text:
Pete Soderling of Stratus Security and Pete Forde of BuzzData led a session on Building and Pricing the Data Marketplace.
Rough notes follow.
What's the Data supply business now? What's a Data Marketplace? How do we get from here to there?
Today, data is a $100Bn global market. But what is data, and why should we care? High value top-down data sets like stock feeds, but also 'open source upstarts like us;' excited by open data, hacking, Government data, and mashups. "Lots of people think data should be free… like music and movies."
There is a huge opportunity for change. There hasn't been real innovation "since Bloomberg came to town."
Data products today tightly tied to a value chain, with defensible customers, rich UI, etc. Moving down the value chain, there are products that focus less on building a coherent offer; 'messy' data? Marketplace has tended to focus on high end, but opportunities for innovation and disruption throughout value chain.
Data distribution/delivery – do a Bloomberg, and sell a terminal? Do a Nielsen, and build a portal? Offer flat-file dumps by ftp? Offer a feed to large customers from your proprietary system? Or use one of the most highly advanced data distribution mechanisms of our time… and ship a disk in the mail.
Bloomberg… disrupted a business and created competitive advantage by acquiring, integrating and distributing data. But a lot of the data wasn't proprietary at all… it was simply difficult to reach.
Challenges for current market/ opportunities for new entrants; current high value projects are highly inflexible. Lock-in and control? There are few pricing options for incumbent systems, and they struggle to react as the economics of supplying data alter.
Consumer data is a big opportunity – but we need to crack privacy first. [Pete Soderling]
What do you need to consider when acquiring a data set? Freshness/ currency. Accuracy. Integrity. Licensing. Format. Open Data today; mostly just lists of lists of data. But 10-15 companies working to build data marketplaces that go further.
But what is a Data Marketplace? Numerous definitions.
Data catalogue – like Infochimps. "Pretty cool." An online mail order catalogue. Microsoft Azure's solution is offering this sort of solution too. "Catalogue shopping is probably not the future of consuming data."
Real-time feeds – like Factual, or Gnip… which is 'seriously rad.'
A huge amount of what we think of as open data (sunlight, world bank, data.gov, etc) comes from a mandate to make data available… but they are really difficult to use.
'Find it and graph the shit out of it;' timetric, Iceland's data marketplace, etc. Visualisation is often the point. But they're not the sort of site you visit regularly in your data acquisition routine, says Forde.
FluidDB, Freebase et al – the solutions of 'ambitious nerds.' 'Totally awesome,' but 'a bit too nerdy.'
Need to develop solutions that solve real problems, rather than developing things just because they're cool.
So do we need a data marketplace at all? Lots of people think we don't. Do people in the street need what we've got? Probably not. Is Open Data even valuable? "People add value to things that are technically free all the time."
Maybe the brand is wrong – 'Data Market' is not the right concept with which to lead. Infrastructure for data is important, but maybe it doesn't need a name and identity.
There's a land grab going on as various entrants round up data and talent as quickly as possible. Maybe we should focus on rounding up some customers?
Lines between 'open' data and valuable market data blurring. But we need to get better at explaining why anyone should care. "Data is completely worthless without context." "There's an absence of discourse around the data sets themselves."
Data collaboration hubs; BuzzData and Talis' Kasabi. Conversation about and around data, in a comfortable environment. Brings people without deep data analysis/ technical skills into the conversation. "Without conversations around data, it never becomes human. It remains cold and alien."
If you build it, will anyone come? Technical considerations; Data as a Service (DaaS). What is DaaS? It should deliver fresh data. That could mean real-time, but it wouldn't have to. It just needs to be timely. If you have taken data offline, do you know where it's from? Do you know when updates become available? Easy integration needs to move us away from proprietary solutions. REST-based apis good, or Microsoft's ODATA spec. Use cases should become more flexible, supporting integration into a customer's own chosen apps. But 'the more flexible access you give to people, the more chance there is they won't know what to do with it.'
DaaS delivery – how do we get data to people? APIs, downloads, vendor-backed data stores, and data marketplaces all remain options.
Delivery metrics are key; know who your customers are, what data they use, and how. Creates opportunities for pricing based on usage. You don't always need to license access to the whole database…
Most importantly in a nascent market, pricing needs to remain flexible. "This world is changing fast."


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Efficacy of Islet After Kidney Transplantation
|The safety and scientific validity of this study is the responsibility of the study sponsor and investigators. Listing a study does not mean it has been evaluated by the U.S. Federal Government. Read our disclaimer for details.
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00468117
Recruitment Status : Completed
First Posted : May 2, 2007
Last Update Posted : October 20, 2017
- Study Details
- Tabular View
- No Results Posted
- Disclaimer
- How to Read a Study Record
|Condition or disease
|Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus
|Procedure: Islet transplantation Biological: Antithymocyte Globulin Biological: Daclizumab or Basiliximab Biological: Etanercept Biological: Allogenic human purified pancreatic islets
|Phase 3
Type 1 diabetes is commonly treated with the administration of insulin, either by multiple insulin injections or by a continuous supply of insulin through a wearable pump. Insulin therapy allows long-term survival in individuals with type 1 diabetes; however, it does not guarantee constant normal blood sugar control. Because of this, long-term type 1 diabetic survivors often develop vascular complications, such as diabetic retinopathy, an eye disease that can cause poor vision and blindness, and diabetic nephropathy, a kidney disease that can lead to kidney failure and thus kidney transplant. Some individuals with type 1 diabetes develop hypoglycemia unawareness, a life-threatening condition that is not easily treatable with medication and is characterized by reduced or absent warning signals for hypoglycemia. For such individuals, pancreas or pancreatic islet transplantation are possible treatment options. The purpose of this study is to assess the benefit of islet transplantation in type 1 diabetic kidney transplant recipients.
Participants in this study will be type I diabetics who have received a kidney transplant for ESRD.. If subjects have not received ITT in the 12 months prior to enrollment, they must undergo a period of standardized diabetes care by an experienced diabetologist at the transplant center using the current ADA's standards of medical care in diabetes. Throughout the study, all participants will remain on the immunosuppressive therapy intended for their kidney. Participants will receive up to three separate islet transplants and a regimen of immunosuppressive medications consisting of antithymocyte globulin (ATG) and etanercept. They will begin receiving ATG 2 days prior to transplant and will continue to receive ATG until Day 2 post-transplant. Etanercept will be given on the day of transplant and on Days 3, 7, and 10 post-transplant.
Transplantations will involve an inpatient hospital stay and infusion of islets into a branch of the portal vein. Participants who do not achieve or maintain insulin independence by Day 30 post-transplant will be considered for a second islet transplant. Participants who remain dependent on insulin for longer than 30 days after the second transplant and who show partial graft function will be considered for a third islet transplant. Daclizumab will be used in place of ATG for the second and third transplants, if they are necessary. Participants who do not meet the criteria for a subsequent transplant will enter a reduced follow-up period.
There will be approximately 15 study visits. A physical exam, review of adverse events, and blood collection will occur at most visits. A chest x-ray, abdominal ultrasound, electrocardiogram, quality of life questionnaires, and urine collection will occur at some visits. Participants will also test their own blood glucose levels throughout the study. A 36-month follow-up period will take place after the participant's last transplant, consisting of 8 additional visits.
|Study Type :
|Interventional (Clinical Trial)
|Actual Enrollment :
|24 participants
|Intervention Model:
|Single Group Assignment
|None (Open Label)
|Primary Purpose:
|Official Title:
|Islet Transplantation in Type 1 Diabetic Kidney Allograft Recipients: Efficacy of Islet After Kidney Transplantation (CIT-06)
|Study Start Date :
|January 2007
|Actual Primary Completion Date :
|July 2015
|Actual Study Completion Date :
|July 5, 2017
Experimental: Islet transplantation
Up to three separate islet transplants will occur and a regimen of immunosuppressive medications consisting of antithymocyte globulin (ATG) and etanercept throughout study.
Procedure: Islet transplantation
Biological: Antithymocyte Globulin
Participants will begin receiving ATG 2 days prior to the initial islet transplant and will continue to receive ATG until Day 2 post-transplant.
Other Name: ATG
Biological: Daclizumab or Basiliximab
Daclizumab or Basiliximab will be used for subsequent transplants.
Biological: Etanercept
Etanercept will be given on the day of transplant and on Days 3, 7, and 10 post-transplant.
Biological: Allogenic human purified pancreatic islets
200 ml suspension of allogenic human purified islets
- Proportion of patients w/HbA1c </= to 6.5% and an absence of severe hypoglycemic events or a reduction in HbA1c of at least 1 point and an absence of severe hypoglycemic events [ Time Frame: At 1 year after first islet infusion ]
- Reduction in insulin requirements, HbA1c, MAGE, LI, HYPO score, fasting glucose, beta score, serum creatinine, c-peptide levels, MMTT, Clarke Survey, FSIGT, CGMS, number of hypoglycemic events, renal impact, cardiovascular impact, and quality of life [ Time Frame: At 1 year after first islet infusion and/or 1 year after final islet infusion ]
Choosing to participate in a study is an important personal decision. Talk with your doctor and family members or friends about deciding to join a study. To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contacts provided below. For general information, Learn About Clinical Studies.
|Ages Eligible for Study:
|18 Years to 68 Years (Adult, Older Adult)
|Sexes Eligible for Study:
|Accepts Healthy Volunteers:
Inclusion Criteria:
- Mentally stable and able to comply with study procedures;
- Clinical history compatible with type 1 diabetes with onset of disease at less than 40 years of age, insulin dependence for at least 5 years at study entry, and a sum of age and insulin dependent diabetes duration of at least 28;
- Absent stimulated C-peptide (defined as less than 0.3 ng/ml) 60 and 90 minutes post-mixed-meal tolerance test;
- Received kidney transplant for ESRD and are taking appropriate calcineurin inhibitor (CNI) based maintenance immunosuppressive therapy;
- Stable renal function as defined as creatinine of no more than one third greater than the average creatinine determination performed in the 3 previous months prior to islet transplantation, until rejection, obstruction or infection is ruled out;
- Intensive diabetes management followed by reduced awareness of hypoglycemia or an HbA1c ≥ 7.5%.
Exclusion Criteria:
- Body mass index (BMI) greater than 30 kg/m2 or weight more than 90 kg;
- Insulin requirement of >1.0 IU/kg/day or <15 U/day;
- Other (non-kidney) organ transplants except prior failed pancreatic graft where the graft failed within the first two weeks due to thrombosis, followed by pancreatectomy and the pancreas transplant occurred more than 6 months prior to enrollment;
- Untreated proliferative diabetic retinopathy;
- Systolic blood pressure higher than 160 mmHg or diastolic blood pressure higher than 100 mmHg;
- Calculated glomerular filtration rate of less than 40 ml/min/1.73meter-squared. More information about this criterion is in the protocol;
- Proteinuria (albumin/creatinine ratio or ACr > 300 mg/g) of new onset since kidney transplantation;
Either Class I or Class II panel-reactive anti-HLA antibodies > 50%; Participants with either Class I or Class II panel reactive anti-HLA antibodies of 50% or less will be excluded if any of the following are detected:
- Positive cross match;
- Islet donor-directed anti-HLA antibodies detected my Luminex Single Antigen/specificity bead assay, including weakly reactive antibodies that would not be detected by a flow cross-match; or
- Antibodies to the renal donor (i.e. presumed de novo).
- Pregnant, breastfeeding, or unwilling to use effective contraception throughout the study and 4 months after study completion;
- Active infection, including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, HIV, or tuberculosis. More information about this criterion is in the protocol.
- Negative for Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) by (VCA) IgG determination;
- Invasive aspergillus infection, histoplasmosis, and coccidioidomycosis infection one year prior to study enrollment;
- History of malignancy except for completely resected squamous or basal cell carcinoma of the skin;
- Known active alcohol or substance abuse;
- History of Factor V Leiden mutation;
- Any coagulopathy or medical condition requiring long-term anticoagulant therapy after transplantation or individuals with an INR greater than 1.5;
Severe co-existing cardiac disease, characterized by any one of these conditions:
- Recent MI (within past 6 months);
- Evidence of ischemia on functional cardiac exam within the last year;
- Left ventricular ejection fraction < 30%; or
- Valvular disease requiring replacement with prosthetic valve.
- Persistent elevation of liver function tests at the time of study entry. Persistent serum glutamic-oxaloacetic transaminase (SGOT [AST]), serum glutamate pyruvate transaminase (SGPT [ALT],) alkaline phosphatase or total bilirubin, with values > 1.5 times normal upper limits will exclude a subject;
- Active infections (except mild skin and nail fungal infections);
- Acute or chronic pancreatitis;
- Active peptic ulcer disease, symptomatic gallstones, or portal hypertension;
- Treatment with any anti-diabetic medication other than insulin within the past 4 weeks;
- Use of any investigational agents within the past 4 weeks;
- Received live attenuated vaccine(s) within the past 2 months;
- Any medical condition that, in the opinion of the investigator, will interfere with safe participation in the trial;
- Male participants with elevation of prostate specific antigen (PSA) of more than 4 unless cancer has been excluded;
- Any condition other than T1D as the primary cause of end stage renal disease (ESRD) in the native kidney;
- Positive screen for BK virus by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) determination at time of screening;
- A previous islet transplant;
- A kidney transplant recipient with T1D who has an HbA1c < 7.5% and no history of severe hypoglycemia.
To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contact information provided by the sponsor.
Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier (NCT number): NCT00468117
|United States, California
|University of California, San Francisco
|San Francisco, California, United States, 94143
|United States, Florida
|University of Miami
|Miami, Florida, United States, 33124
|United States, Georgia
|Emory Universtiy
|Atlanta, Georgia, United States, 30322
|United States, Illinois
|Northwestern University
|Chicago, Illinois, United States, 60208
|University of Illinois at Chicago
|Chicago, Illinois, United States, 60607
|United States, Massachusetts
|Massachusetts General Hospital
|Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02114
|United States, Minnesota
|University of Minnesota
|Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, 55455
|United States, Pennsylvania
|University of Pennsylvania
|Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, 19104
|United States, Wisconsin
|University of Wisconsin
|Madison, Wisconsin, United States, 53792
|Canada, Alberta
|University of Alberta
|Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6G 2C8
|Principal Investigator:
|James F. Markmann, MD, PhD
|Massachusetts General Hospital
|Responsible Party:
|National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
|Other Study ID Numbers:
|First Posted:
|May 2, 2007 Key Record Dates
|Last Update Posted:
|October 20, 2017
|Last Verified:
|October 2017
Kidney Transplant
Insulin independence
Islet Transplantation
Intensive Insulin Therapy
Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1
Diabetes Mellitus
Glucose Metabolism Disorders
Metabolic Diseases
Endocrine System Diseases
Autoimmune Diseases
Immune System Diseases
Antilymphocyte Serum
Anti-Inflammatory Agents, Non-Steroidal
Analgesics, Non-Narcotic
Sensory System Agents
Peripheral Nervous System Agents
Physiological Effects of Drugs
Anti-Inflammatory Agents
Antirheumatic Agents
Gastrointestinal Agents
Immunosuppressive Agents
Immunologic Factors

