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What was meant to be a simple island-hopping vacation in Greece for Brandon Li becomes an epic romance the moment he meets Maria. Get lost in Greece with them and discover its beauty in this three-part original series presented by Citizine. These low-fi island locations can be hard to find on the map. Don't forget to add them to your profile.

Getty Images The next shoe has fallen in Carolina, with another Jerry Richardson lieutenant heading for the door. A source with knowledge of the situation tells PFT that new owner David Tepper has fired Panthers general counsel Richard Thigpen. Of course, that was #asexpected, as he was the team lawyer who presided over signing non-disclosure agreements with former employees, some of whom alleged workplace misconduct by Richardson, which led to the sale of the team. Tepper said during his introductory press conference Tuesday the team would no longer use NDAs, which follows the league’s recommendation in the wake of the investigation of the sexual and racial harassment. Thigpen had been with the Panthers since 1997. Chief operating officer Tina Becker resigned immediately upon the sale to Tepper closing as well, clearing out two top team officials from the Richardson administration.

"I don't know, man." "I want to try something crazy up here right now." "If you think you have thick skin and you think you can take a joke..." "Yeah?" "Come up here, bud." "All right." "Wanna come up here, buddy?" "Wanna come up here?" "Come on up." "This is the ugliest police lineup I've ever seen." "You are adorable." "What's your name?" "Michael." "Michael?" "Where you from, Michael?" "College Station." "College Station?" "Oh, are you a college student?" "No." "No?" "I got locked up before..." "I got locked up before I could go to college." "You got locked up before you could go to college?" "Oh, yeah, that's what happened, sure." "Like you were going to fucking Harvard and all of the sudden..." "You look like..." "You're one of those rare people who looks like a child and a child molester at the same time." "You look like a sweet guy, like you wouldn't hurt anybody." "You're not a violent guy." "I don't know about that." "Oh, shit, next." "Come here, come here, come here." "How you doing, man?" "What's your name?" "I'm good." "Forty." "Forty?" "Yeah." "Come here." "Why they call you Forty?" "Hmm?" "Why they call you..." "You're not under oath, you realize that, right?" "Just a nickname, that's all." "A nickname." "Yeah." "What's your job when you get outside?" "You have a regular job?" "Uh..." "Let's talk to Curious George over here." "My name's E.T." "Your name's E.T.?" "Oh, I thought you looked familiar." "How old are you?" "19." "Oh, my goodness, man." "Your breath is giving me the breath penalty right now." "Hey, do the walk." "What's that?" "Do the walk." "Do the walk?" "What's that mean, do the walk?" "Do the walk!" "Do the walk!" "What's the walk?" "Wait..." "I'm confused." "Is this a jail or a zoo?" "*" "Hello, I'm Jeff Ross." "They call me the Roastmaster General." "Like most of us, I'm fascinated by the American criminal." "I always wonder, what are they really like?" "Why are there so many of them?" "And do they have a sense of humor about their situation?" "So I decided to roast 'em." "They're outlaws, they deserve it, right?" "And if you can laugh at yourself, you're one step closer to freedom." "But prisons and jails are closed-off places, and they don't like outsiders looking in, for a reason." "I've seen people get killed." "I've been stabbed." "Lots of fights." "Lots of riots." "I've got hit in the face a couple of times." "I've seen people get stomped to death." "They got knifes this long." "Yeah." "And stabbing each other." "Not a single lockup in America had the guts to let me in, except one, where they have 600 guys, 150 ladies, and about 60 officers who could all use a little break." "So, screw it." "Armed with nothing but some insults," "I'm heading into a Texas County jail for a few days, to kill or be killed." "*" "A lot of jails would never let me come in here and do a show, so thank you." "Oh, you're welcome." "Why?" "Why did you say yes?" "Well, we are proud of the facility here and we're proud of the staff here." "We convey expectations and if people do what we ask 'em to do, there ought to be a positive incentive for doing that." "More than 90% of the people who are here are gonna go home someday, so you have to ask yourself, when somebody gets out of jail, do you want them to have been in an environment where they were mistreated and they come out angry" "or where they saw an environment where people were taught personal accountability and how to behave and that that can lead to good things?" "Right." "Who do you want to live next door to?" "*" "When's the last time someone did a show here?" "Never." "You look a little scared." "It's a little scary in here." "You don't have to worry about that." "I'll protect you." "You have a gun?" "No, I do not." "We're not allowed to carry guns in the facility." "So, what, do you just ask people politely to stop beating me?" "No, we'll actually assist in trying to get them off of you, but we don't escalate." "We try to de-escalate the situation." "Where are we headed?" "We're headed to 3A." "What's in 3A?" "3A is maximum security inmates." "They are in here for aggravated assaults with deadly weapons, murder." "Is it dangerous?" "It's dangerous." "Everywhere is dangerous in here." "Right." "We never..." "We never relax while we're here." "Ever." "Okay." "So." "If I die, it's on you." "No, we'll die together." "All right." "All right." "Blood brothers." "Yes." "Blood brothers and sisters." "Yes." "Brown, can you open your slider again?" "You ready?" "Yeah." "You go first." "Don't be scared." "You first." "Don't be scared, come on." "What's up?" "What's up?" "How you guys doing?" "What's up?" "!" "Jeff Ross." "Randy Gray." "Nice to meet you guys." "Wave to the camera." "Saturday night, who's coming to the show?" "I thought I'd come take a look around, get ready for the show." "This a barbershop over here?" "Yeah, it's the barbershop." "How you doing?" "Jeff Ross." "Nice to meet you, man." "What are you in for?" "Come here." "Assaulted a police officer." "You assaulted a police officer?" "Yeah." "Oh, my goodness, that's serious, dude." "What was happening?" "They tried to take me to jail for something I didn't do." "And you didn't want to go?" "I didn't want to go." "And who won that argument?" "The police." "Obviously, they did, you know what I'm saying?" "For real." "They did." "What's that tattoo over here?" "42-32." "What's that mean?" "Dirty White Boy." "Dirty White Boy?" "Yes, sir." "Who's the fucking baddest motherfucker in this dorm?" "There's a bunch of them." "There are murderers in here." "Well, alleged murderers." "This is high-security dorm right here." "You coming to my show tomorrow?" " I'm gonna try to." " Hell, yeah." "Yeah?" "Sure." "You gotta be on your best behavior." "Yeah." "I don't want to get shanked onstage or nothing." "Oh, no." "You bust that shank, doggie." "No, we ain't gonna shank him." "You ain't gonna shank him?" "No, we ain't gonna shank him, man." "Shank you very much." "This is where the white dudes hang out?" "Sometimes." "Does anybody ever get offended by your tattoos?" "Sometimes." "Anyway, good luck with the rest of your stay in jail." "How many years?" "99." "Dude, you should get fucking six million years for every Jew that died in the Holocaust." "Fuck this, man." "You know, we believe that personal responsibility is important and we have an inmate behavior management philosophy that we use." "And so for the folks that are gonna get to go to your show, we told 'em that they had to behave for a month with no disciplinary action or anything like that." "And so we had almost half of our population do that." "Wow." "Yeah." "So I'll be performing for everything from DUls to murderers." "Right." "They'll all be in the room with you." "Can you sit the murderers in the back?" "No, they're gonna be up front." "Why is that?" "So that if we need to move 'em, you know, if somebody misbehaves, we can move 'em out." "Jeff Ross, Jeff Ross!" "Jeff Ross, Jeff Ross!" "Everybody give it up for the Roastmaster General," "Mr. Jeff motherfuckin' Ross!" "What's up?" "What the fuck is up?" "What the fuck is up?" "What's up?" "What's up, what's up?" "What's up, buddy?" "What's up?" "What's up, motherfuckers?" "Are you ready for a show?" "Hell yeah!" "You ugly motherfuckers ready to party?" "Yeah!" "All right." "Hell yeah, where my murderers at?" "Sit them in the back, shit." "Waller, you okay over there?" "Come here a second, one quick second." "I need you to give everybody permission to laugh tonight." "Will you, please?" "Yes, we all need to laugh." "Thank you, darling." "We're going to have a good time." "Thank you." "All right, I'll see you back at the hotel." "Wow." "This is all right." "Shh!" "How fucking fat are you, dude?" "Extra, baby!" "Who gains weight in jail?" "This guy, right here!" "Damn." "What'd you do, rob a bakery?" "Pretty much." "Fuck it." "What was your first phone call in jail?" "Hello, Domino's?" "Hell yeah." "This is a trip right here." "This is some gig, man." "No one wants to talk to you." "Frank." "I played basketball with him yesterday and nobody would play with us." "Whoa." "I go, "Why don't you want to play with Frank?"" "And they all went, "Hoo-hoo-hoo."" "This is all right." "We got the fucking whites-only section up there." "What's up?" "Wow, happy Hanukkah, fellas." "Welcome to Bryan, Texas." "What's that?" "Welcome to Bryan, Texas." "Welcome to Bryan, Texas." "Thank you." "What are you, the mayor?" "Shut up." "Now look at this guy." "How you doing, man?" "What do you got?" "How you doing?" "Damn, we got Crips and cripples in here." "Damn!" "What's up?" "!" "How you doing, man?" "This is awesome." "What's your name, sir?" "I'm Robert." "Robert?" "Nice to meet you, man." "They all love you." "They know you, man." "Look at it." "I see you're in a wheelchair, I hope you're okay, man." "What'd you do, bust a handicap in somebody?" "Look at that smile right there, man." "You look great." "You look like Flava Flav's grandpa." "Yeah." "Man, look how covered up you are." "Holy shit, dude." "Can I actually show everybody?" "Come here for one second." "Oh, my God." "Dude." "Dude, look at this shit." "What's your name, man?" "What's your name?" "What up, Nigger, I go by Ghost." "Ghost." "Why, you're about to disappear?" "Look at you, man, three more tattoos, you'll be a black dude." "Thank you, Ghost." "He's a scary-looking motherfucker right there, dude." "He got two teardrops melted together and shit." "Where my innocent people at?" "Where are my guilty people at?" "Right here!" "How many people have lied so much, they don't even know the truth anymore?" "Oh, man." "I came here today because I'm a big believer in second chances and I know most of you, almost all of you will come out of here and be back in the world before long, so on a personal note, I wanted to see" "if I could roast you guys a little bit and see if you had a sense of humor about your situation." "And also, while I was here," "I was kind of hoping I might meet some NFL players." "Are there any here?" "From the Patriots?" "I don't know." " Aaron Hernandez, that guy..." " Yeah!" "All right." "You're a big fan, huh?" "Yeah, big fan." "That guy had just signed a $40 million guarantee." "All he had to do was not kill three people." "That's hard." "What's that?" "It's hard." "It's hard to not kill three people?" "I guess you would know, man." "It all started with O.J." "O.J. was my hero, that broke my heart when he got..." "Man, he deserves to be in jail, that guy." "I'm not saying he's guilty, but his last birthday, he cut the cake 47 times." "It was a vanilla cake, so..." "Man." "And of course he got away with murder, 'cause he had the most expensive legal team in history, man." "His lawyer, did you notice, was Kim Kardashian's father, so you know that family is really talented in getting black guys off." "Fuck, yeah." "You almost laughed, you fucking drug addict, look at you." "Dude." "Yeah, I'm here because, you know, this could have been me, too." "I've been on my own since I'm a teenager." "I lost my parents when I was young and I understand that not everybody in here is a terrible person." "Some of y'all just did something when you were desperate or didn't get enough of an education or didn't get enough love and none of us are above the law." "We all slip up on the outside." "I've drank and driven a car." "I've lied on my taxes." "I shot Suge Knight." "But if I ever got in real trouble, if I had to come into jail," "I already know it's all about survival." "I've been here a few days watching you guys, paying attention to what's happening." "First day in jail, I'd walk in here," "I'd find the biggest-looking, meanest motherfucker in here and suck his dick." "Let 'em know who's boss." "Come on." "All right, to your health." "Radioactive right there." "Young man, he's too young to be in prison." "We got fucking Bill Cosby's rape baby over here." "Oh!" "Wow, I wouldn't feed this to my dog." "Then again, my dog never shot nobody, so..." "Ohh!" "Jail is serious, man." "Jail is serious, dude." "I had lunch here today." "Whoever is the cook should be arrested for attempted murder." "Man." "You guys made me feel so much better already." "I had a rough date the other night." "I went out with this chick, she was not into my Bill Cosby impression." "Now why is the coffee making you sleepy?" "I put the Roofie in the puddin'." "That guy's in a lot of trouble, man." "27 women have accused him of terrible, terrible things." "That's heartbreaking, 'cause as a comedian," "Bill Cosby was another one of my heroes, and all those years, Bill Cosby was like, "Hey, hey, hey!"" "All those women were like, "Hey!" "Hey." "Hey."" "But Bill Cosby will never get in real trouble 'cause he's rich." "It's the poor people who go to jail in America." "There's racism, but there's also classism." "Right now, there's men in here locked up for possession of less marijuana than I have in my lungs right now." "Am I allowed to ask why you're here?" "I guess you could, man." "I got caught with some weed." "Did you hurt someone?" "No." "I got a drug charge." "First felony charge of my life." "Really?" "Yeah, first..." "First drug charge of my life." "I was in front of my house, I was parked the wrong way." "I was on some drugs, but that wasn't why I was parked the wrong way." "Weed helps me adapt, man." "I'm serious." "I got glaucoma, man." "I'm serious." "We're a free country, but we lock up more people than any other place in the world." "The system's broken." "It's mostly minor, nonviolent drug offenses." "Marijuana is..." "Great." "It's medicine." "I live in California." "I got a prescription, man." "Medical marijuana saved my life." "I was dying of anorexia." "Just this morning." "When I was a kid, I had to risk my life to buy marijuana." "I used to have to go to the park at midnight in the rain and pretend to play chess, buy some weed off a guy who looks like this right here." "I knew you looked familiar." "Just trying to make a living." "Just trying to make a living?" "No, dude, you gotta change your ways, dude." "You can't..." "You can't get..." "Plus, you guys are guilty mostly of thinking small." "You gotta think like the big corporations in America." "You can't sell meth to a teenager." "Sell Viagra to his grandfather." "I'm lucky I never got in trouble." "I sold joints at my prom, I was a messed-up kid, too, man." "Then I think about this country." "America was practically founded by a marijuana dealer." "George Washington, father of our country, grew hemp on his plantation." "That's true." "And the first state to legalize marijuana?" "Washington state." "Coincidence?" "Who gives a shit?" "The point is..." "The system is broken." "Incarceration in America is a $75 billion industry." "That's what..." "They say crime doesn't pay?" "It pays, it just doesn't pay you motherfuckers." "Right now, in some states, there's guys locked up for stuff that's now become legal in that same state." "How crazy would that make somebody?" "Right now, there's people in prison in the state of Florida for shooting a black teenager." "That's practically a misdemeanor in Florida right now." "'Cause it's too easy to get guns in this country." "How many people here have owned guns in their lives?" "Damn." "It's Texas." "I know it's Texas, man." "Everybody's got a gun." "Walmart sells guns 24 hours a day." "They sell booze till midnight." "Yeah." "So if you really want a drink, you can buy a gun and rob Walmart." "Makes no sense." "Yeah." "The political system's broken, too." "We never learn, it's the same thing over and over again." "You guys can't vote, but our votes don't count on the outside either." "'Cause there might be a bush in the White House by the time you get out." "Hillary's." "How many times you been back here?" "It's like..." "This is my third felony." "I'm only 23." "How many times you been in here?" "About ten, 20." "I've got 36 priors." "The recidivism rate is phenomenal." "Why do you think people come back to jail so much?" "A lot of people are institutionalized." "It don't take but a few months to get that way, man." "Get used to people telling you when to go to bed, when to wake up, when to eat." "Some people come down here and learn something from their mistakes, some people just dumb, don't learn nothing, and go back out there and do the same thing." "A lot of times, I tell 'em, I say, you can break the mold, you can be the one who steps away and says, you don't have to do this, and when they're talking to you," "they say, "You're right, you're right." "I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna do that."" "And then they bond out and then it could be just a short while later or it could be a couple years later and here they come again." "Like me, personally, every time I come down," "I learn something, I better myself," "I try my best to better myself, you know, but this time, hopefully, is my last," "I pray it's my last, you know." "Who's getting out soon?" "I am." "How long you been in here?" "Been in here a month." "A month?" "You look like you've been in here since Shawshank times." "I'd say, turn your life around, but you look like you got 30 days to live, shit." "Anybody getting their GED, high school diploma while they're here?" "Right?" "That's awesome, dude." "Congratulations." "I bet the prom sucks." "What's the worst part about being in this place?" "The SHU, man." "What's that mean, the SHU?" "Locked down 23 hours a day." "In solitary?" "In solitary." "It messed me up when I went back there." "It messed me up, too." "It messed me up." "What did it feel like?" "It feel like you in hell, really." "Why did you go in there?" "Fights." "Uh, starting a riot." "Talking to the guards and all that, you know." "What does it do to your brain, being by yourself?" "Crazy." "It really run you insane." "It's all rubber, huh?" "All rubber, so you can beat your head on it and it will never hurt you." "Wow." "Do they get a bed or a toilet?" "Nope, they don't get a bed, but they're..." "They do have a toilet." "It's right here." "This is the toilet?" "This is the toilet." "We tell them to use the bathroom in here." "They just squat over this hole?" "Mm-hmm." "Is that why they call it the hole?" ""Send 'em to the hole." Sure." "What's the longest somebody could be in here?" "However long it takes to seek treatment." "Do you think it's torture?" "Pr..." "Possibly, but..." "We have to, you know, dot our "I"s, cross our "T"s." "We can't make..." "We can't have anybody kill themselves on our watch and..." "So we do the best we can." "I took a little tour of solitary." "I spent some time in a little solitary cell yesterday." "That really messed up my head a little bit." "How many guys have spent time in the SHU down there?" "Really, that many?" "Man, did it mess you up?" "It would mess me up." "People need companionship." "They need someone to talk to." "You go into solitary for too long, how do you keep your sex drive alive?" "What do you do?" "Wait for a bug to crawl by?" "Slow down, little lady." "Let me see those legs." "I got solitary, but you're getting the death penalty." "Is it heartbreaking for you when you see someone come in or out of here?" "Sometimes it is, but most of the people that we put in here are in some kind of mental crisis." "What some people may not know is that our nation's jails right now are the biggest mental health institutions in the country." "Wow." "There's more mental health treatment going on in jails than in hospitals." "Really?" "I have to see a counselor every week here to unload my baggage." "I've been through a lot and I still possess a lot of things inside of me that nobody can even imagine, that I saw as a kid." "Violent things?" "Yes." "Without going into too much history, you know, in the '70s, they closed about a half a million in-patient mental health facility beds and there was no safety net, and so today, unfortunately, we see a lot of those people" "living under bridges and in jail." "And so it's an issue that our communities have to address." "So you have a personal connection to keeping these people mentally healthy and physically okay and so on." "It's my community." "Right." "For a person like me, I think this place is awesome." "Yeah?" "Saved my life a lot of times." "Wow." "Here in Brazos County, I slept under bridges, park benches, shit like that." "Got real bad off on that dope and come in a place like this, you get three meals every day, you get..." "You get a bath, shower every day, you know?" "So I'm feeling pretty good right now." "In the best shape of my life coming to fucking jail, dude." "Wow." "So you have everything from guys who got arrested for not having the proper fishing license to murderers." "That's right." "At my show, in your jail." "What if I talk about the death penalty onstage?" "I mean, that's a big issue in Texas." "Texas does have the death penalty as everybody knows, and there are people here who could be subject to that penalty." "This is a heavy state for the death penalty, man." "I have mixed feelings about it." "I kinda understand it." "You kill somebody, you might have to pay the ultimate price." "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." "Some of you look like you've given more than others." "But it's how we do it that seems inhumane." "You put somebody in an electric chair and fry 'em..." "That's cruel to me." "I think if you're on death row, you should be able to decide how you die, right?" ""Hey, Phil Johnson, you killed three people." "We find you guilty."" ""Yes, Your Honor, I'd like to ride a roller coaster without a seat belt."" ""I'll allow it!"" ""Your Honor, I'm a really big Lakers fan." "I'd like to eat Magic Johnson's Band-Aid."" "Uh..." "If I had to figure out how I was gonna die on death row," "I already know how I would want to die." "I'd want to OD on the three "P" s..." "Pizza, pot, and prostitutes." "I'd roll 20 fat joints, I'd order 20 large pizzas," "I'd order 20 fat hookers." "Whatever kills me first, I'm okay with." "I figure the hookers will eat the pizzas, and I'll die of the munchies." "I feel like if you can laugh at yourself, you can do anything in this world, and I want to try speed roasting volunteers in the audience." "I'll take as many of you guys as want to come up." "All right." "Both of you guys can come up." "All right, three?" "Huh?" "That guy up there, back there, four, huh?" "Come on, come on, five, right there." "All right." "Come over here." "Let's talk to Mexican Uncle Fester first." "What's your nationality?" "What's that?" "What's your nationality?" "I'm Jewish." "You don't have no Mexican in you?" "No, I don't want any either." "I'm Jewish, but don't tell those fucking Nazis up there." "Let me see those tats, dude." "Let me see those tats." "Come on." "Don't be shy, let me see those tats." "Oh, my God." "Whoo!" "Dude, let me just tell you something." "You know, the war is over, but tattoos are permanent." "Dude, that shit's supposed to be tilted." "You know that, right?" "All right, well, fuck it, you'll fix it in your next lifetime." "Anyway, what's happening, dude?" "What's your name?" "Robert Regalato." "Robert Regalato." "Yeah." "Why is your voice like that?" "What'd you fucking blow a horse?" "Are you all right?" "Dude, don't get too close, all right?" "Dude, every time I turn around, he gets creepier and creepier-looking." "Come over here, man." "How you doing?" "Oh, shit, how do they know you?" "They roast me all the time." "You do?" "You get roasted all the time?" "I don't give a fuck, so..." "You don't give a fuck?" "You look like you get a fuck every now and then." "This fucking guy." "Look at his fucking boots." "Dude, my boots..." "My boots are not fancy, dude." "I'm sorry you're so dressed up." "Making fun of my clothes, your shit don't even fit." "Dude, this is just for fun, okay?" "I don't care how many shirts you put under that, you're not gonna be tough, all right?" "How long you been in here, man?" "You look so young." "I've been in here nine months." "Nine months?" "Oh, just till she has the baby?" "I didn't say shit to that bitch." "Shh, be nice, come on, man." "You're on TV right now." "Say hi, you're on "Cops."" "Hi!" "I sell drugs." "And look at this guy behind you." "He looks like he could use you as a dildo." "Come here, come here, come here." "How you doing, man?" "How you doing?" "What's your name?" "Paul." "Paul?" "What's going on, Paul?" "Not a whole lot." "Not a whole lot?" "And what are you, the bouncer here?" "Jesus." "You got bigger tits than the women's dorm." "This was so fun." "What's up, dude?" "How you doing, man?" "All right." "What's your name, man?" "Jason Crockett." "Jason Crockett?" "Crash!" "They know you?" "Crash, Crash!" "How do you know..." "Oh, Crash?" "Why they call you Crash?" "'Cause I crash a lot." "Guess that explains the three missing teeth, huh?" "Least you're wearing this helmet." "Am I allowed to ask why you're here, Jason?" "Sure, drugs." "Oh, yeah?" "I'm an alleged dope dealer." "Alleged?" "And in reality, you're what, a kindergarten teacher?" "No, I feel you, man." "I hope it works out for you." "Yeah, me too." "What do you see in your future, Jason?" "Hopefully not 25 to life." "All right." "Tough to argue with that." "You sold drugs in the state of Texas?" "You get 25 years to life." "If you did that in Colorado, you'd be driving a Cadillac." "Wow." "Baking a cake." "You're a regular chef, man." "Yeah, that's what I plan to do when I get out." "Be a chef?" "Yeah, I'm going into culinary arts." "Wow!" "I'm gonna use my FAFSA." "Expand my mind and stay out of here." "Yeah." "That's good, man." "Positive attitude." "Yeah, it's kind of rehabilitation." "Use the skills that you learn in here, take it back out and do something different." "When do you put the knife in there?" "After it's done." "How you doing, man?" "All right." "What's going on?" "Shh." "Dude, what are you, a UFC fighter?" "Part time." "I didn't know UFC stood for "ugly fucking Chicano."" "What is this?" "Damn!" "Dude, you're a truly scary-loo..." "Someone just escaped." "Shit." "Wait, are you guys laughing extra loud 'cause somebody's trying to build a tunnel right now?" "Just making sure." "Back there, come up here, you guys." "Come up here, come up here, man." "What's up, dude?" "How you doing, man?" "All right." "I'm Jeff." "Insane." "Insane?" "Yeah." "Okay, uh..." "Insane..." "I assume they call you that because you're the most well-adjusted, nicest guy here." "So you're right." "Right?" "So you're right." "I'm right." "And when did you grow those pubic hairs on your chin?" "Couple years ago." "All right, Insane." "Can I check out some of your tattoos?" "Yeah." "Jesus." "Dude, that's like $20,000 worth of tattoos." "You could make bond for all these motherfuckers if you didn't have those tattoos." "What's this one over here?" "That's my..." "That's my daughter's name." "It's supposed to have been a rose." "Oh, yeah?" "Yeah." "Supposed to have been a rose, now it's just a penis with warts on it." "What's the worst part about being locked up?" "Missing my family." "I bet." "Do they visit you?" "They visit me every now and then." "Yeah." "What's your daughter's name?" "Liaza Serenity." "Oh, that's beautiful." "If she was here right now, what would you say to her, honestly?" "I'd tell her I love her and Daddy'll be home soon." "That's good enough." "I hope so." "You have kids waiting for you?" "Yeah, I got two kids." "How old are they?" "Six and three." "You miss 'em?" "Yeah, all day every day." "I got kids, man, so I do want 'em to be positive and get out." "Stay in, stay out." "You know what I'm saying?" "Who's waiting for you on the outside?" "My family, my wife, my kids." "My son was right there when I got arrested." "So he saw that." "Yeah, he was crying." "He knew what was happening?" "Yeah, I talked to him the other day." "He asked me where I was." "He said, "Daddy, you in jail?" And I was like, "Yeah."" "He already knows about jail." "I told him about it, all of it, jail, the streets, everything." "So that would be the worst-case scenario, is your son grows up and winds up in here." "Mm-hmm." "Frank, come up here for a second, Frank." "Oh, my God." "Frank, how you doing, man?" "I'm chilling, I'm all right." "Yeah?" "How come I saw you in a cell all by yourself today?" "What the hell happened?" "I'm not even making that shit up." "I'm getting ready for the show," "I was like getting my shit, getting..." "Walking down the hallway and I see Frank like in a giant room behind glass by himself going..." "Dude, what were you doing?" "No, they put me in there so I could calm down." "My wife come to see me today and she had a ticket and she got arrested 'cause she had a warrant, and I went off a little bit." "All right, first of all, she came to see me." "She happened to stop and see you." "I'm just teasing you, Frank, you know that, man." "I don't want to get you all riled up." "I ain't tripping, I bet you pay good, shit." "Fucking awesome." "Why are you so jittery?" "Are you okay?" "Are you nervous?" "No, not really." "Are the drugs in your ass starting to kick in?" "Frank, you kinda look like what happens when the morning-after pill kinda works." "What about the women?" "Do you think they'll have a sense of humor about their situation?" "Yeah, I think so." "Everybody likes to laugh." "If you will, put your hands together and help us welcome my good friend, Jeff Ross." "Wow." "What's up?" "!" "Crazy." "What's happening?" "All right, how you doing?" "This is awesome." "Wow." "How you doing?" "This is crazy." "This must be hell, all these women wearing the same outfit." "Orange is the new very black, look at you." "Man!" "You're beautiful." "What's going on?" "Have you been in here long enough to find me attractive?" "Whoo!" "Huh?" "Oh, look at this, this is awesome." "We got Justin Bieber here." "Take a bow, take a bow." "This is a trip for sure, man." "I have never done a show for all women before and I've never done a show inside a jail before, so this is huge for me." "Thank you." "Good thing about a jail show is, nobody gets up and walks out." "I wanted to fit in with the guys, so I shaved my head like an inmate." "Now I find myself touching..." "Doing this all the time, which is good, 'cause it keeps me from touching my balls in public." "Wow." "One guy, 50 female prisoners." "This is like the first scene of every porno I've ever seen." "I feel like I should be delivering a pizza or something." "How many people have been in here more than once?" "No kidding." "What is this, summer camp?" "How you doing, darling?" "I'm good." "How you doing?" "Hold on, whoa, whoa, whoa." "What's your..." "I'm Big Mama Joe, that's my name." "Big Mama Joe." "Wow." "It's raining men, hallelujah." "It's raining men, hallelujah?" "Yeah." "No shit." "You look so..." "Move back, stop it." "You're making people nervous." "Seriously, Kev, come on." "You can't follow me." "Stay over there." "We're doing a show over here." "This is between me and Big Mama Joe." "That's right." "And her three illegitimate daughters behind her." "There you go." "There you go." "I'm making some child support payments..." "What's that?" "Child support for them three illegitimate kids." "Child support?" "How about some boob support?" "You're all right." "Big Mama Joe, you're not my mama, are you?" "I might be." "You are adorable." "You are my favorite smurf, by the way." "This is so much fun." "It means so much that you ladies would have a sense of humor about your situation." "Oh, wait, what is this right here?" "Is that a baby in there?" "Yeah." "Really?" "Can you come here for a second?" "Can I see it?" "Oh, can I..." "What's your name?" "My name's Autumn." "Autumn?" "Autumn." "Oh, wow." "Why are you here?" "Did you rob a sperm bank?" "No." "You look so cute." "No." "Are you eating for two?" "Yeah." "Did you steal for two?" "That's awesome." "This is good for the baby, it's good for the baby to hear you laughing." "That's good for the baby's development." "Imagine if I was licking your pussy right now, how good it would be for the..." "For the baby's development." "I'm sorry if I go too far." "I'll be careful." "Who's got the balls to come up here?" "All right, come up here." "One, two, three." "All right, we got it." "Four, over there, over there." "All right, come on down, ladies." "That's it?" "And one more?" "What's going on?" "How you doing?" "Doing great, how are you?" "What's your name?" "Country." "Country?" "Wow." "Man." "Why do they call you Country?" "Because that's how I talk." "Obviously." "How long you been here, Country?" "I've been here about seven months." "Oh, yeah?" "Yeah." "Wow." "How you holding up?" "I'd be a lot better if I could be outside and free." "Who's waiting for you out there?" "My two kids." "Oh, yeah?" "Yeah." "That must be so hard, I can't even imagine." "Mm-hmm, it's hard, but I'm making it." "So you have to call the baby-sitter and say," ""I don't know when I'm gonna be home, but..."" ""I'll pay you soon."" ""Help yourself to whatever's in the fridge." Yeah." "This is so fun." "Hold on, Country." "Let's talk to..." "Unfold your arms." "Loosen up." "It's gonna be okay." "You look so beautiful in orange." "Thank you." "What's your name?" "Kat." "Kat?" "Yeah." "Me-ow." "What's the hardest part about being in jail right now?" "I miss my kids." "You miss your kids." "Yeah." "Well, and they can't come visit, can they?" "I don't want them to." "You don't want them to see you up here." "Especially with that hairstyle." "No shit." "Right?" "I'm sweating like a hooker talking to..." "What's that?" "What'd you say?" "I said I was sweating like a hooker talking to a beat cop." "Well, we got a beat cop, you're the hooker." "It's all working out." "This is so fun." "Let's talk to the librarian for a second." "Come right over here." "How you doing?" "I'm good, how are you?" "What's happening?" "What's your name?" "I'm Holly." "Holly." "Holy Holly." "What's your stor..." "Shh." "Tell him your last name." "Why, they teasing you?" "You got a funny last name?" "Yeah, it's Hooker." "That's why I came up here, Jeff." "Holly Hooker?" "What?" "Yeah, yeah." "Get outta here!" "Do you need reading glasses?" "Do you accept..." "Do you accept collect calls?" "What's that?" "Do you accept collect calls?" "Come here, come here, come here." "How you doing?" "How you doing?" "I'm good." "What's happening?" "Mmm... nothing." "Is anybody waiting for you on the outside?" "My babies, my two babies." "Everybody has two babies, that's a lot of babies." "That's not bad." "Big Mama had two since the show started." "That's your next woman." "What's that?" "Ain't she your next girlfriend?" "She would be, but she has to get back to work at the Country Bear jamboree over at Disneyland." "What's your name?" "I'm Shaina." "Shaina." "Were you arrested for, what?" "Theft." "I'm guessing it was..." "Theft, really?" "Yep." "I figured you were here for arson, 'cause my pants are on fire right now." "So, come here, Shaina." "Theft, that's pretty heavy." "Are you allowed to tell me what you stole?" "Baby food." "Cut the bullshit." "Baby food?" "Baby formula." "Baby formula?" "Mm-hmm." "From what, another baby?" "Are you married?" "Not yet." "Not yet?" "What do you think's more important?" "Sense of humor or penis size?" "Shh..." "Both." "All right, well," "I have an 11-inch sense of humor, so..." "All right, ladies." "Group hug, group hug." "Thank you." "Thank you, ladies." "Thank you." "My turn." "Here you go." "A lot of air balls here." "At least something's free around here." "Look at the white guys just not even participating." "They don't even want to play." "This basketball's got more lumps than your mama's ass right here." "Man." "Oh, shit!" "Oh!" "Is this normal, for the white guys and the black guys to hang or is it just 'cause I'm here?" "Ain't no racism in here, man." "Everybody love everybody." "I love Africans, Asians." "We still the same, we all made the same." "We all gotta do the time, so there ain't no point in hating each other doing it." "That's a good point." "Right here, right here." ""Brazos," that's an old Indian word, it means "My lawyer sucks."" "I feel connected to you guys in ways I never thought I would." "I'm a big believer in second chances." "Amen, man." "Bill Gates, when he was a teenager, he got arrested for driving without a license, went to jail for a couple days, came out, went in his garage, invented the computer." "Now he's the richest man in the world." "So my advice to you guys, when you get out of jail... rob Bill Gates." "Whoo!" "You know who Nelson Mandela is?" "Nazis, you know who Nelson Mandela is?" "He was a great black man, so go fuck yourselves." "Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years, and he used that time not to go crazy." "He used that time to completely change who he was." "He became Morgan Freeman, the greatest actor of our time." "I wrote a song for you guys." "Come on, black guys, help me keep the beat." "* The food in here stinks" "* The two-tone turkey made me ralph *" "Yeah!" "Yeah!" "Yeah!" "* I had to toss a salad just to get that taste out my mouth *" "* Stuck in Brazos County" "* Where the food just sucks *" "Yeah!" "Hey, but listen, dude." "* That's what you deserve *" "* When you rob a taco truck." "Let me see that haircut." "He's got the little thing on the back there." "Dude, what is that shit?" "Can I see the back of that for a second?" "No, I thought a squirrel ran by, I was like, "What the fuck?"" "Dude, you got the beard on backwards." "* This guy, he don't like me" "* He's in here for manslaughter *" "* I hope he don't figure out I finger-banged his daughter *" "* Stuck in Brazos County" "* With you bunch of thugs *" "Yeah!" "* And those guys up in the balcony *" "* With the swastika tattoos" "* Look like they could use a hug *" "* Thank you, Brazos County" "* My time here today has been intense *" "Yeah." "Yeah!" "* And I'll see y'all again on the outside *" "* Soon as y'all hop that fence *" "Good night, everybody." "Thank you." "Thank you." "Thank you." "Thank you." "Cheers." "Cheers." "Oh, my God." "Mmm." "That tastes better than freedom." "You got me." "All right!" "Enough with the bread already." "Forty, you've been around." "What's the story?" "Any words of wisdom you want to pass on to the younger people that are here?" "Stay in school." "Don't be a fool."

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January at our place is like Christmas all over again, friends and family… birthday celebrations Galore! We do the math and tease “the parents were “twitter-pated” like the bunnies in April”, but not dust bunnies we hope! Well, this year I don’t have to wonder what everbody is getting… No sillies, not clumps of dust-mites summer-saulting in a fuzz ball… Everybody, including ME are receiving the book of, “1000 Awesome Things!” “Put a little love in your heart, and the world will be a better place!” Listen to this song, it goes hand-in-hand with Awesome! Ha ha! This happens when your vacuum cleaner sucks at sucking too. Eventually, the repetitive walking across the rug causes everything to accumulate into Tribbles on the other side of the rug. Especially when you shed as much as I do! Or when you have brand new carpet … I have new carpet that sheds like crazy and the vacuum canister fills after like thirty swipes across the floor. If I don’t dump it then, it’s completely ineffective and leaves dustballs in its wake. Shedding carpet is not so awesome, but being able to just swoop up the fuzzballs makes it a little more fun. I was reading rdasia and saw ‘awesome’ and I thought I’d just google it out..i’m glad i did it. I’ve gone through some of your posts and they’re cool. it sort off remind u to count your blessings especially in trying times. Lets all of us find 1 awesome thing everyday and when get stuck we can always get some ideas from the bank of awesome wonders in life!!! Keep it up. We can actually rake hairballs at my house… but the hair is impossible to pick up otherwise! Just watched your ted talk and came to the site for the first time, it was just what I needed today… I knew just the place to save the link too, in my “blogs” folder, under “awesome”! Thanks for making the search for awesome that much easier! My daughters forehead print is still on the windshield where she bumped her head while we were parked and waiting for her father. I really do need to get all the dust bunnies picked up and ‘swept under the rug’ before the little gets here. Don’t need him sucking them up. I guess if you saw our back yard with 3’of snow you’d say we had a whole lot of dusting to do! If my kids came from school with this lesson I’d be meeting with their teacher. Putting dirty into beauty, how Dare! Our snow did not come from there, our snow is pure white, no dust mites, while we make snow angels, our snow crystals make rainbows! If this was true when you ate snow, you’d get fir balls in your throat! Be Awesome! Ha! That line is the main reason I commented today! Better with dog hair though! You can spend an hour chasing around little strands or wait a couple days, and just scoop it right up! Silly cocky dog hair! Another one bites the dust! I get these dustballs a lot in my apartment…especially in my hallway. It typically contains lint, hair and an occasional potato chip crumble of some sort. Not awesome to eat. Today I was in the bathroom with the fan on, and one of these dust balls came in under the door and scurried across the floor. Without my glasses, it looked like a ping-pong-ball-sized bug. It literally scared the poop out of me. ;) Feels almost as good as that feeling you get when you let the vaccuuming go for a long time and then when you finally do tackle the job, you can hear all the sand and “chunks” rattling and clanging their way up the pipe. NOW the job feels worthwhile. :) Appears it’s finally going to get warm again ! It has been a wild winter in 2010 everywhere in the county. Is seems just as if spring time won’t come subsequently! Looking towards summer time months ahead .

"Gurren Lagann 34)}sugita kisetsu wo there is no time to grieve over" "34)}nageku hima wa nai the seasons that have already passed" "34)}nido toh mayotte not to get lost" "34)}shimawanu yoni ever again" "34)}kazoe kirenai with humble" "34)}hon no sasayakana yet countless" "34)}son na kohkai regrets like that" "34)}kakaeta mama carried in my arms" "34)}sono senaka dake oikakete i've come this far" "34)}koko made kitan da chasing after you" "34)}sagashite ita always looking for the thing" "34)}boku dake ni dekiru koto which only i can do" "34)}ano hi kureta kotoba ga ima demo because those words you gave me that day" "34)}kono mune ni tashika ni todoiteru kara are still reaching my heart even now" "34)}kinoh yori mo kyoh boku wa even more than yesterday" "34)}boku no umarete kita wake ni kizuite yuku i am realizing the reason why i was born" "34)}kotae wa so itsumo koko ni aru the answer is always right here" "This is the tale of a man who blows a hole in the fate of a universe that is ruled by the endless cycle of violence." "the location of the Anti-Spiral's home planet has been discovered." "The ring that Simon gave to Nia was picked up by their Spiral scan." "he will see Nia. 367)}Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren with Simon on board." "363)}No. 1 Bridge with Simon on board." "Spiral Monitor activated. ...dimensional coordinates verified." "focus your perception on Nia." "I still can't believe it... right?" "Can we really use that thing to jump to her?" "too." "But I guess I can understand it if it boils down to Simon and Nia being connected by feelings that transcend time and space." "If you say so..." "I have confirmation." "Coordinate lock achieved." "Simon!" "We're ready to jump at any time!" "everyone!" "371)}Space Grapearl Squadron Hangar" "We're about to jump to the Anti-Spiral's stronghold. we can't afford to lose." "we'll win and we'll keep our Earth safe." "371)}Space Grapearl Squadron Hangar" "Can you believe this?" "How far are we gonna go?" "That's easy." "As far as it takes." "As far as it takes!" "we go wherever we have to go!" "Y'know?" "Let's go." "This is Team Dai-Gurren's last fight!" "Engines at full!" "activate!" "98)}Episode 24:" "This Second" "What the hell?" "We're there already?" "This is where their big boss is?" "naked lady out there in space!" "what are you talking..." "Nia!" "You came for me!" "didn't I?" "I had faith that you would." "I'll rescue you soon." "So is that the real Nia?" "I don't see how." "It looks like a holographic projection or something like that." "Simon." "The Anti-Spiral are more powerful than you think." "no matter what." "and we'll all go back to Earth together." "Nia!" "What's happening to her body?" "It's being analyzed." "Being analyzed?" "and grew up among humans." "Knowledge regarding Earth's humanity is stored within her body." "However..." "Why now?" "What need do they have to analyze that information at this point?" "where is the real Nia being kept?" "Let's try jumping again." "we'll go to where the real Nia is!" "What the hell is this?" "It's just like last time!" "now I understand." "That fake Nia is actively interfering with our jumps." "Crap!" "One more time!" "Foolish people of the Spiral." "Who's there?" "!" "Anti-Spiral..." "That voice is them?" "Where is the voice coming from?" "It's coming from all directions simultaneously!" "How can that be?" "This is a malleable universe." "They can control it according to their every whim." "It is no exaggeration to say that our enemy is the universe itself." "The universe itself? ...climbing up time and time again from the precipice of despair." "The foolishness of it all..." "But that is now at an end." "Your last ember of hope will flicker and go out when this girl vanishes." "it will no longer be possible to track their homeworld." "No way am I gonna let them do that!" "It's huge!" "Behold." "And learn." "These are your absolute despair given form." "We don't know the meaning of the word despair!" "Aretenborough!" "You got it!" "What was that?" "!" "An energy barrier." "Just like the Mugann have." "Or even more powerful!" "Then we know what we have to do!" "We're going out in Arc-Gurren Lagann!" "Right." "when did you have time to make these monsters?" "Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren's production capacity is downright terrifying." "You guys don't really need me anymore." "As if!" "Nobody but you could've come up with fighting something big with something big." "it's in your hands now." "Sure!" "Count on us." "darling." "Activity detected from enemy ships!" "Enemy ships are launching fighters!" "There's a huge number of them!" "Ship count is..." "off the charts!" "Check it out!" "Enemy fighters are far as the eye can see!" "we'll clear a path for you!" "You can take it from there!" "Understood!" "one last brawl!" "And I don't wanna see anybody holding back!" "Of course not!" "so I'm gonna give it everything I have!" "Y-You have kids?" "!" "when the hell did you have kids?" "!" "you know?" "S-Secrets?" "Contact with enemy formation in 10 seconds!" "Right!" "Let's do it!" "but they ain't so tough!" "We'll keep whittling them down." "Focus on attacking the enemy!" "Right!" "Simon!" "Hit it!" "This is bad!" "We can't take much more of this!" "Hang in there!" "We've almost got it!" "Crap!" "Simon!" "Are you okay?" "!" "Yeah." "let's give it another shot!" "We were damaged pretty badly." "And that thing is just too big." "This thing's drill isn't enough!" "You mean we need an even bigger drill?" "But where can we find something like that?" "I know where there's one!" "Leyte? ...you'll be able to use its drills!" "Transform?" "Indeed." "The human form is the one in which Spiral Power is manifested most powerfully. ...becoming a being which possesses power rivalling that of a micro cosmos." "huh?" "It is not that simple." "it necessary to funnel similarly vast quantities of Spiral Power directly into the main engine." "the only person possessing sufficient Spiral Power... huh?" "Looks like we have no other options. ...and you go transform Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann ASAP." "But are you guys gonna be okay without Arc-Gurren Lagann?" "Kittan!" "now..." "Who the hell do you think we are?" "too." "We'll buy you the time you need." "Simon." "Yeah!" "You owe us!" "You repay us soon!" "I'll be right back with a huge drill." "guys." "it's time for Team Dai-Gurren to take center stage!" "bozos!" "Let's take 'em down in serious style!" "Yeah!" "everybody..." "Gurren Lagann" "Gurren Lagann" "Space Sunbeam!" "they're having all the fun!" "you're drifting in too far." "You're part of the Grapearl Squadron!" "man..." "Rear guard duty stinks." "but that's the job we were assigned." "Enemy battleship has begun to move." "heading right for us." "it worries me that those big things haven't attacked us." "I wonder if they're part of some kind of trap?" "maintain our distance!" "Ultra Spiral Powerplant" "Concentrate on charging up our Spiral energy!" "Ultra Spiral Powerplant" "Ultra Spiral Powerplant (Simon) how much longer?" "Transformation will be possible with another 48%." "Another ten minutes or so." "I'll make sure everything is ready on this end before then." "Understood." "Keep your cool." "But even I can see now that your Spiral Power is off the charts." "You're one impressive specimen." "I have a bad feeling about this somehow." "What's this vibe I'm getting?" "Kittan!" "Yoko?" "Doesn't this seem strange to you?" "These guys are just too weak!" "it just means that WE are just too bad-ass!" "Splash number 108!" "What's this?" "Form up?" "Gimmy!" "There's the rally signal!" "Let's head back to the Dai-Gurren." "things were just getting good..." "What the hell?" "!" "What?" "!" "What's up with these guys?" "They got fast and agile all of a sudden..." "They were faking it!" "Those Grapearls can't handle 'em!" "We'll provide cover!" "return to the Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren!" "Kittan!" "Zorthy's gotten himself into trouble." "Kid and I are gonna go rescue him." "Dumbass!" "Weren't you listening?" "!" "We're supposed to fall back!" "You want us to abandon him?" "!" "I'll come with you!" "Kittan!" "now." "This is OUR job." "right?" "Iraak!" "You heard the man." "We'll leave you to it." "See ya!" "Kid!" "you hear me?" "!" "I'm gonna kick your ass!" "Balinbow!" "We'll follow the Grapearls and cover their backs!" "bastard!" "Son of a bitch!" "Zorthy!" "We're on our way!" "Hold out for a little bit longer!" "Kid!" "either." "didn't I?" "Zorthy!" "You bastards!" "Multiple high-temp thermal signatures have been launched from the enemy battleships." "Predicted target is this vessel!" "How many?" "!" "Thirteen in total!" "Lord Genome!" "Do we have any interceptor missiles?" "Of course." "Aretenborough!" "fire!" "Missiles?" "!" "Darry!" "We're gonna shoot down anything that gets through our flak curtain!" "Roger!" "Thermal signatures now making contact with interceptor missiles!" "How many did we get?" "Half of them!" "Six are left!" "Leave the rest to us!" "Four left!" "Kid." "I'm outta ammo over here." "same here." "Guess we're in sync right to the very end..." "Simon!" "so don't break her heart." "Iraak?" "Simon." "you hear?" "Kid... partner." "Let's show 'em that Team Gurren never gives in!" "Kid!" "Iraak!" "Selfish bastards went and bought it without us..." "Giant missile reading detected coming through a warp gate!" "We're not gonna let 'em have things their way anymore." "no!" "It's too close!" "Second missile inbound!" "Darry!" "You're too close to take the shot!" "But I have to take it down!" "Darry!" "this time from the port stern!" "From the opposite side this time?" "!" "Take evasive action!" "There's not enough time!" "We made it?" "By our defensive shield?" "Yes." "But it could not have handled a direct hit." "Someone must have rammed the missile." "It was Makken." "I picked up Mo-Shogun's signal at the very last second." "Makken..." "Darling... everybody!" "are you okay?" "Gimmy?" "We're going back to the Dai-Gurren together!" "you'll never make it back if you're towing me!" "Run by yourself!" "and you know it!" "Damn it..." "Gimmy!" "Darry!" "You okay?" "!" "Jorgun!" "Balinbow!" "now we go home!" "This isn't good..." "We won't last all the way back!" "our Twinboekun is as tough as it gets!" "I see ship!" "You're right!" "What do you think you're doing?" "!" "Gimmy!" "You protect Darry!" "too!" "Jorgun!" "Balinbow!" "I'll never forget." "this second..." "Threshold achieved." "Simon!" "Begin transformation!" "Gravity field emanating off the port side!" "What in the world is that wall?" "I'm not picking up anything on radar!" "How can there be a sea in space?" "!" "How can this be?" "we're in trouble!" "hurry!" "It's no use!" "We don't have enough power!" "The Spiral gauge is falling steadily!" "What?" "!" "It is a trap." "We walked right into it?" "To Be Continued... 62)}Dakara kakko tsukenaide Motto jibun o shinjite have more faith in yourself." "Peace" "Peace" "62)}Nariyama nai kodou ga itsumo Itazura ni kokoro ni tane o maku" "The relentless beat is always idly sowing seeds in my heart." "62)}Sono tane ga kibou no hana o sakasukamo shirenai maybe those seeds will bloom into flowers of hope?" "62)}Dakara koushite yume o egaku koto ga dekirunda" "That's what lets me dream like I do." "62)}Bunan souna nukemichi ga Ukande wa kiete iku" "Quick and easy shortcuts appear and fade away." "62)}Souyatte boku wa tamesarete douyatte omoi todokeyou?" "how can I make my dreams come true?" "34)}Mayowazu ni mae e susunde" "I continue ever onward." "62)}Dakara kakko tsukenaide Motto jibun o shinjite have more faith in yourself." "Peace" "Peace 62)}Dakara kakko tsukenaide Kitto hana wa saku hazusa" "I know those flowers are gonna bloom." "Peace!" "Peace!" "34)}Minna no peace it's all right!" "it's all right." "34)}Love Rock notte OK!" "it's OK!" "34)}Minna de utau Song For You" "It's a Song For You we all sing." "My Song" "34)}Minna no peace it's all right!" "it's all right." "34)}Love Rock notte OK!" "it's OK!" "34)}Minna de utau Song For You" "It's a Song For You we all sing." "My Song" "113)\fscx261.25\fscy157.5}Next Time" "This sea in space is a Spiral graveyard!" "Countless crushed hopes lie buried in its darkness." "We will find tomorrow's victory using the flower that blossoms in the face of death!" "98)}I Accept Your Last Wish I Accept Your Last Wish"."

