text:
Seventeen-year-old Heiren Delaire should've killed the captain before he sprouted claws.
As a peasant raised in the wretched slums of Andumir, she's never set much store in fairytales. But now a creature from stories, the demon Arawn, has possessed the captain of the kingdom's guard and slaughtered countless innocents, including Heiren's father. With Andumir falling and the nobles' swords and spears doing nothing to quell Arawn's fiery wrath, Heiren takes it upon herself to find a solution.
If demons are real, maybe the sword Erhistaut is, too. Legend tells that the demons forged it to store their powers before the star-born angels cast them to the sky. The sword is the only weapon that can exterminate the possessed captain before his unquenchable fire envelops the land in shadow.
Heiren just needs to find it.
THE DEMON SWORD is a 75,000-word fantasy novel for young adults. I have included the first 250 words below. Thank you for your time and attention.
In the dim lamplight of the cabin, the man's fingers curled around his dagger. He slammed its point into the edge of a piece of parchment, pinning it to the table.
In the shadows behind him, Heiren Delaire watched her father with uncertainty. The cold of the night raised goosebumps on her skin. She shivered. "What are you doing?"
He didn't answer.
She clutched her arm with trembling fingers and stepped forward, letting her green eyes trail over the black ink as it curved and flowered into lakes, rivers, and mountains. A map. The tiny dashes trailed from her home in the
A trail to a sword of miracles.
Of course. Her father would be obsessed with a thing of legend. A sword that doesn't even exist. "The map's a fake, you know." Heiren combed her tangled hair with calloused fingers, watching him. "I don't understand why you bought it."
Still he did not reply.
"You want to use the sword to bring Mother back, don't you?"
He turned his head a little, and greasy black hair fell over his eyes. He listened now, she knew, but refused to acknowledge her. Like he did when he fell from his depression into one of his manic states. When he stopped listening to reason.
Heiren folded her arms.
"You're a fool if you think Erhistaut can bring back the dead. The demons forged it; why would they make it useful for anything good?"


text:
Last week, Nancy in Hawthorne was looking for a recipe for chocolate chip date nut bread. Arlene in Valencia contributed a recipe she has used for years. We hope Nancy likes it, and thank you, Arlene.
On to other requests. Jenna in Manhattan Beach writes: "My entire gaggle of friends and family will be forever grateful if you can obtain the recipe for Brussels sprouts from Manhattan Beach's Tin Roof Bistro. It's amazing!"
Can anyone help Jenna?
Date Nut Bread
1 cup chopped dates
1 cup boiling water
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup sugar
1 cup shortening (1/2 Crisco and 1/2 butter)
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cup flour
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 package chocolate chips
1/2 cup walnuts (or any kind of nuts)
1. Mix dates, water and baking soda in a small bowl and let cool.
2. Cream sugar and shortening. Add eggs and vanilla and blend well.
3. Slowly add flour and then cocoa.
4. Add half package of the chocolate chips and walnuts, and stir to combine.
5. Pour mixture into loaf pan or 8-by-10-inch baking dish. Sprinkle remaining chocolate chips on top.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes.
Makes one loaf.
NOTE: Butterscotch chips may be substituted for chocolate chips.
– From Arlene in Valencia
Address requests, contributions and comments to Recipe Request, Daily Breeze, 21250 Hawthorne Blvd., Suite 170, Torrance, CA 90503; or email email@example.com. Recipe Request is also on Facebook.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
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· Place of Origin: China (Mainland)
· Material: PE
· Specification: 20-630mm
· Length: 5.9/11.8M
· Standard: GB/T15558-2003
Packaging Details:
bundle or as your required
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PE gas pipe manufacture (GB/T 15558-2003)
1. OD:20-630mm
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Material: PE 100
Specification: 20mm-630mm
Length: 5.8m 11.8m per length
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· Type: Other Plastic Building Materials
· Place of Origin: China (Mainland)
· Size: 16-1600mm
· Color: Black, blue
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A. Material: High quality PE80 or PE100
B. Diameter: 16 to 1600mm
C. Pressure:0.6-1.6Mpa
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**Standard: GB/T 13663, ISO 4427
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|Product Price Range


text:
At the annual White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday night, President Barack Obama and news groups were roasted and toasted amidst a crowd full of Hollywood celebrities. On Sunday morning, journalists got back on topic, dissecting the latest deadly violence in Ukraine, the ongoing investigation into Benghazi and of course, presidential politics.
If you missed the Sunday political talk shows, we'll get you up to speed on the latest events and opinion in Washington with this comprehensive round up of all things political:
Follow @politicalticker Follow @LACaldwellDC
Foreign policy: Republicans continue to beat up on the President over his foreign policy. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, said Obama isn't doing enough to combat Russia's heavy hand in Ukraine.
"It really is spinning out of control, and you know the sad fact is sanctions haven't worked," he said on CNN's "State of the Union" after a recent trip to Ukraine.
Violence escalated in recent days in the Black Sea port city of Odessa, where a street battle between supporters and opponents of Russia ended in a deadly blaze that killed more than 40 people.
Ukraine releases protesters; PM visits Odessa
Amid continued defiance, Ukrainian official vows: 'We are not stopping'
While Obama said he would impose tougher sanctions on Russia that target the country's economy if President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine or if he interfered with Ukrainian elections set to take place on May 25, Republicans think tougher sanctions should go into effect immediately, including Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-New Hampshire.
"The bottom line is if we wait until the elections, it will be too late at that point," she said on "Fox News Sunday."
The U.S. and Europe has imposed two rounds of sanctions directed at individuals in Putin's inner circle. Financial punishment hasn't been expanded because Europe relies on Russia's energy exports and knows that industry-focused economic sanctions could harm its economy.
Despite that, Republicans want to see more done.
"Vladimir Putin is only going to respond to action, strength and resolve. He's not going to respond to words," Johnson said.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that the President is "delusional about what's going on in Ukraine."
Rep. Eliot Engel, D-New York, defended the President's actions in Ukraine, saying on "State of the Union" that sanctions have "affected" Putin's behavior, noting that the Russian leader hasn't yet deployed his military across the border.
The GOP senators on three talk shows mounted another pitch echoed by their party for weeks: Send small arms and "anti-tank weapons" to Ukraine, something Obama has not supported.
Engel cautioned against jumping ahead of European allies. "We're going to have to work in conjunction with NATO because if we don't, then the NATO alliance is dead," Engel said, countering Republican demands.
But Johnson insisted the United States do more. "It's the type of weakness that has given Vladimir Putin certainly the signal that he can continue to do those things with impunity," he said.
Obama's leadership – or lack of - has been a Republican talking point throughout his presidency, pointing to Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Russia and now it emerged as an issue on the Sunday political shows regarding Nigeria.
In Nigeria, where more than 200 teenage girls have been abducted by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram last month for attending a Western school, Johnson said, "America has to lead. That's what's missing now."
Demand for return of hundreds of abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria mounts
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, had an unsurprisingly similar sentiment: "I believe in American exceptionalism. I believe we have a leading role. I believe in peace through strength. Unfortunately, we have a president who is not believed around the world. He's lost the credibility. I think he had that credibility and had the military strength to back it up, there would be a lot more peace out there."
Benghazi: A flurry of activity over Benghazi erupted this week with the release of an administration memo written after the deadly attacks that advises Susan Rice, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to underscore that the violence was a result of a protest on a series of Sunday political show appearances.
The fight between the White House and congressional Republicans reached a new level as House Speaker John Boehner announced that he will create a special committee to investigate. But Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, said that Democrats shouldn't participate in the committee, which he called a "colossal waste of time."
"I don't think it makes sense for us to give this select committee any more credibility than it deserves," he said on "Fox News Sunday."
While Schiff called the Republicans' investigations political in nature, Ayotte said the White House's explanation of what happened on September 11, 2012, just two months before the presidential election, was the thing that was political.
"The President had been saying al Qaeda was on the run. They were trying to push a narrative of strength in foreign policy. This did not fit their narrative," she said.
And on NBC's "Meet the Press," Chaffetz said he has evidence that further contradicts the White House's story.
"I have a document in my hand, an internal State Department document that goes to Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, this is on September 12th. The State Department had told the President of the Libyan Congress that it was Ansar al-Sharia, a terrorist organization that had committed these attacks," he said.
But David Plouffe, former White House senior adviser, said on ABC's "This Week" that Benghazi is an issue because "there's a very loud delusional minority that is driving our politics."
Benghazi - government cover-up or right-wing conspiracy theory?
Graham, who thinks the Obama administration is lying and called Benghazi "a smoking gun," also thinks the White House was covering up any possible bad news to protect the President's re-election efforts. But he noted, "Anybody who plays politics with Benghazi will get burned." That includes the Republican Party.
Obama's humor at #WHCD: At the annual White House Correspondent's Dinner, you know, the dinner that gives out awards to serious, well-deserved journalists (i.e. CNN's Brianna Keilar)? The annual event with journalists taking as many selfies as they can with Hollywood's famous? Yeah, that event.
Obama gets last laugh at Washington's annual correspondents' dinner
Well, Obama told a few jokes about himself, the media and healthcare.gov. But he also joked about Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, including: "Let's face it, Fox, you'll miss me when I'm gone. It will be harder to convince the American people that Hillary was born in Kenya."
NBC's "Meet the Press" deconstructed the meaning behind his Clinton/Biden jokes. Anita Dunn, Obama's former communications director, said a Clinton Democratic nomination "is as close to a fait accompli as anything that could exist" in the Democratic Party.
New York Times Magazine Correspondent Mark Leibovich, author of "This Town," criticized the dinner and related parties on "This Week," asking, "what are we celebrating exactly?"
Perry for President? Texas Gov. Rick Perry did not say if he would run for president in 2016, but in a telling remark, he said, "American is a place that believes in second chances."
The governor's last bid for president in 2012 crashed and burned after a series of mistakes, including not remembering his own positions.
After the Oklahoma execution last week when a three-drug cocktail took more than 45 minutes for the inmate to die, Perry called the execution "botched" but defended Texas' active death penalty policy as "appropriate," saying Texas uses only "one drug" during executions.
He also expressed his opposition to the minimum wage rejected by Senate Republicans last week, saying Texas focuses "on the maximum wage rather than the minimum wage."
Fallout from LA Clippers story: Race was a central topic of the roundtable portions of the Sunday talk shows. The conversations were interesting and best viewed in their entirety:
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said that Clippers owner Donald Sterling doesn't realize the seriousness of his remarks. "I don't think he gets that," Garcetti said. Sterling has been in hot water ever since racist remarks made on audio recordings were leaked.
Additionally, he thinks there might be a legal battle over the Clippers as Sterling wants to continue to own the team. After speaking with Sterling, Garcetti said that he might encourage a boycott of the Clippers if Sterling tries to keep the team.
"I would certainly keep that arrow in my quiver," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
NBA to name new CEO for the Clippers; team wins in playoffs
Sell the Clippers to the people
Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson said Sterling should "embrace the sanctions and spend the rest of his life proving he was not a racist."
Kicker: Nancy Pelosi tweets a picture of her tattoo:
@Barbara you are doing great dems just cant stand the truth it makes them blush . More post here on wmd . Cant you dems just amit that Bush stop the attacks down to almost nothing for a change ?
The GOP has made such a muddle of Benghazi that most on the Right can no longer even explain what they think happened, much less why the e-mail that their FOX News minions keep touting is utterly meaningless. But that's the point I guess- that their unthinking folks are simply remembering a "controversy" and a "cover-up" despite the complete lack of any evidence or an understanding of the issue at all..
Yes, that IS the Right, fantasyland style beliefs, so nicely embodied in lies, deceit, and anti-government language. Reality, is just so different. Just like their faux "fiscal conservatism". The GOP has bled tax dollars since Reagan, and do so now with their cut-taxes-and-spend mentality and corporate socialism.
The GOP could do us all a favor by explaining why they want to be in charge of a government they hate so much.
It would be nice if they sorted out just what it is that bothers them about Benghazi- mostly because they cannot stay on point- and it certainly isn't the four deaths when so many more State Dept. employees died (15x) under similar and worse conditions under Mr. Bush- when these "ditto heads" said nothing.
Finally, the GOP needs to explain their support of anti- government, violent militia-types. I mean it's clear that in embracing Mr. Bundy, they re-raised the tinpot gun nuts of Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Oklahoma City bombers- now as some sort of Right-wing heroes. Really? Terrorists as heroes?
The GOP is very, very sick.
I'll stick with the "community organizer" (the one with the doctorate in Constitutional law, 13 years experience teaching at the U of Chicago) and the Democrats over the train wreck that is the GOP.


