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Analysis of Infobright and its MySQL-based data warehouse DBMS formerly known as Brighthouse. Related subjects include:
Are analytic RDBMS and data warehouse appliances obsolete?
I used to spend most of my time — blogging and consulting alike — on data warehouse appliances and analytic DBMS. Now I'm barely involved with them. The most obvious reason is that there have been drastic changes in industry structure:
- Many of the independent vendors were swooped up by acquisition.
- None of those acquisitions was a big success.
- Microsoft did little with DATAllegro.
- Netezza struggled with R&D after being bought by IBM. An IBMer recently told me that their main analytic RDBMS engine was BLU.
- I hear about Vertica more as a technology to be replaced than as a significant ongoing market player.
- Pivotal open-sourced Greenplum. I have detected few people who care.
- Ditto for Actian's offerings.
- Teradata claimed a few large Aster accounts, but I never hear of Aster as something to compete or partner with.
- Smaller vendors fizzled too. Hadapt and Kickfire went to Teradata as more-or-less acquihires. InfiniDB folded. Etc.
- Impala and other Hadoop-based alternatives are technology options.
- Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and to some extent SAP/Sybase are still pedaling along … but I rarely talk with companies that big. 🙂
Simply reciting all that, however, begs the question of whether one should still care about analytic RDBMS at all.
My answer, in a nutshell, is:
Analytic RDBMS — whether on premises in software, in the form of data warehouse appliances, or in the cloud — are still great for hard-core business intelligence, where "hard-core" can refer to ad-hoc query complexity, reporting/dashboard concurrency, or both. But they aren't good for much else.
Greenplum is being open sourced
While I don't find the Open Data Platform thing very significant, an associated piece of news seems cooler — Pivotal is open sourcing a bunch of software, with Greenplum as the crown jewel. Notes on that start:
- Greenplum has been an on-again/off-again low-cost player since before its acquisition by EMC, but open source is basically a commitment to having low license cost be permanently on.
- In most regards, "free like beer" is what's important here, not "free like speech". I doubt non-Pivotal employees are going to do much hacking on the long-closed Greenplum code base.
- That said, Greenplum forked PostgreSQL a long time ago, and the general PostgreSQL community might gain ideas from some of the work Greenplum has done.
- The only other bit of newly open-sourced stuff I find interesting is HAWQ. Redis was already open source, and I've never been persuaded to care about GemFire.
Greenplum, let us recall, is a pretty decent MPP (Massively Parallel Processing) analytic RDBMS. Various aspects of it were oversold at various times, and I've never heard that they actually licked concurrency. But Greenplum has long had good SQL coverage and petabyte-scale deployments and a columnar option and some in-database analytics and so on; i.e., it's legit. When somebody asks me about open source analytic RDBMS to consider, I expect Greenplum to consistently be on the short list.
Further, the low-cost alternatives for analytic RDBMS are adding up. Read more
|Categories: Amazon and its cloud, Citus Data, Data warehouse appliances, EAI, EII, ETL, ELT, ETLT, EMC, Greenplum, Hadoop, Infobright, MonetDB, Open source, Pricing
|6 Comments
Some stuff I'm thinking about (early 2014)
From time to time I like to do "what I'm working on" posts. From my recent blogging, you probably already know that includes:
- Hadoop (always, and please see below).
- Analytic RDBMS (ditto).
- NoSQL and NewSQL.
- Specifically, SQL-on-Hadoop
- Schema-on-need.
- Spark and other memory-centric technology, including streaming.
- Public policy, mainly but not only in the area of surveillance/privacy.
- General strategic advice for all sizes of tech company.
Other stuff on my mind includes but is not limited to:
1. Certain categories of buying organizations are inherently leading-edge.
- Internet companies have adopted Hadoop, NoSQL, NewSQL and all that en masse. Often, they won't even look at things that are conventional or expensive.
- US telecom companies have been buying 1 each of every DBMS on the market since pre-relational days.
- Financial services firms — specifically algorithmic traders and broker-dealers — have been in their own technical world for decades …
- … as have national-security agencies …
- … as have pharmaceutical research departments.
Fine. But what really intrigues me is when more ordinary enterprises also put leading-edge technologies into production. I pester everybody for examples of that.
Thoughts on SaaS
Generalizing about SaaS (Software as a Service) is hard. To prune some of the confusion, let's start by noting:
- SaaS has been around for over half a century, and at times has been the dominant mode of application delivery.
- The term multi-tenancy is being used in several different ways.
- Multi-tenancy, in the purest sense, is inessential to SaaS. It's simply an implementation choice that has certain benefits for the SaaS provider. And by the way, …
- … salesforce.com, the chief proponent of the theory that true multi-tenancy is the hallmark of true SaaS, abandoned that position this week.
- Internet-based services are commonly, if you squint a little, SaaS. Examples include but are hardly limited to Google, Twitter, Dropbox, Intuit, Amazon Web Services, and the company that hosts this blog (KnownHost).
- Some of the core arguments for SaaS' rise, namely the various efficiencies of data center outsourcing and scale, apply equally to the public cloud, to SaaS, and to AEaaS (Anything Else as a Service).
- These benefits are particularly strong for inherently networked use cases. For example, you really don't want to be hosting your website yourself. And salesforce.com got its start supporting salespeople who worked out of remote offices.
- In theory and occasionally in practice, certain SaaS benefits, namely the outsourcing of software maintenance and updates, could be enjoyed on-premises as well. Whether I think that could be a bigger deal going forward will be explored in future posts.
For smaller enterprises, the core outsourcing argument is compelling. How small? Well:
- What's the minimum level of IT operations headcount needed for mission-critical systems? Let's just say "several".
- What does that cost? Fully burdened, somewhere in the six figures.
- What fraction of the IT budget should such headcount be? As low a double digit percentage as possible.
- What fraction of revenues should be spent on IT? Some single-digit percentage.
So except for special cases, an enterprise with less than $100 million or so in revenue may have trouble affording on-site data processing, at least at a mission-critical level of robustness. It may well be better to use NetSuite or something like that, assuming needed features are available in SaaS form.*
|Categories: Amazon and its cloud, Buying processes, Cloud computing, Data mart outsourcing, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Infobright, Netezza, Pricing, salesforce.com, Software as a Service (SaaS), Workday
|5 Comments
Things I keep needing to say
Some subjects just keep coming up. And so I keep saying things like:
Most generalizations about "Big Data" are false. "Big Data" is a horrific catch-all term, with many different meanings.
Most generalizations about Hadoop are false. Reasons include:
- Hadoop is a collection of disparate things, most particularly data storage and application execution systems.
- The transition from Hadoop 1 to Hadoop 2 will be drastic.
- For key aspects of Hadoop — especially file format and execution engine — there are or will be widely varied options.
Hadoop won't soon replace relational data warehouses, if indeed it ever does. SQL-on-Hadoop is still very immature. And you can't replace data warehouses unless you have the power of SQL.
Note: SQL isn't the only way to provide "the power of SQL", but alternative approaches are just as immature.
Most generalizations about NoSQL are false. Different NoSQL products are … different. It's not even accurate to say that all NoSQL systems lack SQL interfaces. (For example, SQL-on-Hadoop often includes SQL-on-HBase.)
Comments on Gartner's 2012 Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems — evaluations
To my taste, the most glaring mis-rankings in the 2012/2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management are that it is too positive on Kognitio and too negative on Infobright. Secondarily, it is too negative on HP Vertica, and too positive on ParAccel and Actian/VectorWise. So let's consider those vendors first.
Gartner seems confused about Kognitio's products and history alike.
- Gartner calls Kognitio an "in-memory" DBMS, which is not accurate.
- Gartner doesn't remark on Kognitio's worst-in-class* compression.
- Gartner gives Kognitio oddly high marks for a late, me-too Hadoop integration strategy.
- Gartner writes as if Kognitio's next attempt at the US market will be the first one, which is not the case.
- Gartner says that Kognitio pioneered data warehouse SaaS (Software as a Service), which actually has existed since the pre-relational 1970s.
Gartner is correct, however, to note that Kognitio doesn't sell much stuff overall.
* non-existent
In the cases of HP Vertica, Infobright, ParAccel, and Actian/VectorWise, the 2012 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management's facts are fairly accurate, but I dispute Gartner's evaluation. When it comes to Vertica: Read more
Amazon Redshift and its implications
Merv Adrian and Doug Henschen both reported more details about Amazon Redshift than I intend to; see also the comments on Doug's article. I did talk with Rick Glick of ParAccel a bit about the project, and he noted:
- Amazon Redshift is missing parts of ParAccel, notably the extensibility framework.
- ParAccel did some engineering to make its DBMS run better in the cloud.
- Amazon did some engineering in the areas it knows better than ParAccel — cloud provisioning, cloud billing, and so on.
"We didn't want to do the deal on those terms" comments from other companies suggest ParAccel's main financial take from the deal is an already-reported venture investment.
The cloud-related engineering was mainly around communications, e.g. strengthening error detection/correction to make up for the lack of dedicated switches. In general, Rick seemed more positive on running in the (Amazon) cloud than analytic RDBMS vendors have been in the past.
So who should and will use Amazon Redshift? For starters, I'd say: Read more
|Categories: Amazon and its cloud, Business intelligence, Cloud computing, Data mart outsourcing, Data warehousing, Infobright, ParAccel, Predictive modeling and advanced analytics, Pricing, Vertica Systems
|6 Comments
Notes on some basic database terminology
In a call Monday with a prominent company, I was told:
- Teradata, Netezza, Greenplum and Vertica aren't relational.
- Teradata, Netezza, Greenplum and Vertica are all data warehouse appliances.
That, to put it mildly, is not accurate. So I shall try, yet again, to set the record straight.
In an industry where people often call a DBMS just a "database" — so that a database is something that manages a database! — one may wonder why I bother. Anyhow …
1. The products commonly known as Oracle, Exadata, DB2, Sybase, SQL Server, Teradata, Sybase IQ, Netezza, Vertica, Greenplum, Aster, Infobright, SAND, ParAccel, Exasol, Kognitio et al. all either are or incorporate relational database management systems, aka RDBMS or relational DBMS.
2. In principle, there can be difficulties in judging whether or not a DBMS is "relational". In practice, those difficulties don't arise — yet. Every significant DBMS still falls into one of two categories:
- Relational:
- Was designed to do relational stuff* from the get-go, even if it now does other things too.
- Supports a lot of SQL.
- Non-relational:
- Was designed primarily to do non-relational things.*
- Doesn't support all that much SQL.
*I expect the distinction to get more confusing soon, at which point I'll adopt terms more precise than "relational things" and "relational stuff".
3. There are two chief kinds of relational DBMS: Read more
Approximate query results
In theory:
- A database query is a predicate.
- A DBMS matches the data it manages against the predicate and send back those records for which the predicate is true.
And so it would seem that query results always have to be exact. Even so, there are at least four different practical scenarios in which query results can reasonably be regarded as approximate, each associated with query languages that can supersede standard set-theoretic SQL.
Actually, there's a fifth, and it's a huge one — some fraction of your data is just plain wrong. But that's not what this post is about.
First, some queries don't have binary results, even in principle. Notably, text queries are answered via relevancy rankings, which fit badly into the relational model.
Second — and this can be combined with the first — you might want to generalize the query to look for partial matches. For example, Yarcdata suggested to me a scenario in which:
- You do a SPARQL query.
- You modify the query to accept results higher up in the taxonomy. (Which is likely to be possible, because where there's SPARQL, there's apt to be a taxonomy as well.) For example, if you really want to query on two people living in the house, you might extend the query to cover two people connected by any kind of address or building.
Similarly, if you're looking for geographic proximity, it's common to extend the allowed radius to fish for more results. Or one can walk up the hierarchy in a dimensional model.
Third, sometimes you just don't have the data for any kind of precise answer at all. One adaptation I've mentioned before is to interpolate time series with synthetic data, and send back "precise" results based on that. In the same post I mentioned the Vertica "range join", wherein users deliberately throw away part of their data — only storing the range it was in — and then join accordingly.
As Donald Rumsfeld might have said — and would have done well to reflect upon — you go into decision-making with the data you have, not the data you wish you had.
Finally, sometimes there's a precise answer in principle, but for performance reasons you accept an approximate one, at least to start with. Numerous companies have told me stories around this, including:
- Infobright, whose "Rough Query" gives fast approximate results to a broad range of queries.
- Metamarkets, which does fast cardinality estimates via HyperLogLog.
- Aster Data, which was the first company to point out to me that median, decile, quintile, and so on calculations are a lot faster in a shared-nothing setting if you're willing to settle for approximate results.
The latter two categories led me to ask vendors how customers actually make use of their exotic SQL capabilities. Answers boiled down to:
- (Always) Well, there's a lot of custom coding.
- (Sometimes) We're working with partner BI vendors to make direct use of the capabilities, but that's not done yet, so it's too early to talk about any details.
Perhaps the answers will never get much better; it's tough to get packaged software vendors to support vendor-specific SQL, unless the vendor is Oracle. Even so, we're seeing ever more ways in which conventional SQL DBMS are being superseded by data management and analytic alternatives.
|Categories: Aster Data, Business intelligence, Data models and architecture, Data warehousing, Database compression, Infobright, Text, Vertica Systems, Yarcdata and Cray
|3 Comments
Our clients, and where they are located
From time to time, I disclose our vendor client lists. Another iteration is below, the first since a little over a year ago. To be clear:
- This is a list of Monash Advantage members.
- All our vendor clients are Monash Advantage members, unless …
- … we work with them primarily in their capacity as technology users. (A large fraction of our user clients happen to be SaaS vendors.)
- We do not usually disclose our user clients.
- We do not usually disclose our venture capital clients, nor those who invest in publicly-traded securities.
- Excluded from this round of disclosure is one vendor I have never written about.
- Included in this round of disclosure is one client paying for services partly in stock. All our other clients are cash-only.
For reasons explained below, I'll group the clients geographically. Obviously, companies often have multiple locations, but this is approximately how it works from the standpoint of their interactions with me. Read more


