and potentially 12.1.
The company, which also offers support for SAP applications, promises that customers will save at least half off their vendor-provided maintenance bills. Companies such as Oracle covet their maintenance revenue streams, which provide healthy profits in a time of slowing software license sales
Although third-party support means customers don't receive product upgrades, Rimini Street caters to companies that have stable systems and no immediate need for new functionality. Customers do get features like tax and regulatory updates, and receive around-the-clock responses from senior engineers in 30 minutes or less, according to the company.
But Rimini Street is also the target of a lawsuit Oracle filed in January. Oracle maintains that Rimini Street's workers have downloaded software and support materials "in excess of the customer's authorization under its license agreement." Rimini has countersued, saying it has committed no wrongdoing and will mount a vigorous defense.
Ravin was the co-founder of TomorrowNow, a company and one-time SAP subsidiary that provided services similar to Rimini Street's. He left TomorrowNow after its sale to SAP in 2005. Oracle sued SAP in 2007, alleging that TomorrowNow workers had illegally downloaded materials from its support systems. That suit is still ongoing and is set to go to trial in November.
Oracle's suit cost Rimini some business at first, Ravin said. "We suffered probably a dozen deals that went sideways."
Still, the privately held business is growing this year at a pace slower than in the past, but which is "nothing to sneeze at," Ravin said. "It's certainly not what Oracle would want. They wanted zero percent and customers running for the hills.".
Rimini's cost of litigation, which Ravin estimates will be US$3- to 4 million annually as the suit unfolds, is surely dragging down the privately held company's numbers.
But on the other hand, it's a worthy investment in its future, Ravin added. Rimini is now serving 325 customers, which is just scratching the surface of an estimated $16 billion ERP (enterprise resource planning) software maintenance market, Ravin said. "We want to be a $1 billion company."
An Oracle spokeswoman declined comment.
Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris's e-mail address is email@example.com


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Several years ago, a young man I know made his first trip home after a semester away as a freshman at a historically black college. As we spoke about his college campus life, he told of dealing with gang-bangers, drug dealers, crime and more. All the while he was trying to pursue his college education.
When I inquired as to why he had to deal with those issues while away at school, he reminded me that historically black colleges are located in historically black neighborhoods. The social ills of those neighborhoods are imposed on the college campus life of the students.
How to deal with the safety of children as they make their way to and from school has always been at the forefront of some people's agenda. Take the case of DeLaSalle High School on the South Side. It is the alma mater of Mayor Daley and for years the white children from Bridgeport would cross State Street and make their way to a school located in a predominantly black neighborhood.
So when the time came to build a new police department headquarters, wasn't it a coincidence that the new station was built at 35th and Michigan, directly across the street from DeLaSalle High School? For now through perpetuity, the children attending DeLaSalle will be safe because their school is patrolled by default by all those police officers who come and go to the police headquarters across the street.
Those children at DeLaSalle will never know what it is like to have to wait for the police to show up. As they travel to and from school, one of their concerns won't be having to deal with any of the social ills of the neighborhood being imposed on their high school campus. Those children will never have to deal with gangs of young men with golf clubs milling around waiting to start another fight over some insane reason.
Ever since I wrote about not supporting the idea of a high school on the site of the former Brach Candy factory, I have been hearing from those who do support the idea. One of the most unusual things I heard during our discourse on the idea was the notion that putting a new school on that site would revitalize the community and help to do away with drug dealing, gang-banging and all the other bad behaviors that go on in that neighborhood.
After reading that suggestion, I was taken aback. What kind of people would argue that children who are already burdened with the "growing pains" of just trying to grow up in this world should also have to bear the burden of being the ones on the front line in the battle against the social ills of a neighborhood?
If we as a community are truly concerned about wanting a state-of-the-art high school in Austin and want it to be a safe environment, then we need to take a page from the Mayor's handbook and put the school in a location where our children can feel just as safe as those who attend his alma mater. So I want to be the first to put forth my suggestion for an alternative site.
On Madison Street at Menard Street sits the brand new 15th District police station. It also has sitting across the street, 3 blocks of prime business land that was used to put in several parking lots for it. My suggestion is, rather than place a brand new school in a neighborhood that is still struggling socially, put the new high school for Austin on the land currently used as parking lots for the 15th District. With a school directly across from the police department, our children, like those at DeLaSalle, can concentrate on their education without the worry of having to deal with gang-bangers and drug dealers.
Now I am being facetious to a certain degree about putting the school on the parking lots. But what I am not kidding about is the notion that our children cannot be the social and moral scapegoats at the forefront of any neighborhood battles whenever a new school is built. What they need most is to have a secure environment in which to learn.


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6 Evolutionary Trends In e-Learning Education
Withthe emergence of internet, e-learning education has become a revolution. We have already seen lots of e-learning courses being introduced in the market. There are some emerging trends which can really give real impetus to e-learning and take it to another sphere. Let us look at some of these trends:
- SHIFT TO OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGY:Learning Management Systems (LMS) have traditionally been a paid service. But with time there are lots of new open source systems like OpenClass have come up which have received a warm welcome from students and educators.
- Key integration of e-learning courses by employers:E-learning courses have not enjoyed popularity amongst students and career oriented employees; as the certificates for the courses are not regarded as a valuable thing in the job market. But as the popularity of e-learning courses increases with the number of masses this perception will change.
- Assimilation of hybrid courses: Different types of courses have been developed with the assimilation of online education along with face-to-face teacher interaction. This type of education is revolutionary and can change the paradigm of online education system.
- Excellent growth in enrollment of e-learning courses in comparison to traditional courses: Enrollment of e-learning courses has risen to 21% growth rate in comparison to a paltry 2% growth rate in overall higher education. As the technologies grow; you can expect the rise of e-learning enrollment at the same pace.
- Increasing use of social media tool for education: Social media is often regarded as a tool for masses to interact with friends and be in touch with them. But recently the trend is changing. Increasingly social media tools are being used for educational purposes, and this will enhance the quality of the entire online educational system.
- Digital content distribution in lieu of books and closed texts: For e-learning courses; textbooks have been replaced by digital content distribution system. It gives freedom to students and professionals to get the relevant information through various mobile devices.
emPower is a leading provider of comprehensive Healthcare Compliance Solutions through Learning Management System (LMS). Its mission is to provide innovative security solutions to enable compliance with applicable laws and regulations and maximize business performance. empower provides range of courses to manage compliance required by regulatory bodies such as OSHA, HIPAA, Joint commission and Red Flag Rule etc. Apart from this emPower also offers custom demos and tutorials for your website, business process management and software implementation.
Its Learning Management system (LMS) allows students to retrieve all the courses 24/7/365 by accessing the portal. emPower e-learning training program is an interactive mode of learning that guides students to progress at their own pace.
For additional information, please visit http://www.empowerbpo.com.
Media Contact (emPower)
Jason Gaya
12806 Townepark Way
Louisville, KY 40243-2311
Ph: 502 -400-9374
Labels: e-Learning Education, Evolutionary Trends, Learning Management Systems, LMS