text:
This image has been re-mastered for Virtual Reality using a suitable viewer.
This remarkable fossil forest is 135 million years old. The primitive trees resemble tree ferns that grew in the age of dinosaurs and forms a part of the World Heritage Jurassic Coast and is a place of Special Scientific Interest. Because the area is part of a military firing range, it is only accessible at certain times of year.


text:
Abbreviations : Report Help
Alexander E. Gorbalenya, Tapani Hovi, Nick J. Knowles, Michael Lindberg, Steven Oberste, Ann C. Palmenberg, Gábor Reuter, Peter Simmonds, Tim Skern, Caroline Tapparel, Katja Wolthers, Patrick Woo, Roland Zell
A summary of this ICTV Report chapter has been published as an ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profile article in the Journal of General Virology, and should be cited when referencing this online chapter as follows:
Zell, R., Delwart, E., Gorbalenya, A.E., Hovi, T., King, A.M.Q., Knowles, N.J., Lindberg, A.M., Pallansch, M.A., Palmenberg, A.C., Reuter, G., Simmonds, P., Skern, T., Stanway, G., Yamashita, T. and ICTV Report Consortium, ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profile: Picornaviridae, Journal of General Virology, 98: 2421–2422.
The Picornaviridae is a family of small, icosahedral viruses with single-stranded, highly diverse positive-sense RNA genomes. Characteristic features of all members of the family are three capsid proteins with b-barrel folding, polyprotein processing by virus-encoded cysteine proteinase(s), and replication by an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase with a YGDD sequence motif. The family comprises 47 genera containing 110 species, but many viruses are presently awaiting classification. Picornaviruses may cause subclinical infections of humans and animals or conditions ranging from mild febrile illness to severe diseases of heart, liver and the central nervous system.
Table 1.Picornaviridae. Characteristics of members of the family Picornaviridae.
Typical member
poliovirus 1 Mahoney (V01149), species Enterovirus C, genus Enterovirus
Non-enveloped, 30–32 nm virions comprising 60 protomers
6.7–10.1 kb of positive-sense, non-segmented RNA with a poly(A) tail
RNA synthesis occurs in reorganized cytoplasmic replication organelles containing non-structural proteins derived from the 2BC-P3 region of the encoded polyprotein; RNA structures at the 5′ and 3′ ends of the genome direct initiation of RNA synthesis and uridylated 3B serves as primer for synthesis of both RNA strands
Directly from genomic RNA containing an internal ribosomal entry site (IRES)
Host range
Vertebrates (at least five of the seven classes)
Realm Riboviria, order Picornavirales; 47 genera containing 110 species
Virions consist of a capsid, with no envelope, surrounding a core of ssRNA. Available crystal structures indicate that particles are 30–32 nm in diameter. Electron micrographs reveal no projections on virions of most picornaviruses, the virus particle appearing as an almost featureless sphere; however, kobuviruses show a surface structure which is distinct from small round structured viruses (astroviruses and caliciviruses) (Figure l.Picornaviridae). The capsid is composed of 60 identical units (protomers). Those picornaviruses with four capsid proteins have three surface proteins, 1B, 1C and 1D, of 24–41 kDa, and an internal protein, 1A of 5.5–13.5 kDa; however, many picornaviruses have three capsid proteina as 1AB (VP0) remains uncleaved. Total protomer is 80–97 kDa. Proteins 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D are also commonly named VP4, VP2, VP3, and VP1, respectively. Proteins 1B, 1C, 1D and the uncleaved 1AB each possess a core structure comprising an eight-stranded b-sandwich ("b-barrel"). Capsid protein (CP) sequences in many genera reveal similarities to those in the "rhv-like" superfamily of proteins, and may contain a conserved "inhibitor binding site" which, in the case of some rhino- and enteroviruses, has been demonstrated to bind active antivirals. The b-barrels pack together in the capsid with T=1, pseudo T=3, icosahedral symmetry; these structural features are shared by all members of the order Picornavirales with solved atomic structures, e.g. cricket paralysis virus (Dicistroviridae), infectious flacherie virus (Iflaviridae) and the comoviruses cowpea mosaic virus, bean pod mottle virus and red clover mottle virus.
Members of different genera differ in the external loops that interconnect the b-strands. These loops account for differences in surface relief of members of each genus (Figure 1.Picornaviridae) and in the thickness of the capsid wall. Assembly occurs via pentameric intermediates (pentamer=five protomers). Proteins within each pentamer are held together by an internal network formed from the N-termini of the three major CPs, the C-termini lying on the outer capsid surface. In members of genera where the 1AB is cleaved in the complete virion, empty capsids, which are produced by some picornaviruses, are very similar to virions, except that 1A and 1B are normally replaced by the uncleaved precursor, 1AB.
Figure 1.Picornaviridae. (A) Schematic of the icosahedral T=3 capsid (small stellated dodecahedron). Each of the 60 facets comprises three protomers (protomer = one copy of the capsid protein CP) and matches with the crystallographic asymmetric unit (thick lines). (B) Schematic of the icosahedral T=1 pseudoT=3 capsid. The picornavirus protomer (comprising one copy each of the capsid proteins VP1, VP0, VP3) and the facets of the T=3 capsid are distinct. In fact, three protomers constitute one of 20 facets of the icosahedron (thus T=1). Where VP0 is cleaved, the fourth capsid protein (VP4) is located about the internal surface of the pentameric apex of the icosahedron. (C) Pictures of 17 picornavirus structures (from VIPERdb http://viperdb.scripps.edu (Carrillo-Tripp et al., 2009)). Indicated are genus, species, virus name abbreviation, PDB entry and the virion's average diameter (Æ). (D) Negative-contrast electron micrograph of poliovirus (PV) particles; the bar represents 100 nm (courtesy of Ann C. Palmenberg). (E) Negative-contrast electron micrograph of Aichi virus A1 (genus Kobuvirus) showing surface structure; the bar represents 50 nm (courtesy of Teruo Yamashita).
The molecular weight of picornavirus virions ranges from 8 x 106 - 9 x 106 with a sedimentation rate (S20w) of 140–165S (for empty particles S20w is 70–80S). Their buoyant density in CsCl is 1.33–1.45 g cm-3, depending on the genus. Some species are unstable below pH 7; many are less stable at low ionic strength than at high ionic strength. Virions are insensitive to ether, chloroform, or non-ionic detergents. Viruses are inactivated by light when grown with, or in the presence of photodynamic dyes such as neutral red or proflavin. Thermal stability varies with viruses as does stabilization by divalent cations.
Virions contain one molecule of positive-sense ssRNA of 6.7–10.1 kb and possessing a single long ORF; cadiciviruses (genus Dicipivirus), however, have two ORFs, with translation of each directed by a separate internal ribosomal entry site (IRES). A poly(A) tail, heterogeneous in length, is located after the 3′-terminal heteropolymeric sequence. A small protein, VPg (c. 2.2 to 3.9 kDa), is linked covalently to the 5′-terminus. The untranslated regions (UTRs) at both termini contain regions of secondary structure which are essential to genome function. The long 5′-UTR (0.5–1.5 nt) includes a 5′-terminal domain involved in replication (e.g. the poliovirus "clover-leaf") and an IRES of 220–450 nt upstream of the translational start site; most picornaviral IRES elements can be assigned to one of several types (I to V, IGR-IRES), according to their secondary structure. Between the 5′-terminal domain and the IRES there may be one, or more, pseudoknots. A poly(C) tract is found in the 5′-UTR of foot-and-mouth disease viruses, encephalomyocarditis viruses and possibly porcine teschoviruses. The 3′-UTR, which may also contain a pseudoknot, ranges from 25 to nearly 800 nt.
In addition to the major CPs, 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D, and 3B (VPg), described above, small amounts of 1AB (VP0) are commonly seen in lieu of one or more copies of 1A and 1B. Protein 1A is small in hepatoviruses, and 1AB is uncleaved in members of the Aalivirus, Ampivirus, Aquamavirus, Avihepatovirus, Avisivirus, Crohivirus, Gallivirus, Kobuvirus, Kunsagivirus, Limnipivirus, Livupivirus, Megrivirus, Mischivirus, Orivirus, Oscivirus, Parechovirus, Pasivirus, Passerivirus, Poecivirus, Potamipivirus, Rosavirus, Sakobuvirus, Salivirus, Shanbavirus and Sicinivirus genera, as well as in a number of unclassified picornaviruses. The orthologous proteins 1B, 1C, 1D, 2C, 3C and 3D are conserved in all picornaviruses and may be used for sequence alignments between viruses, whereas 1A, 2A, 2B, 3A and 3B are highly divergent among members of different picornavirus genera. The viral proteinases are as follows (Figure 2..Picornaviridae): 3Cpro, a chymotrypsin-like cysteine protease encoded by all picornaviruses, performs most of the cleavages; 2Apro related to 3Cpro is responsible for few cleavages in enteroviruses, and possibly sapeloviruses and raboviruses; Lpro residing in a leader protein is a papain-related cysteine protease that releases itself from polyprotein in aphthoviruses, erboviruses and possibly mosaviruses. Also, the 2A of aaliviruses, ailuriviruses, aphthoviruses, aquamaviruses, avihepatoviruses, avisiviruses, bopiviruses, cardioviruses, cosaviruses, crohiviruses, erboviruses, hunniviruses, kunsagiviruses, limnipiviruses, malagasiviruses, mischiviruses, mosaviruses, members of the species Parechovirus B, Parechovirus C and Parechovirus D, pasiviruses, potamipiviruses, senecaviruses, shanbaviruses, teschoviruses, torchiviruses and of a number of unclassified picornaviruses contains a NPG↓P motif that mediates cotranslational termination-reinitiation of RNA translation (↓ = co-translational stop-go site) and acts only in cis (2Anpgp). Conserved sequence motifs are found in the 2C helicase (Walker A motif: GxxGxGKS), 3C proteinase (GxCGx10-15GxH) and 3D polymerase (KDE, DxxxxD, PSG, YGDD, FLKR).
Figure 2.Picornaviridae. Polyprotein processing of enteroviruses and aphthoviruses. Viral RNA (vRNA) is polyadenylated and covalently linked to a virus-encoded protein (VPg) at its 5′-end. A single open reading frame (ORF) encoding a polyprotein is flanked on either side by non-coding regions (NCRs). Release of the capsid protein precursor (P1) is facilitated by 2Apro of the enteroviruses (black arrow) or by an NPG↓P motif at the C-terminus of 2A of foot-and-mouth disease virus (white arrow). P2 and P3 polypeptides are precursors of the nonstructural proteins necessary for genome replication. Further polyprotein processing is conducted by 3Cpro (cleavage sites indicated by arrow heads). The leader proteinase Lpro releases itself from the P1 by cleavage at its own C-terminus. Processing of VP0, the precursor of VP4 and VP2, is thought to be autocatalytic and occurs within the provirion at virion maturation (white diamond). Numbering refers to the genomes of strains poliovirus 1 (V01149) and foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) O6 (AY593829). As the actual length of the poly(C) tract in the 5′-NCR of FMDV O6 has not been determined, the position of the start and stop codons may vary by 100–200 nt.
Polyprotein processing of enteroviruses and aphthoviruses. Viral RNA (vRNA) is polyadenylated and covalently linked to a virus-encoded protein (VPg) at its 5′-end. A single open reading frame (ORF) encoding a polyprotein is flanked on either side by non-coding regions (NCRs). Release of the capsid protein precursor (P1) is facilitated by 2Apro of the enteroviruses (black arrow) or by an NPG↓P motif at the C-terminus of 2A of foot-and-mouth disease virus (white arrow). P2 and P3 polypeptides are precursors of the nonstructural proteins necessary for genome replication. Further polyprotein processing is conducted by 3Cpro (cleavage sites indicated by arrow heads). The leader proteinase Lpro releases itself from the P1 by cleavage at its own C-terminus. Processing of VP0, the precursor of VP4 and VP2, is thought to be autocatalytic and occurs within the provirion at virion maturation (white diamond). Numbering refers to the genomes of strains poliovirus 1 (V01149) and foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) O6 (AY593829). As the actual length of the poly(C) tract in the 5′-NCR of FMDV O6 has not been determined, the position of the start and stop codons may vary by 100–200 nt.
Some picornaviruses carry a sphingosine-like molecule ("pocket factor") in a cavity ("pocket") located inside 1D. Protein 1A, where present, generally has a molecule of myristic acid covalently attached to the amino terminal glycine. No myristoylation signal is found in the N-terminal VP4 and VP0 sequence of avihepatoviruses, dicipiviruses, kobuviruses, parechoviruses and tremoviruses.
None of the viral proteins are glycosylated.
The virion RNA is infectious (Colter et al., 1957, Alexander et al., 1958) and serves as both the genome and the viral mRNA. Initiation of protein synthesis is stimulated by the IRES. Translation of the single ORF produces the polyprotein precursor (216–277 kDa) to the structural proteins (derived from the P1 region of the genome) and the non-structural proteins (from the P2 and P3 regions) (Figure 2.Picornaviridae). In many viruses P1 is preceded by a leader protein (L). In dicipiviruses ORF1 encodes the precursor of the structural proteins (corresponding to the P1 region), whereas ORF2 encodes the functional protein precursor (P2 and P3 regions). The polyprotein is cleaved to functional proteins by virus-encoded proteinases. Intermediates are denoted by letter combinations (e.g. 3CD, the uncleaved precursor of 3C and 3D). Picornaviruses exhibit a modular genome organization (Figure 3.Picornaviridae). Certain genetic elements of the 5′- and 3′-UTR and gene regions are thought to have been exchanged between members of different genera. There may be one or more gene regions encoding various 2A proteins. Beside 2Apro and the aphthovirus-like 2Anpgp, 2A may have the H-box/NC sequence motif of a family of cellular proteins involved in the control of cell proliferaton [aaliviruses, avihepatoviruses, avisiviruses, crohiviruses, galliviruses, kobuviruses, livupiviruses, megriviruses, parechoviruses, passeriviruses, potamipiviruses, rosaviruses, sakobuviruses, saliviruses, shanbaviruses, siciniviruses, tremoviruses and several unclassified picornaviruses; (Hughes and Stanway 2000)] or similarity to the AIG1-type guanine binding domain, a P-loop NTPase with GxxGxGKS motif (aaliviruses, avihepatoviruses, avisiviruses); their function in virus replication is unclear. The 2B and 3A gene regions vary greatly among the genera, although functionally they may be homologous. Some intermediates are stable and serve functions distinct from those of their cleavage products (e.g. cleavage of poliovirus P1 by 3CDpro, not by 3Cpro). Where it occurs, the cleavage of 1AB, which accompanies RNA encapsidation, is thought to be autocatalytic, but the precise mechanism is unknown.