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Physicists worry about what they call the Groucho Marx effect—that any universe simple enough to be understood is too simple to produce a mind capable of understanding it. The discovery of the Higgs boson right where physicists were looking for it is a great sign that the universe isn't too complicated for us to understand after all. "It's a new clue to the big bang," says Neil Turok, director of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. "It gives us hope that we can really describe what was going on at that time."
What's most exciting for young physicists isn't what the predictions got right—it's what they got wrong. Early indications suggest that the Higgs boson isn't behaving quite as predicted when it decays into other particles at the end of its ultrashort lifetime. So far, it's decaying into photons more often than expected and into other particles less often. One possible explanation: The Higgs itself is a composite particle made of smaller particles, a prospect that could help to explain the mysterious dark matter that permeates the universe.
Even Peter Higgs, the 83-year-old physicist who helped predict the new particle in the 1960s, was stumped when asked about the new discovery's practical applications. "I have no idea," he admitted. That doesn't mean there won't be any, Brookhaven physicist Howard Gordon says: "When Einstein proposed relativity, no one thought of its application to GPS." Higgs's discovery sheds light on the energy stored in the fabric of space—and gives us a chance to harness it.

subset: commoncrawl


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- Finally
Transport Jigsaw Puzzles 123
What is it about?
- Finally! The long-awaited sequel to the best-selling puzzle game for young learners!
App Screenshots
App Store Description
- Finally! The long-awaited sequel to the best-selling puzzle game for young learners!
- Top 1 Paid educational ranking in the UK, Top 10 Paid in Australia and Spain, Top 20 iPad Paid in Japan, France, Singapore, New Zealand and more.
- Play Transport Jigsaw Puzzles 123 in more languages! Have fun learning new words in different languages including: English, French, Spanish, Japanese, German, Swedish, Chinese Mandarin, Norwegian, Russian, Danish, Portuguese, Korean, Dutch and Italian.
What is it?
+ 53 everyday transport jigsaw puzzles in 8 different sceneries, all in brilliant and colorful graphics.
+ With 3 difficulty levels to choose from, this educational game will never get old!
+ A fun way for young children to develop logical thinking and learn simple words.
+ Animation and encouraging feedback makes solving puzzles an enjoyable and rewarding experience.
This fun and education app was developed to suit the tastes and learning abilities of young children from ages 1 to 6. Start with simple 2-piece puzzles (great for the little ones!) and gradually move up the levels to master the 9-piece puzzles.
When one puzzle is completed, the name of the transport vehicle will be spelled on the screen and read out loud. Watch the entire scene come to life with color when all the puzzles are completed. Cute pictures and playful animations are sure to make this puzzle game a favourite pastime for kids.
This app will help your child excel in the following areas:
- Problem Solving
- Logical and cognitive skills
- Concentration
- Memory
- Linguistic skills
Transport Jigsaw Puzzles 123 Featuring:
- 8 High quality beautiful transport scenes including:
+ Across the Ocean
+ Busy City
+ My Neighbourhood
+ Up and Away
+ Winter Wonderland
+ Let's Build It!
+ Planes And Tanks, and
+ Lost In Space!
- 53 unique puzzles to be solved.
- 3 difficulty levels, ranging from 2-piece puzzles to 9-piece puzzles.
- Easy to use interface specifically designed for young children.
- Light and cheerful music.
- Interactive animation for even more fun.
- A hint on/off feature to provide optional assistance.
- ...more scenes and puzzles coming soon to new versions.
Transport Jigsaw Puzzles 123 is a sequel to the best selling Farm Jigsaw Puzzles 123, also available on the iTunes app store.
Connect with us!
Visit us: http://www.GiggleUp.com
Like us: facebook.com/GiggleUpApps
Follow us: twitter.com/GiggleUpApps
Email us: firstname.lastname@example.com
Brought to you by GiggleUp, creators of the award-winning Interactive Telling Time and other educational apps for kids. Our goal is to promote learning through play with the purpose of helping children develop useful learning skills. Our apps have been enjoyed by children and used in classrooms all around the world!
AppAdvice does not own this application and only provides images and links contained in the iTunes Search API, to help our users find the best apps to download. If you are the developer of this app and would like your information removed, please send a request to email@example.com and your information will be removed.