subset: commoncrawl


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Remaking a Classic
Sep 03, 2013 | by Megan Scudellari | TheScientist
Companies are bursting at the seams with tools to engineer pharma's next magic bullet: the new and improved antibody.
After selling his first company to Merck in 2006 for $400 million, Dartmouth bioengineer Tillman Gerngross faced a tough decision about starting another company: choose a field with minimal competition but high risk of failure, or enter a space that was already clinically and commercially successful but crowded with rival technologies. He chose the latter when he chose antibodies. "I hypothesized that if we had a truly better way of discovering antibodies, there was business to be had," says Gerngross.
Still, at the time, the pharmaceutical industry was already saturated with companies looking to identify new antibodies and engineer existing ones to be more effective. From a distance, pharma's obsession with these Y-shaped proteins is baffling. Big and clunky proteins, antibodies take twice the time and money to develop into a marketed drug that small molecules do, are terribly complicated to manufacture, cannot be taken orally, and have a history of causing harmful immune reactions.
Yet antibodies have something that small molecules, growth factors, and cytokines lack—exquisite precision. Unlike any other class of drug, an antibody gloms onto a target like a magnet latching onto a needle in a haystack. As therapeutics, antibodies can be used to specifically bind a diseased cell, ignoring healthy cells, and cause the diseased cell to self-destruct, for example, or activate the immune system against it. The large molecules can also suppress the immune overactivity that characterizes autoimmune diseases, bind rogue proteins, deliver toxic payloads to sites of illness, and more. In the late 1990s, antibodies finally lived up to their promise as companies learned how to successfully engineer them. First there was Rituxan, then Herceptin, then Remicade. All are billion-dollar blockbuster drugs, for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, breast cancer, and Crohn's disease, respectively.
Gerngross joined the fray in 2007, cofounding the small New Hampshire-based biotech Adimab, and spent the next 2.5 years building a yeast-based antibody-discovery platform designed to be less complex than existing technologies. And it worked: in 2009 the company signed five partnership deals with pharmaceutical companies; the following year, they inked 10 more. Last year, the first of the company's antibody therapies headed into clinical trials.
Gerngross's success is not only a tribute to his company's technology, but an indication of the industry's continued thirst for new antibodies. "There's been a sea change," says Bassil Dahiyat, president and CEO of Xencor, a California-based antibody biotech. "Because there has been a lot of success with antibodies, the industry now feels that this is actually viable—that there are many multibillion-dollar drugs to be had."
Today, biotech companies left and right, far more than can be described in a single article, are inventing ingenious new ways to discover and engineer antibodies by tweaking every part of the proteins, from the tips of the Y to the bottom of the stalk. "It's a great time to be in this space," says Gerngross. "I'd do it all again."
Link to source:
For contacts and other media information visit our Media Resources page.


text:
Even in the late 1800s, getting a confused baby to sit still for a photograph forced otherwise normal parents to behave like lunatics. Sometimes it required the mother to hide herself under a carpet so it looked like their child was sitting upright of his or her own volition.
Other tactics involved the parent creeping in the background or inserting a phantom limb into the shot. In any case, these attempts at naturalistic portraits produced anything but. These children look like they're about to be kidnapped by angry poltergeists. As Sewanee: University of the South explains of this haunting practice:
19th Century photo-portraits were challenging for sitters because of the low emulsion sensitivity and consequently lengthy exposure times. In the case of children, one stress-reducing device for keeping them still was to cloak mothers and disguise them as a support on or against which the child rested.
Sometimes the floating appendages and fabric lumps were excised by picture frame borders; sometimes they weren't. You can see many more of these curiosities at the Hidden Mother: Tintypes and Cabinets Flickr pool. I'm particularly fond of the pictures that scratch out the adults' faces, thereby making the final product resemble Ringwraith Family Portrait Day at the county emporium.
Hat tip to Sven.


