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While Americans vote for their President and Congress on Tuesday, November 4, the wireless industry, broadcasters, electronics makers, software manufacturers, and media reform groups will nervously monitor another election: the Federal Communications Commission's Open Meeting scheduled for that same day.
There, the five Commissioners will vote on whether to authorize a service that permits consumer electronics makers to build devices that can send and receive wireless broadband signals through vacant TV channels, or "white space." That decision might not have been possible a generation ago.
Cry havoc
This fight has been raging for several years, and Ars Technica has chronicled it from the beginning, giving both sides of the conflict their due. Boosters of the technology see in white space devices (WSDs) the potential to bring high-speed Internet access to many Americans who have yet to benefit from the broadband revolution. Opponents claim that WSDs will wreak havoc on television and cable reception, public performances that use wireless microphones, and perhaps even cell phone services.
The debate has reached a very high decibel level over the last two weeks, but it was always loud. Important advocates for broadcasting have used words like "illness" and "germs" to describe WSD technology, accusing white space backers of favoring the "euthanasia" of television. One media association recently argued in all seriousness that authorizing these devices might represent one of the "greatest technical blunders" in United States history.
The FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) has rejected these claims, concluding that spectrum-sensing methods in tandem with geolocation and database access systems will allow manufacturers to roll out these machines without harming other services. Critics of the concept still challenge the OET's conclusions and want a lengthy public comment cycle on the report, rather than a vote on a possible Order on Tuesday.
There seems little point to this delay, since white space opponents have already filed detailed responses to the OET assessment. What they really want, it seems, is an opportunity to whip up further opposition to the concept from various proxies, among them members of Congress and legacy rock stars.
Why now?
But beyond the many arguments swirling around this issue, a larger question arises for the media historian. Why have the forces that support this potentially democratizing technology even been able to get this far? The graveyard of promising platforms and services buried by subterfuge is full of tombstones. Low Power FM is a good example—shoved into a marginal corner by extreme adjacent channel rules. Even full power FM radio had to wait decades before its supporters could dig the platform out of the regulatory sludge heaped on it at the behest of RCA and NBC in the 1930s and 1940s.
But white space backers have had better luck. One reason for that is so obvious that it is easy to miss: our nation's broadcasters, cable service providers, and telecommunications companies do not own our nation's electronic device and software manufacturers.
Younger Ars readers may take this condition for granted, but I don't. I grew up in a time when there was one nationwide phone company, AT&T, and it owned the one authorized phone device maker, Western Electric. AT&T refused to allow any "foreign attachments" to its network back then. You could lease a Western Electric phone in any color from AT&T, comrades, as long as it was black.
And not long before I was born, Hollywood had a similarly Kremlinesque appearance—its Commissar-like studios controlled both the production, distribution, and showing of films.
The FCC's 1968 Carterfone decision forced AT&T to let competitors sell telephone devices to the public, unleashing the answering machine, fax, and modem revolution. And the Supreme Court's 1948 United States vs. Paramount Pictures antitrust ruling smashed the Hollywood monopoly. An "atom bomb," broadcasting historian Erik Barnoux once called the decision, unleashing an explosion of talent and resources that quickly migrated to a new service: television.
Big divide
The white space battle has made progress in part because of the advocacy of groups like Free Press, Public Knowledge, the New America Foundation, and the Media Access Project. But let's not kid ourselves; white space devices are still viable primarily because the media/telecom corporate sector is split on the issue. Broadcasters oppose the idea on technical grounds, but probably also fear competition. Meanwhile, Google, Microsoft, Dell, Motorola, and the rest of the software/device makers see money to be made in expanded broadband services.
"There's clearly a business interest for Google in this," a Google spokesperson told Ars after the company launched its pro-white space Web site, freetheairwaves.com, in August. "Because expanded access to the Internet hopefully means more users using Google. And more users using Google means more people hopefully clicking on the ads."
Reform groups are right to raise concerns about our present levels of media consolidation. But the structural diversity that we have at present in the media/telecom sector has given us enough political diversity to have a rigorous debate about white space devices that might not have been possible in the past.
Wireless worries
All the more reason why the FCC should look with a cautious eye at two other items on the agency's Tuesday docket: whether to approve the proposed Sprint/Clearwire and Verizon/Alltel deals. Sprint Nextel and Clearwire say that their joint WiMAX marriage, also called Clearwire, will serve 140 million people. Verizon announced its plan to buy Alltel in June. The former says its $28.1 billion purchase of the latter entity will create the biggest cell phone service in the US, even bigger than AT&T after its 2004 union with Cingular.
These ventures represent a new template for the nation's media future. They also represent an opportunity for some of the very forces that are pushing for innovation now to bottle it up later. Google, Comcast, Time Warner, Bright House, and Intel Capital will buy stakes in the new Clearwire operation for over $3 billion. Once again, software and device makers will unite with telecom providers, and may slowly create an AT&T-circa-1965 type incentive to sit on the ideas of the next generation of visionaries, perhaps even charging interference—the last refuge of a media incumbent.
This worry has led the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition to recommend that the FCC demand very explicit open device requirements for the Clearwire deal and a transparent process by which any changes that it makes to its network can be reviewed by the public.
As for the Verizon/Alltel union, the agency is asked to take a hard look at its impact on roaming charges and handset choices for rural consumers before approving the deal. The Commission should also heed the call of the Rural Cellular Association for an investigation of exclusive contracts between handset makers and the big five wireless companies, deals that RCA says leave rural wireless consumers out of the loop when it comes to getting front line products.
Media diversity doesn't just create a more level economic playing field, it creates an open debate about the future of media. It generates a complex array of stakeholders who don't agree about what technology can do and where it should go next. That's a good thing. The debates that ensue can be nasty, brutish, and long—as the white space war attests. But with the help of fair-minded regulators, logjams can be broken and breakthroughs achieved.
If we're standing at the brink of one, it's because NBC doesn't own Google. Let's keep it that way.


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PyroMark APOE, PyroMark HFE, PyroMark MTHFR, PyroMark Q96 CpG LINE-1, PyroMark Q96 CpG MGMT, PyroMark Q96 CpG MLH1, PyroMark Q96 CpG p16, and PyroMark Q96 CpG Prader-Willi tests are intended for molecular biology applications. These products are not intended for the diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of a disease.
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subset: commoncrawl


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EXPANDING THE PROSTITUTION investigation, the Secret Service acknowledged it is checking whether its employees hired strippers and prostitutes in advance of President Barack Obama's visit last year to El Salvador.
The disclosure came not long after the Homeland Security secretary assured sceptical senators that the recent prostitution scandal in Colombia appeared to be an isolated incident.
A spokesman for the Secret Service, Edwin Donovan, said the agency was investigating allegations raised in news reports about unprofessional behaviour that have emerged in the aftermath of the Colombia incident.
The latest, by Seattle television station KIRO-TV, quoted anonymous sources as saying that Secret Service employees received sexual favours from strippers at a club in San Salvador and took prostitutes to their hotel rooms ahead of Obama's visit to the city in March 2011.
Prostitution is legal in both Colombia and El Salvador.
Separately, The Washington Post this week cited unnamed "confidants" of the Secret Service officers implicated in Colombia saying senior managers had tolerated similar behaviour during previous official trips.
The Post described a visit to Buenos Aires in 2009 by former President Bill Clinton, whose protective detail it said included agents and uniformed officers. During that trip, the Post said, members of the detail went out for a late night of partying at strip clubs.
Donovan said Thursday, "Any information brought to our attention that can be assessed as credible will be followed up on in an appropriate manner."
In a confidential message to senators the Secret Service said its Office of Professional Responsibility had not received complaints about officer behaviour in El Salvador but would investigate.
In the message, the agency sought to cast doubt on the KIRO report, noting that it does not routinely send K-9 or explosive-detection units as part of its advance teams; KIRO said the advance team included those elements.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said he doubted that Obama was aware of the allegations about El Salvador when he was briefed by Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan last week in the Oval Office.
The expansion of any investigation into behaviour by the Secret Service could represent another mark against an agency that has been tarnished by the prostitution scandal. At a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill, senators struggled to reconcile the image of courageous agents assigned to protect the lives of the president and his family with the less savory image that has emerged from its investigation in Colombia so far.
Senators on Thursday questioned Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's statement during the hearing that she believed the incident in Colombia was an isolated case. Napolitano had said there was no evidence of similar behaviour, based on a review of complaints during the past 2.5 years to the agency's Office of Professional Responsibility. She said that if there was a pattern of such behaviour, "that would be a surprise to me."
"It sort of defies logic," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who serves on the Judiciary and Armed Services committees, both of which were investigating the case. "The idea that this is the first and only time, it doesn't make sense. For something to get this out of control it has to be a … cultural blueprint."
The chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., said he has heard additional examples of misconduct, so Napolitano's assurances surprised him. His committee is expected to hold hearings in May.
"I keep running into people who tell me that they've talked to agents who tell them about misconduct of this kind over the years," Lieberman said. "Whether anybody knew about it or whether there were files on people I don't know."
The Colombia scandal arose the morning of April 12, when a dispute over payment between a prostitute and a Secret Service officer spilled into the hallway of the Hotel Caribe.
Eight Secret Service officers have been forced out, and the agency is trying to permanently revoke the security clearance of another. Three others have been cleared of serious wrongdoing but face administrative discipline.
One of the Secret Service officers was staying at the Hilton hotel in Cartagena, Colombia, the same hotel where Obama later stayed for the Summit of the Americas.
Another dozen military personnel also have been implicated. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said this week that all have had their security clearances suspended.
The Defence Department briefed senators on Wednesday about its investigation, but Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he was unsatisfied with what the Pentagon told lawmakers.
Unlike for civilian US government employees, soliciting prostitutes is a criminal offense for US military personnel even in countries where prostitution is otherwise legal.
"Secretary Napolitano and especially the director of the Secret Service has been pretty forthcoming in many aspects of this, unlike the Pentagon, which has completely stonewalled, using the excuse that a Uniform Code of Military Justice — as you know, that's the military law — somehow is a barrier to us receiving information," McCain said the CBS program "This Morning."
Graham proposed that military commanders and Secret Service supervisors should conduct surprise visits for personnel working overseas.
"People get away from home, get deployed and believe they're on vacation," he said. "They work hard, but they believe their off-duty time is something that doesn't matter. It does matter."
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Explains how to work with lenses and shoot in auto mode Covers the on-board controls and situational shooting Addresses manipulating focus and color controls Discusses printing, posting online, and other ways to share images
Get started shooting with Olympus E-PL1 For Dummies!