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Active Off-Road Bumpstops for Toyota Landcruiser 70 & 80 series - Rear Kit
Jounce Bumper
Active Off-Road Bumpstops provide off-road enthusiasts greater control over their vehicles' suspension travel. Using progressive-rate springs means that instead of a hard stop at the end of axle travel the axle energy will be absorbed when bottoming-out producing smooth, predictable and quiet axle engagement and disengagement.
Unlike OEM bump stops, Active Off-Road Bumpstops are made from natural rubber. Just like our Timbren SES line, Active Off-Road Bumpstops carry a lifetime warranty and a satisfaction guarantee.
ABSTORLC1 replaces the rear OEM bump stops on the Toyota Landcruiser 70 & 80 series. Upgrade to Active Off-road Bumpstops and experience the difference.
Active Off-Road Bumpstops are a bump stop upgrade that will improve your off-road experience in several ways:
Provide Smooth Axle Engagement
Instead of the harsh jounce you get from regular bump stops, enjoy a much softer, smoother stop when your vehicle bottoms out.
Maintain Axle Travel
Active Off-Road Bumpstops will not limit axle travel, but allow full articulation of the suspension system.
Deliver Greater Control Over The Vehicle
Remain in control of your off-road vehicle during hard-to-handle situations on extreme terrain and at high speeds.
Stay On The Trail Longer
Remove the stress to your body and your off-road vehicle. Active Off-road Bumpstops absorb the harsh slams when your vehicle bottoms out, allowing you to stay out on the trail much longer doing what you love to do.
Maintenance Free
Unlike hydraulic bump stops, Timbren Active Off-Road Bumpstops require zero maintenance. Zip. Zilch. Nada. This is a set-it-and-forget-it upgrade. No tweaks or refills required! Once you install your Timbren bump stop upgrades, they won't need any supervision whatsoever.
Lifetime Warranty
You receive a lifetime warranty with every purchase of Active Off-Road Bumpstops. We have been designing and manufacturing Aeon® rubber springs for over 50 years and confidently stand behind our products.
Timbren vs. Hydraulic Bump Stops
- Headache Free - Hydraulic bump stops make a loud 'banging' noise each time it slaps the strike pad. Timbren bump stops quietly engage with the axle.
- Zero Maintenance - Hydraulic bump stops require maintenance to continue working properly. Timbren bump stops are maintenance free.
- Lifetime Warranty - Timbren bump stops come with a Lifetime Warranty. Hydraulic bump stops do not.
- Save Money - Timbren bump stops cost significantly less than hydraulic bump stops.
- Maintain Full Axle Travel
- Smooth Axle Engagement and Disengagement
- Enhance Suspension Performance
- Progressive Spring Rate
- Absorbs Energy and Cushions Road Shocks
- Stronger Than OEM Bump stops
- Easy Installation
- Satisfaction Guarantee
- Lifetime Warranty
- 2,000 lb capacity
- 4,800 lb bump load capacity
- Overall kit height = 8.25"
- Total deflected (compressed) height = 6"
- Amount of deflection (compression) = 2.25"
What's Included In The Box?
- 2x Aeon® hollow rubber springs (bump stops)
- 2x Mounting brackets
- 2x Steel cups
- All necessary hardware
"What was really fun were the whoops. I would swear someone put a pillow on my suspension." Lori Palmer
"I love the additional support the Active Off-Road Bumpstops give my suspension when I'm off-road." Mark Cosio
"Countless miles of off-road trails and over 2 years of abuse, our Timbren Active Off-Road Bumpstops have not only been a huge advantage but also a necessary modification. Keeping our rig from bottoming out 1 trail at a time!" @fargo4x4
Timbren Active Off-Road Bumpstops come with a Lifetime Warranty which includes:
- Defects in material and workmanship.
- Damaged parts under normal use and service.
Warranty limitations include the following:
- Warranty applies to original purchaser.
- Warranty is not transferable to another vehicle.
- Warranty does not include labor, freight or collateral damage.
- Timbren reserves the right to inspect the failed part and ask for proof of purchase.
- Timbren will not warrant the product in the event of alteration, misuse, overload, negligence or damage cause by others.
What's the difference between Active Off-Road Bumpstops and Timbren SES?
Active Off-road Bumpstops are used to soften the harsh impact when driving off-road. They also help avoid damage to the shock absorber and contact of larger tires with the fender. Timbren SES serve as helper springs to level the load and reduce roll and sway for vehicles carrying heavy loads.
My off-road vehicle has a suspension lift. Will Timbren's Active Off-Road Bumpstops still work for me?
Absolutely! Timbren's Active Off-Road Bumpstops are designed to work with your vehicle regardless of the lift kit you have installed. If you want them to engage sooner, simply order a spacer kit.
Should I install Active Off-Road Bumpstops on both the front and rear suspension of my vehicle?
We recommend both front and rear, especially when navigating rough, off-road terrain. Active Off-Road Bumpstops on all 4 corners of your vehicle will work together to give you a smooth, safe ride.
Do Active Off-Road Bumpstops require any maintenance?
No. Just like Timbren SES kits, Active Off-Road Bumpstops are also maintenance free.
What are Active Off-Road Bumpstops made from?
The Active Off-Road Bumpstops are made from natural rubber with all the unique characteristics inherent in rubber springs.
What is the warranty for Active Off-road Bumpstops?
All Active Off-Road Bumpstops come with a Lifetime warranty covering all replacement parts up until the time you sell your vehicle.
- 809933008516
- Timbren
- New
Shipping Information
- Item Requires Shipping
- 10.0 lbs.
- W8.5000" x H6.5000" x L5.5000"
- Free ground shipping to lower 48 states (some exclusions may apply)
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text:
New on DVD
Clint Eastwood's "Invictus" may look like a sports movie, but the veteran director-actor is again exploring the theme of community, which has shown up in films as widely varied as "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and "Gran Torino."
"Invictus," based on John Carlin's book "Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation," tells the story of a South African rugby team that improbably won the world championship a couple of years after Nelson Mandela's election as the country's first black president. At that point — despite apartheid being gone — litle had changed. Whites still controlled the economy, and poor blacks, who had been brutalized in the old regime, were expecting faster changes, especially from a president who took office a few years after his release from a 27-year incarceration.
Mandela, wily played by Morgan Freeman, spots a way to help pull the country together in the form of a white South African rugby team. The nation is about to host the world championship, but even Mandela's aides are baffled as to why he wants to back the team led by Francois Pienaar, played with appropriate reserve by Matt Damon. The two become unlikely allies in a quest to find a common cause for the people of a fragile democracy.
Throughout his career, Eastwood has been famously associated with the idea of revenge, and throughout the film the threat of retaliation hangs in the air. But by focusing on smaller moments, the director efficiently tells a story of uneasy reconciliation. And while most Americans may not know much about rugby, they'll get the picture.
Almost anyone in Hollywood whose first name began with a J was in Garry Marshall's romantic comedy "Valentine's Day" — Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Jennifer Garner, Jamie Foxx and Julia Roberts.
Throw in Kathy Bates, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, George Lopez, Shirley MacLaine and a few others and you get a hodgepodge of a ensemble piece. Marshall has struck gold with Roberts before ("Pretty Woman," "Runaway Bride"), but America's sweetheart spends most of her time sitting on a plane next to Cooper. Nothing is too romantic or funny in "Valentine's Day," but it's not too painful, either. There is one surprise in songstress Taylor Swift, who proves to be a good comic actor.
Sometimes because of all the goofy roles he plays, we forget that Woody Harrelson is a fine actor. In "The Messenger," writer-director Oren Moverman's absorbing drama, the actor got an Oscar nomination portraying a soldier who informs families that their loved ones have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Harrelson's character, Capt. Tony Stone, a veteran of the first Gulf War, has no special skills for such a delicate mission, and for the most part he's baffled by how to handle the reactions.
"The Messenger" has a fine cast, including Ben Foster, Jena Malone and Samantha Morton, who plays a soldier's widow. Moverman — whose writing credits include "I'm Not There," "Married Life" and "Jesus' Son" — gives us a dark but not overly dramatic portrait of the situation that intelligently explores its complexities.
"Extraordinary Measures" is partly a medical drama and partly about how medical research is conducted and financed. It involves a mismatched pair — the younger, emotional John Crowley (Brendan Fraser), a biotech executive, and the older, gruffer scientist Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford). Together they attempt to find a cure for a fatal genetic disorder that plagues Crowley's family and threatens his two youngest children.
Directed by Tom Vaughan and loosely based on a true story, "Extraordinary Measures" interestingly balances the emotional pull of the dying children with the political and technological problems that the pair faced in doing their research.
Nicolas Roeg's 1971 film "Walkabout" is a bit of a forgotten masterpiece. It tells the story of a young sister and brother, abandoned in the harsh Australian outback, who must learn to cope in the natural world with the help of a young Aborigine on his "walkabout," a rite of passage in which adolescent boys are initiated into manhood by journeying into the wilderness alone. The new Criterion version includes a restored high-definition digital transfer approved by Roeg, commentary featuring Roeg and actress Jenny Agutter, and video interviews with Agutter and actor Luc Roeg.