text:
A proxy service is a virtual service that receives messages and optionally processes them before forwarding them to a service at a given endpoint. This approach allows you to perform necessary transformations and introduce additional functionality without changing your existing service. For example, if you want to use WS-Security with an existing, unsecured service, you can create a secure proxy service with WS-Security enabled with a specified security policy. Additionally, if you want a service to handle messages that are in different formats, you can create a Transformer proxy service to transform requests and responses based on specified XSLT configurations. A proxy service can also switch transports , process the messages with mediation sequences and tasks, and terminate the flow or send a message back to the client even without sending it to the actual service.
Proxy Service vs. Proxy Server
Do not confuse a proxy service, which processes messages on their way to a service, with a proxy server, which acts as an intermediary for handling traffic to a server. For information on how to configure WSO2 ESB to route messages through a proxy server, see Working with Proxy Servers.
You can create the following types of proxy services:
- Pass Through Proxy - Forwards messages to the endpoint without performing any processing on them. This proxy service is useful as a catch-all, so that messages that do not meet the criteria to be handled by other proxy services are simply forwarded to the endpoint.
- Secure Proxy - Uses WS-Security to process incoming requests and forward them to an unsecured backend service.
- WSDL Based Proxy - A proxy service that is created from the remotely hosted WSDL of an existing web service. The endpoint information is extracted from the WSDL.
- Logging Proxy - Logs all the incoming requests and forwards them to a given endpoint. It can also log responses from the backend service before routing them to the client.
- Transformer Proxy - Transforms all the incoming requests using XSLT and then forwards them to a given endpoint. It can also transform responses from the backend service.
- Custom Proxy - A custom proxy service in which you customize the sequences, endpoints, transports, and other QoS settings.
The simplest way to create a proxy service is through the management console, as described in Adding a Proxy Service. You can then use the console to manage the proxy service (edit it, redeploy it, or disable its statistics or tracing) as described in Managing Proxy Services.
You can also configure proxy services manually in XML. Following is an example of manually configuring a Synapse proxy service. For additional samples of manual proxy service configurations, see Proxy Service Samples.
The <
proxy> element defines the proxy service, as shown below.
<proxy name="string" [transports="(http |https |jms |.. )+|all"] [pinnedServers="(serverName )+"] [serviceGroup="string"]> <description>...</description>? <target [inSequence="name"] [outSequence="name"] [faultSequence="name"] [endpoint="name"]> <inSequence>...</inSequence>? <outSequence>...</outSequence>? <faultSequence>...</faultSequence>? <endpoint>...</endpoint>? </target>? <publishWSDL key="string" uri="string"> ( <wsdl:definition>...</wsdl:definition> | <wsdl20:description>...</wsdl20:description> )? <resource location="..." key="..."/>* </publishWSDL>? <enableAddressing/>? <enableSec/>? <enableRM/>? <policy key="string" [type="(in | out)"]/>? // optional service or message level policies such as (e.g. WS-Security and/or WS-RM policies) <parameter name="string"> // optional service parameters such as (e.g. transport.jms.ConnectionFactory) string | xml </parameter> </proxy>
A proxy service is created and exposed on the specified transports through the underlying Axis2 engine. The proxy service can be a SOAP or REST/POX service over HTTP/S or SOAP, POX, Plain Text, or Binary / Legacy service for other transports such as JMS and VFS file systems. It exposes service EPRs as per the standard Axis2 conventions based on the service name.
Axis2 does not allow custom URIs to be set for services on some transports such as HTTP/S. The proxy service could be exposed over all enabled Axis2 transports such as HTTP, HTTPS, JMS, Mail and File etc. or on a subset of these as specified with the optional transports attribute.
You can use the
pinnedServers attribute to specify the list of Synapse servers where this proxy service should be deployed. If there is no pinned server list, the proxy service is started in all server instances. The
pinnedServers attribute takes the Synapse server names separated by commas or spaces. The Synapse server name is specified in the system property
SynapseServerName or through the
axis2.xml parameter
SynapseConfig.ServerName. If neither of these are set, the server hostname is used, or it defaults to
localhost. You can give a name to a Synapse server instance by specifying the property
-DSynapseServerName=<ServerName> when you execute the startup script
wso2server.bat or
wso2server.sh, or by editing
wrapper.conf to do this where Synapse is started as a service.
Each service could define the target for received messages as a named sequence or a direct endpoint. Target
inSequence or endpoint is required for the proxy configuration, and a target
outSequence defines how responses should be handled. Any supplied WS-Policies apply as service-level policies, and any service parameters can be passed into the proxy services'
AxisService instance using the parameter elements (for example, the JMS destination). If the proxy service should enable Security, the appropriate modules could be engaged, and specified service level policies will apply.
To create a dynamic proxy, specify the properties of the proxy as dynamic entries by referring to them with the
key attribute. For example, you could specify the
inSequence or endpoint with a remote key instead of defining it in the local configuration. As the remote registry entry changes, the properties of the proxy are updated accordingly.
The proxy service definition itself cannot be specified dynamically. That is, you cannot specify
<proxy key="string"/>.
You can publish a WSDL for the proxy service using the
<publishWSDL> element. The WSDL document can be loaded from the registry by specifying the
key attribute or from any other location by specifying the
uri attribute. Alternatively, you can provide the WSDL inline as a child element of
<publishWSDL>. Artifacts (schemas or other WSDL documents) imported by the WSDL can be resolved from the registry by specifying appropriate
<resource> elements:
<publishWSDL key="my.wsdl"> <resource location="http://www.standards.org/standard.wsdl" key="standard.wsdl"/> </publishWSDL>
In this example, the WSDL is retrieved from the registry using the key
my.wsdl. It imports another WSDL from
http://www.standards.org/standard.wsdl , but instead of loading it from this location, Synapse retrieves the imported WSDL from the registry entry
Following are additional service parameters you can use:
true / false
If this parameter is set to
true / false
(Effective only with useOriginalwsdl=true) If true (default) modify the port addresses to current host.
|true / false
|If this parameter is set to
true, it enables data type definition processing for the proxy service.
Data type definition processing is disabled in the Axis2 engine due to security vulnerability. This parameter enables it for individual proxy services.
true / false
If this parameter is set to
This is only applicable when you publish the WSDL (i.e., via the
|If this parameter is set to
true, the absolute path of the referred schemas of the WSDL is shown instead of the relative paths.
|If this parameter is set to
true, the full proxy URL will be set as the prefix to the schema location of the imports in proxy WSDL.
The following service parameters are for specific transports:
The JMS connection factory definition (from axis2.xml) to be used to
The JMS destination name (Defaults to the service name).
The JMS destination type. Accept values "queue" or "topic."
The destination where a reply will be posted.
The wrapper element for the JMS message.
The primary File (or Directory) URI in the vfs* transport format, for this service.
The expected content type for files retrieved for this service. The VFS
A file name regex pattern to match files against a directory specified
The poll interval (in seconds).
DELETE or MOVE.
The directory to move files after processing (i.e. all files process
DELETE or MOVE.
The directory to move files after errors (i.e. some of the files
DELETE or MOVE.
The directory to move after failure (i.e. all files fail).
Reply file URI.
Reply file name (defaults to response XML).
Timestamp prefix format for processed file name.


text:
Amy and Rory are gone, the Doctor is considering retirement, the new companion bears an uncanny resemblance to a dead Dalek, and evil snowmen are on the loose — now what? With less than a week until the Doctor Who Christmas special (airing December 25 at 9 on BBC America, sans Ponds, sniff), Vulture rang up series boss Steven Moffat with all our burning questions, and boy did he oblige. He spills on what's next (the Doctor on a submarine!), why he doesn't believe his version of Who is all that complicated, and how it would be "intolerable" for David Yates to bring the Tardis to the big-screen. Of course, we threw in a question about the delay to Sherlock. Read on to see why he pretty much told us to keep calm. (And watch our video in which Matt Smith and his co-star go Christmas shopping for each other here.)
What were you looking for in the Doctor's next companion?
This time we are very well acquainted with the Eleventh Doctor. He's our pal and the companion will be the new person. So I wanted somebody with a bit more mystery to them, someone you have to get to know in a way that you didn't have to get to know Amy because we met Amy and the Eleventh Doctor at that same time. Someone more challenging and difficult, someone who will lead him in a merry dance. I always felt that Amy and the Eleventh Doctor grew up together. They're like childhood friends. It's a very different feeling now.
You introduced Jenna Louise-Coleman as a doomed Dalek named Oswin last season, which was only slightly confusing because Doctor Who fans knew the actress had been cast as the new companion. I know you won't give away the twist, so I'll just ask what made Jenna right for the role?
Casting isn't very difficult. It's very easy to be blown away by somebody who is brilliant. She fit beautifully with Matt in a very different way from Karen [Gillan]. For one thing, she's little and so Matt is suddenly terribly tall. It feels like a bigger age gap somehow. He suddenly is the irascible older man, which Matt does extremely well despite the fact he's 30. As for the twist, I didn't exactly know how they'd connect in the first draft [of Jenna's first episode, "Asylum of the Daleks"] but I did quite early on. I pitched the idea of how we were going to do all this far in advance and I'm saying no more than that.
One of the things critics who cover Doctor Who have said of the Eleventh Doctor seasons is that the stories have gotten overly complicated. River Song's timeline, for example. Do you think that's true?
Well, we haven't actually had any complaints from the general audience at all. Not one single bit of audience feedback has even mentioned complexity. I don't know, I think people just say things. They used to go on about Russell's "gay agenda" and that became a subject discussed endlessly and you'd look at the show and say, "Where is it? What gay agenda?" He never had a gay agenda but people started saying it and everybody else started repeating it.
Doctor Who can be complicated at times, it absolutely can be — but it's supposed to be. You're supposed to pay attention. I'm also addressing children, hugely the case in the U.K., and children are demanding of complexity. So no, I don't think it's true. I think we do some complicated stories, we also do incredibly simple stories. I always think this: I don't care if it's complicated or too scary or too grown-up or too childish or whatever they are saying this week, so long as they never say it's too boring. If anyone says "Oh, it was a bit dull this week" is when the show will start to die.
Do you ever talk to Russell Davies about the show since he left?
We e-mail quite a lot. He always sends me something after each episode. He just reverted to being a fan. As did David [Tennant]. I had dinner with David a few weeks ago and I was showing him photographs on my iPhone of the monsters this season and he was getting all excited about it because we're all fanboys.
What did Russell say about the Ponds' good-bye?
He sent a glowing e-mail. He said he was crying and all that so he was pleased with it I think.
The animated online epilogue with Rory's dad was very sweet. I'm crying thinking about all of this again. Why was it never shot?
It wouldn't have been on television. It would have been an online extra. That would have been a very odd ending, wouldn't it? But it was meant to be filmed. It was the actor availability that stopped it, unfortunately. Mark [Williams] wasn't around.
I read that you actually changed something about how the Ponds left the series. What was the original version?
The ending was the same. It was the mechanism by which they defeated the angels. I added the big falling-off-the-building scene. It was always going to end with Amy getting sent back in time. I think I had the Doctor more central in defeating the angels and there was a certain point I realized that if he becomes utterly ineffectual for the second half of the episode, which he does, then the story is more interesting. It's an odd thing to do in Doctor Who; I haven't done it for a while. He doesn't win the day. He more or less gets in the way and is defeated because he knows it's going to end badly and he is so paralyzed by that.
Neil Gaiman is back, and he's taken on the return of the Cybermen. What were your instructions for him?
I wanted to make them creepier, and a bit more active. I thought we had gone as far as we could with the stumpy Cybermen. I wanted to do the colder, deadlier version and I was interested in Neil giving it a ghost-story feel. Neil's a good ghost story writer.
David Yates attached himself to a Doctor Who film a year ago, one that would not stem from the current series. You've since shot that report down, but could it ever happen?
Well, first of all, when? We spend all year making the series. The thing that I would find intolerable is that you get a film instead of the TV series because the TV series is more important. And I don't think any showrunner or future showrunner of Doctor Who would tolerate the idea that David Yates was talking about, of rebooting it and having a second continuity. That's just nonsense. Absolutely insane and a straightforward insult to the audience. We'd never, ever do that. The question would be how could we do it without delaying or harming the TV show?
So the idea of a movie isn't offensive, just the idea of rebooting it?
I think it could be incredibly exciting to see that Tardis fly on the big screen. It would just be how do we arrange it? And how do we make sure we have … no offense, but you suddenly take American money and they expect to tell you what to do and all that. I wouldn't be happy with that. But it will happen someday, I'm reasonably confident.
The first five episodes of the season were promoted as a series of movies, complete with theatrical posters. Will that continue?
We're really pushing that very hard. It's nearly killed us doing it. We're convalescing. But wait until you see the range. We've got the best alien planet we've ever done. We've got a submarine. Seriously. There's even a proper modern urban thriller in London.
Can I ask where you are with Sherlock? There was a report that production had been delayed.
The delay is completely insignificant as far as the [airdate] is concerned. It was just to fit around Benedict Cumberbatch's schedule. We've got two scripts in second drafts. I haven't started yet because I'm still finishing up with Doctor Who. We're fine. The production delay means nothing at all. I was never going to present over the summer in the U.K. so this doesn't affect that at all.
Any plans to reactivate your Twitter account? Keep us updated?
Not really. It takes up time you know. I should be focused on my work. I retired myself for that reason.