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Baldwin: It's more than being gay
Tammy Baldwin, who became the first openly gay U.S. senator when she won in Wisconsin on Tuesday, said that her campaign was about much more than LGBT issues.
When CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien asked her Wednesday morning if she felt "a personal burden to push forward with a gay agenda," the Democrat said she didn't run to make history but to make a difference.
"You know, what I would say in terms of crashing through that glass ceiling is, you know, if you're not in the room the conversation is about you. If you're in the room, the conversation is with you. That does transform things. But as I said last night, I didn't run to make history. I ran to make a difference," said Baldwin, currently a Wisconsin congresswoman.
She continued: "And my campaign was about the struggle of the middle class, retirement security for seniors, doing right by our veterans when they return home from war. That Wisconsin selected me to face those challenges is historic. But I think it was much more about confronting the very significant challenges that our nation faces right now."
But she did say that she thinks winning has made the Senate "more reflective of America."
( Also on POLITICO: Baldwin tops Thompson in Wisconsin)
"I do think having a seat at the table matters. And I think that we will see a Senate that is more reflective of America. We're certainly not there yet," Baldwin said. "But this will be a change that will move us forward and will have the life experience of more women in the United States Senate."


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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House physician pronounced Donald Trump to be in "excellent health" after Trump had his first medical exam as U.S. president on Friday, capping off a week in which his mental fitness for the job has come under intense scrutiny.
Trump spent about three hours with military doctors at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, an exam that White House doctor Ronny Jackson said went "exceptionally well."
"The president is in excellent health and I look forward to briefing some of the details on Tuesday," Jackson said in a brief statement distributed by the White House.
The exam came after a new best-selling book portrayed Trump, 71, as unfocused and childlike. The White House has faced a barrage of questions over his contradictory messages on key policies and an incident last month where he slurred some words while giving a speech.
The White House determines what data will be released from the exam. Trump is not compelled to release any information, and there is no template for the presidential exam. Jackson is expected to take questions about the results from reporters on Tuesday.
Past presidents are not known to have been tested for mental acuity while in office – including Ronald Reagan, who five years after leaving the White House was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
The White House had made clear that Trump's examination would not include a psychiatric exam. Results of past presidential physicals have included basic data like weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
There is a long history of the White House picking and choosing what to reveal about the commander in chief's health, said Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
For example, John F. Kennedy disclosed war injuries but not the fact he suffered from Addison's disease, a degenerative condition.
Perry said she believed presidents should be subject to a raft of tests to establish they are fit to serve.
When he was running for office, Trump released a glowing report from his personal physician in New York, who said Trump would be "the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."
The public report from Trump's upcoming exam was also likely to be short and sweet, said George Annas, head of the Center for Health Law, Ethics and Human Rights at Boston University School of Public Health.
"I don't think you could expect to see anything else, unless it's something that makes him look good," Annas said.
(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)


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Can you be a success in the world of business and still be mindful? What exactly does it mean to be "mindful" anyway? According to Mirabai Bush, one of the creators of a mindfulness course developed for Google employees called "Search Inside Yourself," you will be more productive and motivated if you use respect, compassion and generosity in the workplace.
"Mindfulness has to do with paying attention to what's happening in the moment without judgment," said Bush. "Sometimes people think being mindful means being slow — it's not about being slow, it's about being slow enough that you can pay attention to things. It requires a certain intelligence to be able to focus on many things at the same time."
Bush, who is the co-founder of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, has helped several companies benefit from mindfulness techniques, but admits it can be challenging to try to convince those in the business world to embrace things like meditation and compassion.
"The ... research has helped validate the benefits of mindfulness, but it's pretty impossible to make people be mindful or make people meditate," she said. "You can bring them into the room, you can get them to close their eyes but you can't get them to meditate unless they are motivated to meditate. So we talk a lot about the research.
"Meditation is proven to reduce cortisol, which is the stress hormone. And everyone wants to lower their stress levels," Bush added. "It doesn't matter if it's a chemical company or a communications company, happy employees are more motivated and more loyal, and that makes for a better workplace."
Here are some tips for bringing mindfulness into the workplace:
Accept your co-workers.
One exercise Bush uses in her mindfulness training includes having workers stand across from each other while the leader of the exercise says certain phrases.
"The leader will say, 'Just like me, this person has suffered in life. Just like me, they've made mistakes and have regrets. Just like me, they want to be happy,'" she said. "It cultivates an appreciation of that person as someone trying to do the right thing ... even if their behavior hasn't been to your liking. It gives you an understanding that like you, they have desires and they also have insecurities. People do things that can hurt you and most of the time in the workplace, it's not personal."
Challenge yourself.
"We discovered that giving good salaries and good benefits doesn't necessarily make people happy ... being happy had more to do with feeling challenged and satisfied by the work itself," Bush said.
Practice mindful emailing.
"When you type out an email, before you send it, sit back, take three deep breaths where you're not thinking about the email, then return to email and re-read it — not so much for the data but for the emotional impact it will have on the reader," Bush said. "Imagine being that reader and try to look at the impact it might have. Then change it accordingly and send it.'"
Learn to let go of your fears.
"Often if you really look into a situation that is upsetting you a little more deeply, maybe you realize you are afraid ... Learning to let go is so important. Notice that your ego is operating and causing these fears and then practice letting go in that moment," she said. "These practices do have the capacity to reduce fear. They increase a kind of radical self-confidence and introduce you to what's going on inside yourself and in your environment to help you see things more clearly."
Twitter: @jenweigel