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The Flinders medical program is recognised internationally for its innovative curriculum that delivers outstanding clinical and academic training, integrating clinical medicine with a strong underpinning in biomedical science.
Medicine is the science and art of treating disease and maintaining health.
Need help with your offer or deciding on your pathway to uni? Get in touch.
Our Student Advisors are available to help via online chat, email or call us, we're here 8am - 6pm throughout January.
Students studying at Flinders University can take advantage of some flexible pathways for entry to Medicine, including:
A direct pathway for school leavers
Via the Bachelor of Clinical Sciences, Doctor of Medicine. In this stream, students can choose either a health sciences or medical science focus in the clinical sciences degree, and then may continue through to the four year postgraduate medical program.
Alternative pathways to graduate entry Medicine
Flinders has more opportunities for students to study graduate entry Medicine. Up to 75 percent of places are reserved for Flinders graduates.
These pathway places are reserved as follows:
There are amazing careers in health all over the world for you to discover.
Your accelerated undergraduate track to a medical degree
While most medicine degrees around Australia are graduate entry only, you can step straight into Medicine at Flinders.
School leavers can complete a medical degree in six years, developing hands-on experience from the first week. There are also pathways for graduate, Indigenous and rural applicants. As leaders in educating future doctors and medical specialists, our curriculum has been adopted by other medical schools in Australia and around the world. Co-located with Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide, you will have the opportunity to undertake authentic, patient-centred clinical experiences from early on in the degree. But you can also choose to undertake your studies in Darwin, Northern Territory, or one of our many rural hubs.
Our commitment to Indigenous health
We recognise and value the contribution that Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous doctors make to the health of our country
Our Indigenous and non-Indigenous academic staff will lead you to a greater understanding of this heritage, and teach you how to work safely and confidently in a multicultural society. You'll have the opportunity to undertake placements in Indigenous communities and you'll help to improve the health of our First Nations people. We also have an Indigenous entry stream, which provides greater opportunities for Indigenous Australians to study medicine at Flinders.
Seek out placements around the world
Experience a variety of health settings.
Electives and placements can be undertaken almost anywhere in the world. You can put theory into practice in metropolitan Adelaide, rural South Australia, remote communities in the Northern Territory, or international locations such as China, India, Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Germany, Canada, the US and UK. Prepare yourself for global influence in a rapidly-changing health industry, as well as improving the wellbeing of individuals. With all the opportunities on offer, you will experience a diverse array of patients and environments.
I love that Medicine at Flinders is very hands-on. We get to experience clinical settings from very early on in our degree, which is really beneficial. The great amount of support we receive, and the small class sizes, allow our learning to be much more student-focused and collaborative.."
Sydney Ma, 19, Bachelor of Clinical Sciences / Doctor of Medicine
It was her own health issues that led Sydney Ma to study medicine at Flinders University.
Sydney knows what it's like to receive the right health care at the right time. As a child, she suffered with severe gall bladder and stomach problems, which resulted in her developing a fascination with biology and how our bodies work.
She has now channelled that fasciation into her building a solid future for herself in the world of medicine.
Today, she is a self-motivated student who jumped at the chance to study at Flinders after hearing about the hands-on, student focused nature of the biology and science programs.
"Flinders Medical School was the first university to introduce the four year Doctor of Medicine graduate entry program," she says. "Medicine at Flinders, unlike most other medical schools, is very hands-on as we get to experience clinical settings from the first year of MD (doctor of medicine). Also, the two years of clinical science before we enter MD allows us to build our knowledge in biology and to enter MD with the confidence we need to proceed onto the next stage of learning.
"The great amount of support we receive and the small class sizes allow our learning to be much more student focused, collaborative and easy to comprehend."
Sydney lives on campus at the student village and says the support from residential tutors has also been invaluable.
"They are extremely helpful in helping us manage personal problems as well as planning fun activities for us to relax after stressful uni days," she says.
After graduation, Sydney hopes to specialise in emergency medicine, working in both regional communities and city based hospitals.
"I want to use all my skills and learnings to help as many people as possible, just like the doctors helped me when I was growing up," she says.
I am thrilled with my decision to study at Flinders. Flinders offers so many great opportunities to learn from experts in the field and to obtain first-hand experience in hospitals. The small class sizes allow for an engaging learning experience and there are plenty of experiences to get involved.
My four years studying medicine trained me really well for working as a doctor, in terms of clinical technique and knowledge, and also in skilful interpersonal communication with patients and colleagues. My training at Flinders prepared me well for my work as a junior doctor and for specialist and sub-specialist training in paediatric ophthalmology.
My medical education at Flinders was innovative, almost revolutionary, personalised, rigorous, research orientated, and has given me a welcome legacy of life long enquiry.
Being able to watch open heart surgery just down the hallway from where we attend lectures in Flinders Medical Centre has been the most amazing thing so far. Observing the whole process from beginning to end was fascinating.
The Flinders MD has given me the ability to gain clinical knowledge and to see real patients from a very early stage of medical school, which helps apply what we are taught in class.
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DENVER — American megachurches use stagecraft, sensory pageantry, charismatic leadership and an upbeat, unchallenging vision of Christianity to provide their congregants with a powerful emotional religious experience, according to research from the University of Washington.
"Membership in megachurches is one of the leading ways American Christians worship these days, so, therefore, these churches should be understood," said James Wellman, associate professor of American religion at the University of Washington. "Our study shows that — contrary to public opinion that tends to pass off the megachurch movement as consumerist religion — megachurches are doing a pretty effective job for their members. In fact, megachurch members speak eloquently of their spiritual growth."
Wellman and co-authors Katie E. Corcoran and Kate Stockly-Meyerdirk, University of Washington graduate students in sociology and comparative religion respectively, studied 2008 data provided by the Leadership Network on 12 nationally representative American megachurches.
Corcoran will present their paper, titled "'God is Like a Drug': Explaining Interaction Ritual Chains in American Megachurches," at the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.
Megachurches, or churches with 2,000 or more congregants, have grown in number, size, and popularity in recent years, coming to virtually dominate the American religious landscape. More than half of all American churchgoers now attend the largest 10 percent of churches.
Megachurch services feature a come-as-you-are atmosphere, rock music, and what Wellman calls a "multisensory mélange" of visuals and other elements to stimulate the senses, as well as small-group participation and a shared focus on the message from a charismatic pastor.
The researchers hypothesized that such rituals are successful in imparting emotional energy in the megachurch setting — "creating membership feelings and symbols charged with emotional significance, and a heightened sense of spirituality," they wrote.
As part of their study, Wellman, Corcoran, and Stockly-Meyerdirk analyzed 470 interviews and about 16,000 surveys on megachurch members' emotional experiences with their churches. Four themes emerged: salvation/spirituality, acceptance/belonging, admiration for and guidance from the leader, and morality and purpose through service.
The researchers found that feelings of joy felt in the services far exceed the powerful but fleeting "conversion experiences" for which megachurches are often stereotyped.
Many participants used the word "contagious" to describe the feeling of a megachurch service where members arrive hungry for emotional experiences and leave energized. One church member said, "(T)he Holy Spirit goes through the crowd like a football team doing the wave. …Never seen it in any other church."
Wellman said, "That's what you see when you go into megachurches — you see smiling people; people who are dancing in the aisles, and, in one San Diego megachurch, an interracial mix I've never seen anywhere in my time doing research on American churches. We see this experience of unalloyed joy over and over again in megachurches. That's why we say it's like a drug."
Wellman calls it a "good drug" because the message provides a conventional moral standard, such as being a decent person, taking care of family, and forgiving enemies and yourself. Megachurches also encourage their members, such as by saying, "Things can get better, you can be happy," he added.
This comforting message also is a key to megachurches' success, Wellman said. "How are you going to dominate the market? You give them a generic form of Christianity that's upbeat, exciting, and uplifting."
The researchers also found that the large size of megachurch congregations is a benefit rather than a drawback, as it results in resources for state-of-the-art technology — amplifying the emotional intensity of services — and the ability to hire more qualified church leadership.
Wellman said, "This isn't just same-old, same-old. This is not like evangelical revivalism. It's a new, hybrid form of Christianity that's mutating and separate from all the traditional institutions with which we usually affiliate Christianity."
Megachurches, which rarely refer to heaven or hell, are worlds away from the sober, judgmental puritan meetinghouses of long ago, Wellman said.
Wellman will continue studying the topic of the new American Christianity with a book-length profile of Michigan-based pastor and author Rob Bell due out in late fall, and a book in 2013 titled "High on God: How the Megachurch Conquered America."
A grant from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion funded the project.
About the American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association (www.asanet.org), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.
The paper, "'God is Like a Drug': Explaining Interaction Ritual Chains in American Megachurches," will be presented on Sunday, Aug. 19, at 10:30 a.m. MDT in Denver, Colorado, at the American Sociological Association's 107th Annual Meeting.
To obtain a copy of the paper; for more information on other ASA presentations; or for assistance reaching the study's author(s), members of the media can contact Daniel Fowler, ASA's Media Relations and Public Affairs Officer, at (202) 527-7885 or email@example.com. During the Annual Meeting (Aug. 17-20), ASA's Public Information Office staff can be reached in the press room, located in Mezzanine A of the Colorado Convention Center, at (303) 228-8350 or (914) 450-4557 (cell).
For more information about the study, members of the media can also contact Peter Kelley, University of Washington News and Information, at (206) 543-2580 or email@example.com.
Papers presented at the ASA Annual Meeting are typically working papers that have not yet been published in peer reviewed journals.
Contact: Daniel Fowler, (202) 527-7885, (914) 450-4557 (cell), firstname.lastname@example.com On-site Press Room (Aug. 17-20): Colorado Convention Center, Mezzanine A, (303) 228-8350
Categories: All Posts, Control, Inhibiting Self Determination,, Societal


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Trivia Nights And a Piece of History: Tam O'Shanter
There are many notable things about Tam O'Shanter in Atwater Village. It's one of the very few Scottish restaurants in town (although some restaurant guide sites will list it under "Irish") and it is also the oldest restaurant in LA that's been constantly owned by a single family (established in 1922 by Lawry's). They were there when Atwater Village had nothing.
The beer list at Tam's is actually quite good as well, with the recently revamped bar. There are 11 beers on draft featuring Brouwerij West, Stone, Great Divide, etc, and quite a few bottled beers.
So, the trivia is done by filling out your answers in these papers each round. Eating LA and I had such a hard time with just the two of us on our team. I didn't get any of the sports questions right! Pat did much better with the music and film questions, but I was jut pretty much useless.
There are two teams who apparently go every week and they tend to take first and second place each time. Next time I'll bring a bigger and more well rounded team!
The Ale & Sandwich Bar area serves a different menu but you can still get items from the main dining room. I had the Toad in the Hole ($24)
Pat got the fish and chips ($18), which uses beer battered halibut.
I ordered some fries topped with Scotch Rarebit, a mixture of Cheddar cheese, Belhaven Scottish Ale and cayenne pepper
More cocktails: I also tried the Braveheart with Glenlivet, lemon, ginger, and honey ($11).
The Tam O'Shanter
2980 Los Feliz Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90039
(323) 664-0228


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Discover more
Come and see us in Kleinarl, no matter in which season! Thanks to our all-inclusive offers you will find an attractive holiday package created with love. Find your perfect holiday!
Cooking in and with nature, this awaits you in the Lärchenhof in Kleinarl. Widen your culinary horizon with cooking lessons with your host, devoted to special topics.
Up to 35 people can celebrate their private festivities in the cosy atmosphere of the Hotel Lärchenhof. We will be happy to fulfil your wishes for your perfect celebration.
Read these recommendations assure yourself, that Hotel Lärchenhof is your perfect destination .


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Photographer Gina LeVay will be presenting her new book "Sandhogs" at several upcoming events
About the book (from the website)
Sandhogs is an original portal to the unseen characters and systems of underground New York—revealing the essential "art form" of mining in the modernized city. In 2003 Gina LeVay was granted rare access to photograph the "hogs," in the tunnel and at off-site locations. "The Sandhog Project" is a multi-faceted work of photo, video, web, and installation art, which explores the figurative and literal overlay, and mutual dependency of the surface city and this underground world. With the Sandhogs book and accompanying exhibitions, LeVay introduces the public to this vibrant and intricate subculture, bringing their rich, extraordinary, subterranean imagery to the surface for the first time ever.