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This article was originally published in the January/February 1998 issue of Home Energy Magazine. Some formatting inconsistencies may be evident in older archive content.
| Back to Contents Page | Home Energy Index | About Home Energy |
Home Energy Magazine Online January/February 1998
A Hubbub Over HERS
As you correctly discovered, rating scores do not correlate closely with energy use or cost since the rating method that is generally used rates the house against itself using the same fuel-type and not against some average of all houses. Energy consumption and costs are displayed separately on ratings to give consumers this information.
Our biggest concern was the wrong numbers for Vermont on Table 1, page 26 (Comparison of HERS Costs to Rating Volume). I am not sure where the figures came from, but those for Vermont are off by a factor of more than two.
If you look at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) HERS Case Study referenced throughout the article, you will see in Table 4-4 that for 1993 through 1995, Energy Rated Homes of Vermont's total funding averaged $218,716 per year (not $390,757). Figure 4-1 in the NREL study shows a total of 1,140 ratings for the same three year period or an average of 380 ratings per year. Doing the math, our cost per rating comes out to $576 per rating and not the $1,252 you reported.
HERS programs can be expensive to get up and running. However, the cost of transforming the housing and mortgage industries to recognize and value energy efficiency will be well worth the expense. The HERS industry is making some real and lasting in-roads that will pay efficiency dividends for a long time to come.
Richard Faesy
Mr. Faesy is correct about the numbers cited in the NREL report. We apologize for the error.Good, Better, BESTEST Stein's article referred to the BESTEST method for evaluating Home Rating software several times. I thought your readers would be interested to know that there are three BESTEST reports available from National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
I would also like to draw your attention to an error in Table 1. It is not possible for the actual and predicted site energy use in Colorado to be 135,000 and 120,000 Btu respectively. That would amount to an annual average utility bill of about $1.50. The numbers appear to be off by about three orders of magnitude.
Ron Judkoff
We mistakenly translated 135 MBtu as 135,000 Btu and 120 MBtu as 120,000 Btu. The correct conversions are 135 million Btu and 120 million Btu respectively.HERS: Improvements Needed The article questioning the accuracy of HERS rating systems may provide the stimulus needed for HERS to grow and prosper. As stated in the article, HERS providers need to give consumers more information about the accuracy and meaning of the ratings.
The meaning of the rating score is so obtuse that even your excellent article found it ambiguous. If rating scores should not be used to compare houses, what then is their value? The ratings neither compare the estimated energy cost, which is what consumers want to know, nor do they compare the amount of energy used. Instead they compare the sum of the energy loads adjusted for the difference in the energy efficiency of the furnace, air conditioner, and water heater. Since there is not much of a market for that information, HERS providers prefer not to explain what the rating means.
The energy-efficient reference house is also difficult to explain. It is not just a house that meets a desired energy code or standard but tailored to the same dimensions as the rated house, but also one that has been doctored in a number of ways. While based on the CABO/MEC 1993 building standards and the 1992 NAECA systems efficiencies, the heat loss for the wall assembly is half that of the CABO/MEC standards and the required efficiency for window air conditioners is 25% more than NAECA. (The reference house efficiency is based on a central rather than wall air conditioner.)
For estimating solar gains/loads, the reference house is assumed to have windows equal to 18% of the floor area, 50% more than the average of 12%. The exaggerated windows in the reference house result in houses in warm climates getting better ratings and those in cold climates worse ratings than they would otherwise. Also, since glazing is measured as a proportion of the floor rather than the walls, larger houses have more skewed results.
Concerning the accuracy of the cost estimates, there are assumptions built into the calculations which preclude the estimated energy costs from matching actual costs. The most prominent assumption concerns the appliances--which account for almost half of the residential energy dollar. Variations in energy use for appliances are primarily due to differences in the size of the house. Larger houses have more lights, larger refrigerators, more TVs, and more laundry than smaller houses. The data from the Residential Energy Consumption Survey, published by the Department of Energy in 1995, confirm this rather obvious relationship. Yet for appliances the HERS calculations are based on the average use of the appliances found in the house. Thus, a one-room house is assumed to use as many lights and other appliances as a ten room house. This flaw in the estimate results in exaggerating the energy expenditures of small residences, while minimizing those of large ones as much as 30%. If the HERS industry is to survive, it must outgrow its shaky technical foundation.
Doris Iklé
Garbage In, Garbage Out--Regardless of whether the home is new or existing, the design and construction characteristics of the home must be accurately defined and entered into the software. Without an accurate building description, it is not possible to obtain accurate energy performance estimates. This requires knowledgeable, trained home energy raters applying a consistent, unambiguous audit process.
Rate the Home, Not the Occupants--HERS rating tools assume typical occupancy assumptions relative to thermostat setpoints, internal heat gain, hot water usage, and other occupant related energy use factors (i.e. lights and appliance operating schedules and energy usage). The goal is to establish the energy efficiency of the home and potential for cost-effective improvements, not to establish the energy-consuming behavior of the occupants. Thus, I think it inappropriate to base an energy rating on utility bills.
Rating Score vs. Energy Costs--So that the home's energy efficiency rating is stable over time, the energy score (rating) does not rely on energy costs. However, as stated in the DOE and HERS Council Guidelines, the annual energy cost for heating, cooling, DHW, and lights and appliances must be prominently displayed on the rating certificate. Everyone in the HERS industry recognizes that the rating score must also be seen in combination with energy costs to truly assess the energy performance of a home.
Rating Tool Energy Cost Prediction vs. Utility Bills--The goal of a HERS rating is not to match an existing home's utility bill. The home's occupants can influence energy costs by a factor of two. Rather, the rating tool attempts to predict likely energy use for the home under average or typical occupancy, just as the MPG test uses a standard driver protocol when establishing the MPG rating on a specific automobile.
Rating Tool Certification--The HERS BESTEST procedure was developed by NREL and the HERS industry to ensure that the physics and mathematics of rating tools is within acceptable bounds of accuracy as established by three public domain simulation tools--DOE-2, BLAST, and SERI/RES. Use of this procedure by all HERS providers will go a long way toward ensuring rating tool accuracy.
HERS has the potential to help create a level playing field for defining home energy efficiency, establishing potential energy costs and identifying cost effective improvements. However, to be meaningful, consistent technical guidelines must exist. These have been developed by DOE, the HERS Council, HERS Providers, and state energy offices. The fact that DOE has not published these guidelines is not important. I would rather see the HERS industry be responsible for promulgating and maintaining these guidelines than DOE. Beyond creating a market demand for home energy rating due to existing and new energy mortgage products, the most important issue facing the HERS industry is to find a business model that will enable home energy raters and HERS providers to be economically sustainable.
HERS represent an important opportunity to account for energy efficiency in all residential real estate transactions. If HERS can promote across-the-board energy efficiency improvements in new and existing homes, national interests, as well as consumers' interests, will be served. We should do all we can to improve the professionalism and technical accuracy of HERS.
I encourage Home Energy to actively support the creation of a viable, professional HERS industry. Let's work together constructively and positively toward this end.
Michael J. Holtz, A.I.A.
Karen Linner
If 30% cooler means that the temperature was 30% lower, then the leakage ratio depends on the temperature scale chosen. In a house on the Detroit, Michigan side of the Ambassador Bridge with an indoor temperature of 70°F, the windows in question would leak air at 49°F. Move the same house to the other end of the bridge in Windsor, Ontario, where those same temperatures are measured as 21°C and 9°C, and the extraneous leakage would be 60% of the total. Measure it in Kelvin, 294°K indoors and 282°K, and the result is 4%. Temperature by itself doesn't capture the rate of heat transfer.
Also, there is no provision for changes in outdoor temperature. A test done on a very cold day would be very different from that made on a warm day.
I also don't understand the assumption that the measured temperature drop must be due to indoor air mixing with outdoor air coming through the rough opening. Any extraneous outdoor air is passing through the wall cavity, which is at some intermediate temperature between indoors and outdoors due to conduction through the wall, as well as to infiltration. Won't it be warmed by this as well as by mixing with indoor air?
Barbara Shohl Wagner
Andrew M. Shapiro responds:
We attempted to make an estimate of the fraction of extraneous leakage that comes from outdoors, and therefore contributes to heat losses during the winter. (Your wording seems to imply all extraneous leakage is from outside--some comes from outside, some comes from inside, based on the way the test procedure is set up. Most uses of this test are concerned with sash leakage only, and so the source of extraneous leakage is unimportant in those tests.) Yes, the wording 30% cooler is very ambiguous. The temperature of air drawn into the blower during the extraneous leakage test (2 layers of poly in place) was about one-third of the way up from outside and to inside temperature. This testing was done during cold weather. Reporting a fraction of the temperature difference (rather than actual temperature difference in degrees) normalizes for varying indoor and outdoor temperatures.
And, yes, we were also aware of the very good point you make about the temperatures of materials across which the air was drawn in the bowels of the wall and window weight cavities influencing the air temperature. The full report (much, much longer) has many caveats about these results. We consider these results a place holder. That is, we have a reasonably high level of confidence that at least some of the extraneous leakage is from outside. We know we did not have the resources to be able to more accurately quantify the actual fraction, but we wanted to make a rough estimate that we could use as an order of magnitude of this effect. The fraction estimated based on this simple test also varied significantly from house to house and even from window to window, even in the limited number of tests we did. There is a lot we have yet to learn about the dynamics of air and heat flow through windows and through adjacent wall areas connected to the windows.
| Back to Contents Page | Home Energy Index | About Home Energy |
Home Energy can be reached at: email@example.com
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Story by
Matthew Panzarino
Matthew Panzarino was Managing Editor at TNW. He's no longer with the company, but you can follow him on Twitter. Matthew Panzarino was Managing Editor at TNW. He's no longer with the company, but you can follow him on Twitter.
In light of today's shakeups, Apple has posted a revised organization chart on its website. The chart lists the newly minted CEO Tim Cook, as well as the other executive staff. It also shows Jobs' new position as Chairman of the Board and Cook's new Board seat as well.
Cook's new bio states:
Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple and serves on its Board of Directors.
Before being named CEO in August 2011, Tim was Apple's Chief Operating Officer and was responsible for all of the company's worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple's supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries. He also headed Apple's Macintosh division and played a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace.
Notable in the bottom row is Cook's likely successor as COO, Jeff Williams. Still present in the top row is the soon-to-be-departed Ron Johnson, Apple's head of retail who is leaving for JC Penny. I have to admit that It's an odd sight without Job's familiar face gracing it.
Our Coverage:
As it Happened | Steve Jobs' Resignation Letter |
Apple Fans' Predictions | Who is CEO Tim Cook? |
Why Apple will continue to dominate |
Woz On Jobs: Greatest Leader Of Our Time |
Steve Jobs: 35 years in technology |
Jobs will remain involved | Apple's CEOs: From 1977 to 2011 |
A front row seat to Steve Jobs' career, by Robert Scoble.
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Google Fixes Kernel Vulnerability
Google Fixes Kernel Vulnerability Google has began patching a security flaw in the Linux kernel that was discovered two years ago. It's allowing users to gain full root access. Per …
About Scott Entsminger
Scott Entsminger was born and raised in Virginia. He graduated from Radford University with a Bachelor's of Science in Criminal Justice. Scott has worked for the Department of Defense since graduating college. He is an expert in Windows Administration; with specific experience in Group Policy and vulnerability remediation. He also has specific experience in Information Assurance (IA) and Cyber Security.
Scott holds the CompTIA Security+ certification. He is always looking to diversify his skillset. Scott is an avid sports fan, particularly baseball. He also is an avid gamer and enjoys learning different skills involving his PC.