Figure 3.Picornaviridae. Schematic genome organization of representative members of 47 picornavirus genera. The paradigmatic genus Enterovirus is shown in the first row; the remaining picornavirus genera are presented in alphabetical order. Open reading frames are represented by coloured boxes. Colours indicate function of the processed proteins; functions are explained in the box below. 2A genes with unknown function are indicated by white boxes. The function of the L protein is unknown except for the aphthoviruses and erboviruses where it is a papain-like protease. Open reading frames are flanked by 5′- and 3′-nontranslated regions. Where known, IRES type (I to V) is given by Roman numerals. For clarity, gene regions of the open reading frames and untranslated regions are not drawn to scale. Foot-and-mouth disease virus of genus Aphthovirus has three copies of 3B (VPg) whereas the aphthoviruses bovine rhinitis Avirus, bovine rhinitis B virus 1 and equine rhinitis A virus (not shown) have only one. 2A of Boone cardioviruses (Cardiovirus C, not shown) is homologous to the respective proteins of other cardioviruses but has no NPG↓P motif. Members of Megrivirus have one to four 2A proteins up to three of which have unknown function. Two types of IRESs (IV and V) are found in kobuviruses.
A typical picornavirus genome layout may be represented by the following:
Where "[" and "]" define the extent of the polyprotein-coding region, "/" represents primary cleavages and "-" represents the final cleavages. Where a particular polypeptide is present only in some members of the genus it can be shown between parentheses. This schema can also be used to indicate some protein functions or amino acid motifs where they differ between viruses (e.g. 2Apro or 2Anpgp or 2AH-box/NC or 2ANTPase). There may be multiple copies of a particular genomic region in the picornavirus genome including repeated copies of one particular region (e.g. three 3B's in the foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) genome) or different types of a particular region (e.g. two different 2A motifs in Ljungan virus of the genus Parechovirus and three different 2A motifs in the duck hepatitis A virus genome of the genus Avihepatovirus).
Replication of viral RNA occurs in tight association with reorganized cytoplasmic membraneous structures. These complexes termed replication organelles contain proteins derived from the whole of the 2BC-P3 region of the polyprotein, including the polymerase (3Dpol, an RNA chain-elongating enzyme), and 2C (an ATPase containing a nucleotide binding sequence motif). The poliovirus and coxsackievirus 3Cpro component has been shown to be required for binding to the 5′-terminal RNA cloverleaf. The small virus-encoded protein, VPg, acts as a transcription primer for both positive- and negative-strand RNA synthesis. Prior to transcription two uridine residues are covalently linked to the conserved tyrosine at position 3 in VPg to form VPgpUpUOH via a templating mechanism involving a cis-acting replication element (cre) and the virus 3D polymerase. The cre is a stem loop containing the sequence "AAAC" in the loop and is found at various places in the genome depending on virus species/genus. Many compounds that specifically inhibit replication have been described. Mutants resistant to, or dependent on, drugs have been reported. Genetic recombination, complementation, and phenotypic mixing occur. Defective particles, carrying deletions in the CPs or L, have been produced experimentally but have not been observed in natural virus populations.
Serotypes are classified, depending on genus, by cross-protection, neutralization of infectivity, complement-fixation, specific ELISA using a capture format or immunodiffusion. Some serotypes can be identified using hemagglutination-inhibition. Serotypes have been determined for most members of the enteroviruses, aphthoviruses, cardioviruses, erboviruses and teschoviruses, but are increasingly replaced by genotypes (commonly referred to as 'types') in clinical or diagnostic practice. Members of different genera are antigenically unrelated where investigated.
Most picornaviruses for which the natural hosts have been identified are specific for one, or a very few host species [exceptions are foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) and encephalomyocarditis virus (EMCV)]. Members of some species can be grown in cell culture. Resistant host cells (e.g., mouse cells in the case of the primate-specific polioviruses) can often replicate virus RNA (for a single round) by transfection with naked, infectious RNA. Transmission is horizontal, mainly by fecal-oral, fomite or airborne routes. Transmission by arthropod vectors is not known, although EMCV has been isolated from mosquitoes and ticks, and poliovirus from flies; therefore mechanical transmission may be possible.
Infection is generally cytolytic, but persistent infections are common with some species and reported with others. Poliovirus infected cells undergo extensive vacuolation as membranes are reorganized into viral replication complexes. Infection may be accompanied by rapid inhibition of cap-dependent translation of cellular mRNAs (2Apro of poliovirus and Lpro of aphthovirus are each powerful inhibitors), mRNA synthesis, and the cellular secretory pathway (poliovirus 2B and 3A have been implicated).
Members of a genus would normally be expected to have homologous IRES structures and proteins, and their sequences would cluster on the same branch in phylogenetic trees (monophyly). The members of all known picornavirus genera differ by (i) genome maps that exhibit distinctive features in comparison to their closest relatives, (ii) significant divergence (number of differences per site between sequences) of the orthologous proteins exceeding 66% of P1cap and 64% of 2Chel, 3Cpro and 3Dpol [these values are based on current sequence data and may vary with additional data available in future], (iii) lack of detectable homology of proteins L (if present), 2B, 3A, 3B. If these rules do not apply, a novel species or genus may be proposed. The Picornaviridae Study Group recommends that strain designations should include information on host species, lab-specific ID number, country of sampling, year of sampling, e.g. seal/ABC1234/USA/2015. When a new picornavirus species is proposed, a preferred virus name should be provided.
A picornavirus species is a class of phylogenetically related viruses that would normally be expected to share (i) a significant degree of amino acid identity of P1, 2C, 3C and 3D proteins, (ii) monophyly in phylogenetic trees, (iii) essentially identical genome maps, and (iv) a significant degree of compatibility in proteolytic processing, replication, encapsidation and genetic recombination.
Picorna: an acronym from poliovirus, insensitivity to either, coxsackievirus, orphan virus, rhinovirus, ribonucleic acid; also, from the prefix "pico" which designates a very small unit of measurement (equivalent to 10-12) and RNA, so describing very small RNA viruses.
Viruses of each picornavirus genus are phylogenetically distinct from members of other genera in those genome regions which are orthologous, i.e. P1cap (Figure 4A.Picornaviridae), 2Chel, 3Cpro 3Dpol (Figure 4B.Picornaviridae). Divergence between the members of a genus may be as high as 66% for the P1 polyprotein and 64% for 2C, 3C and 3D proteins. Divergence between the members of different genera is usually higher.
Figure 4A.Picornaviridae. P1 protein phylogenetic tree showing the relationships between the classified members of the family Picornaviridae. For clarity, unclassified picornaviruses were not included. The maximum likelihood tree was produced with MrBayes using the GTR+G+I substitution model. The tree is rooted to the ampivirus outgroup. Tips are labelled with Genbank accession numbers, a virus name and the strain designation in square brackets. The taxonomy (species and genus) is shown to the right. Numbers at nodes indicate posterior probabilities obtained after 6,000,000 generations. This phylogenetic tree and corresponding sequence alignment are available to download from the Resources page.
Figure 4B.Picornaviridae. 3Dpol protein phylogenetic tree showing the relationships between the classified members of the family Picornaviridae. For clarity, unclassified picornaviruses were not included. The maximum likelihood tree was produced with MrBayes using the GTR+G+I substitution model. The tree is rooted to the ampivirus outgroup. Tips are labelled with Genbank accession numbers, a virus name and the strain designation in square brackets. The taxonomy (species and genus) is shown to the right. Numbers at nodes indicate posterior probabilities obtained after 4,000,000 generations. This phylogenetic tree and corresponding sequence alignment are available to download from the Resources page.
The presence of 1–3 domains with detectable similarity to the rhv-like superfamily with characteristic folding ("b-barrel") in the capsid proteins is common to most members of the order Picornavirales. Likewise, a 'replication block' comprising a RNA-helicase domain (P-loop NTPase), a peptidase C-like proteinase and a RNA-dependent RNA polymerase 1 domain (RT-like superfamily) is also present in all members of Picornavirales and many unclassified picorna-like viruses. Capsid proteins and proteins of the replication block show various degree of similarity. The presence of a small genome-linked protein which is also the replication primer is also common to many small positive-sense RNA viruses. A genome organization with a single open reading frame and CP-encoding gene region at the 5′-end and the gene region encoding the replication block proteins at the 3′-end is common to members of the families Picornaviridae and Iflaviridae.
Virus name
Accession number
Virus abbreviation
marmot sapelovirus 2 [HT6/China/2013]
goose picornavirus [goose/NLSZK2/HUN/2013]
Miniopterus fuliginosus picornavirus [BtMf-PicoV-1/Sax2011]
murine picornavirus [Wencheng-Mm283/China/2012]
Rhinolophus affinis picornavirus [bat/China/2010]
Rhinolophus ferrumequinum picornavirus [BtRf-PicoV-2/YN2012]
rodent picornavirus [rodent/Ds/PicoV/IM2014]
rodent picornavirus [rodent/Rn/PicoV/SX2015_1]
rodent picornavirus [rodent/CK/PicoV/Tibet2014]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [NC16A]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [LMH22A]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [MH9F]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [SK17F]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [TLC5F]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [TLC21F]
Ia io picornavirus (sapelo-like) [bat/China/2010]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtMr-PicoV/JX2010]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtMf-PicoV-2/GD2012]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtRs-PicoV/GD2012]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [bat/Henan-Mr221/China/2012]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtRh-PicoV/SC2013]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtMf-PicoV-2/SAX2011]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtMf-PicoV/FJ2012]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtMf-PicoV-1/GD2012]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtRf-PicoV-1/YN2012]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtRlep-PicoV/FJ2012]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtRa-PicoV/JS2013]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtNv-PicoV/SC2013]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtVs-PicoV/SC2013]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtMa-PicoV/FJ2012]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [BtRs-PicoV/YN2010]
sapelo-like bat picornavirus [CAM/Sap-P24/2013]
sapelo-like bovine picornavirus [Bo-11-39/2009/JPN]
sapelo-like bovine picornavirus [Bo-12-3/2009/JPN]
sapelo-like bovine picornavirus [Bo-12-7/2009/JPN]
sapelo-like bovine picornavirus [Bo-12-11/2009/JPN]
sapelo-like bovine picornavirus [Bo-12-38/2009/JPN]
California sea lion sapelovirus 1 [1162]
California sea lion sapelovirus 2 [1153]
canine sapelovirus [dog/Hong Kong/325F/2008]
feline sapeloviruses
sapelo-like pigeon picornavirus A [pigeon/Norway/03/603-7/2003]
sapelo-like pigeon picornavirus B [pigeon/Norway/03/641/ 2003]
sapelo-like pigeon picornavirus B [pigeon/GAL-7/2010/Hungary]
chicken picornavirus [UCC/PhV]
red-crowned crane picornavirus 1-6
cardiovirus-like rodent picornaviruses
hunnivirus-like rodent picornaviruses
sapelovirus-like rodent picornaviruses
parechovirus-like rodent picornavirus
kobuvirus-like rodent picornavirus
Beihai conger picornavirus
Beihai pentapodus picornavirus
Beihai wrasse picornavirus
Chinese broad-headed pond turtle picornavirus 1
Chinese softshell turtle picornavirus 1
Fujian spotted paddle-tail newt picornavirus
Guangdong Chinese water skink picornavirus
Guangdong Chinese water snake picornavirus
Guangdong fish caecilians picornavirus
Guangdong red-banded snake picornavirus
Guangdong spotted longbarbel catfish picornavirus
Guangxi changeable lizard picornavirus 1
Guangxi changeable lizard picornavirus 2
Guangxi Chinese leopard gecko picornavirus
Hainan black-spectacled toad picornavirus
Hainan oriental leaf-toed gecko picornavirus
Wenling banjofish picornavirus 1
Wenling banjofish picornavirus 2
Wenling bighead beaked sandfish picornavirus
Wenling brown-lined puffer picornavirus
Wenling chelidoperca picornavirus
Wenling crossorhombus picornavirus
Wenling fish picornavirus 1
Wenling hoplichthys picornavirus
Wenling jack mackerels picornavirus
Wenling lepdotrigla picornavirus
Wenling pleuronectiformes picornavirus
Wenling rattails picornavirus
Wenling scaldfish picornavirus 1
Wenling scaldfish picornavirus 2
Wenling sharspine skate picornavirus
Wenling thamnaconus septentrionalis picornavirus
Wenling triplecross lizardfish picornavirus
Western African lungfish picornavirus
Wuhan carp picornavirus
Wuhan sharpbelly picornavirus 1
Wuhan sharpbelly picornavirus 2
Wuhan sharpbelly picornavirus 3
Yancheng osbecks grenadier anchovy picornavirus
Yili teratoscincus roborowskii picornavirus 1
Zhejiang banded bullfrog picornavirus
Support for preparation of the Online Report and Report Summaries has been provided by:


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Daniel Craig is back as James Bond 007, blond-haired ball-busting hero of new film Skyfall that will start filming today.
As Craig brings his sculptured abs and sea-blue eyes back to the role, fans of the Bond franchise can look forward to the introduction of amber-eyed French beauty Bérénice Marlohe who will play a "glamorous, enigmatic" character named Severin. Marlohe has mainly starred on French TV before.
Brit Sam Mendes is directing, but though he unfortunately has several sensitive indie hits to his name (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road) he took time to reassure attendees at the press conference that this does not mean he'll be cutting the action scenes.
Mendes also said that the Skyfall story won't be connected to Casino Royale or Quantum Of Solace, and won't be based on any of the books.
British screen actress Naomie Harris will play a secret agent named Eve. Judi Dench will remain as M, and leading men include skinny Brit actor Ben Whishaw, Ralph Fiennes and Javier Bardem bringing a little Latin villainy. ®


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Tokyo, Japan, October 28, 2010 - FIVB 2010 Women's Volleyball World Championship - Serbia v Costa Rica press conference
Serbia captain Jelena Nikolic: "The first game is always a difficult game no matter who you play. We had a short time to practice, and I hope we can put on a better performance tomorrow against Poland. Today was good but as time goes on I think we will play better and better.â€
Regarding possible points of improvement: "I think we can improve in every single thing, because today was difficult, no matter if it's Costa Rica or whoever. We had to get used to the gym. Blocking… we could do it better, but I'm sure that with time it will come.â€
Regarding her impression of being in Japan: "Me and my team couldn't wait to come to Japan, we have nice memories of here and we like the atmosphere here. In every place we can find lovely Volleyball supporters and it's always great to see them. There are so many positive things around us, and this will help us reach a better result.â€
Impress of Poland who Serbia play on Saturday: "We played against them three months ago, and we won 3-2. I really like to play them because we play similar Volleyball. It's always a difficult match against them. I think we have a good chance to win, and we will see tomorrow. Poland is one of the three best teams in Europe right now.Serbia coach Zoran Terzi: "Like Jelena said the first game of the World Championships is always very difficult. We will try to use this game. At this moment we are a higher quality team than Costa Rica, and we showed this. For us, the World Championships will start, practically, tomorrow.â€
Regarding the competition in the first round: "It's really a difficult question for me, because I cannot say who is the better team, Japan or Poland for example. But we prefer to play Poland, because we play a similar style. But Poland, Japan, Peru, all are favorites to move on to the next round. Peru, we played them a few times … and they were extremely difficult games for us. And of course we will try to prepare for this.â€
Regarding changes and improvements since the Beijing Olympics: "I tried to change some things, to play more speedy, which is a little bit different than usually European Volleyball. Not like Japan or China, but close to those two teams.â€
Costa Rica coach Braulio Godinez: "Four years ago Serbia took the bronze here in Tokyo and we placed 17th, so it is apparent that there's a big gap between us. We did our best. They delivered a strong service, and our reception was not perfect. They are a tall team, and their blocking is very effective.â€
Costa Rica captain Verania Willis: "First congratulations to the Serbian team on their win today. They are a very strong team, with a lot of height, and perhaps size mattered in this match. But we did our best and tried to find some areas to break through, but we couldn't. Facing a difficult situation, we did what we should, but couldn't break through. We have to study what we did today and try to improve.â€


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We've got bad cramps. You know, the kind that once warranted removal from P.E. class, or at least one of mom's Valium. Thing is, we don't get a period [Speak for yourself! -Ed] and we can't stop working (it's our first day!), so we turned to our beloved friend/worst enemy, WebMD, to distract us. Which didn't really work. See why we're convinced we have a bone infection, after the jump.
TMI Time! There's A Crimson Tide At Jezebel HQ


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NASA may have given up on spaceplanes for now, with the Shuttle soon to be replaced by old-school rocket stacks and capsules. But the US Air Force, it seems, still sees a need for spacecraft which can re-enter atmosphere and make a runway landing. Reports indicate that the X-37B unmanned spaceplane demonstrator will make its first orbital launch in November under USAF auspices.
According to Aviation Week, the "Orbital Test Vehicle" - built by Boeing's "Phantom Works" advanced-projects bureau - will be launched atop an Atlas V booster package from Cape Canaveral, taking a launch slot previously filled by a NASA moon reconnaissance mission.
The X-37 unmanned minishuttle as NASA saw it.
The X-37 programme was originally begun by NASA and the Phantom Works in 1999. It was aimed at producing a new generation of orbital spaceplanes, and its immediate justification at the time was the eventual provision of a "lifeboat" landing craft for astronauts on the International Space Station. Various experiments were carried out, involving the release of test airframes from high-flying jets and helicopters, and NASA originally planned to carry out an orbital flight of an unmanned prototype in 2006. The X-37 plans drew heavily on the USAF's X-40 experiments, and it was planned that the more sophisticated X-37 space vehicle would be able to stay in orbit for 21 days.
NASA no longer has any near-future spaceplane plans, but the X-37B "reusable unmanned space test platform" project has been kept going by Boeing with Air Force money. Boeing have previously said that the USAF's objectives are "concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies", and that orbital tests would commence this year. This latest news seems to confirm that schedule.
Just why the Air Force thinks it needs orbital landers isn't clear, but such craft could be one option for America's desired "prompt global reach" capability. Rather than using hypersonic airbreathers ripping through the atmosphere to reach a target, the US forces might choose to send payloads still faster, through the vacuum of low orbit. Future orbiters derived from the X-37 might deliver warheads, spy packages or even troops to far-flung theatres within hours of getting the go order, although they'd never be able to get back again.
Returning to the present day, the X-37 isn't anything like the size of a space shuttle - about 27 feet long and with a wingspan of 15 feet. However, it's supposed to be a significant advance on Shuttle technology, with a "highly durable high-temperature thermal protection system" just one of "approximately 30 airframe, propulsion and operation technologies" to be tried out. There's also a 7 foot x 4 foot payload/experiment bay.
With the demise of the Shuttle, the X-37 - small and unmanned though it is - will be the only true, orbital spaceplane in operation, though Europe's "Phoenix" programme is proceeding on similar lines. There are also various sub-orbital jobs planned for the nascent space tourism industry, similar to the SpaceShipOne of Ansari X-Prize fame, but these merely zoom ballistically out of the atmosphere before falling back in again - they can't achieve the speeds needed to go into a sustainable orbit.
Those who would like to see a future of reusable space vehicles will find today's news some comfort, in a world where launch technology can sometimes seem to be taking retrograde steps rather than advancing. ®