500 F.Supp.2d 942 (2007) MITSUI SUMITOMO INSURANCE COMPANY, LTD., (a foreign entity) a/s/o Alpine Electronics, Inc., Plaintiff, v. MOORE TRANSPORTATION, INC., an Indiana entity, ARL, Inc., d/b/a American Road Lines, a Pennsylvania entity, and Mr. James Evans, an Indiana resident, Defendants. No. 05 C 4525. United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division. May 24, 2007. *943 *944 John Francis Horvath, Duane Charles Weaver, Horvath & Lieber, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff. Stephen C. Veltman, Pretzel & Stouffer, Chtd., Chicago, IL, for Defendants. MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER PALLMEYER, District Judge. This case arises out of the mysterious disappearance of 1,500 CD-tape audio units that were to be shipped from Biatorbagy, Hungary for delivery in Greenwood, Indiana in 2004. When the container that was supposed to contain the cargo eventually arrived in Greenwood, it was empty. Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Company, Ltd. ("Plaintiff"), a commercial insurance firm headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, insured Alpine Electronics, Inc. ("Alpine"), the purchaser of the cargo, for its loss. Defendant ARL, Inc. ("ARL"), a Pennsylvania corporation, is an interstate carrier of goods and contracted to transport the cargo from Chicago to Greenwood. Defendant Moore Transportation, Inc. ("Moore"), an Indiana corporation, procured the shipping contract for ARL. Defendant James Evans ("Evans") worked as an independent contractor for ARL and transported the container that was supposed to contain the cargo from Chicago to Greenwood. Plaintiff paid Alpine $408,012.00 for the lost cargo and is the subrogee of Alpine's rights against Defendants Moore, ARL, and Evans. Against each Defendant, Plaintiff brings a claim under the Carmack Amendment, 49 U.S.C. § 14706 (Counts I, IV, VII), a claim for breach of "intermodal transportation" contract (II, V, VIII), and a claim for breach of obligations as carrier and/or bailee (III, VI, IX). Plaintiff has moved for summary judgment against Defendant ARL on Plaintiff's Carmack Amendment claim (Count IV). Defendants have moved for summary judgment on all counts. For the reasons stated below, Plaintiffs motion for summary judgment is denied. Defendants' motion for summary judgment is granted as to Counts V, VI, and VII and is denied as to all remaining counts. BACKGROUND[1] A. Transport of Container No. NYKU 608014-7 Around March 29, 2004, Alpine of Hungary sold 1,500 CD-tape audio units ("the cargo") to Alpine Electronics Inc. for Q *945 220,500. (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 5; Declaration of Attila Cserepes ¶ 6, Ex. C to Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt.) On March 29, 2004, Alpine Electronics was invoiced for the sale of the cargo, which was to be delivered to Alpine of America in Greenwood, Indiana.[2] (3/29/04 Invoice, Ex. 1 to Cserpes Decl.) The events that followed are in dispute. According to Plaintiff, Alpine of Hungary loaded the shipment into Container No. NYKU 608014-7 ("the container") in Biatorbagy, Hungary. (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 7.) In support of this assertion, Plaintiff cites the affidavit of Attila Cserepes, the logistics manager at Alpine's manufacturing facility in Hungary; Cserepes supervises the sale and shipment of products manufactured by Alpine of Hungary. (Cserepes Decl. ¶ 3.) Cserepes attested that "Alpine of Hungary loaded the 1,500 units in 250 cartons on 13 palettes into Container No. NYKU608014-7 and, thereafter, in the presence of the customs representative, affixed Seal No. NYK 0269869 to the container doors on March 29, 2004." (Id. ¶ 11.) Defendants dispute this fact, noting that Cserepes did not state that he witnessed the loading of the cargo. (Def. LR 56.1 Resp. ¶ 7.) Notably, although Cserepes attested that he had personal knowledge of the facts in his declaration, (Cserepes Decl. ¶ 1), he does not state that he, or anyone else in particular, witnessed or was responsible for the physical loading of the cargo. Cserepes' vague statement, the only evidence to which Plaintiff cites to support that the cargo was loaded into the container in Hungary, does not satisfy the court. The court therefore concludes that there is a genuine dispute as to whether or not Alpine of Hungary actually loaded the cargo into Container No. NYKU 608014-7. Plaintiff also contends that, when the 1,500 units were loaded into the container, they were in "good order and condition," again citing only Cserepes' declaration. (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 8, citing Cserepes Decl. ¶ 8.) Cserepes also attested that, prior to shipment, all electronics items are inspected and tested by Alpine of Hungary to ensure they are in good order and condition, and that items that are not in good order and condition are not allowed to be shipped. (Cserepes Decl. ¶¶ 4-5, 12.) Again, however, because Plaintiff has failed to establish that the cargo was actually loaded, the court does not now reach a conclusion as to whether the cargo was in good order and condition when loaded. According to Plaintiff, after the cargo was loaded into the container, employees of Alpine of Hungary and a customs agent, Jozsefne Mizerak, affixed Seal No. NYK 0269869 and another seal, which the parties do not discuss in any detail, to the container's doors. (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶¶ 9-10.) It is undisputed that Mizerak was responsible for verifying that the seals were properly affixed and that Seal No. NYK 0269869 was a "bolt seal," which is a seal that can only be removed from the container's door handles by being cut. (Id. ¶¶ 11, 14.) Defendants admit that the seal was affixed to the container as described, but they contest Plaintiffs statement that this occurred after the cargo was loaded, a statement supported only by Mizerak's declaration. (Def. LR 56.1 Resp. ¶ 9.) Defendants note that, although Mizerak attested that no shipment is allowed to leave Alpine's facility unless the loading of the shipment is verified by a warehouse administrator, *946 she also attested that it is not her responsibility to physically attend the loading of the cargo. (Id.; Declaration of Jozsefne Mizerak ¶¶ 2, 5, Ex. D to Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt.) The court therefore finds it to be undisputed that Seal No. NYK 0269869 was affixed to Container No. NYKU 608014-7. Without competent evidence relating to the loading of the cargo, however, the court is not satisfied that the cargo was loaded before the seal was affixed and finds this fact to be in dispute. Container No. NYKU 608014-7 was transported from "Biatorbagy, Hungary to Chicago, Illinois under New Wave Logistics (USA), Inc., Bill of Lading AOHU XXXXXXXXX dated April 7, 2004, and NYKS Line Waybill No. NYKS XXXXXXXXX (Bremerhaven to Chicago, Illinois), also dated April 7, 2004." (Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 17.) On April 26, 2004, ARL received Container. No. NYKU 608014-7 at the CSX rail yard in Chicago for transport to Alpine Electronics Manufacturing of America, Inc. in Greenwood, Indiana. (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶¶ 3, 6,12.) Defendants contend that Defendant ARL contracted with a company named NYK Lines[3] to transport a sealed container, Container No. NYKU 608014, from Chicago, Illinois to the "Phoenix Warehouse" in Greenwood, Indiana, on or about April 26, 2004. (Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 1; see Defendants, ARL, Inc. and Mr. James Evans' Answer to Plaintiffs Amended Complaint at Law ¶¶ 3, 7, Ex. B to Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment ("Def. SJ Mot.").)[4] Though Plaintiff admits that ARL contracted to transport this sealed container, Plaintiff disputes that ARL contracted with NYK Lines to do so. (Pl. LR 56.1 Resp. ¶ 1.) Plaintiff points to the testimony of Bruce Moore, `an employee of Defendant Moore Transportation;[5] Moore Transportation procures shipping business for ARL and procured the shipment of the subject container from Chicago to Indiana for ARL. (Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 4.)[6] Mr. Moore testified that his contact regarding "the pick-up number" for the container was MOL Logistics, "an arm of Mitsui," that he had not had any conversations with a representative of NYK Lines regarding the incident in question, and that ARL billed MOL Logistics for the shipment. (Deposition of Bruce Moore at 29-30, 47, Ex. A to Pl. LR 56.1 Resp.)[7] Based on this testimony, the court *947 concludes there is a genuine dispute as to whether Defendant ARL contracted with NYK Lines to transport the container from Chicago to Greenwood. The parties agree that ARL invoiced MOL Logistics for ARL's services in connection with the shipment of Container No. 608014-7 on April 26 and April 27, 2004. (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 28.) In April 2004, Defendant James Evans was an independent contractor working as a driver for ARL. (Deposition of James Evans at 89, Ex. E to Def. SJ Mot.; Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 12.)[8] According to Defendants, other than dispatching Evans to pick up the subject container, Defendant Moore had no other involvement with the shipment. (Def. LR 56.1 Stint. ¶ 7.) The cited testimony, however, does not support this assertion; Mr. Moore testified that he was involved in the booking of the shipment with Alpine, and that he attended a meeting in connection with the shipment after the container was delivered without the cargo. (Moore Dep. at 7-8, 19-20, 28-29.) The parties agree that when Defendants ARL and Evans received the container at the. CSX rail yard in Chicago, Seal No. NYK 0269869 was intact and properly affixed to the container's doors. (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 13.) Defendants assert further that the seals were intact upon delivery of the container in Greenwood, Indiana. (Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 9.) Plaintiff attempts to dispute this fact, noting Evans's testimony that, upon arriving at the Greenwood facility, he cut the "bolt seals" on the container with bolt cutters before backing into "the docks"; Evans characterized this as the regular procedure he would follow when he delivered containers to that particular facility through and including April 27, 2004. (Evans Dep. at 34-38, 42; Pl. LR 56.1 Stint. ¶ 16.)[9] Evans's practice of cutting the bolt seals before backing into the docks is not inconsistent with Defendant's assertion that the containers were still sealed at the point he arrived at the Greenwood facility. (Id.) If the seals were intact at the time Evans arrived at the Greenwood facility, they must also have been intact when Evans departed Chicago with the container. The Department of Transportation and ARL company policy require drivers, such as Evans, to keep an accurate driver's log. (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶¶ 21-22.) Evans testified that, prior to April 27, 2004, he had received a copy of ARL's Policies and Procedures Manual and had at least skimmed it. (Id. ¶ 26.) This manual states that "on duty time includes time driving the vehicle and performing any work of the carrier, including time related to unloading or the giving or receiving receipts for unloading, but excludes time spent resting in the sleeper berth." (Id. ¶ 27.) Evans' log indicates that he was in the sleeper from 11:00 p.m. on April 26, 2004 until 11:30 a.m. on April 27, 2004. (Id. ¶ 23.) In fact, however, on April 27, 2004, Evans signed *948 the Visitor's Register at the Phoenix warehouse at 6:00 a.m., after he had entered the lot and cut the seal from the container's doors. (Id. ¶ 24.) Evans left the Phoenix warehouse at 11:30 a.m. on April 27, 2004. (Id. ¶ 25.) The parties also agree that Evans slept "somewhere" between the time he received the container in Chicago and the time he tendered delivery at the Phoenix warehouse in Greenwood. ARL issued a bill of lading "for the receipt and transportation of Container No. NYKU 608014 from CSX Chicago to the Alpine Warehouse in Greenwood[,]" Indiana; this bill of lading did not reflect the weight of the subject container. (Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶¶ 2-3.) Plaintiff admits that ARL submitted this bill of lading to Alpine upon Evans's delivery of the subject container in Greenwood. (Pl. LR 56.1 Resp. ¶ 2; 4/27/04 Bill of Lading, Ex. C to Def. SJ Mot.)[10] Dave Furbee, an Alpine employee, signed the ARL bill of lading when Evans arrived at the Phoenix warehouse and noted on the bill of lading, "seal in tact [sic]." (4/27/04 Bill of Lading; Deposition of Dave Furbee at 35-36, Ex. F to Def. SJ Mot.)[11] It is undisputed that when Furbee made this notation, Evans had already used bolt cutters to cut the seal. (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 18.) In his deposition, Furbee acknowledged that although he "went out and saw that the seal was on the ground"`and had no reason to think that the seal was not intact when it came into the lot, he did not actually see Evans cut the seal. (Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 12; Furbee Dep. at 14, 35-36.) Furbee recalled that he may have told a co-worker, Rajeana Ray, that he did see Evans cut the seal, but Ray herself has no such recollection. (Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 11; Deposition of Rajeana Ray at 21-22, Ex. C to Def. LR 56.1 Stmt.) For his part, Evans testified that he observed an individual in Alpine's office, some sixty feet away, when he cut the seal, but he admits that no one was present with him at the back of the container doors at the time he cut the seal. (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 19-20.) Evans had made hundreds of deliveries to the Phoenix warehouse prior to April 27, 2004 and had never before delivered an empty container or a container where a shortage was noted. (Id. ¶ 36.) The parties agree that on this occasion, however, when Evans opened the doors to the container at the Phoenix warehouse, there were some "skids" and plastic shrink wrap in the container but the cargo was not there. (Id. ¶ 17.) Plaintiff Mitsui paid Alpine $408,012.00 under Policy No. 945-440098 for the loss of the cargo. (Id. ¶ 38.) B. Investigations of the Lost Cargo On May 4, 2004, Michael Newstead, an investigator for Signum Services Limited, *949 was assigned to investigate the reported theft of the shipment that is the subject of this case. (Declaration of Michael Edmund Newstead ¶ 5, EL I to Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt.) Newstead issued an eight-page report, dated July 22, 2004, detailing his investigation. (Def. Add'l LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 1.)[12] Newstead inspected the container after Evans returned it empty to Chicago and found no evidence that the container had been tampered with in a manner such that the cargo could have been removed from' the container without cutting the seals on the container doors. (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 32.) Newstead also inspected the seal that had been cut from the container and confirmed that the seal was a "high security Bolt Seal," removable, if properly affixed, only by cutting. (Id. ¶ 34.) Newstead traced the transport path of the container from Hungary to Chicago and found no opportunity for anyone to have tampered with it in any manner such that the subject goods could have been removed without cutting the seal. (Id. ¶ 35.) Newstead did observe differences in the pins that secured the right and left door handles of the container; he noted that the "pins on the right hand door bar handles are retained to the door bars with rusty pins, whilst the left door bar handles are secured with galvanised pins." (Def. Add'l LR 56. Stmt. ¶ 2; Report on Theft of Electronic Equipment from Container Number NYKU 6080147 at 5, Ex. J to Def. LR 56.1 Add'l Stmt. ("Newstead Report").) Apart from this difference, however, Newstead found no difference in the composition of the pins and "no significant door surface behind these fittings." (Newstead Report at 5.) Newstead noted that upon the container's arrival in Bremerhaven, Germany, on its route to the United States, the seal, which is checked at the terminal, was recorded as Seal No. 0269868, not No. 0269869, which was the seal originally affixed. (Def. LR Add'l 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 3.) Newstead opined, however, that this may have been a human recording error, given that the number recorded in Bremerhaven was actually "issued by NYK" for unrelated cargo shipped to Singapore. (Newstead Report at 3.) Further, upon arrival at the CSX yard in New Jersey on April 19, 2004, it was noted that Seal No. 0269869 was in place on the container. (Def. LR Add'l 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 4.) Robert Sinnokrak is in the business of inspecting cargo, including ocean containers, and has been in that business for more than thirty years. (Deposition of Robert Louis Sinnokrak at 6, 16, Ex. K to Def. Add'l LR 56.1 Stmt.) At the request of NYK Line, Sinnokrak also inspected the container on April 30, 2004. (Def. LR 56.1 Add'l Stmt. ¶ 6; Sinnokrak Dep. at 8-9.)[13] Sinnokrak's inspection of the container in this case revealed that "the fasteners that hold the handles, the operating handles onto the actual locking bars were different"; the hinge pin on the left door "appeared to be either of stainless steel or galvanized" and the pin on the right door "seemed to be of a carbon steel type that was oxidized or rusted." (Def. Add'l LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 7.) Sinnokrak acknowledged *950 that he had no way of knowing what sort of pin stock was available or whether the different pins were a function of running out of pins, though he thought it seemed "a little bit odd" to have dissimilar pins on a relatively new container. (Sinnorak Dep. at 23-24.) Sinnokrak also testified that if someone were to remove these pins, it might be possible for the door to be manipulated open while the seal remained intact. (Def. Add'l LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 8.)[14] The court considers the parties' motions for summary judgment in light of the facts as outlined above. DISCUSSION As noted earlier, Plaintiff brings claims against all three Defendants — ARL, Moore Transportation, and James Evans — under the Carmack Amendment, 49 U.S.C. § 14706, and common law theories. Plaintiff seeks summary judgment only on its Carmack Amendment claim against Defendant ARL (Count IV). Plaintiff's motion is supported by a memorandum of law in which Plaintiff argues that ARL is subject to the Carmack Amendment as the delivering carrier of the cargo, that Plaintiff has established a prima facie case under the Carmack Amendment, and that ARL cannot establish facts that would allow it to escape such liability. (Plaintiffs Memorandum in Support of its Motion for Summary Judgment Against ARL, Inc. on Count IV ("Pl.Mem.") at 4-7.) Defendants have moved for summary judgment on all counts. They argue in their motion that the Carmack Amendment is Plaintiffs exclusive remedy against a carrier, and that Plaintiff is therefore precluded from bringing its common law claims against ARL. (Def. SJ Mot. ¶¶ 3-4.) ARL further argues that Plaintiff cannot establish that it tendered cargo to ARL so as to maintain its Carmack Amendment claim. (Id. ¶ 5.) Plaintiffs Carmack Amendment claims against Defendants Moore and Evans should also be dismissed, according to these Defendants, because they are not covered by the Carmack Amendment. (Id. ¶ 6.) Finally, Defendants argue that Defendant Moore was not involved in the physical carriage or control of the goods and cannot be held liable under either of, Plaintiffs common law theories, and that Defendant Evans cannot be held liable under Plaintiffs common law theories because he did not have a contract of carriage with Plaintiff and because he received and delivered a sealed container. (Id. ¶¶ 7-9.) Defendants' arguments, outlined above, are laid out in a cursory manner in their motion for summary judgment but are otherwise undeveloped. Defendants' motion for summary judgment refers to a "Memorandum of Law in Support of their Motion for Summary Judgment" that they purportedly "incorporate[d] by reference," (Def. SJ Mot. ¶ 9), but no such memorandum was filed with the court, nor was it served on Plaintiff. (Plaintiffs Response to Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment ("Pl. SJ Resp.") at 10.) Nevertheless, Defendants' reply brief makes no mention of the failure to file an opening memorandum and focuses on just one claim, Plaintiffs Carmack Amendment claim against ARL (Count IV). Defendants present no arguments on any of the eight other counts. (See Defendants' Reply Brief in Support of Their Motion for Summary Judgment ("Def. SJ Reply").) *951 The law of the Seventh Circuit is clear: "Perfunctory or undeveloped arguments are waived." Estate of Moreland v. Dieter, 395 F.3d 747, 759 (7th Cir.2005) (citing Colburn v. Trs. of Ind. Univ., 973 F.2d 581, 593 (7th Cir.1992); Hunter v. Allis-Chalmers Corp., 797 F.2d 1417 (7th Cir. 1986)); see also Freeman United Coal Mining Co. v. Office of Workers' Comp. Programs, Benefits Review Bd., 957 F.2d 302, 305 (7th Cir.1992) (court has no obligation to consider an argument that "is merely raised, but not developed, in a party's brief') (citation omitted); United States v. Dunkel, 927 F.2d 955, 956 (7th Cir.1991) (per curiam) ("A skeletal `argument', really nothing more than an assertion, does not preserve a claim."). To the extent Defendants have failed to develop an argument that Plaintiff disputes, the court will view such an argument as waived. A. Summary Judgment Standard Summary judgment is appropriate when "the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." FED. R. Civ. P. 56(c); Timmons v. Gen. Motors Corp., 469 F.3d 1122, 1125 (7th Cir.2006) (citing Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322-23, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986)). In determining whether a genuine issue of material fact exists, the court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party and draw all reasonable inferences in the non-moving party's favor. Gillis v. Litscher, 468 F.3d 488, 492 (7th Cir.2006) (citing Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986)). The moving party has the initial burden to show that the evidence is insufficient to establish a material element of the non-moving party's case. Celotex Corp., 477 U.S. at 322-23, 106 S.Ct. 2548. If the moving party meets this burden, the non-moving party must then "come forward with specific facts showing there is a genuine issue for trial." Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986). If the evidence supporting the non-moving party's claim is insufficient for a reasonable jury to return a verdict in its favor, the court will grant summary judgment. Id. B. Carmack Amendment Claims Under the Carmack Amendment, 49 U.S.C. § 14706, shippers can "recover for actual losses to their property caused by carriers." Allied Tube & Conduit Corp. v. S. Pacific Transp. Co., 211 F.3d 367, 369 (7th Cir.2000) (citing Gordon v. United Van Lines, Inc., 130 F.3d 282, 285-86 (7th Cir.1997)). In order to recover damages under the Carmack Amendment, the shipper must establish a prima facie case that "(1) the goods in question had been delivered to the carrier in good condition; (2) the goods had arrived at the final destination in a damaged or diminished condition; and (3) the damages can be specified." See Pharma Bio, Inc. v. TNT Holland Motor Express, Inc., 102 F.3d 914, 916 (7th Cir.1996) (citing Mo. Pacific R.R. Co. v. Elmore & Stahl, 377 U.S. 134, 138, 84 S.Ct. 1142, 12 L.Ed.2d 194 (1964)); see also Am. Nat. Fire Ins. Co. v. Yellow Freight Sys. Inc., 325 F.3d 924, 929 (7th Cir.2003) (citing Allied Tube & Conduit Corp., 211 F.3d at 369) (stating the elements of prima facie case for liability under the Carmack Amendment). If the shipper makes such a showing, the carrier then bears the burden of showing that it was free from negligence and "that the damage to the cargo was due to one of the excepted causes relieving the carrier of liability." Am. Nat. Fire Ins. Co., 325 F.3d at 929 (citing Allied Tube & Conduit Corp., 211 F.3d at 369). The excepted *952 causes that relieve the carrier of liability are: (1) acts of God; (2) acts of the public enemy; (3) acts of the shipper itself; or (4) the inherent vice or nature of the goods. Allied Tube & Conduit Corp., 211 F.3d at 369-70 (citing Miss. Pacific R.R. Co., 377 U.S. at 137 n. 2, 84 S.Ct. 1142). i. Moore Transportation (Count I) Defendant Moore moves for summary judgment on Plaintiffs Carmack Amendment claim against it. Defendants' motion for summary judgment states that Moore cannot be held liable under the Carmack Amendment because it is "not a licensed carrier within the meaning of the Carmack Amendment," and that "a freight broker such as Moore . . . is not a carrier for purposed [sic] of the Carmack Amendment. . . ." (Def. SJ Mot. ¶ 6.) Plaintiff contends that although Defendants label Defendant Moore as a "broker" with respect to the shipment of cargo from Chicago to Indiana, Bruce Moore's testimony raises questions of fact as to whether Defendant Moore qualifies as a "carrier" or a "freight forwarder" within the meaning of the Carmack Amendment. (Pl. SJ Resp. at 2-4.) Citing Lumbermen Mutual Casualty Company v. GES Exposition Services, Inc., 303 F.Supp.2d 920 (N.D.Ill. 2003), Plaintiff argues that whether a company is a broker or a carrier/freight forwarder "is not determined by how it labels itself, but by how it holds itself out to the world and its relationship to the shipper." Id. at 921 (citing Custom Cartage, Inc. v. Motorola, Inc., No. 98-C-5182, 1999 WL 965686, at *11-12 (N.D.Ill. Oct.15, 1999)). The court need not pass on the merits of Plaintiffs argument at this time. Defendants' motion merely states that Moore is not a licensed carrier under the Carmack Amendment and that a "freight broker such as Moore . . . is not a carrier" under the Amendment. (Def. SJ Mot. ¶ 6.) Defendant Moore does not develop this argument in light of the facts or law and the court will not do so on the Defendant's behalf. Thus, the court denies summary judgment on Count I. ii. ARL, Inc. (Count IV) Both Plaintiff and ARL move for summary judgment on Count IV, Plaintiffs Carmack Amendment claim against ARL. Plaintiff argues that it has established the elements of a prima facie case under the Carmack Amendment — that it delivered the shipment to Defendant ARL in good condition, that ARL delivered it in a diminished condition, and that the damages can be specified. According to Plaintiff, the record shows no disputes concerning these facts: that Alpine of Hungary loaded the shipment into Container No. NYKU 608014-7 in good condition with Seal No. 0269869 properly affixed, that this seal was properly affixed when Defendant ARL received the container, and that the cargo was not in the container when ARL tendered delivery. (Pl. Mem. at 5-7.) Thus, Plaintiff argues, ARL is required to establish that the loss of the shipment did not occur as a result of its own negligence and that the loss was the result of one of the excepted causes under the Carmack Amendment. (Id.) ARL does not dispute that it is a "carrier" within the meaning of the Carmack Amendment, but contends that there is a question of fact regarding whether goods were ever tendered to ARL for delivery in good condition. (Defendants' Response Brief in Opposition to Plaintiffs Motion for Summary Judgment ("Def. SJ Resp.") at 2.) ARL notes that the container was sealed when ARL received it and when it was picked up by Evans, the weight of the container was not reflected on the bill of lading, and the container was sealed upon its delivery to the Phoenix warehouse in Greenwood, Indiana. (Def. SJ Mot. ¶ 5; Def. SJ Reply at 2.) In ARL's view, these same facts — that ARL picked up and delivered a sealed container — entitle *953 it to summary judgment on Count IV. (Def. SJ Mot. ¶ 5.) The court finds disputes of fact precluding summary judgment for either party on the Carmack Amendment claim against ARL. First, as described earlier, the parties dispute whether Alpine of Hungary actually loaded the relevant cargo-1,500 CD-tape audio units — into Container No. NYKU 608014-7, the container that ARL eventually took possession of and delivered to Greenwood. Further, the bill of lading issued by ARL for Container No. NYKU 608014-7 did not reflect the weight of the subject container when it was in ARL's possession, which could have confirmed whether the cargo was in the container when it was delivered to ARL. (Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 3.)[15] Without question, a dispute over whether Alpine of Hungary initially loaded the cargo is material to the question of whether the cargo was delivered to ARL. This question of fact defeats Plaintiffs motion for summary judgment on its Carmack Amendment claim against ARL. See Am. Nat. Fire Ins. Co., 325 F.3d at 929 (shipper must show "delivery in good condition" to establish a prima facie case under the Carmack Amendment). Nor is ARL entitled to summary judgment on Count IV. While the court cannot find, based on the evidence set forth, that the cargo was delivered to ARL in good condition, it also cannot conclude that the goods were not delivered to ARL in good condition. Thus, it remains a distinct possibility that, on a more complete factual record, Plaintiff may be able to establish that ARL did in fact receive the cargo in good condition, in which case ARL would then bear the burden of showing that it was free from negligence and "that the damage to the cargo was due to one of the excepted causes relieving the carrier of liability." Am. Nat. Fire Ins. Co., 325 F.3d at 929 (citing Allied Tube & Conduit Corp., 211 F.3d at 369). *954 Evidence that the container was sealed when ARL took possession of the container and when it was delivered to the warehouse does not alter the court's conclusion. (Def. Sir Mot. at ¶ 5.) It is true that the parties do not dispute that the container when sealed when ARL and Evans received it, (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 13), nor does the court find a dispute as to whether the bolt seal was intact upon delivery of the container in Greenwood, Indiana. (Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 19.) These facts do not, however, establish conclusively that the cargo was not in the container at the time the container was delivered to ARL or that the loss did not occur while the container was in ARL's possession. Though the parties agree that a bolt seal on the container would have to be cut off to be removed from the container's door handles, (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 14), Sinnokrak testified that it is possible that someone could open the container by removing pins from the door while keeping the seal intact. (Def. Add'l LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 8.) Based on this testimony, it is possible that the cargo was delivered to ARL in good condition even if the container was sealed when ARL received it and when ARL delivered it in Greenwood. Newstead, on the other hand, reached a contrary conclusion; he found no evidence that the cargo could have been removed from the container without cutting the seals on the container's doors and concludes the cargo must have been in the container upon its delivery to ARL in Chicago. (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 32; Newstead Report at 7-8.) The court concludes there is a material dispute as to whether the cargo was ever delivered to ARL. Citing Bally, Inc. v. M.V. Zim America, 22 F.3d 65 (2d Cir.1994), ARL contends that the fact that a container is sealed the entire time it is in a carrier's custody undermines an argument that damage to the goods occurred when the container was in the carrier's custody. Id. at 70. While Defendant is correct that Bally stands for this proposition, Bally is not persuasive here. The Bally court stated that "[d]elivery by a carrier of a container with intact seal does not conclusively prove that loss did not occur while the container was in the carrier's possession," and emphasized that the importance of intact seals is a case-specific analysis. Id. at 70. In this case, the conflicting conclusions of Newstead and Sinnokrak regarding whether the subject container could have been opened without breaking the bolt seal prohibits the court from relying on the intact seals to conclude that damage could not have occurred while the container was in ARL's custody. Given the undisputed facts that the seals were intact when ARL obtained and delivered the container, if it is true that the cargo could not have been removed from the container without cutting the seals, then it cannot be that the cargo was in the container when ARL obtained the container. This additional dispute confirms that summary judgment on Count IV is not proper.[16] *955 Even if Plaintiff could establish its prima facie case under the Carmack Amendment, this dispute between Newstead and Sinnokrak over whether the cargo could have been accessed while keeping the container's seals intact still precludes a grant of summary judgment on Count IV. After all, if the cargo could have been accessed without breaking the bolt seal on the container, it remains possible that even if damage to the cargo occurred while it was in ARL's possession, ARL may be able to show that damage to the cargo "was due to one of the excepted causes relieving the carrier of liability." Am. Nat. Fire Ins. Co., 325 F.3d at 929 (citing Allied Tube & Conduit Corp., 211 F.3d at 369). The court therefore denies summary judgment to both Plaintiff and ARL on Count IV. iii. James Evans (Count VII) Plaintiff does not contest that Defendant Evans was not a carrier within the meaning of the Carmack Amendment. (Pl. SJ Resp. at 9.) The court therefore grants Defendants' motion for summary judgment as to Count VII. C. Breach of Intermodal Transportation Contract In Counts II, V, and VI I, Plaintiff claims that each of the Defendants breached an agreement to pick up Container No. 608014-7 from the CSX rail yard in Chicago and to deliver it to Alpine in Greenwood, Indiana by failing to deliver the cargo to Alpine. Each Defendant moves for summary judgment on Plaintiffs respective breach of contract claims. i. Moore Transportation (Count II) With respect to Count II for breach of contract against Defendant Moore, the only argument stated in Defendants' motion for summary judgment is that "[b]ecause defendant Moore was not involved in the physical carriage or control of the goods, he cannot be liable under [Count II]. . . ." (Def. SJ Mot. ¶ 7.) Plaintiff contests that Defendant Moore is entitled to summary judgment on Count II, arguing that a question of fact exists as to whether Bruce Moore accepted responsibility for the subject shipment. (Pl. SJ Resp. at 4.) Defendant Moore has not developed its argument, and the single sentence in Defendants' motion for summary judgment is not sufficient to satisfy the court that Moore is entitled to summary judgment on Count II. Summary judgment on Count II is denied. ii. ARL, Inc. (Count V) ARL also moves for summary judgment on Count V on the basis that, because ARL is a carrier within the Carmack Amendment, ARL cannot be held liable for Plaintiffs common law claim for breach of contract. (Def. SJ Mot. ¶ 4.) Defendant notes that the Carmack Amendment provides the exclusive remedy for a shipper and preempts common law claims against the carrier; Defendants acknowledge that "ARL is a carrier under the definition set forth" in the Carmack Amendment. (Id.) The Carmack Amendment preempts a shipper from seeking "`state and common law remedies . . . where goods are damaged or lost in interstate commerce.'" Gordon, 130 F.3d at 288 (quoting Hughes v. United Van Lines, Inc., 829 F.2d 1407, 1414 (7th Cir.1987)). While it is true that the Carmack Amendment "does not preempt those state law claims that allege liability on a ground that is separate and distinct from the loss of, or the damage to, the goods that were *956 shipped in interstate commerce," Gordon, 130 F.3d at 289, the parties do not dispute that Plaintiffs claim for breach of contract only aims to address the loss of the subject cargo. Plaintiff concedes that to the extent ARL admits that it is subject to the Carmack Amendment in relation to its transport of the subject container, that act "would solely govern ARL's liability in this instance and would preempt all state law causes of action." (Pl. Resp. at 8.) The court therefore grants summary judgment on Count V in favor of Defendant ARL. iii. James Evans (Count VIII) With respect to Count VIII for breach of contract against Defendant Evans, the only argument stated in Defendants' motion for summary judgment is that "[b]ecause Evans did not have a contract of carriage with Plaintiff for the subject goods, he cannot be liable under Count VIII." (Def. SJ Mot. ¶ 8.) In response, Plaintiff notes that Evans had custody of the shipment and undertook to deliver the shipment in Greenwood, (Pl. SJ Resp. at 9.) Plaintiff also argues that questions of fact remain as to whether Evans is liable for breach of contract. (Id.) Defendant Evans has not developed its argument, and the single sentence in Defendants' motion for summary judgment does not sufficiently inform the court as to the reasons why Evans should be granted summary judgment on Count VIII. Summary judgment on Count VIII is denied. D. Breach of Obligations as Carrier and/or Bailee In Counts III, VI, and IX, Plaintiff claims that each of the Defendants were operating as a common carrier and/or bailee with respect to the cargo and breached their duties and obligations by failing to deliver the cargo in the same condition as it was received. Each Defendant moves for summary judgment on Plaintiffs respective claim for breach of obligations as carrier and/or bailee. i. Moore Transportation (Count III) With respect to Count III for breach of obligations as carrier and/or bailee against Defendant Moore, the only argument stated in Defendants' motion for summary judgment is that "[b]ecause defendant Moore was not involved in the physical carriage or control of the goods, he cannot be liable under . . . [Count III]. . . ." (Def. SJ Mot. ¶ 7.) Plaintiff contests that Defendant Moore is entitled to summary judgment on Count III, arguing that a question of fact exists as to whether Mr. Moore accepted responsibility for the subject shipment as a carrier or bailee. (Pl. SJ Resp. at 4.) Defendant Moore has not developed its argument, and the cursory treatment of Count III in Defendants' motion for summary judgment does not clarify for the court why Moore Transportation is entitled to summary judgment on Count III. Summary judgment on Count III is denied. ii. ARL, Inc. (Count VI) ARL moves for summary judgment on Count VI on the same basis on which this court granted summary judgment on Count V: because ARL is a carrier within the Carmack Amendment, ARL cannot be held liable for Plaintiffs common law claim for breach of obligation as a carrier and/or bailee. (Def. SJ Mot. ¶ 4.) Like Plaintiffs breach of contract claim against ARL, Plaintiffs common law claim in Count VI aims to address the loss of the subject cargo. Thus, for the same reasons the court articulated with respect to Count V, the Carmack Amendment preempts Plaintiffs common law claim against ARL for breach of any obligation as a carrier and/or bailee. (See supra Section C.ii.) Summary *957 judgment is granted in ARL's favor on Count VI. iii. James Evans (Count IX) With respect to Count IX for breach of obligations as carrier and/or bailee against Defendant Evans, the only argument stated in Defendants' motion for summary judgment is that "since the evidence is that [Evans] received and delivered a sealed container, he cannot be held liable under Count IX." (Def. SJ Mot. ¶ 8.) Plaintiff argues that Defendant Evans is not entitled to summary judgment on Count IX based on the fact that Evans had custody of the shipment and undertook to deliver the shipment in Greenwood. (Pl. SJ Resp. at 9.) Defendant Evans has not developed its argument, and Defendants' motion for summary judgment does not sufficiently inform the court as to why Evans should be granted summary judgment on Count IX. Summary judgment on Count IX is denied. CONCLUSION For the reasons stated above, Plaintiff's motion for summary judgment (32) against Defendant ARL, Inc. on Count IV is denied. Defendants' motion for summary judgment (35) is granted as to Counts V, VI, and VII and is denied as to all remaining counts. NOTES [1] The background is drawn from the following: Plaintiff's Local Rule 56.1(a)(3) Statement of Material Uncontested Facts in Support of its Motion for Summary Judgment Against Defendant ARL, Inc. on Count IV ("Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt."); Defendants' Response to Plaintiff's Local Rule 56.1(a) Statement of Material Facts as to Which There is no Genuine Issue ("Def. LR 56.1 Resp."); Defendants' Statement of Additional Material Facts as to Which There is no Genuine Issue ("Def. Add'l LR 56.1 Stmt."); Plaintiff's Reply to Defendants' Statement of Additional Material Facts ("Pl. LR 56.1 Resp. to Def. Add'l Stmt."); Defendants' Local Rule 56.1(a) Statement of Material Facts as to Which There is no Genuine Issue and that Entitles it to Judgment as a Matter of Law ("Def. LR 56.1 Stmt."); and Plaintiff's Response to Defendants' Local Rule 56.1(a) Statement of Material Facts and Additional Facts ("Pl. LR 56.1 Resp."). [2] The relationship among Alpine of Hungary, Alpine Electronics, and Alpine of America is not clear from the record. [3] The parties provide no other information concerning this company. [4] In their statement of material facts, Defendants on occasion refer to the relevant container as Container No. NYKU 608014. (See, e.g., Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 1.) Plaintiff has not raised an argument that this container is different than Container No. NYKU 608014-7, the container to which the court has previously referred. Without reason to believe otherwise, the court assumes that Container No. NYKU 608014-7 and Container No. NYKU 608014 are the same. [5] It is undisputed that Defendant Moore is not licensed for the carriage of goods and does not own any trucks. (Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶¶ 5-6.) [6] According to Plaintiff, a question of fact exists as to whether Mr. Moore "held himself out as accepting responsibility for the subject shipment." (Pl. LR 56.1 Resp. ¶ 4.) The court need not determine whether Plaintiff is correct that a question of fact exists regarding whether Mr. Moore "held himself out as accepting responsibility for the subject shipment" as, in the court's view, this dispute does not contradict Defendants' statement that Defendant Moore acted as a broker for the shipment of the subject cargo from Chicago to Indiana and that Mr. Moore procures shipments for ARL. (Def. LR. 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 4.) [7] The parties do not set forth facts regarding MOL Logistics, what type of function it serves generally, or what function it served with regard to the transport of the cargo that is the subject of this case. As the court understands Mr. Moore's testimony, MOL Logistics was the "steamship line" that would give him the "pick-up number" so that the load could be released or picked up by a carrier — in this case, ARL. (Moore Dep. at 28-29.) The parties also offer no explanation as to how/why Mitsui, a commercial insurer, has a logistics company as its "arm." [8] Defendants arsert, and Plaintiff does not dispute, that Defendant Evans is "an owner/operator for ARL." Evans actually testified that in April 2004 he was employed by ARL as an "independent contractor." (Evans Dep. at 89.) [9] Plaintiff attempts to assert, more generally, that Evans cut the seal "some time after he left the CSX rail yard on April 26, 2004 and before he backed the container into a dock door at the delivery location in Greenwood, Indiana." (Pl. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 15.) Evans did testify that he cut the seal before backing into the dock; his testimony is also clear that he did not cut the seal until arriving at the delivery location in Greenwood. (Evans Dep. at 34-38.) [10] Plaintiff contends that no bill of lading was issued to anyone at the time ARL received the subject container, (Pl. LR 56.1 Resp. ¶ 2), but this is not inconsistent with Defendant's version. In stating that ARL issued a bill of lading "for the receipt and transportation" of the subject container, Defendants cite only to the bill of lading dated April 27, 2004; thus, Defendants' factual statement refers only to the one bill of lading that was issued when ARL transported and Alpine received the subject container in Greenwood. (Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 2.) [11] Adam Grosch is a manager of operations for the Phoenix Group and oversaw dock operations, including dock workers, at the warehouse where the subject container was delivered on April 27, 2004. (Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 13.) Grosch testified that, to him, the term "seal intact" means that he or an associate would have ensured that a seal was "intact"; in other Words, affixed to the back of the container and sealing the load. (Id. ¶ 14-15.) In the context of a bill of lading, Grosch testified, the words "seal intact" would indicate that the seal was on the container. (Id. ¶ 16.) [12] Signum Services Limited is the investigative unit of Thomas Miller & Co., a company that acts for the members of the United Kingdom Protection & Indemnity Club. (Newstead Decl. ¶ 2.) The parties do not explain why Newstead was hired or by whom. According to Newstead's report, his investigation began with meeting someone from "NYK Logistics Budapest," and his final report was addressed to an individual in "Claims Department NYK." (Report on Theft of Electronic Equipment from Container Number NYKU 6080147 at 1, Ex. J to Def. LR 56.1 Add'l Stmt.) [13] As Plaintiff notes, the portion of Sinnokrak's testimony that Defendants cite does not support this assertion, but Sinnokrak testified elsewhere that he inspected the container at the request of NYK Line. (Sinnokrak Dep. at 8.) [14] Plaintiff admits only that Sinnokrak stated that someone could have gained access to the container by "manipulating the fasteners/pins without breaking the seal[,]" however, Sinnokrak's testimony is clear that a pin would have to be removed to gain access to the container in this manner. (Pl. LR 56.1 Resp. to Def. Add'l Stmt. ¶ 8; Sinnokrak Dep. at 25.) [15] In its reply memorandum in support of its motion for summary judgment on Count IV, Plaintiff argues for the first time that a "commercial invoice and packing list" and the NYK and New Wave bills of lading establish the weight of the container when it was delivered to the ocean carrier so as to confirm that Alpine of Hungary loaded the cargo into the container. (Plaintiff Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co., Ltd.'s Reply Memorandum in Support of its Motion for Summary Judgment on Count IV (Carmack) of its Amended Complaint ("Pl. SJ Reply") at 4.) Neither Plaintiff nor Defendants set forth any facts in their statements under Local Rule 56.1 that relate to the weight of the cargo as recorded on the documents to which Plaintiff now refers. While Plaintiff is correct that Defendants referred to the NYK and New Wave bills of lading in their statement of material facts and attached them to their statement of facts, Defendants referred to these bills of lading only for the purpose of establishing the path by which the cargo was transported and made no mention of tie weight of the cargo. (Def. LR 56.1 Stmt. ¶ 17.) Thus, not only is Plaintiff raising this argument for the first time in its reply brief, but Plaintiff is also relying on facts not addressed in the parties' statements of material facts to make this argument. The court declines to address this argument. See United States v. Adamson, 441 F.3d 513, 521 (7th Cir.2006) (citing United States v. Blaylock, 413 F.3d 616, 619 (7th Cir.2005)) (arguments raised for first time in reply brief are waived); United States v. Duran, 407 F.3d 828, 844 n. 7 (7th Cir.2005) (arguments not raised in opening brief are waived). The court notes, however, that even if the evidence relating to the weight of the container when it was delivered to the ocean carrier establishes that the cargo was in fact delivered to ARL — a matter not at all free from doubt — there remains a dispute, discussed infra, regarding whether the cargo could have been accessed without breaking the container's seal. If the cargo was damaged while in ARL's possession, it could be the result of one of the Carmack Amendment's excepted causes. Because the court cannot make this determination on the current factual record, a grant of summary judgment on Count IV would be premature. [16] The court has considered a number of additional cases discussed by the parties in their briefs. In light of the court's conclusion that a dispute of fact exists regarding whether the goods were ever delivered to ARL in the first instance, the cases the parties discuss are not helpful. In Duck Head Footwear v. Mason and Dixon Lines, Inc., 41 Fed.Appx. 692 (4th Cir.2002), cited by Plaintiff, the Fourth Circuit held that the fact that the seals on the subject shipment were intact did not constitute a defense to liability under the Carmack Amendment because such evidence did not fit within any of the allowable defenses under the Carmack Amendment. Id. at 698-99. To the extent ARL discusses whether the seals were intact in this case, it does so in relation to whether Plaintiff can establish that it delivered the cargo to ARL in good condition, an issue that is not addressed in Duck Head Footwear. Plaintiff also cites MG Europe, S.A. v. Locust Point Terminal Corp., 134 F.3d 362 (4th Cir.1998); in that case, the court found a carrier liable where shipments of leather were found to have shortages when the shipments were opened at their final destination. Id. at 134 F.3d 362, 1998 WL 1347, *1. But, unlike this case, there was no dispute in AIG Europe over whether a complete set of goods had initially been loaded into the subject containers. Id.

Howie Mandel along with ICM Partners (the talent agency that represents him) announced Wednesday that they had finalized a deal to purchase the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal as well as its Toronto, Vancouver and Sydney events. The investment group led by Mandel and ICM reportedly beat out six other groups for the festival though the price of the deal has not been revealed by any of the included parties. ICM and Mandel have confirmed that operations and the festival itself will remain in Montreal and the current staff will be kept on. The entire outfit went on the market last October after founder and former president Gilbert Rozon was accused of sexual misconduct and forced to step down. “I have performed at JFL many times over the last 10 years, and I have nothing but love for this event,” Mandel said in a statement, “I consider it to be a cultural treasure not only for the Montreal and Quebec communities, but also for Canada; and I am very excited to be part of this group of investors that will ensure the Festival’s long term success, while growing their global comedy brand.” The investor group has said it will be expanding the Just for Laughs brand with more live events, media deals and possibly new streaming options for their catalogue of content. While pursuing those opportunities, ICM managing director Chris Silbermann assured that the Montreal roots of the festival and its operations will not be altered. ICM Partners hopes to make some Canadian additions to the festival’s investor group in the coming weeks. There is also speculation that ICM Partners’ direct involvement in JFL will mean an influx of A-list American talent featuring in the already world-renowned festival. In addition to Mandel, ICM Partners represents the likes of Ellen DeGeneres, Chris Rock, Kevin Hart and Jerry Seinfeld. “This strategic alliance with Howie Mandel and ICM Partners is the best of all worlds for JFL, and ensures it has the resources to continue to thrive,” said Just for Laughs chairman Pierre-Marc Johnson. Looks like Howie Mandel is going to be a busy man. On top of his ongoingAmerica’s Got Talent commitment and new investor responsibilities, CNBC announced earlier this month that they have green-lit a revival of Deal or No Deal with Mandel returning as host.

1. Introduction {#sec1} =============== Abdominal obesity (AO) is one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and its complications \[[@B1]\]. On the one hand, this is thought to be the result of increasing prevalence of obesity in all age groups all over the world while, on the other hand, there is a distinct correlation between AO and early CVD and its complications, especially in patients with metabolic syndrome (MetS) \[[@B2], [@B3]\]. At the same time in a number of population studies, it has been shown that, despite AO, some subjects retained their insulin sensitivity and had normal lipid and glucose levels and blood pressure and cytokine profile and, accordingly, their risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and CVD was rather low \[[@B4]--[@B7]\]. Such a subpopulation of obese individuals is usually called "metabolically healthy obese" (MHO). Data of different authors showed that the prevalence of this phenomenon in the population of obese individuals varies widely from 6.0% to 38.4%. Such inconsistencies are stipulated, first and foremost, by the absence of unified assessment criteria for this cohort. We could see that the "metabolic health" criteria in various studies were as follows: insulin sensitivity of the tissues measured by different methods and techniques, absence of the metabolic syndrome criteria based on diverse classifications, complete absence of any metabolic disorders, and, finally, at least 2 CVD risk factors \[[@B5]--[@B13]\]. Till now, the question of whether subjects with MHO have some specific phenotypic and/or genetic traits or they are at the intermediate stage of complicated obesity is still to be answered. A number of scientific papers showed that adipocytokine imbalance and genetic factors accounting for the expression of adipocytokines and/or polymorphism of the adiponectin gene as well as that of the leptin and its receptor gene might play a certain role in triggering or, vice versa, preventing metabolic disorders. That is why in our study we tried to identify possible factors including genetic ones that determine these individuals\' benign metabolic profile. *Objective*. The objective of this study is to assess the prevalence of metabolically healthy individuals among the subgroup of patients with abdominal obesity and to determine the phenotype and potential genetic traits associated with a benign metabolic status. 2. Methods {#sec2} ========== A total of 503 residents of Saint Petersburg with AO aged 30 to 55 (average age 45.8 ± 0.3 years) have been enrolled in the study. The inclusion criteria were abdominal obesity (AO), that is, waist circumference (WC) ≥94.0 cm and ≥80.0 cm for men and women, respectively, and signed informed consent (IDF criteria of MetS, 2005). Patients with CVD were not included in the study. Among screened participants, there were 359 (71.4%) women and 144 (28.6%) men of comparable age (45.1 ± 0.6 and 46.1 ± 0.4, resp.; *p* \> 0.05). Mean WC was 98.41 ± 0.62 cm in women and 108.39 ± 0.86 cm in men. In the course of this study, the following anthropometric parameters were measured in accordance with the conventional rules: height, weight, WC, waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), and body mass index (BMI). The subjects were interviewed about their sociodemographic status (education level, income, and family status), familial predisposition to obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, smoking and alcohol consumption, birth weight, duration of obesity, and physical activity (frequency and duration of training sessions per week). Fasting plasma glucose (FPG) was measured with the automated biochemistry analyzer (COBAS INTEGRA 400/700/800) and standard kits (Roche, Germany). High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) quantitative determination was performed by immunoturbidimetric assay. Serum lipids profile (total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C)) was measured by enzymatic colorimetric assays with the analyzer COBAS INTEGRA 400/700/800 (Germany) and standard kits (Roche, Germany). Serum insulin was measured by solid-phase enzyme immunoassay (ELISA) with the DRG standard test kits (EIA-2935) (USA). Insulin resistance was assessed by calculating insulin resistance index, homeostasis model assessment (HOMA-IR) \[[@B14]\]. Leptin and adiponectin concentrations in venous blood serum were measured by ELISA with the testing kits manufactured by "Leptin ELISA" (DRG Diagnostics, Germany) and the "DRG Adiponectin (human) ELISA" kits (DRG Diagnostics, Germany). Genomic DNA was extracted from the peripheral blood lymphocytes by the modified method of Blin and Stafford (1976) \[[@B15]\]. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was performed with the automated MJ Research (MJ Research Inc.) and Biometra (Biometra, Germany) cyclers with thermostable recombinant Taq polymerase manufactured by Sibenzyme (Russia). Identification of leptin gene A19G polymorphism was done by PCR followed by restriction analysis \[[@B16]\]. For identifying leptin receptor gene (LEPR) Q223R polymorphism PCR followed by restriction analysis (Gotoda et al., 1997) was performed \[[@B17]\]. For identifying adiponectin gene G276T polymorphism the method by Křížová et al. (2008) was applied \[[@B18]\]. Adiponectin gene T45G polymorphism was identified by PCR followed by restriction analysis \[[@B19]\]. Studying polymorphisms of these genes was prompted by the availability of data suggesting their possible involvement in both obesity and glucose and lipid metabolism disorders, which allows us to consider them candidate genes potentially contributing to physiological and/or pathological processes. "Metabolically healthy obese" (MHO) were defined as individuals without metabolic syndrome (MetS) according to IDF criteria of MetS and without insulin resistance according to HOMA-IR, while patients with MetS or other metabolic disorders were identified as "metabolically unhealthy obese" (MUO). 2.1. Statistical Analysis {#sec2.1} ------------------------- Biomedical research data was processed by SPSS software 17.0 for Windows. Sample characteristics were presented as an average ± mean error. Frequency characteristics of qualitative variables were analyzed by nonparametric techniques with the use of *x* ^2^, Fisher criterion. Odds ratio (OR) was calculated to define relative risk of the disease. OR = 1 was considered as indicating no association, OR \> 1 indicated positive association, and OR \< 1 indicated negative association of an allele or genotype with the disease (lower disease risk). Confidence intervals for frequency characteristics were estimated by precise Fisher\'s method, *x* ^2^ with Yates\' correction (for small groups). Comparison of quantitative parameters in the study arms was done by ANOVA. Studied parameters were compared for various classification methods and over-time evaluation techniques (paired samples) by applying the sign test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and Friedman test. 3. Results {#sec3} ========== Among 503 subjects with AO, BMI ≥ 30.0 kg/m^2^ was diagnosed in 57.0%. Subjects were divided into the following groups based on their BMI: 28 (5.6%) subjects had BMI ≤ 24.9 kg/m^2^; 180 (35.9%) patients had BMI ≤ 29. 9 kg/m^2^; 192 (38.2%) had BMI ≤ 34.9 kg/^2^; 70 (13.9%) had BMI ≤ 39.9 kg/m^2^; and 32 (6.4%) had BMI ≥ 40.0 kg/m^2^. Various MetS components were found in 91.3% of the patients with AO, 66.5% out of those who were diagnosed with MetS. Only 8.7% of the patients with AO did not have insulin resistance or MetS components. Thus among patients with AO whose waist circumference met the IDF criteria of MetS diagnosis, prevalence of metabolically healthy subjects turned out to be rather low. Comparative analysis between MHO and MUO subjects has shown that MHO individuals were younger and had lower BMI, WC, WHR, levels of total cholesterol, LDL-C, triglycerides, insulin, HOMA-IR, glucose, C-reactive protein, blood pressure, and intima-media thickness of the common carotid arteries but higher HDL-C as opposed to MUO patients ([Table 1](#tab1){ref-type="table"}). Average leptin and adiponectin levels did not differ between these groups (*p* \> 0.05). However, in MHO women, adiponectin level was higher whereas that of leptin was lower than in MUO female. We also determined that more than half of MHO individuals (58.1%) had had obesity for less than 6 years as opposed to 33.0% for MUO subjects (*p* = 0.002). Thus, MHO individuals had a shorter duration of obesity than MUO patients. 47.0% of MHO individuals and 33.4% MUO subjects practiced physical activity or had leisure-time exercise sessions (*p* \> 0.05). In addition to this, the frequency of physical exercise sessions and their duration were significantly higher in MHO than in MUO patients (1.28 ± 0.31 times/week and 0.92 ± 0.11 times/week, resp.; *p* = 0.032; 27.70 ± 6.23 min/week and 15.81 ± 1.42 min/week, resp.; *p* = 0.040). This means that MHO individuals were more physically active than MUO. There were no significant differences between the study arms in terms of social status, birth weight, number of meals, smoking and alcohol consumption status, familial predisposition to obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes mellitus (*p* \> 0.05). Correlations between waist circumference, metabolic parameters, blood pressure, and adipocytokines were identified ([Table 2](#tab2){ref-type="table"}). Linear regression analysis has demonstrated that WC had made an impact on both systolic and diastolic blood pressure (*r* ^2^ = 0.212, *p* = 0.0001 and *r* ^2^ = 0.101, *p* = 0.0001, resp.), insulin (*r* ^2^ = 0.233, *p* = 0.0001), HDL-C (*r* ^2^ = 0.116, *p* = 0.0001), and leptin (*r* ^2^ = 0.338, *p* = 0.0001). Age affects BP (*r* ^2^ = 0.107, *p* = 0.0001), insulin (*r* ^2^ = 0.221, *p* = 0.0001), leptin (*r* ^2^ = 0.312, *p* = 0.0001), and adiponectin (*r* ^2^ = 0.119, *p* = 0.0001). Waist-to-hip ratio determines HDL-C (*r* ^2^ = 0.120, *p* = 0.0001) and adiponectin (*r* ^2^ = 0.117, *p* = 0.0001). Duration of physical activity influences blood pressure (*r* ^2^ = 0.201, *p* = 0.0001) and insulin (*r* ^2^ = 0.224, *p* = 0.0001). At the same time, regression analysis has demonstrated that WC depended on sex, physical activity, duration of obesity, and number of meals. Negative correlations were observed between adiponectin and TG (*r* = −0.234, *p* = 0.003), HOMA-IR (*r* = −0.212, *p* = 0.006), insulin (*r* = −0.231, *p* = 0.0001), WC (*r* = −0.214, *p* = 0.003), WHR (*r* = −0.203, *p* = 0.002), and BMI (*r* = −0.128, *p* = 0.030) whereas positive correlations were between adiponectin and HDL-C (*r* = 0.209, *p* = 0.003). In the course of regression analysis, it has been shown that the following indicators impacted adiponectin levels to a greater extent: insulin, WHR, and TG (*r* ^2^ = 0.115, *p* = 0.0001 for all parameters). Conversely, positive correlations were detected between leptin and HOMA-IR (*r* = 0.108, *p* = 0.011), insulin (*r* = 0.211, *p* = 0.0001), WC (*r* = 0.326, *p* = 0.0001), and BMI (*r* = 0.405, *p* = 0.031). Regression analysis has shown dependence of the leptin level on BMI and TG (*r* ^2^ = 0.211, *p* = 0.0001). Within the framework of this study, genotype distribution and alleles frequency of the leptin (019G polymorphism), leptin receptor (LEPR) (Q223R polymorphism), and adiponectin receptor (T45G and G276T polymorphisms) were analyzed in MUO and MHO as these genes potentially might be responsible for the development of obesity and metabolic disorders. Distribution of genotypes and allele frequency of the leptin gene were analyzed in 459 metabolically healthy and unhealthy individuals with AO. In patients with and without metabolic disorders, distribution of the G19G, G19A, and A19A genotypes and frequency of the 19A and 19G alleles of the leptin gene did not differ (*p* \> 0.05) ([Table 3](#tab3){ref-type="table"}). Also, no differences between the groups of AO patients with and without metabolic disorders have been shown in analysis of the Q223Q, R223Q, and R223R genotypes and frequency of the 223Q and 223R LEPR alleles ([Table 3](#tab3){ref-type="table"}). Distribution of the G276G, G276T, and T276T genotypes and frequency of the 276T and 276G alleles of the adiponectin gene did not differ between MHO and MUO patients ([Table 4](#tab4){ref-type="table"}). In addition, there were more carriers of the 45T allele of the adiponectin gene among metabolically unhealthy patients with AO as opposed to metabolically healthy ones ([Table 4](#tab4){ref-type="table"}). The T45T genotype was associated with over twofold increase of metabolic disorders\' risk for patients with AO (OR = 2.331; 95% CI = 1.121 ÷ 5.132). To make sure that both groups were comparable, we adjusted them to leave only overweight and class I obese patients based on the WHO classification, hence excluding all subjects with BMI ≥ 35.0 kg/m^2^ regardless of the gender, a process that leads to removing 102 MetS subjects from the analysis groups. This approach was adopted since there were no class II and higher obese patients in MHO group. The comparative results confirmed that there were more carriers of the 45T allele of the adiponectin gene among MUO as opposed to MHO subjects (frequency 45T allele: 0.934 and 0.864, resp.; *p* = 0.018). Hence T45T genotype carriage was associated with an increased risk of metabolic disorders in subjects with AO (OR = 2.496; 95% CI = 1.127 ÷ 5.524). Average values of leptin and adiponectin in carriers of various genotypes of the leptin and leptin receptor genes were not different. In MHO and MUO men and women with various genotypes of the studied genes, levels of leptin and adiponectin were the same. However, in women with AO with and without MetS/metabolic disorders (general cohort), carriers of the 223R allele of the LEPR gene, leptin levels were higher than those in individuals with the Q223Q genotype (57.124 ± 0.370 ng/mL and 46.301 ± 2.752 ng/mL, resp.; *p* = 0.030). Furthermore, in women with AO and metabolic disorders with the R223R genotype, leptin levels were higher than those in women, carriers of the 223Q allele of the LEPR gene (60.744 ± 5.581 ng/mL and 47.521 ± 3.243 ng/mL, resp.; *p* = 0.045). Leptin levels did not differ (*p* \> 0.05) in the cohort of MHO women with various genotypes of the leptin receptor gene. 4. Discussion {#sec4} ============= According to the results of the study, prevalence of such a phenomenon as absence of the metabolic syndrome and/or metabolic disorders in persons with AO, residents of Saint Petersburg of employable age, turned out to be insignificant and amounted to 8.7%. These individuals did not have any signs of the metabolic syndrome except for their waist circumference value in accordance with the IDF criteria and insulin resistance according to HOMA-IR. For comparison, study conducted by Iacobellis et al. (2005) has proven that in an Italian cohort of obese patients, in which the MetS IDF criteria were also used as a discriminator of complicated and uncomplicated obesity in combination with assessment of such parameters as uric acid, fibrinogen, and insulin levels, prevalence of this phenomenon was higher and amounted to 27.5% despite the fact that selection criteria were stricter than those in our study \[[@B12]\]. These differences might be due to a number of factors like specific features of the study subjects (number of evaluated patients, their ethnicity, age, obesity duration, etc.), criteria used, and, perhaps, genetic peculiar traits, nutrition patterns, physical activity, and other environmental factors. In our study, characteristic phenotypic features of obese individuals without MS or metabolic disorders were defined. These include younger age, less pronounced abdominal obesity with lesser duration, and a higher level of physical activity as opposed to persons with AO and MetS/metabolic disorders. According to the obesity classification by BMI, all metabolically healthy individuals fell into the category of overweight patients even though their waist circumference met the IDF criteria of abdominal obesity. Currently, it is proven that both waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio strongly correlate with the amount of the visceral fat. It is also known that the visceral adipose tissue generates large quantities of adipocytokines and anti-inflammatory substances that potentiate the development of insulin resistance and other metabolic disorders resulting in earlier debut of cardiovascular disease in obese patients. Presence of correlations between WC and metabolic parameters revealed in this study as well as other numerous studies confirms the relationship between AO and metabolic disorders. The obtained data is consistent with the results of other studies that also showed that individuals with uncomplicated obesity had less visceral fat than patients with obesity and metabolic disorders \[[@B20]\]. Brochu et al. have found that despite similar amount of total fat mass in postmenopausal obese women, MHO women had 49% less visceral adipose tissue than women with obesity and metabolic disorders. Thus, lesser amount of the visceral adipose tissue may, to some extent, determine the favorable metabolic profile of this patient population \[[@B6]\]. In the vast majority of subjects with uncomplicated obesity that we evaluated, obesity duration was relatively short, less than 6 years. According to other studies\' results, subjects suffering from obesity since childhood were encountered more frequently among MHO individuals. It is considered that children and adolescents develop hyperplastic obesity which is associated with preserved insulin sensitivity and with maintained adiponectin concentration, a combination determining the favorable profile of "metabolically" healthy obese individuals \[[@B6]\]. Another hypothesis was proposed by Muscelli et al. (1998), according to which early obesity was accompanied by some kind of metabolic adaptation enabling preservation of normal insulin sensitivity of the tissues \[[@B21]\]. It is also known that complicated obesity is often associated with ectopic fat depositions in the heart, liver, and muscles, which causes the development of insulin resistance and dysfunction of these organs. Conversely, uncomplicated obesity is characterized by a low degree of ectopic fat depositions especially in the muscles and liver \[[@B22]\]. Physical activity (PA) is a potential factor influencing the metabolic profile of obese patients. Thus, in our previous study, it was shown that in physically active AO patients with MS/metabolic disorders both insulin levels and insulin resistance index HOMA-IR were lower whereas the HDL-cholesterol level was higher compared with AO individuals with sedentary life styles while anthropometric indicators in these cohorts were comparable \[[@B23]\]. Therefore, PA can exert an independent positive influence on the metabolic profile of AO patients. Taking this into consideration, one may assume that MHO intense physical activity facilitates maintenance of the normal metabolic status, which is consistent with the results of the study carried out by Wildman et al. (2008) \[[@B9]\]. At the same time, other studies did not find any differences between the basal metabolic rate and energy expenditure on physical activity and level of physical performance in obese patients with the different metabolic profile \[[@B6], [@B22]\]. It is known that adipocytokine imbalance, in particular that of leptin and adiponectin, is associated with MetS. In a number of studies, it has been shown that an elevated leptin level potentiated insulin resistance and arterial hypertension and activated proinflammatory factors while adiponectin, on the contrary, possessed cardioprotective effects. This association is also supported by the results of correlation and regression analysis done in our study. However these adipokine levels are sex-dependent. For example, estimated levels of leptin and adiponectin in our study were lower in men than in women in both evaluated cohorts. Only metabolically healthy obese women had a lower leptin and higher adiponectin level as opposed to women with complicated obesity. That being said, it may be assumed that less significant adipokine imbalance in metabolically healthy women is one of their metabolic health "protective" mechanisms. Undoubtedly, genetic factors also play a role in the development of obesity in subjects with the different metabolic profile. There are evidences of the association between the metabolic syndrome and obesity with polymorphic variants of some genes, products of expression which play an important role in adipogenesis and the regulation of carbohydrate and lipid metabolism. Potential candidate genes include the adiponectin gene, leptin, and LEPR genes studied in our trial. According to our study results, distribution of the G276G, G276T, and T276T genotypes and frequency of the 276T and 276G alleles of the leptin gene were not different in AO patients with or without metabolic disorders. In MUO patients and in MHO individuals, frequency of the 19G allele of this gene was 0.625 and 0.600, respectively, which corresponds to the incidence of this gene in the European population. Thus, frequency of this gene\'s 19G allele varies by different data from 0.36 to 0.67 being higher in Finns than in Frenchmen and Italians as far as the European population is concerned \[[@B16], [@B24], [@B25]\]. The paper by Hager et al. (1998) states that homozygotes of the 19A allele have lower leptin levels than carriers of the 19A allele \[[@B25]\]. In AO patients we evaluated, leptin levels were not different in various genotypes of the leptin gene. In 1999, Li et al. have found that A19G polymorphism of the leptin gene was a predictor of obesity (heterozygotes had higher BMI than homozygotes of the 19A and 19G alleles) although this association was not confirmed in other studies \[[@B26]\]. However, in a number of studies no differences were identified in leptin levels or associations with BMI, waist-to-hip ratio, body mass, and body fat in carriers of different genotypes of the leptin gene \[[@B16], [@B24], [@B27]\]. The results obtained in this study also have not found any correlation between obesity and metabolic disorders in different genotypes of the leptin genes. At present, three single-nucleotide polymorphisms of the LEPR gene are known to lead to amino acid substitution in the receptor protein: Lys109Arg (K109R) rs1137100; Gln223Arg Rs1137101 (Q223R); and Lys656Asn (K656N) rs8179187 \[[@B28]--[@B30]\]. A668G polymorphism of the leptin receptor gene is studied most frequently. A668G polymorphism is localized in exon 6 of the extracellular region of the leptin receptor\'s C domain that has a leptin-binding area, which leads to a single amino acid substitution, that of glutamine (Gln) with arginine (Arg) at position 223, and accounts for the change in functional activity of the leptin receptor \[[@B31]--[@B33]\]. In the literature, this polymorphism is most often referred to as Q223R whereas the allele types of the leptin receptor gene are dubbed 223Q and 223R. Frequency of the 223Q and 223R alleles of this gene is highly variable across countries and ethnic groups. In particular, frequency of the 223R allele in Asian people is notably higher than that in other ethnic groups, up to 0.85 \[[@B33], [@B34]\]. Frequency of the 223R allele in healthy Europeans, by data of various authors, is in the range from 0.41 (England) to 0.44 (the Netherlands) \[[@B35]--[@B37]\]. For AO patients evaluated by us with and without metabolic disorders, frequency of the 223R allele of the LEPR gene was low and amounted to 0.438 and 0.410, respectively. In our study we also found that in metabolically healthy and unhealthy women, carriers of the 223R allele of the leptin receptor gene, leptin level was higher than that in individuals with the Q223Q genotype. Furthermore, in MUO women with the R223R genotype, leptin level was higher than that in women who are carriers of the 223Q allele of the leptin receptor gene. In MHO women with different genotypes of the LEPR gene, leptin levels were not different (*p* \> 0.05). These phenomena were not seen in men. It has been noted in a number of studies that carriage of the 223R allele of the leptin receptor gene was associated with a high level of circulating leptin and reduced sensitivity of the leptin receptor \[[@B30], [@B32], [@B36]\] as well as increased BMI \[[@B36], [@B39], [@B40]\]. Other researchers received the data on the association of the R223 allele with glucose and insulin levels \[[@B41], [@B42]\]. Gottlieb et al. (2009) have found the correlation of this polymorphism with the metabolic syndrome: Q223Q and Q223R genotypes are more frequently encountered in MetS patients than in healthy individuals \[[@B43]\]. In the study carried out by us earlier, it was observed that in AO patients with MS/metabolic disorders carriership of the R223R genotype of the leptin receptor gene was associated with higher BMI and insulin levels; in men it was also associated with larger waist circumference \[[@B44]\]. In the study by van der Vleuten et al. (2006), it has been also shown that carriage of the 223R allele of the LEPR gene (homozygotes of the 223R alleles and heterozygotes) was associated with combined hyperlipidemia, reduced sensitivity to insulin and adiposity \[[@B45]\]. It is known that the adiponectin level is genetically controlled. Data of different authors suggest that heritability of the adiponectin level varies from 55% to 93% \[[@B46], [@B47]\]. Correlation between polymorphisms of the adiponectin gene and its production is identified, which may contribute to incidence of obesity, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes mellitus, MS, and cardiovascular disease \[[@B48]--[@B52]\]. At present, single polymorphisms T45G and G276T are the most frequent ones among described polymorphisms of the adiponectin gene (Y111H, G-12823A, A-11426G, G-11391A, C11377G, A11426G, R112C, I164T, T45G, and G276T) \[[@B53]\]. Results of the studies devoted to these polymorphisms are controversial and largely dependent on studied cohorts. In case of G276T (intron 2, rs1501299) polymorphism of the adiponectin gene, frequency of the 276G allele in the general population varies, by different data, from 0.701 to 0.830 \[[@B18], [@B49], [@B54]--[@B56]\]. According to our data, frequency of the 276G allele in AO patients with and without metabolic disorders did not differ (0.694 and 0.689). In a number of studies, association of the 276G allele with the low adiponectin level (France, Greece, Spain, and Japan), insulin resistance (Japan, Greece, Sweden, Spain, and Italy), obesity (Sweden, Japan), and T2DM (Japan) has been found \[[@B49], [@B54]--[@B59]\]. Yang et al. (2007) have found the association of the 276G allele with MS \[[@B56]\]. In our study, no differences in adiponectin levels in carriers of the 276G and 276T alleles have been observed. With T45G (Gly45Cly) polymorphism (exon 2, rs2241766) of the adiponectin gene, frequency of the 45T allele in the general population, based on data of different authors, varies from 0.705 to 0.950 \[[@B18], [@B49], [@B54], [@B56], [@B61]\]. In a number of studies, relationship of T45G polymorphism and obesity, T2DM, and hypoadiponectinemia was noted. Thus, carriage of the 45T allele (wild type) was associated with low adiponectin level in healthy volunteers in the studies carried out in France and in Canada \[[@B58], [@B61]\]. Similar results were obtained in healthy individuals and patients with T2DM in Japan, Sweden, and Spain and Italy \[[@B49], [@B54], [@B59], [@B60]\]. Besides, in studies conducted in Sweden \[[@B59]\] and in Germany \[[@B63]\], carriage of the 45G allele was associated with adiposity. However, this association has not been found in studies carried out in Finland and in the multicenter trial done in Europe and Canada (STOP-NIDDM-study) \[[@B47], [@B64]\]. Carriage of the 45G allele has been also associated with increased risk of T2DM, impaired glucose tolerance, higher BMI and waist-to-hip ratio in the DESIR study (France) \[[@B65]\], increased T2DM risk (Japan) \[[@B49]\], and hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance (Germany) \[[@B63]\]. Menzaghi et al. (2002) stated that the T45T genotype of the adiponectin gene was associated with insulin resistance and systolic blood pressure \[[@B54]\]. However, some researchers did not find any association between adiponectin gene polymorphism and insulin resistance and BMI \[[@B56], [@B66]\]. In the MetS patient population there were more carriers of the 45T allele of the adiponectin gene than among those metabolically healthy. Furthermore, T45T genotype of the adiponectin gene was associated with over twofold increased risk of metabolic disorders in AO patients even though adiponectin levels in AO patients with various genotypes of this gene were the same. Even when the groups were adjusted by excluding patients with class II and III obesity from MUO group the risk of metabolic disorders in AO patients had remained (OR = 2.496; 95% CI = 1.127 ÷ 5.524). Therefore, it can be assumed that carriers of T45T adiponectin gene genotype have a direct adverse effect on the metabolic profile in patients with AO. Also, as it was found in our previous trial, T45T genotype of the adiponectin gene and reduced adiponectin level in women were predictors of metabolic syndrome in AO patients \[[@B44]\]. Thus, lower frequency of the potentially unfavorable genotype of the adiponectin gene was found in metabolically healthy individuals, which, to some extent, might determine their metabolically favorable profile. 5. Conclusions {#sec5} ============== Prevalence of metabolically healthy obese individuals among patients with abdominal obesity is low, 8.7%. Benign metabolic status was associated with younger age, lower waist circumference, higher physical activity, and shorter duration of obesity. In women with uncomplicated abdominal obesity the leptin level was lower and the adiponectin level was higher than in women with complicated obesity. In metabolically healthy individuals with abdominal obesity low frequency of T45T adiponectin gene polymorphism was found, which is associated with an increased risk of metabolic syndrome in patients with abdominal obesity. Conflict of Interests ===================== The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper. ###### Anthropometric parameters and laboratory parameters in metabolically healthy and unhealthy patients with abdominal obesity. Parameters Healthy AO Unhealthy AO *p* --------------------- ---------------- ---------------- -------- Age (yrs) 42.2 ± 1.4 47.0 ± 0.4 0.001 BMI, kg/m^2^ 29.094 ± 0.511 31.561 ± 0.242 0.011 WC, сm        M 104.65 ± 0.82 108.62 ± 0.95 0.013  F 93.29 ± 0.76 98.94 ± 0.65 0.014 WHR 0.857 ± 0.011 0.890 ± 0.004 0.002 SBP, mm Hg 113.28 ± 1.30 136.42 ± 0.88 0.0001 DBP, mm Hg 73.07 ± 1.08 86.75 ± 0.54 0.0001 Glucose, mmol/L 5.001 ± 0.072 5.624 ± 0.068 0.0001 Insulin, mIU/mL 15.189 ± 1.464 20.221 ± 0.776 0.024 HOMA-IR 3.464 ± 0.432 4.730 ± 0.245 0.043 TC, mmol/L 5.375 ± 0.123 5.866 ± 0.056 0.024 HDL-C, mmol/L 1.642 ± 0.061 1.212 ± 0.021 0.001 LDL-C, mmol/L 3.419 ± 0.130 3.955 ± 0.059 0.005 TG, mmol/L 1.025 ± 0.054 1.620 ± 0.042 0.0001 hsCRP, mg/L 3.009 ± 0.465 4.279 ± 0.180 0.012 Leptin, ng/mL        M 29.304 ± 2.351 35.454 ± 3.410 NS  F 42.360 ± 3.101 57.504 ± 2.054 0.030 Adiponectin, mcg/mL        M 17.330 ± 3.241 16.880 ± 0.851 NS  F 23.651 ± 0.864 19.014 ± 0.861 0.020 BMI, body mass index; WHR, waist-to-hip ratio; SBP, systolic blood pressure; DBP, diastolic blood pressure; HOMA-IR, homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance; hsCRP, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein. ###### Associations between waist circumference and metabolic parameters, blood pressure, and adipocytokines in patients with abdominal obesity (correlation analysis). Indicators *r* *p* -------------- -------- -------- Systolic BP 0.348 0.0001 Diastolic BP 0.231 0.0001 Glucose 0.244 0.0001 Insulin 0.405 0.0001 HOMA-IR 0.402 0.0001 HDL-C −0.327 0.0001 TG 0.219 0.0001 Leptin 0.326 0.0001 Adiponectin −0.214 0.003 hsCRP 0.223 0.0001 ###### Distribution of the G19G, G19A, and A19A genotypes and frequency of the 19A and 19G alleles of the leptin gene; distribution of the Q223Q, R223Q, and R223R genotypes and frequency of the 223Q and 223R alleles of the leptin receptor gene in patients with abdominal obesity. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cohorts of AO\ LEP genotypes Allele frequency patients ---------------- ---------------- ------------------ ------ ------- ------- MHO 13 22 5 0.400 0.600 MUO 169 186 64 0.375 0.625 *p* NS NS NS NS NS Cohorts of AO\ LEPR genotypes Allele frequency patients Q223Q R223Q R223R 223Q 223R MHO 14 18 7 0.590 0.410 MUO 108 245 57 0.562 0.438 *p* NS NS NS NS NS --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ###### Distribution of the G276G, G276T, and T276T genotypes and frequency of the 276T and 276G alleles; distribution of the G45G, G45T, and T45T genotypes and frequency of the 45G and 45T alleles of the adiponectin gene in patients with abdominal obesity. Cohorts of AO patients Adiponectin genotypes Allele frequency ------------------------ ----------------------- ------------------ ------- ------- ------- MHO 18 15 4 0.311 0.689 MUO 193 148 44 0.306 0.694 *p* NS NS NS NS NS Cohorts of AO patients Adiponectin genotypes Allele frequency G45G G45T T45T 45T 45G MHO 0 10 30 0.875 0.125 MUO 1 52 365 0.935 0.064 *p* NS 0.034 0.042 0.005 0.005 [^1]: Academic Editor: Sebastiano Sciarretta

Prevalence of clinically important traumatic brain injuries in children with minor blunt head trauma and isolated severe injury mechanisms. To determine the prevalence of clinically important traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) with severe injury mechanisms in children with minor blunt head trauma but with no other risk factors from the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) TBI prediction rules (defined as isolated severe injury mechanisms). Secondary analysis of a large prospective observational cohort study. Twenty-five emergency departments participating in the PECARN. Children with minor blunt head trauma and Glasgow Coma Scale scores of at least 14. Treating clinicians completed a structured data form that included injury mechanism (severity categories defined a priori). Clinically important TBIs were defined as intracranial injuries resulting in death, neurosurgical intervention, intubation for more than 24 hours, or hospital admission for at least 2 nights. We investigated the rate of clinically important TBIs in children with either severe injury mechanisms or isolated severe injury mechanisms. Of the 42,412 patients enrolled in the overall study, 42,099 (99%) had injury mechanisms recorded, and their data were included for analysis. Of all study patients, 5869 (14%) had severe injury mechanisms, and 3302 (8%) had isolated severe injury mechanisms. Overall, 367 children had clinically important TBIs (0.9%; 95% CI, 0.8%-1.0%). Of the 1327 children younger than 2 years with isolated severe injury mechanisms, 4 (0.3%; 95% CI, 0.1%-0.8%) had clinically important TBIs, as did 12 of the 1975 children 2 years or older (0.6%; 95% CI, 0.3%-1.1%). Children with isolated severe injury mechanisms are at low risk of clinically important TBI, and many do not require emergent neuroimaging.