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by Richard Elen,
August 9, 2000
Originally published on AudioRevolution.com
could reduce the perceived quality of DVD-A to somewhere between a good MiniDisc
and a below-average CD," says a leading classical recording engineer.
The record industry's search for a "watermarking" system that would make itpossible to trace the origin of digital audio recordings despite their processing through internet audio compression techniques such as MP3 (MPEG I Layer 3) and the copying of high-density digital media such as DVD-Audio discs, has run into another major problem.
In British tests, leading record producers were astonished to find that they could clearly hear the supposedly "inaudible" digital watermark, during replay demonstrations of the Verance watermarking system chosen by the record industry's Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). The watermark must be robust enough to survive MP3 compression and similar Internet distribution techniques, while remaining inaudible to users of high-end DVD-Audio discs.
A growing number of industry pundits are coming to regard the goal of a robust, inaudible watermark as being impossible to achieve. Internet distribution techniques rely on "lossy" compression to minimize the file sizes and thus the download time for subscribers. They do this by using one of a number of psychoacoustically-optimized algorithms to determine which sounds in a recording are audible and which are not. Inaudible sounds may be masked by other sounds, or exist at frequencies to which the ear is insensitive. MP3 is the most popular such technique, but there are several others. The techniques are referred to as "lossy" because they throw "inaudible" data away - unlike the MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing) compression technique used on DVD-Audio discs, where all the data is meticulously preserved while still achieving significant data compression.
If a compression algorithm removes inaudible sounds, it can be argued that a watermark will be removed by such techniques - if the watermark is inaudible. If this is the case, it serves no purpose. However, if the watermark is not removed by lossy compression, it will be, by definition, audible. When this evident syllogism was raised by a subscriber to the "surround" internet surround-sound mailing list recently, Robert Stuart, head of leading British professional and consumer audio manufacturer Meridian and co-developer of the MLP compression system, replied, "This is indeed the core of the problem."
The watermarking system currently under consideration would affect equally both the DVD-Audio system (which uses high-sample-rate PCM - pulse code modulation, the most common digitization method used in digital audio systems for the past thirty years) and the competing Sony/Philips Super Audio CD system (which utilizes a bitstream approach called DSD - Direct Stream Digital). However the DVD camp has been considerably more insistent on watermarking than SACD licensees, with a consultant close to Philips noting recently that "Our stated position [on watermarking] as of the AES in Paris [in April this year] was that we would include it only if forced to by content owners."
The SDMI tests in Britain appear to have been very disappointing. The following comments by Tony Faulkner, one of the UK's top classical recording engineers, were posted on the Pro-Audio mailing list in the wake of the UK SDMI tests:
"...The watermark listening sessions themselves were pretty disappointing in my judgment. Poor unfamiliar dull source material, unfamiliar monitoring, limited value A/B/X test procedure...The only consistently usable track for me was (ironically) a 96k/24 transfer off an old analogue Petrushkha, because the differences were easier to identify...
"...with Petrushkha I scored 75% in identifying the watermarking - on two separate runs. It sounded like medium distance buzzing bees (high frequency ones) with a clogged stereo image when the Petrushkha got louder and more complex...
"...I have no doubts in my own mind now that the Verance watermark is clever enough and effectively unobtrusive enough for non-critical low-to mid-fi,... i.e. up to but excluding DVD-A, SACD and high-quality CD. The bad news is that it was audible on poor quality bandwidth limited archive analogue material to a 49 year old engineer with a cold and "747-Ears" the day after a 12 hour intercontinental flight. For audiophiles paying extra money for a new player and for new discs, judging by what I heard yesterday the watermark could reduce the perceived quality of DVD-A to somewhere between a good MiniDisc and a below average CD.
"The myth about the watermarking being optional is becoming very tiresome too. How will it be optional for listeners to major label output ? How is it optional for performers ? How will it be optional for producers and engineers generating regular releases for major international participating labels ? How will it be optional for DVD-A players and recorders manufacturers to choose not to build in and to pay for the technology ?
"I believe that the strategy of watermarking high-quality material on high-quality carriers is fundamentally flawed if the watermarking is audible on high-quality systems. Further I believe that the testing so far has been inadequate in terms of sample size and quality of test material and methods. If it is audible now with a 2bit copy management payload, how will it sound with a 72bit full identifier payload ?"
Faulkner also alludes to criticism of US tests of the system as representing too small of a sample to be statistically valid. Following a demonstration in Nashville, some concern was expressed by at least one attendee, engineer Chuck Ainlay, who said, according to an article in WebNoize "...the test was conducted impartially, but the only test music provided was a new recording by electric guitarist Mark Knopfler, not orchestral, jazz or other acoustic music with a wider dynamic range and more detail than pop music." However there are some apparent errors in the article, notably the spelling of Ainlay's name, and the failure to point out that Ainlay was the engineer on the Knopfler recording, so the quote may be misattributed. ("Audiophile Label, Engineers Question Verance Watermark", at http://news.webnoize.com/item.rs?ID=9648.)
Even so, it is evident that as it stands today, digital watermarking is in big trouble. After the UK demonstration, according to British science magazine New Scientist (July 22), an SDMI representative admitted, "We are starting all over again."
The significance here is that while DVD-audio players are now being shipped, the always hot topic of copyright protection is going to very possibly continue to delay DVD-Audio for the consumer. If handled improperly, this situation could result in poor sounding DVD-audio and or SACD formats. With billions of dollars in sales waiting for both the software and audio hard ware manufacturers, you can count on the industry doing every thing they can to create a more "inaudible" watermarking to avoid quality concerns much like those of CDs versus Vinyl in the early 1980's.