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Banks Turn to Fees to Make Mobile Pay
At the recent Mobile Banking Summit in Miami, a question bankers raised several times was, how do we make money off mobile banking? Mobile app development projects can cost $1 million to $5 million, and often boards and executive committees want to see some kind of return on investment before approving such projects.
The obvious answer is fees. Some in the industry feel it's reputationally risky to charge fees for mobile banking services. Some believe mobile banking initiatives pay for themselves because the channel is much lower cost than branches.
"You don't need to start charging fees in order to monetize mobile," says Andres Wolberg-Stok, global mobile and tablet banking director, Citi Consumer Banking. "Our data shows customers who adopt mobile banking increase their balances on deposit, decrease their attrition and see their overall profitability rise very clearly. Compared over time to other customers who had identical profiles but did not go mobile when they did, they become more profitable."
Yet evidence is starting to mount that retail banking fees, so unpopular in areas like checking accounts, may be palatable for mobile banking services. U.S. Bank has been charging 50 cents per mobile check deposit since 2010 and the bank has said its adoption numbers are strong.
Regions Bank, a $120 billion-asset bank based in Birmingham, Ala., is gradually monetizing many of its mobile banking services.
Like U.S. Bank, Regions charges for remote deposit capture. "It's a clear value-added service," says Stephen Lamar, senior vice president of e-business product and channel management. "Most of our product roadmap for mobile is monetized, and will continue to be. We're getting quickly to the point where it's not just a lower-cost channel, but a channel we're looking to make overall profitable," Lamar says.
Regions lets its prepaid customers load funds onto their cards through the mobile channel, by selecting from a range of funds availability options. The funds can be available immediately for $5, overnight for $3, or after the standard processing time for 50 cents. The immediate-availability option is provided through a branch check-cashing relationship Regions has with Chexar.
"As a bank we've been focusing on our underbanked customers we focus on check cashing and prepaid cards," Lamar says. Regulations require that such customers have immediate access to their funds; they can't overdraw. "So while these prepaid customers are getting instant access, why wouldn't our typical deposit account customer like that option also?"
The bank has seen a gradual increase in prepaid customers using mobile banking, according to Greg Melville, product owner mobile products and payments. "I expect that to continue to grow."
The bank has gotten little backlash from customers over these fees.
"Obviously, customers aren't going to be happy with any kind of cost you throw out there," Melville points out. "But if you offer a value-added service, such as immediate access to their funds, they have shown that it's something they are more than willing to accept."
There was some negative feedback in the beginning. During launch, Regions tracked the ratio of complaints to positive interactions on Twitter, Facebook and calls to the bank's contact center. "You might see your App Store ratings drop, but it's a very vocal minority. We're getting positive feedback," Melville says.
"We were very concerned about that going into it," Lamar says. "We wanted to be prepared from the get-go to have that operational data behind it, because if we had just looked at App Store reviews and our Twitter feed, we would say, wait, back this out, back this out." But very few customers who did complain about the fees actually left the bank. And more than a third of customers are choosing options that cost $3 or more.
Technology-wise, getting these options in place "was a Herculean effort," Lamar says. "It was probably the difference between having mobile deposit ready in six months versus 18 months. We had to create an entire new 'brain' to hold these different tiers of logic for fraud, customer profitability management and limit management. Then we also had to work with Chexar, NCR and our mobile vendor, Kony, and ask them to do things they never did before." The "brain" or rules-based engine is controlled in house, so it can be easily adjusted. Several plans are in the works for additional fee-based mobile services.
One is the ability to raise mobile deposit limits. When some competitors' customers complained about not being able to deposit enough per day, with limits as low as $800, Regions execs saw opportunity. "We thought, we'll be pretty aggressive and let customers pay a dollar to raise their daily limit up to $3,000," Lamar says. The bank has already implemented this fee.
The bank charges $1 for its person-to-person payment service, called Regions Personal Pay, which runs on Fiserv's PopMoney platform. It plans to implement that on mobile.
"Some of our competitors offer that for free, but the simplicity of being on your mobile app and pay someone is worth $1," Lamar says.
Regions Ready Advance, which provides customers an advance on a direct deposit for a fee, may be being mobilized. Through a partnership with Western Union, the bank allows same-day expedited bill payments and money transfers this, too, may be mobilized.
Another source of revenue is the bank's relationship with Cardlytics, in which the bank gets a percentage of the cash-back rewards customers get. These card offers are offered via mobile device.
"With Cardlytics, our offers are based exactly on our customers' previous spending habits," Lamar says. "We rarely hear complaints that the offers are not relevant or worthwhile and our opt-out rate is very low."