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Monocle—the magazine that covers international affairs, global business, culture and design—teamed up with Drakes London to create a new line of Merino wool scarves for the tenth and latest product collaboration for the Monocle Magazine Shop of luxurious goods.
Drakes is perhaps best known for their bespoke ties, and their elegantly woven scarves don't get enough attention. Produced in the heart of London and woven from the Scottish Borders' finest wool, the scarves are simply designed, stylish, will keep you warm and are unashamedly British. They will be available early next week for £95 from the Monocle Magazine Shop.
Monocle only works with companies that share a passion for crafted goods of the highest quality. Whether it be a fragrance, bicycle, table or luggage, all items are specially engineered for their niche. Editor-In-Chief, Wallpaper founder and Financial Times columnist Tyler Brûlé has done a great job of shaping the multimedia Monocle brand and no detail is spared. Even the dimensions of the publication are well thought though. Bespoke in size, the magazine has a smaller footprint but at nearly 200 pages per issue, it is also a bit thicker than your average magazine, so it fits well in any bag and is easy on-the-go.
We recently had the chance to ask Tyler Brûlé a few questions about Monocle and their new products.
Cool Hunting: What was the catalyst for this collection of Monocle branded products?
Tyler Brûlé: The starting point was our idea to do a series of bags with Porter in Japan. After a round of discussions they agreed to the concept and we offered up a brief and set to work. After about three rounds of revisions the first bags were ready and they've been on sale via Monocle.com, Dover Street Market and Beams Daikanyama since the launch. We've sold something in the region of 3,000 units at this point.
CH: How are these products an extension of the Monocle Brand?
TB: They're an extension of our brand by virtue of the fact that we feel our products fill a niche in our readers' lifestyles. Moreover, we're the co-architects on the creative side of all products, i.e., nothing is off the shelf.
CH: How collaborative are the different projects? For example, did the Fritz Table go through many different drafts?
TB: The Fritz Hansen Table was an adaptation of an existing piece in their collection and with our associates in Copenhagen we worked on the solutions to slightly Monocle-ize it.
CH: What criteria do you have when choosing someone to work with for these products?
TB: They need to be either iconic design statements or fill a functional niche for our audience. They should also contribute to our bottom line as well.
CH: Are the products you make dictated by who you work with? Or do you find people to work with to make the things you want?
TB: We work with the appropriate experts in their fields. For example, Comme Des Garçons wanted to do something with us but they weren't quite sure what and the fragrance seemed to make sense as it's a strong part of their brand's line-up.
CH: What is up next? Or who are you working with next?
TB: We have a number of things on the go. A sixth bag with Porter, a series of scarves with Drakes, a candle with Comme Des Garçons, a travel blazer and swim trunks and we have about ten other items in the works.
CH: What's been your favorite favorite collaboration thus far?
TB: The Porter bags and the Comme Des Garçons fragrance as they're our biggest sellers.
CH: Anything you're really looking forward to making sometime in the future?
TB: I think we're doing everything we want at the moment.
CH: What do you think about the over saturation of collaboration products in general? How do you think it helps brands?
TB: I think it's always good to bring an extra set of eyes to the table and media brands, like Monocle, have a very different dialogue with their audience than luxury goods companies might.


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Merry Christmas my dear friends!
Well, that special time of the year full of love, joy and hope has arrived. It's a season of celebrations, tasting delicious traditional meals and beautifully decorating our houses. I particularly enjoy the last two very much. Decorating home is my thing and mostly always with a vintage style.
Today I share a simple but beautiful project: Bizantine Inspired Christmas Ornaments.


text:
Improving Student Achievement
What State NAEP Test Scores Tell Us
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Why do students have different achievement levels across states? Is math achievement improving across states? Differences in average achievement levels across states are mainly traceable to differing family characteristics. However, students from similar families also score differently across states. These differences are related to differences in resource levels and in how resources are spent. States with high spending per pupil, lower pupil-teacher ratios, higher participation in public prekindergarten and higher reported teacher resources have higher achievement. Disadvantaged children are the most sensitive to low resource, and additional resources could substantially their scores. Between-state, rather than within-state, differences in resources appear to be the main reason for inequitable resource levels for students of lower socioeconomic status. The conclusion is that significant math gains are occurring across most states that cannot be traced to resource changes, that the rate of gain varies significantly by state, and that reform efforts are the likely cause of these gains. The results certainly challenge the traditional view of public education as unreformable.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
The State NAEP Achievement Results and State Family and Educational Characteristics
Chapter Three
Review of the Literature
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Trends in State Scores
Chapter Six
Estimating Scores Across States for Students from Similar Families
Chapter Seven
Effects of State Educational Policies
Chapter Eight
Assessing the Cost-Effectiveness of Different Resource Utilizations
Chapter Nine
Appendix A
State NAEP Test Scores and State Family and Educational System Characteristics
Appendix B
NAEP Exclusion and Participation Rates
Appendix C
Sources of Bias
Appendix D
The Tennessee Experiment
Appendix E
Family Variable Development
Appendix F
Variable Definitions
Appendix G
Statistical Results for Estimating State Trends
Appendix H
Statistical Results for Estimating Score Differences for Students from Similar Families Across States
Appendix I
Statistical Results for Estimating Effects of State Policy and Educational Characteristics
Appendix J
Robust Regression Results
Appendix K
Making Cost-Effectiveness Estimates from the Tennessee Class-Size Experiment
Appendix L
Regression Cost Estimates
The research described in this report was supported by the ExxonMobil Foundation, the Danforth Foundation, the NAEP Secondary Analysis Program, and the Center for Research on Educational Excellence and Diversity and was conducted by RAND Education.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation Monograph report series. The monograph/report was a product of the RAND Corporation from 1993 to 2003. RAND monograph/reports presented major research findings that addressed the challenges facing the public and private sectors. They included executive summaries, technical documentation, and synthesis pieces.
This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.


text: Watch out Hudson Yards, Midtown is moving east to Queens. Long Island City is sprouting a small city worth of skyscrapers, ushering in thousands of new residents, hundreds of hotel rooms, and a few hundred thousand square feet of office space. To help us visualize the neighborhood's upcoming transformation, the dynamos at Rockrose Development commissioned visualization experts Zum-3d to produce this exceptionally accurate depiction of the changes afoot. Inspired by the rendering, 6sqft has put together a rundown of the nearly 30 under-construction and proposed projects for the 'hood.