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Alert the authorities: Katie Roiphe is dead right about "Why Professors Should Not Have Affairs with Their Students:" Longtime readers may recall that I've been pretty unsparing in my criticism of Roiphe for a long, long time now, but she really nails it here.
In this new essay, Roiphe writes from the perspective of seeing a number of male colleagues have affairs with their graduate and undergraduate students, and I've seen it too among men in the profession–my age and even younger, so it's not going away anytime soon (although thank the Goddess I've never seen it among my colleagues in my department.) First, it's an obvious and embarrassing trope: "The dynamic is so trite one can barely commit it to the page, but it seems that otherwise charismatic, original men are completely happy to inhabit this cliché, to live and work in it. In my experience these are men who would rather die than dress or speak or write in a clichéd way, but in this particular area of triteness, they feel entirely comfortable."
Also, "the prospect of sleeping with an undergraduate seems a little like wanting to sleep with a puppy," as in bestiality, not as in chaste and adorable puppy snuggling, which is obvs. perfectly fine. But who cares if a middle-aged schlub makes a fool of himself? I don't, and neither does Roiphe, because of course it's the damage to students and to the trust in the professor-student relationship that concerns her most:
The deepest problem for me lies in the perversion of mentorship . In the classroom intellectual crushes are useful. They goad and inspire you. They draw out your best work; they break through limits, challenge, transform. They are part of the thrill of academia at its best. To maneuver within that crush, to manage and exploit it, is part of the trick of teaching. To act on it in the crudest way is to crush the whole endeavor. Be subtle, I feel like telling these male professors. Don't do the unimaginative thing. The world is full of people you can sleep with; it is not full of students to whom you can make a difference.
But wait! That's not all. It doesn't just ruin one student's experience; it ruins all students' experiences in your classes and in your entire working environment, because they know you're a predatory schlub and they won't trust you:
Another problem with a professor hitting on his student is that the damage is rarely confined to that one situation. Once rumors are airborne, the whole environment is polluted. A distrust is established, an unreliability or rottenness. Once word gets out, it is impossible for any of the students in the classroom to take the academic venture seriously, to entrust themselves to it. And why should they? The intellectual exchange is degraded, a joke.
The way she sums it all up is beautiful: sharp and idealistic at the same time:
You may say that I am romanticizing and idealizing the academic world. That I am trying to imagine a place untainted by the usual debased human things, and this is true. Because academia is an artificial place; it is very explicitly not the real world but a place set apart for intellectual development, where the values and desires and materialism and pressures of the regular world are, for a time, pushed off. The university works precisely because it is unworldly, idealistic, and those professors who don't see that are not worthy of any new batch of students filing into class.
I'm so glad she wrote this, because I've been thinking about this ever since Mark Bauerlein published his "What's the Point of a Professor" essay, which we discussed here and elsewhere all over the internets last week. His yearning for closer relationships between faculty and students is something that looks a little different when sexuality is brought into the mix. Bauerlein writes nostalgically of an era in which faculty were "revered," and for an earlier era "when you couldn't walk down the row of faculty offices without stepping over the outstretched legs of English majors lining up for consultations," but not all faculty have high-minded concerns when surrounded by reverential students lined up at attention. And for the most part, it's girls and young women who are the objects of unseemly male professorial attention, although I'm sure that there are some young men too.
I wanted to write about the ways that gender and sexuality play into the hierarchical relations between faculty and students in my initial response, but decided my response to Bauerlein's essay was overly long already. But we can discuss it here, thanks to (of all people!) Katie Roiphe! So, take it away, friends: do you think Roiphe is right, or do you want to stand up for the cliché? (Yes, I know that's the equivalent of asking when someone is going to stop beating his wife, but whatever: Live by the cliché, die by the cliché!)


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A swarm of locusts covered Detroit yesterday, raising fears that Chicago could be next.
Michigan authorities sent out drones to spray pesticides over the city to prevent damage by the swarm, which numbers about 50,000 locusts, said a spokeswoman for the City of Detroit.
The locust alert comes on the eve of the bankruptcy of Detroit. "First there was the collapse of the auto industry, then there was the financial collapse and the bankruptcy of the city and now… locusts," said longtime resident, Jimmy Bellicort.
According to the Bible, a huge swarm of locusts was the eighth of 10 plagues God imposed on Egyptians to persuade Pharoah to free the ancient Hebrews from slavery. Many believe that Detroit is similar to Egypt and that the locusts are just the beginning of several plagues that will overtake the city.
"We are doomed!" said Alvin Johnson, who lives on Six Mile.
Locusts can have a devastating effect on buildings and car factories said the Mayor of Detroit, Dave Bing.
"[The locusts] may have ruined Pharaoh, but they will not ruin us," said Bing.
Locusts are known to move with the wind, and the swarm was swept westward from the Middle East.


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Pot reformers have fallen short of their sign-up target for the first third of their campaign to force a provincial referendum on marijuana enforcement.
Sensible BC spokesman Dana Larsen said the campaign had 65,000 signatures as of Oct. 9 – 15,000 less than their aim of 80,000 by the 30-day mark of the 90-day petition drive.
"We're a little bit behind the target we set," Larsen said, adding getting canvassers officially registered has proven more onerous than expected.
But he remains confident the campaign can succeed in getting the signatures of 10 per cent of eligible voters in every B.C. district.
That would take 300,000 signatures in total, but Larsen said the aim is for 450,000 or 15 per cent in each riding to provide a buffer against signatures that are declared invalid.
The campaign aims to pass legislation that would bar police from spending any time or resources enforcing the federal law against possessing small amounts of marijuana.
Its goal is to use that as a starting point to work towards broader cannabis legalization.
Defeat in any single district means the petition campaign fails.
And even if it succeeds, a referendum is not automatic – the Legislature could introduce the proposed Sensible Policing Act but not put it to a vote.
If it was sent to another referendum it could be non-binding – the HST referendum after a successful Fight HST petition was binding only because Premier Gordon Campbell declared it so.
Fight HST also had many more signatures at their 30-day mark – more than 300,000 – and wrapped up with 705,000.
"They got a lot more than they actually needed," Larsen said. "They could have done it with less."
Larsen said canvassers have already got nearly enough signatures in Vancouver districts like the West End and along False Creek.
Most Interior and Northern districts are also doing well, with about a third of the signatures gathered, and campaigns are running ahead of schedule in Nelson, Kelowna and Kamloops.
Suburban ridings in Metro Vancouver, including Surrey and Coquitlam, have proven more challenging.
"Surrey is a bit of an issue. It's a lot of districts in one city and a lot of people that we need."
Canvassers from Vancouver will be sent to those areas as Vancouver ridings wrap up, Larsen said.
So far, Sensible BC has 3,000 canvassers registered, up from 1,600 when they launched.
Larsen expects the canvasser count will grow to 4,000 by the early December deadline, but that would be well short of Fight HST's 6,500 canvassers.
Petition locations are on the Sensible BC website at sensiblebc.ca.