The Standing to Sue ObamaMembers should let Boehner take the lead against executive excess.June 15, 2014 5:48 p.m. ET President Obama is setting a dangerous precedent by suspending his enforcement of laws on health care, immigration, drugs, banking and so much else, but the courts may soon be asked to throw a brushback pitch. That is, unless a rump group of backbenchers undermines the legal challenge. Mr. Obama's practice of unilaterally waiving his duty to faithfully execute statutes has been abetted by a presumed lack of legal "standing" to contest his suspension. To the extent individuals have not suffered concrete injuries that the courts traditionally redress, he feels he can act without consequence to create whole-cloth regulatory regimes. This makes the inherent Article I powers of Congress irrelevant, with perhaps permanent damage to the separation of powers and political accountability. If Mr. Obama gets away with it, the next President probably will too. President Barack Obama Associated Press But Congress may yet have a way to challenge this usurpation in court. The Washington constitutional litigator David Rivkin and Florida International University law professor Elizabeth Price Foley have developed a legal theory that would allow for judicial review to resolve this dispute between the political branches on the merits. Members of Congress as individuals cannot sue as individuals over passing political disputes. But when the President is usurping core legislative powers, Congress as an institution can sue to vindicate this constitutional injury. Short of impeachment, there is no other way for Congress to defend its rights, and the Rivkin-Foley case is narrow and limited—and should survive judicial scrutiny. The idea has secured the interest of the GOP leadership, which may soon authorize a House-led lawsuit. The problem is that a handful of junior Members may move to pre-empt the House challenge with their own claim in a way that could undermine House leaders. As a legal matter, the formal imprimatur of Congress is important and serves as a limiting principle. Institutional challenges will be rare for only the gravest suspensions of law and keep sealed the Pandora's box that would be the endless deluge of ad hoc political lawsuits against the White House. Backbench fervor may also get the better of legal precision. The Rivkin-Foley theory would itself set a precedent and depends on careful arguments. Mr. Rivkin was the legal innovator behind the challenge to ObamaCare's individual mandate and his ideas persuaded a majority of the Supreme Court, even if Chief Justice John Roberts ultimately got cold feet and called it a tax. But that case was harmed in the lower courts—and in the court of public opinion—by sloppy reasoning from politically ambitious litigators. Rump litigation could interfere by casting doubt on this case too. The courts have long turned back flailing suits from individual legislators, from attempts in the 1970s to police the conduct of the Vietnam war to more recent efforts by Dennis Kucinich and others over Iraq. But personal pique as much as conviction seems to be a motivation in this dispute. Some Members just don't like Speaker John Boehner and prefer to sabotage him at every turn, even in this case when he would be doing a public service by hazarding his own reputation and office. More judges are pushing back against Mr. Obama's abuses when individuals with standing have sued, and the courts may be open to a larger challenge that resolves the dispute in a constitutionally peaceful way. But defending Congress's prerogatives requires Congress. Charles Krauthammer made an excellent point last night when he said of this scandal: “Forty years ago Nixon was crucified by the press and forced to resign - partly over an 18-minute gap on one of his White House tapes. NOW - this administration is claiming they lost 26 MONTHS of e-mails from this woman at the center of the scandal" - and ONLY Fox News reported this story on Friday. Not a peep from any of the other major networks. Sickening.www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/15/curl-irs-scandal-gets-nixonian-the-18-minute-or-26/?page=all#pagebreak As congressional investigators ponder how a computer crash caused two years of Lois Lerner’s emails to disappear, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkissonoutlined several questions lawmakers should be asking the Internal Revenue Service. During Lerner’s tenure at the IRS, tea party groups applying for tax-exempt status routinely were subjected to additional scrutiny and delays in their applications. The IRS informed Congress last week that it had lost an unknown number of emails from Lerner. Now, as congressional Republicans call on the Department of Justice to open an investigation into the computer crash, Attkisson, a Daily Signal senior independent contributor, explained exactly what information investigators should seek regarding Lerner’s missing emails: Please provide a timeline of the crash and documentation covering when it was first discovered and by whom; when, how and by whom it was learned that materials were lost; the official documentation reporting the crash and federal data loss; documentation reflecting all attempts to recover the materials; and the remediation records documenting the fix. This material should include the names of all officials and technicians involved, as well as all internal communications about the matter. Please provide all documents and emails that refer to the crash from the time that it happened through the IRS’ disclosure to Congress Friday that it had occurred. Please provide the documents that show the computer crash and lost data were appropriately reported to the required entities including any contractor servicing the IRS. If the incident was not reported, please explain why. Please provide a list summarizing what other data was irretrievably lost in the computer crash. If the loss involved any personal data, was the loss disclosed to those impacted? If not, why? Please provide documentation reflecting any security analyses done to assess the impact of the crash and lost materials. If such analyses were not performed, why not? Please provide documentation showing the steps taken to recover the material, and the names of all technicians who attempted the recovery. Please explain why redundancies required for federal systems were either not used or were not effective in restoring the lost materials, and provide documentation showing how this shortfall has been remediated. Please provide any documents reflecting an investigation into how the crash resulted in the irretrievable loss of federal data and what factors were found to be responsible for the existence of this situation. I would also ask for those who discovered and reported the crash to testify under oath, as well as any officials who reported the materials as having been irretrievably lost.In testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in March, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told lawmakers agency emails “get taken off and stored in servers.” Yet the IRS said Lerner’s correspondence, sent between January 2009 and April 2011, is irretrievable. Congressional investigators are working to determine whether Lerner acted alone or on orders handed down by the White House. House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., said in a statement Friday the IRS’ loss of documents makes it more difficult for investigators to determine who, besides Lerner, was involved in the scandal.Lerner testified twice on Capitol Hill about the targeting, but invoked the Fifth Amendment both times. In May, the House voted to hold her in contempt for refusing to cooperate with investigations. Lerner Emails (Really) GoneHow green! The IRS recycled former-IRS official Lois Lerner's computer hard drive, making it impossible to retrieve the lost emails that would undoubtedly be another smoking gun on the Tea Party targeting scandal. An IRS spokesman said, "We believe the standard IRS protocol was followed in 2011 for disposing of the broken hard drive. A bad hard drive, like other broken Information Technology equipment, is sent to a recycler as part of our regular process." Furthermore, the magnetic tapes -- the backup system the IRS uses -- only keeps information for six months before it's written over with new information. In other words, they did a thorough job of "losing" those emails. Meanwhile, ABC and NBC ignored the story while making room for a report that Britain's royal baby, Prince George, was learning how to walk. More... Lerner Emails (Really) GoneHow green! The IRS recycled former-IRS official Lois Lerner's computer hard drive, making it impossible to retrieve the lost emails that would undoubtedly be another smoking gun on the Tea Party targeting scandal. An IRS spokesman said, "We believe the standard IRS protocol was followed in 2011 for disposing of the broken hard drive. A bad hard drive, like other broken Information Technology equipment, is sent to a recycler as part of our regular process." Furthermore, the magnetic tapes -- the backup system the IRS uses -- only keeps information for six months before it's written over with new information. In other words, they did a thorough job of "losing" those emails. Meanwhile, ABC and NBC ignored the story while making room for a report that Britain's royal baby, Prince George, was learning how to walk. More...For fuller coverage see http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/irs-lois-lerner-emails-108044.html The irony (and elephant in the room) is that this is the agency that controls the record keeping of all Americans with its enormous federal powers. It galls me that you have to be a right winger to feel outrage over this. The IRS is part of the executive branch of the federal government. Over the months they have been trying to hide find the Lois Lerner emails, all the chief executive above them had to do was order all of his government, the White House in particular, to release to the committee their copy of whatever email exchanges with Lois Lerner that they had. Part of his deny, delay, deflect, and divert attention strategy is that: HE DID NOT DO THAT. This scandal and coverup goes all the way to the top! If the IRS knew for months, he knew for months (or should have know, same thing). Administration of the IRS is part of his sworn responsibilities. He chose to have his White House NOT cooperate with this investigation. Delay as long as possible and then not disclose is not what people thought they were choosing with "the most transparent administration ever". My latest thought is that the House and Senate should take up impeachment after the 2016 election and before the end of his term, out of principle, leaving not enough time on the clock to swear in the Vice President as his replacement. Appoint the special investigators now, get all the information now, and mark history with the precedent that this country does not tolerate this kind of governance. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) hit IRS Commissioner John Koskinen with a question the bureaucrat couldn't answer Monday: "You have already said multiple times today that there was no evidence that you found of any criminal wrongdoing," Gowdy said. "I want you to tell me what criminal statutes you have evaluated." Befuddled, Koskinen replied, "I have not looked at any." Gowdy fired back, "Well then how can you possibly tell our fellow citizens that there's not criminal wrongdoing if you don't even know what statutes to look at?" Gowdy repeated the question, and Koskinen again admitted, "I reviewed no criminal statutes." The only hope for the IRS is smoke and mirrors. We're glad at least Gowdy isn't going to take it. (Best of the tube tonight: Catch us on "Lou Dobbs Tonight," 7 p.m. ET on Fox Business, with repeat showings at 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.) In the scandal involving the Internal Revenue Service, the IRS commissioner refused to play along with a corrupt administration, the New York Times reports. A White House aide handed him a list of 200 political "enemies" the president wanted investigated. In response, the commissioner asked: "Do you realize what you're doing?" Then, he answered his own rhetorical question: "If I did what you asked, it'd make Watergate look like a Sunday school picnic." The White House aide's reply was "emphatic," according to the Times: ""The man I work for doesn't like somebody to say 'no.' " The commissioner went to his boss, the Treasury secretary, "showed him the list and recommended that the I.R.S. do nothing." The secretary "told him to lock the list in his safe." Later, he retrieved the list and turned it over to congressional investigators. Johnnie Walters testifies before a Senate subcommittee, March 1973. Corbis It's enough to restore your trust in the government--except that it happened more than 40 years ago. The corrupt order was delivered by John Dean in September 1972. The commissioner, Johnnie Walters, eventually "testified to various committees investigating alleged Nixon misdeeds," the Times reports. "He left office in April 1973." He died Tuesday; the Times article we've been quoting is his obituary. Walters wasn't the first IRS commissioner to resist President Nixon's political pressure. His predecessor, Randolph Thrower, was fired "for resisting White House pressure to punish political opponents," as the Times notes. Thrower died this March at 100. When Walters took office in 1971, "his stated goals were simplifying the tax process and catching tax cheats," but his job "had grown more complex" when Nixon imposed wage-and-price controls in an economically ignorant effort to curb inflation. But the obituarist dryly notes that "Mr. Walters had not been told of Nixon's other job requirements," which surfaced in a recorded Oval Office conversation: "I want to be sure he is a ruthless son of a bitch, that he will do what he's told, that every income-tax return I want to see I see, that he will go after our enemies and not go after our friends." When Nixon learned that Walters had refused to follow the wrongful order, he asked: "Why the hell did we promote him?" Later, he told the aforementioned White House aide, John Dean: "You've got to kick Walters's ass out first and get a man in there." He added that the Treasury secretary, George Shultz, "needed to make sure that Mr. Walters left if he wanted to keep his own job," in the Times's paraphrase. Shultz remained in office until May 1974, three months before Nixon's resignation, and later served as President Reagan's secretary of state. He's still alive at 93. As far as we know, even Bill Clinton never said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." One group of experts, the International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers, apparently disagrees with Lew and the current IRS commissioner, John Koskinen, as The Weekly Standard's Jim Swift reports: IAITAM administers internationally accepted certifications for information technology professionals. According to the group's standards, if Lerner's supposedly malfunctioning hardware was properly destroyed, there would be records of it. Dr. Barbara Rembiesa, president of IAITAM, questions whether there is documentation of the destruction of the files. Who performed the work, says Rembiesa, is important because not all IT professionals are IAITAM certified. "The notion that these emails just magically vanished makes no sense whatsoever. That is not how IT asset management at major businesses and government institutions works in this country. When the hard drive in question was destroyed, the IRS should have called in an accredited IT Asset Destruction (ITAD) professional or firm to complete that process, which requires extensive documentation, official signoffs, approvals, and signatures of completion. If this was done, there would be records. If this was not done, this is the smoking gun that proves the drive or drives were destroyed improperly – or not at all." Also on Wednesday, the House Ways and Means Committee released an eyebrow-raising email exchange from December 2012 (that is, postdating the alleged computer crashes). It seems that Lois Lerner, the IRS's since-ousted head of tax-exempt organizations, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican member of the Senate Finance Committee, were invited to appear together at a conference. Lerner turned down the invitation, emailing Matthew Giuliano, a lawyer then employed as a manager at the IRS: "Don't think I want to be on stage with Grassley on this issue." (The "issue" and the identity of the conference sponsor are redacted from the email exchange.) But she observed: "Looked like they were inappropriately offering to pay for [Grassley's] wife. Perhaps we should refer to Exam?" "We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against a sitting Republican United States Senator is shocking," Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp said in a press release. "At every turn, Lerner was using the IRS as a tool for political purposes in defiance of taxpayer rights." Giuliano gingerly replied to Lerner that he was "not sure we should send to exam. I think the offer to pay for Grassley's wife is income to Grassley, and not prohibited on its face." There's no indication that Lerner pressed the matter further, and the email exchange alone is consistent with the hypothesis that she was an overzealous enforcer but not a partisan one. That is the claim administration apologists have been making, though when you stop and think about it, that means their defense is that the IRS is indiscriminate in opportunistically snooping on private correspondence. Anyway, everything else we know about Lerner and Obama-era IRS practices argues against that defense. "If this were a Republican administration," former Clinton aide Lanny Davis tells radio host Larry O'Connor, who quotes him in the Washington Free Beacon, "I'd be saying when hard drives have been obliterated and this recent Lois Lerner--I think very inappropriate, maybe innocent but completely inappropriate--'maybe we should look at Mr. Grassley' . . . there's no Democrat that I know of that wouldn't be asking a Republican administration to conduct an independent investigation." Four decades ago, during a Republican administration that was brought down by corruption, the IRS turned out to be a bulwark of government integrity. Today the possibility remains that the IRS itself is the source of the corruption. As we've repeatedly argued, that would be even worse than an IRS that follows corrupt orders from the president. A corrupt administration can be replaced, as Nixon's was. It's harder to see what can be done if a vital and permanent institution of the administrative state has been corrupted. "and those who have protected those officials — need to be removed from office now, not two or three years from now when we may finally have a scrupulous attorney general. This is why the Constitution’s impeachment clause makes clear that the political process of removing malfeasant officials from power provides no double-jeopardy protection against a later criminal prosecution for the same misconduct" "and those who have protected those officials — need to be removed from office now, not two or three years from now when we may finally have a scrupulous attorney general. This is why the Constitution’s impeachment clause makes clear that the political process of removing malfeasant officials from power provides no double-jeopardy protection against a later criminal prosecution for the same misconduct" It would die in the Senate, yes, but if they take their responsibilities seriously it would require them to take it up seriously in a trial and conduct a vote. If done before the election, there are several hot-seat Dems who would have to give it careful consideration, Landreau, Begich, Hagan, Prior? And there are others who may be sick and tired of this administration bringing down the good name of transparency and liberalism, lol. After the election it still cannot be done on a party line vote. As intended, impeachment of anyone requires significant support from both sides. The impeachment proceedings would cause SOME press coverage of the case against them, and the trial in the Senate could get quite testy. ) This is all time and energy not devoted to the administration's transformation project so in that sense we all win no matter the outcome. Obviously if R's bring a weak case and get no crossover support it could easily backfire on them too, like budget showdowns, etc. I disagree with Andrew McCarthy. They are not willing to de-fund or impeach so compare blowing the whistle only with not blowing the whistle. What he does not say with certainty is that this will fail on standing. The lawsuit keeps the over reaches of power in the news. McCarthy says correctly, this is about public opinion. I can envision it failing for reasons other than standing with a practical result of giving Obama a chance to pretend his lawless rampage has been upheld. If the Reps can't make the case for defunding in the court of public opinion, how can they succeed in an effort to take it to SCOTUS? Do we want SCOTUS as the arbiter of these things? What if Hillary is elected and she gets to appoint some justices? We'll be fuct. I wish I had the time to read McCarthy's book on the case for impeachment. Anyone here know of any serious reviews of it? THE BOEHNER LAWSUIT AGAINST OBAMA IS BEGINNING TO TAKE SHAPEThe Boehner Lawsuit Against Obama Is Beginning to Take ShapeA vote on the resolution to authorize the legal action is set for the week before August break. July 8, 2014Starting next week, House Republicans will launch a highly visible—and likely tumultuous—three-week process of bringing to the floor legislation to authorize their promised lawsuit against President Obama over his use of executive actions. "In theory, you could report out a resolution tomorrow and vote on it," said a House GOP aide on Tuesday. "But that is not the approach [the leaders] want to take." Rather, the aim is to display—if not actually engage in—a more deliberative process, even if amid controversy. This drawn-out script builds toward a potentially dramatic floor vote held just days, or even hours, before the House adjourns on July 31 for its August-long summer break. more at link) Personally, while I think it would be highly satisfying to me personally as a conservative, I hope that conservatives WON'T try to impeach Obama. My own preference is that they simply attempt to turn him into a post-November lame duck legislatively (presuming that conservatives get enough seats back to overide a veto). My reason being that O still has a... let's just say 'zealous' in the religious sense of the word... 25-40% base that is going to become very, very (very) galvanized if Conservatives make that move, either after, or especially, before November. Please don't misconstrue-- I think this president is an overt liar, he is a terrible president, he is actively trying to sink the country, and he is ENTIRELY impeachable, quality wise. I just think it would be a bad idea.... imagine how twirled up the media will get about it. It will just pour political gas on the fire, whereas I think Obama can be just as effectively neutered legislatively, *assuming* conservatives gain that super majority. A two-year impeachment trial portrayed for that duration by MSNBC as 'white racist conservatives gunning for the black guy' every night on the news running up to 2016 is a mistake. Eric Holder, now, HIM I hope they tar and feather after November. I understand that he is also impeachable. ( ) If Conservatives win back the Congress, I will wager a digital beer that he simply resigns in the face of what is likely to be a very swift campaign to unseat him. Politically I'm thinking it would be a bridge too far, even though both he and the nation thoroughly deserve it. For one thing, we don't have direct proof tying the President to some of the worst offenses. Hard to say if willful neglect in governing equals high crimes and misdemeanors. Impeachment is a political solution that would fail, install Biden as President if successful, and most certainly backfire on Republicans. Republicans have a public perception problem. They need to be seen as relentlessly advancing real solutions to real problems - every time they get a camera or microphone to their podium. They need to change hearts and minds and they need to win races. People are seeing how bad Democratic policies and governing can be, but haven't fully jumped over to conservative governing principles. This is an enormous and historic opportunity to win people over and change directions. The over-reaches of power and lawless governing are abominable, but side issues to being on the wrong track headed the wrong direction. We won't impeach, but if we did, what would be the articles of impeachment against him? Will anyone add, correct or fill in details to make the case: 1) Fast and Furious, what exactly are we charging them with doing there? 2) IRS Targeting, applying the laws and enforcement mechanism unequally under the law with the intention of stifling opposition gaining unfair advantage in the election. 3) A long list of 'passing' laws by administrative decree when he couldn't get the votes to pass in congress, as required by the constitution. EPA rules, for one example. Removing the work requirement for welfare, for another. We have met the enemy and he is us. Yesterday, in a series of hits as operatic and brutal as the last 15 minutes of the Godfather, the government effectively made inversion through corporate merger an offense punishable by corporate death. Using the threat of an unlimited Treasury investigation, the President and Senator Dick Durbin stopped Walgreen ( WAG) from moving to Switzerland. The wreckage of some $10 billion in lost stock value for mostly Main Street investors was left as a grim reminder not to cross the government by, in this case, following the letter of our own stupid laws. This is a mighty fine way to discourage foreign as well as domestic entrepreneurs from founding and keeping companies in the USA. Think about it -- "Using the threat of an unlimited Treasury investigation". This is becoming the standard modus operandi -- remember the IRS "investigations" of political activists. =============== other friends comment: Absolutely consistent with every other Federal policy, foreign and domestic. The US government is not only a colossus now, but has become a bully. It's acting more and more like an organized criminal enterprise. We can also see, now, how a democracy gives us essentially zero control over the government machine. Hans-Hermann Hoppe argues that democracy tends to increase the power of government and ultimately ensures that we have the worst societal members in positions of power. See http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=199 Obamacare was arguably the most stupid thing the Obama administration has done to date. Trying to stop corporate inversions might be the second most stupid thing. Not only are the Dems showing themselves to be very anti-business, they are displaying supreme ignorance of how business and taxation interact. Instead of trying to stop inversions they should simply fix the tax code. But no, they want to force things to work their way, giving top priority to government's claim on profits. This will keep the economy weaker than it otherwise could have been for the next few years. The revelation that Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Marilynn Tavenner did not retain her e-mails means that more than 20 witness in the Obama administration to lose or delete e-mails without notifying Congress, according to the top House investigator. “The Obama administration has lost or destroyed e-mails for more than 20 witnesses, and in each case, the loss wasn’t disclosed to the National Archives or Congress for months or years, in violation of federal law,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) said of Tavenner’s lost e-mails. “It defies logic that so many senior Administration officials were found to have ignored federal recordkeeping requirements only after Congress asked to see their e-mails,” he continued. “Just this week, my staff followed up with HHS, who has failed to comply with a subpoena from ten months ago. Even at that point, the administration did not inform us that there was a problem with Ms. Tavenner’s e-mail history. Yet again, we discover that this administration will not be forthright with the American people unless cornered.” From February of 2010 to November of 2013 — one month after the launch of the HealthCare.gov website, as the Daily Caller’s Patrick Howley noted — Tavenner didn’t maintain copies of her e-mails as required. “During her entire tenure at CMS, Ms. Tavenner’s CMS e-mail address, which is accessible to both colleagues and the public, has been subject to write-in campaigns involving thousands of e-mails from the public,” CMS wrote to the National Archives and Records Administration, per Howley. “Therefore, she receives an extremely high volume of e-mails that she manages daily. To keep an orderly e-mail box and to stay within the agency’s e-mail system capacity limits, the administrator generally copied or forwarded e-mails to immediate staff for retention and retrieval, and did not maintain her own copies,” CMS said. Issa subpoenaed the missing e-mails ten months ago. “The evidence is mounting that the website did not go through proper testing, including critical security testing, and that the Administration ignored repeated warnings from contractors about ongoing problems,” he said at the time. “The American people deserve to know why the administration spent significant taxpayer money on a product that is entirely dysfunctional and puts their personal information at risk.”

82 U.S. 395 21 L.Ed. 97 15 Wall. 395 MONTGOMERYv.UNITED STATES. December Term, 1872 APPEAL from the Court of Claims; the case being thus: R. H. Montgomery, a British subject domiciled in New Orleans before and during the war of the rebellion, after the capture of that city by the forces of the United States, in April, 1862, made a written agreement with J. W. Burbridge, a loyal person residing in that city, doing business as Burbridge & Co., and the factor and agent of one Leo Johnson, a planter, residing at that time in the parish of La Fourche, Louisiana, and within the enemy's lines; by which Burbridge & Co., as 'the agents of the said Johnson, declared that they had sold, and thereby did sell unto the said R. H. Montgomery, 'the following crop belonging to said Johnson, on his plantation, in the parish of La Fourche, near La Fourche Crossings, to wit: 605 hogsheads of sugar, 700 barrels of molasses, and 300 barrels of rum, at the following prices, to wit: For the sugar, at 4 1/2 cents per pound; for the molasses, at 20 cents per gallon; and for the rum, at 50 cents per gallon, the weight and quantity to be determined at the time and upon the delivery thereof in New Orleans." Montgomery paid to Burbridge & Co. $5000, the receipt whereof was declared in the agreement to be thereby acknowledged, 'and accepted as so much on account of the first sugar, molasses, or rum delivered to him, said Montgomery, as aforestated; the balance to be paid by said Montgomery at each future delivery of said sugar, molasses, and rum.' The sum of $9000 was paid afterwards. Burbridge, on the day of the contract, signed an order directing the overseer of Johnson's plantation 'to deliver to the order of the said R. H. Montgomery the entire crop of sugar, molasses, and rum contained in the sugar-house, purgeries, &c., on the said plantation, the same,' said the order, 'having been sold to him this day.' All the sugars and produce mentioned by the agreement having, as already said, at the time when it was made, been within the rebel lines of occupation, no actual delivery or possession was taken of any part, nor any attempt made to deliver or take possession until the sugar was brought, some time afterwards, into the Federal lines by the forces of the United States. On the 9th of September, 1862, General Butler then commanding at New Orleans, issued a proclamation whereby, among other things, all the property within the district known as the district of La Fourche, and including the plantation where the sugar in question then was, was sequestrated, and all sales and transfers of the same forbidden and declared to be invalid. A commission was appointed to take possession of the property and make an accurate inventory of the same, and to gather and collect all personal property covered by the proclamation and to dispose of it in the manner therein provided. Immediately after the issuing of this order the government forces took possession of Johnson's plantation and delivered to the commission about 500 hogsheads of sugar (being a portion of that embraced in the contract), which they sold; paying the net proceeds, amounting to $37,351, into the Treasury of the United States. Burbridge & Co., for two years before May, 1862, had been the factors and agents of Johnson, and had made advances to him to enable him to secure his crops, and Johnson owed them for such advances, prior to December 9th, 1862, $131,000. Burbridge & Co., as a part of the original agreement made between them and Johnson, were to have a lien on, and were authorized to make sale of, the crop of sugars and produce on the plantation for the purpose of reimbursing themselves the amount of their advances. The sugars, &c., in question were of the crop of the year 1860 and 1861. Montgomery now filed in the Court of Claims a claim for the proceeds of the sugar, under the Captured and Abandoned Property Act of March 12th, 1863, which enacts, among other things: 'That any person claiming to have been the owner of such abandoned and captured property, may at any time within two years bring his action. . . . And on proof, to the satisfaction of said court, of his ownership of said property, and of his right to the proceeds thereof, may recover,' &c. The Court of Claims held that the appellant was not entitled to recover. They said, among other things: 'A careful examination of the agreement between Burbridge & Co. and the claimant (admitting the authority of Burbridge & Co. to make it), satisfies us that no ownership of the property vested in Montgomery. The transaction did not constitute a sale, but only an executory contract for a future sale and delivery. . . . Where a sale is agreed upon of goods, and anything remains to be done to ascertain the quantity or price, the property in such case does not vest in the buyer until this is done.' The court also assumed, apparently, that property situated outside of the Federal lines, and within the rebel lines, was not a lawful subject-matter of sale, between parties such as these were.1 The court accordingly dismissed the petition, and Montgomery now brought the case here on appeal. Mr. T. J. D. Fuller, for the appellant: Had the Court of Claims in its observation about executory contracts said that 'where a sale is agreed upon of goods, and anything remains to be done BY THE VENDOR to ascertain the quantity or price, the property in such case, does not vest in the buyer until this is done;' it would have stated the law truly, but it omitted the words which we put in capitals; and because of this omission—this oversight, or failure to make a proper distinction, found in the authorities,2 it committed error. Now, reading this contract in the light of authorities, and the order of delivery, there was nothing remaining to be done by the vendors. As to the second point. The idea meant to be here presented by the Court of Claims is, of course, that the contract made a trading with the enemy in time of war. But Burbridge & Co. had a lien on the property far above all its value. They were in truth owners, though, speaking technically, we say that they had a power coupled with an interest in and over the produce of the plantation; and as factors had authority to sell the sugars to reimburse themselves for the advances previously made. But, as already said, being far in advance above the value of the crop, they were in truth owners of it; acting for themselves. They could be acting for nobody else. Johnson had no real interest in the crop. Their interest was supreme, for from it only were they likely to get their advances at all. Now, they were not enemies; contrariwise, they were subjects and friends. Reading the contract in the light of then existing facts, the expressions 'agent of Johnson,' 'the property of Johnson,' are merely words descriptive of the property sold, to identify it. Johnson was no party to the sale; his assent or dissent would not in anywise affect the interest of the parties to it. Mr. G. H. Williams, Attorney-General, and Mr. C. H. Hill, Assistant Attorney-General, contra. Mr. Justice STRONG, delivered the opinion of the court. 1 Whether the contract under which the appellant claims to have become the owner of the sugar, molasses, and rum was so far executed that, without more, it would have passed the property, had it been legal, it is unnecessary to consider; for we are of opinion that, whether executed or executory, it was illegal and void. It was a clear case of trading with a public enemy. The subject of the contract was personal property within the Confederate lines. It was a crop at the time on the plantation of Leo Johnson, in the parish of La Fourche, near La Fourche Crossings. It belonged also to Johnson, who was then domiciled in the enemy's territory, and who was himself an enemy. This is expressly stated in the contract itself. The appellant's right, therefore, is founded upon an attempted purchase, during the war, from an enemy, of enemy's property, in direct violation not only of the laws which always prevail in a state of war, but also in violation of the acts of Congress. It is vain to contend that any right can be acquired under such a contract. 2 It is true the sale was negotiated by agents of Johnson, living outside of the enemy's territory, but it was not the less his act because it was done by those acting under his authority. Nothing is clearer, says President Woolsey,3 than that all commercial transactions of whatever kind (except ransom contracts), with the subjects, or in the territory of the enemy, whether direct or indirect, as through an agent or partner who is neutral, are illegal and void. This is not inconsistent with the doctrine that a resident in the territory of one belligerent may have in times of war an agent residing in the territory of the other belligerent, to whom his debtor may pay the debt, or deliver property in discharge of it. Such payments or deliveries involve no intercourse between enemies. The present case exhibits a transaction not wholly within enemy's territory, but a sale from an enemy to a friend. If that can be made through an agent, then the rule which prohibits commercial intercourse is a mere regulation of the mode of trade. It may be evaded by simply maintaining an agency in the enemy's territory. In this way every pound of cotton or of sugar might have been purchased by Northern traders from those engaged in the rebellion. Perhaps the rule is stated too broadly in Woolsey's Commentaries, and in many elementary books, but it is certain that 'every kind of trading or commercial dealing or intercourse, whether by transmission of money or of goods, or orders for the delivery of either between two countries (at war), directly or indirectly, or through the intervention of third persons or partnerships, or by contracts in any form looking to or involving such transmission,' are prohibited.4 The contract in this case contemplated the delivery of the sugar, molasses, and rum at New Orleans, then within the Federal lines. There, on its being weighed and measured, payment was to be made to Johnson's agents. If this be allowed, the enemy is is benefited and his property is protected from seizure or confiscation. 3 It has been argued that because Burbridge & Co., the agents, had a lien upon the property for advances made by them, and had also a power to sell for the repayment of their advances, the sale which was made ought not to be regarded as a sale by Johnson. Yet the only authority they had to sell at all, resulted either from express power given to them by the owner, or from the relation to him in which they then stood. They might have sold their lien, or the debt secured by it; and had they done so, the sale would have involved no trading with the enemy. But they undertook to sell Johnson's property, describing it as such in the instrument of sale, and describing themselves as Johnson's agents. Very clearly, in effect, the parties to the transaction were the appellant and a public enemy. For this reason the judgment is 4 AFFIRMED. 1 See 5th Court of Claims Reports, 658. 2 Crofoot v. Bennett, 2 Comstock, 258; Leonard v. Davis, 1 Black, 483. 3 International Law, § 117. 4 Kershaw v. Kelsey, 100 Massachusetts, 561.

Introduction {#sec1-1} ============ Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is the most common nosocomial infection diagnosed in the intensive care units (ICUs). VAP is defined as pneumonia that occurs 48 h or more after endotracheal intubation or tracheostomy, caused by infectious agents not present or incubating at the time mechanical ventilation was started. It can be of two types: (i) early-onset VAP which is defined as VAP that occurs within the first 4 days of ventilation, and (ii) late-onset VAP which is defined as VAP that occurs more than 4 days after initiation of mechanical ventilation.\[[@ref1]\] Despite major advances in techniques in caring for patients whose respiratory tracts are instrumented and the routine use of efficient disinfection procedures for the respiratory equipment, nosocomial bacterial pneumonia continues to complicate the course of 7-41% of patients receiving continuous mechanical ventilation.\[[@ref2]\] VAP requires rapid diagnosis and initiation of the appropriate antibiotic treatment, since studies have shown that the delayed administration of appropriate antibiotic therapy in patients with VAP has been associated with excess hospital mortality.\[[@ref3]\] The incidence rates calculated using 1,000 ventilator days as denominator reflect more accurately VAP risks rates. VAP rates ranged from 4-14/1000 ventilator days in United States and 10-52.7/1000 days in developing countries.\[[@ref4]\] A number of factors have been suspected or identified to increase the risk of VAP in various studies.\[[@ref5]\] VAP causing pathogens also vary among different settings.\[[@ref6]\] Therefore, knowledge of the incidence of VAP, associated risk factors and common pathogens causing VAP can help in development of effective preventive measures, which in turn will decrease the mortality and morbidity, duration of treatment and hospital stay associated with VAP. The aim of our study was to determine the incidence of VAP, to assess the risk factors and attributable mortality associated with VAP and to find out the various bacterial pathogens causing VAP in the medical ICU of our institute. Materials and Methods {#sec1-2} ===================== A prospective observational study was conducted in the Department of Microbiology in association with 12 bedded multidisciplinary ICU of the Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine of our institute for the period of June 2009 to May 2010. Patients who received mechanical ventilation more than 48 h were included in our study. Modified clinical pulmonary infection score (CPIS) score was followed as a screening method to clinically diagnose VAP.\[[@ref7]\] Detailed history including the name, age, sex, underlying clinical condition, date of admission to the ICU, date of indoor admission, any history of previous antibiotic intake, the treatment being administered in the ICU and clinical outcome of each patient was noted. Any lower respiratory tract infection that developed after 48 h of mechanical ventilation and was judged not to have been incubating before mechanical ventilation was taken as VAP. VAP rate was defined as the number of VAPs/1,000 ventilator days.\[[@ref4]\] The diagnosis of VAP was based on clinical and microbiological criteria. A clinical suspicion of VAP was made in patients with modified CPIS score \>6.\[[@ref7]\] The diagnosis was confirmed when significant growth was obtained in the samples. Endotracheal aspirate (ETA) and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) samples were collected from all patients admitted in the ICU requiring mechanical ventilation for more than 48 h.\[[@ref8]\] Patients who were already on ventilation before admission to the ICU or those who died within 48 h were excluded. ETA samples were collected from each patient on 2^nd^ 4^th^ and 7^th^ day while BAL was collected once from each patient. All the samples were transported to the laboratory immediately. Gram stain preparations were made from all ETA and BAL samples and examined first under low power (×10 objectives) to determine the presence and type of cells in the specimen and then observed under oil immersion field (×100 objective). The relative number of micro-organisms and their morphologies were recorded.\[[@ref9]\] All the samples were inoculated on blood agar, MacConkey agar and chocolate agar. Semi-quantitative cultures were done.\[[@ref10]\] The MacConkey plates were incubated at 37°C while blood agar and chocolate agar were incubated at 37°C in the presence of 5-10% carbon dioxide. Growth \>10^5^ CFU/ml was taken as the cut-off threshold for ETAs while growth \>10^4^ CFU/ml was taken as the cut-off for BALs.\[[@ref11][@ref12]\] Samples showing growth less than these thresholds were assumed to be due to colonization or contamination. In case of significant growth, the isolated colonies were subjected to gram stain and biochemical tests for identification. Identification was carried out according to standard biochemical tests.\[[@ref13]\] {#sec2-1} ### Statistical analysis {#sec3-1} The statistical analysis was performed using standard tests. Fisher\'s exact test was applied when two or more set of variables were compared. *P* \< 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. Results {#sec1-3} ======= A total of 105 patients, who were on mechanical ventilation for more than 48 h were included in our study. A total of 60 patients fulfilled the clinical and microbiological criteria for the diagnosis of VAP. The incidence of VAP in our study was 57.14% and the incidence density of VAP was 31.7/1000 ventilator days. Out of the 60 cases, 21 (35%) were categorized under early onset group and 39 (65%) under the late onset group. In relation to gender the incidence of VAP was more among males (65%) than females (35%) and in different age groups the incidence of VAP was highest in patients more than 55 years of age (73.68%). When considering the development of VAP in relation to the underlying condition in our study it was seen that trauma was the most common underlying condition as shown in [Table 1](#T1){ref-type="table"}. Patients admitted to the ICU after trauma were at the highest risk of developing VAP with 76% of patients developing pneumonia. The incidence of VAP increased in patients who were on mechanical ventilation for \>15 days (85.17%) as compared to those who were ventilated for less than ≤15 days (50%) \[*P* \< 0.01\]. Out of the 60 patients who developed VAP 12 (20%) were on a broad spectrum antibiotics in the preceding 7 days as compared to 5 (11.2%) from non VAP group. There was a total agreement in bacteriology between semi-quantitative ETAs and BALs in our study. ###### Patients with VAP according to age groups and underlying clinical condition  The majority, i.e. 95.7% of bacterial isolates were found to be Gram-negative bacilli. *Acinetobacter* spp. accounted for 34.28% of VAP cases followed by *Pseudomonas aeruginosa* which was responsible for 25.71% cases. Other Gram-negative bacilli isolated were *Klebsiella pneumoniae*, *Citrobacter freundii*, *Enterobacter* spp., and *Escherichia coli* \[[Table 2](#T2){ref-type="table"}\]. Out of the total 70 isolates only 3 isolates were Gram-positive bacteria of which 2 were *Staphylococcus aureus* and 1 *was Enterococcus* spp. Among the total 60 episodes of VAP reported, 10 episodes of VAP were polymicrobial and 50 episodes were monomicrobial. In the monomicrobial episodes, Gram-negative isolates accounted for 96% (48/50) and even in polymicrobial episodes of VAP Gram-negative isolates were predominant accounting for 90% (9/10). ###### Distribution of organisms isolated from patients with VAP  The overall mortality associated with VAP was observed to be 48.33%. Mortality in non VAP group was significantly low at 20%. As these two groups were not similar in other aspects, so the excess mortality could not be attributed entirely to VAP. Severity adjusted mortality could not be calculated. We noted that the mortality associated with VAP was highest in the age group of \>55 years (64.29%), followed by 46-55 years (54.54%), 36-45 years (50%), 15-25 years (36.36%) and 26-35 years (30%) respectively. Discussion {#sec1-4} ========== Overall incidence of VAP was 57.14% in our study. This figure is at the higher end of the range of 15-58% as reported by other investigators.\[[@ref1]\] Divergence of incidence can be attributed to several factors such as differences in the study population, differences in the definition of VAP, e.g. clinically versus microbiologically oriented and possibly, to the use of preventive strategies. The incidence density of VAP in our study was 31.7/1000 ventilator days which were was high but comparable to ICUs in other developing countries.\[[@ref4]\] The higher incidence of VAP in our study can be attributed to the fact that the total number of cases in the study and the study duration were less as compared to other studies showing lower incidence. One more reason for this high incidence can be the lack of adequate nursing staff (nurse to patient ratio should ideally be 1:1 as compared to 1:4 in our institute) which may have adversely affected the quality of care given to patients. There is now a growing evidence that high work load and low staffing level increase the risk for negative patients outcomes such as death and healthcar-associated infections.\[[@ref14]\] When considering the development of VAP in relation to the underlying condition, we observed that trauma was the most common. Many studies have shown that injured patients (head injury and multiple fractures) are at increased risk for VAP relative to medical patients.\[[@ref5][@ref15][@ref16]\] Another risk factor, which was evaluated in this study was the duration of mechanical ventilation. It was observed that the incidence of VAP increased in patients who were on mechanical ventilation for \>15 days (85.17%) as compared to those who were ventilated for less than ≤15 days (50% \[*P* \< 0.01\]). Thus, the incidence of VAP increases with the duration of mechanical ventilation. These findings were similar to an Italian study that icluded 724 ICU patients and showed that the frequency of VAP rose from 5% for patients receiving mechanical ventilation for 1 day to 69% for those receiving mechanical ventilation for more than 30 days.\[[@ref17][@ref18]\] One more risk factor, which was evaluated in our study was the administration of broad spectrum antibiotics in the preceding 7 days. It was observed that out of the 60 patients who developed VAP, 12 (20%) were on a broad spectrum antibiotics in preceding 7 days as compared to 5 (11.2%) in the non VAP group (*P* \> 0.05 which was, however not statistically significant). Furthermore, prolonged antibiotic administration to ICU patients for primary infection is thought to favour selection and subsequent colonization with resistant pathogens responsible for super infection. A sentinel study of VAP in a French ICU noted that prior antimicrobial therapy markedly increased the rate of VAP caused by *P. aeruginosa* and *Acinetobacter* spp. These two pathogens accounted for 65% of VAP cases among patients who have previously received antibiotics, compared with only 19% of VAP cases among antibiotic-naïve patients.\[[@ref2]\] In our study also these two pathogens were responsible for 60% VAP cases. *Acinetobacter* spp. accounted for the highest number of cases followed by *P. aeruginosa*. Similarly, Joseph *et al*. also reported *Acinetobacter* spp. and *P. aeruginosa* as the predominant organisms causing VAP.\[[@ref19]\] In another study by Gupta *et al*., the most common pathogen was *P. aeruginosa*.\[[@ref20]\] Airway intubation is associated with increased frequency of Gram-negative bacterial colonization of upper and lower respiratory tract with subsequent overgrowth and pneumonia. Non fermenters such as *Pseudomonas* spp. and *Acinetobacter* spp. were significantly associated with late onset VAP as observed by other workers but in our study even in patients with early onset VAP, *Acinetobacter* was the most common pathogen.\[[@ref19][@ref21][@ref22]\] In their study Giantsou *et al*. also observed that potentially multiresistant *P. aeruginosa* was the most commonly isolated pathogen in both early onset and late onset VAP.\[[@ref23]\] In the present study, two types of samples, i.e. ETA and BAL were taken for each patient. Both methods produced comparable results. Wu *et al*. also showed that quantitative cultures of ETAs were comparable to those using invasive bronchoscopic methods.\[[@ref24]\] VAP has been associated with mortality rates of 24-76% at a variety of institutions. Patients with VAP appear to have a 2-10 fold higher risk of death compared to ventilated patients without pneumonia.\[[@ref25]\] The overall mortality in patients with VAP in our study was 48.33% while in the non VAP patients the mortality was 20% (*P* \< 0.05). This figure is comparable to that of the study done by Mukhopadhyay *et al*. in which the overall mortality rate among patients with VAP was 47.3%.\[[@ref21]\] Conclusion {#sec1-5} ========== VAP is a serious problem in the ICU leading to longer hospital stay higher treatment costs and increased mortality and morbidity. Prolonged mechanical ventilation is an important risk factor. In addition, prior use of antibiotics increases the risk of acquiring drug resistant pathogens. Effective nursing care and adequate staffing also impact on VAP prevention. Better knowledge of local patterns of pathogens causing VAP can help facilitate treatment choices. Local data collected the similar studies can assist in making informed treatment choices. **Source of Support:** Nil. **Conflict of Interest:** None declared.

PROJECT SUMMARY Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States and other developed countries. Half of these deaths occur suddenly, typically from ventricular tachyarrhythmias that arise in the setting of acute ischemia, acquired heart disease or inherited syndromes including channelopathies and cardiomyopathies. The specialized cardiac conduction system (CCS) comprises a heterogeneous network of cells that orchestrate the initiation and propagation of a wave of electrical excitation throughout the myocardium. Accumulating evidence suggests that dysfunction of the ventricular conduction system (VCS) plays a key mechanistic role triggering a broad range of life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias, however major gaps exist in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms responsible for the formation, function and dysfunction of the VCS. Our laboratory has established new tools and identified novel genes and pathways that we hypothesize are critical for VCS formation, function and dysfunction. In this application we propose a series of experiments designed to test the biological importance of these new genes and pathways.

Interactive Circus Play Area St. Louis Interactive Circus Play Area Looking for a fun, unique hands on activity for your event? Our interactive circus play area St. Louis lets your guests do something that everyone has wanted to do, but almost no one has: Run away with the circus! And they don’t even have to leave your event! Circus Skills We set up an interactive play area with a number of pieces of circus equipment. Your guests come up and try their hand with various circus apparatus. Our circus attendant teaches them different, simple tricks they can try. Hands on. Interactive. Fun! So much fun that your guests may not want to leave the interactive circus play area St. Louis! The equipment often includes, for example: Plate Spinning Plate-spinning is challenging. But when people master it, they are very proud! Flower Sticks There are lots of tricks we teach with flower sticks, ranging from easy to difficult. Ribbon Twirling Ribbon twirling is something kids have success with quickly. It is very visual. Ring Juggling Partner ring juggling is fun! We teach several levels of pair juggling tricks, depending on what they want. Feather Balancing Picnics, Fairs, Festivals, Field Days,… What types of events are good fits for an interactive circus play area St. Louis? Picnics, fairs, festivals, field days,… If you have any of these situations, then a circus play area would likely be a great addition to your event: You have a lot of people at your event People are coming and going You want activity stations at your event You want something fun and unique to keep the kids busy Interactive Circus Play Area St. Louis, MO and IL Where do we provide our interactive circus play area St. Louis? Since we are based in St. Louis, MO, most of our events are in Missouri or Illinois. However, if you are in a neighboring state, or even if you are not and want to explore us setting up a circus play area at your event, call or email us and we’ll see if we can make it happen!

const arsenal = require('arsenal'); const async = require('async'); const metadata = require('../metadata/wrapper'); const logger = require('../utilities/logger'); const { loadCachedOverlay, managementDatabaseName, patchConfiguration, } = require('./configuration'); const { initManagementCredentials } = require('./credentials'); const { startWSManagementClient } = require('./push'); const { startPollingManagementClient } = require('./poll'); const { reshapeExceptionError } = arsenal.errorUtils; const { isManagementAgentUsed } = require('./agentClient'); const initRemoteManagementRetryDelay = 10000; const managementEndpointRoot = process.env.MANAGEMENT_ENDPOINT || 'https://api.zenko.io'; const managementEndpoint = `${managementEndpointRoot}/api/v1/instance`; const pushEndpointRoot = process.env.PUSH_ENDPOINT || 'https://push.api.zenko.io'; const pushEndpoint = `${pushEndpointRoot}/api/v1/instance`; function initManagementDatabase(log, callback) { // XXX choose proper owner names const md = new arsenal.models.BucketInfo(managementDatabaseName, 'owner', 'owner display name', new Date().toJSON()); metadata.createBucket(managementDatabaseName, md, log, error => { if (error) { if (error.BucketAlreadyExists) { log.info('created management database'); return callback(); } log.error('could not initialize management database', { error: reshapeExceptionError(error), method: 'initManagementDatabase' }); return callback(error); } log.info('initialized management database'); return callback(); }); } function startManagementListeners(instanceId, token) { const mode = process.env.MANAGEMENT_MODE || 'push'; if (mode === 'push') { const url = `${pushEndpoint}/${instanceId}/ws`; startWSManagementClient(url, token); } else { startPollingManagementClient(managementEndpoint, instanceId, token); } } /** * Initializes Orbit-based management by: * - creating the management database in metadata * - generating a key pair for credentials encryption * - generating an instance-unique ID * - getting an authentication token for the API * - loading and applying the latest cached overlay configuration * - starting a configuration update and metrics push background task * * @param {werelogs~Logger} log Request-scoped logger to be able to trace * initialization process * @param {function} callback Function to call once the overlay is loaded * (overlay) * * @returns {undefined} */ function initManagement(log, callback) { if ((process.env.REMOTE_MANAGEMENT_DISABLE && process.env.REMOTE_MANAGEMENT_DISABLE !== '0') || process.env.S3BACKEND === 'mem') { log.info('remote management disabled'); return; } /* Temporary check before to fully move to the process management agent. */ if (isManagementAgentUsed() ^ typeof callback === 'function') { let msg = 'misuse of initManagement function: '; msg += `MANAGEMENT_USE_AGENT: ${process.env.MANAGEMENT_USE_AGENT}`; msg += `, callback type: ${typeof callback}`; throw new Error(msg); } async.waterfall([ // eslint-disable-next-line arrow-body-style cb => { return isManagementAgentUsed() ? metadata.setup(cb) : cb(); }, cb => initManagementDatabase(log, cb), cb => metadata.getUUID(log, cb), (instanceId, cb) => initManagementCredentials( managementEndpoint, instanceId, log, cb), (instanceId, token, cb) => { if (!isManagementAgentUsed()) { cb(null, instanceId, token, {}); return; } loadCachedOverlay(log, (err, overlay) => cb(err, instanceId, token, overlay)); }, (instanceId, token, overlay, cb) => { if (!isManagementAgentUsed()) { cb(null, instanceId, token, overlay); return; } patchConfiguration(overlay, log, err => cb(err, instanceId, token, overlay)); }, ], (error, instanceId, token, overlay) => { if (error) { log.error('could not initialize remote management, retrying later', { error: reshapeExceptionError(error), method: 'initManagement' }); setTimeout(initManagement, initRemoteManagementRetryDelay, logger.newRequestLogger()); } else { log.info(`this deployment's Instance ID is ${instanceId}`); log.end('management init done'); startManagementListeners(instanceId, token); if (callback) { callback(overlay); } } }); } module.exports = { initManagement, initManagementDatabase, };

Time running out on Edison deal Sacramento Bee, September 14, 2001 Enron agrees to turn over documents to Senate investigators San Diego Union Tribune, September 13, 2001 California lawmakers face largest issue, hundreds of bills on final day of session San Francisco Chronicle, September 14, 2001 Westerners look to windmills as possible saviors of a way of life San Francisco Chronicle, September 14, 2001 Edison's bailout down to the wire Sacramento Bee, September 14, 2001 Time running out on Edison deal By Jennifer Coleman Associated Press Writer SACRAMENTO (AP) -- State lawmakers prepared to rush through hundreds of measures in the remaining two days of the legislative session, but one massive issue remained unsolved Thursday (AP) -- if and how the state will help Southern California Edison avoid bankruptcy. By Thursday afternoon, the Senate had done little to consider the Assembly's revision of a plan the Senate passed in July. Without a Senate vote, the rescue plan will die and leave Edison faced with bankruptcy. Without a rescue, "we have every indication from Edison that they'll file for bankruptcy," said Steve Maviglio, the spokesman for Gov. Gray Davis, who negotiated a deal with Edison in April. That deal allows the utility to issue revenue bonds, backed by customer bills, to pay most of its $3.9 billion in debts. It also gives the state an option to buy the utility's transmission grid for about $2.4 billion and hold development rights on more than 20,000 acres of Edison land. The Legislature must approve the deal by the time it adjourns Friday. Lawmakers are also in a special session devoted to energy issues, which could last longer than the regular session. The state's other large utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April, after amassing about $8.9 billion due to last year's sky-high electricity costs. Edison says it has accrued $3.9 billion in debts. Now, the Senate has an altered version of Davis' deal, but it appears unlikely to pass it. The bill currently allows Edison to sell $2.9 billion in bonds. Instead, senators could "gut and amend" an Assembly measure, reverting the deal to something closer to the version they sent the Assembly. In that bill, by Sen. Richard Polanco, D-Los Angeles, the utility's bond issue would be capped at $2.5 billion and the state's option to buy the grid would be for the lines' book value. Edison opposed that deal, saying it would not return them to financial solvency. Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, a San Francisco Democrat, has been reluctant to pass an Edison deal. Maviglio said the governor's staff was trying to work with Burton's to come up with something. "We're ready and willing to meet when he is," Maviglio said. The Senate Energy Committee, which could meet Thursday evening, is considering amending an Assembly bill already in their house. That bill would have to be approved by the energy and fiscal committees, then sent to the floor for a vote by the full Senate. If that happens, "there's nothing we can do," said Assembly Republican spokeswoman Dana O'Donnell. "It's coming back for concurrence. That means we can't amend it, we can only either vote on it or not vote on it." Consumer groups opposed the bill approved by the Assembly last week. "We're working pretty hard to prevent them from doing anything," said consumer advocate Doug Heller with the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. That organization has promised to mount a ballot measure to reverse any Edison rescue deal approved by the Legislature. Enron agrees to turn over documents to Senate investigators By Jennifer Coleman ASSOCIATED PRESS September 13, 2001 SACRAMENTO - Enron Corp. agreed Thursday to release company documents to a Senate committee investigating possible price manipulation, ending the committee's quest to cite the energy company for contempt for not complying with a subpoena. The Senate Rules Committee heard arguments from Enron and the Senate Select Committee to Investigate Price Manipulation of the Wholesale Energy Market over whether the energy company should be found in contempt. In June, the select committee subpoenaed Enron files as part of its investigation into record-high prices in the state's wholesale electricity market. Enron sued to quash the subpoena, a motion a judge rejected. The judge agreed, however, that Enron was entitled to a protective order for documents revealing sensitive trading and financial information. Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Santa Ana, chairman of the select committee, said late Thursday that Enron agreed to the same confidentiality agreement accepted by several other generators. With that agreement, Dunn said, the committee would withdraw a report that recommended Enron be found in contempt. He said he expects documents to be transferred immediately. Dunn had argued the subpoena also covered nonconfidential documents, and since the energy company also refused to release those papers to the committee, it was in contempt. He asked Sen. John Burton, D-San Francisco, chairman of the rules committee, to approve fines against Enron for each day they didn't comply with the subpoena. The daily fines would start at $1,000, doubling each day for 10 days. Then the company would be fined $1 million a day. Enron lawyer Michael Kirby said the company had put 49,000 nonconfidential documents in a depository in Sacramento so committee investigators could review them. But Dennis Murphy, a lawyer for the select committee, said Enron didn't tell investigators where the depository was located. The committee discovered the address in documents filed by Enron for the court case, he said. "We've been trying to get into the depository for a week. They have not allowed our people in there to verify what documents are in there," he said. Kirby disputed that, and blamed the committee for delays in turning over the balance of the documents. The two parties haven't met since the judge ordered the protective order, and Kirby said it was the committee that refused to work out the order's details. Dunn said the law requires Enron to produce the documents before it was entitled to a protective order. Sen. Ross Johnson, R-Irvine, said Dunn's push to have Enron found in contempt "smacks at this point of Enron being punished for exercising their right to go to court." A contempt report on Reliant Energy has also been sent to the Senate. A contempt finding against Mirant Corp. was later reversed when the company opened a document depository in Sacramento for the committee's investigators. If the full Senate imposes sanctions against Reliant or Enron, it will be the first time since 1929, when the Senate voted to jail reluctant witnesses during a committee investigation of price fixing and price gouging involving cement sales to the state. California lawmakers face largest issue, hundreds of bills on final day of session State lawmakers faced a mammoth task on the final day of the legislative session as they tackle a rescue plan for Southern California Edison and hundreds of bills to complete by a midnight deadline. The terrorist attacks on Tuesday forced lawmakers to skip a full day of proceedings, creating an even busier final day that could possibly drag into Saturday. During a marathon session Thursday and early Friday, lawmakers redrew their own district lines, approved twin handgun license bills and a measure allowing in-state college tuition for certain immigrants. Lawmakers still have to consider another version of Gov. Gray Davis' plan to rescue Southern California Edison from bankruptcy. The latest plan would let the utility issue $2.5 billion in bonds, leaving the company with $1.4 billion in debt. Without a rescue, "we have every indication from Edison that they'll file for bankruptcy," said Steve Maviglio, the spokesman for Davis. The cash-strapped utility and Pacific Gas and Electric say they've lost nearly $14 billion since June 2000 to high wholesale prices the state's electricity deregulation law bars them from passing on to consumers. PG&E filed for federal bankruptcy protection April 6. Another top priority of the Legislature was redrawing district lines to reflect population changes reported in Census 2000. The Assembly and Senate approved district plans for themselves and Congress, sending them to Davis for his approval. Westerners look to windmills as possible saviors of a way of life Wash. (AP) -- Like many ranchers facing pressure from developers, Shirley Hindman worries that one day she might have to break up her Nine Mile Ranch, one of the largest spreads in the Walla Walla Valley. "That would make me sick," she says. But now she and her father, Billy, have found another way to protect their 14,000 acres of sagebrush-covered hills and canyonland. The answer has come in the wind -- something "we have plenty of," she says. And something also in growing demand. Soon the ridgelines across Highway 12 from Hindman's corrals will be dotted by windmills. By next year Hindman and several other property owners, including a nearby college, expect to be landlords to the world's largest wind farm. Along southeastern Washington and into neighboring Oregon, 450 Danish-built windmills -- sleek white towers 200 feet high with rotors 200 feet across -- will churn out enough power for 75,000 families served by Pacificorp, one of the Northwest's leading electric utilities. Nearly 100 of the wind turbines already are producing. Gravel roads and concrete slabs for the others are in place. "It will help us keep Nine Mile. It will help us sustain a way of life," says Hugh Preston, Ms. Hindman's husband. More than just an economic hedge for farmers and ranchers, wind farms across the West and upper Midwest are emerging as a growing part of the nation's electricity picture. Major projects are operating or earmarked for completion within a year in Texas, Montana, Minnesota, Kansas and Nevada. While windmills still account for only a fraction of 1 percent of the electricity produced in the United States, they no longer are the exotic playthings of a few dreamers. Increasingly, big-time players are showing interest in wind to supplement fossil fuel-powered electricity plants, nuclear reactors and hydroelectric dams. "Wind is a technology that's now reliable and proven," says Robert Morrison, vice president for renewable business development at FPL Energy, the Florida-based company building the 300-megawatt Oregon-Washington project. The cost of generating electricity from wind has declined from 38 cents a kilowatt-hour 20 years ago, to 3 to 5 cents a kilowatt hour in today's larger projects, says the industry. That's competitive with natural gas. "Suddenly this stuff is economical," says Morrison, whose company has other wind projects under way or being planned in a half-dozen states including Texas, Kansas and Wisconsin. Other emerging players include Enron, the giant Houston-based energy conglomerate, and the government's Bonneville Power Administration, which this year sought $1 billion worth of wind energy projects and received more bids than expected. "The response blew us away," said George Darr, Bonneville's manager for renewable resources. Some of the projects will begin operating late next year. Windmills now account for only about 2,500 megawatts of generating capacity nationwide, but the production is expected almost to double by the end of 2001 to provide enough electricity for 1.3 million households. The industry anticipates that in two decades wind power will grow to 100,000 megawatts and account for 6 percent of the country's electricity. In comparison, nuclear power currently provides about 20 percent of U.S. electricity, coal-fired plants 52 percent. Wind's sudden popularity has astounded even its biggest boosters. "We are in a boom year," says Randall Swisher, executive director of the American Wind Energy Association, the industry's trade group in Washington, D.C. "We are expecting huge growth, especially in the West." That is good news for David Bittersdorf, president of NRG Systems Inc., a Vermont company that makes wind-measuring devices. "We've grown 40 percent this year," he says. His company, which had $10 million in sales, expects business to quadruple over the next five years. For the Hindman family at Nine Mile Ranch, turbines rising from the scrub mean cash in the bank, while not interfering with their 700 head of cattle. Typically, farmers and ranchers involved in such lease arrangements get about $2,000 a year per turbine. "Wind is a very lucrative crop for farmers," says Bill Clemens, president of the chamber of commerce in nearby Walla Walla. The windmills are "a real curiosity" and may even add to the valley's tourist trade, he said. Ironically, the region does not provide the most ideal locations for wind power. What some call the Saudi Arabia of wind stretches from eastern Montana and the Dakotas, through Nebraska, Kansas and into Texas -- a region with enough wind potential to power the nation, according to the Energy Department. James Dehlsen, an early wind energy pioneer, dreams of putting together a massive wind complex of 2,000 turbines stretching over 90 miles of prairie in South Dakota. It would be 10 times as large as the Washington-Oregon project and produce a staggering 3,000 megawatts of electricity. "We're at the early stages of the project," said Dehlsen, founder of the Zond Corp., a U.S. wind turbine manufacturer that has since been bought by Enron. But he said he already has a commitments from 150 farmers for use of 176,000 acres. Edison's bailout down to the wire By Carrie Peyton Bee Staff Writer (Published Sept. 14, 2001) Today could be judgment day for Southern California Edison. The drive to dig the state's second-largest power company out of its financial hole has reached its final, sleep-deprived hours. Sometime before the Legislature adjourns late tonight or early Saturday, a $2.5 billion-plus deal could be struck in an effort to keep Edison from following Pacific Gas and Electric Co. into bankruptcy. An Edison rescue could lock Southern California businesses into rates higher than residents pay. It could indirectly drive up residential rates statewide by freeing big businesses to strike private deals for electricity, leaving small consumers to pay off the state's costly wholesale power contracts. And it could still fail to solve Edison's financial problems -- some creditors warn that the utility needs at least $1 billion more to sidestep bankruptcy. But some, including Gov. Gray Davis, believe it is the best way out of a 15-month-old energy quandary that began when wholesale prices soared so high that Edison could not pay them while prices it charged consumers were frozen. Consumer groups argued that Edison and its parent company were legally obligated by deregulation to dig into past profits to cover the gap. Edison disagreed. Since then, Davis has put his prestige on the line with a plan to rescue Edison, which he unveiled three days after PG&E filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April. "We're not doing this for Edison," the governor said in a press release when an Assembly version of the rescue package passed last week. "We're doing it for ourselves, so we can get people who really understand how to buy power back into the power buying business." Many consumer groups and some lawmakers say bankruptcy courts can best unravel Edison's finances. They argue that the best thing the Legislature could do is nothing. Some lobbyists give any Edison pact a 50-50 chance of emerging before the weekend. Edison officials have said repeatedly that the company's many creditors are likely to petition the courts to force it into bankruptcy if no deal is reached by the Legislature's close. They say that could mean lower-quality electric service in the long run. Meanwhile, the terms of any deal have become caught up in the rush toward adjournment, with its hallway conferences, meetings late into the night and constant trades among interest groups and legislative leaders. "When you wait until the last few days of the session, this is subject to all sorts of issues that are totally unrelated," said D.J. Smith, a lobbyist for large electricity users. By Thursday, one key piece of the debate had come down to whether Edison should get $2.5 billion or $2.9 billion from business customers, and how large a business would have to be before it kicks into the Edison rescue. "This may live and die over an apocryphal Rosie's Dry Cleaners," said Mike Florio, an attorney for The Utility Reform Network, a consumer group. "That has kind of become a symbol here over who's going to have to pay for this bailout, (but) I'm not actually sure this is the most important issue." Large business groups are lobbying for a big pool of midsize power users to pay off the $2.5 billion or $2.9 billion through extra charges on their electric bills. Senate President Pro Tem John Burton had initially urged that only the largest power users should pay. A compromise figure emerged Thursday but could change again as the measure is amended. Also in question is how much other energy legislation might be wrapped into a final deal to win votes or allies. At various times, provisions calling for utilities statewide to sell a set amount of renewable power have been included, as sweeteners for the environmentally minded. So have provisions that would let businesses sidestep costly long-term state contracts by generating their own electricity or by signing up with other suppliers. "The clock is running out," said Chriss Street of Street Asset Management, which is advising a committee of Edison creditors. "The real crunch time for all of these negotiations is going to be in the last hours." Street said the Legislature is avoiding the true issue by refusing to authorize a $3.5 billion to $3.9 billion deal that he said is needed to fully pay all creditors. Without the higher amount, he said, Edison creditors might well force a bankruptcy, believing they could get a better deal in court.