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The short story: I've lived with nature my entire life, and, following this interest, went to university for biology. After several years as a traveling field ornithologist, I began to turn my focus to a (hopefully) more stable home-based freelance career in writing. I live with my longtime boyfriend, our two dogs, and three cats in a log home on 130 acres located west of Perth, Ontario.
The long story: I grew up on five acres in the countryside west of Toronto. Nature was always part of my life. As a child, I remember looking for fairy shrimp (we called them "gillfish") in the cold, shallow water of our small vernal pond in the spring. I recall watching deer feed on the windfall under our ancient, spreading apple trees on a bright winter night. Of tapping the maple trees for syrup, and stargazing on clear nights with my dad. We spent most of our free time outside, my sisters and I, and I think it was this early and complete immersion in nature that really fostered my love of it.
When it came time to go to university, I chose to go into biology, my favourite subject in high school. I graduated with an Honours in Zoology and spent several years working as a field ornithologist. I traveled a lot, my contracts taking me from California to Quebec, British Columbia to Ohio. Finally I decided I'd had enough of the road, and wanted to settle down, spend a full season someplace. Unfortunately, there weren't many places hiring ornithologists, and I wasn't keen to restrict myself to a cubicle anyway, having spent these past years with nature as my office. I took some local contracts with bird research still, but I began turning my focus away from ornithology and into something that I hoped would still allow me the flexibility of self-employment but without all the travel.
You could argue that the turning point occurred in 2008, when my boyfriend and I decided to leave Toronto. Mostly by chance, we ended up in a house overlooking a small lake on the borders of Frontenac Provincial Park, north of Kingston, Ontario. It was love at first sight, and we moved in that summer. The area where we now found ourselves seemed to offer an embarrassment of natural riches, with rare or interesting species at every turn. We spent a lot of time outside that summer and autumn, drinking it all in. Though circumstances forced us to leave the following year, we left our hearts behind there. We currently live on 130 lovely acres at the edge of the Canadian Shield, but while I love to hike around them and make new discoveries here, they don't call to my soul the way the Frontenac Arch does. Eventually, I know, I will return there.
I left my ornithology contracts behind in Toronto, so I began to focus on developing my new career. Prior to the move I had collaborated with my friend David Beadle on a new project, a field guide to moths. I think I used up a good deal of my career karma when Houghton Mifflin Harcourt bought the book for publication in their Peterson Field Guide line. For the last few years that's been my primary focus. However, I'd always had the desire to eventually break into literary nonfiction, to write the sort of books that authors like Scott Weidensaul or Tim Flannery, idols of mine, wrote. This continues to be a goal of mine, and since completing the manuscript for the moth field guide I've been working on some draft materials along these lines.
In the summer of 2009 I discovered fiction. I'd always been a passionate reader since my mom taught me to read at a very young age, but I had made few attempts to actually write any myself, aside from a few short stories my sister and I produced when I was about 12 (I wrote; she illustrated). I'm not sure anymore what the stimulus was; I can't even recall if it was a deliberate decision to try writing fiction, or an impulse that overcame me, perhaps struck by a story idea as I was driving to visit family (all of whom are more than an hour away, leaving lots of time for the mind to wander). Whatever it was, I gave in to it and started to write a novel. And I loved it. I had an absolute blast writing that first story, thrilling with each new discovery of plot twists and revelations. In retrospect it was a pretty cliched plot with weak character development. But it was fun. I finished it in about six months, and promptly started in on another novel. I fell in love with it all over again. By the time I finished novel number two I knew I was hooked. I got the same sort of addictive rush from writing fiction that I did from reading an absorbing page-turner. I'm now revising novel three (number two having had similar shortcomings to one). Whether or not I ever sell any fiction, I suspect I'll be a writer for life.
Outside of these pursuits I also maintain a blog about my experiences and observations in nature. I started this in January 2008 during a bout of cabin fever, but it's one mid-winter project that's stuck. It's changed how I view the world while out on walks. I now pay a lot more attention to details that I might once have passed over, the plants and the insects and fungi and everything else. It's also forced me to learn a lot more about nature than I would have done without it. I don't often go for walks without my camera now, and I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting things. I use a Canon Digital Rebel XTi and three lenses to take all of the photos found on this site. You can read more about my equipment here.


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Arctic Securities


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That's just one of the findings from new research that suggests that family behaviors can have a significant impact on the weight of preschool children. Other behaviors that may help youngsters stay slim include getting adequate sleep and limiting time in front of the TV.
"Four-year-olds who regularly ate dinner with the family, got enough sleep and watched less than two hours of TV a day were 40 percent less likely to be obese," said the study's lead author, Sarah Anderson, an assistant professorof epidemiology in the College of Public Health at Ohio State University in Columbus.
"One of the things that's potentially useful about recommending these routines, if they're suggested as part of obesity-prevention counseling, is that they may have other benefits, too. And, for pediatricians and other clinicians, we don't have easy, effective treatments for obesity in children, so it's very important to try to prevent obesity," said Anderson.
Results of the study are scheduled to be published in the March issue ofPediatrics.
The study included a nationally representative sample of 8,550 four-year-old children. One parent of each child answered researchers' questions about the family's routines and behaviors.
From this group of children, 18 percent were considered obese, which means their body mass index (a measurement that includes weight and height) is greater than the 95th percentile when compared to others of their age and gender.
Just 14.5 percent of the children were exposed to all three of the study behaviors on a regular basis: Eating the evening meal as a family five or more nights a week, getting more than 10.5 hours of sleep per night, and watching less than two hours of TV, video or DVDs a day.
The researchers found that in children routinely exposed to all three of these behaviors, the obesity rate was 14.3 percent. In children who weren't exposed to any of these behaviors, the obesity rate was 24.5 percent.
Anderson said that each behavior was associated with a 17 percent reduction in the risk in obesity.
These findings held true even when the researchers controlled for factors that may affect a child's risk of obesity, including maternal obesity, race, gender,socioeconomic status and living in a single-parent household.
Anderson pointed out that this study could only find an association between these behaviors and a child's risk of obesity. The study was not designed to assess cause and effect.
"We don't know if it's the routines per se, or if it's the parenting associated with these routines or something else correlated with these routines, but we do know these routines are associated with a lower incidence of obesity," said Anderson.
"These are relatively simple things that you can do in your home that change the health environment of your child. Not only will it help your child with obesity risk, but plenty of other studies have shown that it will also help with behavior and cognitive development. These are great changes to make if they're not already in place," said Dr. Jennifer Helmcamp, a pediatrician and director of the Jump Start Pediatric Weight Management Clinic at Scott & White Healthcare in Round Rock, Texas.
If it seems impossible to institute all three of these behaviors, Anderson said that any one of them alone can have an effect. "Each of these routines was related to a lower risk of obesity, so you can choose to try the one that you think you'll have the most success with. If you're already doing one, consider doing another," she suggested.
Helmcamp said it can be hard to institute some of these behaviors. But she suggested that parents "make these behaviors a priority. Sit down and figure out how you can make it happen. Maybe your child doesn't need to be involved in four or five different activities."
She said if it's tough to eat together five times a week, shoot for at least three nights a week. And, she also recommended removing TVs from children's bedrooms, which can help with limiting screen time and with getting enough sleep.
A second study in the March issue of Pediatrics found that preschoolers aren't the only age group that can be influenced with positive behaviors. This study, which included 81 obese teenaged girls, found that when girls read a book that featured an overweight girl who learns about nutrition, physical activity and improving her self-esteem, readers reduced their body mass index percentile more than girls who didn't read the book.
More information
Learn more about overweight and obesity in children from the Nemours Foundation's KidsHealth Web site.