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Obama vs. Romney. Blogging the 2012 US Presidential Debates. Round 2. Head to Head at Hofstra.
Over $1.1billion has been spent so far on this year's presidential debate. The American public, tired of two wars, a recession and a flagging economy is also suffering from campaign fatigue. There's an outcry against political rhetoric. Yet it's rhetoric that moves the needle. Witness the debate in Denver where a surging Obama came up short, and a once DOA candidate has come back to life. Early on, Romney responded to Obama saying, "let's look at policies as opposed to rhetoric." Lovers of irony everywhere should appreciate this comment. The debate was chock-full of rhetoric. So instead of looking at policy, let's look at rhetoric. Specifically the rhetorical devices that both used.
Obama: "Gov. Romney doesn't have a five point plan. He has a one point plan." That is: Wealthy "play by a different set of rules." #debate—
Andy Kroll (@AndrewKroll) October 17, 2012
"Gov. Romney doesn't have a five-point plan; he has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules." This phrase opened up Obama's response to the first question. It's the rhetorical device called Antistrophe (I know). Think of it as turning back. It's the repetition of one or several words, at the end of one clause and the beginning of the next.
Romney: You want talk about math that doesn't add up? What about 4 trillion in deficits? *Obama nods* #wut #debate—
Dan Pence (@dantheman007a) October 17, 2012
A close relation is Epistrophe. It's an emphatic repetition of the word or phrase, this time at the end of the sentence. Romney used it for one of his best lines of the night, "When we're talking about math that doesn't add up, how about $5 trillion of deficits over the last four years. That's math that doesn't add up."
.@MittRomney on taxes, says middle-income taxpayers have been buried last four years. #debate—
TheBlaze (@theblaze) October 17, 2012
Both Obama and Romney used Hyperbole. Romney said, "the reason I want middle-income taxpayers to have lower taxes is because middle-income taxpayers have been buried over the past four years." That's an exaggeration to create emphasis or effect. It's probably one of the most common rhetorical devices. Since the only sure things in life are death and taxes, it's likely that people actually buried aren't paying tax.
To the Romans, many of the techniques of rhetoric were know as the "hidden darts". The idea was that if a rhetorical form was successful, it would lodge invisibly in the mind of the audience, serving to embed message deep into memory. If the audience respond to your hidden dart by standing and applauding, or for that matter tweeting, then your subtle technique has been overplayed! Hidden darts, when fired superbly, are silent but deadly.
President Obama produced this little jewel some 21 minutes into the debate, and it slipped past Twitter completely unnoticed:
"I want to give middle-class families and folks who are striving to get into the middle-class some relief. Because they have been hit hard over the past decade. Over the last 15, over the last 20 years.
So four years ago I stood on a stage just like this one…….."
This is a rhetorical form called a diminution, and the President has deployed it to emphasize what a few short years he has had in the White House. Notice the stepped timings: " a decade, 15 years, 20 years…" In the mind of the listener an unspoken time scale now stretches even further back: 25 years, 50 years. So what a tiny amount of time, by comparison is a mere four years. The President was then able to go on and describe various accomplishments that sounded all the more impressive for having only been achieved in such a short little period. And the Twitterverse remained silent. He slipped the deliberate diminution technique past everyone and let the silent but deadly message slip in. Now that's rhetoric!
How about a few things that did light up on Twitter. Well, Big Bird most certainly proved an attention getter.
Obama: We haven't heard any specifics from Romney about solving deficit besides eliminating Big Bird and Planned Parenthood—
Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) October 17, 2012
The reason "Big Bird" falls so compellingly on the eardrums is because it's an example of alliteration, the repetition of a sound: b-b in this case. When President Obama used the Big Bird reference he also followed it up in the same sentence with the p-p sound of a second electoral alliteration: "Planned Parenthood". It's a cleverly chosen combo because in addition to both being alliterative, the letters "b" and "p" are also explosives. In order to say them, we have to explode air through our lips. Try saying "percussion" right now and feel your lips explode with a pop of breath on that first "p".
Explosive consonants, when used in alliteration, become both memorable and pleasing to the ear. Big Bird and Planned Parenthood were made for each other!
Governor Romney's "binders full of women" took the title of rhetorical back-fire of the night, and became have been the evening's number one tweet topic.
'Binders' Dominate Twitter Activity, Google Searches in Presidential Debate - on.mash.to/RSnv8r—
Pete Cashmore (@mashable) October 17, 2012
"Binders full of women" was a hyperbolic attempt at demonstrating equal opportunity employment, but toppled over into unintentional euphemism as the audience instantly reflected on that other group of professionals, often associated with politicians, for whom binders-full-of-women would be a stock-in-trade.
Rhetoric is word-play. It helps us to arrange sounds and structures into forms that connect with an audience on a deeper level. At it's simplest, it can be the use of repetition techniques to emphasize a key word. At it's most complex it can take on a sudoku-like intricacy. When overdone, there can be all manner of embarrassing unintentional consequences. One might even say "binders-full" of consequences.
About us:
Gavin is a founding partner at fassforward consulting group. He blogs about PowerPoint, Presenting, Communication and Message Discipline at makeapowerfulpoint.com. You can follow him on twitter @powerfulpoint.
Peter is a writer, trainer, and speaker on all aspects of Presenting. He coaches business executives in how to be at their best when on their feet. His bi-weekly blog, The Presenters' Blog, examines core disciplines of public speaking and looks at how those disciplines are being illustrated by new stories around the world. You can follow his Twitter feed on @speak2all
A Note about bias. Neither of us can or will be voting in the US elections, but, like all humans, we have biases. We will try to look at the debates purely from a point of view of speaking, messaging and presenting, to see what the rest of us -— those that will never run for President, can learn.
Gavin is a founding partner at fassforward consulting group. He blogs about PowerPoint, Presenting, Communication and Message Discipline at makeapowerfulpoint.com. You can follow him on twitter @powerfulpoint.
More at Google+, Facebook and Pinterest. Comments are welcome, links are appreciated. If you're interested in writing guest posts for this blog, please <a href="mailto:g