If you're one of our readers who was old enough to watch proper telly in the late '80s and '90s, you'll probably recognise Chris Barrie as Rimmer from Red Dwarf. Not this writer, though. In my eyes, Barrie is a nasal leisure centre manager first and a neurotic space hologram second. That's all because of The Brittas Empire, a strange BBC sitcom that has unfortunately been forgotten about in modern times. But with its surprisingly dark humour, tremendously flawed characters and chaotic set pieces, there's no reason why it shouldn't still be held up as one of the decade's great comedies. BBC The Brittas Empire: Original broadcast from January 3, 1991 to February 24, 1997 The main attraction of the series is of course Barrie's ultimate jobsworth Gordon Brittas, a fitness fanatic who unintentionally begins running Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre into the ground from his very first day as manager. The character is completely tactless, clueless and seems to alienate pretty much everyone he comes across. He quickly binds up staff and customers alike at the centre with outrageous rules and impractical ideas, to the extent that they have no choice but to break free by lashing out. Brittas does have a few allies, though. His deputy manager Laura (Julia St John) treats him with nothing but respect, despite the fact that she should very clearly be running things. She's a very loyal, understanding sidekick and it's always nice to see her fight for him, especially on the occasions when the show gets too close to cruel. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. Then there's the disgusting deputy manager/janitor Colin (Michael Burns). And no, I'm not sure how that works either. Permanently sporting bandages and suffering from an array of gruesome ailments, he's never really in a position to judge Brittas. And at least he gets some support at home from his frail, jittery wife Helen (Pippa Haywood). She stands by him throughout, at the cost of her happiness and, yes, even her sanity. Admittedly it's not the most joyous of partnerships, with Helen frequently indulging in affairs and popping pills just to make it through another day. But as I'll explain in more detail later, The Brittas Empire is not really a show interested in being light and fluffy. The other poor unfortunates at Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre - like psychotic receptionist Carole, 'confirmed bachelors' Gavin and Tim, insolent secretary Julie and perma-smiling Linda - are less accommodating of Brittas, but mostly hide the resentment behind smiles for the sake of keeping their jobs. It's credit to the show that they never come across as deceitful or bitchy. It's probably because they are fleshed out significantly more than your standard sitcom characters, making it understandable when their outside issues manifest themselves as contempt for their boss. For example, Tim's struggling with his sexuality and having regular therapy sessions, Colin is revealed to be dating a transvestite milkman and Carole's backstory is a tragic mess that results in her having to keep her kids in the reception cupboard. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. The thing is, most of the hate that comes Brittas's way seems a bit unjustified. What sets him apart from Alan Partridge and other irritating faux-pas machines that have emerged since, is that it's clear there's usually no malicious intention behind anything he says or does. And yet people don't just want to bitch about him - they genuinely want to kill him. Take the pilot episode, where a scorned table tennis instructor whose role at the facility has been diminished tries to drop a ping pong table on his head. What did Brittas do to warrant such an attack? Merely introduce a complex rota that somewhere in his twisted mind seemed the most logical. Have you ever tried to murder your boss because he mixed up your shifts? This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. Granted, it's hard to really describe Brittas as likeable, but he is at least sympathetic. Strangely, he is by far one of the happiest characters and usually walks around with a smile on his face, even when everything is about to fall down around him. He struggles to comprehend why there is so much venom directed at him and for that, you do wish that someone would cut him some slack. What's striking about looking back at The Brittas Empire is how progressive it was for its time. Take Gavin and Tim - would you expect a primetime BBC sitcom nowadays to have two gay main characters, let alone in 1991? Their relationship is one of the joys of the series. It's subtle, long-lasting and not all exploitative. And most surprising of all, the two aren't the embarrassing, camp caricatures you'd probably expect. They're just... people. And then there's Laura, the silent, strong and confident woman whose professionalism is never in doubt. She was a bit of rarity in sitcoms of the day. The Brittas Empire is also quite unsettling at times - or at least darker than a show with a laugh track should be. An episode that sticks out in this writer's mind is the one where Gordon comes back from the dead (much to the disappointment of those at the leisure centre) and Carole tries to crush him with a digger because she believes he is a zombie who has murdered her child to gain perpetual youth. Oh, and let's not forget the episode where Gordon's on trial for murder because he accidentally chainsawed in half a gangster killed in a shootout at the centre. That episode gets bonus weird points for starring both The Demon Headmaster and Billy from EastEnders. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. Thankfully, those horrific storylines and the frequent (sometimes fatal) disasters that occur at the leisure centre were always designed to be as extreme and silly as possible, so that The Brittas Empire's family audience didn't walk away traumatised. In doing so, The Brittas Empire sort of finds the happy medium between goofy, physical comedy and twisted tales meant solely for adults. It's basically a proper cheesy sitcom that sometimes causes you to wince. Granted, there is the feeling that the show stayed on air a little longer than it should have. The fifth series was intended to be the last and Brittas was even killed off in that finale. However, the BBC resurrected The Brittas Empire for two more years and powered on without the original creative team or many fans' favourite character, Laura. As a result, the quality dropped significantly for its last 15 episodes and the new showrunners actually pulled the old 'it was all a dream' trick for the final ever episode - ensuring that The Brittas Empire went out to a chorus of grumbles. Maybe those last misguided series are the reason why The Brittas Empire hasn't really endured like some other shows from that era. It's sad, because for most of its time on screen, the show delivered in every way that a sitcom should - giving us big laughs, great characters and outrageous scenarios. In an ideal world, we'd all forgive a little shark jumping and revisit Gordon Brittas one more time (only on DVD, though. Apparently five minutes with the character is enough to give anyone murderous thoughts). Were you a fan of The Brittas Empire? Do you think it is underrated? Leave your comments below! This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

I'm learning how to canter bareback in my riding lessons but I can't stay on long enough. I either fall off or slip and pull on the reins to stop. I can trot bareback and I can go over poles but cantering is harder. I don't know if I'm just unconfident or if I'm doing something wrong... Anyone have any tips for me? Like leg positioning or anything? anrz 08-16-2009 06:55 PM Hmm... maybe you are getting tense? When I ride bareback and I tense up, it is harder to stay on because I bounce around, and then it's uncomfortable for the horse and they hollow out their back which makes it even HARDER to stay on! I don't know how other people ride bareback but I just try to wrap my legs around the horse. Grab a little mane, if you want, to stay balanced. Pinto Pony 08-16-2009 06:56 PM Have you tried multiple horses? I know some ponies can be smoother than others. Somethings to try though would be keep your heels down with your weight in them, imagine huge weights hanging off your ankles pulling you around the horses barrel. Are you very comfortable cantering in a saddle? Can you anticipate the rhythm and move your back/pelvis freely with the horse? Grab a little mane too if needed and use the neck for support until you strengthen the muscles needed and get a good feel for the gait. So overall, relax and soften your self like you want your horse to be, moving as one. Goodluck! I love cantering bareback, really great one on one with the horse, exhilarating :D KoalaRock 08-16-2009 06:59 PM The horse I ride IS pretty bouncy...maybe thats part of it...I'll ask to try on a smoother horse... Endless Journey Girl 08-16-2009 09:11 PM have you cantered with a saddle but no stirrups? it might be easier to try that first. You still have a little bit of the security of the saddle keeping you on the horse but you are gaining vital leg muscles that will help you stay on the horse when you ride bareback. ArabFarroh 08-16-2009 10:36 PM IMO troting is WAYYY harder than a canter or gallop bareback. i NEVER ride in a saddle, unless it is at a show. With a trot bareback i am tence and when i gallop or canter bare back i just let my feet dangle and let the reins go, and i feel as free as a mustang!! barefoot 08-16-2009 11:18 PM I think you're just tensing. My trainer always discussed and asked if I'd rather trot or canter when riding bareback - And I'd always want to canter. It's a smoother and more relaxing gait. Just have confidence in yourself, relax and find the movement of the horse. Baby Doll Amy 08-17-2009 07:27 AM i think it is you tensing up, because cantering bareback is more comfortable than trotting, no matter what size the horse is, i find its only difficult to canter bareback when the horse wont stay in the canter and is consantly trotting the canter, relax, breathe, sit back but not to far Spindleberry 08-22-2009 09:01 AM I do the same thing i think its just i am not very good at the trot the canter i find nice and smooth if you hold on ; and dont tense but i struggle with the trotting part :( riccil0ve 08-24-2009 10:37 PM Don't grip with your legs. If you tighten the muscles in your legs, it will tighten your hips, and they won't move with the horse but will resist the movement all together. Rock back, you'll think you're leaning too far back, but probably not far enough. My old trainer said it was like your hips are a cup, and you're scooping up a cup of water with each canter stride. I was in a saddle at the time, but the movement is still the same. I also wouldn't recommend grabbing mane, because it could put you in a perching position, leaning forward, hands too low and close together. What you could try if you want a handle is a bareback pad and a vaulting surcingle if you have one, and someone could lunge you. Or, take a stirrup leather and put it around your horses neck. It can come up high enough that you don't have to lean forward to grab like you would mane. Once you get the hang of it, you won't ever want to stop. I love to canter bareback, it's exhilarating. =]

A few months ago, I used to train without gloves in the gym. For me, wearing gloves was something unimportant. I thought that there will be no difference between training with gloves or without them. At the same time, training … Read more It will be absolutely incorrect to say that all men are similar. Not all men are womanizers, playboys, and other types of women hunters. As it was said, all men are different. However, there is one thing that divides men … Read more Fitness girls are women who spend some time in the gym. A fitness girl does not necessarily need to be a superbly beautiful and sexy lady. When I say 'a fitness girl', I mean a girl who exercises in the … Read more “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”– Mark Twain

/* Copyright (C) 2016 Fredrik Johansson This file is part of Arb. Arb is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. See <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. */ #include "acb_hypgeom.h" /* We compute the following normalized versions internally: S(z) = (8/sqrt(pi)) int_0^z sin(2t^2) dt C(z) = (8/sqrt(pi)) int_0^z cos(2t^2) dt The benefit is that z^2 can be computed exactly inside erf when we have multiplied by 1+i instead of (1+i)/sqrt(2), so we get faster evaluation and better error bounds for Fresnel integrals on the real line (this is a bit of a hack, and it would be better to somehow pass z^2 directly to the erf evaluation code). */ void acb_hypgeom_fresnel_erf(acb_t res1, acb_t res2, const acb_t z, slong prec) { acb_t t, u, v, w1, w2; acb_init(t); acb_init(v); acb_init(w1); if (arb_is_zero(acb_imagref(z))) { acb_mul_onei(t, z); acb_add(w1, z, t, 2 * prec); acb_hypgeom_erf(t, w1, prec + 4); acb_mul_2exp_si(t, t, 1); acb_mul_onei(v, t); acb_add(t, t, v, prec); if (res1 != NULL) acb_set_arb(res1, acb_realref(t)); if (res2 != NULL) acb_set_arb(res2, acb_imagref(t)); } else if (arb_is_zero(acb_realref(z))) { acb_mul_onei(t, z); acb_sub(w1, t, z, 2 * prec); acb_hypgeom_erf(t, w1, prec + 4); acb_mul_2exp_si(t, t, 1); acb_mul_onei(v, t); acb_add(t, t, v, prec); if (res1 != NULL) acb_set_arb(res1, acb_realref(t)); if (res1 != NULL) acb_mul_onei(res1, res1); if (res2 != NULL) acb_set_arb(res2, acb_imagref(t)); if (res2 != NULL) acb_div_onei(res2, res2); } else { acb_init(u); acb_init(w2); /* w1 = (1+i)z, w2 = (1-i)z */ acb_mul_onei(t, z); acb_add(w1, z, t, 2 * prec); acb_sub(w2, z, t, 2 * prec); acb_hypgeom_erf(t, w1, prec + 4); acb_hypgeom_erf(u, w2, prec + 4); /* S = (1+i) (t - ui) = (1+i) t + (1-i) u */ /* C = (1-i) (t + ui) = (1-i) t + (1+i) u */ acb_mul_onei(v, t); if (res1 != NULL) acb_add(res1, t, v, prec); if (res2 != NULL) acb_sub(res2, t, v, prec); acb_mul_onei(v, u); if (res1 != NULL) acb_add(res1, res1, u, prec); if (res1 != NULL) acb_sub(res1, res1, v, prec); if (res2 != NULL) acb_add(res2, res2, u, prec); if (res2 != NULL) acb_add(res2, res2, v, prec); acb_clear(u); acb_clear(w2); } acb_clear(t); acb_clear(v); acb_clear(w1); } /* derivatives: |8/sqrt(pi) sin(2z^2)|, |8/sqrt(pi) cos(2z^2)| <= 5 exp(4|xy|) */ void acb_hypgeom_fresnel_erf_error(acb_t res1, acb_t res2, const acb_t z, slong prec) { mag_t re; mag_t im; acb_t zmid; mag_init(re); mag_init(im); acb_init(zmid); if (arf_cmpabs_ui(arb_midref(acb_realref(z)), 1000) < 0 && arf_cmpabs_ui(arb_midref(acb_imagref(z)), 1000) < 0) { arb_get_mag(re, acb_realref(z)); arb_get_mag(im, acb_imagref(z)); mag_mul(re, re, im); mag_mul_2exp_si(re, re, 2); mag_exp(re, re); mag_mul_ui(re, re, 5); } else { arb_t t; arb_init(t); arb_mul(t, acb_realref(z), acb_imagref(z), prec); arb_abs(t, t); arb_mul_2exp_si(t, t, 2); arb_exp(t, t, prec); arb_get_mag(re, t); mag_mul_ui(re, re, 5); arb_clear(t); } mag_hypot(im, arb_radref(acb_realref(z)), arb_radref(acb_imagref(z))); mag_mul(re, re, im); if (arb_is_zero(acb_imagref(z))) { mag_set_ui(im, 8); /* For real x, |S(x)| < 4, |C(x)| < 4. */ mag_min(re, re, im); mag_zero(im); } else if (arb_is_zero(acb_realref(z))) { mag_set_ui(im, 8); mag_min(im, re, im); mag_zero(re); } else { mag_set(im, re); } arf_set(arb_midref(acb_realref(zmid)), arb_midref(acb_realref(z))); arf_set(arb_midref(acb_imagref(zmid)), arb_midref(acb_imagref(z))); acb_hypgeom_fresnel_erf(res1, res2, zmid, prec); if (res1 != NULL) { arb_add_error_mag(acb_realref(res1), re); arb_add_error_mag(acb_imagref(res1), im); } if (res2 != NULL) { arb_add_error_mag(acb_realref(res2), re); arb_add_error_mag(acb_imagref(res2), im); } mag_clear(re); mag_clear(im); acb_clear(zmid); } void acb_hypgeom_fresnel(acb_t res1, acb_t res2, const acb_t z, int normalized, slong prec) { slong wp; acb_t w; arb_t c; if (!acb_is_finite(z)) { if (res1 != NULL) acb_indeterminate(res1); if (res2 != NULL) acb_indeterminate(res2); return; } acb_init(w); arb_init(c); wp = prec + 8; if (normalized) { arb_const_pi(c, wp); arb_sqrt(c, c, wp); arb_mul_2exp_si(c, c, -1); acb_mul_arb(w, z, c, wp); acb_hypgeom_fresnel_erf_error(res1, res2, w, wp); } else { arb_sqrt_ui(c, 2, wp); arb_mul_2exp_si(c, c, -1); acb_mul_arb(w, z, c, wp); acb_hypgeom_fresnel_erf_error(res1, res2, w, wp); arb_const_pi(c, wp); arb_mul_2exp_si(c, c, -1); arb_sqrt(c, c, wp); if (res1 != NULL) acb_mul_arb(res1, res1, c, wp); if (res2 != NULL) acb_mul_arb(res2, res2, c, wp); } if (res1 != NULL) { acb_mul_2exp_si(res1, res1, -2); acb_set_round(res1, res1, prec); } if (res2 != NULL) { acb_mul_2exp_si(res2, res2, -2); acb_set_round(res2, res2, prec); } acb_clear(w); arb_clear(c); }