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With the sudden resignation of NAACP president Ben Jealous, the search is on for a new leader.
BlackAmericaWeb.com's Senior Political Correspondent, Michael H. Cottman, recently weighed in on the issue and suggested a huge change in leadership. In the NAACP's 104-year history, there has never been a female at the helm as president.
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It's been less than a year since Tasha Robinson coined the phrase "Trinity syndrome," and yet it's already become one of the most useful terms in pop culture criticism. Named for the female lead in Lana and Andy Wachowski's The Matrix, Trinity syndrome refers to a movie in which a female character is depicted as cool, competent, and badass, but always and inexplicably in the service of a much blander male lead (for whom she is usually the love interest). She often loses her motivation (if she ever had one) and her ability to affect the plot in the film's final act, just in time for the lead to take center stage, and often needs to be rescued by him. As Hollywood blockbusters become more conservative in their structures and plots, the roles they give women become more constrained, and Trinity syndrome has become a useful way of examining how the appearance of agency can obscure its absence. Jupiter Ascending, the Wachowskis' most recent film and their first return to no-holds-barred SF since the second Matrix sequel, offers an interesting data point in the discussion of the phenomenon to which they gave a name. Of all its many flaws, perhaps the most crucial is that Jupiter Ascending does not suffer from Trinity syndrome.
Perhaps the easiest way to sum up Jupiter Ascending is to describe it as a gender-swapped, space opera retelling of The Matrix. In both films, you have a somewhat personality-free protagonist dissatisfied with their humdrum, monotonous life who discovers that they were born special, a savior figure awaited for generations. Whisked off to a life of adventure by a sexy, uber-competent bodyguard, they discover that the truths about the world that they'd taken for granted are nothing but illusions, and that human beings are being exploited by a sinister system that sees them as nothing but fuel for a great machine--an exploitation that only our hero can bring an end to.
What's interesting about this repetition is how it reveals the ways in which telling the same story with a different-gendered protagonist affects the kind of tale you end up telling. In The Matrix, the fact that Neo was such a blank--devoid of past, family, relationships, or even any concrete dreams or aspirations--wasn't a problem because that blankness allowed the other characters to explain the world to him and the audience to project themselves onto him (in fact one assumes that the reason the Wachowskis chose Keanu Reeves for the role was his infamous lack of affect). That passivity, however, was counteracted by the type of special person Neo turned out to be. His journey from no-one to The One required him to discover skills and ultimately ascend to godhood. As passive as he was, the role in which the story placed him was an essentially active one, and his passivity was expressed by his acquiescence to this active role. But if Neo gets to live out the fantasy of a nobody who discovers that he is actually supremely powerful, Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) gets to live out the girl's version of that fantasy. He's a warrior; she's a princess. His specialness expresses itself in his ability to do things that no one else can; hers, in the fact that she owns a lot of stuff--as the reincarnation of the matriarch of one of the richest dynasties in the galaxy, she owns whole planets (including Earth) and their populations. All Jupiter has to do to be special is keep breathing long enough to officially claim her inheritance--at which point the greatest danger to her (and the rest of the world) becomes that she might accidentally marry the wrong person and give them access to her property.
Jupiter spends the film that bears her name being moved from place to place--and sometimes physically tossed around like a rag doll--by the alien bounty hunter Caine (Channing Tatum), who tries to keep her safe from the various factions in her newfound family who want to control or kill her. There's been some talk about how Caine embodies the romantic fantasies of a certain genre of bodice-rippers--endlessly loyal, his fearsome strength completely in thrall to Jupiter's needs, and constantly on display (the entire middle segment of the film, for example, finds some pretty flimsy excuses to keep him topless). He cuts a much more subservient figure than Trinity, right down to being explicitly likened to a dog, but then that too feels like a function of his gender--Caine being a man reduces the insecurity inherent in his role, and makes it safe for him to be subservient to Jupiter.
What undercuts Jupiter Ascending as female wish fulfillment is the fact that, unlike the bland male protagonists who benefit from Trinity syndrome, Jupiter never develops into the central character in her own story. Caine is, in fact, a more developed character than she is (I'm speaking in relative terms, of course), with something resembling a character arc revolving around his need to find a "pack," which Jupiter comes to embody, and to regain his honor and sense of purpose. Jupiter, meanwhile, has little in the way of a discernible personality. We're repeatedly told that she's cynical and distrusting, but the actual character who turns up on screen is shockingly naive, willing to be led by anyone who acts like they know what they're doing. This is a character, after all, who allows her cousin to convince her to sell her eggs and give him the bulk of her payment. A character who agrees to marry one of the super-rich space siblings whom she has dispossessed by claiming her inheritance, simply because he has promised to use her wealth for good, and despite the fact that Douglas Booth plays him with such slimy untrustworthiness that one almost expects him to make sneering asides to the audience that start with "little does she suspect..."
In the Matrix's final act, Trinity is taken suddenly off the board, leaving Neo without his protector, which forces him to suddenly discover his own awesome powers. Her role immediately becomes a moral one, to inspire Neo to discover his own innate greatness, rather than being great herself--the very fact that she loves him becomes evidence of his incipient godhood. If the Wachowskis were determined to retell their most successful story beat by beat, we'd expect Caine to be similarly sidelined in Jupiter Ascending's final scenes, but instead the film remains focused on him as its action hero and the mover of its plot--even taking a moment to have another character, Nikki Amuka-Bird's stalwart spaceship captain, compliment him on his "rare courage." Jupiter, meanwhile, gets to land a few blows against her chief enemy Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne, proving himself worthy of the Oscar he received last night for his performance in another movie by fully committing to the cheesiness of this one), but since his power is rooted in his wealth, the fact that she can knock him to the ground when all his flunkies and security guards aren't around (which is down to Caine's actions) isn't terribly impressive. She still ends up having to be rescued, and the only way in which she is less passive at the end of the film than she was in its beginning is her willingness to express her sexual desire for Caine. The problem here isn't so much that Jupiter can't beat people up, which after all isn't the only hallmark of a hero, but that unlike Neo, she doesn't undergo any sort of transformation or inner change--in fact her journey leads her back to the exact same life she had at the film's beginning, except with a cute alien boyfriend. Even the two films' parallel closing scenes, in which the protagonists zip through the sky, feel deeply gendered--Neo flies on his own power; Jupiter flies because Caine has lent her his jetpack boots.
But then, maybe this all has a lot less to do with gender than it does with capitalism. Another way to express the difference between Neo and Jupiter is that he is unsatisfied with his life because he wants to do things, whereas she is unsatisfied with her life because she wants to have things. An illegal immigrant who works all hours of the day as a housecleaner, Jupiter spends the film's early scenes lusting after the designer dresses and expensive jewelry she finds in the homes of her rich clients. That the wish-fulfillment fantasy that the Wachowskis spin around her involves being the richest person in the galaxy is therefore unsurprising, as is the form of the exploitation she discovers. The reason that Earth is such a valuable resource, we learn, is that its population can be harvested and converted into a goo that elites like Jupiter and the Abrasax family use to restore their youth and health, essentially living forever. The same imagery that, in The Matrix, was used as a metaphor for the crushing power of conformity, is here used to symbolize the predatory nature of hyper-capitalism, with culled humans floating unconscious in tanks, and referred to as cattle and crops.
There's obviously space here to tell an engaging story about privilege and wealth. For Jupiter, a poor person from what turns out to be a poor planet, to find herself instantly elevated to unimaginable privilege, and just as quickly discover that it is founded, literally, in blood, has a lot of potential. The film's repeated insistence that Jupiter is cynical makes more sense when you realize that she's supposed to have been hardened by poverty, and a life that seemed to offer no hope of anything better. It could have been interesting to see her struggle with her desire for wealth and her disgust at what it means--though again, that would require the film to be a lot more interested in Jupiter as a person than it actually is. But as the saying goes, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. Neo can be a hero in the story of The Matrix because the system he's rebelling against represents something relatively simple, sterile modern living. Jupiter has to rebel against something much more pernicious--even within the film's ridiculous worldbuilding it's hard to imagine how she could end the system by which billions are culled so that an elite few could live forever. Is it any surprise, therefore, that she doesn't even try? That her triumph is the result of relying not just on Caine, but on the very legal authorities that prop up the corrupt system that so horrifies her?
Jupiter's one moment of moral triumph--the one moment in which she does something to actually justify being the protagonist of her own story--is when she refuses to buy her life from Balem by giving him Earth, knowing that if he kills her he still won't have title to the planet. It's a heroic moment--though again, it's worth noting that the most heroic thing Jupiter does in her whole story is to agree to do nothing and die--but unlike killer AIs, we know that capitalism doesn't play by the rules. The film's ending, in which Jupiter goes back to her life on Earth, secure in the belief that no power in the galaxy will touch the precious resource simply because the person who owns it has refused to exploit it, is far less believable than Neo's ability to manipulate space and time in the Matrix. The Wachowskis clearly intended Jupiter Ascending to be the opening chapter in another series, but I think the fact that, unlike in The Matrix, they couldn't hand their heroine a genuine accomplishment with which to close the opening chapter says a lot about the differences between the two stories. Killing Agent Smith strikes a meaningful blow against the Matrix. Killing Balem Abrasax doesn't even ding the system that gave him his power.
There are other reasons why Jupiter Ascending isn't as successful as The Matrix--the lackluster action scenes, the near-total lack of humor, the deadening seriousness with which the film takes its baroque worldbuilding--and, at the same time, it's only fair to note that despite all these flaws, I didn't find it a torture to watch. It certainly isn't good, but it isn't the sort of slog that, say, The Matrix Revolutions was. And while it doesn't approach the heights of zany ridiculousness that the Wachowskis' Cloud Atlas achieved, there's a certain loopy charm to its overstuffed plot and its constant shifts between ever-more elaborate locations, that makes it rather easy to get through. But it's heartbreaking to see a Wachowski film that is so similar to The Matrix, and yet falls so far from its accomplishments. It's even sadder to realize that at least part of the reason for that difference in quality is the Wachowskis' limits--that the sort of stories they tell about women, and poor women in particular, are so much less exciting and adventurous than the ones they tell about disaffected middle class men.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Jupiter Ascending
Posted by Abigail Nussbaum at 12:40 AM 7 comments:
Labels: essays, film, the wachowskis
Wednesday, February 04, 2015
Five Comments on Birdman
It's been two days since I saw Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman and I'm still feeling exhilarated. On the most basic level, this film is like nothing else I've seen in a movie theater in a long time, possibly forever, and I urge you to see it simply for the experience (and ideally in a movie theater, since this is a work worth being immersed in). It's also a hard movie to write about, with multiple layers and themes, and a frenetic approach to plot that makes the format of a straightforward review feel inappropriate. So I'm highlighting a few points that feel interesting in a film about which I could probably say a great deal more.