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Why?:Is There a Moose On This Plane?
I yelped as there was a shudder of turbulence. Flying was a nerve-wracking experience that I had absolutely no control over. It wasn't hard for me to imagine flocks of birds or maybe a superhero of some description gumming up the engines. Not only would the plane crash, but it would then be a plane full of guilty people shamefacedly commiserating each other that they helped end the world.
Flight 572 was the worst one though. Not only did I have to deal with my habitual aviophobia but the people on that flight were the most unsettling I've had to contend with on my regular business trips.
Some of them had actually been watching the carelessly chosen in-flight movie, Plane Disaster; none of the children were screaming or torturing sweeties out of their parents; No couples had giggled their way to the toilets; none of the impatient rednecks were being unreasonably abusive towards the flight attendants and absolutely nobody was paying any attention to the moose at the front of the cabin!
This article is part of Uncyclopedia's Why? series. See more Why's?
It just kept staring at me, a mysterious mouthful of grass dribbled from its lips as it endlessly chewed. I finally couldn't take it anymore, I hammered the little button, demanding someone attend to me. Within seconds a female arrived (another unusual occurrence).
"How may I help you?" she asked sweetly as sweat travelled into my eye.
"Well, I was wondering, I mean I don't mean to be a bother or anything but– why is there a moose on this plane?"
I know that it's her job to lie and everything (Of course this is the best wine, only the best for our customers. Yes those peanuts are in date, sir. I'll get someone to clear that blood up before the next flight, thank you for informing us, miss.) but she really was taking the biscuit when she leaned closer to me and asked:
"What moose, sir? Is there a specific dessert you would like?"
"No, no, you silly girl, that moose over there, it keeps giving me odd looks." I informed as the moose nonchalantly swished its tail and took a step to the left, a small clop of its feet rang dully throughout the compartment.
She made a sour face at being called silly. "Now, sir, there's no need for name calling, I'm only trying to help." She scolded.
"But there's a moose!" I pleaded "It's right there!" I pointed at the creature as it clopped its way along the aisle heading for First Class. I bet they wouldn't treat those toffs like fools.
"How much have you had to drink, sir?" She asked.
"Nothing- well one or two to calm my nerves but- I'm not hallucinating!" I said, almost hysterical.
Apparently finished exploring First Class, the moose came through the curtain divider and began trudging down my side of the plane.
"Well, I'm going to have to leave you for now, call again if you need anything else but don't cause anymore trouble or I'll be forced to call security." The maid walked away muttering "Excuse me, sir." as she sidled past the moose.
I was about to start screaming at her (You can so see the moose! You can! You can! You can!!!) but at the same moment I stood up to chase her the moose decided I was a safe enough tree to urinate on. I almost began to weep.
Violence Solves Nothing
Soaked, smelly and patronised beyond reason I had to lash out. My fist landed on the moose's spine. I yelled as its bony back pulverised my hand. The moose didn't even look at me. It simply went on chewing.
"WHY ARE YOU HERE!?" I bellowed "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!?"
It finally swallowed the grass it had been chewing and for a moment I was terrified it might actually answer me when it opened its mouth. It didn't though; it meagrely decided to belch and then make a move for my vomit-green tie.
I pulled away quickly and tripped over this little boy.
"Watch where you are going!" the bony wraith-like mother scolded slapping my wrist. "They shouldn't let drunks on planes where they can crush little boys. You should be ashamed!" She wrapped her self around the child in, presumably, a protective gesture.
"Mommy, why does that man smell?"
"Because he's an alcoholic, you'll never be like that, I'll never let a drop of that poison pass your lips."
"But it's moose piss! I'm not drunk!" I exclaimed frantically gesturing to the moose. "Well I had one or two…" I conceded guiltily.
"You see this is what they do, Michael, use vulgar language for attention. And as you can see there are no moose around here."
"Well what's that mommy?" The boy asked pointing to the moose.
"You can see it?" I said grabbing the boy's shoulders in something like desperation.
"No, you stupid man!" the woman rasped as she rapped my hands again. "That's a security guard, honey"
To The Captain!
Sure enough some interfering busy body had called for security and a big burly man, who was leaving a trail of spilt coffee and broken laptops in his wake, was heading straight for me, the moose was between us, obviously. Because there was a moose.
Now that was the final straw I was not gonna be arrested because people were fucking with me. I was going straight for the top as I ran down the aisle to wards the captain's cabin. The moose plodded after me as the security guard waited impatiently in tow.
After a harrowing journey through Economy Class (It was all fat people with five seats and whores with no teeth) I ended up at the door to the cockpit. I rattled the door and shouted through it as the moose traipsed through the last curtain divider. A man who barely looked old enough to drive a car let alone a plane poked his head through the door, all smiles like I was an old friend.
"I want to know about the moose." I snapped.
"Oh, cool, yeah well I use VO5; you just rub it through your hair and twist it up, works marvellously."
"No you spastic! The moose! That one there!" I bellowed just on the verge of questioning my own sanity.
"What moose?" he asked a confused smile now gracing his face. I hit him and the weedy little man fell to the ground.
"You know damn fine what moose! You know!" I screamed as I kicked him. To death.
Pathetic Fallacy
Some hours later I was handcuffed to my seat. I had had a full on mental breakdown. After I killed the pilot and co-pilot I had officially committed mass murder as there was no one left that could safely land the plane.
It gave me time to think about the moose though. I began seeing it as some sort of metaphor for the fact I don't like flying or my over working or my marriage problems or the fact I didn't love my children. Something like that. That would make sense.
Still things were more normal now. People paid no attention to the imaginary Plane Disaster. Plenty of children were screaming. All of the couples on the plane had ignored the toilets all-together and were now simply shagging in the aisles and the attendants were now getting more abuse than ever.
All was well until someone begged the final question: "Why did nobody just tell him it was a reindeer?"
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Internal Flexi Air Kit And Buttstock Package for Tippmann X7
The patent-pending RAP4 Flexi-Air system for the Tippmann X7! The RAP4 Flexi-Air system adds a realistic look and feel to your Tippmann X7, and will increase the performance as well! This is the best performance enhancing upgrade for your Tippmann X7. This internal Flexi-Air system is completely hidden inside – No external air line or hose.
The RAP4 Flexi-Air system for the Tippmann X7 features an enormous air expansion chamber. With this expansion chamber, which is conveniently hidden inside the collapsible stock, you can expect your Tippmann X7 to be consistent like never before. Your shots will be more consistent and reliable, and thus more accurate, as your X7 feeds continuously from this enormous reservoir. For winter play, your CO2 won't freeze up in your marker again!
With the RAP4 Flexi-Air system for the Tippmann X7, you can connect a remote line directly in the back of the stock and have it completely out of your way to add the most realistic look and feel to your Tippmann X7…and out-gun your opponent at the same time.
Amp-up your Tippmann X7's performance with the RAP4 Flexi-Air system, and at the same time intimidate your opponents with the most realistic upgrade ever!
The RAP4 Flexi-Air system for the Tippmann X7 is made from aircraft aluminum for durability and dependability for years of service. You can expect it to outlast your Tippmann X7!


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Much was said at MenuDirections about spices jazzing up a dish. The same can be said for conferences, as this sampler of flavorful quotes attests. Here they are, delivered without any adulteration:
I'd make mud pies and put the spearmint on top.—Registered dietician Marilyn Mills of Elliott Health System, on her earliest work with herbs.
My husband loves dill. If we'd had another kid, we would have named him Dill.—Mills
Why menu seafood? One billion people can't be wrong.—Chef Nick Pajor, on how many people on the globe eat it regularly
I've seen some pretty sexy cod out there.—Pajor, on putting pizzazz into the familiar fish
The difference between you being healthy and not being healthy is a teaspoon—a teaspoon—of Omega-3 fatty acids. But we don't get it.—Dr. James Painter, chair of School of Family & Consumer Sciences, Eastern Illinois University
My problem with eating sardines is, they're looking at you.—Painter
[With tacos:] The glory is in the sauce.—Chef Andrew Hunter
[On Mardi Gras in New Orleans:] There's an inverse relationship on beads and upper torso clothing.--Painter


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Veterans Service Officer (VSO) Information
VSOs serve an important role is assisting military Veterans, Retirees, and their Next of Kin. This information is designed to assist VSOs obtain information from the National Personnel Records Center.
Please read the General Information first, and then read about a specific topic.
Index to Information by Subject
- General Information
- Burial Benefits
- Separation Document (DD Form 214 or equivalent)
- Military Personnel Records Locations
- Types of Medical Records
- Medals Replacement
- Record Corrections
- Benefits
- Finance Records
- Official Military Personnel File Contents
- 1973 Fire
- Morning Reports
- Veterans Preference and "Wartime" Service
- Other VA Benefits (G.I. Bill)
- Survivor Benefits (Includes DIC)


text:
MONTREAL – A dominant ground game and more of the workmanlike effort he's become known for helped Darren Elkins cruise on Saturday night
Elkins spent the majority of the fight taking Steven Siler down, then alternately beating him up on the canvas or working for submissions on his way to a 30-27 sweep of the judges' scorecards.
The featherweight kicked off Saturday's UFC 154 event at Montreal's Bell Centre. It streamed on Facebook ahead of additional prelims on FX and the pay-per-view main card.
The 145-pounders threw leather early with Elkins getting inside to land a 1-2 to back Siler up. Elkins looked to land early with his hands against the taller Siler, then defended a knee to get double underhooks and push Siler to the fence. About 90 seconds into the round, Elkins bullied Siler to the ground and quickly got to side control, though Siler defended well and got back to full guard – an early theme of the fight.
Elkins, though, postured up and landed a two-punch combination from his feet, then cradled Siler before looking for a side choke. Elkins slid out, constantly trying to pass Siler's guard. Siler continually was able to work his way back from bad positions into guard, and when Siler popped up, Elkins quickly took him back down. Elkins eventually took his neck, pulled guard and cranked on a modified guillotine choke. But Siler defended and worked out to survive the round.
An early leg kick from Siler in the second led to an easy Elkins takedown just 20 seconds in, and the Indiana native went to work on Siler's neck again. When Siler tried to push off, Elkins would go back to pounding. When Elkins postured up, Siler landed a heavy up kick. But Elkins walked through it, and back on the ground took Siler's back, locked in a body triangle and worked on a rear-naked choke. Siler survived once, but Elkins retained the dominant position and went back to work on the fence, looking for the choke with Siler locked in the body triangle. Elkins bloodied Siler up with punches while continuing to look for the choke. Again, Elkins went for a finish, but Siler kept a hand in to defend. Siler did his best to look for some reverse elbows from the bad spot and landed a few. But Elkins dominated the round, though he wasn't able to get the finish.
Siler had to go into desperation mode, down two rounds, in the third. But Elkins landed a right early, then a left jab. Siler looked to land with a knee, but Elkins again got a takedown, his fourth of the fight. He would finish with six. Siler got a hold of Elkins' neck and looked to crank late, but far too late to matter.
Elkins (15-2 MMA, 5-1 UFC) won for the fourth straight time since dropping from lightweight to featherweight and seventh time in his past eight outings. Siler (21-10 MMA, 3-1 UFC) lost for the first time in nearly two years and first time in the UFC. The TUF 14 cast member had been perfect in the UFC.
Up-to-the-minute UFC 154 results include:
- Darren Elkins def. Steven Siler via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)
For complete coverage of UFC 154, stay tuned to the UFC Events section of the site.
(Pictured: Darren Elkins)
Steven Marrocco and Ben Fowlkes contributed to this report on-site in Montreal.