Also by Cheryl Bradshaw Addison Lockhart Paranormal Suspense Grayson Manor Haunting Rosecliff Manor Haunting Blackthorn Manor Haunting Belle Manor Haunting (Coming Soon) Addison Lockhart Series Books 1-2 Maisie Fezziwig Hickory Dickory Dead Murder Novella Series Whispers of Murder Sloane Monroe Murderous Shorts Deadly Sins: Lust, Sloane Monroe Stories #3 Deadly Sins: Greed, Sloane Monroe Stories #4 (Coming Soon) Sloane Monroe Series Black Diamond Death Deadly Sins: Sloth, Sloane Monroe Stories #1 Murder in Mind Deadly Sins:Wrath, Sloane Monroe Stories #2 I Have a Secret Stranger in Town Bed of Bones Flirting with Danger Hush Now Baby Dead of Night Smoke and Mirrors Sloane Monroe Series Boxed Set, Books 1-3 Sloane Monroe Series Boxed Set, Books 4-5 Sloane Monroe Series Boxed Set, Books 1-6 Gone Daddy Gone Till Death do us Part Echoes of Murder Till Death do us Part Series, Books 1-2 Vegas Dreams Sweet Dreams Shattered Dreams Stolen Dreams Summer Dreams Vegas Dreams Standalone Eye for Revenge Bloody Murder: Two Series Starters Cheryl Bradshaw Series Reading Order The Perfect Lie A View to a Kill Kiss of Death: Four Short Novels Watch for more at Cheryl Bradshaw's site. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Flirting with Danger Copyright © 2014 Cover Design Copyright 2014, 2019 © Indie Designz All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted, given away or re-sold in any form, or by any means whatsoever (electronic, mechanical, etc.) without the prior written permission and consent of the author. Thank you for being respectful of the hard work of the author. _"Believing everyone is dangerous, but believing nobody is more dangerous."_ —Abraham Lincoln Table of Contents CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER 17 CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER 20 CHAPTER 21 CHAPTER 22 CHAPTER 23 CHAPTER 24 CHAPTER 25 CHAPTER 26 About Cheryl Bradshaw Fiction by Cheryl Bradshaw # CHAPTER 1 Rachel Forrester gazed into the full-length mirror, almost not recognizing her recent transformation. An hour earlier she'd arrived at the pricey Hotel Devonshire dressed in a pair of boot-cut jeans, a T-shirt, and neon-colored running shoes. She wore no makeup and no jewelry, not even her princess-cut wedding ring. Rachel checked into the fourteen-hundred-dollar-a-night penthouse suite and was escorted to her room, where her own on-call butler showed off the amenities, including a spectacular view of New York City's Central Park. She'd grown used to these late-night rendezvous in fancy, upscale hotels. Too bad they were coming to an end. After soaking in the oversized marble bathtub, Rachel removed the satin ribbon from the box that had been left for her at the edge of the bed and changed into the outfit she wore now—a ruby red and black corset, black thong panties, silk stockings clipped into garter straps, and the sexiest pair of black-and-gold studded Manolo Blahnik's she'd ever seen. Rocco "The Rock" Romano may have been a tyrant, but she had to admit, he had exquisite taste when it came to women's clothing. Rachel lifted one of the shoes from the box with a finger, dangling it in front of her face. Admiring. Appreciating. Calculating. This pair in particular must have set Rocco back eight-hundred bucks at the very least. She curved her mouth into a smile, fully aware that she was worth it. Worth every copper-colored penny. Seductive vixen wasn't a role Rachel thought she'd ever play, but being hard up for cash opened all kinds of previously closed windows. When the woman who hired her fanned ten large in front of her face, saying no just wasn't an option. The money was too enticing to resist. When she was all done up in Rocco's "gifts," she knew she was exactly what he sought—looks and body included. She was good at playing the role of doting mistress, even allowing a small part of her to fall for Rocco's charms. On the outside, he was intelligent, collected. On the inside, sensitive and warm. At times it was hard for her to see him for who he really was—a cold-blooded killer. Rachel gazed out of the bedroom window, reflected on the first time she met Rocco a few months before. She'd sat at a table across from him at La Vita e Bella, an Italian restaurant he frequented. After tailing him for three weeks, she'd learned his habits, his likes, his dislikes—anything and everything she needed to know so she could nail him to the wall when the moment was right. There was a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bonus in it for her when she did, and she wasn't about to let anything screw it up, not even her feelings for the guy. Rocco had taken to Rachel quickly that first night, striking up a conversation before inviting her to dine at his table. Rachel chose her words carefully, inserting a few shared interests into the conversation, things to reel him in, get him interested. Within thirty minutes, he was hooked. Two months later, Rachel almost had what she wanted. In the living room of his house, Rocco had dropped his guard and engaged in a private conversation with his underboss and consigliere right in front of her. He'd smiled at her, confident she wasn't smart enough to decode what he was actually saying. He was wrong. So wrong. All she needed now was one last night, and it would all be over. The clothes. The attention. The parties. The sex. Rocco. The sound of Rachel's phone vibrating on the nightstand brought her back to the present moment, as if jolting her from a moment of tranquil meditation. She glanced at the name on the caller ID. Rocco. "Thank you for my present," she said. "Did you put it on?" "I'm wearing it now. It fits perfectly. All that's missing is you taking it off of me." "I have one last stop to make, and I'm all yours, baby." "Three days without seeing each other is three days too long," she said. "I've missed you." "I had other things to attend to or I would have seen you sooner." Calm. Cool. Collected. Always in control. "Other things like your wife?" Her sharp words cut through the air like needles seeking out a target. It was too much. Too brazen. She knew it. She also no longer cared. "Trust me, even when I am with her, the only woman I'm thinking of is you." He always had a way with words. A perfect way. For a moment, Rachel felt bad for his wife. Almost. "I had something else delivered," he continued. "Did you find it?" Rachel canvassed the room. "Where?" "Look in the kitchen." She combed a hand through her long, ash-blond hair as she walked into the next room. "I'm here." "Do you see it?" "The wine?" "I bought it special, just for tonight. Try it." "I'd rather wait for you," she said. "Try it together." "If you like it, I'll order more." Rachel grabbed the bottle, stalled for a time, then said, "It's wonderful. I've never tasted anything like it." "Good. Have another glass. I'll see you in a few minutes." The call ended, leaving Rachel with a sense of uneasiness she hadn't experienced with Rocco before. Up to now, she felt confident about every move she made. Tonight, on the phone, something was off. His voice. It was different. Still in charge, in command, but changed somehow. Plain. Monotone. He seemed insistent about her trying the wine. Too insistent. Rachel sized up the bottle, which she hadn't actually opened. She paid particular attention to the seal. It was intact. There was no evidence to show it had been tampered with, nothing to prove it was anything more than the kind of drink they always shared together on nights like this one. _Stop being paranoid. You've done everything right. It's nothing, just a simple bottle of wine._ Simple or not, Rachel stopped herself from partaking of the dark-colored beverage, instead erring on the side of caution. She popped the cork, opened the bottle, took a whiff. It looked fine. It smelled fine. She went to the sink, dumped half the bottle down the drain. Whether his intentions were innocent or not, Rocco needed to believe she'd done what he asked. She could pull off the tipsy-girlfriend act. She'd done it before. Twenty minutes later, the latch to the hotel room door clicked. Rachel reclined back on the bed, bent her knees, posed in the kind of way that would strike Rocco's fancy when he came in. A man rounded the corner. He wasn't Rocco. "Carmine?" Rachel's voice tensed. "What are _you_ doing here? Where's—" "Rocco says to say goodbye." Carmine reached into his coat pocket, pulled out something black, shiny, with a silencer attached to the end. Rachel screamed. She swung her body off the bed, narrowly avoiding the first bullet as it whizzed by, pelleting the pillow her head had rested on a moment before. She dropped to all fours and scrambled to the bathroom where she'd concealed her gun behind a few spare toilet paper rolls under the sink. She cursed herself for not practicing at the gun range this week like her boss had suggested. She hadn't thought she needed to. She was an excellent shot, always had been. She'd assumed—clearly mistakenly—that she had Rocco by the balls. That he was devoted to her, incapable of harming her like he'd done to countless others when deals went south. She was no _deal_. She was his mistress, his lover. He had feelings for her. Genuine feelings. Didn't he? Apparently not. A second shot fired from Carmine's gun. This time it connected, the bullet searing Rachel's leg as it broke through the skin. She smacked the bathroom door closed with her foot, reached up, turned the lock. Blood seeped through her stockings, dripping splotches of red onto the cool marble floor. "Come on, Rach," Carmine teased. "Don't make this harder than it's gotta be. We all die sometime, right?" She yanked open the cabinet, fingered her gun. "Carmine, please. Don't do this." _Don't do this?_ Was she out of her mind? He _was_ doing this. Nothing she said would stop him. She'd been a fool. He'd been sent there on a mission, a mission that only ended one way: with her death. "The wine, did you poison it?" "Poison it?" Carmine roared with laughter. "Whaddya think we are, a bunch of sissies? Rocco wanted you to relax. That's all. You should have stayed put on the bed, made things a whole lot easier on both of us. I would've made it a clean shot. No pain. Now you've made me come after ya." She crouched in the corner, gun centered on the door. Ready. "How did he find out, Carmine?" she asked. "How does he know? If you're going to kill me anyway, you may as well tell me the truth." "You know somethin', Rach? I'm sorry it has to be this way. I mean it. I liked you. Orders are orders, though. You understand." Carmine's next bullet shattered the doorknob. He stepped inside. Gunfire was exchanged. Rachel managed to get two shots off, Carmine only one. One was all he needed. The target had been acquired. # CHAPTER 2 _Three minutes earlier_ Nightmarish dreams frequently penetrated my mind, but tonight was different. It started with me standing on my hotel balcony, staring down at a woman I'd seen earlier, walking with an umbrella in the pouring rain. She looked up at me and smiled, and then the dream took a dramatic shift, the faint, yet unmistakable sound of a woman shrieking through the bleak, sleepy darkness seeming all too real. I sat up, flicked on the lamp, peered at my friend Maddie resting in the bed next to mine, her eyes closed, sleeping soundly. "Did you hear something?" I whispered. No response. "Maddie! Can you hear me?" Still nothing. A smidgen of white foam protruded from one of her ears, and I remembered—Maddie was a light sleeper. She always traveled with earplugs. I scooted off my bed and onto hers, lifted the foam from one of her ears. Tried again. Maddie slid her eye mask to the side, opened one eye halfway, adjusting to the light. "What? Where? What's going on?" "I thought I heard a woman scream just now. Did you hear anything?" "You sure the woman wasn't _you_? You do that sometimes, you know." "It wasn't me. It sounded like it came from the room next door. I'm going to check it out." Maddie raised a brow. "Did you ever think it might be a couple, enjoying some ... ahh ... time together, some _alone_ time?" "Trust me—it wasn't _that_ kind of scream." Maddie stretched one arm into the air, yawned. "If you say so." "I'll be right back," I said. Her eyes slid closed again and she mumbled, "Good luck." I slipped into the hallway and bolted over to the room next to ours. Knocked. Waited. Nothing. I jiggled the door handle. Locked. Seemed right, considering most hotel room doors locked automatically. A key card projected from a rectangular slot above the door latch. Odd. Like it had been left there by someone too boozed up to remember to remove it once the door opened. I took the card out, pushed it back in again. A light no bigger than a sliver of rice flashed red, then green. I tried the handle again. Success. I tiptoed inside, tried not to make myself known on the off chance Maddie was right and I'd interrupted some kind of vigorous mating ritual. At the end of a long hallway, I bobbed my head around the corner. The pale light shining through the oversized window provided a glimpse into what money could buy if you had money to throw away. The penthouse was exquisite, about twice the size of ours, and we'd splurged on eight-hundred square feet. I saw no one at first. Heard nothing. Maybe it _had_ all been a realistic figment of my imagination. Or maybe they'd gone to sleep. I considered what might happen if I got caught sneaking around someone else's room. How would I explain myself? Who would believe me? The faintest noise echoed from the far end of the suite. Someone groaning. There wasn't anything pleasurable or sexual about it. I listened, heard the same harrowing noise a second time, decided there would be no rest until I confirmed whether or not there was any truth to my suspicions. I passed through the living room to the bedroom, unprepared for what I was about to see. A man was slumped on the floor, his back propped against the side of the bed. His cell phone hung from his limp hand. Blood stained his face, keeping me from getting a good look at him. A fairly serious-looking weapon rested on the floor next to him. I pressed two fingers to the side of his neck. No pulse. And he wasn't breathing. I glanced at his phone, at the name of the person he'd tried to reach out to before leaving this world and entering the next. If in fact there was a "next" for this guy. The name on the caller ID was Johnny. First name only. No last name. I pushed on what was left of a splintered bathroom door with a finger. A woman was hunched in the corner, one hand pressed to her chest, as if to keep in what blood hadn't already spilled out. A gun rested on her lap. One of the walls was sprayed red, like a sprinkler set to full blast. The woman faced forward, her eyes still, frozen. And I recognized her. She was the woman with the umbrella that I'd seen earlier. She blinked, and I realized she was alive. I rushed to her side. "Hang on. I'll call the police." She pressed her eyes closed. Tears trickled out of the corners. "No...police." "You need help. You've lost a lot of blood. If I don't call someone right now, you'll die." "No police," she repeated. "Rocco...he..." "Who's Rocco? Why was the man in the bedroom trying to kill you? Why is he dead? I'm a private investigator. Please. Let me help." "334XY7." "I'm sorry," I said. "I don't understand. What are you trying to tell me?" "The key is on the nightstand. Get out of here. Hurry." "I'm not leaving you." "Not...safe." As I clutched her phone in my hand, the woman's head slumped to the side. Her eyes closed again—only this time, they didn't reopen. # CHAPTER 3 Footsteps. Someone was coming. I sized up the cabinet to my left. I had no choice. For now, it would have to do. I manipulated my body inside, reeled the door back, waited. "Carmine, you done yet?" a man said. "Boss said fifteen minutes tops. We gotta get the body and get outta here. Carmine?" Upon discovering Carmine was no longer amongst the living, the man panicked. "Carmine! Wake up! Get up! Come on! Please! This can't happen. This isn't happening." What part of "bullet to the head and it's light out" was confusing to this guy? The man was crying now, feverishly pounding away at something that chirped every time he touched it. "Boss," the man said. "We got a problem. Carmine's dead." There was a pause, and then, "I don't know about the girl. Haven't seen her. Hold on. Lemme check." The man entered the bathroom, sighed, and said, "Girl's dead too. What should I do? I dunno what to do." A second male voice came through a phone that had obviously been placed on speaker. It was smooth, orchestrated. "How did Carmine die, Johnny?" "His face is all bloody ... and ... uhh ... Carmine shot her, and I think she shot him." He _thinks_? How could it be any more obvious? The guy had an unmistakably large entry wound on his forehead. "Johnny, I need you to calm down," the voice on the phone said. "I'm sorry about your brother. Unless you want to end up like him, you need to get a hold of yourself. Now. Understand?" "Yeah, okay." "You on a burner phone?" "Yeah," Johnny said. "Good. I need you to do something for me." "What's that?" "Check Rachel's body. Find her gun." _Rachel_. I had a first name. "I'm staring right at her. It's not here." He was right. It wasn't there. _I_ had it. "It has to be." The voice inside the phone was becoming impatient, irritated. "They couldn't have exchanged fire unless she had a gun. Check her again." "I see Carmine's," Johnny said. "I'm not asking about Carmine's gun, you idiot. You and Carmine failed me tonight. I gave you a simple task. You didn't complete it. You let me down." "I'm sorry, Boss." "Stay there. I'm sending someone over to help you out of this mess." The call ended. I expected Johnny to look for the gun as instructed. He didn't. He made another call. "Lou, Carmine's dead in Rachel's hotel room," he said. "Rachel shot him. Boss said to wait here. He's sending someone over. Who's he sending? What does that mean?" "He wants to talk to ya," Lou said. "Make a couple changes. Just sit tight, all right?" Johnny paused, then said, "What changes? He's not lettin' me go or nothin', right? He wouldn't do that, Lou. I know he wouldn't. He's been good to me." Johnny was unnerved, but Lou's voice was like a melodic rhyme, soft and reassuring. "Calm down, Johnny. Don't worry about it. We're sending you out of town until all this blows over. It's for your own protection." "I'm no empty suit, Lou. I don't wanna leave." "Don't get so worked up. It's temporary." Johnny hung his head and sighed. "Okay, Lou. If you say so. Boss has gotta do what's best. I'll lay low for a while." Johnny ended the call and shuffled out of the room. I pushed the cabinet door open a few inches and heard a woman's voice. "Sloane, you out here?" Maddie's curious voice echoed through the hallway. Before I could respond, she said, "Are you okay? Why do you have blood on your .... hey! Get your hands off me!" I thrust the cabinet door open and rushed out of the room to find Johnny's hands wrapped around Maddie's neck. I aimed the gun at his forehead. "Let her go. Now!" Johnny glanced back just enough to notice Rachel's missing gun had been found. He loosened his grip. She gagged and lurched forward, shouting expletives and spitting in the man's face. By now, I was sure we'd woken everyone on our floor. "Go back to our room, Maddie," I said, "and call the cops." "Oh, no. I'm not leaving you out here with this psycho," Maddie said. "I'll be fine, Maddie. Go." She leaned back against the wall in her typical defiant manner and made the call from where she stood. I grabbed Johnny and shoved him back in the hotel room before any of the guests peeked out of their rooms and saw me brandishing a gun. Johnny sized me up. I returned in kind. He wore black slacks, an oversized polo shirt, a gold chain necklace, and loafers, the kind with the ridiculous-looking tassels on top. With his schoolboy haircut and soft eyes, he looked more like a giant teddy bear than a hardened criminal. "Was it you?" Johnny asked. "Did _you_ kill my brother? Do you know Rachel? You the one she's workin' for? The two of yas in coots?" Seriously. How stupid was this guy? "You mean _cahoots_?" He nodded. "Yeah, what you said." "You first," I replied. "Who are _you_? Who sent you here? And why is Rachel dead?" As I spoke, Johnny started taking small steps backward. "Stop moving," I said. "Answer my questions." He ignored my request. He reached the balcony door and twisted the knob, his eyes still locked on me. He stepped outside. "You don't get it. I'm already a dead man. You. Me. Your friend. We're are all dead. There's no running. No escaping from _him_." "Let's talk about this. Maybe I can help you." Johnny shook his head. "No one can help me now. Not you, not the cops. No one." He curled his fingers around the black iron bars on the balcony, turned, and dove head first over the side. I didn't look. There was no need. We were fourteen stories up. I knew what had happened. # CHAPTER 4 "I'll never second-guess you again." Maddie's long, blond curls flapped in the wind as she stood at the edge of the balcony, her tall, athletic frame staring down at the splattered wreckage below. She was unfazed. As the head ME in Salt Lake City, Utah, Maddie's cool demeanor didn't surprise me. "Whatever I've managed to get us involved in, I get the feeling we shouldn't be here. Someone else is coming, and it isn't the police." "You know this has an 'organized crime' vibe, right?" she asked, her fingers curled into air quotes. "Maybe you should call—" I crossed my arms in front of me. "I'm _not_ calling him." "Why not? We're in New York. Giovanni lives in New York. He has connections, especially _these_ connections. If you're in trouble, he can help. You know he'll help you." For all I knew, Rachel's death was his doing, his order. I yanked on her arm. "Maddie, we have to get back to our room. Now." I scanned the hallway as we stepped out, detected two video cameras. _Smile, you're every move is being recorded._ "We did our duty," Maddie said. "We called it in. Let's go—leave the hotel. This has nothing to do with us." Two days earlier, I'd been trying to decide whether I wanted to fly to New York City with Maddie or not. She'd been asked to teach a class at a conference for the state's coroners association. I thought the trip would be peaceful, serene, granting me the opportunity to put my profession as a private investigator on hiatus. I should have stayed home. "We can't leave. I detected two surveillance videos in the hall. And there's probably more. The cops will see us entering Rachel's room and then exiting several minutes later. We can't hide from this." "What are we going to do, then?" she asked. "Give a statement and change hotels. You'll teach your seminar as planned. Then we'll go home. I have a feeling we've just walked into something big, much bigger than either of us realizes." # CHAPTER 5 It didn't take long for the hotel to become inundated by the NYPD. Maddie and I were grilled, forced to recall the events as they happened, second by tedious second. As far as stories went, they seemed to believe mine. And why wouldn't they? Everything I said checked out. And everything I _hadn't_ said remained tucked inside the vault for later. The cops seemed legit. Maybe they were, or maybe they were dirty, on someone's payroll, which meant telling the whole truth could have exposed me to far more danger than just keeping my mouth shut did. Until I had a better grasp on what had gone down and why, I played the naïve card, kept certain details to myself, details like the last words Rachel uttered before she died. I wanted to check things out on my own, discover why it was so important to her to spout off a series of random letters and numbers I assumed I'd find on a license plate in the hotel's parking garage. I offered the cops a few morsels to keep them satisfied. I turned over the gun I found on Rachel's lap, along with her cell phone, and I admitted I'd overheard Johnny say someone else was being called in to clean up the mess. They asked me if I knew who "someone else" was. I didn't. I only knew an hour had passed, and the man of mystery and his cohorts hadn't shown. With cops raiding the place like a sudden infestation of curious termites, it wasn't hard to see why the mysterious one had remained in the shadows—watching, waiting. I told the cops Johnny had said he wasn't an "empty suit," a term I wasn't familiar with. They clued me in. In short, it referred to a person who didn't have much to offer. While Maddie and I waited to be released, I overheard one of the cops say Rachel's suite was registered to a woman named Eleanora Fagan. The cops took this as a solid lead, no questions asked. Some historians they were. I had to admit, it pleased me to be the one to clue _them_ in for a change. Eleanora Fagan was the real name of song legend Billie Holliday. An alias. Was the name "Rachel" an alias too? Questions impregnated my mind. Who was Rachel, and what was the real reason she was at the hotel tonight? The skimpy outfit indicated she'd been expecting a late-night tryst. This could have meant she was a call girl. Except ... for a call girl, she seemed all wrong. Her nails were manicured and clean, her hair perfectly styled. Her shoes were new, the kind you'd find on the elites of society. There was nothing cheap or trashy about her. An hour later, our personal information was taken, and we were free to go. The question was—where to? We checked out of the hotel and headed outside, waited what seemed like an eternity for the valet to pull our rental car around. We agreed to stay the next night at the hotel hosting Maddie's conference. Once her class was over, we'd fly home. A section of concrete sidewalk several feet from where we stood was still cordoned off. Johnny's body had been removed, but the bloody stains remained on display under a shimmering streetlight in full view of the public. The whole thing didn't sit well with me. My gut said to walk away, like Maddie suggested earlier. This wasn't my case, wasn't my problem. Whether it was or wasn't, Rachel's murder was premeditated. Carmine had been sent there to kill her. I wanted to know why. I placed a hand on Maddie's arm, considered what I was about to say and how I wanted to say it. It didn't matter. It wouldn't be well received no matter what I said. "I need to check on something before we go." She placed a hand on her hip, frowned. "Oh, come on. I know what you're doing." "It's no big deal. I'll be right back, okay?" "I've seen that look too many times, Sloane. I thought we were letting the cops figure things out. This isn't our fight." "I want to take a look at the parking garage. It will only take a few minutes." Both hands were planted on her hips now. "The car will be here any second. What do you want me to do? I can't sit here." She pointed to a sign indicating the lane was for through-traffic only. No waiting allowed. Period. "Drive out of here and pull over somewhere," I said. "Where?" "Anywhere. Wait for my call. I'll have you pick me up." "Sloane, think about it. This guy, the one Johnny said was coming, he could be out there, anywhere." How would leaving lessen the risk? If we _were_ being watched, we'd be followed to the next hotel. I didn't want to spend the next day looking over my shoulder, wondering if every guy on the street, every man in every café was eyeballing me in a way I deemed suspicious. "I need to do this," I repeated. "Five minutes, okay?" I sprinted in the opposite direction, entered the parking garage, and walked from one car to the next, trying to match the numbers with what Rachel had said to me. It was the middle of the week, which meant the garage wasn't filled to capacity. A few minutes and several license plates later, I emerged from the garage empty-handed. I picked the phone out of my pocket, preparing to call Maddie, but stopped when I spotted a large metal sign protruding from a patch of dirt in front of the hotel next door. The sign indicated the hotel was closed for renovations, with an expected reopening date two months from now. There was a picture of what the upgraded rooms were expected to look like. The sign was radiant and had a catchy tagline, but my eyes wandered once I noticed a second vacant parking garage beneath the closed hotel. It was too alluring to resist, so I didn't. Only two cars were visible when I descended the steps of the garage. I walked to the first. It wasn't a match. The second car was parked at the opposite end. It was silver, a two-seater convertible with BMW and Z4 emblems displayed on the back. I checked the plate. 334XY7. We had ourselves a winner. # CHAPTER 6 "Maddie, I'm in an underground parking garage next to the hotel. I found the car. The combination of numbers and letters on the plate match what she said to me just before she died." I pressed the unlock button on the key fob, heard the distinct click, opened the car door. "It'll take me a minute to get to you," Maddie said. "I thought I'd drive around the block a couple times until you called, but there was no right turn on the first two streets I passed, and there must be a billion traffic lights in this city." "No rush. I'll see you when you get here." I shoved the phone back inside my pocket and crawled inside the car. The interior was as pristine as the exterior. There was no litter of any kind, not even a gum wrapper. I felt beneath the seats. Nothing. Checked the center console. Nothing. The trunk. The visor. _Why did she mention this car? What's so important about it?_ I popped open the glove box. Inside was a single item: a black leather case I assumed was the car's user manual. I undid the snap, opened it. At first glance, it was just as I suspected, nothing but pages of mundane photos and descriptions explaining anything and everything relating to the car. I thumbed through it and discovered something else—a hidden compartment in the shape of a three-inch square, cut into the center of the last half of the book. Inside the hidden compartment was a woman's ring. I also found a napkin with the words _Essence Nightclub_ scribbled in pen. There was one other item—a photo copy of a plane ticket. Skyway Airlines Flight 12 departing the following evening at midnight from John F. Kennedy International Airport. Destination: Rome's Fiumicino airport. There was a name written at the top: Dashner. I shoved the copy of the ticket and the napkin inside my pocket. A sound reverberated behind me. Panting. Breathing. Slow. Heavy. My head whipped around as a thick, black bag was thrown over my head, masking my face. I wriggled around in the seat, kicking at the hands of my unknown assailant. My boot connected, slamming into the man's fingers. He reeled back and shouted expletives, threatening, "I'll cut you if you act out again." In the process of defending my life, my leg caught on something sharp. My skin split open, the sting pricking my skin like the tip of a blade. I could feel the blood dribbling down my leg, but instead of focusing on it, I focused on my OCD, randomly thinking about how the pristine car was no longer pristine anymore. "Don't hurt the lady," another male voice said. "He says we have to deliver her unharmed, and that's what we're gonna do." Shit. There were two of them. "A bit of roughing-up will do her some good," the first man said. "Teach her a lesson. She needs it." "Walk it off, Cesare. That's an order. I'll tie her hands. She won't cause no trouble." "You won't get the chance," I spat. I jerked my legs backward, prepared to strike again. "Look, lady. I want to respect the boss's wishes. I really do. But if you don't cooperate, you'll force my hand. Now step out of the car." "Screw you!" I did my best to fling my body onto the passenger seat. I hoped somehow I could get myself out of my current predicament, tear the fabric from my head, and make a run for it. Big mistake. The calmer of the two men had anticipated my move, slapped a hardened piece of plastic around one of my wrists. I reeled my other hand in front of my body, pressing it against my chest. He had one of my wrists. He wasn't getting them both. I couldn't allow them to take me. I knew what would happen if they did. My freed arm was gripped tight, yanked back. The strength of my attacker far exceeded my own. As a woman, I was thin, my frame tiny rather than muscular, which was why I'd spent the last few years learning jujitsu, a skill that, at the moment, wasn't paying off. We struggled together in a tug of war for control of my other wrist. I lost. "You have nowhere to go," he huffed. "Your hands are tied, and you can't see. Get out of the car, or I'll force you out." I listened, heard what sounded like a gun being cocked, ready to fire. "You had a friend with you," the man continued. "What was it you called her? Maddie, wasn't it?" Was he a cop? Were they both cops? Had he been one of the officers in the room when we were being interrogated? "I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "I'm alone." "Feeling a bit of amnesia, are we? I tell you what. Let's make a deal. You get out of the car and get into mine—quietly, without trying to resist—and when your precious friend comes around the corner, I won't be forced to put a bullet in her." I'd been in worse situations than this before, but never at the expense of someone I loved when I still had the chance to save them. He could have been lying. Could have been telling the truth. Either way, time wasn't on my side. Maddie would arrive at any moment. If there was even the slightest chance he meant what he said, I had to keep her safe. "Come with me," he prompted. "You have nothing to fear. Trust me." He was wrong. I didn't have "nothing to fear." I had everything. # CHAPTER 7 It's funny how one sense becomes heightened with another is incapacitated. I'd been seat-belted in to the back seat of what seemed like a four-door sedan. It was too low to the ground to be a truck and not spacious enough to be a van—I could tell by the distance of the men's voices in the seat in front of me. The black bag remained over my head, as did the zip-ties behind my back. In an effort to stop me from kicking again, I'd been zip-tied at the ankles as well. As far as I knew, Maddie was still alive. It was daylight now. Almost. Every once in a while, tiny flickers of light filtered through the mask, sporadic, like the sun was being intermittently blocked by something. Possibly trees or buildings. We were no longer in the city. The car hadn't stopped at a traffic light for several miles. I couldn't help but wonder if I was being driven into the woods where I'd be executed, buried in a shallow grave because I'd turned up at the wrong place at the wrong time. I'd envisioned my death before. Thought about the ways I'd most likely meet my end. Of the various scenarios, this one hadn't even made the top ten. I felt weak and helpless, incapable of defending myself. I wasn't about to give up. Not yet. Most women in my predicament would be too unnerved to remain calm and focused at a time like this. Not me. My normal life provided all the anxiety I needed. I'd lost an innumerable amount of sleepless nights over victims I'd searched for over the years. All of them were eventually found, though some were still lost forever, their souls gone to live in a world beyond this one. Wherever that was. Sitting in the back seat of someone else's car, being tied up, blindfolded—it almost seemed surreal, like my body was floating somewhere between this world and the next. Teetering on the edge. One foot remaining in this life, the other stepping into the great beyond. Since the first right turn was made after exiting the parking garage, I estimated we'd driven for about thirty minutes. I'd counted every turn, clocked every bump on the road, took in every smell. The car had a lingering aroma of cigar smoke and the smallest hint of glass cleaner, an unsavory, nauseating combination. Cesare and the other guy were involved in a discussion about where to go for lunch, arguing over burgers and fries versus going to Rita's house for homemade lasagna. They seemed calm, unruffled, like abducting someone at random was just another day. For them, it probably was. "I don't know what he wants with this one," Cesare said. "I really don't. Too feisty for my blood." "You just like women you can control," the other man said. "Probably why you're still single." Cesare grunted a laugh. "Being single is a personal choice. Strapping myself to a single broad isn't nearly as much fun as lovin' 'em and leavin' 'em. You should try it sometime." The other man said, "I have a classy lady at home. And I'm happy. Maybe _you_ should try _that_ sometime." "Feisty or not, this one will break. They all do, eventually." " _This one_ can hear you," I said. " _This one_ better shut her mouth if she doesn't wanna be stuffed in the trunk," Cesare replied. "Do it. I don't care." "You don't have any idea why we nabbed you, do you?" Cesare asked. "No idea who you're goin' to see." "Would it matter if I did?" "S'pose not." Cesare laughed. "You scared?" "Leave her alone, Cesare." "Do I seem scared to you?" I scoffed. "I dunno. I'd have to look into those pretty, brown sparklers of yours. You don't sound scared. I'll give you that." "What's your name?" I asked. "Not Cesare, the other one." I had nothing to lose. Why not ask? "Vincent." "Vincent ... what?" "What's it to you?" "I like to know the name of the man before I end his life." Cesare roared with laughter. "Girl has balls." "You plan on killing me, eh?" Vincent asked. "The first chance I get." # CHAPTER 8 I was escorted—and by escorted, I mean Cesare had me by one arm, and Vincent by the other—into a building of some kind, possibly a house. The way everyone's voices carried, if it was a house, it wasn't a small one. On the way inside, I heard a gate open and close. Wherever I was, it wasn't the woods. I was taken to a room, strong-armed into a chair. "Don't make any stupid moves," Vincent said. "There are two men at the door. You seem like a smart girl. I don't need to explain what will happen if you're dumb enough to think you can get out of here. You've got nowhere to go." The door closed. I waited. "Is anyone there?" I asked. No reply. I raised myself off the chair a few inches, testing the waters. "Sit back down," a male voice said. The voice belonged to someone other than Vincent or Cesare. I sat. "Who are you? Why am I here?" The door reopened. I heard the distinct sound of women's heels clacking along the stiffness of a solid floor. A heated exchange ensued between the woman and two men. Several sentences were shouted in Italian followed by the woman switching to English, saying, "I said do it! Now!" A few more minutes passed. I had no idea who was still around and who wasn't. Something rattled on the floor next to me. A cool, damp cloth was applied to my leg, dipped into water, wrung out, and applied again. Scissors sliced through the zip-ties. I was free. "Who are you?" I asked. "Why are you helping me?" "I'm so sorry, Sloane." Her voice. I recognized it. I'd heard it before. I pulled the bag off my head, saw the long, raven-black hair flowing past her shoulders. I blinked a few times, allowing my eyes to shift back into focus. "Daniela?" Daniela was the sister of my ex-boyfriend, Giovanni Luciana. He ended our relationship shortly before his brother, Carlo, an FBI agent, was gunned down on a case Carlo and I were working together. I was present when Carlo died. I witnessed his death. My inability to save him haunted me even now, hovering over me like a storm cloud waiting to burst. Our split, while initiated by Giovanni, was a choice he had made after I had suspected Giovanni of having a secret life, a life outside of the one we'd been building together. At the time, part of me didn't want to know the truth. Another part of me knew if we were together, I _had_ to know. In an ongoing effort to get to know him better, I'd pushed, asked questions, never receiving the answers I wanted. Not from him anyway. Daniela had been the one to set me straight, the one to confirm her brother was the man I'd suspected he was all along. The mob, while diminished and not as talked about, was still alive and well in New York City, among other places. And my sweet, loving Giovanni wasn't just part of it, he was the underboss, first in line to assume his father's position as the head of the family. In truth, if Giovanni hadn't ended things, I would have. He knew the choice he had to make, and he made it. I'd never look at him the same way again. Never trust him again. That part of my past was over. "What the hell is going on?" I questioned. "Why go through all the trouble of staging a kidnapping when you could have just picked me up and brought me here?" "Trust me ... none of this was supposed to happen. Giovanni sent Vincent and Cesare to pick you up. No harm was supposed to come to you. I swear." "No _harm_? You saw what those two idiots did to me." She started to speak then halted when two men entered the room, their hands wadded around the back of the shirts of two other men they were strong-arming. The two other men were thrust down, their knees smacking the ground as they were forced to kneel before me. Giovanni walked in behind them, his eyes screaming a kind of internal rage he seemed to be fighting to keep suppressed. He looked at me, at the cut on my leg, the zip-ties littering the ground, and the discarded bag they'd thrown over my head. "Vincent and Cesare, explain to me what happened here," Giovanni said. "We just did what you asked," Cesare said. "We picked up the lady and brought her here." "I _asked_ you two to _escort_ Miss Monroe back to the house, not treat her like she's a vicious animal." "She fought back," Vincent said. "We had to do something." "Both of you get up." Vincent and Cesare stood. Giovanni gave a slight nod to the muscle men. They stepped forward, punching Vincent and Cesare in the face. "Giovanni, stop! Please," I said. "Don't do this. I'm fine." It was if I hadn't spoken at all. He didn't look at me. Didn't acknowledge me in any way. His attention remained focused on Vincent and Cesare. "Did I _ask_ you to tie her up, to cover her face? Well? Did I?" "She resisted," Cesare said. "We didn't know how else to get her into the car. What were we supposed to do?" "You were _supposed_ to accompany her to the car and drive her here, unharmed," Giovanni replied. "You'll both to apologize to her." Vincent immediately followed through with Giovanni's request. Cesare glared at me with a look that indicated any kind of apology to me was beneath him. "You _will_ apologize, Cesare," Giovanni repeated. "Now." Cesare grunted a weak offer of remorse, and Giovanni demanded he do it again. I'd had enough. "Everyone except Giovanni get out!" I said. The men froze, appalled I'd made a command in front of their fearless leader. I saw my phone peeking out of Cesare's front pants pocket. I walked up to him and grabbed it. I looked him in the eye. "I said ... GET ... OUT." Giovanni flicked his wrist, and the men filed out of the room, their heads shaking, eyes wide with disbelief. I looked at Daniela. "You too." "We need to talk," she said. "We will. Later. I need a moment with Giovanni first." I watched her leave the room, and then I did what any woman in my position would do. I struck Giovanni across the face. # CHAPTER 9 "Get that ridiculous grin off your face," I said. "None of this is funny. I thought I was being led to some abandoned forest where I'd be raped, murdered, left for dead or buried. Do you have any idea what that feels like? What it does to your mind?" I talked and simultaneously texted Maddie, telling her I was all right, urging her to go to the hotel. I'd meet her there later, explain everything. "It was never my intention for you to get hurt. They were rushed. They didn't understand my instructions. I apologize for the way you were treated, _cara mia_." "Don't call me that," I said. "We're not together anymore." He leaned against the wall and slid his hands into his pockets. "Why did you send those two jerks to pick me up in the first place?" I continued. "And why not have them tell me who they were and avoid all the confusion?" "If they told you the truth, would you have come here willingly, without question?" No, I wouldn't have. "How did you know I was here, where I was staying?" I asked. He took his time before answering. "Why is it all roads lead right back to you?" If he believed there was a road anywhere on earth that would repair the damage of the past and put the two of us back together again, he was mistaken. "Answer the question." "What are you doing here in New York City with Madison?" My turn to play coy. "It's none of your business." "You just spoke to the police, which makes it my business." "How do you know about that?" He shrugged. "I know a lot about what goes on in this city." "A woman died at the hotel we were staying at. I found her." He frowned. "I know, and I'm sorry." He had a look of remorse on his face, a look I'd seen before. "You knew her, didn't you?" "It's complicated, Sloane." "Are you involved with what happened to her?" I asked. "Did you have her killed?" "Is that how you see me, as some kind of killer?" Round and round we go. "Aren't you?" He walked over to a desk and sat down. "I never lied to you about who I was." "That's right. You don't lie. You hide things. And then you convince yourself there's a difference between the two." "Even after all this time, you're still upset." "I'm fine," I said. "I've been fine for a while now." "Is that why you ran to Wyoming, into the arms of the country lawman?" I crossed my arms. "Leave Cade out of this." "Who's hiding things now?" "The life I lead doesn't involve you anymore." "If that's how you truly feel, I'll respect your wishes. Now you must respect mine. I need you and Madison to leave New York City immediately." "Tell me why," I said. "Tell me what's going on." "I can't." "Then I can't leave." He slammed a fist down on the desk. "You must! It's for your own safety. Don't test me." He wasn't getting what he wanted. A rarity. "Did you kill the woman in the hotel?" "I did not." "Did you have someone else kill her?" He shook his head. "Who killed her then?" I asked. "Rocco?" He raised a brow, surprised I'd spoken Rocco's name so freely. "I'll ask you once more to leave the city. If you don't, I'll put the two of you on a plane myself. But you are leaving." "I'm not going anywhere until I have some answers." "Sorry to disappoint you, but you won't get them." "Do what you have to do," I countered. "I _will_ find out who she is, and I _will_ find out what she was doing at the hotel last night." A bookcase on the left side of the room popped opened, and Daniela stepped out from behind in. "Enough of this, Giovanni. Sloane deserves to know why you brought her here, at least." "Daniela, don't," Giovanni said. One thing I knew about Daniela was that she took orders from Giovanni the same way I did. Without looking at him, she said, "The girl in the hotel. She worked for me. For us. I'll tell you. I'll tell you everything." # CHAPTER 10 Giovanni aimed a finger at Daniela. "Not another word." " _Not another word?_ " she responded. "This concerns me too. You can't keep me quiet like you can everyone else, Gio. This is our family we're talking about. Our life. My life. Yours. Our future. Our children's future." _Children_? Did Giovanni have kids? "Sloane doesn't need to be caught up in this," he said. "It's not her affair." "Why are you discussing me like my choices are _your_ decision?" I said. "I've seen three dead bodies in the last several hours. What's going on?" Giovanni and Daniela faced one another, engaging in a silent stare-off. I waited. "I'm telling her," Daniela said. Giovanni exhaled a long, dissatisfied breath. He turned toward me. "If we tell you, will you leave New York City?" "I'll consider it." The words "I'll consider it" carried the same kind of weight a mother's did when responding to a child asking the same question for the twentieth time. Translation? Maybe, but most likely, no. Daniela motioned to a pair of chairs perfectly aligned next to one another in front of Giovanni's desk. "Sit down, Sloane. Please." I sat. She did too. Giovanni fidgeted, tapping his thumb and pointer finger on the desk. He was used to control, and I wondered how he felt to be losing that grip. As angry as I was about being taken against my will, he'd done what he had out of concern for me. "About six months ago, our father was shaken down by the Feds," Daniela started. "Since our brother Carlo died, we don't have anyone on the inside. We've lost our FBI connection. Our family is unprotected, vulnerable." "What do you mean _shaken down_?" "The Feds can prove our family is tied to online sports gambling." Sports gambling? It was possible their organization had changed, evolved with the times, when Giovanni was put in charge. Recently, his father had threatened my life, alluding to what would happen if I didn't steer clear of Giovanni. I was a disruption, a distraction, the one woman who'd almost managed to convince Giovanni to give up what his father had in store for him. "Sports gambling doesn't seem so bad. What's the punishment?" "Worse than you think." "I don't understand." "The truth is, they don't want to put him away at all. At his age, he's a small blip on their radar compared to what he used to be. It would almost be a waste of time." "Why are they pressing him then? What do they want?" "To make a deal," Daniela said. "For?" "Rocco." It made sense. Why go after aged meat when fresher was better? "So they approached your father—what did he say?" "He said no," Daniela said. "He's never squealed on anyone a day in his life. He's not about to start now." "How did that go over?" "They arrested him just to give him a taste of how serious they were. Dad's free now. We got him out, moved him somewhere safe while we sort everything out. But his freedom won't last. We're running out of time." I thought about their father, a dominating tormentor who had an air about him like he was untouchable. The thought of him wasting away in a cell suited me just fine. The thought of Daniela and Giovanni suffering because of it stirred what little feelings for Giovanni I still had left. "Why did they come to you instead of asking someone else? Why your family?" For this answer, Daniela turned to Giovanni. For a minute, I thought he wouldn't answer the question. Then he said, "For the most part, the businesses we operate are legitimate and clean. This keeps the focus off of us and transfers it to families the government would rather invest the time and money in to take down." "Rocco's running heroin," Daniela said. "And not just any heroin—heroin spiked with lethal amounts of fentanyl. We don't approve of it and have never wanted any part of it." "Excuse my ignorance," I said. "I'm not familiar." "Fentanyl is an opiate. It's eighty percent stronger than morphine. Even the smallest dose can be fatal. We were told the supply Rocco is dealing is half fentanyl, half heroin. Users shoot up, never knowing how much fentanyl has been mixed with what they assume to be straight heroin. Most users have no idea about the risk they're taking." "Shouldn't this be a DEA issue, not an FBI one?" "People are dying," Daniela said. "And not just a handful. Several handfuls. The FBI and the DEA are working together. That's how bad they want it stopped." "If they know Rocco's distributing the drugs, why not arrest him?" "Rocco only acts as distributor," Daniela said. "They want to identify the source, find out where the drugs are coming from, how they're being smuggled into the States. Arresting Rocco might stop one man, but it won't stop the entire operation. Head of the Romano family or not, if Rocco goes down for this, someone else in his family will step up to the plate. He'll be replaced. They'll lose a day, maybe a few days, and then the drugs will find their way to the street again through someone else. The government doesn't want that to happen, and neither do we." # CHAPTER 11 Daniela had hired Misty Coulter, a.k.a. Rachel, several months back. She'd known Misty for a couple years. They'd taken spin class together at a local gym downtown. Several months earlier, Misty confided she wasn't making enough at work and was looking for a way to make money on the side. The idea of becoming Rocco's mistress for a large sum of money upfront appealed to Misty. The way she explained it to Daniela, her own marriage had grown stale, her husband preferring to sit in his favorite recliner every night until he fell asleep. Misty had become an afterthought. And since they didn't have any kids, it wasn't long before she'd grown tired of the same mundane life, night after night. Misty wanted spice. Action. Attention. And for a while, that's exactly what Rocco provided. Before Misty was given the go-ahead to mingle with Rocco's dark side, Giovanni requested an interview, a sit down, one on one. He wanted to see Misty for himself, wanted to be sure they could trust her, wanted to make sure she knew what would happen should that trust be broken. The Luciana and Romano families weren't the best of friends, but they'd always shared mutual respect, something Giovanni wanted to preserve. After deeming her worthy to get the information they needed, Misty was given a lump sum of money with the promise of another payday after successfully completing each of the following hurdles, which included meeting Rocco, becoming his mistress, and most importantly, finding out who supplied the drugs, where they came from, and how they made it into the States. Somewhere along the line, Rocco must have found out something. I wondered what he knew and what he didn't. "How did Misty gain Rocco's trust in the first place?" I asked. "I taught her how to be everything he liked," Daniela replied. "So you know him well then?" Daniela laughed. "Rocco's younger brother Benny, who calls himself 'The Hammer,' has had a hard-on for me ever since we played in the sandbox as kids. He was my shadow. Over the years I got to know those boys very well." "Are you saying you dated?" "Benny's not my type. Too weak, too much of a follower, and too little of a leader." "And Rocco?" "We had a date once. He's handsome, I'll give him that, but he'd sell out his own kin to make a quick buck." "If Benny likes you so much, why not try to get the information out of him yourself?" I asked. "We considered it. Giovanni decided it was too risky. Our families are fairly close, but we don't meddle in each other's business." Giovanni and Daniela exchanged a curious look with each other. There were things they were telling me and things they were not, just like I expected. "With Misty dead, are you worried Rocco learned the truth, and your family is compromised?" "Rocco found out Misty wasn't with him for the right reasons, yes. As to whether he knows who hired her and why, we can't be sure. We took every precaution with Misty. We had to. There's only a slim chance she could ever be traced back to us. I don't think he knows. I think she slipped up somehow, sold herself out." Either way, they'd lost their prize hen. "What will you do now?" I asked. "Feel him out. I said before it's risky, and it is. So be it. I have to save my father." Throughout the conversation, Giovanni had remained still, listening to the two of us go back and forth for as long as his patience would allow. That patience had come to an end. "You can't question Rocco. If Dad goes down for this, he goes down. It was foolish of me to agree to it in the first place." "If Dad goes _down_ for this?" Daniela challenged. "Don't sit there and act like you're the innocent one. You're not. I'm not. They'll lock Dad away, and we'll be next. I still think we can get the information we need, Gio." "How? Your first plan failed. It's over. We have no other plays." "I don't know, I'd say we still have _one_." Daniela looked at me. "You're smart, Sloane. You're good at getting information. I need you. _We_ need you. Will you help us?" Giovanni raised a finger. "Absolutely not!" It was his insistence that I not do it that prompted me to respond in a way I knew wouldn't go over well. And it didn't. # CHAPTER 12 "No offense, but Misty didn't deserve to die for your father," I said. "I'll help, on her behalf, not his. Before I do, I need to know something. How did you know I was at the hotel?" "The butler for her room," Daniela said. "He also works for us." "Where was he when she was being murdered?" Daniela grimaced, her face flushed, embarrassed. "Smoke break." "Great timing," I said. "When you were being interviewed by the police, he managed to snap a couple photos on his cell phone. He forwarded them to us. We didn't believe it at first, but there you were. Within five minutes, Giovanni sent Vincent and Cesare to pick you up. It all happened so fast, Giovanni never really communicated who you were before they—" I raised a hand in the air. "We've moved past all that now. What I don't understand is how could you send Misty to deal with Rocco alone? The room should have been bugged. You should have been listening." "Misty was not just some girl. She was a cop. She knew how to defend herself, knew how to use a gun." Not well enough. "Who else besides you two knew I was in Misty's room last night?" Daniela shrugged. "Nobody. Everybody. We don't know. They could have had someone on the inside just like we did." I thought about the surveillance cameras I'd passed on the way out of Misty's room, and my stomach turned. The phone on Giovanni's desk buzzed. He answered it, listened, set the phone back down again. "We weren't taking chances then, and we're not taking any now," he said. The door opened. One of the muscle men glanced at Giovanni. "Show her in," Giovanni said. "Show _who_ in?" I asked. Maddie entered into the room with a wide grin on her face. "You were supposed to wait for me at the hotel," I said. She gestured to the muscle man that walked in behind her. "Tough guy here met me at the hotel, told me you were with Giovanni, and said it wasn't necessary for me to stay." "Why not?" "We've been invited to stay here." She glanced at Giovanni. "Right?" Wrong. "I'm not staying here," I said. " _We're_ not staying here." For the first time today, Giovanni seemed pleased. "I gave you a chance. Several, in fact. I asked you to leave the city. You said no. Until you decide otherwise, you'll remain here. You'll _both_ remain here, as my guests." # CHAPTER 13 I paced the guest room, irritated. Maddie crossed one leg over the other and reclined back on one of six gold-and-black designer pillows plumped across a California king-sized bed. "You're overreacting, Sloane," she said. "We need to get out of here," I said. "I can take care of myself. I don't need his help." Maddie raised a brow. "Have you considered Giovanni's position in all of this? Rocco's family isn't the type you're used to going up against. They're something entirely different. He's just trying to keep you safe." "Why aren't you concerned? You have a forensics class to teach tomorrow. That's the reason we came here in the first place. How are you supposed to do that when you're stuck here?" She grinned. "Oh, I'm not stuck. We worked it out. The guy that picked me up today will be my escort tomorrow. He's a sharpshooter. I'm not worried, and you shouldn't be either." It was just like her. She never worried about anything. Balls of fire could be pelting the earth, and she'd still be sitting half-naked on the bed filing her nails. My life, on the other hand, was usually spent in a constant state of restless paranoia. "Sloane, maybe you should take something ... you know ... to calm you down. Get your OCD out of overdrive." "How could you think—" Daniela entered the room. "Please don't be mad at me. It's not my fault my brother is overprotective of all those he cares about. With Misty dead, we can't predict Rocco's next move. We have no idea whether he suspects our family sent her in to get information." I sat on the bed and tried to detach my feelings from my common sense. "Have you ever heard the saying about a chain only being as strong as its weakest link? You attacked Rocco, the strongest link, the one that doesn't budge for anyone. What you should have done was start with someone who's high enough in the family to know inside information, but weak enough to talk under the right circumstances." "The right circumstances being ...?" "I don't know ... drugged?" I couldn't believe I'd suggested it. "Drugged, as in, temporarily?" It was the kind of conversation Maddie was knowledgeable about and wouldn't be able to resist. She propped herself up on a pillow, and said, "It's easier than you think." "You talk like you speak from experience," Daniela said. I cracked a smile. "She does." "I don't know," Daniela said. "We don't have any of the information we were supposed to get. I don't want to screw things up again. I'm just not sure where to go from here." I dug into my pocket, pulled out the plane ticket I'd found, and handed it to Daniela. "We can start with this." # CHAPTER 14 Daniela stared at the plane ticket. "Where did you get this?" "Inside the glove box of Misty's car," I said. "The car is actually one of ours. I loaned it to her so she could look the part for the role she was playing. Anyway, the last time I talked to Misty, she told me she had information that would lead us to the answers we needed. She didn't want to discuss the details over the phone. She just said she had something to show me. She planned to see Rocco one last time, and then we were supposed to meet up the next morning." "That might explain why she was killed. This flight document is a copy. It had to be printed or scanned from somewhere. Maybe Rocco's computer." I pointed to the destination on the ticket. "He's flying to Rome." "When?" "Tomorrow. Midnight." I pointed to the name penned at the top of the page. "Do you know anyone who goes by the name Dashner?" She shook her head. "I don't think so." "Before Johnny committed suicide, he asked me if I was working with Rachel, and if I'd hired her. He seemed confused." "So Rocco must think Misty was planted then," Daniela said. "But if he doesn't know _we're_ involved, maybe we can still find out what he's up to." "Whether he knows or he doesn't, you need to be sure," I said. "If Rocco plans an attack, a retaliation, you need to be ready." "Trust me, Giovanni didn't want to alarm you, but ... we're ready." As if the men I'd seen weaving in and out of his mansion all day weren't an indication. "What else did you find in the car?" she asked. "Anything?" "A napkin from a nightclub." "Essence?" "How'd you know?" "Rocco owns the place. It's one of five clubs he operates in the city, but it's the only one he frequents." "It's not like it's some kind of secret, though, right?" "Anyone who's anyone knows he's there most nights. He's highly guarded. No one can get to him unless he wants them to." The napkin from the nightclub was important enough for Rachel to keep it. But why? "Tell me more about the heroin. It usually comes from Colombia, doesn't it?" "Colombia is the primary supplier, but there are others." "And yet, Rocco's not flying to Colombia. He's flying to Italy. Who's in Italy?" "Family. Only about a third of the Romano family lives in the States. The rest live on a private island in Rome. The fact he's flying there tomorrow means nothing to me. He flies there all the time. Misty must have assumed the plane ticket was a big deal, although I can't see why." "What about the family businesses?" I asked. "Do they operate together or separately?" "Together." One family, two bases of operation. Did one distribute the heroin to the other? "We need to find out where this laced heroin comes from. Even if we don't have a specific manufacturer, we should at least be able to find out what country we're dealing with." Maddie, who had been listening to our conversation, piped up. "I've heard some of the laced heroin is being made right here in the US." Daniela shook her head. "It can't be. Are you sure?" "There are two different versions," Maddie continued. "Pharmaceutical grade and non-pharmaceutical grade. Most of the dealers in the States are pimping the non-pharmaceutical stuff, probably being made in a clandestine lab in Mexico. There's a lot more of it, and it's easier to get. The newer, updated strain sells for a lot more. It's rumored to be made in the States, only no one knows where." I had an additional theory. "What if it's a trade-off? What if the Romano families here and in Italy are working together to distribute this strain of heroin?" "What are you saying?" Daniela asked. "One side provides the heroin, the other provides the fentanyl." "It's possible," Maddie said. "If I'm right, Rocco's not just smuggling it _in_ ," I said. "He's smuggling it out." # CHAPTER 15 I removed the napkin from Essence Nightclub from my other pocket. Looked at it. Front and then back. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I opened it. After fanning it out into a perfect square, I made an unusual discovery. "What is that?" Daniela asked. "I don't know," I said. "Looks like a piece of tape." She held out her hand. "Can I see it?" I handed it over. She lifted the taped section to her face, inspected it. "There's something under here." "Beneath the tape?" I asked. "Yep." She gently tugged on an edge of the tape, inserting her finger beneath it. Then she pulled it back out and stuck the tiniest sliver of white powder into her mouth. "Yep, it has a kind of vinegar-like taste to it," Daniela said. "Heroin?" Daniela nodded. I didn't ask her if she was sure, or how she knew she was sure. Looking at her face, it was obvious there had been a time when she, herself, chased the dragon. "Looks like we know where they're storing it." Between the printed flight document and the napkin laced with smack, somewhere along the way, Misty had slipped up. "Now that we're on to something, the question is—what are we going to do about it?" Daniela asked. I lifted a finger. "I have an idea, but I'll need your help." # CHAPTER 16 Giovanni invited me to meet him in the dining room for dinner. Given the uncomfortable circumstances between us, I would have declined were it not for wanting to see the look on his face when my plan was put into action. Maddie had been whisked away by Daniela, which was fitting. She hadn't been invited to what I assumed was only a two-person dinner party. He wanted to see me alone. I wasn't sure why he bothered. Why reopen a wound after working so hard to close it? In the time we'd been apart, I escaped inside myself, shut everyone out, taking several months off from accepting new clients in order to consider my life choices—the good, the bad, the horrendous. As people go, Giovanni fell into all three. I wondered which side I'd see tonight. I walked into the room and sat in a chair opposite him, even though he'd pulled out a chair to his right. We were several feet apart, but the way his eyes drilled into mine made it feel like mere inches. "You look nice," he said. I was wearing a frumpy, multicolored tank top, a shawl, and leggings. There wasn't anything _nice_ about it. "You cut your hair since I saw you last," he continued. "It's short, darker than I remember. What do they call that style again?" _A pixie cut. Stop fishing._ I shifted my gaze to a bowl that an older woman wearing a crisp, white apron had just placed in front of me, a reddish-orange soup. Creamy tomato from the tangy smell of it. "You've decided never to speak to me again," Giovanni said. "Is that it?" I released the spoon in my hand. It clanked against the side of the bowl. "Do you have any children?" He thought about it for far too long, which answered the question better than words ever could. He _did_ have children. No explanation needed. "A daughter. Allesandra." "In all the time we dated, you never mentioned her to me. Why?" "I didn't see how it was relevant," he said. "You didn't see how it was _relevant_? How is it possible someone as intelligent as you doesn't understand how a normal relationship works?" "If we would have advanced further, I would have told you." If we would have _advanced_? The nerve of him. Even then, he wouldn't have told me. The timing was never right. Not when it came to revealing details about himself. For someone who was once so warm, he'd grown incredibly cold. Daniela had yet to show her face and make the announcement we'd planned. I was through waiting. I tossed my napkin onto the table, backed the chair up, and stood. "Where are you going?" he asked. "Away from you." "Wait a minute. Allow me to finish the conversation." "We weren't having a conversation. Enjoy your evening, Giovanni." "She's dead." _She's. Dead._ And I was a jerk. I turned. "What ... happened?" "It was years ago. It was a time in my life I'm not proud of, a time long past. I no longer talk about it. I'm sorry if that's not good enough for you, but it's all I'm willing to say on the subject." Before I could even consider how to respond, Daniela entered, proving herself the queen of bad timing. "I've arranged a dinner party for tomorrow night," she declared. Giovanni's expression hardened. "Without speaking to me first?" "I don't need your permission. I live here too." "I never said you did. I simply would have liked to know about it before you made plans." "You do know about it," Daniela said. "I just told you." "Who have you invited, and why?" Daniela broke eye contact with Giovanni and looked at me, clearly implicating my involvement in the scheme we'd hatched. His attention diverted to me. "Sloane, what have you done?" "She hasn't _done_ anything," Daniela said. "I've invited the Romanos for dinner. Not all of them, just Rocco, his brother, Rocco's wife, their children. They said yes. It was easy." "You did _what_?" "They're family, Gio." The words "they're family" clung to my face like raw humidity on a hot day. What had she meant by that? "As long as they don't know we hired Misty, they have no reason to suspect a thing," Daniela continued. "If they _do_ know, we won't be able to hide from it anyway, so why not find an excuse to clear us of any wrongdoing and get it out in the open?" "Why would you do this?" "I want the chance to speak with Benny. Alone." "And what am I supposed to do with Rocco in the meantime?" "Talk business," Daniela said. "We don't 'talk business' between families. You know that." Daniela's stole an olive from a bowl in the center of the table and popped it into her mouth. "You'll think of something. You always do." The more enraged Giovanni became, the faster I walked to the door, deciding it would be best to allow brother and sister to hash out the details themselves. _Some_ of the details. The other specifics would have to remain between us three girls until our plan had been carried out. A shrill, high-pitched squeal tore through the room, stopping me from making my exit. "Hellooo? Giovanni? You here?" Daniela stiffened, all except for her eyes, which jerked in my direction. A woman entered the dining room. She wore a fitted black dress with a plunging neckline that cut between her breasts, studded stiletto heels, and glossy red lipstick. Her skin was tan and her hair long and wavy, the same dark-chocolate shade as mine. The woman looked at me, smirked. She knew who I was. And yet, I didn't know her. Not officially. I'd seen her once before sitting beside Giovanni at Carlo's funeral, but I'd slipped out before we were introduced. "You weren't supposed to return for another three days." Giovanni attempted to speak in an even tone, even though his nervousness was apparent. "I decided to come home early. Is that a problem?" The woman pointed at me and said, "Will someone explain to me what _she's_ doing here, in _my_ house?" " _She_ has a name," I said. "Oh, I _know_ your name," she said. "Allow me to tell you mine. It's Valentina Violeta Romano Luciana." It took me an entire minute to process those four words. It took even longer for me to accept them. It felt like the room was spinning and I was getting swept away with it. "Romano? Any relation to Rocco?" "Ah, I see you know my brother." She leaned in to Giovanni, smothering his mouth with her lips. When she pulled back, a lipstick imprint remained. He wiped it off. "I understand you also know my husband," Valentina said. A kid I didn't know about, followed by a wife I didn't know about. Fantastic. "How long have you two been married?" I squeaked. "Let me put it this way," she said, hand on hip, "long before the two of you ever met." My breathing stilled. I braced myself against the edge of a wooden chair by the door. Not seeing the potential for the situation to get any worse, I inhaled a lungful of air and steadied myself, just in time to see a young boy's head peek through the door. "Daddy, daddy!" he screamed. The boy, who couldn't have been much older than three, ran to Giovanni, wrapping his stick-like arms around Giovanni's leg. Unless Allesandra had risen from the dead, aged backward, and changed sexes, I'd just met Giovanni's second child. Giovanni ran a hand through the boy's brown hair and forced a smile. "Run along and play, Marcelo. I'll come find you in a while, and we can talk about your trip." Marcelo's face saddened as he realized he was being turned away. He walked past me, his bottom lip jutting out, eyes stuck on the ground. I followed him out the door. "Sloane, wait just a—" I half-turned. "No, Giovanni. Spend some time with your _wife_." # CHAPTER 17 I woke the next morning determined that by the end of the day, one way or another, I'd fly back home and never return to New York City again. For now, I'd given Daniela my word, and even though it seemed there was no one in Giovanni's family I could trust any longer, I'd see our plan through. I'd made a promise. I wasn't about to break it now, no matter how much I wanted to. After explaining the dining room fiasco to Maddie, she assumed the role of protector, refusing Giovanni when he came to our bedroom door, not once, but twice. The second time, Giovanni endured a side of Maddie rarely seen, the effect of how she reacted when someone she cared about had been wronged. I was dressed and ready, applying the finishing touches of makeup to my face while I waited for Maddie to return. Several hours earlier, she'd left with her sharpshooter bodyguard. After teaching her class, she planned to meet up with an old friend to procure an item we would need later on. I remained in the room, alone, having no desire to see Giovanni or any other members of his family. I passed the time by looking into anyone with the name Dashner. The most prominent Dashner was a man named Edward H. Dashner. Edward was a doctor, and, as it turned out, he was involved in a program called Doctors Assist International. He frequently traveled across the country administering medicine to those in need. I checked on the site, looking at the list of countries they visited. The list was alphabetical. Italy was on it. There was a knock on the bedroom door. "Can I come in?" Daniela. "It's open," I said. She entered, carrying a tray of food, which she set on the nightstand. "You didn't come down for breakfast this morning. I told Maddie it would be ready for you at ten o'clock." "Can you blame me?" "No, I can't," she said. "I ... ahh ... feel I should speak up on Giovanni's behalf." "Is Valentina really Giovanni's wife?" "Yes, she is." "And is Marcelo his son?" She nodded, reluctantly. "How could you, Daniela? He's always hid things from me ... but you?" "I know, I should have told you. I wanted to. He said it would cause—" "Please. Just stop. There's nothing more to say. Besides, Giovanni and I haven't been together for a while now. I see no reason why an explanation is needed." "Sloane, you really should allow me to—" "No, Daniela. No more. I'll do what I said I would, as agreed, and then I'm leaving." She sat on the edge of the bed. Nodded. "Thank you." "For what?" "Staying." Only until the part I was about to play was over. Then I was going, and I wasn't _ever_ coming back. # CHAPTER 18 Maddie returned from her conference with something she called "devil's breath," a nasty drug also known as scopolamine, a kind of truth serum we hoped would turn "The Hammer" into a babbling buffoon. There were no promises, though. As Maddie explained it, "truth serum" didn't guarantee the truth would actually come out. The drug varied from person to person. It was inconsistent at best. A longshot. But it was the only shot we had. Maddie instructed Daniela on how to administer the drug. We were told to wait inside her oversized shoe closet, a room no man had any reason to enter. "Tell me how this drug works," I whispered to Maddie. "It's tasteless, odorless, and colorless. That's why I asked her to slip it into the wine she's going to offer him." "What does it do exactly?" "It blocks the formation of memories. Regardless of what happens, he shouldn't be able to recall what went on here tonight with any kind of clarity. It's like a fragment of time will be lost forever. Gone." "How long does it take to kick in?" I asked. "Not long. He'll still be coherent, conscious, articulate even, but he'll lack willpower, give in to suggestion. That's when we'll find out what he knows." "Won't he remember Daniela inviting him here? Assume he was drugged?" "Hard to say. Some are more susceptible than others." The plan was for Benny to wake up in Daniela's bed. Naked ... and hopefully thinking the two of them had slept together. She'd give him a kiss or two and send him on his way. "Daniela said she'd let him go once she gets what she wants." Maddie laughed. "What's so funny?" I asked. "I'm not sure I believe her, and you shouldn't either. Her father's life is at stake—her entire family, if she gets caught." "She promised he wouldn't be hurt." "Sloane, Benny's a criminal. They're _all_ criminals. Giovanni included." I looked away. "I know." "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said—" "Forget it. I don't love him anymore. I mean, I'd be lying if I said I didn't care, didn't still have feelings. But they're not the same now. They'll never be the same." ... Several minutes before the dinner guests were to arrive, Giovanni grabbed my wrist as I ascended the stairs. "You have guests coming," I said. "You need to go." "We need to talk. What you did, filling my sister's head with ideas, it's not okay. You can't run around here doing anything you like." Too late. I already had. I wriggled my arm, but he wouldn't release me. "Let go," I said through gritted teeth. The doorbell rang, leaving him with no option than to set me free. Before I stepped away from him, I leaned in close, whispered in his ear. "This bed you're in right now ... when everything is said and done, just remember, _you_ are the one who made it." Guests flowed into the room below. Giovanni released my wrist, and I looked down, watching him greet Rocco as though they were old friends. Rocco was everything I thought he'd be—tall, tan, and arrogant. He was handsome, but he looked like a brute, his demeanor lacking the sophistication and charm Giovanni had. I escaped upstairs, joining Maddie in the closet. Daniela stopped in to let us know the dinner party had commenced in a friendly, cordial manner. Rocco behaved as if he wasn't the slightest bit suspicious of anyone in Giovanni's family. Wine flowed freely as did idle conversation. Daniela even braved the biggest question of all—asking what everyone's plans were for the rest of the night. When Benny said he didn't have any, it opened the door for Daniela to ask him to stay, talk for a while, an offer he quickly accepted. Rocco remained quiet about his trip to Rome later that evening. Once dinner concluded, Rocco made a quick exit, excusing himself by taking a call and saying there was something that needed to be "handled." Benny followed Daniela up to her room, where the real action was about to begin. # CHAPTER 19 "Why now?" Benny asked. "Why, what?" Daniela responded. "Accept me. Invite me to your room. I've shown interest in you for decades. Why here? Why like this? This isn't like you." "Maybe you never tried hard enough." Glasses clanked together. The pair toasted to the health and happiness of their families, and to good fortune, a sentiment that meant something different to each of them. Within minutes, Benny's formal, tough-guy act faded, and a new, malleable Benny emerged. As he embraced the oh-so-good feeling, he began singing Daniela's name repeatedly like it was a song. She laughed, played the part, accepting his flirty banters of affection. "Dan ... yell ... ah," Benny sang. "Come to me. Come here." Daniela stepped over to the closet, whispering to Maddie, "Is he ready yet?" Maddie pushed the closet door open, nodded. "Is this okay?" Daniela asked. "I mean, is it all right if he sees you?" "It's fine," Maddie said. "He shouldn't remember we were here." "I'm not sure what to say," Daniela said. "How far can I go? What can I ask him?" Maddie shrugged. "Anything." "Dan ... yell ... ah, where'd you go?" Benny walked around the room. Searching. "He's crooning like he's backed by a full orchestra," I said. "You need to keep him quiet. We don't need Giovanni up here." For as tough and assertive as I knew Daniela to be, her visible thigh was trembling. She was out of her league tonight, and she knew it. I stepped into the room, exchanging glances with Benny. "Who are you?" he asked. "Why don't you have a seat?" I said. He thought about it for a moment. "Okay, I will." He sat. Test one: success. "Daniela tells me you oversee most of the nightclubs in town," I said. "I do," he said. "Why?" "How do I get into Essence?" He giggled like I'd been smacked over the head by a stupid stick. "Use the front door like everyone else." "The front door is for guests of the club. I want to go through the side door, hang out in the secret room with your brother and his friends." He swished a hand through the air. "It's easy. Punch in the code, and you're in." "I would," I said, "but I don't know the code." "I don't either." We had ourselves a problem. "I thought you managed the club." "I do. Never took the time to memorize the numbers, though." "How do you get in when the club's not open?" I asked. "K-C-O-R-E-H-T." "Excuse me?" "It's 'The Rock' backward. Never took the time to learn what numbers they match to, but you type in those letters, and the door will open." No hesitation. No alarm bells going off in his brain. Nothing. He said it like he wanted me to know. Daniela's mouth dropped open. "What's in the secret room?" I asked. "Where do you keep the drugs?" "Not drugs, pills. In packages." I wasn't sure what he meant. It didn't matter. We'd find out soon enough. "Why is your brother going to Rome tonight?" "To see family. Why else?" "To smuggle heroin," I said. Benny laughed. "You're a funny lady. You really think my brother's stupid enough to run 'em himself?" "I think he's smart enough to get a patsy to do it for him. Who's the patsy—Dr. Dashner?" Benny grinned. "You're funny _and_ smart." "Where can I find Dashner?" I asked. With a finger swishing through the air, he said, "1-5-3 Palmer, 1-5-3 Palmer, 1-5-3 Palmer," over and over again. I was starting to think shutting him up would prove the biggest challenge of all. "I think I have what we need," I said. Daniela followed Maddie and me to the door. "You two be careful. You have the pistols I gave you, right?" I nodded. "I'll check in as soon as we've found something." On my way out, I noticed Benny's eyes hadn't left mine. Loud enough for him to hear, I said, "I'm heading over to the nightclub." When her bedroom door closed, Benny's playful voice was crooning again. "You're all going to die tonight," he sang. "You're all going to die." # CHAPTER 20 Clouds pooled together across a dreary, gray sky. Thunder roared, shouting its anger, its discontent, for all to see. Everything felt wrong. So wrong. "We're not going to Essence Nightclub," I said. "Why not?" Maddie asked. "It's a trap." Before Maddie and I trekked through a patch of forest to get to a car Daniela had waiting on the next street over, I texted Daniela, asked if she was okay. She replied that she was fine. Benny was in her bed, beckoning her to accept his advances. I explained my concerns, instructed her to wait only a few minutes, just long enough for us to get to the car. Then she needed to get Giovanni involved, and get Benny out. The Romano family was planning something, which meant they knew. Giovanni needed to be ready. I felt uneasy about Daniela being alone with Benny. As soon as the car was in sight, I sent Giovanni a text: _Benny's in Daniela's room. He may or may not be drugged. I fear she's in danger._ There was no time to explain anything else. I held my palm out to Maddie. "Let me see your phone." She handed it over. I took mine and hers, checked them between a cluster of trees. "What are you doing?" Maddie asked. "Getting us out of here." # CHAPTER 21 The address I had led me to a two-story stucco house close to the city. The curtains were drawn, shielding my view. Maddie and I approached the front door. Seeing my hand inside my jacket pocket gripping my gun, she retrieved hers. I shook my head. The last thing I needed was a novice gunslinger shooting her way inside. "Put it away," I whispered. She frowned. "What's your plan—knock and hope he answers?" I twisted the doorknob. It wasn't locked. I stepped inside. "Stay behind me," I said. Five large, zipped suitcases were lined up side by side in a perfect row on the living room floor. Whistling sounded from the hallway, growing louder as it approached. Upon seeing two women in his living room, a man I assumed was Dashner came to an abrupt halt. The man was older, late sixties. He wore rimless glasses and had a full head of white hair with a trimmed mustache to match. He was slim, well-groomed, and pretty. He looked like he hadn't disobeyed a law in his life. "Going somewhere?" I asked. "Excuse me?" "I asked if you're going somewhere." "Who are you? Why are you in my house?" His voice was calm, not the least bit agitated. "Answer the question," I said. "I will not. Leave or I'll call the police." "Are you Edward H. Dashner?" He nodded. "What do you want?" I withdrew my gun. He raised both hands in front of him. "If you're planning on shooting me, mind telling me who you two are first?" I smiled. "I'm Kit, this is Kat. Have a seat." He sat, crossed one leg over the other. "You shouldn't be here. You should go." I turned to Maddie. "Unzip the bags." I expected Dashner to resist. He didn't. Maddie unzipped one of the bags, pulled out a packet with a familiar label for a name-brand headache medicine. "My supplies," Dashner said. "I work with Doctors Assist International." "We know who you are, and we know what you do. What we don't know is why you're helping Rocco Romano smuggle fentanyl out of the country." I picked up one of the packets. "It _is_ fentanyl in these bags, right?" He interlaced his hands on his lap. "I ... had no choice." "Of course you did. You always have a choice." I whipped my head to the side a moment too late. Vincent stepped around a wall in front of me, fired his gun. The bullet ripped into my shoulder and then shot back out again, drilling itself into the wall beside me. Maddie reached for her gun. Vincent stopped her. "Pull a gun on me and you die," Vincent said. "Right here, right now." Maddie took a step forward. "Stay where you are!" Vincent yelled. "She's bleeding," Maddie said. "Let me help her." "Stay. Where. You. Are." Maddie stayed. "You don't just work for Giovanni, do you?" I asked him. "How long have you been working for Rocco?" "I don't work for him. I work for myself." "Then why are you here?" "I've been loyal to Giovanni's family for three years." "What changed?" I asked. "Information." "You found out about Misty." "Found out I was working for a family of traitors. Decided I'd approach Rocco. He paid good money to find out what I know. Ever since, I've been doing things for him, like escorting the doctor here to the airport tonight, making sure nothing gets in the way." "Why did he choose you?" I asked. "Why not someone else—someone he trusts, since you're pretty much a traitor too?" "They're ... uhh ... occupied at the moment." Occupied. Giovanni. For a split second, Vincent's attention diverted to something behind me. A second was all I needed. I pulled my gun, fired and missed—the pain of my wound getting in the way of a clear shot. I glanced behind me. Saw who Vincent was looking at. Cesare. A million swear words crowded my mind. Were they both in on it? A bullet whizzed by me, fired by Maddie's gun. It plunged into Vincent's chest. He reeled back. Cesare leveled his gun, pointing it at me. As I popped off another shot in his direction, he yelled, "Wait!" Maddie walked toward Vincent, unloading her clip into his helpless body. Cesare braced himself against the wall, glanced down at the blood oozing from his lower abdomen. He pleaded with me again. "Sloane, please. Wait." His tone was different, nothing like the man who'd kidnapped me a short time ago. "You had your gun raised to me. You were going to kill me. Why should I spare you now?" "It wasn't aimed at you. It was aimed behind you, at Vincent." He reached an unsteady hand inside his jacket, pulled out a shiny piece of gold, and raised it in front of me. With his fingers curled around the top, I couldn't read everything it said, but four words stood out like a firefly on a darkened night. I slapped a hand over my lips, my eyes blurry, questioning myself and my actions. What had I done? # CHAPTER 22 "I'm calling 9-1-1," I said. "No," Cesare said. "Not yet." Dashner stood. "I have some medical supplies in the hall closet." My hands were sweaty, my heart pumping a series of rapid thuds throughout my chest. "Sloane." Maddie squeezed my shoulder. "What do you want him to do?" "Yeah ... yeah ... get your kit. Maddie, go with him." Maddie and Dashner disappeared into the hallway. I turned to Cesare. "I'm sorry, I didn't know. You were so ... horrible to me." He attempted a faint smile. "How do you think I lasted this long?" I flattened my hand, pressed it down over his. "I'm sorry I shot you." "I've survived worse." "You're undercover." He nodded. "How did you end up here—working for Giovanni?" I asked. "His brother, Carlo, was my friend. We worked a few cases together. As far as I know, I was the only other person who knew who Carlo was—his background, where he came from. I promised to look after his family if anything ever happened to him." "Do they know who you are?" I asked. "Giovanni does. Since you arrived at the house, he asked me to keep an eye on you." "They're planning something." "Who?" "Rocco's family. Something big. Giovanni and Daniela, they're both in danger." "Let Giovanni worry about them. We need to make sure Dashner gets on that plane tonight." "Why can't we just turn them all in to the guys heading the investigation?" I asked. "And leave the final piece of the puzzle, the biggest piece, unsolved?" "Can't they interrogate him, get what they need from Dashner himself?" "It's not that easy." Maddie and Dashner returned. He went to work on Cesare. Maddie attended to me. "How bad is it?" I asked the doctor. "He'll survive," Dashner replied, "but he needs to get to the hospital. I can only do so much." "No hospital," Cesare said. "Not yet." "But son, you have to—" Cesare reached up, his hands gripping the front of Dashner's perfectly ironed, button-up shirt. "I appreciate what you're doing for me, but if you don't start talking about where these drugs are going and how they're getting there, I'll put a bullet in you myself." Cesare released Dashner, who removed his glasses, wiped his brow. A genuine sadness covered his face. "You don't understand," Dashner said. "None of you. I'm not who you think I am." "You're a doctor," I said. "Aren't you?" He nodded. "And you're helping Rocco?" He nodded again. "Tell me what I'm missing then—what _we're_ missing. I fail to see it." "I'm not a bad guy, a bad person. I'm a legitimate doctor. I'm only helping him because I have no choice." "Of course you have a choice," I said. "You always have a choice." "They have my son." "Who has your son?" "Rocco. And if I don't do what he wants, not only am I dead, my son's dead too." Cesare extended a hand to Dashner. Dashner hesitated at first then stretched out his own hand, and the two shook. "By shaking hands, we're making a deal. I know you're scared. I know you don't trust anyone. I know Rocco has warned you not to talk to anyone. I'm telling you right here, right now. You can trust me. Tell me what you know, and I'll do everything in my power to find your son." # CHAPTER 23 For his part in the family drug creation and exchange, Rocco needed a doctor with access to fentanyl to mix with the heroin coming in from Colombia. Dashner was an excellent choice for several reasons. He had both the means and the transportation to deliver supplies without causing the same kind of red flag a normal passenger would. While Dashner flew to Rome on a small plane with fellow doctors, Rocco flew on a separate plane, ensuring the two were never tied to each other in public. Having someone else transport the drugs kept his hands clean. Once Dashner arrived in Rome, he offered medical assistance to migrants and those seeking asylum. Without the proper paperwork, many people entering the country were detained for a lengthy period of time while the proper identification was obtained. Sometimes it was obtained, other times it wasn't, at which point those entering illegally were deported, kicked out of the country. Among those waiting, certain diseases persisted. Many migrants entered the country already afflicted with a preexisting condition, such as tuberculosis or chagas. This is where Dashner and his colleagues came in, working as part of a mobile medical team to care for the afflicted. Only that's not _all_ he did. During one of his visits to Rome, Rocco approached Dashner in the back room of a hole-in-the-wall café and made a proposal—Rocco would pay him a large sum of money if Dashner smuggled fentanyl into the country. Dashner refused, and Rocco retaliated by taking his son. A new deal was struck. After Dashner completed a few runs, he'd get his son back, provided he continued delivering fentanyl to Rocco's family. Dashner did what he had been asked, handing over the fentanyl, which had been packaged and mislabeled as a variety of over-the-counter remedies for things like headaches or an upset stomach. I'd asked Dashner what proof he had that his son was still alive. He said he'd been granted one phone conversation the last time he made a delivery. Once he returned again, Rocco promised he'd hand Dashner's son over. It was clear Dashner believed Rocco. But I wasn't so sure I did. # CHAPTER 24 It was eleven o'clock when I drove into the short-term parking lot at JFK airport. Dashner's plane was departing in one hour, and Rocco's thirty minutes after that. I wanted to make damn sure both of them made their flights. "Rocco always calls me to check in before the plane takes off," Dashner said, "to make sure I'm holding up my end of the bargain. What am I supposed to say if he asks about Vincent?" "Tell him the truth." He raised a brow. "Are you crazy?" Most days? Definitely. That was beside the point. "Not the entire truth. If he does know something and you lie about it, you'll raise his suspicions even more. Don't give him a reason not to get on his flight. Your usual exchange must take place tomorrow evening in Rome as planned. Understand?" "If he knows Vincent is dead, what should I say?" Dashner asked. "Say a man came to your house, someone you've never seen before. Tell him there was a struggle between the man and Vincent, during which time you managed to get to your car and head to the airport. If he asks about the precious cargo you're carrying, tell him it's just fine, that it was already in your car before the man arrived." "Do you think that will work?" "Do you have any better ideas?" With my own boarding pass bound for Salt Lake City's airport in hand, Maddie and I snaked our way through a security line two rows behind Dashner. This allowed me to keep an eye on him without anyone seeing us together. He was nervous. Too nervous. And we didn't need another screwup. As much as I wanted to breathe, to be in the moment for a few glorious seconds, the end seemed like the beginning, a beginning I feared I'd live to regret. I glanced at Maddie. "I'm going to call Daniela and check in one last time." I dialed. Daniela didn't answer. I tried a few more times. Nothing. "Let's call Giovanni," Maddie said. I shook my head. "Let's not." Maddie grabbed the phone and dialed his number anyway. "Something's wrong, Sloane. You know it is. She always picks up." "We don't _know_ anything." Even though I'd said it, I wasn't convinced. "Giovanni, this is Maddie. We're at the airport. We've been trying to call Daniela, and she's not—" I heard his muffled voice on the other end of the phone. Maddie clutched my arm and squeezed. I snatched the phone from her hand. "Giovanni, what is it?" I asked. "What's going on?" He muttered something so unreal, his words just hung there for a moment. The phone slipped from my hands, and I bent over, struggling to breathe. "Sloane? What's happened?" "Giovanni's house," I said. "It's burning in flames." # CHAPTER 25 After trying to reach Giovanni several times, he finally picked up. "Where's Daniela?" I asked. "Is everyone okay?" "Daniela left in the ambulance about fifteen minutes ago," Giovanni replied. "Is she all right?" "She will be." "And your son?" I asked. "Marcelo is alive." "Your wife?" There was a long pause. "Giovanni, are you there?" "Valentina was outside and safe, except for a small gash below her left eye. As she watched the fire burn, she became frantic, raving about her grandmother's jewels. They were locked inside a safe in our room. I tried to ease her mind, reminding her the safe was fireproof, and the jewels would survive. Daniela was being looked after by one of the medics, and I rushed to her side. In my absence, Valentina slipped back inside the house." I clasped a hand over my mouth. "What happened?" "One of the wooden beams from the ceiling dislodged, collapsing on top of her. She was trapped." I didn't need to ask what happened next. From his tone, I knew she wasn't alive. "I'm so sorry, Giovanni." "She wasn't even supposed at the house at all. Rocco asked her to come over to his place. He said he'd bought another horse, and he wanted her to see it. She left, but then came back when she realized she'd forgotten her purse. I suppose Rocco intended to spare her life, even though he didn't." "Do they know how the fire was started?" "The point of origin is still being determined. They believe it started in Daniela's bedroom. It was Benny, acting on an order giving by his brother." I wondered if he hadn't been drugged at all—if he'd faked it the entire time. "Where is Benny now?" "He's dead." "If Benny was responsible for setting the fire, how did he manage to get himself killed by it?" "I never said he died in the fire." He was right. He hadn't said that. There was a pause and then he said, "I've always found it fascinating the things a person will say when they think there's a sliver of a chance you'll spare their life. He may have gone to the grave tonight, but he went there singing." Only the tune was much different than before. "You killed him." "It's because of Benny that Valentina is dead," he stated. "That Marcelo will grow up without a mother." A part of me understood. A part of me didn't. Murder was murder, no matter what the justification, although a part of me felt I'd sleep better knowing Benny was no longer a threat. "Where are you now?" Giovanni asked. The raised hairs on my arm made me reluctant to tell him. I did anyway. "At JFK airport. It's a long story. I know how they're getting the drugs in and out of the country." "Wait there. Do _not_ approach Rocco if you see him, and do not talk to the Feds." # CHAPTER 26 A monitor inside the airport displayed the terminal number for Skyway Airlines Flight 12. It was all the way on the opposite side of the airport. I checked the time. Rocco would be boarding in the next ten minutes. "Maddie, stay here until Giovanni arrives then call me. Tell him I went to the ladies' room or something. I'll be right back." "After you check on Rocco, you mean?" "I have to know if he's on that plane," I said. "Go. But be safe. And hurry." I hopped on the next train. By the time the doors slid open and I stepped back out again, I'd shielded my hair beneath a beanie cap I'd stashed inside my carry-on bag. Fifty feet from the gate, I spotted Rocco, dressed in a suit and standing with the first-class passengers preparing to board. I backed against a wall, and flipped open a discarded magazine I'd found on the train. Rocco placed his ticket beneath a scanner. The woman at the flight desk nodded. He smiled, she smiled, and he glanced around, with a smug look on his face like all his worries were over. For a moment, it seemed as if his eyes rested on me. _Be normal._ _Act normal._ Only nothing felt normal about it. Seconds later, he boarded the plane, and I breathed. I texted Maddie, asked if she'd seen Giovanni yet. Her response: no. I replied back saying I was staying until Flight12 was safely in the air. She wasn't surprised. After the first-class passengers had boarded, a second line formed for the rest of the passengers. A man entered the line. His tall stature, sleek ponytail, and thick glasses made him stand out amongst the others, but I was focused on something else: his well-manicured, stick-like fingers. Fingers that gave him away. I walked over and stood next to him. "You were going to leave without saying goodbye?" "When is your flight?" Giovanni asked. "Soon," I replied. "Did you really think you could wear a wig and I wouldn't notice?" "The disguise isn't for you. I'm going to tell you something, and this time I'd like you to listen. I only married Valentina because my father was friends with her father. It's what my father wanted. What they both wanted." I crossed my arms. "We don't need to do this now." "Yes, we do." "Fine. You lied about Valentina, about your daughter, your son." "I love Marcelo. But he's _not_ my son. Not by blood anyway." "Whose son is he then?" "It doesn't matter." I grabbed his arm. "Don't get on the plane. The FBI is organizing a team in Rome to track where the drugs are being made once Dashner delivers the fentanyl." "I know." He stared forward. The line in front of him had slimmed down to three passengers. "I have to go." "No, you don't. You should be here with your sister, not chasing a personal vendetta against Rocco." He lowered his voice, whispering, "I can't allow him to live after what he's done." "As soon as the government has what they need, they'll arrest him. He'll be convicted, go to prison." "He'll pay with the government's form of justice. Not mine." Giovanni handed his boarding pass to the woman and glanced at me. "Go home, Sloane." I turned, shielding him from the wave of tears brimming in my eyes. So many emotions flowed through me—feelings I'd been denying for far too long. I stood there, not looking back as he boarded the plane, knowing this could be the last time I'd ever see him again. "Are you happy—in your life?" I turned. "I ... thought you were on the plane." The overhead speakers announced the final boarding for Skyway Airlines Flight 12. "You need to go," I said. "No, You were right. I don't." He wiped the tears from my eyes and kissed my forehead. "You didn't answer my question." "I'm ... working on it. You know me. Constant work in progress." "And the lawman. He makes you happy?" My thoughts turned to Cade, and I smiled. "He does. He's a good man." Giovanni stuck out a hand. I suppose he felt after all I'd been through, it was the only thing I'd accept. But we were past all that now. I wrapped my arms around him, feeling the safety of his embrace one last time. "I'll always love you," he said. "You tell Cade he's a lucky man." THE END Flirting with Danger is a prequel to Hush Now Baby, book six in the Sloane Monroe book series. Here's a sneak peek at chapter one. # CHAPTER 1 Serena Westwood peeled back the quilt atop her four-poster bed and climbed in, reeling the covers over her shivering body until she'd cocooned herself inside. It was early September, and already the frigid fall air crept through the valley, misting it like a damp sheet struggling in the wind. After a long, noise-filled day, all was still. There was a time when Serena loved the quiet, basked in the gentle, serene calm, but not now. Now she had more than herself to consider. At thirty-nine years old, Serena had almost convinced herself the role of "mother" was meant for everyone _but_ her. She'd spent many restless nights in the same bed she relaxed in now, trying to accept the reality that she, and her husband, Jack, would remain childless forever. And yet, here she was, the proud new mother of a sweet baby boy. Before Finn was born, Jack and Serena had run the gamut, trying everything from artificial insemination to in-vitro fertilization. Nothing took. Her womb, desolate and barren, had rejected it all. When conceiving a baby was out of the question, they turned to surrogacy. Three potential candidates were interviewed. All were rejected. Another round of women were selected. None seemed like the right fit. On the way home from the market one wintery afternoon, an SUV struck a patch of ice on the road. The vehicle careened into the oncoming lane, sideswiping Serena's Subaru in the process. While waiting for police to arrive, Serena had taken refuge inside the Precious Gift Adoption Agency. A firm believer in fate, Serena found herself explaining her unsuccessful plight to Teresa Foster, one of the caseworkers. Teresa was empathetic, her own life experience mirroring much of what Serena herself had endured, but Teresa's attitude was different. In Teresa's mind, infertility had led her to the greatest gift of all—adoption—and she prevailed upon Serena to think of adoption the same way. One week and several conversations later, Jack and Serena filled out the necessary paperwork. And although Teresa cautioned them at the onset, saying the wait time for a newborn baby could be two years or more, a mere three months passed before a birth mother selected Serena and Jack as her adoptive parents. Four months later, Finn made his opening debut. The faint hum of a stirring baby jolted Serena awake. She peered at the clock on the nightstand. Four a.m. It seemed like only minutes had elapsed since she rested her head on the pillow, and already, it was feeding time again. "Mommy's coming, Finn." Her melodic voice drifted down the hall. Serena coiled a tattered robe around her body, cinching it in front of her waist. She picked a few bobby pins out of the terry-cloth pocket and twisted her long, blond locks into a bun. She squeezed the lids over her hazel eyes open and shut a few times, forcing herself awake. The frigid chill of the tiles beneath her feet as she made her way down the hall were a stern reminder to leave her slippers by her bedroom door next time. She entered the kitchen, her mind doing most of the work for her, having memorized her every move. After performing the same routine night after night, intelligent thought was no longer required. The bottles practically made themselves. Cupping the bottle in her hand, Serena stirred the formula and water together and popped it into the microwave. She watched the hardened plastic revolve around and around on the circular glass tray like a carousel. For a moment, her eyes closed and she found sleep again until Finn's desperate cries grew louder. She was used to the baby fussing, but he'd never been this agitated before. "Almost there," she called. "Mommy's coming." _Mommy_. She wasn't used to the name. She wondered if she'd ever get used to it. The microwave dinged. She removed the bottle and dipped her pinkie finger inside, ensuring the formula had heated just right. Perfect. She screwed the lid on and paused. The crying had stopped. Had he fallen back to sleep? All was quiet. Too quiet. Tiptoeing to the other side of the house, she snuck up to the crib. A wave of panic gripped her. There was no baby. A low, lucid chirp prompted Serena to whip around. She saw nothing at first, but there was something peculiar about the wall opposite her. A dark shadow in the shape of a person blackened its surface. Her eyes trailed the shadow to its source—the bedroom door. Was someone behind it? "Who's there?" Her voice trembled. No response. Her eyes tore across the lamp-lit room. Armed with nothing but the baby's bottle, she saw no way to defend herself from the assumed attacker. Her mind raced back to a self-defense class she'd taken years earlier, remembering something the instructor had said about fingers being a person's most viable weapon. "Jab them in the eyes," he'd said, lecturing the room full of women on how to handle an intruder. "Fast and with all the force you can muster. Don't think about it. Just do it." A knot wrenched her gut. "I asked who's there. Show yourself." She thought about adding the word "please," but didn't want to sound weak. While there was no movement from behind the door, a second faint squeak emitted from Finn's mouth. "Who are you?" she cried. "Come out. I know you're there." A man's voice floated throughout the room. He spoke, but not to her. "Hush now." His tone was rugged, yet soothing enough to quiet the child. The man remained behind the door, toying with Serena. But why? It didn't matter why. Not really. Whoever he was, he had her baby, and she was done playing his game. She shaped her fingers into a stiff V and surged forward. The man stepped out, anticipating her protective instinct to react. He had the height of a basketball player and the largest hands she'd ever seen. In one hand he held Finn. In the other, a Sig Sauer .45, aimed right at her head. "Back...up," he demanded. "Now." Staring down the barrel of a gun, Serena shied away, seeing no alternative than to comply with his demand. "Why do you have my baby?" she whispered. He bounced Finn up and down, his eyes never breaking contact with Serena's terrified face. " _My_ baby." He laughed, finding the comment amusing. A defiant Serena refused to give in any more than necessary. "What do you mean _your_ baby?" A second nervous laugh escaped from the man's lips. Finn started to cry. "He's frightened," Serena said. "Let me hold him. Please." "Can't." "Please! You're scaring him!" She attempted to place the bottle on the nightstand. "Don't!" "I was just going to—" "Your hands," he grunted. "Keep them where I can see them." She wasn't sure whether to hoist them in the air, palms forward, like she was a hostage, or to let them fall to the side. He picked up on her uncertainty. "Just ... cross your arms or something." In his eyes she detected inner conflict, like he was wrestling with the decision of whether to keep Finn or give him back. Or maybe she had it all wrong. Maybe he was trying to decide whether _she_ lived or died. His hands were steady, not sticky and pulsating like hers. Why was he there? What was his motivation? If only she could figure it out, maybe she could save them both. She tried appealing to his sensitive side, if he had one. "My son's name is Finn. We adopted him a few weeks ago. He's our only—" "Shut your mouth, lady. I don't care." Finn squirmed, growing restless in the man's hand. Without stepping forward, Serena reached her hands out in front of her. "Don't ... move," the man said through gritted teeth. He crossed in front of Serena, eased Finn back into the crib. "Thank you." No response. "We have a safe," she added. "I'll show you where it is. Okay?" With the slowest of movements, she put one foot in front of the other, easing her way toward the door. "You think I'm here to rob you?" "Aren't you?" she asked, without looking back. "Lady, if I wanted to rip you off, I would have done it already." "If you don't want money, what do you want?" Thoughts swirled around in her mind, each more sinister than the one before. She breathed in, but it made no difference. It felt like all the air to the room had been sucked out. Another thought occurred: _Is he here to rape me? Then why bother with the baby?_ Serena reminisced on how grateful she'd been when her husband switched from days to swing shift at work. The bump in pay allowed them to come up with the adoption money they needed. Now she wished her husband was by her side, wished Jack was here. Serena wrapped her arms around herself and bowed her head, pointing the way to the master bedroom at the other end of the hall. "Just get it over with ... and then I want you to leave." "I'm sorry about this. Really, I am." "If you're sorry, don't do this. Just leave." "Why couldn't you have stayed asleep?" "Why couldn't I ...?" But it was too late. He aimed the gun at the back of Serena's head and fired. Enjoy the preview? Hush Now Baby is available now at your favorite online retailer. # About Cheryl Bradshaw Cheryl Bradshaw is a _New York Times_ and _USA Today_ bestselling author writing in the genres of mystery, thriller, paranormal suspense, women's fiction, non-fiction, and romantic suspense. Her novel _Stranger in Town_ (Sloane Monroe series #4) was a 2013 Shamus Award finalist for Best PI Novel of the Year, and her novel _I Have a Secret_ (Sloane Monroe series #3) was a 2013 eFestival of Words winner for best thriller. Since 2013, seven of Cheryl's novels have made the _USA Today_ bestselling books list. Sign up for Cheryl Bradshaw's Killer Newsletter today and receive a FREE eBook. Learn more by clicking HERE. **Enjoy the Collection?** You can show your appreciation by leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, AppleBooks, Google play, or in the Kobo Store. If you do write a review, please be sure to email Cheryl HERE so she can express her gratitude. # Fiction by Cheryl Bradshaw Sloane Monroe Series Black Diamond Death (Book 1) _Charlotte Halliwell has a secret. But before revealing it to her sister, she's found dead._ Murder in Mind (Book 2) _A woman is found murdered, the serial killer's trademark "S" carved into her wrist._ I Have a Secret (Book 3) _Doug Ward has been running from his past for twenty years. But after his fourth whisky of the night, he doesn't want to keep quiet, not anymore._ Stranger in Town (Book 4) _A frantic mother runs down the aisles, searching for her missing daughter. But little Olivia is already gone.—A Shamus Award Finalist_ Bed of Bones (Book 5) _Sometimes even the deepest, darkest secrets find their way to the surface.—A USA Today Best Selling Book_ Flirting with Danger (Book 5.5) A Sloane Monroe Short Story _A fancy hotel. A weekend getaway_ _. For Sloane Monroe, rest has finally arrived, until the lights go out, a woman screams, and Sloane's nightmare begins._ Hush Now Baby (Book 6) _Serena Westwood tiptoes to her baby's crib and looks inside, startled to find her newborn son is gone.—A USA Today Best Selling Book_ Dead of Night (Book 6.5) A Sloane Monroe Short Story _After her mother-in-law is fatally stabbed, Wren is seen fleeing with the bloody knife. Is Wren the killer, or is a dark, scandalous family secret to blame?_ Gone Daddy Gone (Book 7) _A man lurks behind Shelby in the park. Who is he? And why does he have a gun?—A USA Today Best Selling Book_ * * * Sloane Monroe Stories: Deadly Sins Deadly Sins: Sloth (Book 1) _Darryl has been shot, and a mysterious woman is sprawled out on the floor in his hallway. She's dead too. Who is she? And why have they both been murdered?_ Deadly Sins: Wrath (Book 2) _Headlights flash through Maddie's car's back windshield, someone following close behind. When her car careens into nearby tree, the chase comes to an end. But for Maddie, the end is just the beginning._ Deadly Sins: Lust (Book 3) _Marissa Calhoun sits in front of the lagoon, a beach-like swimming hole nestled Cairns, Australia's foreshore. Tonight the lagoon is hers and hers alone_ _. Or is it?_ * * * Addison Lockhart Series Grayson Manor Haunting (Book 1) When Addison Lockhart inherits Grayson Manor after her mother's untimely death, she unlocks a secret that's been kept hidden for over fifty years. Rosecliff Manor Haunting (Book 2) _Addison Lockhart jolts awake. The dream had seemed so real. Eleven-year-old twins Vivian and Grace were so full of life, but they couldn't be. They've been dead for over forty years._ Blackthorn Manor Haunting (Book 3) _Addison Lockhart leans over the manor's window, gasping when she feels a hand on her back. She grabs the windowsill to brace herself, but it's too late--she's already falling._ * * * Till Death do us Part Novella Series Whispers of Murder (Book 1) _It was Isabelle Donnelly's wedding day, a moment in time that should have been the happiest in her life...until it ended in murder._ Echoes of Murder (Book 2) _When two women are found dead at the same wedding, medical examiner Reagan Davenport will stop at nothing to discover the identity of the killer._ * * * Stand-Alone Novels Eye for Revenge _Quinn Montgomery wakes to find herself in the hospital. Her childhood best friend Evie is dead, and Evie's four-year-old son witnessed it all. Traumatized over what he saw, he hasn't spoken.—_ _A USA Today Best Selling Book_ The Devil Died at Midnight _When true-crime writer Alexandria Weston is found murdered on the last stop of her book tour, fellow writer Joss Jax steps in to investigate._ Hickory Dickory Dead _Maisie Fezziwig wakes to a harrowing scream outside. Curious, she walks outside to investigate, and Maisie stumbles on a grisly murder that will change her life forever.—A USA Today Best Selling Book_ Roadkill _Suburban housewife Juliette Granger has been living a secret life ... a life that's about to turn deadly for everyone she loves.—_ _A USA Today Best Selling Book_ # Don't miss out! Click the button below and you can sign up to receive emails whenever Cheryl Bradshaw publishes a new book. There's no charge and no obligation. <https://books2read.com/r/B-A-KYC-ACTF> Connecting independent readers to independent writers. Did you love _Flirting with Danger_? Then you should read _Hush Now Baby_ by Cheryl Bradshaw! **On a crisp, fall night, Serena Westwood wakes to the faint stirs of her crying baby.** Bottle in hand, she tiptoes to the other side of the house, sneaks up to the crib, looks in. A wave of panic grips her as her real nightmare begins. Inside the crib, there is no baby. If you're a fan of Sue Grafton and Mary Higgins Clark, you'll love these suspenseful mysteries. A _New York Times_ bestselling mystery series. _"Bradshaw is a great storyteller."_ _"The suspense is consuming!"_ _"A fantastic, fast-paced detective novel."_ Read more at Cheryl Bradshaw's site. Also by Cheryl Bradshaw Addison Lockhart Paranormal Suspense Grayson Manor Haunting Rosecliff Manor Haunting Blackthorn Manor Haunting Belle Manor Haunting (Coming Soon) Addison Lockhart Series Books 1-2 Maisie Fezziwig Hickory Dickory Dead Murder Novella Series Whispers of Murder Sloane Monroe Murderous Shorts Deadly Sins: Lust, Sloane Monroe Stories #3 Deadly Sins: Greed, Sloane Monroe Stories #4 (Coming Soon) Sloane Monroe Series Black Diamond Death Deadly Sins: Sloth, Sloane Monroe Stories #1 Murder in Mind Deadly Sins:Wrath, Sloane Monroe Stories #2 I Have a Secret Stranger in Town Bed of Bones Flirting with Danger Hush Now Baby Dead of Night Smoke and Mirrors Sloane Monroe Series Boxed Set, Books 1-3 Sloane Monroe Series Boxed Set, Books 4-5 Sloane Monroe Series Boxed Set, Books 1-6 Gone Daddy Gone Till Death do us Part Echoes of Murder Till Death do us Part Series, Books 1-2 Vegas Dreams Sweet Dreams Shattered Dreams Stolen Dreams Summer Dreams Vegas Dreams Standalone Eye for Revenge Bloody Murder: Two Series Starters Cheryl Bradshaw Series Reading Order The Perfect Lie A View to a Kill Kiss of Death: Four Short Novels Watch for more at Cheryl Bradshaw's site. # About the Author Cheryl Bradshaw is a New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author writing in the genres of mystery, thriller, romantic suspense, and paranormal suspense. Stranger in Town (Sloane Monroe mystery series book 4) was a Shamus Award finalist, and I Have a Secret (Sloane Monroe mystery series #3) won best thriller of the year from eFestival of Words. Read more at Cheryl Bradshaw's site.