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Innovation and Economic Crises
Overall, the trend in patenting is up - both in absolute numbers and controlling for population. Innovation has increased over the past decade, but not at the breakneck pace of the 1980s and 1990s. There have been two dips in patenting over the past decade - the first in the wake of the tech crisis of 2001 and the second, more recently, concurrent with the onset of the housing and financial bubbles and the subsequent economic crisis.
This past week, I've look at the trends in U.S. innovation, commenting on Michael Mandel's powerful and compelling thesis about the deceleration and interruption of American innovation. With the help of my MPI team, I've tracked patent data since 1980, examined patent trends for U.S resident and foreign, non-resident inventors, and looked at the geographic distribution of patenting.
Overall, the trend in patenting is up - both in absolute numbers and controlling for population. Innovation has increased over the past decade, but not at the breakneck pace of the 1980s and 1990s. There have been two dips in patenting over the past decade - the first in the wake of the tech crisis of 2001 and the second, more recently, concurrent with the onset of the housing and financial bubbles and the subsequent economic crisis.
American innovation has shifted and become more geographically concentrated. Places like Silicon Valley and Seattle have seen a steady increase in innovation while older, industrial centers like Pittsburgh and Detroit have declined significantly. Innovation in large cities like New York and Chicago has stagnated. And American innovation has grown increasingly dependent on non-resident, foreign inventors.
Today, I focus on a broader historical question: How do economic crises affect American innovation? Does innovation slow down or speed up during periods of crisis?
Joseph Schumpeter long ago argued that crises were seedbeds of innovation and entrepreneurship. Innovations developed during crises generate the gales of creative destruction that launch new technologies, remake existing industries, and give birth to entirely new ones - setting in motion new rounds of economic growth. Economists Gerhard Mensch and Christopher Freeman have examined the historical timing of innovations, with Freeman famously arguing that the pace of innovation is actually relatively constant: Innovations bunch up during crises, only to be unleashed as economic conditions are restored.
The graph above is reproduced by economist Alfred Kleinknecht. It shows patent activity from 1750 to 1970. It tracks actual patents granted from 1901 to 2005. There are clear spikes in innovative activity during the Long Depression of the 1870s and 1880s and the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The historical literature also suggests that crises are periods of significant innovation. Joel Mokyr and Naomi Lamoreaux have documented the rise of important innovations like the incandescent light, the steam turbine, and the transformer during the Long Depression. Economic historian Alexander Field finds the 1930s to be the "most technologically progressive" decade of the 20th century.
The chart below, compiled by the MPI's Patrick Adler based upon a reading of the historical literature, identifies some of the major innovations of the Long Depression and the Great Depression. If the past is any guide, we should expect some acceleration of innovation - and particularly of the dramatic innovation Mandel wants to see - in the coming decade.
The graph below, compiled by my colleague Charlotta Mellander, updates the story, charting patents granted per 10,000 people from the 1890s to 2007. The rate of innovation rose significantly after the Long Depression. It then dipped during the Great Depression before trailing off considerably during the World War II period. American innovation rebounded remarkably in the post-war period before trailing off in the 1970s. Since the early 1980s, however, American innovation has surged to record highs. There have been two dips in innovation in the 2000s. But as of 2007, innovation has fallen only slightly from its record pace.
So what's happened to U.S. innovation?
Like virtually every other facet of the economy, it has been - and continues to be - reshaped by globalization. As we saw on Wednesday, foreign non-resident inventors have become a key element growing U.S. patenting and a big piece of the American innovation system. Beginning around 1980, non-resident inventors essentially closed the gap with U.S. inventors. By the late 1990s, they had pulled even and were at times outpacing U.S. inventors. This is part and parcel of the globalization of the economy and the fact that the U.S. is the biggest market and most innovative nation on the planet.
This has altered the American system of innovation in a deep and fundamental way - changing it from a system that for the better part of a century was based on producing and commercializing innovations to one that is more attuned to attracting inventors and innovation globally. This shift is also reflected in the changing geography and regional concentration of U.S. innovation - the decline of old, integrated, regional innovations systems in locations like Pittsburgh and Detroit and the rise of new, globally focused clusters like Silicon Valley.
Innovation is no longer an American game - or, for that matter, a game of any one nation. The countries of the world are now all part of a much more global innovation system. Strategically, this shift means from organizing to generate new breakthrough innovations to organizing to absorb innovations coming from many different sources worldwide.
The U.S. is uniquely positioned because of its size, scale, universities, and venture capital system; its sophisticated end-users and customers; and its ability to attract global talent - to harness and reap the benefits of this global system. Its major innovation clusters reinforce this advantage and they will be hard to displace. That said, for the first time, the overall rate of American innovation has come to depend on foreign inventors. Anything that might slow the immigration or inflow of foreign inventors - or redirect their inventions and patents - would undoubtedly damage the rate of American innovation.
The key question for the future is less about the slowdown in innovation and more about which people and places will prosper in this new age of accelerating global innovation.


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As the November 6th election date draws near, you may wish to look more closely at the articles written by serious investigative journalists. Below are some sources of election information beyond the usual suspects of Fox, NBC etc., which are in the business of entertainment rather than serious journalism.
- KPBS Election Coverage
- NPR Special Series Election 2012
- Politics – The Center for Public Integrity – Consider the Source Project
- ConsortiumNews.org
- ProPublica: Journalism in the Public Interest – Campaign 2012
- Salon.com – 2012 Elections
- FactCheck.org – Annenberg Public Policy Center
For progressive or conservative alternative press, see this list of U.S. independent media sources from Ithaca College.


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The struggles of Mother Jones fact checker, Jaeah Lee, (see video here) to locate the "decline" in the IPCC assessment report is an object lesson in the effectiveness of the IPCC's strategy to hide the decline. That she ultimately succumbs to bafflegab from Keith Briffa, declaring "case closed", is not the main lesson of her video. The main lesson is the success of IPCC's efforts to hide the decline, even from a fact checker looking for the decline.
The efforts of a young and inexperienced fact checker contrast with the negligent failure of the "seven inquiries" to do likewise. Consider for a moment that none of these reports contained an analysis of "hide the decline" that answered the reasonable questions of the most junior fact checker. None of them even contained a graphic showing hide the decline.
While Jaeah made a few mis-steps along the way and unwisely relied on Mann and Briffa as sources, her struggles to figure out the meaning of Hide the Decline are an object lesson that should embarrass the climate science community.
Jaeah begins her story about trying to find the decline:
We thought it would be easy. Boy, were we wrong.
She then gives a short description of proxies and says:
We put on our magnifying glasses and set out in search of the data….
Like me some years ago (or anyone else), she began her quest with the 2001 IPCC Report:
Figure 1. IPCC Figure shown in MJ presentation.
She couldn't find the decline in this figure and asked "where was the so-called decline"?
We started out with the 2001 IPCC report, the leading authority… This graph illustrated historical temperatures…… All of these lines told more or less the same story. That starting in the 20th century, the earth warmed at an unprecedented rate. But where was the so-called decline?
Here Jaeah provides vivid testimony on IPCC's success in hiding the decline. Climategate emails show that IPCC authors were worried that showing the Briffa reconstruction (with the decline) would "dilute" their message. Jaeah's impression of the IPCC graphic is testimony to their success in hiding the decline. Defenders have argued that the decline is reported in specialist literature and that interested readers could learn about the decline there. But that wasn't what Jaeah did. She got the desired impression: "All of these lines told more or less the same story." This was the fundamental deception of Hide the Decline.
Six years ago, having read about the decline (indeed Briffa's absurd cargo cult was one of the factors that led me into the field), I wondered the same thing about the IPCC graphic – where was the decline – see CA post here, leading me to do a blowup of the graphic, only then discovering that there had been an unreported deletion of post-1960 in the IPCC graphic.
But back to Jaeah's story. She asked scientists for data and "the more we dug for the answers , the more we grew confused." She reports:
Several scientists sent us data sets. One started to showed a decline, but the data ended in 1960. We emailed Mann, the originator of the graph. … Mann said that we were looking at the wrong tree ring sets and pointed us to an article published in 2002 in Science. When we plotted this data set, we saw a clear decline around 1960 but still had no idea what happened after 1960.
Here Jaeah is experiencing one part of the frustration in trying to deal with the Team, but she didn't get the Full Monty treatment. The Team sent her data without her having to resort to a Freedom of Information request. They also tried to answer her questions. However, even with full Team cooperation, the data that she was sent didn't show the decline, as seen in the next figure, which is a screenshot of her plot of the data that she was sent. It can be conclusively identified as the (truncated) Briffa et al 2001 reconstruction as archived (see here) up to and including the deletion of data after 1960. In their graphic, they've added 14 deg C to the archived version (which is in anomaly deg C). The graphic below plots the archived version plus 13 deg C (the overlay at 14 deg C is exact.) For her smooth, Jaeah used a 40-year rolling average (rather than the gaussian smooth that Briffa normally used). My quick experiments indicate that this was done using forward values (rather than centered), without padding, but all available values – thus the smooth extends into the 1990s, although the underlying Briffa version ended in 1960.
Figure 1. Motherjones starting point. Red- as plotted by MJ. Black- Briffa et al 2001 version plus 13 deg C.
As she noted, Jaeah could not locate the decline in this data. This is not surprising. The decline had been deleted from the data. (Looking forward a little here, the Climategate letters were the first time that data after 1960 became available for the Briffa et al 2001 reconstruction – as reported shortly after Climategate at CA here.)
Frustrated, Jaeah turned to Mann for clarificationm who, as noted above, told her that they were looking at the "wrong tree ring sets", directing them to Briffa and Osborn (Science 2002). Jaeah extracted this data set and showed it in her video as shown below, observing:
When we plotted this data set, we saw a clear decline around 1960 but still had no idea what happened after 1960.
Here Jaeah's task is complicated by the Gang Who Can't Shoot Straight. She extracted the Briffa version from the graphic in Briffa and Osborn (Science 2002), but this version is actually identical to the version that she started with. So there's no difference. Mann's claim that she had used the "wrong data" is the Gang not shooting straight. In the figure below, I show a gaussian smooth of the Briffa et al 2001 data. Up to a displacement, the two series are evidently the same. So the reason why the Briffa and Osborn 2002 version still didn't show the decline was that the decline had been deleted from it as well.
Figure 2 . Screenshot of Mother Jones version of Briffa series in Briffa and Osborn 2002.
Jaeah, like many of us, was stumped. Then, in language that precisely tracks the very first mention of Climategate, Jaeah says: "a miracle happened." The miracle was that they "received a letter from Briffa". An explanation from the Team – a miracle indeed. Cynics might observe that this sort of miracle only seems to happen to the faithful.
Jaeah recounts her brush with the holy as follows:
He explained that the particular sample did show a decline after 1960 possibly due to increased exposure to carbon dioxide. But that sample data was computed in a way that wasn't scientifically useful. Meaning basically that all the fuss over the decline came from one obscure data set showing tree ring densities in high latitude regions.
At this point, Jaeah, apparently overcome by the miracle, seems to have swooned and ceased checking facts. To my knowledge, no one has ever suggested that additional carbon dioxide caused a decline after 1960. Nor is there any scientific reason why it should. On the contrary, there is considerable evidence that carbon dioxide increases plant growth; indeed, the anomalous growth of Graybill's bristlecones – which are integral ingredients in the Mann et al 19998-99 and many subsequent reconstructions – was attributed by Graybill and Idso to increased carbon dioxide.
Nor was the Briffa reconstruction based on "one obscure" data set. The decline was observed in an extremely large data set (389 sites in the Schweingruber network) covering the Northern Hemisphere that had been selected ex ante as being temperature dependent. In fact, the data sets that didn't show the decline were the ones that were more vulnerable to small and problematic data sets i.e. Yamal and bristlecones, described in the past at CA as respectively cocaine and heroin for paleoclimatologists, who are addicted to these proxies.
Jaeah continues:
When that data was computed in one specific way, that formula gave scientists the wrong idea about the earth's climate. When they realized it, they stopped using that formula on tree ring for temperatures after 1960. And relied on things like say actual recorded temperatures.
Jaeah's final graphic is entitled "Briffa post 1960 data finally" and, as shown below, includes data after 1960. Presumably this was included in the "miracle" email from Briffa, though Jaeah didn't say. As CA readers know, post-1960 Briffa data was first obtained in a Climategate email shortly after the IPCC Lead Authors meeting in Arusha (this version is plotted below.) The Mother Jones version looks related, but the scale looks a little different.
Figure 3. Mother Jones "Finally" with Climategate version (light grey). Smooth as described above. 1960 shown in dotted red.
Jaeah's conclusion is not warranted from the facts. She states:
so really the mystery of the decline was no mystery at all. Just a messy debate resulting from poor communication and misinterpretation.
Jaeah's original puzzlement was why the IPCC report didn't show the decline – an issue that was not investigated by any of the inquiries. (Thus, Jaeah could not locate an explanation in the inquiries.) While the deletion of adverse data can be traced back to Briffa and Osborn 1999 and Jones et al 1999 (both published in first half 1999), the Climategate emails show serious concern at the IPCC Lead Authors about the Briffa version in the Zero Order Draft (which had both a decline and lower centennial variability). Folland had observed:
But the current diagram with the tree ring only data [i.e. the Briffa reconstruction] somewhat contradicts the multiproxy curve and dilutes the message rather significantly.
Folland added caveats that they wanted the "truth". Mann replied:
everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this [the Briffa reconstruction] was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably concensus viewpoint we'd like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann et al series.
Mann continued that he didn't want to give "fodder" to skeptics:
So, if we show Keith's series in this plot, we have to comment that "something else" is responsible for the discrepancies in this case. [Perhaps Keith can help us out a bit by explaining the processing that went into the series and the potential factors that might lead to it being "warmer" than the Jones et al and Mann et al series?? We would need to put in a few words in this regard] Otherwise, the skeptics have an field day casting doubt on our ability to understand the factors that influence these estimates and, thus, can undermine faith in the paleoestimates. I don't think that doubt is scientifically justified, and I'd hate to be the one to have to give it fodder!
The "solution" to the problem eventually adopted by IPCC (whether it was Mann or Briffa or both is not material to the fact that it was some combination) built on the tactic already tested in Briffa and Osborn (Science 1999) – delete the inconvenient bits. This has nothing to do with "poor communication and misinterpretation". Critics are not misinterpreting what they did. They understand precisely what they did and do not accept it as valid scientific methodology, with Richard Muller speaking sharply on this point.
Jon Stewart's analysis remains the most acute;
It means nothing…He's just using a trick to… hide the decline. It's just scientist-speak for using a standard statistical technique for calibrating data in order to …. trick you…into not knowing about ….the decline.