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The Quip team
We're a team committed to changing the way the world works together and we have fun doing it. We're an eclectic group that includes parents, world travelers, and hard-core (board)gamers. These are our leaders.
Bret Taylor
Bret was most recently the CTO of Facebook, after it acquired FriendFeed, the company he co-founded in 2007. Prior to that, Bret was a Group Product Manager at Google, where he co-created Google Maps and the Google Maps API, and started Google's Developer product group. Bret has an MS and a BS in Computer Science from Stanford.
Kevin Gibbs
Founder & CEO
At Google, Kevin founded and was the tech lead of Google App Engine. He is also the creator of Google Suggest, which provides interactive search suggestions as you type. Prior to that, Kevin was part of the Infrastructure group at Google, working on cluster management systems. Kevin has an MS and a BS in Computer Science from Stanford University.


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It's widely known that ultraviolet light has bacteria killing properties. Unfortunately, its usefulness is limited since it also harms us. But now researchers have developed a high intensity, narrow spectrum wavelength that's safe enough to be used as lighting in hospitals.
High Intensity, Narrow Spectrum (HINS) light works by exciting molecules within bacteria to lethal levels, inducing bacterial suicide. Since it's harmless to humans, it can be incorporated into lighting, keeping areas constantly sterile.
The researchers, from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, also anticipated that people may not enjoy living in a purple-hued world, so they've figured out how to combine it with LED technology for a warmer, more pleasant glow. [University of Strathclyde via Smart Planet via Popular Science]


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As much as people complain about the challenges of balancing copyrights and fair use in the US, overseas courts have been happy to provide examples that remind us that some aspects of US copyright law are actually fairly liberal. The latest such reminder comes courtesy of a case in Germany that revisits an issue that appears settled in the US: the right of image search services to create thumbnails from copyrighted works to display with the search results. The German courts have now determined that this is not OK in Germany, where Google has just lost two copyright suits over image thumbnails.
This is not the first tussle of this sort that Google has been involved with. The company had initially lost a copyright case based on its creation of thumbnails from porn site Perfect 10, but ultimately prevailed on appeal in that case. Although the appeal did not clarify all the legal issues, it did determine that the creation of thumbnails fell within the exceptions granted by US copyright law for transformative use.
The search giant hasn't always had good luck in European courts, however. Last year, Google lost a legal tussle with a Belgian newspaper trade group, and was left in the awkward position of seeing the excerpts it uses for Google News content be declared a violation of copyright. Negotiations have gotten the Belgian papers' content back in Google searches, but the case is still very active; Google is appealing, while the newspapers are looking to extract a healthy fine.
The latest case to be decided combines aspects of both of these others: image thumbnails and European courts. In this case, the venue was Germany, where Google was being sued for creating thumbnails from the copyrighted materials of a photographer and a comic artist. According to Bloomberg News, Google lost both of these cases, with courts declaring that shrinking images down to thumbnail size doesn't create a new work, and thus displaying the thumbnails is a violation of copyright.
Google was, not surprisingly, unamused. A Google spokesperson told paidContent, "Today's decision is very bad for Internet users in Germany, it is a major step backwards for German e-business in general, and it is bad for the thousands of websites who receive valuable traffic through Image Search and similar services."
Although copyright holders can easily let search engine indexing bots know what files to avoid, the ruling apparently leaves them with no legal need to do so. Instead, the burden lies on the search engines, which apparently need to determine what images they discover are subject to copyright. Given the impossibility of doing so in an automated fashion, the ruling is likely to see Google radically alter its image search offerings in Germany.
Google is unlikely to be the only one with this problem, too, as those who initiate these lawsuits rarely stop at one search engine. Perfect 10 later went after Microsoft despite having part of its case against Google thrown out. Meanwhile, the Belgian newspapers, fresh off their Google victory, went after the EU itself. It seems likely that it will be a matter of time before other image search services get served in Germany.


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Tales Winners
So I've been asked to list the winners at Tales of the Cocktail this year, and to the best of my Sazerac-drowned memory the winners are in yellow, below. Congrats to all who won, and to all who were nominated.
World's Best Drinks Selection
Criteria: A venue stocking an outstanding range of spirits and liqueurs. The judges will favor discernment as well as sheer numbers of bottles stocked.
The Merchant Hotel, Belfast
Le Lion Bar de Paris, Hamburg
ZigZag Café, Seattle
Best American Cocktail Bar
Criteria: This award recognizes the influence on cocktail trends within the United States and seeks to award the country's best cocktail bar.
Death & Co, NYC
Pegu Club, NYC
World's Best Cocktail Bar
Criteria: Only truly world-class bars will be considered for this illustrious title. Some bars attain worldwide recognition and this award recognizes the very best of the best.
Door 74, Amsterdam
High Five Bar, Tokyo
Pegu Club, NYC
World's Best New Cocktail Bar
Criteria: Only bars which opened after 1st March 2008 may be nominated. This award aims to reward new creativity and ideas as well as well executed drinks.
Clover Club, Brooklyn
Drink, Boston
Quo Vadis, London
World's Best Hotel Bar
Criteria: The classic 'American Bar' played an important role in the history and development of cocktail culture. The judges are looking for hotel bars, which uphold this tradition (but are not necessarily old) and offer five-star service and consistently well-made drinks.
Dukes, London
The Connaught, London
The Merchant Hotel, Belfast
American Bartender of the Year
Criteria: From Jerry Thomas onwards, American bartenders have been amongst the most influential on drinks styles and cocktail culture in general. This award seeks to recognize the most influential American bartender today. The winner should be proficient at making all recognized classic drinks and also have created contemporary cocktails, which have been copied by his/her peers.
Audrey Saunders
James Meehan
Phil Ward
International Bartender of the Year
Criteria: The absolute best drinks mixer in the world. The winner must have received international recognition of their work with their own recipes crossing borders to appear on cocktail menus in numerous countries. (US citizens are not excluded.)
Agostino Perrone
Charles Vexenat
Tony Conigliaro
Best New Cocktail/Bartending Book
Criteria: The best book published in 2008 regarding cocktails, liquor, and bars, bar design or bartending in general. New editions of existing works may also be nominated.
Cocktails Made Easy – Simon Difford
Mud Puddle Books – Greg Boehm
The Essential Cocktail – Dale DeGroff
Best Cocktail Writing
Criteria: Great journalism is one of the best ways to communicate to the general public the value and significance of great cocktails and related products. This award is for any non-book journalism (Magazine, Newspaper, Website, etc) that promotes bars, bartender, or cocktails in general.
Camper English
Dave Wondrich
Gary Regan
Jared Brown & Anistatia Miller
Best New Product
Criteria: This is awarded to what the judges consider to be the best new cocktail ingredient (spirit, liqueur, syrup or juice) or piece of cocktail equipment (muddler, shaker etc.). To qualify products must be on general retail sale in at least three US states.
Angostura Orange Bitters
Bols Genever
World's Best Cocktail Menu
Criteria: The judges seek to reward innovative and thirst inducing cocktail menus. Both the design and content will be considered.
Hawksmoor, London
Le Lion Bar de Paris, Hamburg
Merchant Hotel, Belfast
Best American Brand Ambassador
Criteria: An award, which recognizes the importance of personality in the promotion of drinks brands across America.
Jacques Bezuidenhout, Partida
Julio Bermejo, Tequila
Simon Ford, Plymouth
4 Responses to "Tales Winners"
Can someone, please, tell me when New York City is going to start getting a little recognition at these awards? I mean, I see at least 4 awards here that went to the rest of planet earth and not NYC. It's just not right!


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Rides on Tap
Minneapolis/St. Paul
Ride: Start at Summit Brewing Company in St. Paul, the Twin Cities' most venerable brewery, and ride to their trendiest, Surly Brewing Co., just north of Minneapolis.
Terrain:City streets, bike paths, park roads
Try: Summit Extra Pale Ale and Surly Furious
More From Bicycling
Bend, Oregon
Ride: Hit the dirt in this Pacific Northwest outdoor mecca, home to seven craft breweries. Take a tour with Cog Wild or rent from Sunnyside Sports. At sundown, roll over to the Deschutes Public House as your first stop on a post-ride brewery crawl.
Terrain: Singletrack
Try: Deschutes Black Butte Porter
San Diego County
Ride: Tour the birthplace of hoppy American IPA. Grab lunch at the Pizza Port in Carlsbad, one of the breweries to champion the style 20 years ago, and end the day at Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens in Escondido.
Terrain: Road
Try: Pizza Port Wipeout IPA and Stone Ruination IPA
New York City
Ride: Piece together a three-borough bike tour that connects the Queens East River bike path, Central Park, and the bottom of Manhattan, then loops back over the Williamsburg Bridge to the Brooklyn Brewery.
Terrain: Urban bike path
Try: Brooklyn Local 1
Yakima Valley, Washington
Ride: Ride the rolling hills of central Washington in September or early October for a fragrant trip through the world's second-largest hop-growing region. Then grab lunch and a pint at the Snipes Mountain Microbrewery in Sunnyside.
Terrain: Rural roads
Try: Sunnyside Pale Ale
Southwestern Wisconsin
Ride: Take part in fall's most popular beer celebration on the Tyranena Oktoberfest Bike Ride. The brewery's October 1 event offers 25, 50, and 70-mile options—plus tickets for two free beers.
Terrain: Road
Try: Rocky's Revenge
Tyranena Oktoberfest Bike Ride Website
It Does a Body Good
Five beers with cycling benefits
Soothes Sore Muscles
Cantillon Kriek This lambic is made with tart cherries, believed to help reduce pain.
Helps Refuel
North Coast Old Rasputin This imperial stout tops off energy stores with 13 grams of carbs per bottle.
Cools You Off
Full Sail Session Brewed at cooler temperatures than an ale, this classic lager is meant to be enjoyed ice cold.
Quenches Thirst
Celis White At 3.9 percent alcohol, it's weak enough to hydrate, according to British scientists.
Boosts Immunity
Beamish Stout Dark beers are higher in disease-fighting antioxidants than light ones.
Matt Allyn is the features director for Bicycling and Runner's World magazines. He's run nine marathons and come heartbreakingly close to BQing three times. In addition to running and cycling, he's also covered beer for more than a decade and is a certified beer judge.


