Brian Koppelman

Brian William Koppelman (born April 27, 1966) is an American showrunner. Koppelman is the co-writer of "Ocean's Thirteen" and "Rounders", the producer for films including "The Illusionist" and "The Lucky Ones", the director for films including "Solitary Man" and the documentary "This Is What They Want" for ESPN as part of their "30 for 30" series, and the co-creator, showrunner, and executive producer of Showtime's "Billions".
Early life and education.
Koppelman was born on April 27, 1966 in Roslyn Harbor, New York to a Jewish family, the son of Brenda "Bunny" Koppelman and Charles Koppelman. His father was a producer and media executive. Koppelman holds degrees from Tufts University and Fordham University School of Law.
Career.
He first started managing local Long Island bands as a teenager. He would also book bands at a local nightclub. Through booking acts, he came into contact with Eddie Murphy and helped arrange Murphy's first record deal. As a student at Tufts University, he discovered singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman and executive-produced her first album. He was later brought to Giant Records by president Irving Azoff. During his career, Koppelman was an A&R representative for music labels Elektra Records, Giant Records, SBK Records and EMI Records.
Film.
In 1997, Koppelman wrote the original screenplay for "Rounders" with his writing partner, David Levien. Koppelman has described his approach to writing as a team as having only one rule: no video games in the office. In 2001, Koppelman wrote, produced, and directed his first film, "Knockaround Guys", which film critic Roger Ebert gave 3 out of 4 stars. Since then, Koppelman has worked on a dozen films, including having written "Ocean’s Thirteen" and directed an ESPN "30 for 30" documentary, "This Is What They Want".
In 2009, Koppelman co-directed "Solitary Man" starring Michael Douglas. The film was included in both A. O. Scott's "The New York Times" "Year End Best" list, Roger Ebert's "Year End Best" list, and holds a "Fresh" rating of 81% at the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.
Other writings and podcasts.
Koppelman was a contributor and essayist at Grantland.com, a website that was dedicated to sports and pop culture. Additionally, since March 2014, Koppelman has hosted a weekly podcast, "The Moment", on ESPN Radio.
In October, 2013, Koppelman received significant media attention for releasing a series of videos on the platform Vine in which he gives screenwriting advice in six seconds or less called "Six Second Screenwriting Lessons". His "Screenwriting, in Six Seconds or Less" Vine from July 31, 2014, generated over 15 million loops in less than nine days. He has also written a short story, "Wednesday is Viktor's", for the anthology "Dark City Lights: New York Stories (Have a NYC)", published in 2015. Koppelman has a chapter giving advice in Tim Ferriss' book Tools of Titans.
Television.
Showtime's drama "Billions", created by Koppelman with "The New York Times" columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin and writing partner David Levien, and starring Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis, premiered to strong reviews in 2016.
Awards and recognition.
In 2013, Tufts University awarded Koppelman their P.T. Barnum Award for success in Media/Arts. In 2014, Koppelman won an Emmy Award for his "30 for 30" documentary.
Personal life.
In 1992, Koppelman married novelist Amy Levine at the Central Synagogue in Manhattan. His sister is Jennifer Koppelman Hutt, who hosts a Sirius Satellite Radio show called "Just Jenny". Regarding religion, Koppelman describes himself as culturally Jewish, but from a philosophical standpoint he identifies himself as an atheist.
Koppelman is a fan of the Knicks, Jets, and Yankees.
Of his five-year practice of Transcendental Meditation Koppelman said in 2016: "For me it was a way to control anxiety, and I found that the physical manifestations of anxiety just dissipated by about 85 or 90 percent ... So that was a gigantic life change, to not feel a fluttering stomach, to not get a stress headache and things like that."
He has stated on numerous occasions that the greatest film of all time, as well as his favorite, is The Godfather Part II.
Filmography.
Producer only
Actor


Jim Cash

James Willis Cash (January 17, 1941 – March 25, 2000) was an American film writer, noted for writing such 1980s films such as "Top Gun" and "The Secret of My Success".
Early life.
Cash was born on January 17, 1941 in Boyne City, Michigan.
Education.
In 1970, Cash received a B.A. in English from Michigan State University (MSU). In 1972, Cash received an M.A. in Television and Radio from Michigan State University.
Career.
As a professor, Cash taught writing and film history at Michigan State University. Cash met a student named Jack Epps, Jr., who would later become his writing partner. Epps was from the Detroit area.
Cash and Epps began their writing relationship while at Michigan State University. In 1975, they wrote their first story together in the MSU Union Grill. Soon afterward Epps moved to Hollywood, California. Cash continued to live in East Lansing, Michigan, while Epps lived in Santa Monica, California. They collaborated via computer.
In 1986, Cash and Epps co-wrote "Top Gun".
Personal life.
Cash and his wife Cynthia Cash had four children. He died of intestinal disorders.


Crew calling

Crew calling is the generic term for the non-business use of ship earth stations at sea. With mobile phones being reliable only to around five miles (8 km) off the coast, crew on board merchant ships have until comparatively recently had few means of communicating with their families at home.
History.
Before the introduction of satellite communications enabled by the Inmarsat A terminal in the early 1980s, crew members relied on their ship's radio personnel to send either a telex or patch-through a radio-to-telephone message once their ship was at sea. When time in port between voyages could extend to several weeks this social isolation was usually manageable, but by 2001 average vessel turnaround times in port had declined to an overall mean of less than a day, while voyages could last several weeks. At a time when many shipowners complained that they could not find competent personnel, the lack of normal communications avenues such as SMS and mobile voice services was thought to be a possible contributory factor.


Kartik Chandran

Kartik Chandran is an American environmental engineer at Columbia University, where he is a Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering. He primarily works on the interface between environmental molecular and microbiology, environmental biotechnology and environmental engineering. The focus of his research is on elucidating the molecular microbial ecology and metabolic pathways of the microbial nitrogen cycle. Applications of his work have ranged from energy and resource efficient treatment of nitrogen containing wastewater streams, development and implementation of sustainable approaches to sanitation to novel models for resource recovery. Under his stewardship, the directions of biological wastewater treatment and biological nutrient removal were established for the first ever time in the history of Columbia University.
In 2015, he received the MacArthur Fellowship for his innovative work on "integrating microbial ecology, molecular biology, and engineering to transform wastewater from a troublesome pollutant to a valuable resource".
Education and career.
Chandran graduated with a B.S.(Honors) in Chemical Engineering from the University of Roorkee, now the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. He obtained a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering at the University of Connecticut in 1999 and worked there as a post-doctoral fellow until 2001. From 2001-2004, he worked as a senior technical specialist with the engineering firm, Metcalf and Eddy (now part of AECOM). From 2004-2005, he was a research associate at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Chandran joined Columbia University in 2005 as Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering.


Frog Education

Frog Education (formerly FrogTrade) creates software for use in schools. Founded in 1999 by Gareth Davies and Tariq Isa, Frog found their success in the Ed Tech Industry through their Learning Platform. Since its founding Frog has gone on to employ over 100 people in their head office in Halifax, Yorkshire. Frog is used across 12,000 schools and has 12 million users worldwide.
Current Market Offerings.
Currently Frog provides four tech solutions to schools all over the world; 'Curriculum, Assessment & Progress' allows schools to build their curriculum from scratch or by editing the collection of curriculums provided by Frog Partners such as the NAHT, Rising Stars, and NAACE. This software then allows teachers and students to monitor student progress with a range of innovative tools that simplify a sometimes complicated process.
'Home Learning' is a homework solution for schools to set and manage students homework. This included 250,000 self-marking questions which have been written in line with the national curriculum. This solution also has a formative feedback feature.
'Intervention & Catch-Up' has been designed to assist schools with children that have fallen behind. It has been particularly popular in the secondary market to help children in year 7.
'Parental Engagement' is a tool to link home and school through a combination of apps, and a timeline showing parents and care givers what pupils have achieved at school.
History and Collaborative Projects.
Frog services schools all over the world, and in 2011 secured a contract in Malaysia which saw Frog rolled out to over 10,000 schools across the country. This contract secured Frog as the state procured VLE used by students and teachers in Malaysia. Malaysia was the first country in the world to roll-out a 4G network and VLE at the same time.
Following the two companies working together and integrating their products for 1, in 2012 Frog Education acquired I-Education, owner of I Am Learning, a games based revision and assessment system designed to help students improve their results. This development also saw Steve Holt and Michael Wilkinson, who founded I-Education join Frog's Board of Directors.
With the 2014 National Curriculum, Frog developed their product to help schools navigate this change, particularly around the removal of national attainment levels. The following year, Frog became a founding partner in Life After Levels along with the NAHT, a project designed to guide schools through assessment without levels. Frog have designed Curriculum Designer for the project which is free to all schools.
Achievements.
Named 2011 fastest growing small business in Yorkshire by Ward Hadaway and The Yorkshire Post
Deloitte Fast 500 winners 2011
Virtual learning/school management system provider award - Education investor awards
References.
External links
Official website
Developer platform
International Learning Platforms Conference (Frog conference)


Anne Schaefer (scientist)