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There was plenty of fussing, fighting and political grandstanding, but in the end, the $787 billion stimulus bill passed. One sliver of the pie—$7.2 billion to be exact—has been allocated for broadband expansion to and improvement in "underserved areas." That money is further split between two government departments: $4.7 billion goes to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is run by the Commerce Department; and another $2.5 billion goes to the Rural Development division of the Department of Agriculture. Calls last week to the two departments revealed little about how they would use and distribute the money. Representatives from both offices said they had yet to get all the details from the White House, and the bill itself is somewhat vague in defining important variables such as "what qualifies as broadband?" and "what qualifies as an undeserved area?"
Believe it or not, the Department of Agriculture (DOA) has the greater experience here, having pushed out electric power to rural areas through the Rural Electrification Act of 1936. More recently, starting in 2000 the DOA began providing loans for the development of rural broadband Internet service—but reports on the program's success have been mixed. Over at the Commerce Department, the NTIA's most recent experiment with large-scale telecommunications rollout is the digital television transition, which is widely regarded as a disaster of cost overruns and embarrassing last-minute delays.
Much of the impetus behind broadband expansion has come from alarming reports that the U.S. is "falling behind" other industrialized nations in broadband adoption—a report last December by Free Press Action Fund called Down Payment on Our Digital Future (.pdf) claimed that we were in 15th place among developed nations. It's worth noting, however, that, statistically speaking, most U.S. homes do seem to have access to broadband. The numbers surrounding total broadband availability in the U.S. are a bit hard to unpack, but the cable industry claims that 92 percent of homes have access to its high-speed Internet service. Yet another study from 2008 by the Pew Research Center found that broadband adoption is 55 percent, and that growth seems to be flattening out (the previous year's figure was 54 percent).
More From Popular Mechanics
So what's going on here? Do we need more broadband or don't we? Twenty-seven percent of the Pew report survey respondents weren't Internet users at all, and they tended to be older (median age 61) and have lower incomes than those who do go online regularly. So it may be that broadband stimulus in America has less to do with pushing cables out to rural areas than it does with finding a way to make broadband more affordable.
Here's where the bill's vague language can come in handy. The biggest problem with broadband service in America is not a lack of availability, it's a lack of competition. Most users have only one or two options for service, and while prices have come down slightly, they are still relatively high for Americans who feel increasingly pinched. Pew's study found an average monthly broadband bill of $34.50, down 4 percent from the previous year, but it also showed a gradual migration away from cable service, which tends to be faster and more expensive, to cheaper and slower DSL service. So the broad language could end up defining an "underserved" area as simply an area without enough competition to make service affordable.
Granted, there's plenty of room for skepticism here. With ambiguously written legislation cramming billions of public dollars down the throats of multiple government agencies with a mandate to spend the money quickly, the potential for confusion, waste and abuse is high. Nevertheless I'm still cautiously optimistic, since the need for universal broadband adoption is actually far more pressing than even most public policy wonks understand.
To understand why universal broadband adoption is so pressing, consider the experience of a customer who buys a new Windows VistaÂequipped computer. That computer was likely made in a factory a month or two previous to its purchase. By the time it is opened by its user, the computer's operating system could have missed several operating system updates—Microsoft releases software patches almost every day, and most computers are set to update cumulatively once a week. The typical update is between 500 kilobytes and 30 megabytes, which will take anywhere from 1 minute to an hour to download over a 56 kbps dial-up account (assuming our hypothetical new computer even has an integrated dial-up modem—many don't). If our new user had purchased a computer during Microsoft's transition to Vista's Service Pack 1, the computer would prompt its user to download an update of 435 MB, keeping his dial-up connection busy pecking for bits for more than 17 hours. (Mac users, don't start snickering yet, the latest security updates to OS X Leopard and Tiger were 43 MB and 164 MB, respectively.)
The automatic updating of operating systems is only a minor example of a larger technological trend—each new generation of technology evolves to take advantage of the fastest networking connections available at the time. Consequently, any new devices and services depend upon broadband connectivity to work properly. That makes many new consumer electronic devices, such as Blu-ray players, gaming systems and movie download boxes such as Roku and Apple TV, unappealing if not useless to users who don't have high-speed Internet connections.
These are discretionary purchases at best, but what is far more important is the slow migration of basic services to Web-dependant formats. In the commercial space, that includes "cloud computing" applications such as Google Apps document-creation software, Facebook, Apple's MobileMe and Microsoft's Windows Live services. But the government is also increasingly reliant upon Internet connectivity for its services. Last year more than 60 percent of tax returns were filed electronically. The IRS has a stated goal of getting that number to 80 percent, and with good reason—it costs 35 cents to process an e-filed return compared to $2.87 to process each paper return. What's more, the Internet is increasingly becoming the public information dissemination tool of choice for the government: President Obama releases a weekly video address on YouTube, almost all government documents are posted as PDFs, and updates on the progress of the stimulus package are released on recovery.gov. Americans who either cannot afford or are not capable of using reliable, robust Internet connections are at risk of becoming increasingly marginalized as citizens.
Many in the business community refer to the concept of "network effects" to explain the collective value of technologies such as the phone system. As the logic goes, the more people there are who have and use these technologies, the more valuable they are to each user. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. When a technology reaches enough critical mass to become a societal benefit, every citizen who is not a user drags down the utility of the system for everyone else and hinders its overall development. For example, if I can rely upon the assumption that everyone has a touch-tone telephone, then I can roll out a service that allows people to dial in for information from an automated help line. If not everybody has a touch-tone phone, then I have to hire operators to field a certain percentage of calls; the more people there are who don't have the more advanced touch-tone technology, the more operators I must hire, and at a certain point, the cost becomes prohibitive, so I don't roll out the service at all.
Without widespread broadband adoption, many other federal technology projects cannot move forward efficiently. The stimulus bill includes funding for a rollout of electronic medical records. The Department of Health & Human Services regulations require patients to have access to their own medical records, and the natural way to grant easy and private access to digital medical records would be through a secure online interface. Yet the biggest users of the public health care system, the elderly, are also the most resistant to adopting the technology that would reduce costs. It may prove worthwhile to incentivize nonconnected households to get broadband just to realize the greater savings of a fully digital, networked healthcare system.
And in a parallel to the New Deal's Rural Electrification Act, the modern Smart Grid proposed by the new administration is heavily dependant on a persistent two-way flow of data between utilities and residential customers to track electricity usage in real time. I spoke recently with Billy Ray, superintendent of the Glasgow Electric Plant Board in Glasgow, Ky., who refers to the synergy of electrical power service and broadband as "infotricity." Ray's municipal electrical service first started rolling out coaxial cables to every house in town in 1988 to allow the utility to remotely read networked electric meters. Since they had installed the coax, they started operating a not-for-profit cable service as well. When the Web gained popularity in 1995, Glasgow rolled out broadband Internet service as well. "We skipped right over dial-up," says Ray. Now Ray is starting to roll out fiberoptic lines to residences, since he is anticipating a future of intelligent thermostats and other household control systems that are in constant communication with the utility to better manage the local grid's electrical load. The utility could get the advantage of more efficient operations, and the citizens get the benefit of some of the lowest-cost broadband and cable service in the U.S.
I'm the first to admit that the stimulus package probably wasn't the best legislative vehicle to fund this through. The money allotted will probably not be that effective as instant economic stimulus, and broadband in many areas may initially be greeted with shrugs of indifference. Those who don't see the value of the Internet right now might not be much more excited by it just because the price is a bit lower or the service a bit better. But if the money is administered intelligently as a fund to "fill in the blanks" in broadband service—offering faster and cheaper options in markets where competition is low—then we all benefit from the network effects.


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The notion of a two-track economy seems to be taking hold. We kicked the concept around pretty well last week — your 130 comments (as of this morning) helped clarify a great deal of what we know, don't know, and need to worry about. The two-track concept overlaps with, and builds on, long-standing issues of inequality in the U.S., but it's also different. Within existing income classes, some people find themselves in relatively good shape and others are completely hammered.
New dimensions of differentiation are also taking hold within occupations and within industries – the WSJ this morning has nice illustrations. The contours of this differentiation begin to shape our recovery or, if you prefer, who recovers and who does not – it's hard to say how this will play out in conventional aggregate statistics, but these are likely to become increasingly misleading.
For now, I would highlight three points about the two-track future for banks – partly because this matters politically, and partly of the way it impacts the rest of the process.
- The remaining big banks have become bigger and more powerful economically — the Washington Post emphasized deposits yesterday; good point, but only part of the picture. The Financial Roundtable is tickled pink about the government's "reform" proposals (except the consumer protection part), with good reason.
- Many smaller banks are getting squeezed – as reflected in the latest news on the FDIC's "danger/sick list". The smaller banks really do not seem to understand how they have been done in by the big banks – if they did get it, they'd be up on Capitol Hill and all over the media arguing strenuously for much tougher controls on bad big bank behavior. The lack of leadership among non-large banks is remarkable.
- The WSJ today has the data: borrowing costs for large banks are now lower than for small banks. This is, of course, a direct reflection of the government's firefighting/firesetting strategy: unlimited cheap resources for large big banks; for small banks, not so much.
So now it's all about whether you are a preferred client of Goldman Sachs or another big finance house.
If you're on the inside track, this is a great time to buy US assets that are being dumped by people without access to cheap credit, or assets overseas (e.g., Asia, where the "carry" or interest rate differential relative to the Federal Reserve is already positive and the exchange rate risk is all upside).
If you're on the outside track, you are experiencing a version of Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine". Some (former) members of the elite are in this category – this is another standard feature of emerging market crises and "recoveries". But mostly, of course, it's nonelite on the outside track and a more concentrated, reconfigured version of the elite on the inside.
This can lead to short-term growth – the speed of recovery in many emerging markets surprises many, from about 12 months after the crisis breaks. But it also leads to repeated crisis, to derailed growth, and to a loss of income, status, and prospects for most of society.
By Simon Johnson