- The first coherent thought I had about Birdman, even as I was still watching it, was that its overarching goal, the one thing it wanted to accomplish more than anything else, was to replicate the experience of watching a play through the experience of watching a movie. That's not an unusual desire, of course, but usually when directors aim for it their approach is to be super-naturalistic--to limit both the space in which the story takes place and the cinematic tools they employ so that the actors and the dialogue can come to the fore (and, or course, most of these films are adaptations of existing plays, while Birdman is an original story).
Birdman's approach is the exact opposite. It's trying to make you feel as if you're watching a play by constantly reminding you that you're watching a movie, and using the most blatant cinematic tools and gimmicks to recreate the experience of being in a theater. You see this in the by-now famous long takes that make up the movie. An eye-catching and, some would say, self-indulgent device, they never allow you to forget that you are watching something that was crafted, where a less present directorial choice might have let you believe that you are merely peering through a window that shows the film's events. But what these long takes do is force the audience to feel the physical space in which the film takes place as almost its own character, rather than a backdrop that is simply there to lend verisimilitude. They also force the actors to stay in character far longer than they would in a conventionally-shot movie, closer to what they'd have to do on stage. Most interesting to me was the film's use of sound. Birdman has a stunning, percussion-heavy score (by Antonio Sanchez) that does a lot to establish the film's frenetic tone and the increasing deterioration of its hero's grasp on reality, but the way it uses diegetic sound--doors opening and closing, dialogue that comes from off-screen--is particularly wrongfooting. These sounds are all much too loud, and they come from one side of the movie theater only, in a way that initially makes us wonder whether what we're hearing is part of the movie or happening next to us in reality (I don't think it's an accident that the first instance of this device is a cellphone ringing).
This is, of course, how plays establish their world, and particularly events that happen off-stage, with over-emphasis compensating for the fact that the audience is being asked to build an entire setting from a stage, a few props, and some sound effects. But when layered onto the real-world setting of a movie the result is hyper-realistic, almost an assault. Most movies try to distract us from their artifice. They use location shooting and a lot of clever sound editing to make us think that we're seeing something effortless, so that we can ignore the setting and focus on the story. Birdman wants us to notice the artifice, to do the work that we would have had to do if we were watching a play. It's putting us in the headspace of a theater audience even though we're watching a movie.
- This all feels particularly important because the underlying theme of Birdman is authenticity. The hero, Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton) is a Hollywood star best-known for playing a superhero in the 90s, who is making a desperate bid for respectability by directing and starring in a Broadway play. He's insistent that he is trying to create something "real," and haunted by the fear that he is actually a fake--a celebrity pretending to be a serious actor. At the same time, he keeps seeing and hearing his titular alter-ego, who insists that it's actually the world of the theater that's a fake--why scramble for the approval of a few hundred theater-goers and the insular world they represent when you can be beloved by millions for playing something as primal as a hero?
Whatever he chooses, Riggan is dismissed a poseur, a hack who is after prestige and fame rather than art, and so it's perhaps not surprising that he becomes obsessed with realism as a means of elevating his performance. In this, he's joined by his co-star, Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), a blowhard who, by his own admission, is only honest when he's on stage. Mike is a brilliant actor, but he takes his commitment to realism to irrational extremes, bringing real gin onstage for his character to drink (and then bringing a preview to a halt when he realizes that Riggan switched the drink with water, insisting that doing so undercuts his performance), and trying to have sex on stage with his co-star and girlfriend Lesley (Naomi Watts) when he becomes aroused mid-scene. Riggan is frustrated by Mike's antics, but also clearly starstruck by his commitment. As his grip on reality slackens, and as he becomes convinced that the play will fail and make him a laughingstock, he buys further and further into the notion that creating something real on stage means being something real on stage. This culminates with Riggan bringing a real gun on stage with which to shoot himself in the play's final scene. The audience's response to Riggan pulling the trigger is ecstatic, even when it's revealed that he really shot himself. The New York Times's sour-faced theater critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan) writes a glowing review titled "The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance" (also the film's subtitle) in which she praises Riggan for discovering a new mode of acting.
There are a lot of reasons to question these final scenes, in which Riggan survives his suicide attempt, which I'll get to shortly. But I think that Birdman itself is teaching us, through its style, to doubt what we're being told. If making art was as simple as putting real pain, real joy, real horror on a stage and pointing a camera at them, then our culture would begin and end with reality TV. Art is the process of saying something real by doing something fake; it achieves authenticity through artifice, not in spite of it. In the film's earlier scenes, Riggan seems to realize this--he breaks through Mike's self-satisfaction by telling him a heartbreaking story about his abusive father, and then reveals that he was just acting--but he loses that understanding by its end, convinced that killing himself on stage is a meaningful artistic statement. But in a movie that constantly calls attention to its fakeness, to the work that went into creating it, it's impossible to take that conclusion at face value. What Iñárritu's hard work in making Birdman such a consciously artificial object tells us is that ignorance is not a virtue. Art isn't something that just happens; you have to work to make it, even if all that work is to make the audience think that you did nothing at all.
- It's not surprising that Riggan buys into the notion of realism as art, because as much as he claims to be devoted to his play, it's clear that what interests him isn't the work, but himself. As much as Birdman is a meditation on authenticity and art, it's also a portrait of a profoundly self-absorbed man, who, as his ex-wife points out, consistently mistakes admiration for love, and is desperately scrambling to earn more of the former. Riggan may claim that he's trying to create something real, but what he's actually trying to do is make himself real by winning plaudits and applause. Genevieve Valentine has written an excellent essay about reading Birdman as an indictment of toxic masculinity, with Riggan's downfall stemming from his desperate need to be the big man, the star, the alpha male, and from his inability to accept that in his real life, he isn't a superhero. But it's an observation that inevitably leads us to wonder what Birdman does with its female characters, and there the film is a mixture of success and rather bizarre failure.
Through the three most important women in Riggan's life--his daughter Sam (Emma Stone), his ex-wife Sylvia (Amy Ryan), and his girlfriend Laura (Andrea Riseborough)--Birdman does an excellent job of conveying the frustrations of loving someone who is so completely narcissistic. Despite being locked into Riggan's point of view for most of its run, the film shows us enough of these women to make them real, sometimes through only a single line delivery. "I want a baby but my body won't cooperate," Sylvia says, quite simply and almost with a shrug, in one of the film's later scenes. The contrast between her plain, undemonstrative acknowledgment of this heartbreaking fact and Riggan's movie-long tantrum over the far smaller tragedy of his failing career speaks volumes about the balance of their relationship, about who gets to be operatic and to act as if the world has ended, and who has to just keep going without giving in to self-pity. In another scene, Sylvia, who clearly still cares deeply for Riggan, has to remind him that their marriage fell apart because he was violent and unfaithful, something that Riggan has clearly not given much thought to. Sam, meanwhile, is the only person who manages to engage Riggan as a human being, not as an actor, and thus the only person who can come close to puncturing his belief that his play is a grand and meaningful endeavor, rather than just one more shout into the darkness among millions.
When the film's camera leaves Riggan, however, and follows these women on their own stories, a strange flattening seems to occur. We can see their humanity when Riggan is ignoring it, but it seems to escape Iñárritu (and his co-writers Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, and Armando Bo), who locks them into simplistic roles and dead-end relationships. Laura and Lesley have a romantic encounter that comes out of nowhere and isn't referenced again after it happens. Sam falls into a romantic relationship with Mike despite witnessing the death throes of his relationship with Lesley, in which he is at his most immature and self-absorbed, and despite Mike making it clear that her main appeal to him is her youth and the reflected vitality he hopes to gain from her. It's not unrealistic for a young woman to enter into a relationship that is clearly a bad idea (especially as Sam is just recently out of rehab and very vulnerable) but the fact that, in her scenes with Mike, the film isn't interested in Sam as a person is a problem. She's human in her scenes with Riggan, where she's allowed to express frustration and anger in ways that aren't cute or flattering to him. But in her scenes with Mike she becomes the muse he sees her as, batting away his bad behavior in a way that only invites more of it, and skewering his faults without ever seeming to consider that maybe they make him an unsuitable romantic partner.
- A lot of the negative reactions I've seen to Birdman have concentrated on the character of Tabitha and the film's apparent disdain for critics. It's true that Birdman seems to have been written from the perspective that critics are merely frustrated artists, and it's always depressing to see otherwise intelligent, creative people reveal such a bizarre inability to grasp that most people who write criticism do it because they genuinely love it. But though Birdman doesn't offer the pro-critic perspective, I don't think it comes down as hard on Tabitha as I'd been led to expect. Yes, she's painted as a villain, informing Riggan that she's going to destroy his play before she's even seen it. But she also gets to explain why, and her reasons are largely persuasive--she's sick of celebrities like Riggan taking up oxygen in an industry that is already struggling, and doing so merely to gratify their own vanity--and in fact supported by what we see of Riggan in the rest of the film. Of all the characters in the movie, Tabitha is the one who most accurately diagnoses Riggan's faults and failings, and unlike the other women in his life she is someone he has no power over (a fact that clearly frustrates him enormously). In a movie that is ultimately so critical of its star and his delusions, it's hard to see how the person who most clearly expresses that criticism is meant to be a pure villain, even if she's hit with some easy and familiar (not to mention misogynistic) accusations.
- One of the reasons that I'm less down on the depiction of Tabitha is that I don't think we're meant to take the about-face in her review of Riggan's play at face value. My reading of the film's ending is that its final scene, in which Riggan wakes up to discover that he survived his suicide attempt and that his play is being lauded as a triumph, is a fantasy--that Riggan in fact died on stage. This is perhaps a bleaker conclusion than Birdman can shoulder--aside from the fact that Riggan, narcissist that he is, doesn't actually deserve to die, it leaves most of the other characters in a lurch, from the fragile Sam who clearly still needs her father, to Lesley, whose dreams of a Broadway debut have just been shattered. So I can't blame the film for ending more ambiguously, even if to me the true conclusion feels obvious--and to its credit, there's room to read the ending as something much stranger and wilder.
Posted by Abigail Nussbaum at 9:26 PM 6 comments:
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|The Police Interceptor when it was
first purchased
|The Interceptor after its makeover
|A 42-inch screen in the trunk
On Saturday, August 31, Keith—whose last scan showed he is cancer-free—displayed the vehicle at the seventh annual Charity Car and Motorcycle Show at the Martin Family Farm in Elburn. He took home the first place prize for the emergency vehicle category.
A special thank you to Keith and Sue for their support of the Memorial Fund!
|Keith and his wife Sue with the Ford Interceptor
|Keith with the Ford Interceptor