Anne Schaefer is a neuroscientist, Professor of Neuroscience, Vice-Chair of Neuroscience, and Director of the Center for Glial Biology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Schaefer investigates the epigenetic mechanisms of cellular plasticity and their role in the regulation of microglia-neuron interactions. Her research is aimed at understanding the mechanisms underlying various neuropsychiatric disorders and finding novel ways to target the epigenome therapeutically.
Early life and education.
Schaefer started her medical training at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany from 1996 until 1999. Schaefer continued her education by pursuing her MD at the Charite University Berlin, in Germany. She worked under the mentorship of Dr. Ralf Ignatius and then in 2001, Schaefer won the USA-Scholarship of the German National Merit Foundation and to pursue a research internship at The Rockefeller University. As a Visiting Student, Schaefer worked under the mentorship of Dr. Michel Nussenzweig at Rockefeller studying immunology, specifically the adaptive immune lymphocytes called B cells. In her research, she helped discover that 55-75% of the antibodies produced by immature B cells are actually auto-reactive and these B cells are removed from the population during two discrete check points in B cells development.
After her research internship, Schaefer stayed in New York City to complete a Medical Internship at Weill Cornell Medical College within the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2003. Schaefer graduated from Charite University in 2004.
Schaefer came back to Rockefeller in 2004 to pursue postdoctoral training under the mentorship of Dr. Paul Greengard. In the Greengard Lab, Schaefer switched her research focus in the direction of neuroscience and explored epigenetic regulation of neural physiology.
Career and research.
Schaefer remained in Greengard’s lab as a research associate from 2007 to 2009 and was promoted to Senior Research Associate in 2009. She held this title until she started her own lab at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 2011. Schaefer is currently a tenured professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the Friedman Brain Institute at Mount Sinai School and remains an adjunct faculty member at Rockefeller University. In 2012 named the Chrissy Rossi Investigator at Mount Sinai. In 2017, Schaefer co-founded the Center for Glial Biology at Mount Sinai and is now the co-director of the center alongside Dr. Patrizia Casaccia. As of 2018, Schaefer was promoted to Vice-Chair of Neuroscience at Sinai. The Schaefer Lab studies the epigenetic mechanisms of cellular plasticity, maintenance of neuronal identity, as well as the role of epigenetics in regulating neuron-microglia interactions. One of the goals of her lab is to develop tools and therapies with which to target the epigenome to treat neurological disorders.
The neuronal epigenome.
In 2007, Schaefer published a first author paper discussing the importance of microRNAs (miRNAs) in the regulation of neuronal gene expression. She showed that a conditional knockout of the miRNA generating enzyme, Dicer, lead to death of neurons in the cerebellum. Since loss of miRNA led to cerebellar degeneration, her findings highlight the potential role for dysregulation of miRNAs in neurodegenerative diseases. Further highlighting the role of genetic regulation in brain homeostasis, Schaefer showed in 2009 that a deficiency in the histone methyltransferase complex GLP/G9a leads to defects in learning, motivation, and environmental adaptation in rodents. Histone methyltransferases are a key regulator in gene expression. They manipulate the state of DNA, which can be either open, referred to as euchromatin or closed, referred to as heterochromatin. Later in her postdoc, Schafer helped elucidate the role of transcriptional regulation in the context of drug addiction in mice. She found that a deficiency in argonaute 2 (a gene known to regulate the generation of miRNA) in the dopamine receptor 2 (Drd2) positive cells in the striatum caused a decrease in the motivation to seek cocaine. Schaefer further explored which miRNAs are modulated by argonaute 2 to elucidate specifically which miRNAs might be important in mediating addition to cocaine.
Once Schaefer started her lab at Mount Sinai, she continued to probe the role of transcriptional regulation on neuronal function and driving behavior. In 2013, she published a paper in Science showing that a specific miRNA, miRNA-128, governs neuronal excitability and motor behavior in mice. When they suppressed this miRNA, aberrant motor patterns and fatal epilepsy resulted. Seeing how critical the presence of this one miRNA seemed to be in regulating neuronal excitability, Schaefer and Greengard filed a patent for using miRNA manipulation as a treatment for motor diseases and seizures. Overall, Schaefer's work has highlighted the importance of understanding epigenetics and transcriptional regulation in the context of brain related diseases.
Epigenetics and autism spectrum disorders.
Schaefer's work has also increased our understanding of the epigenetic mechanisms contributing to Autism Spectrum Disorders. Her lab identified the bromodomain and extraterminal domain-containing proteins (BETs) as potent regulators of genes involved in generating ASD-type behaviors in mouse models. When they suppressed BET proteins they found decreased neuronal gene expression and neuronal dysfunction which suggested a role for the BET-controlled gene network in ASD. Following up on this work, Schaefer and her colleagues hypothesized that ASDs are disorders of gene regulatory networks which are inevitably influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, consistent with broad array of factors that we find linked to ASD development in humans.
Epigenetics and microglia.
Another facet of Schaefer's work is understanding the impact of epigenetic regulation on neuroimmunity, with a particular focus on the innate immune cells of the brain, microglia. In a paper published in Nature Neuroscience in 2018, Schaefer and her colleagues showed that epigenetic regulation underlies differences in microglial behavior across different brain regions. They found that baseline phagocytic activity of microglia was high in the cerebellum but low in the striatum. Using the TRAP technique developed by Schaefer in 2011, they discovered that the polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2), which mediates repressive chromatin modifications, is actively repressing phagocytic phenotypes and morphological changes in striatal microglia. When they inhibited PRC2, microglia exhibited robust phagocytic activity even in the absence of dying neurons. These findings highlighted a critical role for epigenetic regulation of microglia in diseases where aberrantly activated microglia lead to over-pruning and neurodegeneration. To understand more deeply what drives the unique epigenetic programming of cerebellar versus striatal microglia, Schaefer collaborated with Dr. Miriam Merad’s group at Sinai to look at ontology of cerebellar versus striatal microglia. They found that cerebellar microglial identity was driven by interactions between CSF-1 and the CSF-1 receptor, and was not reliant on the alternate CSF-1R ligand, IL-34. When they depleted CSF-1, it led to disruptions in cerebellar microglia development as well as cerebellar neuron function but had no effect on the development of forebrain microglia.
Pharmaceutical industry involvement.
In addition to her academic involvements, Schaefer is also a consultant for the pharmaceutical company Neuroinflammation NewCo and is involved in the committees and data safety monitoring of Eli Lilly, Genentech Inc, GlaxoSmithKline, and Regenxbio.
In 2011, Schaefer was part of a team that filed a patent for a method of translational profiling and molecular phenotyping of mRNAs from specific cell types. The TRAP (Translating Ribosome Affinity Purification) methodology that is described in this patent provides a way to detect genes that are co-regulated within or across cell types, as well as discover candidate gene targets for treating specific neurological disorders and screen for modulators of those candidate genes. The method involves isolating mRNAs that are in complex with a ribosome that is presumably in the process of translating the mRNA. The TRAP technique is now widely used by scientists to find vulnerable cell types or modulators associated with particular diseases.
In 2013, Schaefer and her postdoctoral advisor, Dr. Paul Greengard, filed a patent for a therapeutic strategy to treat or reduce the likelihood of seizures. Schaefer and Greengard found that the microRNA miR-128 is involved in modulating neuronal excitability and motor activity. Their therapeutic strategy involves administering miR-128, an agent with 90% sequence homology, or an agent capable of increasing the expression or activity of miR-128 as a means to control dopamine receptor 1 (Drdr1) neuron excitability. The agent would be administered intrathecally, intranasally, or directly to the hippocampus or cortex via an injection.
Awards and honors.
1999-2003 Scholarship of the German National Merit Foundation
2001-2003 USA-Scholarship of the German National Merit Foundation
2003 Keystone Scholar Travel Award
2004 Summa cum laude, Charité University Berlin
2005 Hans-Hench Award 2005, German Society for Immunology, Germany
2006-2008 German Research Foundation DFG, Research Fellowship, Germany
2011 2010 NARSAD Young Investigator Award, USA
2012 named “Chrissy Rossi Investigator”
2012 Seaver Autism Center Research Award, USA
2012 NIH Director's New Innovator Award, USA
2014 Technology Development Fund Award, Mount Sinai Innovation, USA
2014 Cure Challenge Award, USA
2014 Kavli Frontiers in Science Fellow, The National Academy of Science, USA
2015 Harold and Golden Lamport Research Award, Mount Sinai, USA
2017 Co-director, Center for Glial Biology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, USA
2018 Inaugural NINDS Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship, NIH, USA
2018 Inventor of the Year 2018 Award, Mount Sinai, USA
2019 Vice Chair of Neuroscience, Mount Sinai, USA
2019 Max Planck Sabbatical Award


Archer Taylor

Archer Taylor (1890–1973) was one of America's "foremost specialists in American and European folklore", with a special interest in cultural history, literature, proverbs, riddles and bibliography.
Early life and education.
Taylor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 1, 1890.
He enrolled at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, graduating with the B.A. and M.A. in German.
He then taught German at Pennsylvania State College. He went on to Harvard University, receiving his Ph.D. degree in German in 1915 with a dissertation on the fairy tale motifs in the Wolfdietrich epics. At Harvard, he studied under such famous scholars as Kuno Francke, George Lyman Kittredge, John Albrecht Walz, Hans Carl Gunther von Jagemann, William Henry Schofield, Charles Hall Grandgent, and F.N. Robinson. From them he developed interest in such fields as German literature, Germanic philology, Scandinavian studies, Romance languages, Celtic and, folklore in general.
Taylor also spent two summers studying abroad: at the University of Freiburg (Breisgau) in 1913 and at the University of Helsingfors (under Kaarle Krohn) in 1925.
St. Louis, Chicago.
In 1915 Taylor began teaching German at Washington University in St. Louis, eventually being promoted to professor.
He moved to the University of Chicago in 1925. By 1927 Taylor had become the Chairman of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures.
He married his childhood sweetheart Alice Jones on September 9, 1915, and they had three children. He lost her June 16, 1930, while they lived in Chicago. He later married Dr. Hasseltine Byrd, who became his second wife on June 17, 1932. They had two children. Like her husband, Dr. Hasseltine Byrd Taylor also taught for many years at the University of California Berkeley.
Berkeley, California.
In 1939, they moved to California, where he served as Professor of German Literature and Folklore at the University of California at Berkeley, as Chairman of the Department from 1940 to 1945. While in California, they built a home in the Napa Valley, where they hosted many folklorists. While in California, he worked as a journal editor, for "California Folklore Quarterly" (which he helped found) (now "Western Folklore") and the "Journal of American Folklore". In 1965, Archer worked with his Finnish friend Matti Kuusi to establish the journal "Proverbium".
Retirement.
Taylor retired in 1958 but continued to be intellectually active and productive, spending periods as visiting professor at the "University of Texas (1959), Indiana University (1958 and 1962) and Ohio State University (1963)" and continuing to publish books.
He died on September 30, 1973.
Legacy.
His publications were numerous, included work in medieval literature, philology, folklore, bibliography, etc., eventually totalling over four hundred books, monographs, articles and notes in America and Europe. His most famous work was "The Proverb" (1931), which contains his most famous quote, "the definition of a proverb is too difficult to repay the undertaking... An incommunicable quality tells us this sentence is proverbial and that is not".
Though Taylor's contribution to the studies of proverbs is better known, his contribution to the studies of riddles is also significant. "Archer Taylor ... among modern folklorists has contributed most to riddle scholarship."
Honors.
Taylor received honorary doctorate of law degree from the University of California and was appointed a senator of the University of Giessen in Germany. He was a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1927 and again in 1960, was elected president of the Modern Language Association in 1951, and was president of the American Folklore Society 1936–38.
In 1960 Taylor was honored by a Festschrift, "Humaniora: Essays in Literature, Folklore, Bibliography: Honoring Archer Taylor on His Seventieth Birthday", edited by his friends Wayland D. Hand and Gustave O. Arlt. At the annual meetings of the Western States Folklore Society, which he helped found, there is an invited lecture in the Archer Taylor Lecture Series.