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We're doing a season-long NFL roundtable with our friends at Slate. Check back here each week as a rotating cast of football watchers discusses the weekend's key plays, coaching decisions, and traumatic brain injuries.
« Previous entry | Next entry »
From: Stefan Fatsis
To: Josh Levin, Seth Stevenson
Five minutes after Baltimore Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff pulled that relatively short, potential game-tying field goal wide left, I texted him: "I'm so sorry, Billy. Hang in there." When it comes to missed field goals, kicker solidarity trumps journalistic propriety every time.
Meta Quest Pro
Mixed reality
The Meta Quest Pro centers on working, creating, and collaborating in a virtual space.
Not to exonerate Cundiff, but the play itself looked threatened, if not doomed, from the outset. With the play clock at 10 seconds and ticking, I was stunned, like others, to see Cundiff racing onto the field. I haven't talked to him or seen an explanation for the delay. It's possible that Cundiff normally trots out a bit later than the rest of the field-goal unit. But this looked extreme. Cundiff was running pretty hard to get into position, and the ball was snapped as the play clock expired. You rarely see that on field goals. Then, unsurprisingly and definitely unconsciously, Cundiff rushed. When a kicker rushes, he rotates his hips too quickly, and when he rotates his hips too quickly his leg pushes the ball in the direction of the rotation. In this case, to the left. New England wins, 23-20.
"Sometimes you focus on the end result and your head comes up and your chest goes across the ball and you wind up pulling it," said Arizona Cardinals kicker Jay Feely when I talked to him after the game. (Feely has plans to work out with Cundiff in the offseason.) "In a pressure situation, that sometimes happens."
Cue the idiots. "Cundiff will be safer in Iran," someone commented on Pro Football Talk. "This is why kickers are hated. That boy Cundiff would NOT fly home with my team," Stephen A. Smith bloviated, simultaneously demonstrating an ignorance of how kickers are viewed by their teammates and the concept of a team sport. (Replied Feely: "Kind of like loud mouthed media personalities who never played the game." Boom!) Even sportswriters who should know better got into the act. "Somewhere, Gary Anderson is laughing his ass off," Pro Football Talk tweeted. (No he's not, at all.) "Stanford kicker Jordan Williamson no longer failed kicker of the year," added Sports Illustrated's Tim Layden. (He never was.)
Cundiff is a smart, quiet, polite guy who, like many NFL kickers, has endured his share of misses and cuts. He entered the NFL in 2002 and was out of the league entirely in 2007 and 2008. Cundiff revived his career in Baltimore, replacing the guy who replaced the NFL's fifth all-time scorer, Matt Stover. In 2010, he was nothing short of fantastic, making 26 of 29 field goals, breaking the NFL record for touchbacks (on kickoffs from the 30-yard line), making the Pro Bowl, and signing a big (for a kicker) contract. His overall percentage declined this season, but he missed just two of 21 attempts from inside of 40 yards. The only risk factor: As this prescient pre-game ESPN blog post noted, Cundiff was a perfect 19-19 on field-goal attempts at home but just 11-20 on the road.
After the game, Cundiff met the media and said the right things. "There's really no excuse for it. It just didn't go through." He said he felt he had earned his teammates' trust over the last three seasons and was disappointed to have let them down, especially linebacker Ray Lewis, who may not get that close to a Super Bowl again. The NFL.com clip of Cundiff's interview is truncated, so I don't know whether Cundiff was asked why, when it looked like the kick would be rushed, he didn't call a timeout. ("The one thing you don't want to do is rush yourself," Feely said.) When Ravens coach John Harbaugh was asked why he didn't signal for a timeout, he answered, "That's something we'll have to look at." (Don't believe the argument that the Ravens didn't want to ice their own kicker, because there's no such thing as icing the kicker.)
In any event, in Baltimore, the blog commenters and radio blabbermouths will bemoan the very existence of the kicker. In New York, meanwhile, they will celebrate one.
Stefan Fatsis is a panelist on Slate's sports podcast "Hang Up and Listen." His latest book is A Few Seconds of Panic: A Sportswriter Plays in the NFL.


text:
Black Gold to offer surplus potatoes
Fingerling potatoes are supposed to be small. When they grow too large, it's a problem — and that's what happened this year for Black Gold Farms in Sturgis.
But those potatoes don't have to go to waste. From 9 a.m.-3 p.m. each Friday, the community is welcome to bring containers and take all the potatoes they can use from the Black Gold Farms facility at 69331 Klinger Lake Road in Sturgis.
Ray Baker, manager of the facility, said although the potatoes are called "seconds," it's only because of the size.
"It doesn't affect the taste," Baker said.
Black Gold growers primarly specialize in "chip potatoes" destined for potato chip companies, but fingerlings are "table stock," Baker said. They come in three varieties: red, white and purple.
Because fingerlings are thin-skinned, typically they aren't peeled, but can be, he said.
The potatoes haven't been washed, so they are dirty. The facility does not have storage, Baker said, so the potatoes have to go.
"But it seemed like such a shame to dump them when they're perfectly good," Baker said.


text:
Iconic Style Inc Owner & Founder: Cydney McMillon.
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Cydney is the author of e-book: "Dress for Success, How to define your personal brand and elevate your lifestyle." She has also created and published digital ebooks, planners and online courses for women to achieve their goals, boost their confidence, increase productivity and manage their personal finances.
Cydney has over 12 years of experience in the IT field and has been nationally featured in her Senior role at Lexus as a Regional Technology Specialist. She shares her 6 figure success blueprint in her e-books and online courses.
With faith, hard work and determination, founder: Cydney turned her technical talents and passion for fashion into a booming online boutique and lifestyle brand. She has a mission to impact and inspire women with a flair of style.
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Sincerely,Cydney, CEO
Iconic Style Inc © Created and Founded in 2019.
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text:
Address: 43, Patel Colony, Sardar Patel Marg
Dtdc-Courier-And-Cargo-Limitedprovides the services and located in 43, Patel Colony, Sardar Patel Marg
Writing great reviews may help others discover the places that are just apt for them. Here are a few tips to write a good review:
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text:
The Late Movies: Guess The Theme 78
It's Thursday, it's late, it's time once again for the game that's sweeping the nation: GUESS THE THEME! All the clips below, in this case movies, have something in common. Leave your best guesses in the comments.
Spider-Man Trailer
Jurassic Park Trailer
Shawshank Redemption Trailer
Garden State Trailer
The Notebook Trailer