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Also see Systemic Pharmacotherapeutics of the Nervous System Systemic Pharmacotherapeutics of the Nervous System .
Seizure Control:
Status epilepticus (continuous or cluster seizures) in dogs and cats may be interrupted by diazepam, given at 0.5 mg/kg (not to exceed 10 mg at one time), IV. Sodium pentobarbital to effect, not to exceed 3–15 mg/kg, IV, may also be used, followed by phenobarbital at 2–4 mg/kg, IV, every 6 hr. A better alternative is to give propofol as a constant rate infusion at 0.1–0.6 mg/kg/min, followed by a loading dose of phenobarbital (if the animal is not already on phenobarbital) of 2–4 mg/kg, IV, every 6 hr for a total of four doses. Diazepam given at 0.5–1 mg/kg/hr as a constant-rate infusion may be used to control persistent status epilepticus. If the animal has a preexisting hepatic condition that precludes the use of phenobarbital, then levetiracitam 40–60 mg/kg may be given IV, SC,or rectally, resulting in a therapeutic blood level that will persist for 9 hr. Oral anticonvulsants should be resumed as soon as possible if currently being given.
Recommended maintenance anticonvulsant therapy in dogs and cats is phenobarbital at 2–4 mg/kg, PO, bid, as needed to control seizures or to maintain serum levels at 15–40 mcg/mL. Dogs can be treated with potassium bromide (KBr), 22–44 mg/kg given with food until the serum level is 1,500–3,000 mcg/mL. Because KBr has a long half-life, if started at maintanance levels, the steady state therapeutic level will not be reached until 3 mo after initiation of therapy. Phenobarbital may become clinically effective in 72 hr, whereas KBr may take several weeks. The longterm efficacy of phenobarbital and KBr is about the same. However, KBr bypasses the liver, so it is preferred in animals with liver disease. Animals taking phenobarbital often have increased liver enzymes and cholesterol levels but decreased thyroid levels; these should be expected and often do not require treatment. KBr has also been linked with megaesophagus and pancreatitis in dogs. A source of KBr is commercially available, or it may be prepared by a compounding pharmacist by mixing KBr crystals in water to give a concentration of 250 mg/mL or by packing the crystals in gelatin capsules. KBr serum levels are affected by the salt content of the diet, so the diet should be consistent; the higher the dietary salt content, the faster the bromide is excreted via the kidneys. KBr has proved more efficacious than phenobarbital in dogs with cluster seizures and for seizures that are difficult to control. Phenobarbital and KBr may be given in combination. Diazepam is not an effective longterm oral anticonvulsant in dogs because of its short half-life; however, a compounding pharmacist can prepare rectal suppositories containing diazepam 0.5–2 mg/kg for home use in dogs with cluster seizures, or the injectable form can be given rectally at 1 mg/kg to prevent trips to emergency clinics. The tertiary anticonvulsants, levetiracitam and zonisamide, are gaining greater favor. Zonisamide especially has shown good efficacy in controlling seizures in those animals with a poor response to phenobarbital and KBr.
KBr may cause asthma in cats, so its use in cats is no longer recommended. Diazepam at 0.5–1 mg/kg, PO, bid, may be used in cats with uncontrolled seizures because of its longer half-life in cats; however, in one report diazepam was associated with fatal hepatic necrosis in cats and thus warrants close monitoring throughout the first few weeks of therapy. Phenobarbital is the anticonvulsant of choice in cats; if seizures are not well controlled, then levetiracitam is added. Acupuncture may be useful to control seizures in all species.
Acute Spinal Cord Injury:
Acute spinal cord injury from trauma, intervertebral disc herniation, or fibrocartilaginous embolization resulting in paraplegia must be treated aggressively in dogs to ensure the best chance for recovery. If the dog is seen within the first 8 hr after injury, methylprednisolone sodium succinate or prednisolone sodium succinate is given at 30 mg/kg, IV, followed by 15 mg/kg in 2 and 6 hr, or a constant IV infusion to give a total dose of 60 mg/kg. Steroid use is not advised if it has been longer than 8 hr since the trauma occurred, because there may be more deleterious effects than beneficial ones. Dexamethasone is not used. Oral famotidine at 0.5–1 mg/kg, once or twice daily; cimetidine at 5–10 mg/kg, bid; or misoprostol at 3 mcg/kg, bid, can be used to protect the GI tract. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) 30% solution may be given IV at 2.2 mL/kg, then repeated in 24 hr. PEG is a newer treatment that appears promising. If the injury occurred more than 72 hr before treatment, the benefit of PEG is questionable. For maximal benefit, decompressive spinal surgery should be performed as soon as possible, usually within 24 hr, when indicated.
Anti-inflammatory Drugs:
For control of CNS inflammation in dogs and cats unassociated with a virus or other agent, prednisone at 2 mg/kg/day may be given PO. Oral famotidine at 0.5–1 mg/kg, once or twice daily; cimetidine at 5–10 mg/kg, bid; or misoprostol at 3 mcg/kg, bid, is given to prevent GI irritation. If GI ulcers develop and melena is detected, sucralfate (500 mg for cats and dogs < 20 kg; 1 g for dogs >20 kg), PO, tid-qid, is given 2 hr apart from other drugs. NSAIDs should never be given in conjunction with steroids, because GI ulceration is common. The dosages of all steroids given should be slowly tapered; abrupt withdrawal should be avoided. Prednisone can be used as longterm maintenance therapy on alternate days to avoid complete suppression of adrenal function. Other chemotherapeutics used for inflammatory CNS disease such as MUE are cytarabine (50 mg/m2, SC, bid for 2 days, then repeated at 3–4 wk intervals), mycophenolate (10 mg/kg, PO, bid), and cyclosporine (5 mg/kg, PO, bid).
Antiedema Drugs:
After cranial surgery and in animals with brain tumors or head injuries that cause a declining neurologic status, 20% mannitol, 0.5–1 g/kg, may be given slowly IV. Mannitol is not given in spinal cord injuries. Use of methylprednisolone sodium succinate as described above for acute spinal cord injury is no longer recommended for head injuries in people, and its use in the veterinary field is declining. For palliative treatment of brain tumors, oral prednisone may be used.
Muscle Relaxants:
Diazepam at 0.5 mg/kg or methocarbamol at 40 mg/kg, PO, tid-qid, relieves muscle spasms from intervertebral disc protrusion and other sources of nerve root irritation.
Antimicrobial Therapy:
Refer to discussions of specific infections for antimicrobial therapy recommendations.
Nursing Care:
Animals with paraplegia and quadriplegia need intensive nursing care. The animal should be maintained on padding and turned every 4–6 hr to avoid decubital ulcers. The bladder must be expressed or catheterized every 6–8 hr. In paraplegic animals, diazepam may be given to facilitate relaxation of the urinary sphincter, making manual expression of the bladder easier. Urine must be monitored for evidence of cystitis. The skin must be kept clean and free of urine and feces to prevent dermatitis. Quadriplegic animals may need to be hand fed nutritious food and given plenty of water. Manual extension and flexion of joints and muscle massage will help delay contractures and muscle atrophy in paralyzed limbs.


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Anndra Neen
Sisters Phoebe and Annette Stephens grew up in a family of artists; their grandmother Annette Nancarrow—a painter, sculptor, and jewelry designer in 1930s Mexico—worked alongside artists such as Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, and her pieces were worn by Frida Kahlo, Peggy Guggenheim, and Helena Rubinstein. With this impossibly elegant history in mind, the Stephenses launch Anndra Neen, shell and stone amulets hung from hammered nickel breastplates and tarnished, forearm-spanning spiked cuffs, fit for a Mayan princess or medieval warrior. All are handmade at the Stephenses' traditional, low-impact workshop in Mexico City, where they were born. The pair spend half of their time south of the border and the rest in Manhattan. "I wore one of our first pieces to a party, and a male friend of ours asked to borrow it because he thought it would give him warrior powers with women," Annette says. "Next thing we knew, he was talking to the hottest girl at the party."
Next: Agua Cota
Agua Cota
More From ELLE
Manhattan-based, Mexican-born designer Christian Cota has been a fixture on the NYC benefit circuit—and has dressed his fellow philanthropist beauties—since he started with a small line of delicate evening gowns and separates in 2008. Now he has set his sights on one cause in particular: Wine to Water (winetowater.org), a charity that helps provide clean drinking water to impoverished communities around the world. The 29-year-old launches Agua Cota, a capsule collection of bamboo silk jersey and linen sundresses, with 25 percent of the proceeds going directly to the foundation. Cota also recently produced locally sourced, eco-friendly raffia bracelets for the Paradisus Resort in the Dominican Republic, where he traveled to creatively recharge for his fall 2010 collection. We can't wait for his next move.
Next: Costello Tagliapietra
Costello Tagliapietra
Between 17 and 20 percent of all industrial pollution comes from the treatment of fabric, which makes the textile industry the third biggest consumer and contaminator of water on the planet, according to the World Bank. Beloved Brooklyn designers Robert Tagliapietra and Jeffrey Costello are doing their part to change that. For spring and continuing into fall, their exquisitely draped gowns are now printed and colored using AirDye, a revolutionary process that requires no water and produces no toxic waste. This nifty technique saves up to 25 gallons of H2O per garment. The added bonus? All AirDye fabric is naturally reversable, giving you twice the dress for your buck.
Next: Lauren Pierce
Lauren Pierce
Famous for her burlap for-charity Feed bags, Lauren Bush tries bespoke clothing with Lauren Pierce Atelier, a new line of batik dresses hand-dyed by craftswomen in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sold exclusively at Barneys New York, the collection offers five styles along with a limited made-to-order option, which will arrive six weeks later with your name and the signature of the D.R.C. artisan who made it. With the purchase directly boosting the income of these budding designers, Bush's fair-trade shifts are likely to change lives. How often can you say that about a dress?
Next: Frieda and Nellie
Frieda and Nellie
Remember knotting friendship bracelets into your hair, or stacking them by the dozens on your wrists? Friends Stacy Herzog, 24, and Sarah Reid, 29, do, and they're bringing them back with Frieda and Nellie, a new line of hand-stitched bracelets and necklaces named after their grandmothers. Inspired by camp-style arts and crafts, the NYC-based pair attach cotton bracelets—stored in a Caboodle kit, no less—to hand-me-down costume jewels from their nanas. "These pieces aren't meant to just be a trend from the past," Reid says. "They're our memories."
Next: Metalskin
Alicia Halegua, the brains behind Metalskin, a line of chic wraparound leather bracelets, is going green for spring with a selection of vegan cuffs in honor of the designer's vegetarian sister. Made from animal-free materials, including vegetable-dyed linen and vinyl-treated cloth, the bands come in a dreamy grass green faux ostrich (below) and plain flaxseed and almond hues. Almost good enough to eat.
Next: Leaf
Known for their fashion-forward basics—sultan pants in organic fair-trade cotton—Marie-Hélène Gautier and Debra Kellner are now adding sustainable cashmere from Tibet and Mongolia to their three-year-old line, Leaf. Each piece—including incredibly soft scarves in mellow mushrooms, cool tie-dyes, tasseled ginghams, and a striped tunic dress—is spun, woven, dyed, and knitted in fair-trade conditions in the Kathmandu Valley and Mongolia. Barneys New York has bought the collection for fall, and its website will run a two-minute video on the brand's green, people-friendly practices.