Wamey language

Wamey ([wæ-meỹ], Meyny), or Konyagi (Conhague, Coniagui, Koniagui), is a Senegambian language of Senegal and Guinea.


Virgilio Barco Vargas

Virgilio Barco Vargas (17 September 1921 – 20 May 1997) was a Colombian politician and civil engineer who served as the 27th President of Colombia serving from 7 August 1986 to 7 August 1990.
Early life.
Barco was born in Cúcuta in the Norte de Santander Department of Colombia to Jorge Enrique Barco Maldonado and Julieta Vargas Durán. He studied Civil Engineering at the National University of Colombia and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from which he graduated in 1943. He entered politics in 1943 when he became a city council member for the Liberal Party in the town of Durania. He was then elected to the lower house of Congress, but went into exile to the US in 1950 because of violence between liberals and conservatives. His daughter, Carolina Barco Isakson (who would later become a Colombian politician herself) was born there. He obtained an M.A. in economics at MIT, where he took classes under Nobel prize winners Robert Solow and Paul Samuelson in 1952. In 1954 he obtained a PhD in economics from Boston University.
Barco is the grandson of Colombian General Virgilio Barco M., who developed one of the country's largest oil concessions in 1905.
Political career.
Barco returned to Colombia in 1954 to help negotiate the peace process which allowed the formation of the National Front between liberals and conservatives, which lasted two decades. He became a member of the Senate, the upper house of Congress in 1958, left to become the ambassador to Britain in 1961, and returned to Colombia in 1962. He served another term in the Senate until 1966, when he was elected mayor of Colombia's capital, Bogotá. He served in that position until 1969, when he became a director of the World Bank until 1974. He then served as ambassador to the United States from 1977 until 1980.
Presidency.
Barco was elected president of Colombia with 58% of the vote in 1986. He supported anti-poverty programs, renewed dialogue with leftist guerillas and fought drug traffickers. Though he was popular within the international community, he became less popular in Colombia because the drug traffickers became more violent after he started to move against them. His restrictive economic policies at first doomed the country. After two years of this, The Economic Openness program was initiated by his administration, which would open Colombian markets to the world and recharge the country's economy. He served one 4-year term.
Post-Presidency and death.
When he left the Presidency in 1990, he served as ambassador to Britain again until 1992.
Barco was diagnosed with cancer and he died on May 20, 1997, in Bogotá when he was 75. He is now buried in the Central Cemetery of Bogotá.


Willard L. Beaulac

Willard Leon Beaulac (July 25, 1899 – August 25, 1990) was a United States diplomat. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay, Colombia, Cuba, Chile and Argentina.
Biography.
Willard L. Beaulac was born on July 25, 1899 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island to Sylvester Clinton Beaulac and Lena Eleanor Jarvis. He attended Brown University before joining the United States Navy in 1918. After his honorable discharge in 1919, he attended the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and graduated in 1921.
He joined the United States Foreign Service in 1921. He received his first ambassadorial appointment to Paraguay in 1944. in 1947 he was named United States Ambassador to Colombia. He married Catherine Hazel Arrott Greene on February 25, 1935.
From 1951 to 1953 he was United States Ambassador to Cuba. In 1953 he succeeded Claude G. Bowers as United States Ambassador to Chile. From 1956 to 1960 he was United States Ambassador to Argentina. Before retiring around 1962 he was the deputy commandant for foreign affairs of the National War College.
He died of Alzheimer's disease on August 25, 1990 in Washington, DC.


Earl Nelson (singer)

Earl Lee Nelson (September 8, 1928 – July 12, 2008), who also performed as Jackie Lee, was an American soul singer and songwriter. He started his career in the doo-wop group the Hollywood Flames in the 1950s before founding the R&B duo Bob & Earl with Bobby Byrd. As Jackie Lee, he's best known for his hit song "The Duck" (#14 Pop, #4 R&B).
Biography.
Earl Lee Neslon was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana on September 8, 1928. He sang in his church's gospel choir in his youth before his family relocated to Los Angeles in 1937. Nelson enlisted in the U.S. Army at the age of 17, working on the construction of the Panama Canal.
In the 1950s he began singing doo-wop and joined the Hollywood Flames. He sang lead on the 1957 single "Buzz Buzz Buzz" which reached #11 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and #5 on the R&B chart. Nelson and Bobby Byrd, not Bobby Byrd of the Famous Flames, collaborated as Bobby "Baby Face" Byrd & the Birds as well as Bobby Day & the Satellites. In 1957, Nelson released his first solo single, "Oh Gee Oh Golly" / "I Bow To You," on Class Records. That year, Nelson and Byrd released their first single as Bob & Earl, "You Made a Boo-Boo," on Class. In 1958, Nelson sang background vocals on Day's single "Rockin' Robin" (#2 Pop, #1 R&B). Afterwards, they left the Hollywood Flames, but after a few years, Byrd left Bob & Earl to focus on his solo career.
Bob Relf from the Laurels replaced Byrd, and the new Bob & Earl recorded for different labels before releasing "Harlem Shuffle" on Marc Records in 1963. The single reached the Top 50 in the US and years later the Top 10 in the UK. Their follow up singles weren't as successful. In 1965, Nelson relaunched a solo career on Mira Records with the single "Ooh Honey Baby," credited to Earl Cosby. Later that year, Nelson signed to Mirwood Records recorded as Jackie Lee. Jackie was Nelson's wife's name and Lee his own middle name. He released his biggest single "The Duck" in November 1965 and by January it peaked at #14 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and #4 on the R&B chart. In 1966, he released his only album, The Duck, which reached #85 on the "Billboard"'s Top Lp's chart and #8 on the R&B chart. Though Nelson didn't have further chart success, his later singles on Mirwood are popular in Northern soul circles. Nelson later recorded for ABC-Paramount and Uni Records. Barry White produced his 1974 Warner Bros. single "Strange Funky Games and Things" (credited to Jay Dee).
Nelson continued to perform around Los Angeles, but he was later diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Nelson died at the age of 79 in Los Angeles on July 12, 2008. At the time of his death, Nelson had been married three times and he had seven surviving children (two deceased).
Discography.
Singles.
Earl Nelson and The Pelicans
Earl Nelson
Chip Nelson
Earl Cosby
Jackie Lee
Jackie Lee and Delores Hall
Jay Dee


Palaka language

Palaka (or 'Kpalaga') is a central Senufo language spoken by approximately 8,000 people in northern Ivory Coast. It is bordered to the south by Djimini, a southern Senufo language, and to the west by Nyarafolo, another Senufo language. North and east of the Palaka area live Dioula people.
Palaka constitutes a separate branch of the Senufo languages on its own, being rather different from them in morphology and phonology. It has been tentatively linked to Nafaanra language, an isolated Senufo language spoken in Ghana. Palaka has been separated from the other Senufo languages at least since the fourteenth century AD.


School of Experiential Education

School of Experiential Education (SEE) is a small alternative high school located in Toronto's west end of Etobicoke. SEE's take on alternative education includes small class sizes, discussion-based courses, thematic English courses, and opportunities for independent and project-based learning. SEE delivers all courses required for the completion of the Ontario Secondary School Diploma. It offers opportunities to participate in media, technology, and photography courses, with equipment such as cameras, two computer labs, recording equipment and a dark room available for student use. SEE has a full curriculum that includes the arts, math, humanities and sciences, as well as physical education, technology and business. SEE is a semestered school.
It is designed for students with strong academic potential who are disinterested by the traditional high school approaches to learning. Almost all students go on to university.
The school began in 1971 as one of two alternative schools in the Etobicoke School Board. When the government of Mike Harris merged the Toronto area school boards and sharply cut budgets in 1998, the school was threatened with closure.
Curriculum.
Because SEE has a small student population, the range of courses offered each term is limited. However, the small class sizes (usually 20 or fewer students per class) enable a greater breadth and depth within each individual course, which is not usually possible in normal class sizes of 30 or more. Because of the informal teaching environment and low student to teacher ratio, students are encouraged to learn independently, through discussions, and through projects, often of their own design.
Many courses at SEE are thematic. Past English classes have had themes of Death & Dying, Classics, Queer, Graphic Novel, and Science Fiction. A Writer's Craft course is also offered. Themed history courses have included Genocide, Power and Protest, and Revolution. A History of Food course was offered in the 2012-13 school year.
Although SEE offers the same credit as other schools, the classes generally have different names than most schools. For example, the grade 9-10 English class for 08-09 was named "Stop The Madness"; there have been grade 10 and 11 Tech courses called "Schnitzel" and "Tattoo"; and the Physical Education class is known as "Healthy Living".
Admission process.
Because SEE is an optional attendance school, potential students must go through an application process in order to be admitted. This process includes an application (including an essay), an interview, and submission of a transcript (if the student has previously attended a secondary school) or a report card (if the student is applying directly from grade eight).


Frantique

Frantique was an American disco group signed to Philadelphia International Records. They released the album titled "Strut Your Funky Stuff" in 1979. The title track from "Strut Your Funky Stuff" charted on the UK Singles Chart in 1979, peaking at #10 in September.
"Strut Your Funky Stuff" was produced by Vivienne Savoie Robinson, James Bolden and Jack Robinson


Baelelea language

Baelelea (Mbaelelea) is a Southeast Solomonic language of Malaita.