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An enormous storm has erupted in Saturn's northern hemisphere.
Amateurs first sighted the storm earlier this month, but the Cassini spacecraft moved into a good position on Dec. 24 to photograph it from about 1.1 million miles away. Earth received the raw and unprocessed shots today.
The storm has a huge central funnel and a long tail that sweeps around Saturn's northern hemisphere for tens of thousands of miles. A shot in blue light (left) reveals the extent of the tail, but infrared light (right) shows detail of the storm's amorphous core. The photos were taken exactly a month after Cassini recovered from a solar-flare-induced error that temporarily silenced the spacecraft from Nov. 2 through Nov. 24.
Saturn's weather is complex like Jupiter's, but it's often difficult to see such storms beneath Saturn's hazy outer atmosphere, wrote Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist and leader of Cassini's imaging team, on Twitter.
Images: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
See Also:


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As a kid, I was always fascinated with Superman. Sure, he was "more powerful than a locomotive," and let's not forget his ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. However, what really impressed me was his quick change from businessman to superhero garb.
As triathletes, we have a similar need for quick changes, though not necessarily from the confines of a phone booth. After all, finish time does not just include an athlete's cumulative swim, bike and run splits, it also includes the time it takes to transition from one sport to another. These time segments are aptly named transition 1 and transition 2, or T1 and T2 if you're conserving energy for race day.
More: 5 Little Things That Make a Big Difference on Race Day
In a triathlon, whether you knock 60 seconds off your transition times or 60 seconds off your run split, you still finish a minute faster. However, while a run PR can demand tremendous patience and sweat equity, lightning fast transitions can be achieved much more quickly.
Ready to fly through transitions? Read on.
#1 Make Like Magellan
Before setting off on his voyage to circumnavigate the earth, Magellan spent years working with mapmakers to plan his route. Sure, the distance covered in a triathlon is much shorter, but planning your route is equally important. Navigating transition areas can be a little complicated, especially when you're in race mode.
For races that involve a bike and/or gear bag drop off the day before, use the more low key setting as an opportunity to familiarize yourself with the ins and outs of the transition area, literally. When the flow of traffic is not obvious, ask a volunteer for a walk thru. Make note of the swim exit, bike exit and entrance, run exit and entrance, changing tents and rack locations.
More: How to Execute Smooth Transitions
#2 Minimalism Isn't Just for Footwear
A good transition area will more closely resemble a monk's chamber than your typical teenager's cluttered bedroom. Start by storing your bike pump and backpack full of pre/post race clothes far out of the way of both yourself and other competitors. Do your best to streamline what you will need for the race and leave only the essential items out on your transition mat—T2 is not the time to decide which visor best matches your race kit or if a chocolate or oatmeal raisin flavored Powerbar is actually your favorite.
More: How to Set Up Your Transition Area
#3 Practice. Refine. Repeat.
Smooth transitions are a skill that can be developed with just a little bit of effort. Most athletes put hundreds of hours into swim, bike, and run training in preparation for a race, but neglect to spend even 20 minutes on transitions.
For a perfect taper week workout, try setting up a mini race circuit with a designated transition zone. Keep the swim, bike and run distances very short—think one lap around the parking lot for the bike leg—and repeat until the transitions feel smooth.
This makes for a great group workout, even when fitness levels vary. If you want to watch transition poetry in motion, look no further than the ITU draft legal races, where events are won and lost on small margins and making a lead pack on the bike is crucial for success.
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This past weekend, as my EQII trial came to an end, I set out to work towards a few more achievements in Guild Wars. I had a multi-year pause in the Eye of the North storyline to revisit; I fell behind most of my guildmates during our initial run and never got around to picking it back up again, until now.
Several near-wipes and a couple of hours later, I had finally bested the Disc of Chaos and appealed to a guildie to help me take down the Great Destroyer. This proved to be one of the more simple parts of the EOTN campaign, following the Guild Wars "Boss in a room" technique, and before too long I was claiming my Dwarven fire staff and receiving accolades from every NPC I had ever encountered in my travels.
All in a day's work, my NPC friends.
My main purpose in finishing up now, of course, is to be able to witness the interactions between Lt. Thackeray and Gwen, to hopefully take part in assisting in their courtship, and to ramp up my involvement in the War In Kryta events. I have not yet been able to assemble all the necessary elements of Gwen and the Lieutenant's inevitable picnic, nor have I had a successful engagement with the ominous Peacekeepers as yet (I keep wiping on them, no doubt in part due to having level 15 henchmen for the area, while going up against level 20 groups), but I have two more nights to try!
In the meantime, lovely treats like this new Guild Wars 2 Manifesto keep popping up and making me want to spin forward my clock until it's 2011. Any shows of interest I might have for the slew of MMOs currently in some state of progress or another fades to a "meh" when compared to my anticipation for Guild Wars 2. I've been trying hard not to get too excited since there's such a long wait to be had, but frankly, ArenaNet has a solid track record as far as I'm concerned, and if they say their game is going to be fun, then by gum, I know it's going to be fun!
And if they say they want Guild Wars 2 to be "the best MMORPG ever created", well, I'm on board for that, too.


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Food Network Star Season 8 Finale Recap
Well, I'm still a little flabbergasted with last week's results. Michele had easily the worst performance of the night yet she gets a pilot. However, since Martie and Justin had the best performances they let them both stay. Kudos Food Network, that's the first time you've done a mid-show rules change with a positive result. Yvan has really proven he belongs as well. All things being equal Justin is the best pick for the next Food Network Star but as I have stated before, I don't trust this show.
As usual with the finale I will give my assessment of each remaining candidate and what I see in their future. I will also try to predict the future of a few of the other contestants. Let's get started shall we?
Michele Ragussis – The best way to describe Michele's performance is underwhelming. I have never seen what the judges have loved so much. I can only assume that it is because of editing. But I can only base my predictions on what I have seen and what I saw was someone who showed no growth from beginning to end. Should Michele win I see her show following the same path as Aaron McCargo Jr's show. For those of you that don't know Aaron's show was canceled last year but people are only now starting to notice it isn't on. I don't think she wins but we will occasionally see her from time to time and I would love to cook with her someday.
Yvan Lemoine –He has really grown since the show started. His charm and camera presence have been present since the beginning but it took him a few weeks to put the whole package together. Yvan would be a wonderful host and his show could be a hit for Food Network but I see him on Cooking Channel instead. I'd watch the crap out of Yvan's show.
Martie Duncan –I've never met Martie personally but she is the friend of a friend. She's also from my home state of Alabama so it stands to reason that I love Martie. As a Southerner I have always hated the portrayal of us in the national media but there was a time when food TV got it right. Justine Wilson was amazing, Emeril brought our culture to life and lest we forget that Alton Brown is a good ole Georgia boy. The best cooks in America are now and have always been from the South. Win or lose I see Martie with a show on Food Network. She's earned it.
Justin Warner – this has been his contest since about week two. In all reality if Justin doesn't win this show needs to stop billing itself as a competition. He has been the class of the cast all season long. His fresh and brainy approach make his POV perfect to fill the void left by Good Eats retirement. Keep in mind that GE didn't go off the air because people weren't watching it anymore but because Alton decided it was time for something new. Justin Warner is new, like nothing we've ever seen on Food Network before. He should win but if he doesn't he'll still get a show and it's ratings will destroy the show of whoever does win.
Of the others:
Emily Ellyn – Eliminated in week 7 in what was easily the sleaziest episode of the season. She is a fan favorite and I see her with a show if not on Food Network/Cooking Channel (they'd be foolish to let her get away) then on another major cable network. Her POV, style and food are too good to not have a national audience. Plus she's just so damned good looking. I think Emily and Nadia G would make a great one-two punch.
Judson Allen – Eliminated in week 5 in what was the second sleaziest episode of the season Judson is not only likable he just may be what the black community needs to form a unified front against obesity and the diabetes it leads to. As much as Judson would love to be on Food Network/Cooking Channel I believe his place might be on BET. It was originally started as a network to break the stereotypes of black culture but these days it is one of the worst perpetuaters of them. Judson has the potential to have the most important show to come from this contest. After watching Susie gushing over his new heath & wellness POV I would not be surprised to see him on Cooking Channel.
Nikki Martin – Eliminated in week 11 Nikki showed a lot of personal growth and tenacity. Here elimination last week was questionable since she clearly had a better performance than her teammate Michele. As much as I would love to see Nikki on a major cable network I'm just not sure if it will happen. She's good enough but they can only take so many people from one cast. Still, we have not seen the last of her. She would totally rock on this new Chopped: Grillmasters special.
As I have stated before this is easily the most talented cast they've ever had. Every single contestant this year was good enough to have a nationally televised TV show. Most of them, should they chose to do so, will have ample opportunities within their own communities. I look forward to what the future holds for all of them. I have made some terrific friends in this year's cast and I want the best for each and everyone of them.
The next Food Network Star is. . .


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Bird Senses: Can Birds Smell or Taste?
Bird-watchers often wonder can birds smell and can birds taste? Learn more about bird senses and how they use them from a birding expert.
In all my time studying birds, there's one topic that always elicits a reaction—can birds smell or taste? I'm not surprised that many people have an opinion on this subject. After watching birds select only certain types of seeds, fruit and suet from backyard feeders, it's difficult to believe birds don't rely on smell or taste to determine what to eat.
Even the experts can't agree, despite more than a century of research and debate. The results of studies in this area of bird senses are often contradictory or simply inconclusive. However, one fact is almost certain. Birds depend less on the senses of smell and taste than people do.
Most birds have little use for the sense of smell. The odors of food, prey, enemies or mates quickly disperse in the wind. Birds possess olfactory glands, but they're not well developed in most species, including the songbirds in our backyards. The same is true for taste, which is related to smell. While humans have 9,000 taste buds, songbirds have fewer than 50.
That means the birds we feed around our homes must locate their food by sight or touch, two senses that are highly developed in birds. Did you know hummingbirds can see even MORE colors than humans, according to researchers.
Can Birds Taste?
Anyone who has used cayenne pepper in birdseed to discourage squirrels knows that birds will eat the seeds without hesitation. Why? Because birds don't detect the strong scent and taste of the pepper. However, squirrels, like all mammals, have well-developed senses of smell and taste and react to the pepper as we would—with distaste.
Further evidence that birds find food by sight is an experiment I conducted with six wild birdseed mixes, each having a unique formula and a different appearance. I presented the six mixes in two kinds of feeders, six tube feeders and six tray feeders. At the end of each day, I weighed and measured the uneaten seeds.
One mix was a clear winner, but what amazed me was watching the birds go right to the feeders containing the winning mix, even though I frequently rotated them. Obviously, they recognized the favored mix by its appearance. Why they preferred this specific mix, however, is somewhat of a mystery. Since instinct plays a large role in their behavior, one possible explanation is the birds relied on their genetic programming to determine what seed was best for them. After all, birds are "built" to eat certain types of foods. One way you can tell is by looking at their different beak shapes.
Can Birds Smell?
While most birds seem to lack much sense of smell, there are some groups of birds that can smell. They locate food using their olfactory glands. Extensive research into bird senses has shown that vultures, seabirds, kiwis and parrots have well-developed olfactory glands, giving them some sense of smell and taste. A biologist once watched as vultures found hidden meat by detecting its odor. Some seabirds can smell fish oils from a distance, and kiwis in New Zealand are able to sniff out earthworms underground. But these are exceptions in the bird world.
Clearly, there is more to learn about this topic. If birds can't smell or taste, why do they avoid eating toxic monarch butterflies? How do hummingbirds distinguish plain water from sugar water? Maybe one day we'll learn the answers to these and other questions. Perhaps we'll even discover that a bird's olfactory glands play a role totally different from other members of the animal kingdom.
Next, learn why do birds sing in spring?