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How big was Hudiesaurus?
January 17, 2008
In the last post, an astute commenter asked about Hudiesaurus: "A first dorsal 550 mm–isn't that in Argentinosaurus territory?"
Well, let's find out.
Hudiesaurus sinojapanorum was described by Dong (1997) based on a partial skeleton from the Kalazha Formation in China. The holotype, IVPP V 11120, is an anterior dorsal vertebra. Referred elements include a nearly complete forelimb, supposedly from a smaller individual of the same taxon.
I don't actually have a copy of Dong (1997), but I do have Glut (2000), which contains a pretty good summary and a couple of pictures. Here's the holotype dorsal in posterior view, after Glut (2000), after Dong (1997).
According to Glut, the scale bar is 15 cm–I added the "15 cm" in the image above for ease of use. Presumably 'sp' is 'spine', 'po' is 'postzygapophysis', 'dp' is 'diapophysis', and 'ce' is 'centrum'. Glut says:
As measured by Dong (1997), the holotype dorsal centrum of H. sinojapanorum has a length of 42 cm, 1.5 times longer than the comparable element in the 22-meter (about 75-feet) long mounted holotype skeleton of Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis, which was the largest sauropod known from China when it was described. From these dimensions, Dong (1997) estimated the total length of H. sinojapanorum to be about 30 meters (more than 100 feet) in length.
IF the scaled figure (from Glut [from Dong]) is accurate, and if the 42 cm length (reported by Glut [reported by Dong]) is accurate–and the uncertainties involved cannot be ignored, especially after the last post–then the vertebra has the following dimensions:
- Centrum length: 42 cm
- Cotyle height: 39 cm
- Cotyle breadth: 42 cm
- Total height: 78 cm
None of these are close to 550 mm, so there's no telling where that measurement came from or what it refers to.
UPDATE: please read comment #4 below, by Mickey Mortimer, which sets the measurement record straight. And invalidates the specific numbers used in the rest of the post, but not the overall point.
Fortunately for us, the dimensions of the vertebrae of Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis are available for free in English, along with the rest of the description (Young and Zhao 1972), courtesy of the wonderful Polyglot Paleontologist site. Here's the paper. Let's do some comparin'.
D1 of M. hochuanensis has a centrum length of 25 cm, cotyle height of34 cm, cotyle width of 17 cm, and total height of 64 cm. The fact that the centrum is twice as tall as wide is almost certainly an artifact of the lateral compression that affects the whole vertebral column to some extent. Let's say for the sake of argument that the cotyle was originally circular and 25 cm in diameter. The holotype of H. sinojapanorum is 68% longer, 60% larger in diameter, and 22% taller. So if the vertebra is actually D1 and if H. sinojapanorum was built like M. hochuanensis (be sure to keep your If Counter updated), it might have been anywhere from 27-37 meters long (89-121 feet).
A couple of points before we go on. First, that's pretty big, but it's also a huge range. At the low end, it's no bigger than Diplodocus; at the high end, it's one of the longest sauropods on record. So that math suggests that it was a big sauropod but doesn't help us pin down how big it was. Second, you have to keep in mind that Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis is basically a ridiculous neck attached to an unremarkable body (at least in terms of size). If you ignore the neck, the animal was about the same size as Cetiosaurus or Haplocanthosaurus–about 75% the size of the well-known specimens of Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, and Camarasaurus, and no where near the size of Brachiosaurus (despite having a longer neck). It's basically a weiner dog, with most of the weiner out in the neck. Which is how Hudiesaurus could be 22% bigger and still be about the same size as Diplodocus. Even if Hudiesaurus was 60% bigger than M. hochuanensis, it would still not be in Argentinosaurus range in anything but length.
Mike (white shirt on lift) with M. hochuanensis at the Field Museum. It is worth remembering that he would need the same lift at about the same height to work on the posterior cervicals of Brachiosaurus!
Also, assigning serial positions to isolated vertebrae is tough. What if Dong was off by a single position, and the holotype vert is actually the most posterior cervical? True, it doesn't have fused cervical ribs, but cervical ribs can fuse pretty late in ontogeny. Furthermore, rib identities can get a little wonky in the cervico-dorsal transition. Sometimes you have a nice, well-behaved, fully-fused rib on the last cervical, and a nice, well-behaved, long mobile rib on the first dorsal, but sometimes there is a godawful Frankenstein rib that doesn't fit neatly into either category. Anyway, we're just playing "what if" here. Nobody should take this as gospel.
The last cervical of M. hochuanensis has a centrum length of 32.5 cm, an average cotyle diamter of 29 cm, and a total height of 66 cm. If the holotype of Hudiesaurus actually corresponds to this vert instead of D1, then it is 29% longer, 38% larger in diameter, and 18% taller. In other words, no bigger than Diplodocus. In which case, the articulated forelimb might belong with the dorsal vertebra after all. Although it was found more than a kilometer away from the vertebra, so the case for it's referral to the same taxon is not strong. At all.
But that's not all! Not all Chinese sauropods were hellaciously long-necked, a point made by Mickey Mortimer in his DML post on Hudiesaurus. Abrosaurus ha 13 cervicals, rather than 19 like M. hochuanensis, and its cervicals are only about a third longer than its dorsals (upshot: in neck-to-body proportions, it was built like Camarasaurus). If Hudiesaurus was built like a giant Abrosaurus, it might have approximated a large individual of Camarasaurus in both body size and neck length.
A final amusing point. Glut (2000, p. 235) includes a photograph of the articulated forelimb of Hudiesaurus on display at Dinofest '98 in Philadelphia. Next to the forelimb is a string of 4 articulated dorsal vertebrae. What is this? The original paper only mentions one dorsal vertebra, so where did the other three come from? Sadly, they came out of the same mold as the first–if you look carefully at the photo, you can see that the exhibitors simply made four casts of the same vertebra and strung 'em together to look like something more complete.
It's not uncommon to clone adjacent vertebrae to fill out mounted skeletons. Heck, the T. rex skeleton in the Valley Life Sciences Building at Berkeley (my old digs) has a block of 5 identical dorsals, and its caudals come in identical pairs all the way down the tail (easy to see even in the small photos here). But that's a different case. T. rex is known from complete remains, and the cloning was only done to fill out a skeleton that was already mostly there. The exhibition of the cloned Hudiesaurus vertebrae bothers me, because it implies to observers that the animal is better known than it actually is. I wasn't at Dinofest '98 so I can't tell you for certain that there wasn't a sign right there that said, "Warning: this animal is based on one vertebra that we have cloned to show you what a string of them would look like!" but I seriously doubt that there was any indication at all (that's no reflection on Dong; he probably had nothing to do with the choices made by the exhibitors).
Here's the take-home message:
If you see an eyebrow-raising number tossed out regarding a giant dinosaur, don't surrender your credulity until you or someone you trust have tracked down the sources. And anytime you see mounted material, it's perfectly fair to ask how much of it is real.
- Dong, Z. 1997. A gigantic sauropod (Hudiesaurus sinojapanorum gen. et sp. nov.) from the Turpan Basin, China; pp. 102-110 in Dong, Z. (ed.), Sino-Japanese Silk Road Dinosaur Expedition. China Ocean Press, Beijing.
- Glut, D.F. 2000. Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia, Supplement 1. McFarland & Company, Inc. Jefferson, North Carolina. 442 pp.
- Young, C.C., and Zhao, X.-J. 1972. Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis sp. nov. Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology Monographs, A, 8:1-30.
20 Responses to "How big was Hudiesaurus?"
January 17, 2008 at 11:08 pm
WOW and it's not even my birthday. Thanks! :)
When I said Argentinosaurus territory, I remember reading another Mortimer post on the DML and remember the vertebra apparently being that sort of length. I've never actually seen the paper describing the animal. (Apart from the images that were posted previously).
The post certainly highlights the many problems with trying to visualise specimens that are only known from very few bones and then extrapolating from relatives. Anyhow, this size stuff fascinates me. Maybe it's because it's relatively simple compared to say, the classification side of palaeontology, which I've never gotten around to studying properly. Cheers!
January 17, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Here's the post I was thinking of,
http://dml.cmnh.org/2003Dec/msg00163.html (The post is quite relevant to this topic) The Argentinosaurus verts are actually stated as being around 450 -500mm. Not shure whether that the whole vert or just the centrum. As for the 550mm for Hudiesaurus, maybe that figure is the total length rather than just centrum length.
'it is frustrating, because the biggest dinosaurs–the biggest land animals of all time–are only known from scraps'
Exactly, Stop everything and start digging! ;)
January 18, 2008 at 7:05 am
Well, since I was referenced here, I suppose I should reply. Dong's measuremenmt table in the Hudiesaurus description lists the following-
height of vertebra- 76 cm
length of centrum- 55 cm
width of centrum anteriorly- 42 cm
width of centrum posteriorly- 39 cm
height of neural spine- 41 cm
width at top of neural spine- 27 cm
The scale bar for the figure you posted (fig. 3 in Dong's paper) is actually 14 cm, not 15 cm. So Glut made a mistake. Also you can see the 42 cm measurement was anterior central width, not central length, so Glut erred there as well. You weren't joking about the perils of ignoring those uncertainties! ;) There's a photo of the vertebra in lateral view (fig. 1) with a scale bar included which would indicate the centrum is 52.3 cm long. Which isn't far off from the measurement table.
In the discussion, Dong states the centrum is 1.5 times longer than the M. hochuanensis holotype, but it seems 2.2 times longer to me based on Young and Zhao's paper. Then again, the vertebrae is only 1.19 times taller and the cotyle is 1.56 times wider. Compared to Young and Zhao's figure of dorsal 2, Hudiesaurus' is quite a bit longer compared to centrum height. Maybe your idea of it being a last cervical is correct. The height/centrum length ratio of Hudeisaurus' vertebra is intermediate between the 17th and 18th cervicals of Mamenchisaurus. But I'm no sauropod expert, so I wouldn't know what other details to look for.
January 19, 2008 at 7:58 am
May I join the conversation as an intrigued passer-by? I'm not employed in science, but a 1982 Zoology degree and ongoing fascination with dinosaurs are my excuses..
'Abrosaurus has 13 cervicals, rather than 19 like M. hochuanensis, and its cervicals are only about a third longer than its dorsals.. If Hudiesaurus was built like a giant Abrosaurus, it might have approximated a large individual of Camarasaurus in both body size and neck length.. Also, assigning serial positions to isolated vertebrae is tough..'
It's interesting to consider that partial remains may leave much scope for such variant reconstructions. And that new incomplete finds may not have had the same proportions as species already known.. even those species judged to be most similar on the basis of particular (equivalent?) bones.
Re that photo of M. hochuanensis, it may be a naive comment but am I alone in thinking how flimsy the leg bones look compared to the neck? (especially those last few cervicals.. pleurocoels there I know, but still awesome). Femur and humerus in particular seem mere sticks by comparison!
It makes me wonder how these creatures could manage to squat, kneel or lie down – let alone mate! – and how slowly they may have moved… it's not just their weight, it's the inertia and angular momentum, torque and leverage, that I'm thinking of.
Thanks for the interesting reading!
January 20, 2008 at 4:39 pm
The problem I've found with scale bars in pictures — at least the way I take them — is that when photographing small things, any scale bar placed physically in the field with the object and photographed is nearly in the same plane as the object, thus making the scale bar much more applicable to the object itself. When dealing with much larger (at least, much thicker) objects, like sauropod vertebrae…for example, if one puts the vert in position for, say, a right lateral view (such that one has had to place a bunch of blocks under the vertebral body [er, "centrum"] so that the thing isn't sitting at an angle because of the transverse process), and then puts the scale bar on the floor next to it, then the camera focuses on the right-hand surface of the vertebra, but the scale bar is in the same plane as the left-hand side of the vertebra. In short, it's farther away, and therefore appears (in a two-dimensional view) smaller. I've never calculated, or seen calculated, how big a difference this is (probably only a few percent), but I've often wondered if it can add up to increasingly substantial errors… Which leads to the question, then, of where's the best place to put the scale bar? Should it, too, be elevated, and, if so, to where? The same plane as the vertebral body? The "highest" point of the vertebra (in the case above, to the top of the right transverse process) in the picture? Of course, this really is just a function of the fact that different parts of a vertebra are also going to be distorted in such a perspective (like Luis Rey's pictures in Holtz's new book, where the heads of the animals seem ginormous because the heads are closer to the viewer than the rest of the bodies are — personally, I really don't like those kinds of pictures, even though they're perfectly valid perspectives!) — the parts closer to the camera will appear huge and the parts farther away will appear tiny, but clearly a scale bar in any one plane doesn't apply to each part — only to those parts in the same plane as the scale bar itself!
I mention all this only to suggest that this might be a part, if not the entirety, of the difference between reported measurements and measurements taken from photos with a scale bar. And, of course, if one uses something like Photoshop to replace the actual scale bar with a solid black or white bar instead, an additional error (albeit again probably small but measureable) is introduced by trying to approximate which column or row of pixels really equals the end of the mark on the scale bar and should therefore also be the end of the digital "replacement" bar…
January 27, 2008 at 6:51 pm
How about placing lightweight spheres – of a stated diameter, say 100mm or 200mm – at various locations around a specimen (or at least bracketing it) if different parts are going to be at significantly different distances when photographed?
A sphere has the advantage of looking the same whatever the viewing angle. Its diameter is thus easily compared for scaling of the object.
Any pictures with Daleks in are handy for scaling nearby objects… all those 4inch domes…
January 28, 2008 at 1:35 am
Mike, thanks a lot BTW for your welcome above and your detailed reply to my question! Yes, I see those leg bones are much wider transversely. Interesting, in itself…
I would love to know more about their range of motion in life – did these animals kneel or lay down sometimes, or were they basically on their feet for life? How straight, and how vertical, did they normally keep their limbs? How readily could they turn?
Or …back on the topic of vertebrae!… how did those necks behave?
All this is of more than usual interest to me just now, as I am considering the practicability of sauropods going on parade locally in August: for Dunfermline's inaugural Carnegie Festival of the Imagination.
Diplodocus carnegii and Apatosaurus louisae, being named after Andrew Carnegie and his wife Louise, and now approximately centenary, seem apt subjects for a festival here in his home city…
…if a mite challenging…
I suspect any parade versions may have to be rather more pneumatic than the originals!
February 12, 2008 at 8:33 am
Any time I see the name "Hudiesaurus", it makes me laugh in that 5th-grade inappropriate humor sort of way.
April 1, 2008 at 7:55 am
[…] and wrist, which is a good 2 feet in me and I'm only 6′2″. Assuming–well, you know–that would give a cotyle diameter of about 60 cm, which is just appallingly large. The […]
May 6, 2009 at 2:59 pm
[…] 5, 2009 A while back, Matt speculated on the size of the allegedly giant mamenchisaurid Hudiesaurus. At the time, all he had to go on was […]
September 2, 2009 at 7:53 pm
[…] impossible, since 30-foot-plus necks are known for the largest individuals in several clades (e.g., Mamenchisaurus, Supersaurus, Sauroposeidon, probably Puertasaurus, possibly Futalognkosaurus, but probably not […]
February 2, 2015 at 5:15 am
[…] you're really hardcore, you may remember that back in 2005, Mike got to go up on a lift at the Field Museum of Natural History to get acquainted with a cast skeleton of Mamenchisaurus […]
March 3, 2015 at 9:41 am
[…] of the recently-described giant sauropods from China, trying to sort out just how big they were. Not a new pursuit for me, just one I hadn't been back to in a while. Also, I'm not trying to debunk anything […]
March 14, 2018 at 4:25 pm
[…] the good old M. hochuanensis holotype specimen that has been put up all over the world, including on stilts in Chicago and even in a flooded basement in […]