Natan Eidelman

Natan Yakovlevich Eidelman () (1930 in Moscow – 1989 in Moscow) was a Soviet Russian author and historian. He wrote several books on about the life and work of Alexander Pushkin, Decembrists Sergey Muravyov-Apostol and Mikhail Lunin, and historian Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin.
See also.
https://web.archive.org/web/20051120025451/http://vivovoco.rsl.ru/VV/PAPERS/NYE/EIDELMAN.HTM


Marta Kolomayets

Marta Kolomayets (April 6, 1959, Chicago – August 16, 2020, Kyiv) was a Ukrainian journalist and social activist; Director of the Fulbright Program in Ukraine, Chairman of the Board of the Ukrainian Women's Foundation, the first American journalist to come to Ukraine, journalist of The Ukrainian Weekly (1982–1998), journalist and manager of a number of programs: educational, on local government reforms, on the fight against corruption, on the development of civil society. Together with her husband, Danylo Yanevsky, she was the producer of a film about the life of Patriarch Josyf Slipyj. On August 16, 2020, Marta Kolomayets passed away at the age of 61 due to a lengthy illness in Kyiv and is buried at the Baikove Cemetery.
Biography.
Marta Kolomayets was born in 1959 to a Ukrainian family in Chicago (USA). Father Anatoliy is from Poltava region, mother Lyubov is from Western Ukraine.
Marta Kolomayets graduated from William Howard Taft High School (Chicago). She later graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she studied Slavic studies. She later studied journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
Since 1985 she has been visiting Ukraine, where she met dissidents. On her second trip to Ukraine (in 1987) she interviewed Vyacheslav Chornovil and Mykhailo Horyn. These videos were later confiscated, and Marta Kolomayets was deported from the Ukrainian SSR on charges of espionage.
In 1991, Marta moved to Ukraine and opened a Ukrainian Weekly bureau in Kyiv, that became the first foreign media outlet to open a bureau in Ukraine. Thus, Kolomayets became the first American journalist to come to independent Ukraine. She worked in Ukrainian Weekly until 1998. During this time, she recorded many testimonies of people who survived the Holodomor of 1932–33. The testimonies were transferred to the US Library of Congress and played an important role in the adoption of the US resolution on the Holodomor in 2018. In addition, Martha talked to Ukrainian dissidents, helped them and also recorded their testimonies.
In 1999–2002 she headed the Ukrainian educational program of market reforms. Marta Kolomayets was the founder of Ukraine's network of press clubs in 25 Ukrainian cities in 1999. In 2004–2007 she was the head of the USAID anti-corruption program "Partnership for a Transparent Society" (2002–2004), and in 2004–2007 — the head of the "Community Partnership" program of the Ukraine-USA Foundation. For the next two years, she headed the Ukrainian office of the National Democratic Institute of International Relations (2007–2009).
In 2010–2012 Kolomayets worked in Chicago (USA) as the director of programs and communications of the Ukrainian Catholic Educational Foundation. She assisted the Ukrainian Catholic University and was a member of the Friends of UCU Committee in the United States and Ukraine. At UCU, she is called "Sister and Closest Friend." As well she supported Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies for decades.
Marta Kolomayets was an active member of several organizations, such as Help Us Help the Children Orphan Aid and Chicago-Kyiv Sister Cities.
In 2013, Marta became the director of Fulbright in Ukraine, administered by the Institute of International Education (IIE). In the span of 7 years serving as a director, Kolomayets helped more than 300 Ukrainian scholars to pursue education in the United States. Being a director she founded an alumni network of Ukrainian Fulbrighters — the Ukrainian Fulbright Circle with currently 350 members.


Outline (note-taking software)

Outline is a note-taking application, available on iOS and OS X platforms. It is being developed by Gorillized Corporation, specializing in Productivity and Business apps for Apple devices. The distinguishing features of Outline are design, hierarchy, free placement of notes as in a paper notebook, support of various types of content ("text, images, inks, tags, web-content, etc."), synchronization options and Microsoft OneNote compatibility.
History.
Outline was first released in July 2011 as a reader of OneNote files on iPad. The next update enabled editing and creation of new notebooks. Outline for Mac also developed from the reader to the editor on OS X.
Its first edition was launched in March 2013. Since December 2013 it performs as a full-functional note-taking app on Mac.
Design.
Outline's design was invented as an alternative to standard office look.
Hierarchy.
Outline hierarchy resembles that of a real notebook: there are notebooks for general subjects, section tabs for specific topics and pages for actual notes. For more complex notebook structures additional section groups can be created within a notebook. There is no limitation on the number of notebooks, section groups, section tabs and pages.
Platforms.
Outline for iPad is compatible with iOS 9 and later. Outline for Mac requires OS X 10.9 and later, 64-bit processor. Outline for iPad and Outline for Mac are separate though compatible apps. They can be synced between each other via Box, Dropbox, iCloud or OneDrive.
Features.
Besides the built-in standard editing tools Outline is equipped with additional features:
Compatibility.
Outline supports Microsoft OneNote file format. Each notebook consists of .one – section files and a .onetoc2 – table of contents file. Outline can open and edit notebooks consisting of such files and also create new ones in the same format.
Currently Outline is compatible with OneNote 2010 and 2013. OneNote 2007 is supported in read-only mode. OneNote 2003 is not supported.
Import/Export.
Outline and OneNote notebooks can be exported from and imported into Outline for iPad via iTunes. It requires iTunes to be installed on all the involved devices. They need to be connected via USB cable and be in the same Wi-Fi network. It performs manual transfer of a notebook in its actual state from and to Outline.
Outline also allows pages to be exported to PDF and e-mailed directly from Outline.
Synchronization and backup.
Outline supports several backup and sync options.
Notes may be synchronized with users' accounts on Box and Dropbox online services, which retain versions history and deleted items. Files are stored in ".one" and ".onetoc2" standard OneNote format. On Windows and OS X this feature requires native client software for these services.
Outline also syncs data over iCloud, easy way to store notes, keep them synchronized and access anytime across multiple devices. Synchronization process is strong, reliable and provides an error-free data transfer. All the data can be backed up to iCloud or hard drive (for Mac version).
Alternatively, Outline notes may be synchronized with Microsoft OneDrive (Microsoft's online storage service for OneNote software) and Microsoft SharePoint (versions 2010 and 2013 only). Files are stored in single notebook files, which does not retain versioning information and deleted notes. Only incremental updates are sent to the server during synchronization, reducing transfer time and bandwidth usage.


Lucio Frydman

Lucio Frydman (, born 1965) is an Argentine chemist whose research focuses on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and solid-state NMR. He was awarded the 2000 Günther Laukien Prize and the 2013 Russell Varian Prize. He is Professor and Head of the Department of Chemical and Biological Physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and Chief Scientist in Chemistry and Biology at the US National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. He is a fellow of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Magnetic Resonance.
Birth and Education.
Frydman was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he completed his undergraduate studies in chemistry in 1986 at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1990 he received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the same university.
Career.
In 1990 Frydman started working in his post-doctoral research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and at the University of California, Berkeley, under the direction of Alexander Pines. In 1992 he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he became Associate Professor in 1996, and Full Professor in 1999. In 2001 Frydman moved to Israel, where he was appointed Professor in the Department of Chemical Physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Since 2015 he holds the Bertha and Isadore Gudelsky Professorial Chair; in 2017 Frydman was appointed Head of the newly formed Department of Chemical and Biological Physics. He was Director of the Fritz Haber Center for Physical Chemistry from 2007 to 2012, and again since 2017. He is Director of the Helen and Martin Kimmel Institute for Magnetic Resonance Research since 2012 and he became the Director of the Clore Institute for High-Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectroscopy since 2015.
In 2012 Frydman was appointed Chief Scientist in Chemistry and Biology at the US National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida.
Research.
Frydman’s research focuses on the fields of MRI, NMR and solid-state NMR. His scientific work has produced over 200 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals.
In 1995 Frydman and his coworker John Harwood developed the Multiple-Quantum Magic-Angle-Spinning (MQMAS) NMR experiment. The article describing this experiment received more than 1000 citations and the experiment became widely used for acquiring solid-state NMR spectra of quadrupolar nuclei.
In 2002 Frydman and his coworkers introduced a new approach to collect NMR data that allows the acquisition of arbitrary multi-dimensional NMR spectra within a single scan. Provided that sufficient sensitivity is available, this method can yield 2D NMR correlations that are orders of magnitude faster than hitherto possible and it has found applications in many areas of chemistry.
Recently, Frydman and his coworkers further developed this spatio-temporal encoding (SPEN) strategy to collect MRI images in a single scan. This method allows the acquisition of real-time MRI spectra and can be used to monitor processes in functional MRI (fMRI) and in diffusion MRI.


Beata Heuer-Christen

Beata Heuer-Christen (born 27 February 1935) is a Swiss-German soprano concert singer and voice teacher.
Life.
Born in Bern, Heuer-Christen is the daughter of the violinist and member of the Bern Symphony Orchestra, Caesar Christen, and Greti Christen-Schiffmann, also violinist in the Bern Symphony Orchestra and Primaria of the Schiffmann Quartet.
Heuer-Christen studied singing in Bern with Maria Helbling, in Freiburg with Margarethe von Winterfeldt and in Zurich with Dorothea Ammann-Goesch. After her studies, she first worked as a classical concert singer in oratorios, Lieder recitals, radio and television recordings in various countries. Her main focus was in the field of Neue Musik. She has performed world premieres under the direction of Arturo Tamayo, Hans Zender and Wolfgang Fortner.
Since 1962, she was a lecturer and from 1980 to 2005 professor for singing at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. She also gave master classes in the fields of oratorio, opera and lied.
Among her students are prize winners of national and international competitions as well as concert singers or singers with engagements at opera houses in Paris, Munich, Hamburg, Vienna, Dresden, Leipzig, Bern, Geneva and Basel. Among them are Maria Bengtsson, Rachel Harnisch, Bernhard Richter, Clemens Morgenthaler, Benoît Haller and Markus Flaig.