Q: Rails 4.1 scope method with relationships I'm using Rails 4.1 and trying to setup a scope method that seems like it should be easy, but I can't seem to get figured out. The high-level data models are: class Request < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :items, dependent: :destroy has_many :actions, through: :items end class Item < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :request belongs_to :action end class Action < ActiveRecord::Base enum usertype: { isnormal: 0, isadmin: 1 } end For our app, a Request is denoted as an administrative request if any of its associated actions' usertype is set to isadmin. I'm trying to setup a scope method (or something similar) whereby we can retrieve the administrative requests via something along the lines of Request.admin, and the normal requests via Request.normal. I just can't seem to wrap my head around how to chain anything together to retrieve these. A: I was finally able to come up with a solution to my question. I don't know that it's the best approach, but it is working and seems simple and straight forward enough. (And I don't know why it took so long to get at it.) class Request < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :items, dependent: :destroy has_many :actions, through: :items scope :isadmin, -> { joins(:actions).where(actions: {usertype: Action.usertypes[:isadmin]}) } scope :isnormal, -> { where.not(id: isadmin.pluck(:id)) } end

torturehttp://www.npr.org tortureenCopyright 2015 NPR - For Personal Use OnlyNPR API RSS Generator 0.94Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:58:00 -0500http://media.npr.org/images/podcasts/primary/npr_generic_image_300.jpg?s=200torturehttp://www.npr.org 'Torture Report': A Closer Look At When And What President Bush KnewA Senate investigation says President George W. Bush was not briefed on the specifics of how the CIA interrogated terrorism suspects until four years into the program. Bush denies that.Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:58:00 -0500http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/16/369876047/torture-report-a-closer-look-at-when-and-what-president-bush-knew?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=torture http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/16/369876047/torture-report-a-closer-look-at-when-and-what-president-bush-knewA Senate investigation says President George W. Bush was not briefed on the specifics of how the CIA interrogated terrorism suspects until four years into the program. Bush denies that. ]]>Eyder PeraltaAs Torture Report's Release Nears, CIA And Opponents Ready ResponsesThe Senate's release will focus on case studies of the treatment, at times brutal, of 20 or so high-value detainees in the counterterrorism efforts following 9/11, and whether those methods paid off.Tue, 09 Dec 2014 05:00:00 -0500http://www.npr.org/2014/12/09/369536790/as-torture-reports-release-nears-cia-and-opponents-ready-responses?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=torture http://www.npr.org/2014/12/09/369536790/as-torture-reports-release-nears-cia-and-opponents-ready-responsesThe Senate's release will focus on case studies of the treatment, at times brutal, of 20 or so high-value detainees in the counterterrorism efforts following 9/11, and whether those methods paid off. ]]>Carrie JohnsonU.S. Boosts Security At Facilities Ahead Of 'Torture Report' ReleaseThe White House says the report "could lead to a greater risk" to U.S. facilities and individuals around the world, but that the president supported the Senate's release scheduled for Tuesday.Mon, 08 Dec 2014 14:54:00 -0500http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/08/369370463/u-s-boosts-security-at-facilities-ahead-of-torture-reports-release?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=torture http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/08/369370463/u-s-boosts-security-at-facilities-ahead-of-torture-reports-releaseThe White House says the report "could lead to a greater risk" to U.S. facilities and individuals around the world, but that the president supported the Senate's release scheduled for Tuesday. ]]>Krishnadev CalamurCongress Clashes Over Release Of CIA 'Torture Report'Senate Democrats plan to release the long-withheld report on interrogation techniques this week, but the State Department wants more delay because of feared repercussions — both at home and overseas.Mon, 08 Dec 2014 02:45:00 -0500http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/07/369262235/congress-clashes-over-release-of-cia-torture-report?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=torture http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/07/369262235/congress-clashes-over-release-of-cia-torture-reportSenate Democrats plan to release the long-withheld report on interrogation techniques this week, but the State Department wants more delay because of feared repercussions — both at home and overseas. ]]>Lauren HodgesFormer CIA Officials Denied Chance To Preview 'Torture' Report The report, along with a CIA rebuttal, is the most detailed accounting of a set of controversial interrogation, rendition and detention practices the CIA carried out after the Sept. 11 attacks.Sat, 26 Jul 2014 03:36:00 -0400http://www.npr.org/2014/07/26/335483947/former-cia-officials-denied-chance-to-preview-torture-report?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=torture http://www.npr.org/2014/07/26/335483947/former-cia-officials-denied-chance-to-preview-torture-reportThe report, along with a CIA rebuttal, is the most detailed accounting of a set of controversial interrogation, rendition and detention practices the CIA carried out after the Sept. 11 attacks. ]]>The Associated PressNew Torture And Rendition Allegations Surface Against The U.S.Human Rights Watch has issued a new report alleging the U.S. detained 14 men from Libya in third countries without charge and then abused and tortured them. The abuse allegedly included waterboarding. Many of the detainees have key positions in the new Libyan government.Thu, 06 Sep 2012 10:18:00 -0400http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/09/06/160668227/new-torture-and-rendition-allegations-surface-against-the-u-s?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=torture http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/09/06/160668227/new-torture-and-rendition-allegations-surface-against-the-u-sHuman Rights Watch has issued a new report alleging the U.S. detained 14 men from Libya in third countries without charge and then abused and tortured them. The abuse allegedly included waterboarding. Many of the detainees have key positions in the new Libyan government. ]]>Korva Coleman'Torture Centers' Stretch Across Syria, Human Rights Watch ReportsThe watchdog group says interviews with hundreds of former detainees and defectors show that an "archipelago of torture centers" has been created. Opponents of the Assad regime report being beaten, sexually assaulted and subjected to mock executions.Tue, 03 Jul 2012 08:20:00 -0400http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/07/03/156179079/torture-centers-stretch-across-syria-human-rights-watch-reports?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=torture http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/07/03/156179079/torture-centers-stretch-across-syria-human-rights-watch-reportsThe watchdog group says interviews with hundreds of former detainees and defectors show that an "archipelago of torture centers" has been created. Opponents of the Assad regime report being beaten, sexually assaulted and subjected to mock executions. ]]>Mark MemmottOn 9/11 Anniversary, The Case Against TortureCharles and Gregory Fried, father and son, the former a Reagan solicitor general, the latter, a philosophy professor, argue against torture in their new book, saying it is never permissible. But they differ on whether officials should be prosecuted.Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:24:00 -0400http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/09/10/129785867/with-9-11-anniversary-as-background-the-case-against-torture?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=torture http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/09/10/129785867/with-9-11-anniversary-as-background-the-case-against-tortureCharles and Gregory Fried, father and son, the former a Reagan solicitor general, the latter, a philosophy professor, argue against torture in their new book, saying it is never permissible. But they differ on whether officials should be prosecuted. ]]>Frank JamesYour Voices Have Been Heard For the record, I have brought this issue and the volume of comments to the attention of NPR's top editorial staff.Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:31:00 -0400http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2009/06/torture_round_two.html?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=torture http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2009/06/torture_round_two.htmlFor the record, I have brought this issue and the volume of comments to the attention of NPR's top editorial staff. ]]>Alicia C. ShepardHarsh Interrogation Techniques or Torture?The Ombudsman's office has received a slew of emails challenging NPR's policy of using the words "harsh interrogation tactics" or "enhanced interrogation techniques" to describe the treatment of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration. ...Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:37:00 -0400http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2009/06/harsh_interrogation_techniques.html?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=torture http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2009/06/harsh_interrogation_techniques.htmlThe Ombudsman's office has received a slew of emails challenging NPR's policy of using the words "harsh interrogation tactics" or "enhanced interrogation techniques" to describe the treatment of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration. ...

Frank Turner is easily one of the most emotionally expressive songwriters in music right now. On Turner’s fifth solo album, “Tape Deck Heart,” his first since 2011’s “England Keep My Bones,” Turner pours out his feelings on love and life with his clever and poignant lyrics. Though not as strong as previous albums, Turner still manages to outshine most others on this diverse, if occasionally cliché effort. The album begins with one of its strongest tracks: the lead single, “Recovery.” Turner starts the song with just an acoustic guitar, singing “Blacking in and out in a strange flat in East London / Somebody I don’t really know just gave me something / To help settle me down and to stop me from always thinking about you,” before his backing band, the Sleeping Souls, kick in with a steadfast drumbeat and happy, melodic piano. The track builds towards a climax before Turner belts out in a near scream that if he or anyone wants to get better, they must have the right mindset. The next track that truly captured my attention was the LP’s fourth track, “Plain Sailing Weather.” The lyrics “Just give me one fine day of plain sailing weather / And I can fuck up anything, anything / It was a wonderful life when we were together / And now I’ve fucked up everything” accompanied by a soft, strumming guitar gives the song a self-depreciating start before exploding into the next chorus with a jolting electric guitar. Turner continues this theme throughout the song, eventually detailing how his lover would “Fold your hands, speak my name like a curse” as he tried to explain himself. As personal and introspective of a record it is for Turner, “Tape Deck Heart’s” best song is an anthem dedicated to his punk roots and love of a good concert. “Four Simple Words” starts as a slow piano ballad in which Turner laments that one is probably listening to him through headphones alone. It then explodes into a big drum roll and a chugging guitar. Turner ecstatically yells during the chorus, “But I’m no good at dancing, yet I have to do something / Tonight I’m going to play it straight, I’m going to take my chance, I want to dance.“ He praises the independent, hard-working artists when he says, “I want bands who had to work for their keep / Drove a thousand miles and played a show on no sleep / Sleeping on the floor in a stranger’s place / Hungry just to do it all again the next day.” The track ends with him screaming the chorus while his band chants “wo-oh-oh “ in the background. Turner triumphs his non-commercialized past and romanticizes the thought of such a hardworking band making it big. Turner turned to folk singing after a short time with the band Million Dead, and released four albums on the independent label Epitaph before signing with major label Interscope for this record. The album ends with the heart-tearing ballad, “Broken Piano,” in which Turner croons in falsetto, singing about carefully destroying a piano so that one could only play minor melodies. A piano’s soft plunking and distorted keyboard hum in the background before a pounding bass drum kicks in to give the song an uplifting, hopeful quality––though a sort of sad sentimentality can be felt. For as much of a breakup record as it is, “Tape Deck Heart” is full of optimism. Turner’s earnestness is a bit cliché at times, but it’s that same earnestness that makes most of his songs so vulnerable and real. Other highlights include “Losing Days,” “Polaroid Picture” and “Anymore,” though the whole album is solid. “Tape Deck Heart” is certainly one of the top records of the year—and possibly my favorite. For those that dismiss this record as more generic or cliché than Turner’s previous work, you are missing out. It may not be as strong as his previous records, but one would be hard pressed to find something better and more honest from an artist. Rating: 4 stars

Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of pediatric gastroenteritis associated with new viral agents. A 22-month study (2008-2009) was carried out on 273 patients (average age 40 months), admitted with gastroenteritis to the Pediatric Unit of L. Sacco University Hospital in Milan, Italy. Fecal samples were investigated for rotavirus (HRV), norovirus (NoV), adenovirus (AdV), sapovirus (SaV), enterovirus, astrovirus and bocavirus (HBoV). A 38.3% incidence of infection was observed for HRV, followed by NoV (16.2%), HBoV (13.6%), AdV (2.6%) and SaV (0.6%). Clinical evaluation of 109 gastroenteritis patients with confirmed diagnosis was graded by the Ruska-Vesikari scoring system, showing vomiting (78%), diarrhea (96%) and fever (80%). A total of 25 NoV-positive samples were selected for nucleotide sequence analysis. The severity of AdV-associated infection was lower than for NoV, HRV and HBoV. These latter viruses caused similar symptoms that were indistinguishable using clinical information. NoV, HRV and HBoV were often present as mixed infections (13.1%). Sequencing of NoV-positive samples allowed identification of GII.2, GII.3 and GII.4 2006 variants.

This peanut butter production line can produce natural peanut butter, stable peanut butter, smooth type peanut butter, salty peanut butter, sweet peanut butter, particle type peanut butter and so on. It also can produce the tahini and walnut butter, can be equipped with variety of configuration and capacity according to the different customer requirements. In a word, this production line has advanced technology, stable quality of products. It is a best choice for food processing plant. Features of Automatic Peanut Butter Production Line This production line was designed based on the foreign tech, which consists of feed elevator, continuous roaster, conveyor, cooling machine, decorticating machine, sorting conveyor, grinding machines, pump, storage slot, cooling machine, mixing machine, vacuum deair, etc. It has advantages of high automation, easy-operating integrated control, stable performance, high product quality, etc. We can get good undertand for the peanut butter production line by the video. This is Peanut Butter Production Line Video Show for peanut butter business: Introduction of Peanut Butter Processing Line: 1. Peanut Roasting Machine: Batch roaster’s working temperature is 200-210 ºC, 20-30 minutes. Use batch roaster will bake some delicious smells. 2. Peeling Machine: Put the roasted peanuts into peeler to take off the red skin, the double rollers will frication the red skin, the simple cyclone system will suck the red skins, most of them will be put in half-piece, then fall to the selecting conveyor, the over-roasted peanut kernel is picked up by manual or mechanical. 3. Grinding Machine: Using grinder to make the second grinding, the fineness of grinding is controlled below 7μm, temperature of grinding is controlled below 68C. 4. Mixing Tank: Make the peanut butter more homogeneous. 5. Cooling Machine: The peanut butter after ground should be cooled immediately. The temperature should go down 45C. 6. Vacuum Degasser: Take out the air from peanut butter.

A new national study shows that while Canada’s transgender youth face significant physical and mental health issues, strong family, school and community connections are helping many of them navigate these challenges. The study is the first and largest of its kind in Canada, with 923 individuals participating between the ages 14-25. They answered a range of questions in English or French on their home and school life, physical and mental health, access to health care, and gender identity. “We found high numbers of youth had experienced discrimination, harassment, and cyberbullying in the past year,” said Elizabeth Saewyc, the study’s principal investigator and a nursing professor at the University of British Columbia. “For example, two-thirds of those surveyed reported discrimination because of their gender identity. “ Elizabeth Saewyc Not surprisingly, many participants also experienced mental health challenges. Nearly two-thirds reported self-harming in the past year, and more than one in three had attempted suicide. Health care was also problematic, as only 15 per cent of youth with a family doctor felt “very comfortable” discussing their trans-specific health care needs. But the report also uncovered positive sources of support for trans youth — parents, family members, schools, and community adults, especially when these adults supported the youth in living in their preferred gender. “If someone had a supportive adult in the family, they were about four times less likely to have self-harmed in the past 12 months,” Saewyc said. “If they felt more connected to school, they were almost twice as likely to report good or excellent mental health as those with lower levels of school connectedness.” The report calls for measures to improve the well-being of trans youth, including: improved support for families, so they can better understand and support their transgender children; developing safer, more inclusive schools; retooling health care to provide gender-affirming services for trans youth; and reducing health care disparities between provinces. “Caring adults at home, at school and in the community are just as essential for our trans youth as they are for all youth. By reinventing our societal supports, we pave the way for their healthy development,” Saewyc said. The study, Being Safe, Being Me, was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and completed in collaboration with universities and health researchers across Canada. Copies of the report in English or French are available at www.saravyc.ubc.ca The researchers are available for interviews in English and French. Contact Tracy Tang at 778-888-6848 or tracy.tang@nursing.ubc.ca The Trans Youth Health Survey took place between October 2013 and May 2014. The survey was anonymous, although participants were asked to provide their postal code and province of residence. Responses were received from every province and territory except Nunavut and the Yukon. This survey was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute for Gender and Health. CIHR is Canada’s health research investment agency. Key findings: Eighty-three per cent of participants lived in their “felt gender” at least part-time; half lived in their felt gender full-time. Those who lived in their felt gender all the time were almost 50 per cent more likely to report good or excellent mental health. Nearly two-thirds of youth reported self-harm within the past year. More than one in three had attempted suicide. Seventy per cent of participants reported sexual harassment. Two-thirds reported discrimination because of their gender identity. More than one in three, or 36 per cent, of the younger participants (ages 14-18) had been physically threatened or injured in the past year. One in three youth did not have an adult in their family they could talk to about problems, and seven in 10 felt their family did not understand them. When they felt cared about and supported by family, they reported better health. Only 15 per cent of youth with a family doctor report feeling comfortable discussing their transgender-specific health care needs.

Background {#Sec1} ========== Often considered one disease, sporadic colorectal cancer (CRC), accounting for 95% of CRC cases, is a heterogeneous disease arising from different sets of genetic and epigenetic alterations.^[@CR1]^ The most established underlying molecular pathological subtypes of CRC are characterised by microsatellite instability (MSI) (prevalence 15% in sporadic CRC), CpG island methylator phenotype (CIMP-high, 20%),^[@CR2]^ B-Raf proto-oncogene serine/threonine kinase gene mutations (BRAF mutations, 10%) and Kirsten rat sarcoma viral oncogene homologue gene mutations (KRAS mutations, 30--50% of sporadic CRC cases). KRAS and BRAF mutations are considered mutually exclusive.^[@CR3]^ Another important molecular feature is the adenomatous polyposis coli (*APC*) gene, a key tumour suppressor gene mutated in 45% to 81% of sporadic CRC cases.^[@CR2]^ Smoking is associated with increased risk of CRC.^[@CR4]^ Moderate to high intake of alcohol was shown to increase CRC risk in a linear dose--response association.^[@CR5]^ Several studies found smoking was associated with a higher risk of MSI-high,^[@CR6]--[@CR10]^ CIMP-high,^[@CR8],[@CR10],[@CR11]^ BRAF-mutated (mut)^[@CR8],[@CR10],[@CR11]^ and KRAS-wild-type (wt) CRC^[@CR12],[@CR13]^ while others found no differential association by CRC subtypes.^[@CR13]--[@CR16]^ In one study, alcohol was found^[@CR17]^ to be associated with increased risk of MSI-high compared to MSS CRC. In other previous studies, alcohol was not differentially associated with either MSI,^[@CR9],[@CR18]^ CIMP, BRAF^[@CR19]--[@CR21]^ or KRAS status.^[@CR22]^ Since smoking and high alcohol consumption are often correlated, both risk factors were investigated in this study. The aim of this study was to extend current knowledge on the associations of smoking and alcohol consumption with major molecular subtypes and pathways of CRC. Methods {#Sec2} ======= Study population {#Sec3} ---------------- The DACHS study (Darmkrebs: Chancen der Verhütung durch Screening; CRC: chances for prevention through screening), an ongoing case--control study with follow-up of CRC cases, was initiated in 2003 and has been described in detail previously.^[@CR23],[@CR24]^ In short, cases with a first, histologically confirmed, diagnosis of CRC and randomly selected control participants with no history of CRC, frequency matched to cases by age, sex and county of residence, are recruited in the Rhine-Neckar-Odenwald region in Germany (\~2 million inhabitants). The DACHS study was approved by the ethics committees of the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University and the state medical boards of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. Data collection {#Sec4} --------------- Eligible cases were identified in hospitals within the study region and after giving written informed consent were interviewed by trained interviewers using a standardised questionnaire during hospitalisation after surgery or at home after discharge. The median time between diagnosis and interview was 24 days (interquartile range: 10--224 days). Control participants were randomly selected from population registries and contacted through the study centre to schedule home interviews. Controls with a history of CRC were excluded. Controls opting out of the interview were offered a self-administered short questionnaire. Based on hospital data, \~50% of eligible patients were recruited. The participation rate of eligible controls was 51%. The current analysis is based on DACHS participants recruited in 2003--2010, as comprehensive molecular tumour analyses of MSI, CIMP, BRAF and KRAS were performed in full for cases joining the study in that period. Participants reporting having Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis (*N* = 28) were excluded from the current analysis. Control participants who answered the short questionnaire only (*N* = 658) were also excluded due to missing required information on lifetime alcohol consumption and time of smoking cessation (Supplementary. Fig. [1](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Assessment of smoking and alcohol consumption {#Sec5} --------------------------------------------- Participants were interviewed regarding smoking history prior to diagnosis (for cases) or interview (controls). Participants were classified as non-smokers if they had never smoked regularly or as former smokers if they had stopped smoking at least 2 years before diagnosis (cases) or interview (controls). Participants were asked about alcohol consumption in each decade of life from the age of 20 years until diagnosis (cases) or interview (controls). Alcohol consumption was calculated in units of gram ethanol per day. Data were collected on participants' drinking habits of portions of beer (0.33 l), wine (0.25 l) and liquor (0.02 l). Ethanol content was derived from food composition tables,^[@CR25]^ assuming an average of 4, 8.6 and 33 g of pure ethanol in 100 ml of beer, wine and liquor, respectively. Tumour tissue analyses {#Sec6} ---------------------- Details of tumour tissue analyses of MSI, BRAF, KRAS and CIMP have been reported previously.^[@CR26]^ In short, formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded surgical specimens of CRC tumours were collected from cooperating pathology institutes and transferred to the tissue bank at the National Centre for Tumour Diseases (NCT) in Heidelberg. MSI analysis was performed using a mononucleotide marker panel (BAT25, BAT26 and CAT25), which differentiates MSI-high from non-MSI-high tumours with a sensitivity of 98.2% and a specificity of 100%, and with 100% concordance of MSI-high tumours compared with the National Cancer Institute/International Collaborative Group on HNPCC marker panel (BAT25, BAT26, D17S250, D2S123 and D5S346) for the evaluation of MSI in CRC.^[@CR27]--[@CR29]^ For KRAS, in about half of the tumour samples, mutation status was determined by a single-stranded conformational polymorphism technique using the same DNA sample, and expression of BRAF V600E was determined by immunohistochemical analyses by two pathologists independently (91% concordance, *κ* 0.59). Discordant cases were discussed to obtain a final evaluation. In the other half of the tumour samples, KRAS mutation status and BRAF mutation status were determined by Sanger sequencing as reported previously.^[@CR30]^ CIMP was determined after DNA bisulfite conversion as previously described.^[@CR31]^ CIMP-high and CIMP-low/negative were classified when 3--5 and 0--2 of the investigated loci (MGMT, MLH1, MINT1, MINT2, and MINT31) had a positive methylation status, respectively. Statistical analyses {#Sec7} -------------------- Multinomial logistic regression models were used to estimate adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the association of smoking and alcohol consumption with CRC risk according to molecular features and pathways. The models were adjusted for covariates known to be associated with CRC risk in all regression analyses: sex, age, body mass index (BMI) 5--14 years before diagnosis (cases) or interview (controls), education level, using non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) regularly for more than a year (yes, no), history of CRC in a first-degree family member, previous large bowel endoscopy and diabetes. Additionally, average lifetime daily ethanol consumption was included as a covariate in the smoking analyses and smoking (never, former, current) as a covariate in the alcohol consumption analyses. Ever, former and current smoking were compared to never smoking. High alcohol consumption was defined as the fourth quartile of the average daily lifetime gram ethanol consumption among alcohol drinkers (\>24.6 g) and was compared in analyses to low/never consumption (≤24.6 g). In case--control analyses, each of the molecular features or pathways was compared to all study controls. In addition, combinations of single tumour markers approximating the traditional (MSS, CIMP-low/negative, BRAF-wt, KRAS-wt), sessile serrated (CIMP-high, BRAF-mut) and alternate (MSS, CIMP-low/negative, KRAS-mut) pathways to the development of CRC were examined.^[@CR32]^ To assess heterogeneity in CRC risk between subtypes and pathways, case--case analyses were conducted with the same covariates as in the case--control analyses. All statistical tests were two sided and the significance level (*α*) was \<0.05. Analyses were conducted using R version 3.4.4.^[@CR33]^ Results {#Sec8} ======= A total of 4919 participants, 2444 cases and 2475 controls, were included in the current analysis. Descriptive statistics for study participants are shown in Table [1](#Tab1){ref-type="table"}. Current smoking was associated with a 59% (OR = 1.59, 95% CI: 1.30--1.94) increased risk of CRC, while former smoking was associated with a 19% (OR = 1.19, 95% CI: 1.03--1.38) increased risk. However, risk was not increased if smoking cessation was more than 20 years ago. More than 29 pack years of smoking were associated with 61% increased CRC risk (OR = 1.61, 95% CI: 1.31--1.99) compared to never smoking. High alcohol consumption (\>24.6 g/day) was associated with increased CRC risk (OR = 1.27, 95% CI: 1.08--1.50) (Supplementary Table [1](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}).Table 1Characteristics of study population.VariablesCases (%), *N* = 2444Controls (%), *N* = 2475*p* Value^a^Gender  Female1016 (41.6)974 (40.4)0.117  Male1428 (58.4)1501 (59.6)Age (median (range))70 (30--96)70 (34--99)0.474BMI (kg/m^2^)  \<25758 (31.5)928 (37.8)\<0.001  25--301168 (48.5)1179 (48.1)  \>30480 (20)346 (14.1)School education (years)  1--81672 (68.6)1474 (59.7)\<0.001  9--10403 (16.5)485 (19.6)  \>10363 (14.9)511 (20.7)Family history of CRC in first-degree relative  No2068 (84.8)2201 (89)\<0.001  Yes370 (15.2)271 (11)Previous endoscopy  No1904 (78.0)1117 (45.1)\<0.001  Yes538 (22.0)1358 (54.9)Diabetes  No1989 (81.5)2123 (85.9)\<0.001  Yes452 (18.5)348 (14.1)Ever regular use of NSAIDs  Never1866 (76.7)1682 (68.4)\<0.001  Yes568 (23.3)778 (31.6)Physical activity (metabolic equivalents MET-h/week)  Low1122 (46.8)1207 (47.1)0.136  High1277 (53.2)1260 (52.9)Smoking  Never1134 (46.5)1257 (50.9)\<0.001  Former923 (37.9)945 (38.3)  Current380 (15.6)268 (10.9)Avg. lifetime daily alcohol consumption (g ethanol)^b^  None/low1872 (76.9)1996 (79.8)0.012  High (\>24.6 g)562 (23.1)473 (20.2)Cases and controls were matched by age and sex during recruitment to the study.*BMI* body mass index (kg/m^2^), *NSAIDs* non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.^a^Fisher's exact test.^b^High alcohol consumption was defined as the fourth quartile of the average daily lifetime gram ethanol consumption among alcohol drinkers (\>24.6 g) and was compared in analyses to low/never consumption (≤24.6 g). Smoking and CRC risk by molecular pathological subtypes {#Sec9} ------------------------------------------------------- Current smoking compared to never smoking showed much higher odd-ratios for MSI-high (OR = 2.79, 95% CI: 1.86--4.18) compared to MSS CRC (OR = 1.41, 95% CI: 1.14--1.75, *p*-heterogeneity = 0.001), for BRAF-mut (OR = 2.40, 95% CI: 1.41--4.07) compared to BRAF-wt CRC (OR = 1.52, 95% CI: 1.24--1.88, *p*-het = 0.074), for KRAS-wt (OR = 1.70, 95% CI: 1.36--2.13) compared to KRAS-mut CRC (OR = 1.26, 95% CI: 0.95--1.68, *p*-het=0.039) and for CIMP-high CRC (OR = 2.01, 95% CI: 1.40--2.88) compared to CIMP-low/negative CRC (OR = 1.50, 95% CI: 1.22--1.85, *p*-het = 0.101), although not all differences in association were statistically significant at the *p* \< 0.05 level. The results and differences were not as strong for the comparison of ever vs. never smoking (Table [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"} and Fig. [1](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}).Table 2Association of smoking and alcohol consumption with CRC risk by single molecular pathological subtypes.Ever regular smokingAlcohol: g/ethanol/day^a^NeverEverFormerCurrent≤24.6\>24.6*N* (%)*N* (%)OR (95% CI)^b^*N* (%)OR (95% CI)^b^*N* (%)OR (95% CI)^b^*N* (%)*N* (%)OR (95% CI)^b^Controls1257 (50.8)1217 (49.2)1945 (38.3)1268 (10.9)11996 (80.8)473 (19.2)1MSI111 (47.0)125 (53.0)1.60 (1.19--2.16)79 (33.6)1.26 (0.90--1.76)45 (19.1)2.79 (1.86--4.18)196 (82.7)41 (17.3)1.07 (0.72--1.58)MSS916 (46.8)1041 (53.2)1.24 (1.08--1.43)756 (38.6)1.19 (1.03--1.39)285 (14.6)1.41 (1.14--1.75)1486 (76.1)466 (23.9)1.32 (1.11--1.57)*p*-heterogeneity0.0710.5840.0010.385BRAF-mut91 (51.4)86 (48.6)1.73 (1.22--2.46)63 (35.6)1.56 (1.07--2.28)23 (13.0)2.40 (1.41--4.07)152 (86.4)24 (13.6)1.09 (0.61--1.65)BRAF-wt955 (46.1)1118 (53.9)1.26 (1.10--1.44)793 (38.3)1.17 (1.01--1.36)324 (15.6)1.52 (1.24--1.88)1574 (76)496 (24)1.30 (1.10--1.54)*p*-heterogeneity0.0360.0750.0740.373KRAS-mut350 (47.9)381 (52.1)1.19 (0.99--1.43)285 (39.0)1.17 (0.96--1.43)96 (13.1)1.26 (0.95--1.68)568 (77.9)161 (22.1)1.19 (0.94--1.49)KRAS-wt690 (45.6)824 (54.4)1.34 (1.15--1.55)577 (38.1)1.22 (1.04--1.44)246 (16.3)1.70 (1.36--2.13)1147 (75.9)364 (24.1)1.30 (1.09--1.56)*p*-heterogeneity0.2260.6410.0390.456CIMP-high196 (49.2)202 (50.8)1.47 (1.15--1.87)147 (36.9)1.32 (1.02--1.71)55 (13.8)2.01 (1.40--2.88)323 (81)76 (19)1.22 (0.90--1.66)CIMP-low/neg930 (46.1)1088 (53.9)1.25 (1.09--1.44)771 (38.2)1.18 (1.01--1.37)316 (15.7)1.50 (1.22--1.85)1529 (76)484 (24)1.28 (1.08--1.52)*p*-heterogeneity0.1280.2610.1010.868^a^Multinomial logistic regression model adjusted for: Sex, age, BMI, education level, history of colorectal cancer in first-degree relative, previous endoscopy, diabetes, ever NSAIDs regular use and average lifetime alcohol consumption/ever regular smoking. Ever/former/current smoking compared to never smoking.^b^High alcohol consumption was defined as the fourth quartile of the average daily lifetime gram ethanol consumption among alcohol drinkers (\>24.6 g) and was compared in analyses to low/never consumption (≤24.6 g).Fig. 1Association of current smoking with CRC risk overall and by molecular pathological subtypes and pathways.Heterogeneity between molecular subtypes was assessed in case-case comparison. For the pathways, heterogeneity was assessed using the traditional pathway as reference. Smoking and CRC risk by molecular pathological pathways {#Sec10} ------------------------------------------------------- Ever and current smoking were significantly associated with higher risk of CRCs that were grouped into the traditional (OR = 1.50, 95% CI: 1.16--1.94) or the serrated pathways (OR = 2.39, 95% CI: 1.27--4.52) (Table [3](#Tab3){ref-type="table"} and Fig. [1](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}). On the other hand, no association was found between smoking and CRC developing along the alternate pathway, characterised by MSS, CIMP-low/negative and KRAS mutation (OR = 1.08, 95% CI: 0.77--1.52, *p*-het = 0.062).Table 3Association of smoking and alcohol consumption with CRC risk by molecular pathological pathways.Regular smokingAlcohol: g/ethanol/day^a^NeverEverFormerCurrent≤24.6\>24.6*N* (%)*N* (%)OR (95% CI)^b^*N* (%)OR (95% CI)^b^*N* (%)OR (95% CI)^b^*N* (%)*N* (%)OR (95% CI)^b^Controls1235 (51.1)1183 (49.4)1916 (37.9)1267 (11.0)11953 (80.8)465 (19.2)1Traditional pathway414 (44.5)517 (55.5)1.30 (1.09--1.54)368 (39.5)1.23 (1.02--1.49)149 (16.0)1.50 (1.16--1.94)680 (73.0)251 (27.0)1.57 (1.16--2.11)Sessile serrated pathway65 (53.7)56 (46.3)1.55 (1.01--2.36)41 (33.9)1.34 (0.85--2.13)15 (12.4)2.39 (1.27--4.52)101 (83.5)20 (16.5)1.84 (0.75--4.52)*p*-het traditional vs. sessile serrated0.3400.6040.1630.850Alternate pathway254 (49.4)260 (50.6)1.11 (0.9--1.39)197 (38.3)1.13 (0.89--1.43)63 (12.3)1.08 (0.77--1.52)397 (77.2)117 (22.8)1.15 (0.80--1.66)*p*-het traditional vs. alternate0.1710.4250.0620.243^a^Logistic regression model adjusted for: Sex, age, BMI, education level, history of colorectal cancer in first-degree relative, previous endoscopy, diabetes, ever NSAIDs regular use and average lifetime alcohol consumption/ever regular smoking. Ever/former/current smoking compared to never smoking. High alcohol intake compared to low/none. Traditional pathway: MSS, CIMP-low/negative, BRAF-wt and KRAS-wt; sessile serrated pathway: CIMP-high, BRAF-mut; alternate pathway: MSS, CIMP-low/negative, KRAS-mut.^b^High alcohol consumption was defined as the third quartile of the average daily lifetime gram ethanol consumption among alcohol drinkers (\>24.6 g) and was compared in analyses to low/never consumption (≤24.6 g). Alcohol consumption and CRC risk by molecular pathological subtypes and pathways {#Sec11} -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Average lifetime daily consumption of more than 24.6 g ethanol was associated with around 30% increased CRC risk of the non-aberrant, more frequent subtypes (MSS, BRAF-wt, KRAS-wt, CIMP-low/neg) and not with the aberrant subtypes (MSI, BRAF-mut, CIMP-high), but no statistically significant differences were observed in heterogeneity testing between subtypes in this study. The strength of the associations of high alcohol consumption with risk of traditional pathway CRC and the direction of association of the serrated pathway CRC were comparable to that of current smoking, but heterogeneity was not statistically significant (Tables [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"} and [3](#Tab3){ref-type="table"} and Fig. [2](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}).Fig. 2Association of high alcohol consumption with CRC risk overall and by molecular pathological subtypes and pathways.Heterogeneity between molecular subtypes was assessed in case-case comparison. For the pathways, heterogeneity was assessed using the traditional pathway as reference. Joint effects of smoking and alcohol {#Sec12} ------------------------------------ No interaction was found between high lifetime average daily alcohol consumption and ever smoking (*p*-interaction = 0.519) in the association with CRC risk, and no major differences were found when analysing alcohol consumption (high vs. low/none) stratified by smoking status (ever/never) and CRC risk for the different molecular subtypes or pathways (data not shown). Discussion {#Sec13} ========== This large population-based case--control study aimed to examine the association between smoking and alcohol consumption and CRC risk by CRC subtypes and pathways characterised by MSI, BRAF mutation, KRAS mutation and CIMP status. Ever and current smoking were associated with higher risk for CRC, especially with MSI-high, BRAF-mut, KRAS-wt and CIMP-high CRC. Smoking was also associated with higher risk of cancers developing via the traditional or the serrated pathways. High alcohol consumption was not differently associated with single CRC subtypes or pathways, but associations with molecular pathways still seemed similar to those of current smoking. Our findings are generally in agreement with former studies. Smoking was associated with higher MSI-high compared to MSS CRC risk in five previous studies^[@CR6]--[@CR10]^ and in a meta-analysis published in 2018.^[@CR34]^ Stronger associations were also previously reported for BRAF-mut compared to BRAF-wt CRC,^[@CR8],[@CR10],[@CR11]^ for KRAS-wt compared to KRAS-mut CRC^[@CR12]--[@CR14]^ and for CIMP-high compared to CIMP-low/negative CRC.^[@CR10],[@CR11]^ Smoking has also been found to be associated with the serrated-polyps pathway, defined by CIMP-high and BRAF-mut status.^[@CR35]--[@CR37]^ Further, in accordance with previous studies, no major or statistically significant differences were found in the associations between alcohol consumption and CRC risk by molecular pathological subtypes,^[@CR9],[@CR17]--[@CR19],[@CR22]^ although the observed associations with CRC pathways pointed to potential differences in our study. Although several possible biological mechanisms were proposed,^[@CR10],[@CR38]^ the way smoking increases the risk of MSI-high CRC is still not established. Our results also support a strong link between smoking and BRAF mutation, which is regarded as the initiating event in sessile serrated adenomas, followed by methylation of key tumour suppressor genes, which would also be supported by the stronger association with CIMP-high CRC and the sessile serrated pathway.^[@CR32],[@CR39]^ Molecular pathological epidemiology (MPE) focuses on heterogenic aetiology of CRC based on molecular tumour features. While studies linking smoking with CRC risk found an overall increase of around 26% in risk,^[@CR40],[@CR41]^ our study provides more specific risk estimates by known CRC subtypes and pathways. This distinction can help provide more evidence for the causal relationship and its mechanisms between smoking and CRC risk. The large size of the study, its population-based design, the comprehensive assessment of smoking, alcohol consumption and other lifestyle, medical and family history factors, and the analysis of multiple major molecular tumour tissue markers, are notable strengths of this study. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study examining the effect of both smoking and alcohol consumption on CRC risk by major molecular pathological tumour features and pathways of CRC. This study adds to the limited knowledge about the potential smoking-related increase in CRC risk according to molecular features, potentially linking smoking differentially to specific molecular pathways. The study also has limitations. MPE is a relatively new field of research, thus analyses are often exploratory and need confirmation from other studies.^[@CR1]^ Not all patients with available tumour tissue samples could be included in the subtype analyses: MSI status was available for 90% of cases, BRAF for 92%, KRAS for 92% and CIMP for 99% of cases. Another limitation is that some analysed subgroups of cases were small, which lowered the ability of the study to reach significant results, particularly when multiple tumour features were combined. As this is an observational study, based on self-reports during standardised interviews, smoking, alcohol and other relevant factors may be subject to information bias. In summary, based on results from this large population-based case--control study, smoking, and in particular current smoking, showed the strongest association with increased risk of molecular subtypes of CRC MSI-high and KRAS-wt and with CRC showing features of the sessile serrated pathway. No major differences were observed for the association of alcohol with subtypes, but potential differences according to pathways should be investigated in future studies. More large studies with tumour marker combinations are needed to confirm these results for a better characterisation of the carcinogenic mechanisms underlying these associations. Supplementary information ========================= {#Sec14} Supplements **Publisher's note** Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Supplementary information ========================= **Supplementary information** is available for this paper at 10.1038/s41416-020-0803-0. We thank Ute Handte-Daub, Ansgar Brandhorst, Petra Bächer, Bettina Walter, Gloria Laukemper and Terence Osere for their excellent technical assistance. We thank the study participants and the interviewers who collected the data. We also thank the following hospitals and cooperating institutions that recruited patients for this study: Chirurgische Universitätsklinik Heidelberg, Klinik am Gesundbrunnen Heilbronn, St. Vincentiuskrankenhaus Speyer, St. Josefskrankenhaus Heidelberg, Chirurgische Universitätsklinik Mannheim, Diakonissenkrankenhaus Speyer, Krankenhaus Salem Heidelberg, Kreiskrankenhaus Schwetzingen, St. Marienkrankenhaus Ludwigshafen, Klinikum Ludwigshafen, Stadtklinik Frankenthal, Diakoniekrankenhaus Mannheim, Kreiskrankenhaus Sinsheim, Klinikum am Plattenwald Bad Friedrichshall, Kreiskrankenhaus Weinheim, Kreiskrankenhaus Eberbach, Kreiskrankenhaus Buchen, Kreiskrankenhaus Mosbach, Enddarmzentrum Mannheim, Kreiskrankenhaus Brackenheim and Cancer Registry of Rhineland-Palatinate, Mainz. We are also very grateful for the support of the pathologies in the provision of tumour samples: Institut für Pathologie, Universitätsklinik Heidelberg; Institut für Pathologie, Klinikum Heilbronn; Institut für Angewandte Pathologie, Speyer; Pathologisches Institut, Universitätsklinikum Mannheim; Institut für Pathologie, Klinikum Ludwigshafen; Institut für Pathologie, Klinikum Stuttgart; Institut für Pathologie, Klinikum Ludwigsburg. Special thanks to the tissue bank of National Centre for Tumour Diseases (NCT), Heidelberg, for storage and processing of the tissue samples. Study concepts and design: E.L.A., M.H., H.Br., J.C.-C.; data acquisition: L.J., E.A., W.R., E.H., M.K., H.BI., J.C.-C., M.H., H.Br.; data analysis and interpretation: E.L.A., P.R.C., M.H., L.J.; manuscript preparation: E.L.A., M.H.; manuscript review and approval: E.L.A., P.R.C., L.J., E.A., W.R., M.K., H.Bi., J.C.-C., H.Br., M.H.; funding acquisition: J.C.-C., M.H., H.Br. The DACHS study was approved by the ethics committees of the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University and the state medical boards of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. Written informed consent for study participation and publication of results based on aggregated data was obtained from all participants. The study was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The data used in the current analyses are not publicly available due to legal privacy restrictions. The authors declare no competing interests. This work was supported by the German Research Council (BR 1704/6-1, BR 1704/6-3, BR 1704/6-4, BR 1704/6-6, CH 117/1-1, HO 5117/2-1, HE 5998/2-1, KL 2354/3-1, RO 2270/8-1 and BR 1704/17-1); The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (01KH0404, 01ER0814, 01ER0815, 01ER1505A and 01ER1505B); The Interdisciplinary Research Programme of the National Centre for Tumour Diseases (NCT), Germany. Open access funding provided by Projekt DEAL.