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Melbourne, Sydney
A chance meeting with seasoned promoter Michael Chugg led to a new partnership, and the festival expanded to Sydney.
Jerome Borazio (Laneway co-founder): "I bumped into Michael Chugg at a health retreat and said to him, 'We have this festival in Melbourne - check it out, see what you think. He called the next day and got us up to Sydney."
With the experienced Chugg coming on board to help ease the newcomers' passage, the festival took place among the office towers of Circular Quay, utilising Macquarie Square, Reiby Place and The Basement.
Matthew Lazarus Hall (Chugg Entertainment CEO & Laneway co-promoter): "Everyone questioned us: 'How are you going to do a festival there? It's in the middle of the Sydney CBD?' It was a cosy site and rainy, but we had an amazing day."
Danny Rogers (Laneway co-founder): "That was the first year we had some real international acts. That was definitely the beginning of what would come. The Avalanches came up to Sydney to play as a bit of a 'We're endorsing this' and it was special.
Line-up: Art of Fighting, Augie March, Broken Social Scene, Clare Bowditch and the Feeding Set, Cut Copy, Dane Tucquet, Darren Hanlon, Decoder Ring, Faker, Gersey, Jens Lekman, Les Savy Fav, Mercy Arms, Mountains in the Sky, New Buffalo, Pivot, Pretty Girls Make Graves,The Avalanches, The Gossip, The Hold Steady, The Pop Frenzy Sound Unit, The Posies, The Raveonettes, The Temper Trap, Wolf & Cub, Youth Group
(Melbourne only: Augie March, Cut Copy, Dane Tucquet, Mountains in the Sky, The Temper Trap)
(Sydney only: Art of Fighting, Clare Bowditch and the Feeding Set, Darren Hanlon, Decoder Ring, Gersey, Jens Lekman, Pivot, Mercy Arms, The Gossip, The Pop Frenzy Sound Unit, The Raveonettes)