Tim Osswald

Tim Andreas Osswald (born June 6, 1958, Bogotá, Colombia) is a mechanical engineer and the K. K. and Cindy Wang Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also honorary professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany and the National University of Colombia. Osswald has authored 12 books in the field of polymer engineering and teaches polymer processing and designing with polymers. His research includes modeling and simulation in polymer processing, engineering design with plastics, sustainability and biopolymers.
Osswald is co-founder and present co-director of the Polymer Engineering Center. The center is dedicated to the solution of problems in the plastics industry through education, training, and research at the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 2001.
Osswald serves as the English-language editor of the "Journal of Plastics Technology" and as an editor for the Americas of the "Journal of Polymer Engineering".
Education.
Osswald attended the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology from 1978 to 1982, where he received a B.S. degree and a M.S. degree in mechanical engineering. In 1987 he received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Between 1987 and 1989 he was an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow at the Institute for Plastics Processing () in Aachen, Germany.
Awards and honors.
Osswald was recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1991 granted by the National Science Foundation. In 2001 he was the first academic to receive the VDI-K Dr-Richard-Escales-Preis () (Plastics Division of the German Engineering Association, ). In 2006 he was named an honorary professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany and in 2010 honorary professor at the National University of Colombia.
Osswald serves as faculty advisor to Theta Tau Professional Fraternity to the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and to the Society of Plastics Engineers.
Books.
Osswald is author and co-author of several influential books in plastics engineering including the International Plastics Handbook. His work has been translated into many foreign languages, including Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.
Osswald is also the series editor of Plastics Pocket Power (Hanser Verlag, 2001), which currently includes 6 books.
Personal life.
Osswald was born in Bogotá, Colombia. At the age of 4, his family moved to Cúcuta, Colombia. After graduating from High School, he was an exchange student in Rapid City, South Dakota with Florida Cultural Exchange for one year. He returned to Rapid City to get his B.S. and M.Sc. degrees in 1977. He then continued his graduate studies in Urbana, Illinois where he met his wife.
Osswald and his wife, Diane, have a son, Paul, and a daughter, Ruthie, and were married in Aachen, Germany in 1988. They live in Madison, Wisconsin.


Robert A. Stern (neurologist)

Robert A. Stern is professor of neurology, neurosurgery, anatomy, and neurobiology at Boston University School of Medicine, where he is also director of clinical research for the BU Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center. From 2010 to 2019, he was the director of the Clinical Core of the BU Alzheimer's Disease Center (funded by National Institutes of Health, NIH).
A major focus of Stern's research involves the long-term effects of repetitive brain trauma in athletes, including the neurodegenerative disease, CTE. He has been funded from NIH and the Department of Defense for his work on developing methods of detecting and diagnosing CTE during life, as well as examining potential genetic and other risk factors for this disease. He is the lead principal investigator for the 7-year, multi-center DIAGNOSE CTE Research Project, funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. His other major areas of funded research include the assessment and treatment of Alzheimer's disease, the cognitive effects of chemotherapy in the elderly, thyroid-brain relationships, and driving and dementia. He is the BU site principal investigator for several clinical trials for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Stern has also published on various aspects of cognitive assessment and is the senior author of many widely used neuropsychological tests, including the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (NAB).
Stern has received several NIH and other national grants, has published over 250 journal articles, chapters, and abstracts, and is the co-editor of two recently published books: "Sports Neurology", which is part of the "Handbook in Clinical Neurology" series published by Elsevier, and "The Oxford Handbook of Adult Cognitive Disorders", which is part of the "Oxford Handbook" collection. He is a Fellow of both the American Neuropsychiatric Association and the National Academy of Neuropsychology. He is a member of the Mackey-White Health and Safety Committee of the NFL Players Association, as well as the court-appointed Medical Scientific Committee for the NCAA Student-Athlete Concussion Injury Litigation. Dr. Stern has testified before the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging and the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. He appears frequently in national and international print and broadcast media for his work on CTE and AD. He also appears in the feature-length documentaries "League of Denial" (PBS "Frontline", 2013), "Head Games" (2012), and "I Remember Better When I Paint" (2009).
Stern received his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University and his master's and Ph.D. degrees in clinical psychology from the University of Rhode Island. He completed his neuropsychology internship training at the Boston VA Medical Center, under the supervision of Edith Kaplan, and his postdoctoral fellowship training in both neuropsychology and psychoneuroendocrinology at the UNC School of Medicine. He was on the faculty at UNC from 1990 to 1993, where he was associate director of the NIMH-funded Mental Health Clinical Research Center and director of the Neurobehavioral Assessment Core. He then joined the faculty at Alpert Medical School, where he was associate professor of psychiatry and neurology, as well as director of neuropsychology and the Memory and Cognitive Assessment Program at Rhode Island Hospital. He also directed the Brown Clinical Neuropsychology Internship Training Program. In 2004, Stern joined the Boston University School of Medicine's Department of Neurology as an associate professor. He was promoted to professor of neurology and neurosurgery in 2011 and was then appointed to professor of neurology, neurosurgery, and neurobiology, in 2014.


Hossein Amini

Hossein Amini (; born 18 January 1966) is an Iranian-born British screenwriter and film director. Amini has worked as a screenwriter since the early 1990s. He was nominated for numerous awards for the 1997 film "The Wings of the Dove", including an Academy Award for Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay. He also won a "Best Adapted Screenplay" award from the Austin Film Critics Association for his screenplay adaptation of Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive" (2011), based on the novel by James Sallis. For his directorial debut, he both wrote and directed "The Two Faces of January", an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel.
Early life, family and education.
Hossein Amini was born in Tehran, Iran. He is the son of Iranian diplomat Iradj Amini and his wife Vida. His early life was spent in Tehran where he attended the British School. When he was 11 years old, he and his family moved to England.
He attended Bryanston School, a public school in Dorset, and won a scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford, where he read history and modern languages.
Career.
Screenplays.
Amini's first screenplay was for the 1994 TV movie "The Dying of the Light", directed by Peter Kosminsky. The TV movie told the story of Sean Devereux, an aid worker who was murdered in Somalia in 1993 for criticising arms sales. It was nominated "Best Single Drama" at the British Academy Television Awards. Amini also wrote an adapted screenplay of the 1895 novel "Jude the Obscure" by Thomas Hardy. Producer Andrew Eaton commissioned the screenplay in 1995, and it was filmed by Michael Winterbottom as "Jude", released in 1996. Amini also wrote a screenplay for another TV movie, "Deep Secrets", which aired in 1996.
Amini wrote the adapted screenplay for "The Wings of the Dove", which was based on the 1902 novel of the same name by Henry James. The film, directed by Iain Softley, was released in 1997 and received critical acclaim. Amini was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay.
Amini was one of the screenwriters, along with Michael Schiffer, who wrote a screenplay adaptation of A.E.W. Mason's novel "The Four Feathers", which became the film "The Four Feathers" (2002), directed by Shekhar Kapur and starring Wes Bentley and Heath Ledger. In 2008, he adapted the Elmore Leonard novel "Killshot" into the screenplay for the film "Killshot" (2008), directed by John Madden and starring Thomas Jane, Diane Lane, Mickey Rourke, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Rosario Dawson.
In 2010, Amini wrote an original screenplay for a film entitled "Shanghai" directed by Mikael Håfström and starring Chow Yun Fat, Gong Li, Ken Watanabe and John Cusack.
Amini also wrote the screenplay for the neo-noir film "Drive" (2011), directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. His screenplay for the film is a loose adaptation of the novel of the same name by James Sallis. During interviews, Refn noted that he and Amini cut out a lot of the content from Sallis' book, resulting in the almost bare bones structure for the film, and the few lines of dialogue for the film's star, Ryan Gosling. For his screenplay of "Drive", Amini also won a "Best Adapted Screenplay" award from the Austin Film Critics Association in 2011.
Amini was one of the screenwriters, along with Evan Daughtery and John Lee Hancock, who wrote the screenplay for "Snow White and the Huntsman" (2012), directed by Rupert Sanders and starring Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron. Additionally, Amini is one of the screenwriters, along with Chris Morgan and Walter Hamada, who wrote the screenplay for the film "47 Ronin" (2013), directed by Carl Rinsch and starring Keanu Reeves, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tadanobu Asano, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Rinko Kikuchi.
Amini adapted John le Carré's novel "Our Kind of Traitor" into a feature film, directed by Susanna White. The "film", was released in 2016, starring Ewan McGregor, Naomie Harris, and Stellan Skarsgård. He then adapted "The Snowman", from the novel by Jo Nesbø. It was a box office disappointment and received negative reviews, with critics calling it "clichéd and uninvolving."
In 2018, Amini began writing for television, with the crime series "McMafia" and "The Alienist". On 27 September 2019, it was announced that Amini will be writing the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi "Star Wars" series for Disney+. He has since departed from the project
Directorial work.
His feature directorial debut, "The Two Faces of January" (2014), is a film adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel for which he also wrote the screenplay. The film stars Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac.


Sandy Close

Alexandra Close is an American journalist and the founder of Ethnic Media Services. She was the executive eirector of Pacific News Service from 1974 to 2017 and of New America Media from 1996 to 2017.
Early life and education.
Close received her B.A from the University of California, Berkeley in 1964.
Career.
Close worked as the China editor in Hong Kong for the "Far Eastern Economic Review" in the mid-1960s. Upon her return to the U.S. she co-founded Oakland-based newspaper "The Flatlands". She was also a weekly commentator for Morning Edition from 1984 to 1985.
In 1991, she founded "Yo! Youth Outlook", a monthly magazine of youth writing and art, and in 1996, she co-founded "The Beat Within", a weekly journal written by incarcerated youth.
She served as the Executive Director of Pacific News Service from 1974 to the publication's closing in 2017. In 1996, she founded New America Media, which involved up to 3,000 ethnic news organizations in California, and served as its Executive Director until its closure in 2017.
In 2018, Close founded Ethnic Media Services, a non-profit agency focused on developing cross-cultural journalism and marketing projects to promote inclusive public discourse.
Close was a co-producer for the film "", which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) in 1996.
Personal life.
Close was married to the historian and Asian affairs scholar Franz Schurmann from 1968 until his death in 2010.