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I've been using hemp seeds for over ten years. But it's really been over the last five years that I have found almost every possible use for their hemp hearts. I did a whole month for Vegan MoFo a few years ago with just some ideas, and since then, I've tried countless more, but sadly, have little time to blog about them. But I always tweet!
In a nutshell, or should I say, hemp seed shell, they are amazing because each 30g gram serving of hemp hearts has 10g of complete protein, and 10g omega 3 and 6. As a vegan, that's pretty important, but also as a mom of an allergic kid, they are an easy substitute for nuts. Also as a mom of three, two of which are picky, I love that I can toss them into baking, on salads, in smoothies, etc. without too much fanfare.
I have also loved their protein powders - I keep meaning to write up my 'Bran' Muffin recipe that uses their Hemp Pro Fibre hemp protein powder, I loved to throw in Hemp Pro 70 into smoothies and really loved making truffles and protein balls out of their Chocolate and Vanilla Hemp Pro 70 flavours. So when, over the last year, I was seeing their Hemp Protein Smoothie in Mixed Berry flavour at Costco without seeing much on Manitoba Harvest's Facebook and Twitter about it, I have to admit my curiosity was piqued.
And then this lovely box arrived:
Mixed Berry! Vanilla Chai! Chocolate! Oh boy! I was EXCITED. Plus a super cool Blender Bottle and measuring spoons. I was all set!
Like the other hemp protein powders from Manitoba Harvest, these ones are chock full of protein - a whopping 15g per 30g serving! But the really sneaky thing that I like is that there are greens included! Spinach, kale and broccoli! It's like a little added bonus.
So to honour my favourite and most versatile 'health' food, I decided to go to town making some stuff with it. I hope you like what you see! Please note that I have no fancy photography - just an iPhone with no editing...ghetto!
Given that this is a 'smoothie' product, I thought, let's not go too far off the beaten path. I made this Mixed Berry Smoothie (above) first to give this flavour a try. I have to say, adding this protein powder not only gave my smoothie a great protein boost, but the Mixed Berry mix added an extra fruity flavour boost. I have to admit, this smoothie tasted exactly like something I'd order from Jamba Juice/Booster Juice (which is meant as a compliment). Really fruity!
Mixed Berry Smoothie
Gluten-free, nut-free, soy-free, can be made oil-free (depending on milk used)
1 cup non-dairy milk (I used rice milk)
1 banana, sliced and frozen
1/2 cup frozen sliced strawberries
1/4 cup frozen wild blueberries
2 tbsp Hemp Protein Smoothie - Mixed Berry flavour
Toss all ingredients in a high-speed blender and blend until smooth. Makes 2 servings.
Ok, so still on the smoothie front...decided to crack open the chocolate. I made Dreena Burton's Chunky Monkey Smoothie, using hemp seeds instead of almond butter, and my new Chocolate Hemp Protein Smoothie Mix (see pic below). Delicious!
Then decided I wanted to go beyond smoothies when it came to the Vanilla Chai Hemp Protein Smoothie mix. I decided to throw it into my favourite muffin recipe based on one from DIY Vegan. They are gluten-free, oil-free, nut-free and all over just plain awesome. But the boost from the Vanilla Chai Hemp Protein Smoothie mix put them over the top!
Banana-Hemp Muffins
Gluten-free, nut-free, soy-free, oil-free, refined sugar-free
Based on recipe from DIY Vegan
3 overripe bananas
3/4 cup hemp milk (I use homemade)
1 cup oat flour
2/3 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup Vanilla Chai Hemp Protein Smoothie mix
1/2 cup coconut sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/3 cup Hemp Hearts
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a couple of muffin trays with 14 liners.
In a large bowl, use an immersion blender to mix bananas and hemp milk. Add in dry ingredients (except hemp hearts) and mix just until smooth. Sprinkle in hemp hearts, and toss just to combine. Evenly distribute batter between 14 prepared muffins cups. Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean. Makes 14 muffins.
Then I got to thinking about other ways to use my Vanilla Chai mix...I remember trying a 'healthier' Monkey Mix/Puppy Chow Mix and thinking it would be a good fit. Not sure if you are familiar with this Crispix/Chex-based concoction, but the original format involves melted chocolate chips, peanut butter and a lot of icing sugar mixed with cereal. I shudder thinking how I could actually munch on that back in the day. Now that I'm very careful about my sugar intake, the original recipe is a no-go, nor do I have any desire to eat it that way. Anyways, I came across a recipe somewhere that called for using protein powder as a coating for a similar mix instead of icing sugar. Perfect! So here's my version:
Chai Crispix/Chex Mix
Nut-free, oil-free, can be made gluten-free with GF Chex
6 cups Crispix or Chex cereal
1/3 cup melted coconut butter*
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2-3 tbsp Vanilla Chai Hemp Protein Smoothie mix
Toss cereal into a large bowl. In a small measuring cup, mix together coconut butter and spice. Pour over cereal and toss until cereal is coated. Either keep the cereal mixture in a bowl, or dump it into a large Ziploc bag. Add Vanilla Chai Hemp Protein Smoothie mix and stir or shake until cereal is coated. Makes about 6 cups.
* Note: This is not the same as coconut oil. I make this by dumping a bag of Let's Do Organic shredded coconut in my Vitamix blender and letting it run on full-speed for three minutes...makes 1 cup.
Stepping away from the Vanilla Chai flavour, and back to Chocolate. I thought this stuff would make a pretty damn good fudgy frosting...and I was right! It's pretty thick for cupcakes (seen here) but I think it would be PERFECT for spreading on some black bean brownies. I like this frosting because you don't need any sickening icing sugar nor vegan margarine.
Chocolate Hemp Protein Frosting
Gluten-free, nut-free, soy-free, refined sugar-free, can be made oil-free (depending on milk used)
3/4 cup melted coconut butter
3/4 cup maple syrup
3/4 cup Chocolate Hemp Protein Smoothie mix
1 tsp vanilla
Pinch of salt
Mix all ingredients in a large bowl with an electric mixer. Use immediately, as frosting sets quickly as coconut butter cools. Makes just over 2 cups.
* Note: This is not the same as coconut oil. I make this by dumping a bag of Let's Do Organic shredded coconut in my Vitamix blender and letting it run on full-speed for three minutes...makes 1 cup.
Since I didn't have too many cupcakes kicking around, I decided to reformat the frosting into an energy bite. Easy peasy! These cute little balls are like milk chocolate bites of heaven. Super easy to pack in my bag or my kids' lunches as a better-for-you treat.
'Milk' Chocolate Energy Bites
Gluten-free, nut-free, soy-free, oil-free, refined sugar-free
3/4 cup melted coconut butter*
3/4 cup maple syrup
3/4 cup Chocolate Hemp Protein Smoothie mix
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups oat flour
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (I use Enjoy Life)
Mix first five ingredients in a large bowl with an electric mixer. Add in oats and mix until a soft dough forms. Add in chocolate chips. If dough is too soft to roll, chill in fridge for 15 minutes. Take teaspoonful amounts and roll into balls. Place on a lined cookie sheet. Chill for at least one hour. Keep refrigerated. Makes around 40 bites, depending on amount being rolled.
* Note: This is not the same as coconut oil. I make this by dumping a bag of Let's Do Organic shredded coconut in my Vitamix blender and letting it run on full-speed for three minutes...makes 1 cup.
And if there weren't enough recipes crammed into this post, here's one last one for you! A rich chocolate chia pudding that is ridiculously easy to make. Based on a recipe I found on the Internet but cannot locate, but let's be real - there are so many chia puddings out there anyways...they all can't be that original!
Chocolate Chia Pudding with Hemp Protein
Gluten-free, nut-free, soy-free, oil-free, refined sugar-free
1 can full-fat coconut milk
3/4 cup water
2 tbsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup chia seeds
1 cup Chocolate Hemp Protein Smoothie mix, to taste
Add all ingredients except smoothie mix to a 1L mason jar. Stir, then shake vigorously. Refrigerate at least 4 hours, stirring halfway through. When ready to serve, scoop out a serving into a bowl, and add about 1-2 tbsp of Chocolate Hemp Protein Smoothie mix per cup of pudding and stir. Serve immediately. Makes 6-8 servings.
I would love to hear what ideas you might have for me to try with what remains of my smoothie mixes - let me know in the comments! Manitoba Harvest was generous enough to provide a 15% off coupon code when you checkout through their website - hempsmoothielaunch16 - which is good until April 30, 2016. Let me know what flavours/recipes you try! If you post a picture to social media using the hashtag #hempproteinsmoothie and tag +Manitoba Harvest Hemp Foods, you have a chance to win a case of your favourite flavour! This contest runs until April 15, 2016, so be sure to try some soon!
* Full disclosure - I was sent this package from Manitoba Harvest and I decided to do a review with some recipes :) I love all of their stuff!