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Yes, dear reader. It is finally here. That glorious week awaited by millions – nay, billions! – across the universe. The one…the only…SHARK WEEK. Discovery Channel's Shark Week is anticipated by some the way an anxious child awaits Christmas morning. Typical plans for the week are cancelled or never made. Perhaps a few sick days have even been saved up for some Shark Week sniffles – dangerous business; definitely should stay home! But while your remote may get a vacation during Shark Week as you watch show after show without fail, your belly is gonna start to grumble. Man and woman cannot live by Shark Week alone. You need to keep up your strength so you don't miss anything!
So what to put on the Shark Week menu? Seafood is always a good choice. Watching sharks, eating like sharks, makes sense to us! And when the time comes for dessert or a late night snack, you can keep the ocean theme wave rolling in. Don't worry – we don't have any recipes for crab flavored ice cream up our sleeves. Just some sweet, summery treats that are shark-tastic!
Gummi X-Ray Fish – These fruity gummies are fun to look at and neat to eat – gummy bones and all! Each box contains 36 see-through fishies, individually-wrapped and ready to enjoy.
Swedish Fish Aqua Life – Offering all the fabulous favors the Swedish Fish family of gummies has to offer, Aqua Life brings quite a bounty of oceany options, including gummy starfish, gummy blowfish, and gummy dolphins and seahorses.
Salt Water Taffy – A boardwalk favorite that will shore-ly make Shark Week all the better! It will feel like a true vacation when you add Salt Water Taffy to your SW menu, though an actual trip to the beach will likely be the furthest thing from your mind. The Midwest, anyone? I hear it's gorgeous this time of year!