Lego Toy Story

Lego "Toy Story" is a Lego theme based on the Disney·Pixar's "Toy Story" film franchise. The first four sets were released on December 30, 2009, with an additional two sets being released on January 4, 2010. In May, five Lego and four Duplo sets were released under the "Toy Story 3" sub-theme. For the release of "Toy Story 4" there was one Duplo set based on the third film and 6 Lego sets based on the fourth film. These sets were released in March and in April of 2019 this time under the Juniors line.
Overview.
Taking place in a world where anthropomorphic toys come to life when humans are not present, the plot focuses on the relationship between an old-fashioned pull-string cowboy doll named Woody and an astronaut action figure, Buzz Lightyear, as they evolve from rivals competing for the affections of their owner Andy Davis, to friends who work together to be reunited with him after being separated from him.
Sets.
According to Bricklink, The Lego Group released a total of 22 Lego sets and promotional polybags as part of "Lego Toy Story" theme.
Lego.
The first "Toy Story" sets were released on December 30, 2009. Army Men on Patrol (set number: 7595) is a 90 piece set. The sets features include an 8 cm (3") jeep, a stretcher and four minifigures. The minifigures include three plain army men and a medic. Buzz's Star Command Spaceship (set number: 7593) is a 257 piece set. The set features include a Star Command spaceship which is 18 cm (7") tall, a moon buggy, an Emperor Zurg minifigure and a Buzz Lightyear minifigure. This set is based on the spin-off TV series "Buzz Lightyear of Star Command". Woody and Buzz to the Rescue (set number: 7590) is a 92 piece set. Its features include RC the car with a pull-back motor, a Woody minifigure, and a Buzz Lightyear minifigure attached to a rocket. The car measures 13 cm (5") long. Woody's Roundup! (set number: 7594) was the fourth set to be released in December. It is a 502 piece set, its features include the sheriffs building, a jail, a mine, and four minifigures. It is 28 cm (11") long, 20 cm (8") tall and over 10 cm (4") wide. The four minifigures include Woody, Jessie, Bullseye and Stinky Pete. This set is based on the show-within-a-show "Woody's Roundup". All of these sets have a recommended age range of 6–12, except Buzz's Star Command Spaceship (set number: 7593), which has an age range of 7-14.
Five days later an additional two sets were released with an age rating of 7–14. Both sets had only an alien for the minifigures. Construct-a-Buzz (set number: 7592) is a 205 piece set. The set features include a buildable Buzz Lightyear that is 18 cm (7") tall with a retractable helmet and moveable wings, Buzz's laser cannon and a Squeeze Toy Alien minifigure. Construct-a-Zurg (set number: 7591) is a 118 piece set. The set features include a buildable Emperor Zurg that is 23 cm (9") tall with a rotating waist, a sphere-shooting cannon, and a Squeeze Toy Alien minifigure.
On May 4, 2010 five sets were released in the United States based on the events of "Toy Story 3". Four days later the sets were released in the United Kingdom. Trash Compactor Escape (set number: 7596) is a 370 piece set with an age rating of 7–12. The set features include a crane claw, a dumpster, a 40 cm (16") conveyor belt and five minifigures. The minifigures include Lotso, Hamm, Woody and two squeeze toy aliens with different markings on their face, the same markings on their body, and no markings on their legs. Western Train Chase (set number: 7597) is a 584 piece set with an age rating of 7–14. The set features include a locomotive, three train cars and six minifigures. The minifigures include Buzz, Woody, Jessie, Bullseye, Rex, and Hamm as Evil Doctor Porkchop. Pizza Planet Truck Rescue (set number: 7598) is a 225 piece set with an age rating of 6–12 and is based on the fictional Pizza Planet restaurant. The set features a 20 cm (4") pizza truck and four minifigures – Buzz, Rex, Hamm and a squeeze toy alien. Lotso's Dump Truck (set number: 7789) is a 129 piece set which also has an age range of 6–12. The set features include a 14 cm (5.5") dump truck and three minifigures – Lotso, Chunk and Stretch. The dump truck driver is not a minifigure. Garbage Truck Getaway (set number: 7599) is a 402 piece set with an age rating of 7–14. The set features 22 cm (8.5") dumpster and four minifigures. The minifigures include Buzz, Jessie, Twitch and Lotso. Twitch is an exclusive to Garbage Truck Getaway.
A promotional set, Alien Space Ship (set number: 30070), was released across Europe. In the United Kingdom it was made redeemable at Tesco stores, along with a Lego Toy Story Keychains, or a minifigure magnet set. Two additional promotional sets were released through the United Kingdom's Daily Mirror. Woody's Camp Out (set number: 30072) was released along with the newspaper on July 17 and Buzz's Mini Ship (set number: 30073) was released with the paper on July 18. An Army Jeep (set number: 30071) set branded under the Toy Story 3 logo has also been released in 2010.
In 2019, the 6 sets based on the "Toy Story 4" film was released on 22 April 2019.
Duplo.
A Duplo sub-theme was released at the same time in May as the "Toy Story 3" sets. All of the sets have an age recommendation of 2–5 and are branded under the Toy Story 3 logo. Jessie's Round-Up is an 18 piece set which features a sheriff's wall, a Bullseye minifigure and a Jessie minifigure. Pizza Planet Truck is a 13 piece set. Its features include a Dinoco fuel sign and pump, a 12 cm (5") Pizza Planet truck, a Squeeze Toy Alien and a Buzz minifigure. The Great Train Chase is a 39 piece set. Its features include a 20 cm (8") locomotive and caboose, an archway, and three minifigures. The minifigures include Jessie, Buzz and Woody. Alien Space Crane is a 23 piece set. Its features include a crane with a shovel, a garbage truck and three minifigures – Buzz, Woody, and a Squeeze Toy Alien.
Lego Ideas
A project based on "Andy's Room" was uploaded to the Lego Ideas site on September 4, 2016. The project hopes to reach 10,000 supporters in order for Lego to consider to make it into an official set. The project is based on Andy's bedroom from the original "Toy Story" film and includes characters such as Buzz Lightyear, Sheriff Woody, Rex, Hamm, Mr Potato Head and RC. But in 2018, the project expired.
Reception.
In 2018, Woody's Roundup (set number: 7594) was listed as the "Top 10 Western LEGO Sets" by Lego fansite "BricksFanz".


Ken Ueno

Ken Ueno (born January 11, 1970 in Bronxville, New York) is an American composer.
Career.
He studied at the United States Military Academy. He graduated from Berklee College of Music with a B.M. in Film Scoring/Composition "Summa Cum Laude", from Boston University with a M.M., from Yale School of Music with a M.M.A., and from Harvard University with a PhD.
He taught at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
He teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. He is co-director of Minimum Security Composers Collective.
Works.
He has composed orchestral works, for jazz big band and woodwind quintet, and two dance pieces for the Boston Conservatory.
He performed at the Flea, New York City.
Ueno has collaborated with violist Kim Kashkashian and percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky on the works "Hypnomelodiamachia" for viola, percussion, and electronics (2007), and "Two Hands", a Kashkashian commission, for viola and percussion (2009). A monograph compact disc of three works for soloist(s) and orchestra, "Talus" for viola and orchestra, "On a Sufficient Condition for the Existence of Most Specific Hypothesis" for solo throat-singer and orchestra, and "Kaze-no-Oka" for biwa, shakuhachi, and orchestra, was released by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in 2010. Ueno has also written for such ensembles as the So Percussion Group, Bang on a Can All-Stars, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Del Sol String Quartet, Prism Quartet, and eighth blackbird.
Ueno's compositional approach frequently involves extra-musical modeling, including using images, cultural phenomena, or architecture as the basis for structural decisions, somewhat analogous to the use of architectural proportions in Renaissance music. "Kaze-no-Oka", for example, reflects in part the structure of the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki's like-named project. His "Talus" is, in a manner of speaking, a biography of a traumatic event in the life of its soloist, violist Wendy Richman, who shattered her ankle in a ten-foot fall. He is keenly interested in the process of exploring unique, in some sense irreproducible, sonic events linked to the performers for which his music is written.
As a performer, Ueno is active as a throat-singing vocalist and performing with live electronics. He is an accomplished guitarist.
In 2010, he was awarded the Berlin Prize residential fellowship in Music Composition at the American Academy in Berlin.


Thomas Carothers

Thomas Carothers is an expert on international democracy support, democratization, and U.S. foreign policy. He serves as senior vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he founded and currently directs the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance. He has also taught at several universities in the United States and Europe, including Central European University, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Nuffield College, Oxford, where he is a senior research fellow.
Early life.
Carothers received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics where he was a Marshall Scholar and an A.B. from Harvard College. He speaks English, French, and Spanish.
Career.
Carothers worked at the law firm of Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC. Before that, he was an attorney-adviser at the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State from 1985 to 1988. While serving at the State Department, he worked with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on democracy assistance in Latin America. This experience formed the basis for his first book, "In the Name of Democracy: U.S. Policy Toward Latin America in the Reagan Years".
His work has focused on the areas of civil society development, political party assistance, rule of law assistance, and democratic transitions. In addition to his research and writings, Carothers has consulted for and worked directly on democracy assistance programs for both private and public aid organizations.
Carothers is the author of five books on international democracy and development assistance, as well as three edited volumes and a collection of his most influential essays. He has also written numerous articles for the Journal of Democracy, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and other publications. His writings have been translated into many languages.


Call pickup

Call pick-up is a feature used in a telephone system that allows one to answer someone else's telephone call. The feature is accessed by pressing a pre-programmed button (usually labelled "Pick-Up"), or by pressing a special sequence of buttons on the telephone set.
In places where call pick-up is used, the telephone sets may be divided into "zones". Under such an arrangement, using call pick-up will only pick up a call in the same zone.
Call pick-up can be "directed". Directed call pick-up is used for picking up a call that is ringing at a specific extension number; this feature is accessed through a different sequence of buttons than normal call pick-up.
A telephone set can only pick up one call at one time. If there are many incoming calls at the same time, call pick-up will pick up the call that rang first unless the pick-up is directed.