--- abstract: 'We develop a microscopic theory for the relaxation dynamics of an optically pumped two-level system (TLS) coupled to a bath of weakly interacting Bose gas. Using Keldysh formalism and diagrammatic perturbation theory, expressions for the relaxation times of the TLS Rabi oscillations are derived when the boson bath is in the normal state and the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) state. We apply our general theory to consider an irradiated quantum dot coupled with a boson bath consisting of a two-dimensional dipolar exciton gas. When the bath is in the BEC regime, relaxation of the Rabi oscillations is due to both condensate and non-condensate fractions of the bath bosons for weak TLS-light coupling and dominantly due to the non-condensate fraction for strong TLS-light coupling. Our theory also shows that a phase transition of the bath from the normal to the BEC state strongly influences the relaxation rate of the TLS Rabi oscillations. The TLS relaxation rate is approximately independent of the pump field frequency and monotonically dependent on the field strength when the bath is in the low-temperature regime of the normal phase. Phase transition of the dipolar exciton gas leads to a non-monotonic dependence of the TLS relaxation rate on both the pump field frequency and field strength, providing a characteristic signature for the detection of BEC phase transition of the coupled dipolar exciton gas.' author: - 'Vadim M. Kovalev$^{1,2}$' - 'Wang-Kong Tse$^{3,4}$' title: | Relaxation of Radiation-Driven Two-Level Systems Interacting\ with a Bose-Einstein Condensate Bath --- \[sec:level1\]Introduction ========================== The dynamics of a quantum two-level system (TLS) is a topic of fundamental importance. Its sustained influence is evident in the continual interest in the dynamics of spin or pseudospin systems ranging from quantum optics [@QO_ref_1; @QO_ref_2] to quantum information [@QI_ref_1; @QI_ref_2; @QI_ref_3]. The spin-boson model  [@2_Weiss] captures the interaction between the TLS and its environment by a spin $1/2$ degree of freedom coupled linearly to an oscillator bath  [@3_Makhlin]. Despite the simplicity of such a model, it exhibits a rich variety of behavior and describes a diverse array of physical systems and phenomena  [@1_Leggett; @2_Weiss]. One of the quantum systems that is well described by a TLS is the quantum dot (QD). Fueled by interests in quantum information processing, coherent optical control of quantum dots has seen substantial development in the past decade [@QD_review1]. New functionalities or tuning capabilities can be achieved with hybrid systems by further coupling QDs to other materials, such as nano-sized cavity [@QD_cavity], graphene [@QD_graphene], and superconductor [@QD_SC]. Hybrid quantum systems comprising a fermion gas coupled to a boson gas constitute the condensed matter analogue of $^3$He-$^4$He mixtures. In systems where an electron gas is coupled with excitons or exciton-polaritons, it was recently predicted that the transition of the excitonic subsystem to the Bose Einstein condensate (BEC) phase strongly modifies the properties of the electronic subsystem, resulting in polariton-mediated superconductivity and supersolidity [@6_RefImamogluPRB2016; @7_RefShelykhPRL2010; @8_RefShelykhPRL1051404022010; @8_1Shelykh2012; @9_RefMatuszewskiPRL1080604012012]. The topic of phase transition of the exciton or exciton-polariton Bose system into the BEC state is itself an intriguing topic that has garnered much attention  [@4_1Butov; @4_2Butov; @4_3Butov; @5_Timofeev; @5_1Timofeev]. For dipolar exciton systems realized in GaAs double quantum well (DQW) structures, the critical temperature to reach the condensate phase is about $3-5\,\mathrm{K}$. Recent works have demonstrated that double-layer structures based on transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD) monolayers  [@10_3butovAPL2016; @10_4Rivera2015] can further push the transition temperature to $\sim 10-30\,\mathrm{K}$  [@10_2butovNature2014; @10_5Wu2015; @10_6Berman2016]. Motivated by recent interest in hybrid fermion-boson systems and exciton-polariton physics mentioned above, in this paper we consider a radiation-driven quantum dot coupled to a dipolar exciton gas and study the influence of the latter’s BEC phase transition on the dynamics and relaxation of the QD states. The problem of TLS relaxation coupled to a fermionic bath transitioning to a superconducting state was studied in the context of metallic glasses  [@10_6.1BlackFulde1979]; however, the question of TLS relaxation coupled to a *bosonic* bath transitioning to a BEC state has not, up to the authors’ knowledge, been considered before. It is noteworthy to mention that our current work is closely connected to the problem of a mobile impurity moving in a BEC [@11_Mobile_impurity], since the renormalization of physical properties of a moving electron that strongly interacts with the surrounding medium (polaron problem) can be described by a quantum particle coupled with a bath  [@2_Weiss]. Our theory consists of a TLS modeling the ground and lowest excited states of the QD, which is coupled  [@10_9.1Melik1978; @10_9.2Weisskopf1930; @10_9.3Gordon1963] to a bath of weakly-interacting Bose gas modeling the dipolar exciton system. In contrast to the simple spin-boson model, the interaction between the QD and the 2D dipolar exciton gas in our system is described by a *nonlinear* coupling Hamiltonian. We take the Bose gas to be weakly interacting, exhibiting a normal phase as well as a BEC phase described by the Bogoliubov model [@10_10Beliaev1958; @10_11PitaevskiiStringari2003; @10_10.1Griffin1998]. Our results demonstrate that the damping of the Rabi oscillations of the TLS is highly sensitive to the phase transition of the bosonic bath. The rest of our paper is organized as follows. The second section is devoted to the development of general theory for the relaxation rate of an illuminated TLS coupled to a bosonic bath. We then apply our general results to the situation of a QD coupled with a dipolar exciton gas in the third section. Finally, in the fourth section we present numerical results of the relaxation rates and discuss their behavior as a function of the optical pump field’s parameters. In the Appendix we present details of our calculations. General theory ============== Driven TLS and Rabi oscillations -------------------------------- First, we consider dynamics of isolated TLS system under strong external electromagnetic field and describe the system’s response using the non-equilibrium Keldysh Green function technique. The TLS Hamiltonian is given by $$\label{eq1} %\begin{bmatrix} \hat{\tilde{H}}_0(t)=\left( \begin{array}{cc} \Delta & \lambda e^{-i\omega t} \\ \lambda^\ast e^{i\omega t} & -\Delta \\ \end{array} \right),$$ where $\pm\Delta$ are the energies of the upper and lower states of the TLS, and quantities with an overhead caret ($\,\hat{}\,$) symbol denotes a matrix quantity. The interaction Hamiltonian with the electromagnetic field is written here in the Rotating Wave Approximation (RWA). $\lambda$ is the interaction matrix element and $\omega$ the frequency of the electromagnetic field. It is also assumed in Eq. (\[eq1\]) that the wavelength of the electromagnetic field is much larger than the geometrical size of the TLS so that the field is uniform on our scale of interest. In this work, we denote quantities in the laboratory frame and the rotating frame, respectively, with and without an overhead tilde. The dynamics of the TLS is described by the time-ordered Green’s function $\hat{\tilde{G}}_0(t,t')$ satisfying the equation of motion $$\begin{gathered} \label{eq2} \left( \begin{array}{cc} i\partial_t-\Delta & -\lambda e^{-i\omega t} \\ -\lambda^\ast e^{i\omega t} & i\partial_t+\Delta \\ \end{array} \right)\hat{\tilde{G}}_0(t,t')=\delta(t-t').\end{gathered}$$ To remove the explicit time dependence, it is convenient to transform this equation to the rotating frame using the unitary transformation $$\begin{gathered} \label{eq3} \hat{S}=\left( \begin{array}{cc} e^{i\omega t/2} & 0 \\ 0 & e^{-i\omega t/2} \\ \end{array} \right),\,\,\,\hat{S}^{-1}=\left( \begin{array}{cc} e^{-i\omega t/2} & 0 \\ 0 & e^{i\omega t/2} \\ \end{array} \right).\end{gathered}$$ As a result, the Green’s function in the rotating frame, $\hat{G}_0(t,t')=\hat{S}(t)\hat{\tilde{G}}_0(t,t')\hat{S}^{-1}(t')$, is described by the equation $$\begin{gathered} \label{eq4} \left( \begin{array}{cc} i\partial_t-\varepsilon_0 & -\lambda \\ -\lambda^\ast & i\partial_t+\varepsilon_0 \\ \end{array} \right)\hat{G}_0(t,t')=\delta(t-t'),\end{gathered}$$ where $\varepsilon_0=\Delta-{\omega}/{2}$. To find the self-energies and lifetimes, we need the retarded and the lesser components of the non-equilbrium Green’s function. The retarded Green’s function is derived as (see Appendix A), $$%\bar{G}^{R}_{ij}(\varepsilon) %=\frac{A_{ij}}{\varepsilon-\Omega+i\delta} % +\frac{B_{ij}}{\varepsilon+\Omega+i\delta},\\\nonumber \hat{G}_0^{R}(\varepsilon) =\frac{\hat{A}}{\varepsilon-\Omega+i\delta} +\frac{\hat{B}}{\varepsilon+\Omega+i\delta},\label{eq5}$$ where $\Omega=\sqrt{\varepsilon_0^2+|\lambda|^2}$ is the Rabi frequency, and $\hat{A}$ and $\hat{B}$ are matrices defined as $$\hat{A}=\left( \begin{array}{cc} u^2 & uv \\ u^\ast v^\ast & v^2 \\ \end{array} \right),\,\, \hat{B}=\left( \begin{array}{cc} v^2 & -uv \\ -u^\ast v^\ast & u^2 \\ \end{array} \right),\label{eq5_1}$$ with $u^2=\left(1+{\varepsilon_0}/{\Omega}\right)/2$, $v^2=\left(1-{\varepsilon_0}/{\Omega}\right)/2$ and $uv={\lambda}/{2\Omega}$. Eqs. (\[eq5\])-(\[eq5\_1\]) imply that new quasiparticles emerge from the light-matter coupling that renormalizes the original TLS states into dressed states with energies $\pm \Omega$. $\hat{A}$ and $\hat{B}$ are the projection operators to these dressed states. It is instructive to recover the result for Rabi oscillations using the above retarded Green’s function Eq. (\[eq5\]). The TLS wave function at a latter time $t$ is obtained by propagating the initial time ($t = 0$) wave function, $$\begin{aligned} \psi_i(t) &=&[\hat{S}^{-1}(t)\hat{G}^R(t)\hat{S}(0)]_{ij}\psi_j(0) \nonumber \\ &=& \left[\hat{S}^{-1}(t)\int\frac{d\varepsilon}{2\pi}\hat{G}^R(\varepsilon)e^{-i\varepsilon t}\right]_{ij}\psi_j(0), \label{eq6}\end{aligned}$$ where $\psi_i$ are the wave functions of the TLS upper $(i=1)$ and lower $(i=2)$ levels. Here $\hat{S}^{-1}(t)\hat{G}^R(t)\hat{S}(0) \equiv \hat{\tilde{G}}^R(t,0)$ is the retarded Green’s function in the laboratory frame. When only the lower level is initially occupied, $\psi_2(0)=1$ and $\psi_1(0)=0$. Using Eqs.(\[eq3\])-(\[eq5\_1\]), the transition probability to the upper level is then given by $$\begin{aligned} |\langle\psi_2^+(0)\psi_1(t)\rangle|^2&=&\left|\frac{\lambda}{\Omega}\sin(\Omega t)e^{-i\omega t/2}\right|^2 \nonumber \\ &=&\frac{|\lambda|^2}{2\Omega^2}\left(1-\cos\Omega t\right), \label{eq7} %|\langle\psi_2^+(0)\psi_1(t)\rangle|^2=\left|\frac{\lambda}{\Omega}\sin(\Omega t)e^{-i\omega t/2}\right|^2=\frac{|\lambda|^2}{2\Omega^2}\left(1-\cos\Omega t\right),\end{aligned}$$ which is the Rabi oscillations [@12_LL]. The lesser Green’s function can be expressed in terms of the distribution functions $n_{\pm \Omega}$ of the upper and lower dressed states as $$\begin{aligned} \hat{G}^{<}(\varepsilon) &=& -n_{\varepsilon}\left[\hat{G}^{R}(\varepsilon)-\hat{G}^{A}(\varepsilon)\right] \nonumber \\ &=& 2\pi i n_{\varepsilon}\left[\hat{A}\delta(\varepsilon-\Omega)+\hat{B}\delta(\varepsilon+\Omega)\right] \nonumber \\ &=& 2\pi i \left[\hat{A}n_{\Omega}\delta(\varepsilon-\Omega)+\hat{B}n_{-\Omega}\delta(\varepsilon+\Omega)\right]. \label{Glesser1}\end{aligned}$$ Note that $n_{\Omega}+n_{-\Omega} = 1$. Assuming the radiation is turned on adiabatically, we can obtain $n_{\pm \Omega}$ in the following. The density matrix $\hat{f}$ in the original basis of TLS upper and lower levels satisfies the kinetic equation (see Appendix A): $$\begin{aligned} \label{KE} %\begin{equation} &&\frac{\partial \hat{f}}{\partial t} +i[\hat{H}_0,\hat{f}] = 0, \label{KE} \\ &&\hat{f} = \left(\begin{array}{cc} f_{11} & f_{12} \\ f_{21} & f_{22} \\ \end{array} \right), \label{distfcn} %\end{equation}\end{aligned}$$ where the subscripts $1,2$ respectively denotes the original (*i.e.*, unrenormalized by light) upper and lower levels of the TLS, and $\hat{H}_0 = \hat{S}(t)\hat{\tilde{H}}_0(t,0)\hat{S}^{-1}(0)$ is the Hamiltonian in the rotating frame. Writing the Hamiltonian as $\hat{H}_0 = \hat{\bm{\sigma}}\cdot {\bm{B}}_0/2$, we can define an effective magnetic field ${\bm{B}}_0 =2\lambda_R{\bm{e}_x}-2\lambda_I{\bm{e}_y}+ (2\Delta-\omega){\bm{e}_z}$ that drives the TLS pseudospin degrees of freedom, where $\lambda_{R,I}$ are the real and imaginary parts of $\lambda$ and $\bm{e}_{x,y,z}$ the unit vectors along the $x,y,z$ directions. Then, decomposing the density matrix $\hat{f}$ as $\hat{f} = C+\bm{S}\cdot\hat{\bm{\sigma}}/2$, the kinetic equation can be written as a Bloch equation: $$\frac{\partial \bm{S}}{\partial t}+\bm{S}\times {\bm{B}}_0= 0. \label{Bloch}$$ From the definition of $\hat{f}$ in Eq. (\[distfcn\]), we can relate the distribution functions in the two representations as $S_{z} = f_{11}-f_{22}$ and $S^{(+)} \equiv S_{x}+iS_{y} = 2f_{12}^* = 2f_{21}$. With the laser field switched on adiabatically, the optical response follows adiabatically the driving field and is therefore stationary in the rotating frame, *i.e.*, $\partial/\partial t = 0$. Before laser is turned on, the TLS initial state is in the lower level so that $\bm{S}(t = 0) = -{\bm{e}_z}$. Since $\vert \bm{S} \vert$ is a constant of motion, this implies that $\vert \bm{S}(t) \vert = 1$ for all times $t$. Here we focus on the regime without population inversion, so that $S_{z} = f_{11}-f_{22}$ is always less than zero. We obtain $\bm{S}$ as $$\begin{aligned} S^{(+)} &=& -\frac{\mathrm{sgn}(2\Delta-\omega)2\lambda^*}{\sqrt{(2\Delta-\omega)^2+4\lambda^2}}, \\ S_{z} &=& -\frac{\vert 2\Delta-\omega \vert}{\sqrt{(2\Delta-\omega)^2+4\lambda^2}}.\end{aligned}$$ Using $f_{11}+f_{22} =1$, we also find the density matrix $\hat{f}$ in the original basis of the TLS upper and lower levels: $$\begin{aligned} f_{11} &=& \frac{1}{2}\left[1-\frac{\vert 2\Delta-\omega \vert}{\sqrt{(2\Delta-\omega)^2+4\lambda^2}}\right], \label{fpp} \\ f_{12} &=& -\frac{\mathrm{sgn}(2\Delta-\omega)2\lambda}{\sqrt{(2\Delta-\omega)^2+4\lambda^2}}. \label{fpm}\end{aligned}$$ On the other hand, Eq. (\[Glesser1\]) gives the density matrix in the basis of the dressed quasiparticles as follows $$\begin{aligned} \hat{f}(t) &=& -i\hat{G}^{<}(t,t) = -i\int\frac{d\varepsilon}{2\pi}\hat{G}^{<}(\varepsilon), \nonumber \\ &=& \hat{A}n_{\Omega}+\hat{B}n_{-\Omega}. \label{Glesser2}\end{aligned}$$ We can determine $n_{\Omega}$ by comparing the expressions of the density matrix in Eq. (\[Glesser2\]) and Eq. (\[fpp\]). The $11$ element, for instance, gives $f_{11} = u^2 n_{\Omega}+v^2(1-n_{\Omega})$ or $n_{\Omega} = ({f_{11}-v^2})/({u^2-v^2})$, from which we determine $$%&=& %\frac{f_{11}-v^2}{u^2-v^2} \nonumber \\ n_{\pm \Omega} = \frac{1}{2}\left[1\mp \mathrm{sgn}\left(\varepsilon_0\right)\right]. \label{nOmega} % \frac{1}{2}\left[1-\mathrm{sgn}\left(\Delta-\omega/2\right)\right]. \label{nOmega}$$ It follows that $n_{\Omega}$ takes on the values $0$ or $1$ depending on whether the light frequency $\omega$ is smaller or larger, respectively, than the energy difference $2\Delta$ of the TLS. Coupling to bosonic bath and TLS self-energies ---------------------------------------------- In the absence of bath coupling, the TLS is described by bare Green’s functions with a vanishing level broadening. To focus on the effects of bosonic bath coupling, we ignore the effects of spontaneous and stimulated emission due to electrons’ coupling to light. The only damping effects on the TLS dynamics, once coupled to the bosonic bath, will be due to interlevel transitions caused by absorption or emission of the bosons. To analyze the TLS-bath coupling, we add to the bare TLS Hamiltonian Eq. (\[eq1\]) the TLS interaction term with the bath and the bath Hamiltonian $$\begin{gathered} \label{eq8} \left( \begin{array}{cc} W_{11}[\varphi] & 0 \\ 0 & W_{22}[\varphi] \\ \end{array} \right)+\hat{H}_{bath}[\varphi].\end{gathered}$$ Here the first term is TLS-bath coupling Hamiltonian where the matrix elements describe the interaction of the upper and lower levels with the bath bosons. Both terms in Eq. (\[eq8\]) are functionals of the quantum field $\varphi$, which describes the dynamics of bath degrees of freedom. The structure of the bath Hamiltonian depends on whether it is in the normal or Bose-condensed phase and will be specified later on. We assume short-range interaction between the TLS and the bosonic bath $$\begin{gathered} \label{eq9} W_{ii}[\varphi]=g_i\int d\textbf{r}|\psi_{i}(\textbf{r})|^2|\varphi(\textbf{r},t)|^2,\end{gathered}$$ with the coupling constant $g_i$. The form of this interaction contains $\varphi^2$ and is markedly different from the conventional coupling to a phonon-like bath, which is linear in $\varphi$ [@2_Weiss]. Anticipating further application of our general theory to consider a QD interacting with a 2D exciton gas, we note that $W_{ii}$ in Eq. (\[eq9\]) takes into account the most important direct contribution to the Coulomb interaction energy between electrons in the QD and the 2D exciton gas. To elucidate the influence of the bosonic bath on the TLS dynamics, we use the diagrammatic perturbation theory. Within this approach the retarded Green function can be found from the Dyson equation, $$\label{eq10} \hat{G}^R=\hat{G}_0^{R}+\hat{G}_0^{R}\hat{\Sigma}^R\hat{G}^{R}, %\bar{G}^R_{ij}=\bar{G}^{0R}_{ij}+\bar{G}^{0R}_{im}\bar{\Sigma}^R_{mn}\bar{G}^{R}_{nj},$$ where the bare Green’s function $\hat{G}_0^{R}$ is given by Eq. (\[eq5\]). The solution of Eq. (\[eq10\]) gives the interacting Green’s function as follows $$\hat{G}^R = \frac{1}{\Lambda}\left[{\hat{G}_{0}^{R}-\det(\hat{G}_0^{R})\sigma_y (\hat{\Sigma}^R)^{\mathrm{T}}\sigma_y}\right], \label{eq11}$$ where $\Lambda = 1-\mathrm{Tr}(\hat{G}_0^{R}\hat{\Sigma}^R)+\det(\hat{G}_0^{R}\hat{\Sigma}^R)$, $(\hat{\Sigma}^R)^{\mathrm{T}}$ is the matrix transpose of $\hat{\Sigma}^R$, and $\sigma_y$ is the Pauli matrix. We arrive at the following form of the Green’s function (see Appendix B) $$\begin{aligned} \hat{G}^R(\epsilon) &\approx& %\frac{\hat{G}_0^{R}(\epsilon)}{1-\mathrm{Tr}\left[\hat{G}_0^{R}(\epsilon)\hat{\Sigma}^R(\epsilon)\right]} % \nonumber \\ &=& \frac{\hat{A}}{\epsilon-\Omega+i/2\tau_u} +\frac{\hat{B}}{\epsilon+\Omega+i/2\tau_l}, \label{eq12} %\bar{G}^R_{ij}(\epsilon)=\frac{\bar{G}^{0R}_{ij}(\epsilon)}{1-Tr\left[\bar{G}^{0R}(\epsilon)\bar{\Sigma}^R(\epsilon)\right]}\approx\\ %\approx\frac{A_{ij}}{\epsilon-\Omega+i/2\tau_u} %+\frac{B_{ij}}{\epsilon+\Omega+i/2\tau_l},\end{aligned}$$ where we have introduced the relaxation times $\tau_{u,l}$ of the upper (subscript $u$) and lower (subscript $l$) dressed quasiparticles $$\begin{aligned} \frac{1}{2\tau_u} &=&-\textmd{Im} \, \mathrm{Tr}\left[\hat{A}\hat{\Sigma}^R(\Omega)\right],\label{eq13_1} \\ \frac{1}{2\tau_l} &=&-\textmd{Im} \, \mathrm{Tr}\left[\hat{B}\hat{\Sigma}^R(-\Omega)\right], \label{eq13_2}\end{aligned}$$ and neglected the shift of the levels due to the real part of self-energy. To obtain expressions of the relaxation times, we apply the diagrammatic perturbation theory in the leading order of the TLS-bath interaction potential and account for the lowest-order non-vanishing diagrams for the self-energy. The explicit form of such diagrams depends on whether the bath is in the normal or the condensate state. First we consider the normal state. ### Bath in the normal state ![Feynman diagram for TLS self-energy when the bath is in the normal phase. Double blue line represents the TLS Green function, dashed lines the TLS electron-bath interaction, and solid black lines the Green functions of the normal-state bath particles.[]{data-label="Figure1"}](figure1.pdf){width="4.5cm"} In the normal state of the bath, we assume that the bosons are non-interacting with a kinetic energy $E_{\textbf{p}}=\vert\textbf{p}\vert^2/2m \equiv p^2/2m$ and chemical potential $\mu$. To lowest order in the TLS-bath interaction, the self-energy diagram is shown in Fig. \[Figure1\]. Detailed calculation of the self-energy is presented in the Appendix C. The result reads $$\begin{aligned} \label{eq14} \hat{\Sigma}^R(\omega) &=& \sum_{\textbf{k},\textbf{p}}\left[ \hat{M}_{\textbf{k}}\hat{A}\hat{M}_{-\textbf{k}}\frac{(1-n_\Omega)[n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})-n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}})]+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}) [1+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})]}{\omega-\Omega+E_{\textbf{p}}-E_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}+i\delta}\right. \nonumber \\ &&\left.+\hat{M}_{\textbf{k}}\hat{B}\hat{M}_{-\textbf{k}}\frac{(1-n_{-\Omega}) [n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})-n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}})]+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}) [1+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})]}{\omega+\Omega+E_{\textbf{p}}-E_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}+i\delta} \right],\end{aligned}$$ where $\xi_{\textbf{p}} = E_{\textbf{p}}-\mu$ is the energy of the bath bosons rendered from the chemical potential, $n_B(\xi) = [\exp(\xi/T)-1]^{-1}$ is the Bose distribution function, and $$\hat{M}_{\textbf{k}}=\left( \begin{array}{cc} g_1\int d\textbf{r}e^{i\textbf{kr}}|\psi_1(\textbf{r})|^2 & 0 \\ 0 & g_2\int d\textbf{r}e^{i\textbf{kr}}|\psi_2(\textbf{r})|^2 \\ \end{array} \right),\label{eq15}$$ Taking the imaginary part of Eq. (\[eq14\]), integrating over the angle between $\textbf{k}$ and $\textbf{p}$, and substituting the resulting expression into Eqs. (\[eq13\_1\])-(\[eq13\_2\]) we find the relaxation times $$\begin{aligned} \frac{1}{2\tau_u} &=&\frac{m}{(2\pi)^2}\int_0^\infty dk \left[\int_{k/2}^\infty \frac{\alpha_kf_\Omega^u(p)pdp}{\sqrt{p^2-(k/2)^2}}\right.\label{eq15_1} \\ &&\left.+\int_{|{k}/2-{2m\Omega}/{k}|}^\infty \frac{\beta_kf_{-\Omega}^u(p)pdp}{\sqrt{p^2-\left({k}/{2}-{2m\Omega}/{k}\right)^2}}\right],\nonumber\\ \frac{1}{2\tau_l} &=&\frac{m}{(2\pi)^2}\int_0^\infty dk\left[\int_{k/2}^\infty \frac{\gamma_kf_{-\Omega}^l(p)pdp}{\sqrt{p^2-(k/2)^2}}\right. \label{eq15_2} \\ &&\left.+\int_{|{k}/{2}+{2m\Omega}/{k}|}^\infty \frac{\beta_kf_{\Omega}^l(p)pdp}{\sqrt{p^2-\left({k}/{2}+{2m\Omega}/{k}\right)^2}}\right]. \nonumber\end{aligned}$$ Here we have introduced the coefficients $$\begin{gathered} \label{eq15_3}\nonumber \alpha_k=\textmd{Tr}\left(\hat{A}\hat{M}_{\textbf{k}}\hat{A}\hat{M}^\ast_{\textbf{k}}\right)=\left|g_1(M_{\textbf{k}})_{11}u^2+g_2(M_{\textbf{k}})_{22}v^2\right|^2,\\\nonumber \beta_k=\textmd{Tr}\left(\hat{B}\hat{M}_{\textbf{k}}\hat{A}\hat{M}^\ast_{\textbf{k}}\right)=|uv|^2\left|g_1(M_{\textbf{k}})_{11}-g_2(M_{\textbf{k}})_{22}\right|^2,\\ \gamma_k=\textmd{Tr}\left(\hat{B}\hat{M}_{\textbf{k}}\hat{B}\hat{M}^\ast_{\textbf{k}}\right)=\left|g_1(M_{\textbf{k}})_{11}v^2+g_2(M_{\textbf{k}})_{22}u^2\right|^2,\end{gathered}$$ and $$\begin{aligned} %\label{eq15_4} f^u_{\Omega}(p) &=& f^l_{-\Omega}(p)=n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})[1+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})],\nonumber\\ f^u_{-\Omega}(p) &=& n_{\Omega}[n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})-n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}}+2\Omega)]\nonumber \\ &&+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}}+2\Omega) [1+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})],\nonumber\\ f^l_{\Omega}(p) &=& \theta(E_{\textbf{p}}-2\Omega)\left\{n_{-\Omega}[n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})-n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}}-2\Omega)]\right. \nonumber \\ &&\left.+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}}-2\Omega) [1+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})]\right\}, \label{eq15_4} %f^u_{\Omega}(p)=f^l_{-\Omega}(p)=n_{\textbf{p}}(1+n_{\textbf{p}}),\\\nonumber %f^u_{-\Omega}(p)=n_{\Omega}(n_{\textbf{p}}-n^+_{\textbf{p}})+n^+_{\textbf{p}}(1+n_{\textbf{p}}),\\\nonumber %f^l_{\Omega}(p)=\theta(E_{\textbf{p}}-2\Omega)[n_{-\Omega}(n_{\textbf{p}}-n^-_{\textbf{p}}) %+n^-_{\textbf{p}}(1+n_{\textbf{p}})],\end{aligned}$$ ### Bath in the condensed state We now consider the bath to be in the Bose condensed phase and obtain the TLS self-energy. The elementary excitations of the Bose-condensed system are Bogoliubov quasi-particles. An explicit form of the dispersion law of Bogoliubov excitations depends on the model used to describe the system of interacting bosons. In the case of small particle density an appropriate theoretical model is the Bogoluibov model of weakly-interacting Bose gas. In the framework of this model, the dispersion law of elementary excitations has the form of $\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}=\sqrt{E_{\textbf{p}}\left(E_{\textbf{p}}+2g_0n_c\right)}$, where $n_c$ is particle density in the condensate and $g_0$ the strength of inter-particle interaction. In the low-energy, long-wavelength limit $E_{\textbf{p}} \ll 2g_0n_c$ the elementary excitations comprise sound quanta, with a dispersion $\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}\approx sp$ where $s=\sqrt{g_0n_c/m}$ is the sound velocity. In the Bose-condensed state, most of the particles are in the condensate but there are also noncondensate particles, due to both interaction and finite temperature effects (thermal-excited particles). All three fractions of particles contribute to relaxation times of TLS. We consider the quantum limit $T\ll sp$ when thermal excitations are not important and the theory can be developed for $T=0$. In the present dilute boson gas limit, the density of the noncondensate particles is small, and one can neglect the interaction term due to fluctuations of the condensate density and the noncondensate density. Thus, the contribution to relaxation times due to the condensate and noncondensate particles can be calculated independently. \[h\] ![Feynman diagrams for TLS self-energy when the bath is in the BEC phase. Type (a) describes the condensate particles contribution, $\bar{\Sigma}^c$, and (b) is due to the non-condensate particles, $\bar{\Sigma}^n$. Double blue line represents the TLS Green function and dashed lines the TLS electron-bath interaction. Red lines denote the normal or anomalous Green functions of the non-condensate particles, and the zigzag lines stand for $\sqrt{n_c}$ corresponding to the condensate particles.[]{data-label="Figure2"}](figure2.pdf "fig:"){width="8.5cm"} The self-energy diagrams in the lowest order with respect to the TLS-bath coupling are depicted in Fig. \[Figure2\]. Fig. \[Figure2\](a) corresponds to the contribution to the self-energy from the condensate particles and describes virtual processes in which a condensate particle is scattered by a TLS electron through an intermediate non-condensate state. Fig. \[Figure2\](b) corresponds to the contribution from the non-condensate particles and describes polarization of the non-condensate particles induced by the TLS electrons. These self-energy contributions due to condensate particles $\hat{\Sigma}^{c R}$ and non-condensate $\hat{\Sigma}^{nR}$ particles have the following form (see Appendix C) $$\begin{aligned} \hat{\Sigma}^{c R}(\omega) &=&\frac{n_c}{2ms}\sum_{\textbf{k}}k \left[\hat{M}_{\textbf{k}}\hat{A}\hat{M}_{-\textbf{k}}\left(\frac{1-n_\Omega}{\omega-\Omega-\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}+i\delta}+\frac{n_\Omega}{\omega-\Omega+\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}+i\delta}\right) \right.\nonumber \\ &&\left.+\hat{M}_{\textbf{k}}\hat{B}\hat{M}_{-\textbf{k}}\left(\frac{1-n_{-\Omega}}{\omega+\Omega-\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}+i\delta}+\frac{n_{-\Omega}}{\omega+\Omega+\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}+i\delta}\right)\right],\label{eq16_1}\end{aligned}$$ $$\begin{aligned} \hat{\Sigma}^{nR}(\omega) &=&\frac{(ms^2)^2}{2}\sum_{\textbf{k},\textbf{p}}\left[\frac{\hat{M}_{\textbf{k}}\hat{A}\hat{M}_{-\textbf{k}}}{\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}} \left(\frac{1-n_\Omega}{\omega-\Omega-\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}-\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}+i\delta}+\frac{n_\Omega}{\omega-\Omega+\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}+\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}+i\delta}\right)\right. \nonumber\\ &&\left.+\frac{\hat{M}_{\textbf{k}}\hat{B}\hat{M}_{-\textbf{k}}}{\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}}\left(\frac{1-n_{-\Omega}}{\omega+\Omega-\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}-\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}+i\delta}+\frac{n_{-\Omega}}{\omega+\Omega+\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}+\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}+i\delta}\right) \right]. \label{eq16_2}\end{aligned}$$ Similar steps leading to Eqs. (\[eq15\_1\])-(\[eq15\_2\]) yields $$\begin{aligned} %\label{b10.1} \frac{1}{2\tau^c_u}&=&\frac{1}{2\tau^c_l} =n_{\Omega}\frac{\pi n_c}{2ms}\sum_kk\beta_k\delta(-2\Omega+\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}),\label{b10.1}\\ \frac{1}{2\tau^n_u}&=&\frac{1}{2\tau^n_l} \label{b10.2} \\ &=& n_{\Omega}\frac{\pi (ms^2)^2}{2}\sum_{\textbf{k},\textbf{p}}\frac{\beta_k}{\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}}\delta(2\Omega-\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}-\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}). \nonumber\end{aligned}$$ Explicit expressions for relaxation times depend on the shape of the wave functions of the TLS upper and lower states through the matrix elements Eq. (\[eq15\]). In the next section we propose and analyze an experimental setup in which explicit expressions of the relaxation time can be obtained. Application to coupled QD-dipolar exciton bath {#Sec:QD} ============================================== Applying our theory developed in the previous sections, we consider the nanostructure depicted in Fig. 3. A double quantum well (DQW) with closely separated electron-doped and hole doped wells realizes a 2D gas of indirect excitons (also called dipolar excitons). A self-assembled QD is positioned above the DQW and is irradiated with a frequency close to the lowest exciton energy of the QD. In the electron-hole representation of the QD, the lower quantum state describes the unexcited QD state (*i.e.* vaccum) $|vac\rangle$, while the lowest excited QD state describes the state $|eh\rangle$ of an excited electron-hole pair upon irradiation [@QD_TLS1; @QD_TLS2; @QD_TLS3]. With a shift in energy that does not affect the system’s dynamics, we can assume that these two QD states correspond exactly to the lower and upper TLS levels in Eq. (\[eq1\]) with $\Delta=(E_e+E_h)/2$, where $E_{e,h}$ are the lowest energies of electrons and holes in the QD (corresponding to the energies at the conduction and valence band edges), and $\lambda$ represents the dipole matrix element weighted by the electron-hole pair envelope wave function integrated over all space. \[h\] ![Schematic of the coupled QD-dipolar excitons system. The quantum dot is positioned through a dielectric spacer on top of a double quantum well that hosts the dipolar exciton gas.[]{data-label="Figure3"}](figure3_2.pdf "fig:"){width="8.5cm"} Let us discuss the exciton gas model we use for our calculations. The indirect excitons have a dipole moment $\textbf{p}$ in the out-of-plane direction of the DQW. The excitons are modeled as rigid dipole molecules that are free to move on the DQW plane as described by the center-of-mass motion of the dipoles, a valid assumption as long as the dipole’s internal degrees of freedom are not excited. The exciton density $n_{\mathrm{ex}}$ is assumed to be small so that $n_{\mathrm{ex}}a_B^2\ll 1$, where $a_B$ is an exciton Bohr radius. For simplicity, we assume that there is no particle tunneling between the QD and the DQW so that the exchange contribution to the interaction potential is negligible. This can be guaranteed using a large-band gap dielectric spacer as a substrate between the QD and the DQW. The direct contribution to the interaction potential between the electron-hole pair in the QD and the excitons in the DQW is given by $$\begin{gathered} \label{eq17} %\label{interactionpotential}\nonumber U=\int d\textbf{r}\int d\textbf{r}'\left(|\chi_h(\textbf{r})|^2-|\chi_e(\textbf{r})|^2\right)|\varphi(\textbf{r}')|^2u(\textbf{r}-\textbf{r}'),\\ u(\textbf{r}-\textbf{r}')=\frac{e^2}{\varepsilon\sqrt{(\textbf{r}-\textbf{r}')^2+a^2}}-\frac{e^2}{\varepsilon\sqrt{(\textbf{r}-\textbf{r}')^2+(a+d)^2}},\end{gathered}$$ where $\chi_{e,h}(\textbf{r})$ are the electron (e) and hole (h) wave functions in the QD, $\varphi(\textbf{r})$ is the QW exciton center-of-mass wave function, $\varepsilon$ is an effective dielectric constant taking account of the dielectric environment of the spacer and the DQW, $a$ and $d$ are the distance of the QD to the DQW surface and the separation between the positive charges and negative charges of the dipole layer (see Fig. \[Figure3\]). The Fourier transform of $u(\textbf{r})$ yields $$\begin{gathered} \label{eq18} u(\textbf{k})=\frac{2\pi e^2}{\varepsilon k}\left(1-e^{-kd}\right)e^{-ka}.\end{gathered}$$ Typical values of the wave vector $k$ here are determined by the bath excitons of DQW. At temperatures above the condensation temperature $T>T_c$, the bath in the normal state, the DQW exciton energy is of the order of $T$ and thus the wave vector $k\sim p_T=\sqrt{2mT}$, where $m$ is the exciton mass. At $T=0$, the bath is in the condensed phase, the typical value of the bath excitation momentum is of the order of $p\leq ms$. Hereafter we assume the distance of the QD from the DQW as well as the inter-well distance in the DQW to be sufficiently small so that $p_Ta, p_Td \ll 1$ and $(ms)a, (ms)d \ll 1$. This allows us to simplify the expression Eq. (\[eq18\]) assuming that $kd,ka\ll 1$. Thus we have $$u(\textbf{k})\equiv U_0=\frac{2\pi e^2d}{\varepsilon}, \,\,\,u(\textbf{r})=U_0\delta(\textbf{r}). \label{eq19}$$ Under this approximation the interaction Eq. (\[eq17\]) becomes contact-like, $$U=U_0\int d\textbf{r}\left(|\chi_h(\textbf{r})|^2-|\chi_e(\textbf{r})|^2\right)|\varphi(\textbf{r})|^2. \label{eq20}$$ In our coupled QD-exciton gas system, since the lower level is the vacuum, we have in Eqs.(\[eq8\]) and (\[eq9\]) that the coupling constants $g_1=U_0,\,\,g_2=0$ and their respective matrix elements $W_{11}=U,\,\,W_{22}=0$. The QD is described by a two-dimensional system of electrons and holes confined by a parabolic potential. For strongly confined QDs where the QD size $L$ is small compared to the Bohr radius of the electron-hole pair, the lowest-energy electrons and holes are characterized by the wavefunctions [@QD_TLS2] $\chi_i(\textbf{r})=\exp(-\rho^2/2a^2_i)/({a_i\sqrt{\pi}})$, where $a_i$ is an electron $i=e$ or a hole $i=h$ characteristic length determined by the QD confinement potential. Using these wavefunctions, we find the matrix element $(\hat{M}_{\textbf{k}})_{11}=\mathrm{exp}[{-(ka_h/2)^2}]-\mathrm{exp}[{-(ka_e/2)^2}]$. Relaxation times for normal-state bath -------------------------------------- With $ka_i \ll 1$, we perform the integration over $k$ in Eqs. (\[eq15\_1\])-(\[eq15\_2\]) and obtain the following expressions for the relaxation times $$\begin{aligned} \frac{1}{2\tau_u}&=&\frac{m\alpha_0}{(2\pi)^2}\int_0^\infty F_+(p,0)n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})[1+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})]pdp\nonumber \\ &&+\frac{m\beta_0}{(2\pi)^2}\int_0^\infty F_+(p,p_0)f^u_{-\Omega}(p)pdp, \label{eq21_1} \\ \frac{1}{2\tau_l}&=&\frac{m\gamma_0}{(2\pi)^2}\int_0^\infty F_-(p,0)n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})[1+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})]pdp\nonumber\\ &&+\frac{m\beta_0}{(2\pi)^2}\int_0^\infty F_-(p,p_0)f^l_{\Omega}(p)pdp, \label{eq21_2} %\frac{1}{2\tau_u}&=&\frac{m\alpha_0}{(2\pi)^2}\int_0^\infty F_+(p,0)n_{\textbf{p}}(1+n_{\textbf{p}})pdp+\\\nonumber %&&+\frac{m\beta_0}{(2\pi)^2}\int_0^\infty % F_+(p,p_0)f^u_{-\Omega}(p)pdp, \label{eq21_1} \\ %\frac{1}{2\tau_l}&=&\frac{m\gamma_0}{(2\pi)^2}\int_0^\infty F_-(p,0)n_{\textbf{p}}(1+n_{\textbf{p}})pdp+\\\nonumber %&&+\frac{m\beta_0}{(2\pi)^2}\int_0^\infty % F_-(p,p_0)f^l_{\Omega}(p)pdp, \label{eq21_2}\end{aligned}$$ where $F_\pm(p,p_0)=6\pi(p^4\pm p^2p_0^2+p_0^4/6)\theta(p^2\pm p_0^2)$ with $p_0^2=4m\Omega$, and $$\begin{aligned} \alpha_0 &=& U_0^2(a_h^2-a_e^2)^2u^4/16,\nonumber \\ \beta_0 &=& U_0^2(a_h^2-a_e^2)^2|uv|^2/16,\nonumber \\ \gamma_0 &=& U_0^2(a_h^2-a_e^2)^2v^4/16. \label{eq21_3}\end{aligned}$$ To simplify Eqs. (\[eq21\_1\])-(\[eq21\_2\]) we consider two limiting cases. At large temperatures $T \gg\Omega$ \[while still small compared to $\hbar^2/(2m d^2)$\], we can keep up to the zeroth order in $\Omega/T$ with $F_{\pm}(p,p_0) \approx 6\pi p^4$ and $f^u_{-\Omega}(p)\approx f^l_{\Omega}(p)\approx n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})[1+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})]$ in Eqs. (\[eq21\_1\])-(\[eq21\_2\]). The relaxation rates for $\Omega\ll T$ then read $$\frac{1}{\tau_{u,l}} =\frac{1}{\tau_T}\left(1\pm \frac{\varepsilon_0}{\Omega}\right)\mathrm{Li}_2\left(e^{\mu/T}\right), %\int_0^\infty\frac{xdx}{e^{x-(\mu/T)}-1}, \label{eq22}$$ where the $+,-$ signs apply for $\tau_{u,l}$ respectively, and $$\frac{1}{\tau_T} = \frac{3 U_0^2 m^4T^3(a_h^2-a_e^2)^2}{4\pi\hbar^9}, \label{eq22_1}$$ and $\mathrm{Li}_2(x)$ is the polylogarithm function of order $2$. In the opposite limit of low temperatures $T \ll \Omega$, we keep up to the zeroth order in $T/\Omega$. Then the respective first terms in Eqs. (\[eq21\_1\])-(\[eq21\_2\]) drop out, and we have $f^u_{-\Omega}(p)\approx n_\Omega n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})$ and $f^l_{\Omega}(p)\approx n_\Omega \theta(E_{\textbf{p}}-2\Omega) n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}}-2\Omega)$ in the second terms. The result is $$\frac{1}{\tau_{u}} = \frac{1}{\tau_{l}} =\frac{1}{\tau_T}n_{\Omega}\frac{\pi^2}{3}\left(\frac{\lambda}{T}\right)^2\frac{\hbar^2 n_{\mathrm{ex}}}{mT}, \label{eq23}$$ where $n_{\mathrm{ex}}$ is the exciton density in the bath. We have restored $\hbar$ in the expressions for the relaxation rates here and in the following section. Relaxation times for Bose-condensed bath ---------------------------------------- Straightforward but cumbersome integration in Eqs. (\[b10.1\])-(\[b10.2\]) results in the following expressions for relaxation times due to the condensate and non-condensate particles in the bath $$%\frac{1}{2\tau^c_u}=\frac{1}{2\tau^c_l} %=n_{\Omega}\frac{|\lambda|^2n_cu_0^2}{4Ms^4}M^2_{2\Omega/s}, \label{eq24} \frac{1}{2\tau^c_u}=\frac{1}{2\tau^c_l} =n_{\Omega}\frac{|\lambda|^2n_cU_0^2}{4\hbar^3 ms^4}\left[e^{-(\Omega a_h/s)^2}-e^{-(\Omega a_e/s)^2}\right]^2, \label{eq24}$$ and $$\begin{aligned} &&\frac{1}{2\tau^n_u} =\frac{1}{2\tau^n_l} =n_{\Omega}\frac{\vert\lambda\vert^2 m^2sU_0^2}{16\pi^2\hbar^4 \Omega^2}\label{eq25} \\ %=n_{\Omega}|uv|^2\frac{sm^2U_0^2}{4\pi^2}\label{eq25} \\ %=n_{\Omega}|uv|^2\frac{2(\pi Ms^2u_0)^2}{(2\pi s)^3}\times\\\nonumber &&\times\left[\frac{F(\sqrt{2}\Omega a_h/s)}{a_h\sqrt{2}}+\frac{F(\sqrt{2}\Omega a_e/s)}{a_e\sqrt{2}}-2\frac{F(\sqrt{a_h^2+a_e^2}\Omega/s)}{\sqrt{a_h^2+a_e^2}}\right], \nonumber\end{aligned}$$ where $F(x)$ is the Dawson integral $$F(x)=e^{-x^2}\int_0^x e^{t^2}dt.$$ Discussion ========== Simple analysis of Rabi oscillations given above accounting for the finite values of relaxation times yields $$\begin{aligned} |\langle\psi_2^+(0)\psi_1(t)\rangle|^2 &=&\frac{|\lambda|^2}{2\Omega^2} \left(1-\cos\Omega t\right)e^{-{t}\left({1}/{2\tau_u}+{1}/{2\tau_l}\right)}\nonumber \\ &&+\frac{|\lambda|^2}{4\Omega^2}\left(e^{-{t}/{2\tau_u}}-e^{-{t}/{2\tau_l}}\right)^2. \label{eq26}\end{aligned}$$ We focus our discussion on the low temperature regime $T \ll \Omega$. First we note that the relaxation rates for the upper and lower levels coincide both in the normal phase \[Eq. (\[eq23\])\] and in the Bose-condensed phase \[Eqs. (\[eq24\])-(\[eq25\])\]. With relaxation times for the upper and lower levels being equal, Eq. (\[eq26\]) is simplified to $$\begin{gathered} \label{eq28}\nonumber |\langle\psi_2^+(0)\psi_1(t)\rangle|^2=\frac{|\lambda|^2}{2\Omega^2}\left(1-\cos\Omega t\right)e^{-t/\tau},\end{gathered}$$ where $1/\tau=1/\tau_u=1/\tau_l$, with $1/\tau$ given by Eq. (\[eq23\]) in the normal phase and by $1/\tau^c+1/\tau^n$ from Eqs. (\[eq24\])-(\[eq25\]) in the BEC phase. Secondly, the relaxation rates are all proportional to the distribution function $n_{\Omega}$ of the dressed quasiparticle states given in Eq. (\[nOmega\]). Since $n_{\Omega} = 1$ only if the upper dressed quasiparticle state $+\Omega$ is occupied and vanishes otherwise, finite relaxation of the TLS Rabi oscillations occurs only when the pump field frequency exceeds the TLS energy level difference $\omega \geq 2\Delta$ [@Remark1]. In our following discussion, therefore, we focus on the regime $\omega \geq 2\Delta$. In the normal phase, we note that the low-temperature relaxation rates Eq. (\[eq23\]) are independent of the driving frequency and increases monotonically with the TLS-light coupling as $\lambda^2$. In the BEC phase, we find that the relaxation rates Eqs. (\[eq24\])-(\[eq25\]) exhibit strong non-monotonic dependence on the driving frequency through the Rabi frequency and the TLS-light coupling. \[h\] ![Relaxation rate $\hbar/\tau^{c}$ due to condensate particles (normalized by $\Delta$) versus frequency detuning $y$. Red (dot-dashed), blue (dashed) and black (solid) lines correspond to $\lambda=0.1\,\mathrm{meV}$, $0.2\,\mathrm{meV}$ and $0.3\,\mathrm{meV}$ respectively.[]{data-label="Figure4"}](figure4_updated_3.pdf "fig:"){width="8.5cm"} \[h\] ![Relaxation rate $\hbar/\tau^{n}$ due to non-condensate particles (normalized by $\Delta$) versus frequency detuning $y$. Red (dot-dashed), blue (dashed) and black (solid) lines correspond to $\lambda=0.1\,\mathrm{meV}$, $0.2\,\mathrm{meV}$ and $0.3\,\mathrm{meV}$ respectively.[]{data-label="Figure5"}](figure5_updated_3.pdf "fig:"){width="8.5cm"} \[h\] ![Relaxation rates due to condensate and non-condensate particles versus TLS-light coupling $\lambda/\Delta$ at frequency detuning $y = 0.01$. Solid (black) line corresponds to $\hbar/\tau^{c}$ and dashed (red) line to $\hbar/\tau^{n}$, respectively.[]{data-label="Figure6"}](figure6_updated_3_1.pdf "fig:"){width="8.5cm"} \[h\] ![Three-dimensional plot of relaxation rates $\hbar/\tau^{c}$ and $\hbar/\tau^{n}$ as a function of TLS-light coupling $\lambda/\Delta$ and frequency detuning $y$. Grey (red) surface corresponds to $\hbar/\tau^{c}$ and black (blue) surface to $\hbar/\tau^{n}$, respectively.[]{data-label="Figure7"}](figure7_updated_3_1.pdf "fig:"){width="8.5cm"} Below, we proceed to analyze the numerical dependence of the relaxation rates on the driving frequency and TLS-light coupling in the BEC phase. For the TLS, we take the following parameters $\Delta = 500 \,\mathrm{meV}$, $m_e=0.067\,m_0$ and $m_h=0.45\,m_0$ ($m_0$ is the electron mass) typical for GaAs-based QDs [@GaAs_QD1; @GaAs_QD2; @GaAs_QD3]. The characteristic lengths of the hole and the electron wavefunctions are taken as $a_h = 2\, \mathrm{nm}$ and $a_e \approx a_h \sqrt{m_h/m_e} = 2.23 a_h$. With the dipole matrix element of the QD $\sim 10\,-\,100\,\mathrm{Debye}$ ($1\,\mathrm{Debye} = 3.3\times 10^{-30}\,\mathrm{Cm}$) and optical field strength $0.1\,-\,10\,\mathrm{MVm^{-1}}$, the TLS-light coupling constant takes the range of values $\lambda \sim 0.1\,-\,10\,\mathrm{meV}$. For the dipolar exciton gas, we take $d=10\,\mathrm{nm}$, $n_c=10^{10}\,\mathrm{cm}^{-2}$, $\varepsilon = 12.5$ and $m = m_e+m_h = 0.517\,m_0$ typical for GaAs DQW structures. To provide an estimate for the inter-particle interaction $g_0$, we assume a simple point-charge treatment of the dipolar excitons, and the exciton-exciton interaction potential takes the form [@Zimmermann] $g(r) = (2e^2/\varepsilon)(1/r-1/\sqrt{r^2+d^2})$. Fourier transform of $g(r)$ then gives $g(k) = (4\pi e^2/\varepsilon k)[1-\mathrm{exp}(-kd)]$ and the coupling constant $g_0 \equiv g(k = 0) = 4\pi e^2 d/\varepsilon$. The Bogoliubov speed of sound $s$ is thus also fixed from $s = \sqrt{g_0 n_c/m}$. For convenience, we display the frequency $\omega$ in terms of the dimensionless frequency detuning $y=(\omega-2\Delta)/(2\Delta)$. Figs. \[Figure4\]-\[Figure5\] show the relaxation rates $\hbar/\tau^{c}$ and $\hbar/\tau^{n}$ as a function of $y$ for relatively small values of $\lambda \sim 0.1\,\mathrm{meV}$. We find that both relaxation rates behave non-monotonically as a function of detuning, reaching maximum values at $y \sim 0.01$ and then becoming exponentially suppressed at larger values of $y$. $\hbar/\tau^{c}$ is more strongly suppressed than $\hbar/\tau^{n}$. Secondly, we observe that, for the present values of $\lambda \sim 0.1\,\mathrm{meV}$, the condensate and non-condensate fractions contribute to the relaxation rate by the same order of magnitude, with $\hbar/\tau^{c}$ exceeding $\hbar/\tau^{n}$. This trend is maintained until $\lambda$ reaches $\sim 1\%$ of $\Delta$ (corresponding to $5\,\mathrm{meV}$), when $\hbar/\tau^{c}$ starts to drop signifcantly faster than $\hbar/\tau^{n}$. Fig. \[Figure6\] shows both quantities plotted versus $\lambda/\Delta$ at a frequency detuning $y = 0.01$, from which we observe that $\hbar/\tau^{c}$ decreases much more abruptly than $\hbar/\tau^{n}$. When $\lambda$ is increased beyond $\sim 0.02\Delta$, it is seen that $\hbar/\tau^{n}$ now overtakes $\hbar/\tau^{c}$. For $\lambda$ values beyond $0.03\Delta$, $\hbar/\tau^{c}$ has dropped essentially to zero and the non-condensate fraction constitutes the dominant contribution to relaxation. Although the relaxation rates vanish expectedly when $\lambda = 0$, they do not vanish at zero frequency detuning $y = 0$, as one might conclude by inspecting Figs. \[Figure4\]-\[Figure5\]. To examine more fully the behavior of $\hbar/\tau^{c}$ and $\hbar/\tau^{n}$, we plot them in Fig. \[Figure7\] in the full range of $\lambda$ and $y$. At $y = 0$, both relaxation rates become small only when $\lambda \ll \Delta$; in addition $\hbar/\tau^{c}$ also become small when $\lambda \gtrsim 0.03\Delta$. Around $\lambda \sim 0.01\Delta$, both relaxation rates as a function of $y$ reach maximum at $y = 0$. Conventionally, the BEC phase transition of a dipolar exciton gas is detected using optical spectroscopy. In the BEC phase, the excitons or exciton-polaritons are described by a single coherent wave function and emit light coherently. The resulting luminescence peak becomes much narrower in comparison with that in the normal phase, signaling formation of the condensate state. Another way to detect the BEC phase transition has been theoretically suggested recently [@10_RefKovalevChaplikJETP2016; @10_1RefKovalevChaplikJETPLetters2016]. BEC phase transition strongly influences the non-equilibrium properties of a dipolar exciton gas driven by an external surface acoustic waves (SAW). Under phase transition, the SAW attenuation effect and the SAW-exciton drag current become strongly modified, allowing one to detect the BEC phase transition using acoustic spectroscopy. On top of the foregoing, our findings in principle provide a new strategy to detect the BEC phase transition of the dipolar exciton gas. While the QD’s relaxation rate displays only a monotonic linear dependence on the light intensity when the exciton gas is in the normal phase, it becomes strongly non-monotonic as a function of both the pump field’s frequency and intensity once the exciton gas is in the BEC phase. Thus, by monitoring the Rabi oscillation dynamics of the QD, the normal and condensed phases of the exciton gas can be distinguished by the dependence of the relaxation rate on the frequency and intensity of the driving field. Conclusion ========== To conclude, we have developed a theory for the relaxation of optically pumped two-level systems coupled to a bosonic bath using the nonequilibrium Keldysh technique and the diagrammatic perturbation theory. To elucidate the effects of bath phase transition, we have considered the cases when the bosonic bath is in the normal state and in the Bose-condensed state. We then apply our theory to study the scenario of an illuminated quantum dot coupled to a dipolar exciton gas. The condensate and non-condensate fractions of the bath particles contribute to the relaxation rate by variable proportions depending on the value of pump field amplitude. When the pump field is weak, both fractions contribute by about the same order of magnitude; while for strong pump field, the non-condensate fraction becomes the dominant contribution. Our findings also show that the phase transition of the dipolar exciton gas to the BEC regime results in a strong dependence of the relaxation rate on the optical pump field. The relaxation rate then exhibits a strong non-monotonic behavior, reaching a maximum and then becoming exponentially suppressed as a function of both the pump field’s frequency and amplitude. Such a non-monotonic dependence could in principle serve as a smoking gun for detecting BEC phase transition of the coupled dipolar exciton gas. Finally, we point out that despite our focus on dipolar exciton gas in this work, the theory we have developed is also applicable to other types of Bose gas, such as 2D exciton-polaritons [@10_7Deng2010], magnons [@10_8Pokrovskii2013] and cold atoms [@10_9Pethick2002]. Acknowledgments =============== V.M.K. acknowledges the support from RFBR grant $\#16-02-00565a$. W.K. acknowledges the support by a startup fund from the University of Alabama. Appendix {#Appendix} ======== Non-Equilibrium Green’s Functions {#Sec:NEGF} --------------------------------- Because of the time-dependent perturbation from light, we employ the Keldysh formalism to calculate the Green’s function and distribution function of the system. Following established routes in non-equilibrium Green’s function formalism, the left-multiplied and right-mulitplied Dyson equations for the contour-ordered Green’s function ${G}^c$ are $$\begin{aligned} G_0^{-1} {G}^{c} &=& 1+{\Sigma}^{c} {G}^{c}, \\ {G}^{c} G_0^{-1} &=& 1+{G}^{c} {\Sigma}^{c}. \label{Dyson}\end{aligned}$$ We are interested in the Green’s function of the TLS under irradiation, therefore the self-energy ${\Sigma}$ due to interaction with the bath is set to zero. In the rotating frame, we already find $$\begin{gathered} \label{5} \hat{G}_0^{-1}(t,t') = \left( \begin{array}{cc} i\partial_t-\left(\Delta-\frac{\omega}{2}\right) & -\lambda \\ -\lambda^\ast & i\partial_t+\left(\Delta-\frac{\omega}{2}\right) \\ \end{array} \right).\end{gathered}$$ First we derive the retarded Green’s function. Applying Langreth’s rules [@14_Jauhobook] to the two equations in Eq. (\[Dyson\]) and summing them together, we have $\hat{G}_0^{-1}\hat{G}^{R}+\hat{G}^{R}\hat{G}_0^{-1} = 2\delta(t-t')$, $$\begin{aligned} %\bar{G}_0^{-1}\bar{G}^{R}+\bar{G}^{R}\bar{G}_0^{-1} &=& 2\delta(t-t') %\nonumber %\\ \left(i\frac{\partial \hat{G}^R}{\partial t}-\hat{H}_0 \hat{G}^R\right)+\left(-i\frac{\partial \hat{G}^R}{\partial t'}-\hat{G}^R \hat{H}_0\right) = 2\delta(t-t'). \nonumber \\ \label{Dyson2}\end{aligned}$$ We transform the time variables $t,t'$, into the Wigner coordinates with the average time $T = (t+t')/2$ and relative time $\tau = t-t'$. Eq. (\[Dyson2\]) becomes $$\begin{aligned} i2\frac{\partial \hat{G}^R}{\partial \tau}-\left\{\hat{H}_0,\hat{G}^R\right\} = 2\delta(\tau).\end{aligned}$$ Performing Fourier transformation with respect to $\tau$ gives $$\begin{aligned} 2\varepsilon \hat{G}^R-\left\{\hat{H}_0,\hat{G}^R\right\} = 2.\end{aligned}$$ Solving this matrix equation yields the retarded Green’s function in Eq. (\[eq5\]): $$\begin{aligned} \hat{G}^R(\varepsilon,T) &=&\frac{1}{2\Omega}\left( \begin{array}{cc} \varepsilon+\varepsilon_0 & \lambda \\ \lambda^\ast & \varepsilon-\varepsilon_0 \\ \end{array} \right) \nonumber \\ &&\times \left[\frac{1}{\varepsilon-\Omega+i\delta}-\frac{1}{\varepsilon+\Omega+i\delta}\right] \nonumber \\ &=&\hat{A}\frac{1}{\varepsilon-\Omega+i\delta}+\hat{B}\frac{1}{\varepsilon+\Omega+i\delta}, \label{7}\end{aligned}$$ with $\hat{A},\hat{B}$ defined in Eq. (\[eq5\_1\]). Now from the contour-ordered Dyson’s equations Eq. (\[Dyson\]) and applying Langreth’s rule, then subtracting the two equations, we get $G_0^{-1}G^{<}-G^{<} G_0^{-1} = 0$, $$\begin{aligned} \left(i\frac{\partial \hat{G}^{<}}{\partial t}-\hat{H}_0 \hat{G}^{<}\right)-\left(-i\frac{\partial \hat{G}^{<}}{\partial t'}-\hat{G}^{<}\hat{H}_0\right) = 0, %\bar{G}_0^{-1}\bar{G}^{<} = i\frac{\partial \bar{G}^{<}}{\partial % t}-\bar{H}_0 \bar{G}^{<}, \\ %\bar{G}^{<} \bar{G}_0^{-1}= -i\frac{\partial \bar{G}^{<}}{\partial % t'}-\bar{G}^{<}\bar{H}_0,\end{aligned}$$ Transforming into the Wigner coordinates, we obtain the kinetic equation $$i\frac{\partial \hat{G}^{<}}{\partial t}-\left[\hat{H}_0,\hat{G}^{<}\right] = 0$$ The density matrix $f(t)$ is given by the equal-time Keldysh Green’s function $\hat{f}(t) = -i\hat{G}^{<}(t,t) = -i\hat{G}^{<}(T = t, \tau = 0)$, which satisfies $$\frac{\partial \hat{f}}{\partial T} +i[\hat{H}_0,\hat{f}] = 0.$$ Quasiparticle Lifetimes {#Sec:QPL} ----------------------- We start from Eq. (\[eq11\]) in the main text $$\hat{G}^R = \frac{1}{\Lambda}\left[{\hat{G}_{0}^{R}-\det(\hat{G}_0^{R})\sigma_y (\hat{\Sigma}^R)^{\mathrm{T}}\sigma_y}\right]. \nonumber %\label{eq11}$$ From Eqs. (\[eq5\])-(\[eq5\_1\]) it can be easily evaluated that $\det(\hat{G}_0^{R}) = 1/(\varepsilon^2-\Omega^2+i\delta)$. Upon substitution of Eq. (\[eq5\]), the first term of Eq. (\[eq11\]) can be written as follows $$\begin{aligned} \frac{\hat{G}_{0}^{R}}{\Lambda} &=& \frac{\hat{A}}{\varepsilon-\Omega-\mathrm{Tr}(\hat{A}\hat{\Sigma}^R)-\mathrm{Tr}(\hat{B}\hat{\Sigma}^R) (\varepsilon-\Omega)/(\varepsilon+\Omega)+\det(\hat{\Sigma}^R)/(\varepsilon+\Omega)} \nonumber \\ &+&\frac{\hat{B}}{\varepsilon+\Omega-\mathrm{Tr}(\hat{A}\hat{\Sigma}^R)(\varepsilon+\Omega)/(\varepsilon-\Omega)-\mathrm{Tr}(\hat{B}\hat{\Sigma}^R)+\det(\hat{\Sigma}^R)/(\varepsilon-\Omega)}. %\label{eq11}\end{aligned}$$ In the vicinity of the poles we have $$\begin{aligned} \frac{\hat{G}_{0}^{R}}{\Lambda} &\approx& \frac{\hat{A}}{\varepsilon-\Omega-\mathrm{Tr}(\hat{A}\hat{\Sigma}^R)\vert_{\varepsilon = \Omega} +\det(\hat{\Sigma}^R) \vert_{\varepsilon = \Omega}/(2\Omega)} \label{eqSB1} \\ &+&\frac{\hat{B}}{\varepsilon+\Omega-\mathrm{Tr}(\hat{B}\hat{\Sigma}^R)\vert_{\varepsilon = -\Omega}-\det(\hat{\Sigma}^R)\vert_{\varepsilon = -\Omega}/(2\Omega)}. \nonumber \end{aligned}$$ Since $\hat{\Sigma}^R \sim 1/\tau$ where $\tau$ is the quasiparticle lifetime, $1/\tau \ll \Omega$ is satisfied for our perturbative calculations. We see that the last terms in the denominators above $\det(\hat{\Sigma}^R)\vert_{\varepsilon=\pm\Omega}/(2\Omega) \sim (1/\tau)\times 1/(\Omega\tau)$ are a factor of $1/(\Omega\tau)$ smaller than $1/\tau$ and thus can be neglected. Next we consider the second term of Eq. (\[eq11\]), whereupon substituting Eq. (\[eq5\]) becomes $$\begin{aligned} \frac{\det(\hat{G}_0^{R})\sigma_y (\hat{\Sigma}^R)^{\mathrm{T}}\sigma_y}{\Lambda} &=& \frac{\sigma_y(\hat{\Sigma}^R)^{\mathrm{T}}\sigma_y}{\varepsilon^2-\Omega^2-(\varepsilon+\Omega)\mathrm{Tr}(\hat{A}\hat{\Sigma}^R)-(\varepsilon-\Omega)\mathrm{Tr}(\hat{B}\hat{\Sigma}^R)+\det(\hat{\Sigma}^R)}. \label{eqSB2} \end{aligned}$$ In the vicinity of the upper level where $\varepsilon \approx \Omega$, $$\begin{aligned} &&\frac{\det(\hat{G}_0^{R})\sigma_y (\hat{\Sigma}^R)^{\mathrm{T}}\sigma_y}{\Lambda} \label{eqSB3} \\ &\approx& \frac{1}{2\Omega} \frac{\sigma_y(\hat{\Sigma}^R)^{\mathrm{T}}\sigma_y}{\varepsilon-\Omega-\mathrm{Tr}(\hat{A}\hat{\Sigma}^R)\vert_{\varepsilon = \Omega}+\det(\hat{\Sigma}^R)\vert_{\varepsilon = \Omega}/(2\Omega)}. \nonumber %\nonumber \\ %&\sim& \frac{1}{\Omega % \tau}\frac{1}{\varepsilon-\Omega-\mathrm{Tr}(\hat{A}\hat{\Sigma}^R)}. \label{eqSB3} \end{aligned}$$ We see that the expression in the last line above is a factor of $1/(\Omega \tau)$ smaller than the corresponding $\varepsilon \approx \Omega$ contribution (*i.e.*, the term $\propto \hat{A}$) in Eq. (\[eqSB1\]), and hence can be neglected. A similar analysis shows that the same is true for the $\varepsilon \approx -\Omega$ contribution in Eq. (\[eqSB2\]). Therefore we find $$\begin{aligned} \hat{G}^R(\epsilon) &\approx& \frac{\hat{A}}{\varepsilon-\Omega-\mathrm{Tr}(\hat{A}\hat{\Sigma}^R)\vert_{\varepsilon = \Omega}} \nonumber \\ &+&\frac{\hat{B}}{\varepsilon+\Omega-\mathrm{Tr}(\hat{B}\hat{\Sigma}^R)\vert_{\varepsilon = -\Omega}}, \end{aligned}$$ which gives Eq. (\[eq12\]) with Eqs. (\[eq13\_1\])-(\[eq13\_2\]) in the main text. TLS Self-Energy {#Sec:TLS_SE} --------------- Here we derive the expression for the TLS self-energy. Analytic expression of the diagram depicted in Fig. \[Figure1\] reads $$\begin{gathered} \label{A1}\nonumber \hat{\Sigma}(t-t')=i\int \frac{d\textbf{k}}{(2\pi)^2}\hat{M}_{\textbf{k}}\hat{{G}}(t-t')\hat{M}_{-\textbf{k}}\Pi(\textbf{k},t-t'),\\ \Pi(\textbf{k},t-t')=i\sum_{\textbf{p}}\mathcal{G}(\textbf{p},t-t')\mathcal{G}(\textbf{p}+\textbf{k},t'-t),\end{gathered}$$ where times $t,t'$ are located on the Keldysh contour, $\Pi$ and $\mathcal{G}$ are the polarization operator and Green’s function of the bath’s particles. To proceed further, let us first perform an analytic continuation to the real time domain. Using the Langreth’s rules [@14_Jauhobook] we find $$\begin{aligned} \hat{\Sigma}^<(\omega) &=& i\sum_{\textbf{k},\varepsilon}\hat{M}_{\textbf{k}}\hat{{G}}^<(\omega-\varepsilon)\hat{M}_{-\textbf{k}}\Pi^<(\textbf{k},\varepsilon), \label{App2_1} \\ \hat{\Sigma}^R(\omega) &=& i\sum_{\textbf{k},\varepsilon}\hat{M}_{\textbf{k}}\left[\hat{{G}}^<(\omega-\varepsilon)\Pi^R(\textbf{k},\varepsilon) \right.\nonumber \\ &&+\hat{{G}}^R(\omega-\varepsilon)\Pi^<(\textbf{k},\varepsilon) \nonumber\\ &&\left.+\hat{{G}}^R(\omega-\varepsilon)\Pi^R(\textbf{k},\varepsilon)\right]\hat{M}_{-\textbf{k}}, \label{App2_2}\end{aligned}$$ $$\begin{aligned} \Pi^<(\textbf{k},\omega) &=& i\sum_{\textbf{p},\varepsilon}\mathcal{G}^<(\textbf{p}+\textbf{k},\varepsilon+\omega)\mathcal{G}^>(\textbf{p},\varepsilon),\label{App2_3} \\ \Pi^R(\textbf{k},\omega) &=& i\sum_{\textbf{p},\varepsilon}[\mathcal{G}^<(\textbf{p}+\textbf{k},\varepsilon+\omega)\mathcal{G}^A(\textbf{p},\varepsilon) \nonumber \\ &&+\mathcal{G}^R(\textbf{p}+\textbf{k},\varepsilon+\omega)\mathcal{G}^<(\textbf{p},\varepsilon)].\label{App2_4}\end{aligned}$$ ### TLS self-energy in normal state bath Lets consider the bath in normal phase state, $T>T_c$. In this case the bare Green’s functions of the bath’s particles are $$\begin{aligned} %\label{A3} \mathcal{G}^<(\textbf{k},\varepsilon) &=&-2\pi i n_B(\xi_{\textbf{k}})\delta(\varepsilon-E_{\textbf{k}}), \label{A3_1}\\ \mathcal{G}^>(\textbf{k},\varepsilon)&=&-2\pi i[1+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{k}})]\delta(\varepsilon-E_{\textbf{k}}),\label{A3_2}\\ \mathcal{G}^R(\textbf{k},\varepsilon)&=&\frac{1}{\varepsilon-E_{\textbf{k}}+i\delta},\label{A3_3} %\mathcal{G}^<(\textbf{k},\epsilon)=-2\pi in_{\textbf{k}}\delta(\epsilon-E_{\textbf{k}})\\\nonumber %\mathcal{G}^>(\textbf{k},\epsilon)=-2\pi i[n_{\textbf{k}}+1]\delta(\epsilon-E_{\textbf{k}})\\\nonumber %\mathcal{G}^R(\textbf{k},\epsilon)=\frac{1}{\epsilon-E_{\textbf{k}}+i\delta}\end{aligned}$$ where $n_B(\xi_{\textbf{k}})$ is equilibrium Bose distribution and $E_{\textbf{k}}=k^2/2m$ is the energy of the bath’s particles (which corresponds to the kinetic energy of the exciton’s center-of-mass motion for the excitonic bath we consider in Section \[Sec:QD\]. Using these functions we find the following polarization operators $$\begin{aligned} %\label{A4}\nonumber \Pi^<(\textbf{k},\omega)&=&-2\pi i\sum_{\textbf{p}}n_B(\xi_{\textbf{k}+\textbf{p}})[1+n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})] \nonumber \\ &&\times\delta(\omega+E_{\textbf{p}}-E_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}), \label{A4_1}\\ \Pi^R(\textbf{k},\omega)&=&\sum_{\textbf{p}}\frac{n_B(\xi_{\textbf{p}})-n_B(\xi_{\textbf{k}+\textbf{p}})}{\omega+E_{\textbf{p}}-E_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}+i\delta}. \label{A4_2} %\Pi^<(\textbf{k},\omega)=-2\pi i\sum_{\textbf{p}}n_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}(n_{\textbf{p}}+1)\delta(\omega+E_{\textbf{p}}-E_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}})\\ %\Pi^R(\textbf{k},\omega)=\sum_{\textbf{p}}\frac{n_{\textbf{p}}-n_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}}{\omega+E_{\textbf{p}}-E_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}+i\delta}\end{aligned}$$ Substituting these expressions into Eq. (\[App2\_1\]), we obtain the self-energy expression Eq. (\[eq14\]). ### TLS self-energy in BEC bath If the bath is in the Bose-condensed state, the elementary excitations in the Bogoliubov’s theory of weakly-interacting Bose gas have the energy dispersion $$\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}=\sqrt{\frac{k^2}{2m}\left(\frac{k^2}{2m}+2ms^2\right)}, \label{A7_0}$$ where $s^2=g_0n_c/m$ is the Bogolubov quasiparticle’s speed of sound, $g_0$ is the inter-particle interaction strength, and $n_c$ particles density in the condensate. The Green functions are given by $$\begin{aligned} \label{A7} \hat{\mathfrak{G}}^R(\textbf{k},\varepsilon) &=& \left( \begin{array}{cc} \mathfrak{G} & \mathfrak{F}^+ \\ \mathfrak{F} & \tilde{\mathfrak{G}} \\ \end{array} \right)^R=\frac{1}{(\varepsilon+i\delta)^2-\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}^2}\label{A7_1}\\ &&\times\left( \begin{array}{cc} \varepsilon+k^2/2m+ms^2 & -ms^2 \\ -ms^2 & -\varepsilon+k^2/2m+ms^2 \\ \end{array}\right), \nonumber\end{aligned}$$ and $$\begin{aligned} %\label{A8} &&\hat{\mathfrak{G}}^<(\textbf{k},\varepsilon) = n_B(\varepsilon)[\hat{\mathfrak{G}}^R(\textbf{k},\varepsilon)-\hat{\mathfrak{G}}^A(\textbf{k},\varepsilon)] \nonumber \\ &=& -\frac{2\pi i}{2\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}}\left( \begin{array}{cc} \varepsilon+k^2/2m+ms^2 & -ms^2 \\ -ms^2 & -\varepsilon+k^2/2m+ms^2 \\ \end{array}\right)\nonumber \\ &&\times\left\{n_B(\epsilon_{\textbf{k}})\delta(\varepsilon-\epsilon_{\textbf{k}})+[1+n_B(\epsilon_{\textbf{k}})]\delta(\varepsilon+\epsilon_{\textbf{k}})\right\},\label{A8_1}\end{aligned}$$ $$\begin{aligned} &&\hat{\mathfrak{G}}^>(\textbf{k},\varepsilon) = [1+n_B(\varepsilon)][\hat{\mathfrak{G}}^R(\textbf{k},\varepsilon)-\hat{\mathfrak{G}}^A(\textbf{k},\varepsilon)]\nonumber \\ &=&-\frac{2\pi i}{2\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}}\left( \begin{array}{cc} \varepsilon+k^2/2m+ms^2 & -ms^2 \\ -ms^2 & -\varepsilon+k^2/2m+ms^2 \\ \end{array}\right)\nonumber \\ &&\times\left\{[1+n_B(\epsilon_{\textbf{k}})]\delta(\varepsilon-\epsilon_{\textbf{k}})+n_B(\epsilon_{\textbf{k}})\delta(\varepsilon+\epsilon_{\textbf{k}})\right\}.\label{A8_2} % \hat{\mathfrak{G}}^<(\textbf{k},\epsilon)=N_\epsilon[\hat{\mathfrak{G}}^R(\textbf{k},\epsilon)-\hat{\mathfrak{G}}^A(\textbf{k},\epsilon)]\\\nonumber=-\frac{2\pi i}{2\epsilon_k}\left( % \begin{array}{cc} % \epsilon+k^2/2m+ms^2 & -ms^2 \\ % -ms^2 & -\epsilon+k^2/2m+ms^2 \\ % \end{array}\right)\times\\\nonumber % \times[N_k\delta(\epsilon-\epsilon_k)+(1+N_k)\delta(\epsilon+\epsilon_k)],\\\nonumber % \hat{\mathfrak{G}}^>(\textbf{k},\epsilon)=(1+N_\epsilon)[\hat{\mathfrak{G}}^R(\textbf{k},\epsilon)-\hat{\mathfrak{G}}^A(\textbf{k},\epsilon)]\\\nonumber=-\frac{2\pi i}{2\epsilon_k}\left( % \begin{array}{cc} % \epsilon+k^2/2m+ms^2 & -ms^2 \\ % -ms^2 & -\epsilon+k^2/2m+ms^2 \\ % \end{array}\right)\times\\\nonumber % \times[(1+N_k)\delta(\epsilon-\epsilon_k)+N_k\delta(\epsilon+\epsilon_k)],\\\nonumber % N_k=\frac{1}{e^{\epsilon_k/T}-1},\end{aligned}$$ The polarization operator has two contributions. The first one comes from the condensate particles and the other one from non-condensate particles, Fig. \[Figure1\]. If the Bose bath is a two-dimensional system, the condensate occurs at zero temperature only. In this case one assumes that $n_B(\epsilon_{\textbf{k}})=0$. The contribution $P_c(\textbf{k},\omega)$ to the polarization operator from the condensate particles is $$\begin{aligned} %\label{A9}\nonumber P^R_c(\textbf{k},\omega) &=& n_c[\mathfrak{G}^R+\mathfrak{F}^{+R}+\mathfrak{F}^R+\tilde{\mathfrak{G}}^R] \nonumber \\ &=& n_c\frac{k^2/m}{(\omega+i\delta)^2-\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}^2}, \label{A9_1}\\ P^<_c(\textbf{k},\omega) &=& n_c[\mathfrak{G}^<+\mathfrak{F}^{+<}+\mathfrak{F}^<+\tilde{\mathfrak{G}}^<] \nonumber \\ &=&-\pi in_c\frac{k^2/m}{\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}}\delta(\omega+\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}).\label{A9_2} % P^R_c(\textbf{k},\omega) &=& % n_c[\mathfrak{G}^R+\mathfrak{F}^{+R}+\mathfrak{F}^R+\tilde{\mathfrak{G}}^R] \nonumber \\ % &=& n_c\frac{k^2/m}{(\varepsilon+i\delta)^2-\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}^2}, \label{A9_1}\\ % P^<_c(\textbf{k},\omega) &=& % n_c[\mathfrak{G}^<+\mathfrak{F}^{+<}+\mathfrak{F}^<+\tilde{\mathfrak{G}}^<] % \nonumber \\ % &=&-\pi in_c\frac{k^2/m}{\epsilon_k}\delta(\varepsilon+\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}).\label{A9_2} % %P^R_c(\textbf{k},\omega)=n_c[\mathfrak{G}^R+\mathfrak{F}^{+R}+\mathfrak{F}^R+\tilde{\mathfrak{G}}^R]=n_c\frac{k^2/m}{(\epsilon+i\delta)^2-\epsilon_k^2},\\\nonumber % %P^<_c(\textbf{k},\omega)=n_c[\mathfrak{G}^<+\mathfrak{F}^{+<}+\mathfrak{F}^<+\tilde{\mathfrak{G}}^<]\\=-2\pi in_c\frac{k^2/m}{2\epsilon_k}\delta(\epsilon+\epsilon_k).\end{aligned}$$ Using this functions one finds the condensate contribution to the retarded self-energy, Eq. (\[eq16\_1\]). Now let us find the contribution to the self-energy from the non-condensate particles. First, we need the retarded and lesser polarization operators. In the regime $ms^2 \gg k^2/2m$ where linear dispersion $\epsilon_{\textbf{k}}=sk$ of the Bogoliubov quasiparticles holds, using Eqs. (\[A7\])-(\[A8\_2\]) we find for the retarded and lesser polarization operators of non-condensate particles $$\begin{aligned} %\label{A11} P_n^R(\textbf{k},\omega) &=& 2i\sum_{\textbf{p},\varepsilon}\left[\mathfrak{F}^<(\textbf{p}+\textbf{k},\varepsilon+\omega)\mathfrak{F}^{+A}(\textbf{p},\varepsilon)\right.\label{A11_1} \\ &&\left.+\mathfrak{F}^R(\textbf{p}+\textbf{k},\varepsilon+\omega)\mathfrak{F}^{+<}(\textbf{p},\varepsilon)\right]\nonumber \\ &=&\frac{(ms^2)^2}{2}\sum_{\textbf{p}}\frac{1}{\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}}\left(\frac{1}{\omega-\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}-\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}+i\delta}\right. \nonumber\\ &&\left.-\frac{1}{\omega+\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}+\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}+i\delta}\right),\nonumber\end{aligned}$$ $$\begin{aligned} P_n^<(\textbf{k},\omega) &=& 2i\sum_{\textbf{p},\varepsilon}\mathfrak{F}^<(\textbf{p}+\textbf{k},\varepsilon+\omega)\mathfrak{F}^{+>}(\textbf{p},\varepsilon)\label{A11_2} \\ &=&-\pi i(ms^2)^2\sum_{\textbf{p}}\frac{1}{\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}}\delta(\omega+\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}+\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}). \nonumber % P_n^R(\textbf{k},\omega)=2i\sum_{\textbf{p},\epsilon}[\mathfrak{F}^<(\textbf{p}+\textbf{k},\epsilon+\omega)\mathfrak{F}^{+A}(\textbf{p},\epsilon)+\\\nonumber % +\mathfrak{F}^R(\textbf{p}+\textbf{k},\epsilon+\omega)\mathfrak{F}^{+<}(\textbf{p},\epsilon)]\\\nonumber % =\frac{(Ms^2)^2}{2}\sum_{\textbf{p}}\frac{1}{\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}}\left[\frac{1}{\omega-\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}-\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}+i\delta}-\frac{1}{\omega+\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}+\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}+i\delta}\right],\\\nonumber % P_n^<(\textbf{k},\omega)=2i\sum_{\textbf{p},\epsilon}\mathfrak{F}^<(\textbf{p}+\textbf{k},\epsilon+\omega)\mathfrak{F}^{+>}(\textbf{p},\epsilon)\\\nonumber % =-2\pi i\frac{(Ms^2)^2}{2}\sum_{\textbf{p}}\frac{1}{\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}}\delta(\omega+\epsilon_{\textbf{p}}+\epsilon_{\textbf{p}+\textbf{k}}).\end{aligned}$$ Now the calculation of the non-condensate particles’ contribution to the self-energy of TLS is simple, and we arrive at the expression Eq. (\[eq16\_2\]) of the main text. 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.clear { clear:both; } #main { width:900px; margin:auto; } #title { font:21pt Arial,sans-serif; color:#888; font-weight:bold; } .imageToolButtonBar { background:url(/html/images/skin/portalTab_bg.gif); height:29px; border:1px solid silver; padding:4px 15px 2px 15px; } #exif { clear:both; height:2em; } #toolBar{ width:100% border:0px solid silver; padding:0px; } #imageToolIframe{ height:700px; } #showScaleSlider{ margin-top:10px; width:300px; height:20px; } #imageViewPort{ overflow:auto; border:1px solid silver; height:500px; width:898px; vertical-align:middle; padding:0px; margin:0px; text-align:center; background-color:#eeeeee; } /* style the image */ #me { } #cropDim{ display:none; } /* part of the widget: drag handle styles */ .imageDragger { /* required: */ position:absolute; /* optional: */ cursor:move; z-index:999; background:#fff; border:2px dotted #000; min-width:50px; min-height:50px; } #cropSizeBox{ float:left; border:1px solid silver; opacity: 1; min-width:46px; height:20px; color:black; white-space:nowrap; } .displayImageDim{ width:50px; height:20px; background:#eeeeee; overflow:hidden; float:left; } .baseImageDim{ width:50px; height:20px; overflow:hidden; float:left; } #buttonControl{ width:920px; padding:10px; border:1px solid silver; } #doCropButton{ display:none; } #controlTable{ width:100%; } #viewingUrlDiv{ padding:10px; text-align:center; } #viewingUrl{ border:1px solid silver;padding:3px;width:600px; } #filtersUndoDiv{ display:none; text-align:left; } #filterListTd{ vertical-align:top; padding:0px; } #filterListDiv{ width:100px; } /* .filterListItem{ This is defined on the JSP } */ /* .loader{ This is defined on the JSP } */ #controlTable td{ border:1px solid silver; padding:3px; text-align:center; white-space: nowrap; } #showScaleSlider td{ border:0px solid silver; padding:0px; } #hsbDialog{ width:400px; height:300px; } #hsbTable{ border:1px solid silver; width:90% } #hsbTable td{ padding:4px; border:1px solid silver; height:20px; vertical-align: top; } #hsbTable .colorSlider td{ padding:0px; border:0px solid silver; } .colorSlider{ width:200px; } .thumbnailDiv{ cursor:pointer; padding:3px 15px 3px 15px; border:silver 2px dotted; } .thumbnailDivHover{ cursor:pointer; padding:3px 15px 3px 15px; border:blue 2px dotted; }