text:
Module ASB-2511:
Evolution of Management Thought
Module Facts
Run by Bangor Business School
10.000 Credits or 5.000 ECTS Credits
Semester 2
Organiser: Dr Brian Jones
Overall aims and purpose
To describe and assess the emergence and evolution of the main theories and contributors to management thought. Topics include the people and institutions which create and disseminate this knowledge.
Course content
This module provided an introduction as to how current thinking about management and managers has been shaped by academics, top executives, consultants, and management gurus.
Topics include the power of ideas to explain organizational change and the diffusion of management ideas (business education, management consultants, knowledge management within the firm).
Assessment Criteria
B- to B+ (60-69%): Very good performance Most of the relevant information accurately deployed. Good grasp of theoretical/conceptual/practical elements. Good integration of theory/practice/information in pursuit of the assessed work's objectives. Evidence of the use of creative and reflective skills.
A- to A+ (70%+): Outstanding performance. The relevant information accurately deployed. Excellent grasp of theoretical/conceptual/practice elements. Good integration of theory/practice/information in pursuit of the assessed work's objectives. Strong evidence of the use of creative and reflective skills.
C- to C+
C- to C+ (50-59%): Much of the relevant information and skills mostly accurately deployed. Adequate grasp of theoretical/conceptual/practical elements. Fair integration of theory/practice/information in the pursuit of the assessed work's objectives. Some evidence of the use of creative and reflective skills.
D- to D+ (40-49%): No major omissions or inaccuracies in the deployment of information/skills. Some grasp of theoretical/conceptual/practical elements. Integration of theory/practice/information present intermittently in pursuit of the assessed work's objectives.
Learning outcomes
Recognize the main elements and features of key contributors to management, as well as those contributors conceptualising what managers do in organisations.
Identify the various dimensions of management thought, including when and how it began and how it has evolved.
Demonstrate an awareness of the contexts where different views on organising and managing have emerged, who were the early contributors and who are the main current contributors.
Recognise the large number of cultural, political, economic and environmental factors that gave rise to different concepts of the structure of organisations, its implications for managing work, and employee behaviour.
Identify the main spaces where theories, views and framework about what is management and managers do emerged.
Outline how management thinking in the past influences current views in management today. Also how these views are potentially likely to influence our thinking about what managers do and what is management in the near future.
Assessment Methods
|Individual Essay
|Final Exam S2
Teaching and Learning Strategy
One 1-hour practical session involving the discussion of teaching case studies in weeks 4 and 9. Students will be split into two groups, with each group attending a one-hour tutorial in both weeks.
One 2-hour lecture per week. This will be a combination of traditional lectures, formative tasks, and multimedia resources.
|Private study
Participants will be expected to prepare before the lecture from a list of readings, set textbook, and journal articles.
Transferable skills
- Literacy - Proficiency in reading and writing through a variety of media
- Computer Literacy - Proficiency in using a varied range of computer software
- Self-Management - Able to work unsupervised in an efficient, punctual and structured manner. To examine the outcomes of tasks and events, and judge levels of quality and importance
- Exploring - Able to investigate, research and consider alternatives
- Information retrieval - Able to access different and multiple sources of information
- Inter-personal - Able to question, actively listen, examine given answers and interact sentistevely with others
- Critical analysis & Problem Solving - Able to deconstruct and analyse problems or complex situations. To find solutions to problems through analyses and exploration of all possibilities using appropriate methods, rescources and creativity.
- Safety-Consciousness - Having an awareness of your immediate environment, and confidence in adhering to health and safety regulations
- Presentation - Able to clearly present information and explanations to an audience. Through the written or oral mode of communication accurately and concisely.
- Teamwork - Able to constructively cooperate with others on a common task, and/or be part of a day-to-day working team
- Management - Able to utilise, coordinate and control resources (human, physical and/or financial)
- Argument - Able to put forward, debate and justify an opinion or a course of action, with an individual or in a wider group setting
- Self-awareness & Reflectivity - Having an awareness of your own strengths, weaknesses, aims and objectives. Able to regularly review, evaluate and reflect upon the performance of yourself and others
- Leadership - Able to lead and manage, develop action plans and objectives, offer guidance and direction to others, and cope with the related pressures such authority can result in
Subject specific skills
- Problem solving and critical analysis: analysing facts and circumstances to determine the cause of a problem and identifying and selecting appropriate solutions.
- Research: the ability to analyse and evaluate a range of business data, sources of information and appropriate methodologies, which includes the need for strong digital literacy, and to use that research for evidence-based decision-making.
- Articulating and effectively explaining information.
- Conceptual and critical thinking, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
- Self-management: a readiness to accept responsibility and flexibility, to be resilient, self-starting and appropriately assertive, to plan, organise and manage time.
- Self reflection: self-analysis and an awareness/sensitivity to diversity in terms of people and cultures. This includes a continuing appetite for development.
Resource implications for students
Talis Reading listhttp://readinglists.bangor.ac.uk/modules/asb-2511.html
Reading list
Talis reading list is available
Courses including this module
Compulsory in courses:
- N105: BSc Business Studies (Bangor International College) year 2 (BSC/BICBS)
- N200: BSc Business Management year 2 (BSC/BM)
- N20F: BSc Business Management year 2 (BSC/BMFF)
- N20P: BSc Business Management with Placement Year year 2 (BSC/BMPP)
- N101: BSc Business Studies year 2 (BSC/BS)
- N10B: BSc Business Studies (4 year with Incorporated Foundation) year 2 (BSC/BS1)
Optional in courses:
- NQ26: BA Astudiaethau Busnes a Chymraeg year 2 (BA/ABCH)
- N2T1: BA Business Management and Chinese year 2 (BA/BMCH)
- N2R1: BA Business Management and French year 2 (BA/BMFR)
- N2R2: BA Business Management and German year 2 (BA/BMG)
- N2R3: BA Business Management and Italian year 2 (BA/BMI)
- N2M1: BA Business Management and Law year 2 (BA/BML)
- N2MB: BA Business Man & Law (4 year with Incorp Foundation) year 2 (BA/BML1)
- N2R4: BA Business Management and Spanish year 2 (BA/BMS)
- N1R1: BA Bus Stud with French year 2 (BA/BSFR)
- N1R2: BA Business Studies with German year 2 (BA/BSGER)
- N1R3: BA Business Studies with Italian year 2 (BA/BSIT)
- N1R4: BA Business Studies with Spanish year 2 (BA/BSSP)
- N107: BA Business year 2 (BA/BUS)
- NM11: BA Business and Law year 2 (BA/BUSALAW)
- N1T1: BA Business Studies and Chinese year 2 (BA/BUSCH)
- NM1B: BA Business and Law (4 year with Incorporated Foundation) year 2 (BA/BUSLAW1)
- NR1C: BA Business Studies/French year 2 (BA/BUSSF)
- NR1F: BA Business Studies and German year 2 (BA/BUSSG)
- NR1H: BA Business Studies and Italian year 2 (BA/BUSSI)
- N102: BA Business Studies (with International Experience) year 2 (BA/BUSSIE)
- NR1K: BA Business Studies and Spanish year 2 (BA/BUSSS)
- N5R3: BA Marketing with Italian year 2 (BA/MKITAL)
- N5R1: BA Marketing with French year 2 (BA/MKTFR)
- NR51: BA Marketing and French (4 year) year 2 (BA/MKTFR#)
- N5R6: Marketing with French with International Experience year 2 (BA/MKTFRIE)
- N5R2: BA Marketing with German year 2 (BA/MKTGER)
- NR52: BA Marketing and German (4 year) year 2 (BA/MKTGER4)
- NR53: BA Marketing and Italian (4 year) year 2 (BA/MKTITAL)
- NR54: BA Marketing and Spanish (4 year) year 2 (BA/MKTSP)
- N5R4: BA Marketing with Spanish year 2 (BA/MKTSP#)
- L190: BSc Business Economics year 2 (BSC/BEC)
- L19B: BSc Business Economics (4 year with Incorporated Foundation) year 2 (BSC/BEC1)
- L19F: BSc Business and Economics year 2 (BSC/BECF)
- L191: BSc Business Economics with International Experience year 2 (BSC/BECIE)
- L19P: BSc Business Economics with Placement Year year 2 (BSC/BECP)
- L192: BSc Business Economics (Bangor International College) year 2 (BSC/BICBE)
- N201: BSc Business Management (Bangor Uni International College) year 2 (BSC/BICBM)
- N503: BSc Marketing (Bangor International College) year 2 (BSC/BICMRK)
- N20B: BSc Business Management (4 year with Incorp Foundation) year 2 (BSC/BM1)
- NBR1: BSc Business Management with French year 2 (BSC/BMFR)
- NBR2: BSc Business Management with German year 2 (BSC/BMG)
- NBR3: BSc Business Management with Italian year 2 (BSC/BMI)
- N2N5: BSc Business Management and Marketing year 2 (BSC/BMM)
- N2NC: BSc Business Man & Marketing (4 yr with Incorp Foundation) year 2 (BSC/BMM1)
- N5NF: BSc Business Management and Marketing year 2 (BSC/BMMF)
- N5NP: BSc Business Management and Marketing with Placement Year year 2 (BSC/BMMP)
- NBR4: BSc Business Management with Spanish year 2 (BSC/BMS)
- NNM1: BSc Business Studies & Marketing with Intl Experience year 2 (BSC/BSMIE)
- NN1M: BSc Business Studies and Marketing year 2 (BSC/BSMKT)
- NN1K: BSc Business Studies & Marketing (4 year with Incorp Found) year 2 (BSC/BSMKT1)
- IN00: BSc Computer Information Systems for Business year 2 (BSC/CISB)
- IN0B: BSc Computer Information Sys for Bus (4 year w Incorp Found) year 2 (BSC/CISB1)
- IN02: BSc Computer Information Systems for Business (Franchised) year 2 (BSC/CISBF)
- N501: BSc Marketing year 2 (BSC/MKT)
- N50B: BSc Marketing (4 year with Incorporated Foundation) year 2 (BSC/MKT1)
- N50F: BSc Marketing year 2 (BSC/MKTF)
- N50P: BSc Marketing with Placement Year year 2 (BSC/MKTP)
- N5C8: BSc Marketing with Psychology year 2 (BSC/MP)
- C6N1: BSc Sport Science & Business Management year 2 (BSC/SSB)
- C6N5: BSc Sport Science & Marketing year 2 (BSC/SSM)
- CN5P: Sport Science and Marketing with Placement Year year 2 (BSC/SSMP)