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Undergraduate Bio-Medical Research Earns Honors
A research project by senior biology major Carl Hjelmen (Garretson, S.D.), senior bio-chem major Nicole Ensz (Sioux Falls) and Leah McComas (biology major from the class of 2012, Maplewood, Minn.) was named a recipient of the 2011-12 Student Travel Award from the Biology Division of The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR). Dr. Mark Larson, assistant professor of biology and Augustana's Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN) coordinator, served as a faculty mentor for the project.
The research, entitled "Exogenous modification of platelet membranes with the omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA impairs thrombogenesis" illustrated the effect of omega-3 fatty acids from fish oils on blood platelet function and the formation of the clotting protein thrombin. Hjelmen, Ensz and McComas presented a poster detailing the work at the Experimental Biology 2012 Convention, held in San Diego, Calif., in April.
This summer, Hjelmen is one of nearly 70 Augustana students who are conducting undergraduate scientific and bio-medical research throughout the U.S. He is currently working on research related to genome sizes as a member of the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Program within the Department of Entomology at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. The initiative is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Ensz is spending the summer studying abroad.
McComas is beginning a dental hygienist program at the University of Minnesota.
Carl Hjelmen Leah McComas Nicole Ensz


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Main Content
Judges in need of assistance due to addiction or mental health issues may speak to other judges who are in recovery or who have gone through treatment by calling a helpline sponsored by the American Bar Association. Judges who have volunteered to be a personal resource to other judges throughout the US and Canada are uniquely positioned to share their experiences, strengths and hope with their colleagues from other states.
Both judges in need of help and those interested in serving as peer-to-peer volunteers should call 800.219.6474 during business hours Central time. All information is confidential and protected by statute.
The International Judges' Assistance Helpline is a service of the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs Judicial Assistance Initiative and administered by the Texas Lawyers' Assistance Program. Indiana has judges volunteering for the Helpline, but it is also available to any Indiana judge seeking support and guidance but reluctant to talk to another in-state judge about his or her personal issues. Anyone wanting more information about the Helpline may call the Indiana JLAP office or the 800 number above for additional information.
Contact Information
Indiana Judges and Lawyers
Assistance Program
320 N. Meridian St., Suite 606
Indianapolis, IN 46204


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It's Shark Week. You know you wanna watch... because it's Shark Week! But supposing you don't have a TV to plunk down and watch it. Don't worry, you're covered.
Discovery never fails to provide links to the latest clips and highlights from this week of awesome. The kick-off comes at 9, but you can already check out a few gems, as well as the live Ustream of the world's largest shark tank at the Georgia Aquarium.
If you're a Comcast subscriber, you can log into Xfinity TV and watch these biting machines do their thing. You can also watch some classic clips from back in the day.
G/O Media may get a commission
YouTube jumped in on the action as well. You just have to stare at Andy Samberg for a bit to get to the choice nuggets of shark action


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I am writing a bash script in a busybox session.
The script has to initiate an external executable numerous times in sequence in daemonised form then monitor the output.
while read LINE; do
VARIABLEPARAMETER=`echo "$LINE" | sed -e 's/appropriateregex(s)//'`
externalprog --daemonize -acton $VARIABLEPARAMETER -o /tmp/outputfile.txt
until [ "TRIGGERED" = "1" ]; do
WATCHOUTPUT=`tail -n30 /tmp/outputfile.txt`
TRIGGERED=`echo "$WATCHOUTPUT" | grep "keyword(s)"`
if [ -z "$TRIGGERED" ]; then
PROGID=`pgrep externalprog`
kill -2 "$PROGID"
done < /tmp/sourcedata.txt
My question is which of the two loops will the continue command be executed against?
The initial while read line, or the subsequent, until triggered?
Please don't get to focused on the actual code I've thrown this together as an example to try to explain this question, the actual code is much more detailed.


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BETHESDA, MD — Children who are overweight as toddlers or preschoolers are more likely to be overweight or obese in early adolescence, report researchers in a collaborative study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and several academic institutions.
Researchers collected height and weight measurements of a sample of children, beginning at age 2 and continuing until age 12. Their analysis, which appeared in the September Pediatrics, provides some of the strongest evidence to date that being overweight in early childhood increases the chance for being overweight in later life.
"These findings underscore the need to maintain a healthy weight beginning in early childhood," says Duane Alexander, the director of NIH's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which funded the study. "Contrary to popular belief, young children who are overweight or obese typically won't lose the extra weight simply as a result of getting older."
The strength of the current analysis is that it was conducted on data collected during frequent intervals over an extended period of time, from age 2 through age 12. Also, the children who took part in the study were born in 1991, and so were growing up during the current trend of overweight and obesity in the general population, researchers noted.
Children who were overweight at least once from ages 2 to 4 ½ were five times more likely to be overweight at age 12 when compared to children who were not overweight from ages 2 to 4 ½. The more times a child was overweight from ages 7 through 11, the greater the chances the child would be overweight at age 12 in comparison to children who were not overweight from ages 7 through 11.
The study's authors also found that no children in the study who were below the 50th percentile at preschool or elementary school age were overweight at age 12.


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- Create a new empty text document (.txt) on your pc. (e.g.: on your desktop)
- Rename it to X.UDL
- Double click the file to open the Data Link Properties
- Select the correct provider on the [Provider] tabpage
Fill in your connection details on the [Connection] tabpage
- Click [OK] to close the Data Link Properties window when you have a succesful connection (via [Test Connection])
- Now open the X.UDL with your favorite text editor (e.g.: notepad, notepad++)
You should see your connection string now!