Vacuum activity

Vacuum activities (or vacuum behaviours) are innate, fixed action patterns (FAPs) of animal behaviour that are performed in the absence of a sign stimulus (releaser) that normally elicit them. This type of abnormal behaviour shows that a key stimulus is not always needed to produce an activity. Vacuum activities often take place when an animal is placed in captivity and is subjected to a lack of stimuli that would normally cause a FAP.
Etymology.
From Latin vacuum ("an empty space, void") noun use of neuter of "vacuus" ("empty") related to "vacare" ("be empty").
History.
The term was first established by the ethologist Konrad Lorenz in the 1930s after observations of a hand-raised starling. In 1937 Lorenz wrote: "With head and eyes the bird made a motion as though following a flying insect with its gaze; its posture tautened; it took off, snapped, returned to its perch, and with its bill performed the sideways lashing, tossing motions with which many insectivorous birds slay their prey against whatever they happen to be sitting upon. Then the starling swallowed several times, whereupon its closely laid plumage loosened up somewhat, and there often ensued a quivering reflex, exactly as it does after real satiation."
Lorenz's Hydraulic Model of Motivation.
Animals that were raised without releasing instinctual behaviours, due to being in captivity or being taken as a pet, will produce these vacuum behaviours in seemingly random moments due to a build-up of energy reserves. This theory is based on Lorenz's Hydraulic Model of Motivation, which attempts to explain the mechanism of FAPs by equating energy input to water adding up in a container, leading to a valve which, under normal circumstances, is opened upon addition of a releaser or sign stimulus, to produce a FAP. When a sign stimulus or releaser is not present, this leads to an energy (water) build-up, forcing the valve open and producing the FAP in the absence of a stimulus.
Evolution and Genetics.
Over time as animals have evolved, natural selection has favoured some behaviours over others because they have ensured the survival and reproduction of the animal. These potentially long-lasting, innate behaviours have a genetic origin that propagates through evolutionary time, becoming slightly altered due to environmental changes and mutations. The study of Epigenetics explains how certain mutations (e.g., histone modification and DNA methylation) affect how genes are expressed without altering the genetic code, suggesting learning from the environment can change gene expression, and thus neural pathways, to modify the animals behaviour within its lifetime. These FAPs, or instinctual, stereotyped behaviours lead to the production of vacuum activities when the environment is lacking the necessary stimuli, revealing a deeply intwined relationship between an external stimulus in the environment, genes, and learning. This is illustrated in the act of primates shaking branches in their natural environment to cause a distraction from predators and the inclination for captive primates in zoos to shake roof beams even though they cannot know if a predator is outside. The animals physiology is attempting to produce an instinctual behaviour that is common for that particular species but the necessary external stimulus is not present.
Examples.
Birds.
Lorenz observed that a starling bird snapped at the air when flying as if it were catching insects though there were no real insects there.
Weaver birds go through complicated nest building behaviour when there is no nest building material present.
"Sham dustbathing" (sometimes referred to as "vacuum dustbathing") is a behaviour performed by some birds when kept in cages with little or no access to litter. During sham dustbathing, the birds perform all the elements of normal dust bathing, but in the complete "absence" of any substrate. This behaviour often has all the activities and temporal patterns of normal dustbathing, i.e. the bird initially scratches and bill-rakes at the ground, then erects her feathers and squats. Once lying down, the behaviour contains four main elements: vertical wing-shaking, head rubbing, bill-raking and scratching with one leg. However, hens "dustbathing" on wire floors commonly perform this close to the feed trough where they can peck and bill-rake in the food. Because it seems the birds appear to treat the feed as a dustbathing substrate, the term "sham dustbathing" is more appropriate.
Raccoons.
Wild raccoons often investigate their food by rubbing it between their paws while holding the food underwater, giving the appearance of 'washing' the food (although the exact motivation for this behaviour is disputed). Captive raccoons sometimes perform these actions of 'washing' their food by rubbing it between their paws, even when there is no water available. This is most likely a vacuum activity based on foraging behaviour at shorelines.
Calves.
One vacuum activity that has been studied is 'tongue-rolling' by calves. Calves raised for 'white' veal are generally fed a milk-like diet from birth until they are slaughtered at about four months of age. The calves are prevented from consuming roughage such as grass or hay partly because the iron contained in such plant-based food would cause their muscles to assume a normal reddish colour instead of the pale colour that purchasers of this product demand. The diet, however, is unnatural because calves would normally start to forage and ruminate from about two weeks of age. When limited to a milky diet, some calves will spend hours per day in what appears to be 'vacuum grazing'. They extend the tongue out of the mouth and curl it to the side in what appears to be the action that cattle use to grasp a sward of grass and pull it into the mouth, but the calves do this simply in the air, without the tongue contacting any physical object.."
Pigs.
A similar vacuum activity to tongue rolling is 'vacuum chewing' by pigs. In this behaviour, pigs perform all the activities associated with chewing but with no substrate in their mouth. This abnormal behaviour can represent 52–80% of all stereotyped behaviours.


Siegfried Wiessner

Siegfried Wiessner (born 26 February 1953 in Germany) is a Professor of Law and the Founder and Director of St. Thomas University's Graduate Program in Intercultural Human Rights in Miami, Florida.
He holds a law degree (1977) as well as a Dr. iur. (1989) from the University of Tübingen, Germany, and an LL.M. from the Yale Law School (1982). In 1986, he was elected member of the International Institute of Space Law. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Martinus Nijhoff's Studies in Intercultural Human Rights. From 1997 to 2000, he was a lecturer at the UN/UNITAR International Law Fellowship Program. In October 2009 and November 2010, he served as Visiting Professor of Law at the City University of Hong Kong. In fall 2009, he was a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. From 2007 to 2010, he was a member of the Executive Council of The American Society of International Law. From 2008 to 2012, he served as the Chair of the International Law Association's Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Professor Wiessner teaches U.S. Constitutional Law and International Law. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law, international law, human rights, international indigenous law, the law of armed conflict, arbitration, space law and refugee law. In 1989, he published a book on the function of nationality, and he is the co-author, with Michael Reisman of the Yale Law School, of a leading casebook on international law, "International Law in Contemporary Perspective" (2004).
Throughout his life, Professor Wiessner has pushed the envelope in favor of social justice, protection of the poor and marginalized. In Germany, as a young lawyer in 1980, he safeguarded the due process rights of asylum seekers through a novel interpretation of the country's constitution which was, in essence, adopted by the country's Federal Constitutional Court. Coming to Yale Law School in 1982, he was immersed in that institution's distinctive problem-oriented approach to law, saw it as a liberation from the straitjacket of positivism, and redefined the role of the lawyer as leader and problem solver in society, a "doctor of the social order." By taking into account conflicting claims, past trends in decision and evaluating past decisions in light of a public order of human dignity, he suggests developing decisions best suited to maximize access by all to all things humans value. He applied this "New Haven Approach" to issues of mass atrocities as well as conflicts over the allocation of resources.
His main contribution to an order of human dignity worldwide has been, as of yet, his research on, and subsequent development of, the law regarding the rights and status of indigenous peoples. He first made the argument, laid out in the "Harvard Human Rights Journal" in 1999, that customary international law protects indigenous peoples' rights to land, their cultural traditions, and self-government. As Chair of the International Law Association's Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples he led 30 experts from around the globe to a thorough review of this position, culminating in the organization's emphatic approval of Resolution No. 5/2012 confirming those rights to their lands, culture and autonomy at its meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria in August 2012.
His other abiding achievement is the creation of the Graduate Program in Intercultural Human Rights, founded in 2001. This combination of a unique and most successful LL.M. Program with a highly selective J.S.D. program requiring publication of students' theses has made St. Thomas known and respected globally and locally. Many graduates of the program are now working in the field and transporting values of human dignity. In the 303 students graduating from the LL.M. program so far, it sent out "warriors for dignity" who are confidently using the arms of the law and other peaceful instruments to bring about positive change in all four corners of the world.
On March 14, 2013, Professor Wiessner received the Law Professor of the Year Award by the humanitarian organization Lawyers to the Rescue.
Selected works.
Die Funktion der Staatsangehörigkeit [The Function of Nationality] (Tübingen University Press, 1989), 414 pp.
International Law in Contemporary Perspective (Casebook,Foundation Press 2004), with W. Michael Reisman, Mahnoush Arsanjani and Gayl Westerman,1584 pp.
Looking to the Future: Essays on International Law in Honor of W. Michael Reisman (Editor, with Mahnoush Arsanjani, Jacob Katz Cogan & Robert D. Sloane, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2011), 1100 pp.
"Asylverweigerung ohne Anerkennungsverfahren", 7 Europäische Grundrechte-Zeitschrift 473-479 (1980).
"The Public Order of the Geostationary Orbit: Blueprints for the Future", 9 Yale J. World Pub. Order 217-274 (1983[1985]).
"Rights and Status of Indigenous Peoples: A Global Comparative and International Legal Perspective", 12 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 57-128 (1999).
"Policy-Oriented Jurisprudence and Human Rights Abuses in Internal Conflict: Toward a World Public Order of Human Dignity", 93 Am. J. Int'l L. 316-334 (1999), with Andrew R. Willard.
"The New Haven School: A Brief Introduction",32 Yale J. Int’l L. 575-582 (2007), with W. Michael Reisman and Andrew R. Willard.
"The New Haven School of Jurisprudence: A Universal Toolkit for Understanding and Shaping the Law", 18 Asia Pacific L. Rev. 45-61 (2010).
"The Cultural Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Achievements and Continuing Challenges", 22 Eur. J.Int’l L. 121-140 (2011).


Cesare della Valle

Cesare della Valle (1776/77 - 1860) was Duke of Ventignano. He is best known today as a playwright and librettist.
He wrote the libretto to Giacomo Rossini's opera "Maometto II", from his own drama tragedy "Anna Erizo" (1820). Both were based on real-life Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II who took Negroponte from the Venetians in 1470.
That opera was completely reworked a few years later into "Le siège de Corinthe" (1826), but based on the same characters and story created by della Valle.