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Two Verizon LTE modems from LG and Pantech have leaked out in an ad that all but confirms the promised 38-city high-speed wireless network activation has all but arrived.
The only downer for LTE aficionados appears to be that these two LTE modems will be on the husky side in terms of their size. As early arrivals on the LTE new technology scene that's unsurprising, of course, and you should expect slimmer, sexier modems as the service—and manufacturers—get a bit more savvy.
Anti-LTE and 4G skeptics are invited to roll their eyes at this news and read our feature on why today's 4G isn't really 4G. [Engadget]


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Watch Online Love All Play (2022) Episode 5 English Sub Thai Drama has been released. Dramacool will be the fastest one to upload all Episodes in HD for free. DOWNLOAD Love All Play (2022) Episode 5 English Sub for free and in Full HD Quality.
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Patrick signs law creating 'Boston Strong' plate
$50 plate will benefit One Fund
Massachusetts drivers will soon have an opportunity to purchase a "Boston Strong" license plate.
Gov. Deval Patrick on Friday signed into law a bill creating the specialty plate. Proceeds from sales of the $50 plate will help victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.
The phrase "Boston Strong" became popular after the April 15, 2013 attack that killed three people and injured more than 260.
Along with those words, the plate will include a design showing support for those most affected by the bombing.
Proceeds from the sales will go to the One Fund, which is providing financial assistance to injured survivors of the bombing and the families of those killed.
If the One Fund is later dissolved, proceeds would then go to another nonprofit organization that helps the victims.


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I'd like to know why these people that keep calling in every day. Why don't they get a life? What difference does it make where the police chief or the officers live? As long as they get to work every day and do their job. Who cares? It's the worst I see the City of Watervliet didn't get the grant for the GPS in the snow plows. The snow plows have been unable to find certain streets over the weekend during the snowstorm. The mayor thinks they're doing a great job of snowplowing. The worst snowplowing in the area. It won't take long With the new commissioner, now you're pushing the police chief out so we got a cheap guy for $30,000 running the Police Department. We'll see how long that lasts before Mayor Lou Rosamilia gives him an increase in salary. The next thing is the mayor should check every month the overtime of police and firemen. Every single month check the accounting. See how much it's going up. It's going to cost real money The remaining three years of Mayor Rosamilia's term and the police commissioner will cost Troy taxpayers about $100,000. Maybe they would go down I see The Record has the list of Rensselaer County delinquent taxes. Can someone please explain to me how Rensselaer County collects these taxes? Maybe our taxes would go down in Rensselaer County if they actually did this. Well done I'd like to say job well done to the Green Island DPW. They took an old truck, put a brand new engine in it and turned into a salting truck. Keep up the good work. Spectacular RPI. The red lights on your building at night are absolutely beautiful. I hope you can do it more often and a little more light on the front, please. It's spectacular at night.
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SAMJ: South African Medical Journal
On-line version ISSN 2078-5135
Print version ISSN 0256-9574
SAMJ, S. Afr. med. j. vol.100 n.3 Pretoria Mar. 2010
Mental health services for HIV/AIDS patients versus ARV services for mentally ill HIV/AIDS patients
To the Editor: I fully support the call made by Andersen and Seedat,1 and would like to add another dimension to the challenges posed by HIV/psychiatric co-morbidity. Apart from the psychiatric complications caused by the infection, an increasing number of - especially - the young adult psychiatric population, with chronic disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, present with co-morbid HIV infection. Owing to the adverse socio-economic backgrounds of most public sector patients, combined with the increased socioeconomic vulnerability of chronic psychiatric patients, the HIV-positive chronic mental health care user (MHCU) is the most disadvantaged of the disadvantaged! The understandably rigorous prerequisites for ARV therapy hinder access by MHCUs to ARV treatment: they may be homeless, rejected by their families, or lead nomadic lives owing to their mental condition. These factors make identification of a 'buddy' a major challenge. Their mental condition may pose limitations on their ability to engage in the mandatory educational programme preceding commencement of treatment, or cognitive impairment from the mental illness and/or the HIV infection may diminish their capacity to give informed consent.
Finally, those with an 'organic' psychosis or HIV dementia may respond suboptimally to standard psychotropic interventions, yet be unable to access the very medication that could assist in their recovery. Special provision needs to be made in the ARV roll-out policy to cater for these patients, who may engage in risky sexual behaviour because of illness-related impairment in judgement, or themselves be 'soft' targets for sexual assault. While some may argue that a 'special' policy for MHCUs adds to discrimination and stigma, I believe that such 'discrimination' can better serve the interests of this vulnerable clinical population. Policy should facilitate MHCU access to ARV treatment, taking into consideration the challenges posed by mental illness on the consent and participation process, and make provision for active community-based worker support to facilitate adherence to both psychotropic and ARV treatment. Dedicated psychosocial support for these patients at clinic and community level, and perhaps offering a 'combined' clinic where their unique needs and challenges can be addressed, are avenues worthy of exploration.
S Ramlall
Department of Psychiatry
King George V Hospital and University of KwaZulu-Natal
1. Andersen LS, Seedat S. Mental health services for HIV/AIDS patients are long overdue (Editorial). S Afr Med J 2009, 99: 796. [ Links ]
Lena Andersen replies: There is no question but that mental health services for HIV/AIDS patients are urgently needed. Recognising this is the easiest part. Developing and implementing services that cater to the entire spectrum of psychiatric needs is an enormous and complex undertaking that will require the constructive input and teamwork of many people, departments and organisations. Ramlall highlights an important issue that needs to be considered in the roll-out process. I encourage the mental health community to continue this dialogue in order to identify and address all the relevant dimensions of the problem.