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The Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, a 125-year-old education and research institution best known for summer courses that attract scientists from around the world, has signed an agreement to affiliate with the University of Chicago, initiating a relationship that aims to put the center on a firmer financial footing.
The agreement, made official at a signing ceremony late Monday in New York, is part of a broader trend reflecting the struggle of independent research institutions that face increased competition for dwindling federal funds, amid other economic pressures.
Late last year, for example, the long-running Boston Biomedical Research Institute announced it would shut down due to financial problems exacerbated by increased competition for research grants.
The new relationship of the Marine Biological Laboratory and the University of Chicago will help the nonprofit trim costs and take advantage of the large research university's clout and financial resources.
"It's really tough to run a small independent research institution on grant income, because we don't have the revenues associated with a university, like tuition or a large endowment or alumni donations," said Joan V. Ruderman, president of the marine research institute, who said the search for an affiliation with a large institution began last summer.
The new agreement will allow the institution, which has a $43 million operating budget, to shore up its finances, in part by reducing administrative costs and insurance rates.
The 300-employee marine lab will also benefit from the University of Chicago's expertise in drafting strategic plans and the new connections it could make with federal agencies and funders, Ruderman said.
The Woods Hole center will remain a separate, nonprofit institution and continue its joint graduate program with Brown University.
Neil Shubin, an associate dean at the University of Chicago, said the affiliation will allow the university to expand its programs and offerings; currently, it has many marine biologists distributed over various departments.
"We're a Midwestern university," Shubin said. "We have fresh water, but we don't have salt. We're looking to put a little salt in our veins."
Shubin said the affiliation will be analogous to its stewardship of two major national laboratories: the university manages Argonne National Laboratory, a science and engineering research center, and is a partner in a consortium that manages the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, a high-
energy physics laboratory.
Those relationships have allowed the university to develop research and education programs in areas such as materials science and cosmology that would otherwise be difficult to maintain.
"We're going to help them with their bottom line," Shubin said. "Independent research institutions are really suffering in our country; that whole model is really endangered. It's unfortunate, because those enterprises are really the source of so much science."
Because the Woods Hole campus is most active during the summer, when more than 1,700 scientists from institutions across the world come for advanced classes and research opportunities, the university may try to find ways to use the facilities year-round, developing opportunities for students and scientists in the off-season.
The marine laboratory maintains five year-round research programs, focused on areas including regenerative biology, studies of ecosystems, and evolutionary biology.
Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@
globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @carolynyjohnson.


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Matt's back and so are the JBs!
Erin Hodgson and Matt O'Neal return to talk about insect pests of soybean in Iowa and the greater midwest. On today's episode, the return of the soybean aphid, the japanese beetles and a variety of uncommon insects that feed on soybean plants and other crops (stink bugs, celery leaf tier, and colapspis beetles).


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The docks at Hartley Bay Marina
Hartley Bay Marina - very well run operation
Just before we hit the head on wind.
The classic artsy canoe shot
The entrance to one of the portages off Base Lake.
Welcome to George Bay - This panorama is at the end of the Main channel.
Dullas Rapids at the north end of the main channel.
Part of the Whales Mouth
Part of The Whales Mouth
Well, this didn't work, but it is a view looking backwards from the canoe. Tough picture to take considering I had to turn around in the canoe in the middle of the lake.
Barb grabbed this of me while she was taking a nature break.


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Seven tips for middle school students who will be reading and commenting on blogs.
1. Assume it's public
Some blogs are private so that only the class can see them. Others are public and the world can read what you say. Sometimes, it's hard to tell how the blog you're commenting on is set up. That's why I suggest you assume everything's public.
2. Use the "2 Minute Rule"
In person, my rule is that you must be listening to a conversation at least 2 minutes before adding anything. This is kind to the people who in the conversation before you got there and it helps you make the best comments possible.
Online, you need to read the entire conversation before responding. Same deal as in person.
3. Do unto others
Be kind, be constructive. You can use the sandwich method to leave a good comment: start with praise, go on to your constructive criticism, and close with praise.
4. Build on previous comments
Read not only the original blog post but also the comments. Then attempt to add to the conversation with statements like, "I agree with Peter when he said his favorite rule was the 2 Minute Rule." Go on to explain why. The "why" is the more important part. No one learns from a "me, too!" response but we can all learn from additional explanations you can add.
5. Quote me on that
If you're responding to one part of what was said, copy-paste the relevant text so we'll know what you're talking about.
6. Edit, edit, edit
I like to read all my online writing out loud to see if it sounds right. Then I'll remove unnecessary words and correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
7. Protect your identity
I suggest you use a screen name or your first name only. When leaving a blog comment, your email address is usually given only to the site owner so use a real one.
What tips would you add to the list?
Thanks, Cool Cat Teacher (Ten habits of bloggers) for inspiring this post!


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Living on the edge: An innovative model of mangrove-hammock boundaries in Florida
The key to understanding how future hurricanes and sea level rise may trigger changes to South Florida's native coastal forests lurks below the surface, according to a new model linking coastal forests to groundwater. Just inland from the familiar mangroves that line the coasts lie hardwood hammocks that are sensitive to salinity changes in water found in the soils.
University of Miami (UM) Ecologist Donald L. DeAngelis, who is also a researcher for the U.S Geological Survey (USGS), has worked with collaborators to develop a novel computer model describing the underlying forces that maintain this vegetative boundary. The findings, published in the current issue of the journal Landscape Ecology, indicate that large pulses of saline water into the hammock vegetation may cause mangroves to invade areas now populated by hardwood hammocks.
"A high level of salt in the soil favors the mangroves and stresses the hardwoods," says DeAngelis, professor in the Biology Department at the UM college of Arts and Sciences and one of the principal investigators of this project "Hardwood hammocks are a unique feature of the Everglades, they are home to many species, and if they decrease in numbers that will mean a loss of habitat for some organisms."
During storm surges, the salty winds and waves rush into areas of brackish water. The likelihood of such salt water overwash from the coast is expected to increase as sea level rise affects the natural coastal processes in the region.
The study is one of the first to couple vegetation dynamics with hydrology and salinity of the area in order to study the factors affecting the forest boundary. The work reveals that the sharp mangrove-hammock boundary, or ecotone, is defined by a combination of factors such as water levels during the dry season, tides, changes in the land's features, and trees own ability to alter the environment to their benefit (a process known as positive feedback).
"Ecotones are of great interest to ecologists because many species like to live along the edges between different vegetation types, so you can get rich diversity in those areas," says Jiang Jiang, doctoral student in the Biology Department at UM College of Arts and Sciences and co-author of the study.
Changes in water management, such as the expected increase in freshwater from the implementation of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, may help offset the possible effects caused by future salt water overwash and inundation.
"The USGS project that we are working on will include a big landscape hydrology model that will predict the freshwater flow into the southern Everglades and at the same time take into account sea level rise," says DeAngelis.
The study, supported and funded by the USGS, lays groundwork for a larger investigation in which the agency is developing models to look at how sea level rise will affect coastal regions in South Florida. Other co-authors are Thomas J. Smith III, ecologist at the USGS and co-principal investigator of the project; Su Yean Teh, lecturer at the School of Mathematical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia; and Hock-Lye Koh, professor at the School of Civil Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
The scientists hope to extend the application of this model to include other ecotones and other parts of the world that experience frequent storm surges. The researchers would like to be able to predict if salt water intrusion will have a long-lasting effect on vegetation, and on fresh water supply.
Provided by University of Miami


text: Muslims throughout the world have been marking Eid al-Adha, but in war-torn Syria there is little to celebrate as most people struggle to meet their basic needs: food, water, and shelter. Their plight has been highlighted by Arabic media reports that cite a fatwa, or religious ruling, by a local imam that allows people who are desperately hungry to eat dogs and cats. Eating dog, cat or donkey is forbidden under Islamic dietary laws. The imam in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in the capital, Damascus, reportedly said at a mosque Friday that dog, cat and donkey meat could be eaten "after reaching a desperate need and the stores of food were inadequate to feed the population under the siege." Yarmouk has been besieged for months by Syrian government forces seeking to flush out rebel fighters. During the Eid al-Adha holiday, one of Islam's most revered observances, Muslims around the world sacrifice sheep and share the meat with the poor. It corresponds with the height of the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia that annually draws 2 million Muslims. A YouTube video purports to show a group of religious leaders outside Damascus issuing a fatwa permitting the eating of cats, kittens, donkeys, and animals killed in shelling. The man reading the statement appeals to the world, and particularly to Muslims who are completing the Hajj pilgrimage, to think of the Syrian children "dying of hunger" while the viewers' stomachs are full. "How can't they just stand for us, for our children?" the sheikh asks. "Do they want us to get to the point when we are forced to eat the flesh of our dead martyrs and our beloved just to survive?" CNN cannot independently confirm the authenticity of the video. Syria's war: CNN's Nick Paton Walsh reflects on front line reports 'We are living in despair' At the Atmeh refugee camp in Idlib province in northern Syria, some refugees set up improvised vendor stands for the celebration – but drew few customers who could afford their goods. "Before the crisis, during Eid, we used to go to the shops and buy items, we were happy," said Suad Zein. "Eid was a wonderful holiday here. Now these days I can't even buy my boy a pair of trousers, or shoes, or even a loaf of bread. "I have eight children. I can't support them all. We are living in despair." Said another: "We have nothing to celebrate. We used to celebrate with food, drink, desserts. We used to make pastries. … Now there's nothing." Some refugees in Aleppo, Syria, were more fortunate. A benefactor donated sheep for the traditional animal sacrifice, which were to be slaughtered and distributed among families in need, a man in charge of the slaughter said. The U.N. food agency, the World Food Programme, warned last month that the violence in Syria was making it hard to get aid to those in need. It estimated that 4 million people in the country were unable to produce or buy enough food. Eid al-Adha commemorates when God appeared in a dream to Abraham – known as Ibrahim to Muslims – and asked him to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience. As Abraham was about to perform the sacrifice, God stopped him and gave him a sheep to kill in place of his son. Versions of the story also appear in the Torah and in the Bible's Old Testament. The four-day celebration is also known as the Feast of Sacrifice, or Greater Eid. It is the longer of two Eid holidays observed by Muslims. Eid al-Fitr, or Little Eid, follows the holy month of Ramadan. Asma al-Assad makes rare appearance A rare interview with Asma al-Assad, wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, aired Tuesday on Syrian state TV, showing her as she visited the Daughters of Martyrs' school in Damascus. The first lady, wearing a gray sweater with the Syrian flag in the center, is shown being greeted with applause from dozens of Syrian girls and planting olive trees with them. The olive tree is a symbol of giving and peace, she says, as well as "a symbol of life and endurance, those who sacrificed and are sacrificing for this homeland are doing that for us so we can live and prosper in this land." The interviewer asks Asma al-Assad, who lived in Britain before her marriage to Syria's president, about past rumors that she had left the war-torn country for Russia, Lebanon or Britain. Smiling, she replies, "I am here, I exist here. My husband and my children are present here in Syria. It is quite rational for me to be here with them. And just like the majority of the Syrians, I was raised to love the homeland and I grew up with that notion that wherever I'd travel or lived before, and no matter how long people stay away, there is nothing more precious than the homeland." The first lady has also been a star of the recently established Instagram account of the Syrian presidency, where she is seen smiling, showing off her volunteer work and attending social events with her husband. Activists: Truck carrying civilians hit Syria's descent into civil war began in March 2011, when Bashar al-Assad's regime cracked down on peaceful anti-government protesters. That conflict spiraled into an armed uprising and a crisis that the United Nations says has claimed more than 100,000 lives. On Wednesday, at least 53 people – including 13 children and four women – were killed nationwide, the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria reported. Four children and six women were among the fatalities in a blast in Daraa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. At least 21 people died when their truck was hit by an explosive device in southern Syria, opposition activists said. The truck carrying civilians was hit as it passed through an area controlled by troops loyal to the Syrian government, the group said. Government officials did not immediately respond to the allegation. Two suicide bombers from the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra rebel group detonated themselves Wednesday afternoon inside the gates of Aleppo Central Prison, killing seven regime forces, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Meanwhile, the Turkish army has reinforced its positions near a strategic border gate between Turkey and opposition-controlled northern Syria, where ISIS fighters have been active. Last month, ISIS fighters pushed more moderate Syrian rebels out of the nearby Syrian town of Azaz. Weapons inspectors As the war rages, international inspectors continue their mission to inventory and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons arsenal. Experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, supported by the United Nations, have conducted verification activities at 11 sites identified by Syrian authorities, the OPCW said Wednesday. They have overseen the destruction of "critical equipment" at six sites, as well as the destruction of some unloaded chemical weapons munitions, it said. On Monday, Syria became bound by the international treaty banning chemical arms, the Chemical Weapons Convention, which is implemented by the OPCW. A team of OPCW inspectors entered the country on October 1. The joint mission is tasked by a U.N. Security Council resolution with ridding the country of chemical weapons by mid-2014.