Peggy Pettitt

Peggy Pettitt (born February 8, 1950) is an American actress, dancer, teacher, playwright, and storyteller. Pettitt is best known for her role as Billie Jean in the 1972 family–drama film "Black Girl", starring alongside Brock Peters and Claudia McNeil. Pettitt is a native of St. Louis, Missouri.
Playwright and storyteller.
The centerpiece of Pettitt's theater career is a unique style of solo performance rooted in African-American storytelling. She developed this form to portray a spectrum of characters. Related by blood and circumstance, these characters shed light on the multifaceted history of African American men and women. And they tell "stories addressing important issues of our time." In collaboration with director Remy Tissier, she has created over 10 original full-length plays. These examine issues of domestic violence, sexual abuse, cross-generational differences, voting registration, the Civil Rights Movement, identity and the world HIV/Aids crisis. Titles include "Women Preachers," "Caught Between the Devil and The Deep Blue Sea," "Tricksters: All Over You Like White On Rice," "Wrapped Up, Tied Up and Tangled," "Mollie Oil BETWIXT," "Wild Steps" and "In The Spirit For Real".
One play was the product of her 2000-01 Fulbright Fellowship to Senegal: "The Spirit Factor". An original play, it's based on the living history and the art of storytelling in West Africa. Another play, "Voyage", was presented at the Avignon "Off Festival" in 2010. It explores American history through both the blues and a spiritual heritage that lives along the Mississippi River but originated in West Africa. Pettitt has presented her work at the Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni Les Rencontres du Bout des Mondes International Festival in 2011 (French Guiana). In addition to the Fulbright Fellowship, she has received numerous other grants and awards. These include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Pearls of Wisdom is a storytelling ensemble of the Elders Share the Arts in N.Y. City. Pettitt is its founding artistic director, and with the Pearls of Wisdom, she was inducted in 2007 into City Lore's People's Hall of Fame.
Actress.
In 1972, during the era of Blaxploitation movies, Pettitt made "Black Girl", her first feature film. Pettitt was nominated for Best Actress by the NAACP for her role in "Black Girl", written by J.E. Franklin and directed by Ossie Davis. Another of her noteworthy roles was at Lincoln Center as Miss Lindsey in "Mule Bone", Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes’ historical comedy.
Teacher.
Pettitt has professional experience and training in directing and storytelling workshops. She teaches a step-by-step process of creating, writing and performing original material. Partnering with a wide array of organizations, she has helped scores of diverse groups present their own original stories as both theater and storytelling performances. She also works extensively with drama therapists, social workers and educators in public schools.
Both in the U.S. and abroad, Pettitt has worked at numerous schools and educational institutions. Her teaching experience extends to facilities such as homeless shelters, prisons, drug treatment centers, VA hospitals, and senior and adolescent centers. Additionally she has ample experience working with the emotionally and physically disabled and their families. She currently teaches self-scripting at New York University's Experimental Theatre Wing.
Biography.
In 1974, after earning a BA from Antioch College, she moved to London on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Pettitt now resides in New York City. She has been married since 1982 to writer, director and painter Rémy Tissier.


64th Writers Guild of America Awards

The 64th Writers Guild of America Awards honored the best film, television, and videogame writers of 2011. Winners were announced on February 19, 2012.
Nominees.
Film.
Original.
"Midnight in Paris" — Written by Woody Allen; Sony Pictures Classics
Adapted.
"The Descendants" — Screenplay by Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash; Based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings; Fox Searchlight
Documentary.
"Better This World" — Written by Katie Galloway & Kelly Duane de la Vega; Loteria Films
Television.
Drama series.
"Breaking Bad" — Sam Catlin, Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, Gennifer Hutchison, George Mastras, Thomas Schnauz, Moira Walley-Beckett; AMC
Comedy Series.
"Modern Family" — Cindy Chupack, Paul Corrigan, Abraham Higginbotham, Ben Karlin, Elaine Ko, Carol Leifer, Steven Levitan, Christopher Lloyd, Dan O'Shannon, Jeffrey Richman, Brad Walsh, Ilana Wernick, Bill Wrubel, Danny Zuker; ABC
New Series.
"Homeland" — Henry Bromell, Alexander Cary, Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon, Chip Johannessen, Gideon Raff, Meredith Stiehm; Showtime
Episodic Drama.
"Box Cutter" ("Breaking Bad") — Vince Gilligan; AMC
"The Good Soldier" ("Homeland") — Henry Bromell; Showtime
Episodic Comedy.
"Caught in the Act" ("Modern Family") — Steven Levitan & Jeffrey Richman; ABC
Long form – original – over one hour – one or two parts, one or two airing times.
"Cinema Verite" — David Seltzer; HBO
Long form – adaptation – over one hour – one or two parts, one or two airing times.
"Too Big to Fail" — Teleplay by Peter Gould, Based on the book "Too Big to Fail" by Andrew Ross Sorkin; HBO
Short Form - original new media.
“Episode 1,” “Episode 2,” “Episode 4,” “Episode 5,” “Episode 6” (Aim High) by Heath Corson & Richie Keen; cambio.com/aim-high
“Episode 2.1: Employment,” “Episode 2.2: Clientele,” “Episode 2.3: Personal Property,” “Episode 2.4: The American Dream,” “Episode 2.5: Debt Ceiling” ("Downsized") by Daryn Strauss; downsizedthewebseries.com
“Episode 3.1: The Return,” “Episode 3.5: The Testosterone,” “Episode 3.6: The Advice,” “Episode 3.7: The Date” (Jack in a Box) by Michael Cyril Creighton; jackinaboxsite.com
Animation – any length – one airing time.
"Homer the Father" ("The Simpsons") — Joel H. Cohen; FOX
Comedy/variety – (including talk) series.
"The Colbert Report" — Michael Brumm, Stephen Colbert, Rich Dahm, Paul Dinello, Eric Drysdale, Rob Dubbin, Glenn Eichler, Dan Guterman, Peter Gwinn, Jay Katsir, Barry Julien, Frank Lesser, Opus Moreschi, Tom Purcell, Meredith Scardino, Scott Sherman, Max Werner; Comedy Central


Academy of Hope

Academy of Hope (AOH) is a non-profit organization, involved in providing "educational empowerment" to Washington, DC adults. The organization was founded in 1985 by Church of the Saviour volunteers.
Services.
Academy of Hope provides adult basic education leading to improved literacy, the GED certificate, other high school diploma programs (External Diploma Program), and computer training. Students are typically adults with limited or no income who are under-educated or lack the educational skills for employment. About 350 students have received high school credentials through the academy, taking an average of two years but as many as 10 years in a few cases.
Funding.
Academy of Hope receives funding from private donors and foundations as well as $170,000 a year in federal and D.C. funds earmarked to fight adult illiteracy. A 2007 renovation and move was paid for in part by a $200,000 grant from Oprah Winfrey's Angel Network.


David Lewis (psychologist)

David Lewis (born 1942), a French-born English neuropsychologist, is founder and director at the independent research consultancy Mindlab International based at the Sussex Innovation Centre in Brighton. Additionally, he is a chartered psychologist, an author and lecturer. He currently specialises in non-invasive techniques for measuring human responses under real life conditions. The studies started in the early 1980s while he was a doctoral student at the University of Sussex and required him to develop both the hardware and software necessary to monitor and record electrical activity in the brain.
He has a first-class honours degree in psychology and biology from the University of Westminster and a doctorate from the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex, where he lectured in clinical psychology and psychopathology before setting up his own research organisation.
He is the author of books covering a range of psychological topics, a lecturer and Sony award-winning broadcaster for a BBC Radio 5 Live series on the psychological relationships between sports stars and their mentors and trainers.
In the early 1990s his work was featured on BBC TV's "Tomorrow's World".


Lynn J. Bush

Lynn Jeanne Bush (born December 30, 1948) is a senior judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims, appointed to that court in 1998 by President Bill Clinton.
Early life, education, and career.
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, to John E. Bush III and Alice (Saville) Bush, Bush received a B.A. from Antioch College in 1970, after which she received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, followed by a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1976.
Admitted to the Arkansas Bar in 1976 and to the District of Columbia Bar in 1977, she was a trial attorney for the Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice from 1976 to 1987, and then moved to the Department of the Navy, where she was senior trial attorney for Naval Facilities Engineering Command until 1989, and counsel for Engineering Field Activity Chesapeake until 1996. She then became an administrative judge for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Board of Contract Appeals from 1996 until 1998.
Federal judicial service.
On June 22, 1998, Bush was nominated by President Bill Clinton to be a judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 26, 1998, and received her commission that day. She assumed senior status on October 22, 2013.
Personal life.
Bush has one son, Brian Bush Ferguson.


MIND High School

MIND High School (Moving In New Directions; ) (est. 1975) is an alternative education high school in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Its reputation stems from its community-based programs.
MIND is a partnership between the English Montreal School Board (EMSB) and McGill University's Faculty of Education. The program focuses on providing critical thinking and enriched education through alternative teaching methods.
History.
Founded in 1975 with 125 students from the entire PSBGM (Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal) and 7 staff, MIND was originally known simply as "The Alternative High School" and was located primarily on the third floor (with a few classes on the second floor) of the International YMCA at the corner of Parc Avenue and St. Viateur.
A vote was held by the community (students, staff and parents/guardians each had one vote), and "MIND" (Moving In New Directions) was declared the new name of the school. Early community votes dealt with the use of recreational drugs at school (rejected), smoking during class (eventually banned on the third floor only), world poverty and debt (no resolution) and student apathy (a surprisingly large meeting with no real solution). Community meetings were held weekly and home group meetings were held every Monday morning.
Shortly after, MIND moved to the third floor of the old High School of Montreal building on University Street, which was otherwise occupied by the arts-oriented high school F.A.C.E. Staff consisted of eight teachers including one head teacher, and approximately 133 students in grades 9-11 (secondary III-V). MIND currently has five teachers and 55 students.
In 1999, MIND moved to its current location in the top floor of the Bancroft elementary school building at Mont Royal and St. Urbain, in the shadow of Mount Royal. In 2003, MIND organized its first soccer team, and was soundly trounced by all of its competitors. The team's uniforms were black and white, with no logo.