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There's a whisper-quiet rumor making the rounds that Amazon is looking to establish a second headquarters outside of its initial digs in Seattle. It's even got a name — HQ2 — and, in reality, Amazon's announcement was a thunderous roar.
One of the premier global brands to which anyone or any city would love to hitch its wagon, when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sneezes, people want to examine the tissue for opportunity. Thus, economic development officials nationwide are foaming at the mouth while preparing to put their best foot forward, and pundits are speculating as to choices like Denver, Boston, Chicago, Austin and others.
In the offing is some 50,000 new jobs, deep organizational investments in infrastructure and more, thousands of relocating smart minds, high wages, residual economic benefits like new home sales, wage taxes, millions upon millions spent with regional retailers, charitable impacts and hundreds of other companies that will establish a presence to feed off of Amazon. Plus, as CEO Jeff Bezos said, "…billions of dollars in up-front and ongoing investments." The prospective impact is remarkable, meaningful and has the potential to transform a region.
The big question is: Where? My unabashedly biased answer: St. Louis.
Yes, that St. Louis, in Missouri. The one I once wrote did "not suck" in Forbes. It's where the Cardinals win a lot of baseball games and the Gateway Arch and Energizer Bunny live, and yes, the region that admittedly grapples with the same set of complex human challenges that nearly every other major metropolitan area in the U.S. is working to address today.
Why should Amazon look to St. Louis? In actuality, there is no one singular selling point, nor should there be if Amazon — or for that matter, any other company — is considering it. Rather, the choice revolves around a broad-based criterion, as anyone working in economic development and site selection understands.
Where to being? Well, although it's not particularly important for all practical purposes, let's start with legacy, as St. Louis' run of innovation and corporate success over the past two centuries is nothing short of remarkable.
Anheuser-Busch birthed the global beer industry and Purina the worldwide pet food market; Energizer batteries and the largest car rental company, Enterprise, launched in St. Louis; and say what you want about GMO crops pending your politics, but St. Louis-based Monsanto has ensured for a generation of food production while global farmland dissipates and worldwide population numbers soar.
What have you done for me lately? Jim McKelvey and some anonymous guy from St. Louis named Jack Dorsey founded Square payments systems — not in the Bay Area — but in St. Louis; Mercy Hospitals is revolutionizing virtual healthcare here and Washington University Medical's Human Genome Project has been hailed as groundbreaking.
What's ironically lost relative to what Amazon is, and is not, revolves around perhaps the most boring moniker in business: Logistics.
But what about tech? Amazon, of course, is a tech giant, and one would imagine that being a "tech town" is important. St. Louis was once corporate America's manufacturing backyard, but through strategic planning initiatives first launched at the start of the new millennium, the region has evolved into a vibrant hotbed of technology, as well as a cradle of entrepreneurship over the past decade. But don't take my word for it — Forbes' Christopher Steiner cited St. Louis as "The Right Way To Build a Tech City," the city was ranked as the top startup city by Popular Mechanics in 2015, the fastest growing startup city by Business Insider and the "new startup frontier" by FiveThirtyEight in 2016.
What's ironically lost relative to what Amazon is, and is not, revolves around perhaps the most boring moniker in business: Logistics. That's right — at its core, Amazon is simply a logistics company. And guess what? St. Louis is a logistics town — total ballers in moving goods. The region is centered in the middle of the U.S., at the cross-section of international air, rail, interstate and major rivers; within 500 miles of one-third of the U.S. population and 1,500 miles of 90 percent of the people in North America.
And beyond the stereotypical perspective of transportation, let's not forget the softer side of the modern worker's everyday life — public transit — which is a key component for Amazon employees. Millennial workers today are less interested in driving to and from work and more interested in hopping a train to work as well as play. Thus, light rail is no frivolous criterion, and it just so happens that St. Louis has one, offering convenient service throughout the city, into nearby suburbs and to the airport.
What about human assets, or more plainly, a strong native workforce?
From a potential standpoint, the region has more than 30 four-year colleges and universities in the region, enrolling approximately 120,000 students, with options ranging from community and technical colleges to the esteemed Saint Louis University and the nationally recognized and prestigious Washington University in St. Louis. Plus, St. Louis has a strong pipeline of talent to one of the finest software engineering programs in the U.S. — the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana.
From a more present-day perspective, the region is a hotbed of smart minds. For example, it has more plant science PhDs than anywhere else in the world thanks to the presence of Monsanto, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and Washington University, among others. The region also boasts one of the largest STEM workforces in the U.S. as more than 80,000 are employed in these highly specialized occupations. Additionally, metro-St. Louis has cultivated a bioscience machine as noted by The Initiative for Competitive Inner Cities' report, "Building Strong Clusters for Strong Urban Economies." The organization cited St. Louis' BioSTL bioscience economic development coalition — established in 2001 to build on plant and life science strengths — as a model for cities endeavoring to create economic growth through regional strengths.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon decision makers, even Santa Claus — are you paying attention? It's all right there in front you.
How about life beyond the day-to-day grind of work? Good news — the region's cultural assets are rich and diverse. St. Louis boasts one of the largest urban parks in the U.S. (Forest Park), amazing theaters like the historic Fabulous Fox and Muny theaters, The National Blues Museum, a strong live music scene highlighted by the annual LouFest music festival, the insane City Museum, the Magic House children's museum, a vast collection of historic architecture, phenomenal art and history museums and, of course, the obligatory reference to the Gateway Arch.
Plus, St. Louis couldn't exist without baseball and beer, and has not only been widely hailed as America's best baseball town, but also is an unquestioned beer town — built on the backs of Anheuser-Busch — and now boasts one of the most respected craft beer communities in the U.S. led by Schlafly and Urban Chestnut, among other stellar microbrews.
And while you never lead a sale with price, let's finish with it. In reality, you can't sing karaoke in a public park in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, DC or Miami without it somehow costing you $145 per cubic note.
Good thing St. Louis' median home value, at $164,200, is well below the U.S. median of $194,500, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2015 American Community Survey data. But what does that really get you? Certainly more than your $2,000-per-month 400-square-foot efficiency in Manhattan.
The Council for Community and Economic Research (ACCRA) Cost of Living Index that measures the relative cost of U.S. metropolitan areas examines a new 2,400 square foot, four-bedroom, two-bath home with an attached two-car garage suitable for a management household. This index correlated with an average St. Louis-area home price of $214,260 for the year 2016 versus the U.S. metro average of $326,999 for the same period.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon decision makers, even Santa Claus — are you paying attention? It's all right there in front you. The smart choice. A community that has a certain hustle in its step that has the red carpet laid out for you — that's St. Louis. Whether it's smart minds, a welcoming business environment, cultural assets, a legacy of innovation, tech talent or even cost of living — this region has all the ingredients Amazon needs to make HQ2 a success. Let's get cooking, together.
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Source : TechCrunch