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With the chaos of the holidays slowly subsiding into the background, you've finally got a few moments to catch your breath and unwind a bit before getting back to the grind of your normal routine. We can't think of a better time to kick up your feet, crack open the packaging on that fresh new iOS device you were luck enough to receive from a thoughtful friend or relation, and load that baby up with some heavy-duty games.
But which games? There are quite a few them, as just a glance at Apple's overstocked App Store will tell you. Don't worry, though—we're here to make your life easier. If you're the proud new owner of the latest iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch models, we've found nine games that take advantage of the innovations Apple has built into its iOS offerings. From artsy indies and frenetic arcade action to role-playing game geekery and brain teasing fun, these apps are must-have additions to your mobile device. (Note that the listed prices reflect the regular cost of downloading these apps, and that prices may go up and down depending on holiday sales.)
A geeky college student's trek to catalogue magical flowers turns into a hilarious and utterly charming quest to liberate the island's mechanical inhabitants from their oppressive spirit overlords in this bizarre, beautifully designed adventure from BitMonster. Defeating mask-adorned foes by chasing them down and ripping flowers off their back is as oddly compelling a pursuit as the game's pleasantly peculiar character interactions.
Lili: $2, compatible with iPhone 4 and later, fourth-generation iPod touch and later, and iPad 2 and later
Eufloria HD
Micro meets macro in an abstract real-time strategy game from Omni Systems that blends a minimalistic, zen-inducing art style with world conquering battles. Exploring galaxies and populating planets to grow your seedling species is a calm affair at first, but as conflicts arise and battles between planetary bodies ensues, your intergalactic adversaries amply prove they're no pushovers. Let the colonization wars begin!
Eufloria HD: $5, compatible with iPhone 3GS and later, third-generation iPod touch and later, and iPad
Super Hexagon
As maddeningly addictive as it is brutally challenging, Super Hexagon's fast-paced arcade puzzle action has you dodging deadly walls that close in around you in a constantly cycling geometric doom vortex. Your average run may only last a dozen seconds in Terry Cavanagh's game, but a catchy chiptune soundtrack and simple yet absorbing gameplay make this intense retro puzzler a tough one to put down.
Super Hexagon: $3, compatible with iPhone 3GS and later, third-generation iPod touch and later, and iPad
Stringing together words from stacks of random letters to earn points and clear blocks from the screen is a lot more exciting when your every move bumps the precarious tower higher and higher. Keeping the stack from hitting the top requires some careful strategizing and smart wordplay, but it's the pressure-cooker nature of this brainy beast that'll keep you playing Zach Gage's SpellTower.
SpellTower: $2, compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad
Minecraft – Pocket Edition
Now that Mojang finally updated its iOS game to include a survival mode and more cool items to craft, the pocket edition of Minecraft is a must-download app for on-the-go tinkering. Whether you're scavenging for materials to build things with, battling dangerous nocturnal creepers, mining deep underground, or erecting mighty castles, this blocky first-person sandbox offers a one-of-a-kind experience to play around in.
Minecraft — Pocket Edition: $7, compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
A captivating point-and-click adventure with RPG elements and plenty of style, this pixel perfect indie offering from Capybara tells a fascinating story of a lady-warrior and her canine companion as they embark on an ill-fated journey. Unusual ties to the in-game lunar cycle, neat character interactions, and some clever timing-based combat sequences round out the fun in this thought provoking interactive tale.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP: $5, compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad
Infinity Blade II
Aside from being one of the most visually stunning iOS games available, Infinity Blade II's innovative sword fighting combat system is further refined in this story and action-driven sequel. Dueling against towering foes tests your reflexes as you execute carefully timed dodges, parries, and counterattacks to deal maximum damage with each blow. Delivering the sword-swinging smackdown has never been more satisfying in Chair Entertainment's combat game.
Infinity Blade II: $6, compatible with iPhone 3GS and later, third-generation iPod touch and later, and iPad
Asphalt 7: Heat
An abundance of high speeds and flashy cars give Asphalt 7: Heat's arcade-style street racing lots of horsepower. But looks aren't the only thing about Gameloft's racing offering. The game's tilt steering controls are a responsive, fun way to play, and with tons of racers to unlock and lots of events to challenge through, you won't find a slicker street racing. Fire up those engines and put the pedal to the floor.
The Room
Spooky and full of atmosphere, The Room is a mysterious puzzler that revolves around a locked safe sitting in the center of a single dark room. Initially scouring every inch of its surface for clues on how to open that safe deepens the mystery with increasingly elaborate physics puzzles. Things get creepier and stranger the more time you spent digging deeper into the room's secrets. While this version works only on the iPad, developer Fireproof Gams also makes The Room Pocket for iPhone gamers. Find out for yourself why Macworld named this one of the top iOS apps of 2012.
The Room: $2, compatible with iPad 2 and later


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To Ease Budget Crunch, Topeka, Kan. Repeals Domestic Violence Law
Tuesday, protesters gathered outside the Shawnee County Courthouse over a decision by District Attorney Chad Taylor to stop pursuing domestic violence and other misdemeanor cases.John Hanna/AP
A budget battle between the city of Topeka, Kan. and Shawnee County has led to the repeal of the city's domestic violence law and freed about 30 people charged with abuse.
Here's how the Kansas City Star tells the story:
It started when Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor announced that a 10 percent budget cut would force him to end his office's prosecution of misdemeanor cases, almost half of which last year were domestic battery cases.
With that, Taylor stopped prosecuting the cases and left them to the city. But city officials balked at the cost.
Tuesday's 7-3 vote to eliminate the local domestic violence law was designed to force Taylor to prosecute the cases because they would remain a crime under state law.
Before the city council voted, it heard from victims of domestic abuse. The New York Times reports that one of them told the council by repealing the law, they were failing to protect them. The Times also reports that advocates against domestic violence were outraged.
"To have public officials pointing fingers while victims of domestic violence are trying to figure out who will protect them is just stunning," Joyce Grover, executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence told the Times.
Today, as the dust settled on the vote, The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that the interim city manager Dan Stanley said the vote yesterday was "very sober and difficult." But that he had reached out to the district attorney to reach an agreement.
Stanley, reported the Capital-Journal, said now that the city has left no ambiguity as to who is responsible for prosecuting domestic abuse cases, he expects the negotiations would get "real serious real fast."
The Washington Post takes the news from a different angle. For a city to claim not prosecuting domestic abuse cases is a cost-cutting measure is folly, the paper reports. A lot of the costs associated with domestic abuse cases have nothing to do with courts.
They include things like health-care costs to treat the victim, "days of paid work lost because of intimate partner violence," and "loss in earnings."
The Kansas City Star reports that of those 30 abuse suspects released, one of them was arrested and released twice because of the budget impasse.