Q: add some declaration line to the xml file with the aid of MarkupBuilder I am trying to build a xml file with the MarkupBuilder with some declarations and tags but I do not find a solution to build the following line <kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2" xmlns:gx="http://www.google.com/kml/ext/2.2" xmlns:kml="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"> in the xml file. I appreciate any help code def writer = new StringWriter() def xml = new groovy.xml.MarkupBuilder(writer) xml.mkp.xmlDeclaration(version: "1.0", encoding: "utf-8") xml.Documents { Placemark() { name("mapData") styleUrl("#m_ylw-pushpin") LineString(){ tessellate("1") coordinates("8.463415562903656,47.97716901704985,0 8.462984259089152,47.97656710950728,0 8.461242137735676,47.97352418265724,0 8.485274199626216") } } } println writer.toString() example <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2" xmlns:gx="http://www.google.com/kml/ext/2.2" xmlns:kml="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"> <Document> </StyleMap> <Placemark> <name>mapData</name> <styleUrl>#m_ylw-pushpin</styleUrl> <LineString> <tessellate>1</tessellate> <coordinates> 8.463415562903656,47.97716901704985,0 8.462984259089152,47.97656710950728,0 8.461242137735676,47.97352418265724,0 8.485274199626216 </coordinates> </LineString> </Placemark> </Document> </kml> Current output <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?> <Documents> <Placemark> <name>mapData</name> <styleUrl>#m_ylw-pushpin</styleUrl> <LineString> <tessellate>1</tessellate> <coordinates>8.463415562903656,47.97716901704985,0 8.462984259089152,47.97656710950728,0 8.461242137735676,47.97352418265724,0 8.485274199626216</coordinates> </LineString> </Placemark> </Documents> A: Add kml as top level element, add Document as child to it and invoke setDoubleQuotes(true) on the builder to output double quotes instead of single def writer = new StringWriter() def xml = new groovy.xml.MarkupBuilder(writer) xml.doubleQuotes = true xml.mkp.xmlDeclaration version: "1.0", encoding: "utf-8" xml.kml ( xmlns:"http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2", "xmlns:gx": "http://www.google.com/kml/ext/2.2", "xmlns:kml": "http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2", "xmlns:atom": "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" ) { Documents { Placemark() { name "mapData" styleUrl "#m_ylw-pushpin" LineString { tessellate "1" coordinates "8.463415562903656,47.97716901704985,0 8.462984259089152,47.97656710950728,0 8.461242137735676,47.97352418265724,0 8.485274199626216" } } } } println writer.toString() Output: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2" xmlns:gx="http://www.google.com/kml/ext/2.2" xmlns:kml="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"> <Documents> <Placemark> <name>mapData</name> <styleUrl>#m_ylw-pushpin</styleUrl> <LineString> <tessellate>1</tessellate> <coordinates>8.463415562903656,47.97716901704985,0 8.462984259089152,47.97656710950728,0 8.461242137735676,47.97352418265724,0 8.485274199626216</coordinates> </LineString> </Placemark> </Documents> </kml>

La Ciudad de México busca Constitución. La reforma política que transformó el Distrito Federal en la flamante megaurbe a la que llaman CDMX obliga a las autoridades a redactar una Carta Magna. Esta mañana, el jefe de Gobierno, Miguel Ángel Mancera, presentó a 28 personas encargadas de elaborar un proyecto del texto. “Es una gran oportunidad para que no se dé un solo paso atrás en los derechos ganados”, señaló el político que gobierna el más importante bastión de la izquierda en el país. Mancera, del PRD, dijo que el grupo comenzará sus trabajos el lunes 8 de febrero. El principal promotor de la reforma política de la Ciudad de México aseguró que el nuevo texto podrá servir de “referente para una reforma mayor en el país” y como punto de partida de una nueva Constitución de la República mexicana, que el próximo año cumple un siglo de haberse redactado. El grupo presentado esta mañana está conformado por políticos, activistas, académicos, juristas y escritores. Existían temores de que Mancera, que tiene una buena relación con Enrique Peña Nieto, lo que despierta desconfianza en una ciudad que es gobernada por la izquierda desde 1997, presentara nombres más cercanos al PRI, el partido en el poder. Esas dudas fueron disipadas esta mañana en el antiguo Palacio del Ayuntamiento. En el grupo, conformado por 13 mujeres y 15 hombres, se encuentra a Lol Kin Castañeda, una activista por los derechos de los homosexuales y una de las primeras mujeres que se casaron cuando fueron aprobadas las bodas gais en la capital, en 2009. También figuran los nombres de Clara Jusidman, una reputada académica de izquierdas; Marta Lamas, la feminista más reconocida de México; Ana Laura Magaloni, catedrática experta en derecho constitucional, María Rojo e Ifigenia Martínez, militantes del PRD y la periodista Guadalupe Loaeza, entre otras. Loaeza, por cierto, no es la única escritora en la lista. Juan Villoro, uno de los autores más leídos de México e hijo del filósofo Luis Villoro, estará encargado de redactar el texto más seco de su carrera: la primera Constitución de la ciudad. En la tarea lo acompañarán experimentados políticos como Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, fundador del PRD y primer Jefe de Gobierno del DF; Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, que ha trabajado para gobiernos de distintas banderas del PRI, PRD y PAN; el senador Alejandro Encinas; académicos como Francisco Valdés y Mauricio Merino, experto en temas de transparencia y rendición de cuentas, entre otros. El grupo de trabajo estará presidido por Miguel Ángel Mancera y podrá contar con el apoyo de asesores externos coordinados por Juan Ramón de la Fuente, el exrector de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Cárdenas dijo que el proyecto que elaborarán se inclinará hacia la “equidad social” y a la democracia participativa. El polémico Constituyente El texto que elaborará el grupo de sabios será revisado por la Asamblea Constituyente. Ese órgano encargado de aprobar la primera carta magna capitalina estará conformado por 100 diputados. Sesenta serán elegidos el 5 de junio en un proceso electoral inédito organizado por el Instituto Nacional Electoral (INE). Los 40 restantes serán plurinominales y serán designados por el presidente Enrique Peña Nieto (seis), el jefe de Gobierno Miguel Ángel Mancera (seis), la Cámara de Diputados (14) y Senadores (14). La convocatoria para elegir al Constituyente ha preocupado a los grandes partidos de oposición. Representantes del PRD, PAN y Morena, la organización del izquierdista Andrés Manuel López Obrador, han amenazado con impugnar ante los tribunales el llamado a las elecciones que ha hecho el INE. La autoridad electoral ha dispuesto entregar 10 millones de pesos (545.000 dólares) a los nueve partidos que existen en México para que hagan campaña para sus asambleístas. "Es un atraco", dijo Pablo Gómez, que defiende los intereses del PRD ante la autoridad electoral. Este partido, junto al PAN y Morena, considera que el trato igualitario a todos los partidos, sin importar cuántos votos hayan obtenido en las últimas elecciones, beneficia al PRI y al Gobierno de Enrique Peña Nieto. Las minorías de la Ciudad de México, en este caso el PRI y sus aliados, el Partido Verde y Nueva Alianza, contarán con la misma cantidad de dinero que la izquierda, que es la fuerza política mayoritaria en la Ciudad de México desde hace 19 años.

"Romek" "What do you want to know?" "The truth" "Are you sure?" "Yes, that's why I've come to you" "How many women have you had in your life?" "You know, women, girls or whatever you call them" "Eight... nine..." "I don't know, maybe fifteen" "That's enough" "I've been married for ten years now And frankly..." "That's enough, too" "Are you sure I don't ever be able to make love to any woman?" "I'm afraid you won't, the findings are typical, and so are the symptoms" "What's your wife like?" "She's wonderful" "Take a divorce" "Romek" "I heard your car" "Come on" "You didn't want to meet you, did you?" "I did" "Your suit is dripping wet" "Don't you want to know why I went to Krakow?" "Why, you have friends there" "Just one" "Why don't you tell me about Zagreb?" "I delivered several lectures I assisted during several operations" "On three occasions, I operated myself I got paid and by the tim" "I was leaving, the money I got was only worth a half of its original value" "Are you tired?" "No" "I say, Hanka darling..." "Mhm..." "Not now, please" "Tell me everything" "I'm not afraid anymore" "I went to Krakow to meet Mikolaj" "He's a friend of mine I told you about him once, didn't I?" "That son of a bitch, I remember" "Well, he examined me and had all the analyses made" "He was quite frank" "I haven't any chances Today, tomorrow..." "Or ever..." "I don't believe it" "These are facts" "Do you love me?" "Well, do you or not?" "You're afraid to say you do although you do love me after all" "Love is not just panting in bed for five minutes once a week" "It is that, too" "It's just biology" "True love is situated in one's heart and not between the legs" "What matters to me is what we have and not what we haven't" "You're young and..." "I can manage" "You'll have to find yourself a lover" "That is, if you haven't found one yet" "I haven't" "Some things are better left unsaid" "Oh no" "All right, so you've been frank with me You won't ever be able to make love to me" "At least that's what the doctors say I'm telling you this" "I want to be with you anyway" "I love you" "May I cuddle up to you?" "Yes" "Tightly, O.K.?" "You asleep, Hanka?" "No" "We've never wanted a baby" "No" "It would perhaps be easier now if there was one" "Perhaps" "Can I help?" "If you're so kind..." "Just hold the funnel, will you?" "May I join, Doctor?" "Make a decision" "It's not very good for you" "But not fatal" "The ward head told me he found it rather difficult to come to terms with you" "Really?" "But it's perfectly simple" "You see, Doctor" "I have a voice" "How's that?" "A singing voice" "My mother is a hard-working woman She wants me to be somebody" "I wasn't admitted to the school of music because of my heart" "I shouldn't sing, my heart's too weak, but Mother wants me to become a singer" "What's your specialty?" "Bach and Mahler Do you know Mahler?" "And... van den Budemayer?" "No, I don't know that one" "His works are... well, difficult But I can sing them" "Mother wants me to make a career abroad or at least here" "This is what that operation's for" "Mother wants the ward head to operate on me or better still, you" "Do you want it, too?" "I want to live, that's enough for me I don't have to sing" "Besides, I'm scared" "I guess the ward head wanted you to reassure me to tell me it isn't dangerous" "I'll be able to do everything afterwards..." "Well, go on, tell me" "Know what, it's not that simple" "Such operations are usually carried out to save, I mean..." "They are the last resort, when nothing else can be done" "Which is not the case with me, right?" "Frankly speaking, that's what I mean" "Various people have different needs" "Mother wants me to have everything ...while I only need this much" "Good afternoon May I speak to Hanka please?" "I'm afraid she's out" "Oh, I thought she was Thank you" "Want me to give her a message?" "No, thanks I'll try to reach her later" "What is it?" "Van den Budenmayer Beautiful, isn't it?" "Yes" "I once heard it before" "I took a call to you" "Who was it?" "Beautiful, really" "I've bought something for you Care to try it on?" "It's for you" "Hello, Hanka, at last!" "Hanka..." "I must see you You didn't come at four" "All right" "Hanka darling" "All right, I'll be there" "Yes, it's better this way" "I see" "Yes, sure, O.K." "Can you hear me?" "Why, hello, Mum" "When could you send it to me?" "We fly on Thursdays and Saturdays now" "Fine, go to my flat and find that black shawl and umbrella" "All right" "Please come in" "I've been thinking about you" "After we'd talked yesterday, I bought a record" "What record?" "Van den Budemayer?" "In Dutch, it's wonderful" "Remember anything?" "Your singing's beautiful" "A pity you don't want it for a career" "That's what Mother says" "And rightly, too" "What did you dream about when you were my age?" "I wanted to become a doctor, a surgeon" "And what about having home, a family?" "Didn't you dream about that?" "I never thought about it" "Mariusz Zawydzki, Physics" "Eleven..." "Twenty-three..." "Forty-five..." "Eleven..." "Twenty-three..." "Forty-five..." "Oh, I forgot" "Mother phoned She wants her umbrella and shawl" "Why don't they sell shawls in shops where she is?" "Don't you know her?" "She wants to have her own one" "When is the plane due?" "At twelve, a few minutes past" "I don't operate until the afternoon I may go to the airport," "I'm free for an hour" "You're a dear" "Oh, give me the key" "The umbrella is on the coat-stand A black folding one" "The shawls's black, too, it's in the chest of drawers in the bedroom" "I'll find it" "It's me" "Do me a favour, will you?" "Never call me on the phone at home unless you have to" "Anything wrong?" "No, phone me at the office, it's better that way" "Ten to six, right?" "And ten to eight on Thursdays and Tuesdays" "As you wish, Madam Have you been to your mother's flat?" "I send a postcard to you saying I love you and will keep our date today" "A postcard?" "Yes, a silly one, with the Pope on the reverse side" "When did you mail it?" "After our last meeting, as usual Haven't you got it?" "No, bye" "May I speak to Mr. Mariusz, please?" "It's the right number, isn't it?" "Mariusz!" "For you again!" "Hallo" "It's me, so you're there?" "Yes" "I tried to reach you but the number was engaged all the time..." "I've just come in You must have got the number wrong" "Hurry up, Roman, don't rummage the flat Mother doesn't like it" "Hope I can still make it, they haven't taken off yet," "I'm free at six" "You can have the car" "Oh, but what about you?" "I've got time enough" "That's great I'll come to fetch you" "I'll be free at nine Is it comfortable?" "Yes" "No mail in Mother's flat?" "Ah, I didn't check, you should have told me to when you phoned" "I didn't think about it" "Well, be seeing you" "Roman" "The registration card?" "It's in the glove compartment" "See you in the evening" "I can't sleep" "You were good at physics, ...weren't you?" "Tell me how that law goes" "The loss of weight of a floating body ...is equal to" "How does it go?" "The apparent loss of weight ...is equal to the weight of water that body has dislodged" "Something like that" "I think..." "You've had a bad day" "Was it an operation?" "Yes" "Someone died, right?" "Yes... don't" "Who was it?" "Don't touch me" "Sorry" "It's me" "Why, hello, Hanka darling..." "I must see you" "This is what I've been telling you all week long, but the last two days you refused" "Now I want it" "I miss you" "All right, is Thursday all right with you?" "Any time will be fine" "At six on Thursday, then" "Is anything wrong, darling?" "At six" "Are you there..." "Roman?" "Yes" "No, don't take it off I have very little time" "I've missed you so much" "No... don't" "O.K. Not now" "And never again This is the last time we meet" "That's what I wanted to tell you" "But Hanka..." "Go away now" "All right, we don't have to go to bed But don't make me go, please" "It's not that, but go now" "I love you" "We never talked about it" "And we're not going to" "Did he find out about us?" "We're not going to discuss him, either" "He hasn't found out and he won't ever find out" "Button you jacket up and go" "You're looking swell" "Well, go away now" "Come out" "Come out, will you?" "Come out!" "Why have you done it?" "Tell me, why?" "You wanted to see me having fun with him in bed?" "You should have come last week, you'd have seen everything" "I was here last week, too" "How's that?" "I was sitting on the steps and listening" "Open the door" "Perhaps you'd like me to marry you..." "You know, you could get a divorce and" "Roman" "Please take me in your arms" "Take me tightly" "I can't" "Please" "Oh please do" "You're not going to walk out on me ...just because I went to bed with..." "I didn't know..." "I know you well enough but I never thought..." "I didn't know how much I'd hurt you" "I have no right to be jealous I can't demand it from you" "Of course you have the right" "You were right about that other thing, too" "Nothing should be left unsaid" "I'll never lie to you again I don't want to hide behind a wardrobe" "I had an extra key made" "You won't ever have to" "We should have a child, adopt one You were right" "We need a rest from each other" "Yes" "All right, take a holiday" "And I'll talk to some lawyer in the meantime about that adoption" "No, I want you to go away" "I won't have that physicist..." "Good" "Not too short?" "They're my wife's" "Could you tell me..." "How much is a ticket to Melbourne?" "Go away" "I just wanted to ask how much is a ticket to Melbourne" "Janusz" "This gentleman will tell you all you want to know, Melbourne is his department" "What can I do for you?" "It takes longer if you want a boy, and much shorter with a girl" "The lawyer was very nice It would be fully confidential" "All right, but how long does it take?" "Well, several months with a girl Everybody wants a boy" "You'd just have to provide a certificate of sterility" "I might get it from Mikolaj" "Tell me, Roman Is it what you really want?" "Yes" "Want me to phone you every day from Zakopane?" "No, don't do it" "But you do trust me, don't you?" "How are you?" "I hate you" "Why, you agreed, didn't you?" "Yes..." "But I didn't want it" "Has anything happened?" "What's wrong?" "Nothing yet, but I know I'm a different person now" "What do you mean?" "I want to sing And to have a large audience" "Hallo?" "Good evening" "I couldn't get a connection at an earlier hour..." "Mariusz, please?" "He's away Who's speaking, please?" "A friend from the university" "My son went away to Zakopane to ski" "Do you want me to give him your message?" "The tickets for today are sold out" "The booking-office does not sell tickets in advance for tomorrow" "It's open daily from seven thirty a.m." "Passengers are invited to come back tomorrow" "Two for ten thirty" "What are you doing here?" "I was told you went for a skiing holiday" "I thought, maybe you are in Zakopane So I came here too" "I forgot" "Hold this a minute, I forgot" "Is this the hospital?" "Yes, may I help you?" "This is Hanna Nycz speaking from Zakopane, is my husband there?" "No, Doctor Nycz isn't here today He phoned he wasn't coming" "Yes" "Would you please do me a favour?" "Should my husband phone the hospital," "Please tell him I'm leaving for Warsaw on the first train or bus I manage to catch" "I'll be home in the evening Will you tell him?" "Yes" "I'll tell him" "Thank you" "I'd like to make another call, please" "It won't take long It's a local call" "Right here, at the refilling station" "No, just what I needed They're perfect" "Your ticket, please" "Put the skis in the luggage-carrier" "Your tickets, please Your ticket, Madam" "I have no ticket But I must get to Warsaw" "Roman..." "Yes..." "Where?" "I see" "Can you hear me?" "Your wife is not in that hotel in Zakopane" "She left for Warsaw in the morning" "Thirty-two... fifty-six... thirty-six..." "Hanka darling" "You're all right" "Oh God, you're all right" "I am"

Masila crude Yemen has set the official selling price of its Masila crude for loading in October at a premium of $0.13 a barrel to dated Brent, down 39 cents from the previous month, its government said late on Monday.

Q: Startup script always crashing on ubuntu 9.10 server edition I wrote a startup script that starts at startup for ubuntu 9.10 server edition and does the rsync of my directories that is specified in my path, I did the startup in the old fashion way linking my script from init.d and placing it on run level, which is working and so i am able to start it on startup but after a while the service of my script is not running. It crashes on the middle after 5 minutes when the system is up and the code inside the script is just a line of rsync which i am sure is not the problem and so i have to invoke the script again to start it services? what is wrong with this? Can anyone help?? A: Check your /var/log/ directory for log entries -- I don't know upstart nearly as well as I should, but I hope it would kill any /etc/init.d/rc* task that runs for five minutes. init scripts should use start-stop-daemon to start specific programs that run for a long time. (That way, those same programs can be gracefully shut down at reboot or shutdown time.) But the scripts themselves should run in under a second or so. I'd suggest writing an actual upstart management script and placing it into /etc/init/ instead of fighting with an init script. I don't think upstart is going away :) so you might as well get used to it.

Thanks for reading these excerpts of the story that is my life. Comments are appreciated. Monthly Archives: April 2009 Oooh I love this discussion of Susan Boyle and should she get a makeover. I say yes, she’s going perform on stage, and people want to see your eyes. But that’s not the biggest reason I want her to have a makeover. I want her to have a full makeover (no surgery or shots) so people can be fully aware of just how much finesse, illusion, even, goes into what people think is beautiful. Call me shallow. I say polish her up. Well maybe better said, What I didn’t notice immediately. The most obvious was that she was probably trying to sell me on joining this new venture. Imagine how quick her turn-around would be if she went right home and started making calls to people she knew, right? The inner me is still not sure that’s what was happening, but the reasonable me has decided that the inner me is an idiot. But not That much of an idiot. I guess my suggesting what she had just bought into was quite likely a scam of some sort was tantamount to a pretty firm, “No, Thank you.” She’s excited. She’s so excited. She and her husband live comfortably, not luxuriously. They have lots of dogs they support, but no kids and no mortgage. He works nights, I can imagine they’d love to find something a little less draining than that with which to support themselves. Apparently this deal has two ways of producing income: first is you sell memberships to other people, secondly, the Company has some sort of agreement with big, reputable companies, to… To what? I still don’t understand what they do. She said she didn’t understand really either, but it involved third parties who did bill processing and credit card applications for companies like Best Buy, Dish Network, GE Security. It even involves taking current companies she might already work with (like cell phone companies, or cable companies- neither of which she uses) and running your account through the Company. That way, every month some money from her monthly bill would actually go back to her. So it must be that her opportunity for income growth is if she can convince lots of people to agree to run their current bills through XXX Company, and then a portion of their bills will go to her as well. They call that “Residuals”. If you get enough of those, you can be independently wealthy, and move up the rankings in the Company. I don’t quite understand what moving up the ranks does, but it seems to involve a Lexus. We got off the phone agreeing that we’d both go and do more research and we’d touch base in a day or so. As near as I can tell, this is a scam, but it’s legal. They sell the opportunity to sell products which a person could sell without the Company being the middle man. What the Company has, is a great polished looking website (although the phone number is never answered and the only thing one can buy on the website is merchandise with the Company logo on it), hope, and a subtle us/them attitude. Us is (with some exceptions) Christian, working-class men and women. Them is poor, lazy, uninspired or cynical people who don’t believe in anything (much less their dreams) and are afraid to ‘think outside the box’. So hope and gullibility are two aspects necessary for this thing to fly, the third is self-doubt. I frequently don’t understand things. But if I ask a few questions and I pay attention, I can understand almost any business model or philosophy. My adult self knows this, but my inner child self secretly is embarrassed to say when I don’t understand something. This happens to many people, I think. I know when I asked Honey about it, she repeatedly said she didn’t really understand it, but that she’d be learning more. My philosophy really is, if you can’t explain it to someone else, you don’t understand it. If someone wants you to get involved in something you don’t understand, they are trying to scam you. I’m thinking about calling her back and asking more questions to see if I can get a better handle on what the hell makes her want to do this. I’m thinking about calling the Company to see what they hell they SAY they sell. How can a website not give the user any idea of what in god’s name their business is? It’s weird, I keep thinking I must be missing something. It’s like eating styrofoam. There seems to be structure there, it’s even a little crunchy, but something really important seems to be missing… One cool thing is that if I publish the company name, my readership will spike and tons of people will come on and call me a DreamKiller and rant about how ignorant I am. I’m thinking about it, but I don’t want any trouble to come to Honey. There are lots of things people believe which I cannot make myself believe. I only rarely try to make people unbelieve. Religion, for example I don’t mess with usually because it’s important to so many people, and just like proselytizing, anti-proselytizing makes you seem like a jerk. It would get way too exhausting. On the other hand, there are times when I try really hard to convince someone of my point of view, when I cannot do so. I had one of those this week when my tenant called me out of the blue. She and her husband are darlings. I love having them for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that they always pay the rent early and she always includes a hand written letter with the check. These letters are pleasant and informative, if a bit weird. She tells me about the wildlife they’ve seen this month, neighborhood activities and how their life is going in general. They’re usually about a page or two long, and generously sprinkled with happy-faces, hearts and exclamation points. Honey (not too far from her actual name) called just to let me know about a program she and her husband had gotten involved in. The description was a bit fuzzy to me, but I never claimed to be a genius. She talked about paying 300 dollars to buy into the program, and that if she sells 3 memberships, she’ll make her money back. Everything after the first three is pure profit. I said I didn’t understand what she would be selling memberships in, was it a discount club? Was it an investment club? She said she didn’t understand exactly how it worked, but she was going to a meeting where they would explain it all to her. From the get-go it sounded like a pyramid scheme, aka a multi-level marketing scheme, aka a Ponzi scheme… It sounded to me like a text-book scam. I told her this. She laughed and said she still had a number of questions about it and she’d be checking it all out. While I was talking with her, I plugged the name she gave me into google. It popped up with lots and lots of hits. 33 thousand hits. A fair number of them were alerts from people saying the company was a scam. Didn’t sound like a good deal to me. I like Honey, so I told her I had done a quick google search on(XXXX) (the company she was joining), and it didn’t look reputable. She was a little taken aback, but soldiered on, talking about how nice the people were, how they went out of their way to help her out, although they wouldn’t get any proffit from her. I asked her the key question one needs to ask in a situation like this, “Honey, is there anything I could tell you that would convince you this wasn’t a good idea? ” Her heart was already set on this path. I could tell. I should have let it go. I got off the phone, promising to look into it further, and extracting from her a promise that she would as well. Why did I do that? I was only going to be convinced I was right, and she was only going to be convinced that she was right. Ok, lets go over the things I like about this place and the things I don’t like. Like: Truckloads of fruit coming to the market every day: oranges and pineapples by the truckoad, and fruit trees growing on every street. Bats drinking out of the pool at Las Sabilas. Birds drinking out of the pool: at dusk, the bats would start to fly around and eat mosquitos. Sometimes they’d detour on their fly-bys and dip into the pool for a drink and leave a little ripple. Street food vendors 50 cent beers for the locals Flowers that change color during the day brown-eyed babies, curvy Mexicanas and bedroom-eyed Mexicanos Jasper swimming in the pool chilaquiles: Jasper’s favorite breakfast food in Mexico. Deep-fried tortilla strips in chile sauce, sprinkled with cheese. Served with tortillas and frijoles. Tastes a lot like chilli-cheese freetos. A lttle heavy for my tastes at breakfast. carne de cerdo en chile: Pork swimming in a red-chile tomatillo sauce which was out of the world. We had nary a bite of cumin in our travels for those of you who object to it. jugo de naranja: fresh orange juice jugo de piña: fresh pineapple juice aguas frescas: Lime, or orange, or rice, or tamarind, or grapefruit or other random ‘ades’ with spices or not. Quite refreshing in the hot sun. gorditaas con carnitas y salsa verde: street vendor selling hand-made tortillas grilled to melt the cheese with meat and tomatillo salsa. The cheese and tortilla were browned and nothing less than heavenly. Don’t like: Not being able to throw the toilet paper in the toilet, instead having to throw it into the trash after using it: Mexican plumbing can’t handle toilet paper. There are some habits which are very ingrained. Toilet habits rank among those. Buses and trucks driving on side-streets: buses and trucks make loud, loud noises. When they drive past you on a side street, or hit the air breaks, it can be very jarring. More than once Jasper jumped and covered his ears. not knowing the tip protocol: according to my sources, one should tip a waitress, and the person who cleans one’s room. But the taxi-driver does not expect to be tipped. It’s really a hard situation when you just don’t know what’s polite. itchy spots from the sun: our swarthy guide didn’t really buy our excuses about not being able to stay in the sun longer than a couple hours. People with sun-friendly skin just don’t get it. They think you might just be out of shape or lazy. no door on the bathroom: your family might be close enough to not mind sharing a room while pooping. Mine isn’t. We’re not even striving for that. We like a closed door between the pooper and the outside world. This required ingenuity on our part. We started to discretely ask each other for “private bathroom time” wherein the entire hotel room was off limits to family members not using the bathroom. sleeping in a bed that isn’t mine machine gun toting guards: mostly at the banks or jewelry stores $1.50 beers for the Gringos: knowing about this instance makes one feel uneasy in every other commercial interaction. chilaquiles: Jasper’s favorite breakfast food in Mexico. Deep-fried tortilla strips in chile sauce, sprinkled with cheese. Served with tortillas and frijoles. Tastes a lot like chilli-cheese freetos. A lttle heavy for my tastes at breakfast. String mops: String-mops may be the root of all evil. I’ve never seen them leave a floor cleaner than when they arrived on the scene. I’m somewhat of a freak when it comes to cleaning a floor. This caused some tension in our relationship with the maid. Acres and acres of Chinese-made crap being pedaled: street markets would pop up spontaneously in the night while we slept. We’d go out walk through, smell and eat the street-venders’ wares and get out. How many shoes can one world need? We saw enough shoes in our trip that i am comfortable adding shoes to my list of things which need a moratorium of their production. By 6 in the evening, they’d be gone. Even the trash was gone. Cucarachas: only saw 3 on this trip. This is a record as far as latin american countries. we usually see many many more. deformed and disabled beggars : these put a damper on many a walk-about. Jasper found it unconscionable that people without arms or legs, or both, would be left to beg for coins on the street. The only way he’d leave the hotel room was with a pocket full of change. Jasper asks important questions like, “how does that guy even get to the corner? He’s just like a basketball with a head. Someone must bring him in a wagon.” When I asked my Mexican acquaintances how they handled talking about the beggars with their kids, they couldn’t understand the question.

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Aneurysmal Fibrous Histiocytoma: Clinicopathology Analysis of 30 Cases of a Rare Variant of Cutaneous Fibrohistiocytoma. Aneurysmal fibrous histiocytoma is often clinically misdiagnosed. In this study, we put forward an insight on how to help diagnose this disease clinically. A retrospective chart review was performed on all patients diagnosed with aneurysmal fibrous histiocytoma from 2007 to 2017 in the Department of Dermatology, Union Hospital, China, and all clinical data were collected from the hospital archives. From a total of 418 patients diagnosed with cutaneous fibrous histiocytoma, only 30 patients were confirmed to have aneurysmal fibrous histiocytoma out of which only 2 patients were clinically diagnosed with aneurysmal fibrous histiocytoma. The remaining 28 patients were diagnosed with various types of vascular tumors although pathology classified them as having aneurysmal fibrous histiocytoma. Among the 30 patients, 9 were male and 21 were female. There were following age groups: 13-19 (mean 16, n=4), 20-29 (mean 26.25, n=8), 30-39 (mean 33, n=7), 40-49 (mean 44, n=4), 50-59 (mean 56.75, n=4), 60 and above (mean 61, n=3). Tumors were present on the head, neck, back, waist, hips and upper and lower extremities. After complete excision, there was no recurrence and no complications. Histologically, lesions showed the typical pseudoangiomatoid spaces without endothelial lining and infiltration of fibrohistiocytes in hemosiderotic pigmentation. It was suggested that although the prognosis of aneurysmal fibrous histiocytoma is good, accurate diagnosis is paramount to avoid clinical misdiagnosis and subsequent complications.

Triptych image: Jesse Chehak, “Blame the Sun” WHEN MAX HORKHEIMER took over the Institute for Social Research in 1930 and brought together a group of thinkers that included Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse in what would become known as the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, they had no inkling that later generations of the school would include feminists. Yet in Fortunes of Feminism, Nancy Fraser looks back at the history of second-wave feminism while being, at the same time, a prominent second-wave feminist and a prominent member of the Frankfurt School’s third generation. She has a somewhat easier time than Horkheimer and Adorno. When they began their work, they had long ago given up on the proletariat revolution that Marx had predicted. Not only had the European working class failed to execute their “historic task” of ushering in socialism, many were rapidly becoming fascists. Much of the Frankfurt School’s initial efforts, then, were spent deriving the position from which a critical theory of society was at all possible. Marx and Lukács thought they could take up the standpoint of the proletariat to decipher the future of capitalism and predict its demise, but how did one ground a critical theory of society once one gave up on the working class? By the end of their lives, Horkheimer and Adorno had expanded their critique of capitalism into a critique of Western “instrumentalist” reason in general, thereby making it unclear not only from what standpoint they were speaking, but also to whom they were speaking. For Fraser, Marx’s 1843 definition of a critical social theory remains more apt: “the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age.” Critical theories, she thinks, take up explicitly partisan standpoints informed by particular social movements: in her case, second-wave feminism. The task of such theories is therefore two-fold. First, from their partisan perspectives, they must articulate the pathologies and injustices of capitalist societies and map the route toward overcoming those pathologies and injustices. Second, they must serve as the consciences of their own social movements, as sources for critical self-reflection. It goes without saying that Fraser’s view is not the only way to articulate the position of a critical social theory. Her comember in the Frankfurt School’s third generation, Axel Honneth, thinks it is a mistake to take one’s theoretical framework from whatever social movements happen to grab the existing social imagination. But as the previously published essays reprinted in Fortunes of Feminism make clear, Fraser sees in second-wave feminism a considerable series of insights into “the struggles and wishes of the age,” and in critical theory considerable contributions to feminism’s necessary self-criticism. Fraser sees the trajectory of the second-wave feminism as a play in three acts. In her rendition, the first act is centered on the effort to expose and eliminate gender injustice in post-World War II capitalist societies. Inspired by liberalism, socialism, Marxism, and the like, feminists sought to eliminate legal, economic, and political barriers to women’s opportunities and to abolish their inequality with men. Nevertheless, feminism’s second act lost its way, Fraser thinks. Inspired now by Derrida, Lacan, and other pro-structuralists and in sync with the rise of neoliberal economics, feminists turned to cultural issues and identity politics. Indeed, rather than focusing on equality, they now demanded recognition for women’s difference from men and for their unique attitudes and strengths. This brings us to the present day and what Fraser perceives as the start of act three, for which she has high hopes. “We could see a reinvigorated feminism join other emancipatory forces aiming to subject runaway markets to democratic control,” she writes in her introduction. The reprinted essays that follow are representative contributions she has made to each of these acts. In the first act, Fraser sees her role as being a critic of a significant lacuna within the tradition of critical theory: women’s subordination. The first essay in Fortunes of Feminism is the 1985 article, “What’s Critical about Critical Theory: The Case of Habermas and Gender.” Here Fraser examines the double analytic perspective that Jürgen Habermas, the most famous member of the Frankfurt School’s second generation, uses to clarify the tensions of post-World War II capitalist societies. Habermas argues that such societies can be seen as lifeworlds, on the one hand, and as systems, on the other. Under the former perspective, societies appear as contexts of shared traditions and common value orientations. These are the resources necessary to “symbolic integration,” or in other words, to the ability of members of the society to come to understandings with one another, coordinate their actions, and socialize succeeding generations. But societies can also be seen as self-regulating systems in which the integration of actions and intentions happen behind the backs of actors, as it were, in terms of the consequences of those actions and intentions. Here integration is non-direct and non-communicative, the result of the “invisible hand” of the economy, on the one hand, and the power embedded in the administrative state, on the other. Habermas does not think complex societies can do without such “system-functions;” nonetheless, he is concerned with the way they “colonize” or take over functions of the lifeworld: the bureaucratic imperatives of the administrative state and the monetary values of the economy intrude on lifeworld contexts, divorcing them from communicative contexts, and damaging them in the process. Consider, for example, the intrusion of economic imperatives into universities, their missions directed by market strategies and the intrusion of bureaucratic imperatives into people’s lives, now molded by the benefits they might receive. Foucault called the effects of these imperatives “normalizing.” For Habermas, the family is a prime lifeworld context, one increasingly encroached upon by the constraints of the public economy and normalizing bureaucratic imperatives. Yet Fraser thinks it is a mistake to see the family in this way. We do not understand families adequately, she suggests, if we see them only as “havens in a heartless world.” Instead, we need to understand them as institutions that straddle lifeworld and system. They are sites of labor-exchanges (unpaid in the case of household work that women typically perform) and economic distributions (typically controlled by male heads of households). Consequently, to conceive of emancipatory struggles as struggles against the colonization of the lifeworld, as Habermas does, can serve an ideological function. With regard to the family, we risk supporting and reinstating a domain, not of free and equal communicative action, but of male domination and female subordination. As Fraser puts the point, a critical theory that wishes to avoid this danger must be careful not to “put the male-headed nuclear family and the state-regulated official economy on two opposite sides of the major categorical divide.” What categorial framework does Fraser think can do better? What sort of theoretical perspective from the horizon of second-wave feminism can provide a better diagnosis of post-World War II capitalist societies? Fraser offers a first stab in her 1989 “Struggle over Needs: Outline of a Socialist-Feminist Critical Theory of Late-Capitalist Political Culture.” Here she focuses on the question of how “late-capitalist” societies determine which desires are to count, which social needs are the political state’s responsibility to meet. Her answer is a tripartite model, the first aspect of which involves “the socio-cultural ‘means of interpretation and communication’” or, in other words, the particular set of interpretive resources a given society has for raising claims about what people need and for showing the legitimacy of those claims. The model is also meant to allow us to locate the boundaries in the society between political, economic, and domestic dimensions of life. Finally, the model presents needs as sites of struggle over these boundaries: that is, the economic and domestic relations of power at any given time will work to keep needs from crossing economic and/or domestic boundaries, and thereby become political issues. Thus, the insistence that domestic battery is a private issue between husband and wife and day-care an economic issue between worker and employer. Even when activists have succeeded in resetting the boundaries between political, economic and domestic dimensions of life — in the form of laws against domestic battery, for example — these boundaries can be un-set, in a sense. We can pathologize domestic batterers and their victims, reducing them to fodder for therapy rather than criminal justice. To be sure, as a way to understand struggles over needs, it is not entirely clear what exactly Fraser’s model adds. Her Foucauldian caution that expert discourses can depoliticize needs is well taken. Nevertheless, we can surely understand struggles over needs without an “outline of a socialist-feminist critical theory of late-capitalist political culture.” In Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Miranda Fricker does fine with simple narrative. Take Fricker’s example of unwanted advances in the workplace. Before feminists and activists took up the issue, the available discursive resources (“the socio-cultural means of interpretation and communication”) did not yet include the language of sexual harassment. Rather, unwanted advances were more often understood as innocent flirtations about which women were meant to have or to cultivate a sense of humor. Countless workshops and consciousness-raising sessions were necessary to develop a more adequate understanding. Fraser’s model sees these workshops as attempts to shift the boundaries between economic and political arenas. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how her model clarifies or how it adds to our understanding of struggles over needs. And it remains unclear how it contributes to a critical theory of “late-capitalist political culture.” If these two articles illustrate Fraser’s role in what she sees as the first act of second-wave feminism, what about her contributions to the second? Two articles from this part of Fortunes of Feminism are illustrative, the first of her critical interventions and the second of her programmatic views. Fraser sees the “cultural” turn she thinks feminism took in the 1990s as a mistake. Feminists too narrowly focused on women’s difference from men and too eagerly turned to poststructuralist theories. They did so, Fraser thinks, at the expense of the institutional analyses and attention to political economy that she says characterized second-wave feminism’s first act. In “Against Symbolicism: The Uses and Abuses of Lacanianism for Feminist Politics,” she recalls her “severe puzzlement” and “growing incomprehension as a large and influential body of feminist scholars created an interpretation of Jacques Lacan’s theory of the symbolic order, which they sought to use for feminist purposes.” What disturbed Fraser was not so much Lacan’s work itself, but rather the version of his work that she thinks feminists took up: hence, her reference to Lacanianism rather than Lacan in her title. The merit of Lacanianism is that it shows gender to be a “discursive construction;” sexual identity, the recognition that one is a man or a woman, is no longer based on biology, but on the process of identification, language, and socialization, in which the child learns society’s rules and becomes a subject. In taking on the identity the society prescribes, the child enters the symbolic order, governed by the incest taboo or what Lacan calls “the law of the Father.” Subjugation to that law and becoming a subject are thus one and the same. Given the law’s phallocentric tilt, women are pretty much condemned. This analysis is too culturally and historically unspecific for Fraser. What we need from discourse theory are insights into how our social identities are formed and altered over time, how social groups form and disintegrate over time, how dominant groups retain their cultural dominance, and what our prospects are for emancipatory change. Foucault, Bourdieu, Bakhtin, Gramsci, and Habermas can help us toward these insights, she insists; Lacan, Kristeva, Saussure, and Derrida cannot. The ahistorical and acultural bent of Lacanianism has consequences: it reduces gender inequality to a matter of language and culture, neglects socio-economic issues, and leaves women without any prospects for change. Not that Fraser wants to ignore questions of gender identity completely. Instead, in “Feminist Politics in the Age of Recognition: A Two-Dimensional Approach to Gender Justice,” she argues for a two-dimensional conception of gender. Gender organizes a status hierarchy that permeates popular culture and everyday interactions and does so according to what Fraser calls “androcentric value patterns.” These patterns elicit misrecognition and are the source of oppositional struggles for recognition, played out on the terrain of culture. But gender also structures the division between paid productive and unpaid domestic work, and, within paid productive work, it also largely dictates the division between higher-paid manufacturing and professional occupations and lower-paid “pink collar” occupations. These divisions elicit distributive inequalities, played out on the economic terrain. The causes of misrecognition cannot be derived from the structure of maldistribution, nor vice versa. An adequate feminist theory, she writes, must allow for two independent analytic perspectives in order to deal with issues of redistribution and recognition. How? Here Fraser turns to a principle of what she terms participatory parity. A just society, she says, is one in which all its members can participate as peers or on par with all other participants. Participatory parity requires social policies and actions that acknowledge the legitimacy of claims to recognition without increasing economic inequality. And it requires social policies that achieve fairness in the distribution of resources without increasing failures in status recognition. Take, for example, redistributive policies aimed at reducing female poverty. To the extent that such policies stigmatize certain women as unproductive “welfare mothers” and pit them against hard-working taxpayers, they feed into status problems of misrecognition. Conversely, policies restricting certain kinds of sex work may enhance the status of women at the expense of the economic welfare of sex workers themselves. The upshot, according to Fraser, is the need for a double slogan: no redistribution without recognition and no recognition without redistribution. Support for poor women must be accomplished on a neutral basis, such as unemployment insurance, in order to avoid status problems. Efforts to curtail demeaning views of women must be accomplished through educational means that do not threaten livelihoods. These results are certainly desirable. But surely the paradigms of redistribution and recognition mirror Habermas’s distinction between system and lifeworld, the very distinction Fraser criticized in 1985. Moreover, if redistribution and recognition provide different analytic perspectives on society, why these perspectives and why only two? Honneth asks a similar question in his “The Point of Recognition: A Rejoinder to the Rejoinder,” which is part of his exchange with Fraser in Redistribution or Recognition: A Political Philosophical Exchange (2003). Why not consider political and legal perspectives as well? Does the possibility of participation as a peer not also include a political condition determining who can make claims about distribution or recognition on whom and in accordance with what procedures? Fraser concedes this point in her most recent work, which she presents in Fortunes of Feminism as a contribution to second-wave feminism’s third act. “Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World,” first published in 2005, argues that such questions become especially pertinent in the heyday of globalization. “Predator states and transnational private powers” signal the demise of what Fraser refers to as the “Keynesian-Westphalian frame,” or territorial-state system. We can no longer simply assume we know the context within which issues of recognition and redistribution are to be settled, and we therefore need to attend to the political dimension of representation and misrepresentation; in particular, we need to attend to the possibility of “misframing” where those setting political boundaries can disenfranchise others who are thereby barred from raising legitimate claims. Fraser thus enlarges her standard of participatory parity. She now says that we need not only a standard from which we can adjudicate claims to economic fairness and status recognition, but, in addition, a standard from which we can adjudicate claims about who can raise such claims and to whom. The appropriate slogan now is “no redistribution or recognition without representation.” Presumably, we can therefore revise Fraser’s earlier analysis of welfare mothers and sex workers. What both need is the assurance of political representation and hence enhanced democratic structures and institutions. Once we extend our gaze beyond the United States to women of the global South, sex workers in the tourist trade and so on, it becomes clear that enhancing democratic structures must proceed in both national and international arenas. Fortunes of Feminism is not without its problems. Despite Fraser’s rationale for republishing these essays, some readers will still find it odd that the book includes not just previously published essays, but previously published essays she has already republished in her own previous books. Others may question her focus on conceptual models, on finding the overarching analytic perspectives for illuminating the whole of modern capitalist societies. Might this aim be quixotic? Or the resulting models less illuminating than she thinks? In the introduction to Redistribution or Recognition: A Political-Philosophical Exchange, Fraser and Honneth write that despite the differences their cowritten book illuminates, they share “above all, the ambition to connect the usually discrete levels of moral philosophy, social theory, and political analysis in a critical theory of capitalist society.” They continue: In this respect we part company from many of our friends and colleagues who also identify with the tradition of Critical Theory. Whereas most of them now tend to assume a disciplinary division of labor, assigning moral theory to the philosophers, social theory to the sociologists, and political analysis to the political scientists […] both of us aspire to theorize capitalist society as a “totality.” Yet though Fraser thus takes up the mantel of “grand theory,” it is not clear that her theoretical models as are illuminating as her utopian vision. Habermas’s analytic framework of system and lifeworld tells us where to look for tensions in modern capitalist societies, and it directs us to work to protect and enhance important areas of communal life against the incursions of money and power. It is not clear that Fraser’s theoretical models have the same effect. Do we need them to see that we ought to recognize people different from ourselves, that we ought to work to minimize unconscionable disparities in wealth, and that we ought to try to improve democratic institutions and procedures within states and international organizations? Undoubtedly not. But it is, nonetheless, a pleasure to watch, in Fortunes of Feminism, an important contemporary critical theorist at work, attempting to clarify, as time goes by, “the struggles and wishes of the age.” ¤ Georgia Warnke is Professor of political science, University of California, Riverside

Warning: Use of undefined constant �DISABLE_WP_CRON� - assumed '�DISABLE_WP_CRON�' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/c4136/public_html/wp-config.php on line 12 Warning: Use of undefined constant �xmlrpc_enabled� - assumed '�xmlrpc_enabled�' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/c4136/public_html/wp-config.php on line 40 Warning: Use of undefined constant �__return_false� - assumed '�__return_false�' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/c4136/public_html/wp-config.php on line 40Getting at the truth Search this site Escape from Paradise, – Now being made into a movie! Click! The book’s sensational reviews! “It took me two and a half evenings to complete your un-put-downable book…it is a unique contribution to the appreciation of a life in Singapore. Thank you for having written it.”C. V. Devan Nair, former President of Singapore. “Bought the book from Select this weekend and can’t put it down! 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This includes a commitment from a CPA firm who does tax credit financing in Ireland, a possible location to film, as part of the package needed for investors – along with the CPA firm’s commitment to apply for and finance the tax credits if ThunderBall does shoot in Ireland and what portion of the budget they would provide. For inquiries, please contact John Harding at jbharding@gmail.com. Pam Bondi Defense Argument Pam Bondi: (00:00) Senators, members of the Senate. When the house managers gave you their presentation, when their submitted their brief, they repeatedly referenced Hunter Biden and Burisma. They spoke to you for over 21 hours and they referenced Biden or Burisma over 400 times and when they gave these presentations, they said there was nothing, nothing to see. It was a sham. This is fiction. In their trial memorandum the house managers describe this as baseless. Now, why did they say that? Why did they invoke Biden or Burisma over 400 times? Pam Bondi: (01:02) The reason they needed to do that is because they are here saying that the president must be impeached and removed from office for raising a concern and that’s why we have to talk about this today. They say sham, they say baseless because they say this because if it’s okay for someone to say, “Hey, you know what? Maybe there’s something here worth raising.” Then their case crumbles because they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there is no basis to raise this concern, but that’s not what public records show. Pam Bondi: (01:49) Here are just a few of the public sources that flagged questions surrounding this very same issue. The United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office, deputy assistant secretary of state, George Kent. Hunter Biden’s former business associate and ABC white house reporter. Good morning America, ABC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Ukrainian Law Enforcement, and the Obama State Department itself. They all raised this issue. We would prefer not to be talking about this. We would prefer not to be discussing this, but the house managers have placed this squarely at issue, so we must address it. Pam Bondi: (02:47) Let’s look at the facts. In early 2014 Joe Biden, our vice president of the United States, led the United States foreign policy in Ukraine with the goal of rooting out corruption. According to an annual study published by Transparency International, during this time, Ukraine was one of the most corrupt countries in the entire world. In Ukraine, there’s a natural gas company called Burisma. Burisma has been owned by an oligarch named Mykola Zlochevsky. Pam Bondi: (03:22) Here’s what happened very shortly after vice president Biden was made US point man for Ukraine. His son, Hunter Biden ends up on the board of Burisma working for and paid by the oligarch Zlochevsky. In February 2014 in the wake of anti-corruption uprising by the people of Ukraine, Zlochevsky flees the country fleas, Ukraine. Zlochevsky the oligarch is well known. George Kent, the very first witness that the Democrats called during their public hearings testified. So Zlochevsky stood out for his self dealings even among other oligarchs. House managers didn’t tell you that. Pam Bondi: (04:17) Ambassador Kurt Volker explained that Burisma had a “very bad reputation as a company for corruption and money laundering.” House managers didn’t tell you that. Burisma was so corrupt that George Kent said he intervened to prevent USAID from cosponsoring an event with Burisma. Do you know what this event was? It was a child contest and the prize was a camera. They were so bad, Burisma that our country wouldn’t even co-sponsor a children’s event with Burisma. Pam Bondi: (05:07) In March 2014 the United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office opened some money laundering investigation into the oligarch Zlochevsky and his company Burisma. The very next month, April 2014 according to a public report, Hunter Biden quietly joins the board of Burisma. Remember early 2014 was when vice president Biden began leading Ukraine policy. Here’s how Hunter Biden came to join Burisma’s board in April 2014. He was brought on the board by Devon Archer, his business partner, Devon Archer was college roommates with Chris Heinz, stepson of secretary of state, John Kerry. Pam Bondi: (05:54) All three men, Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, and Chris Heinz had all started an investment firm together. Public records show that April 16th, 2014 Devon Archer meets with vice president Biden at the white house. Just two days later, on April 18th, 2014 is when Hunter Biden quietly joins Burisma according to public reporting. Remember, this is just one month after the United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office open a money laundering case into Burisma, Hunter Biden joins their board. And not only 10 days after Hunter Biden joins the board, British authorities seizes $23 million in British bank accounts connected to the oligarch Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma. Pam Bondi: (06:57) Did Hunter Biden leave the board then? No. The British authorities also announced that it had started a criminal investigation into potential money laundering. Did Hunter Biden leave the board? No. What happened was then only then did the company choose to announce that Hunter Biden had joined the board after the assets of Burisma and its oligarch owners Zlochevsky were frozen and a criminal investigation had begun. Pam Bondi: (07:38) Hunter Biden’s decision to join Burisma raised flags almost immediately. One article from May, 2014 stated the appointment of Joe Biden’s son to the board of Ukrainian gas firm Burisma has raised eyebrows the world over. Even an outlet with bias for Democrats pointed out Hunter Biden’s activities created a conflict of interest for Joe Biden. The article stated the move raises questions about a potential conflict of interest for Joe Biden. Pam Bondi: (08:20) Now even Chris Heinz, Hunter Biden’s own business partner had grave concerns. He thought that working with Burisma was unacceptable. This is Chris Heinz. He was worried about the corruption, the geopolitical risk and how bad it would look. So he wisely distances himself from Hunter Biden and Devon Archer’s appointments to Burisma. He didn’t simply call his step-father secretary-of-state and say, “I have a problem with this.” He didn’t tell his friends, “Hey guys, I’m not getting on the board. I want nothing to do with this.” He went so far as to send an email to senior state department officials about this issue. This Chris Heinz? Pam Bondi: (09:17) He wrote, apparently Devon and Hunter have joined the board of Burisma and a press release went out today. I can’t speak to why they decided to, but there is no investment by our firm in their company. What did Hunter Biden do? He stayed on the board. What did Chris Heinz do? He subsequently stopped doing business with his college roommate, Devon Archer and his friend Hunter Biden. Chris Heinz spokesperson said the lack of judgment in this matter was a major catalyst for Mr. Heinz ending his business relationship with Mr. Archer and Mr. Biden. Now the media also noticed the same day and ABC news reporter ask Obama White House press secretary Jay Carney about it. Here’s what happened. Speaker 1: (10:14) Hunter Biden has now taken a position with the largest oil and gas holding company in Ukraine. Is there any concern about at least the appearance of a conflict there? The vice president’s son taking- Jay Carney: (10:28) I would refer you to the vice president’s office. I saw those reports. Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family are obviously private citizens and where they work does not reflect an endorsement by the administration or by the vice president or president. But I would refer you to the vice president’s office. Pam Bondi: (10:52) The next day the Washington Post ran a story about it. It said, the appointment of the vice president’s son to a Ukrainian oil board look… Pam Bondi: (11:03) … Of the vice president’s son to a Ukrainian oil board looks nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst.” Again, “The appointment of the vice president’s son to a Ukrainian oil board looks nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst.” And the media didn’t stop questioning asking questions here. It kept going, here’s ABC. Joe Biden: (11:27) You have to fight the cancer of corruption. Speaker 2: (11:32) But then something strange happened. Just three weeks later, a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, accused of corruption appoints hunter Biden, seen here in their promotional videos, to their board of directors, paying his firm more than a million dollars a year. Pam Bondi: (11:52) Here’s more from ABC. Continued on. Speaker 2: (11:55) Ukraine wasn’t the only country where Hunter Biden’s business and his father’s diplomacy as vice president intersected. It also happened in China. Speaker 2: (12:03) This video shows Chinese diplomats greeting Vice President Biden as you arrived in Beijing in December of 2013. Right by his side? His son, Hunter. Less than two weeks later, Hunter’s firm had new business, creating an investment fund in China involving the government controlled bank of China with reports they hoped to raise one $1.5 Billion. Pam Bondi: (12:29) In fact, every witness who was asked about Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma agreed there was a potential appearance of a conflict of interest. Multiple house Democrat witnesses, including those from the Department of State, the National Security Council, and others unanimously testified there was a potential appearance of a conflict of interest. These were their witnesses. Pam Bondi: (13:03) How much money did Hunter Biden get for being on the board? Well, you start looking at this bank records. According to reports, between April, 2014 and October, 2015, Burisma paid more than $3.1 million to Devin Archer and Hunter Biden. That’s over the course of a year and a half. How do we know this? Some of Devin Archer’s bank records were disclosed during an unrelated federal criminal case, having nothing to do with Hunter Biden. These bank records show 17 months that Burisma wired two payments of $83,333, not just for one month, for two months, for three months, but for 17 months. According to Reuters, sources report that of the two payments of $83,333 each, one was for a Hunter Biden and one Devin Archer. Pam Bondi: (14:09) Now, Hunter Biden was paid significantly more than board members for major US Fortune 100 companies such as Goldman Sachs, Comcast, Citigroup. The typical board member of these Fortune 100 companies … We know they’re titans of their industry, they’re highly qualified, and as such, they’re well compensated. Even so, Hunter Biden was paid significantly more. This is how well he was compensated. Hunter Biden is paid over $83,000 a month while the average American family of four during that time, each year made less than $54,000, and that’s according to US Census Bureau during that time. Pam Bondi: (15:06) And this is what’s been reported about his work on the board. The Washington post said, “What specific duties Hunter Biden carried out for Burisma are not fully known.” The New Yorker reported, “Once or twice a year, he attended Burisma board meetings and energy forums that took place in Europe.” When speaking with ABC News about his qualifications to be on Burisma’s board, Hunter Biden didn’t point to any of the usual qualifications of a board member. Hunter Biden and had no experience in natural gas, no experience in the energy sector, no experience with Ukrainian regulatory affairs. As far as we know, he doesn’t speak Ukrainian. So, naturally, the media has asked questions about his board membership. Why was Hunter Biden on this board? Pam Bondi: (16:02) If your last name wasn’t Biden, do you think you would have been asked to be on the board of Burisma? Hunter Biden: (16:07) I don’t know. I don’t know, probably not. Pam Bondi: (16:11) So, let’s go back and talk about his time on the board. Remember he joined Burisma’s board April, 2014, while the United Kingdom had an open money laundering case against Burisma and its owner, the oligarch Zlochevsky. On August 20th, 2014, four months later, the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office initiates a money laundering investigation into the same oligarch, Zlochevsky. This is one of 15 investigations into Burisma and Zlochevsky. Pam Bondi: (16:48) According to a recent public statement made by the current prosecutor general, on January 16, 2015, prosecutors put Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, on whose Hunter Biden sat on his board, on the country’s wanted list for fraud, while Hunter Biden’s on the board. Then a British court orders Zlochevsky’s $23 million in assets be unfrozen. Why was the money unfrozen? Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent testified to it. Jay Carney: (17:29) Somebody in the general prosecutor’s office of Ukraine shut the case, issued a letter to his lawyer, and that money went poof. Pam Bondi: (17:44) He also testified that the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office’s actions led to the unfreezing of the assets. After George Kent’s confirmation, that prosecutor was out. Victor Shokin becomes the prosecutor general. This is the prosecutor that you’ll hear about later, the one that Vice President Biden has publicly said he wanted out of office. In addition to flagging questions about previous prosecutor’s actions, George Kent also specifically voiced other concerns, this time to the vice president’s office about Hunter Biden. In February, 2015, he raised concerns about Hunter Biden to Vice President Biden’s office. Jay Carney: (18:32) In a briefing call with the national security staff of the office of the vice president in February of 2015, I raised my concern that Hunter Biden’s status as a board member could create the perception of a conflict of interest. Pam Bondi: (18:46) But House managers didn’t tell you that. This is all while Hunter Biden’s sat on Burisma’s board. Did Hunter Biden stop working for Burisma? No. Did Vice President Biden stop leading the Obama administration’s foreign policy efforts in Ukraine? No. In the meantime, Vice President Biden is still at the forefront of the US Ukraine policy. He pledges $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine contingent on its progress in rooting out corruption. Around the same time with the $1 billion announcement, other people raised the issue of a conflict. As special Obama administration special envoy for energy policy told the New Yorker, it raised Hunter Biden’s participation on the board of Burisma. He raised it directly with the vice president himself. This is a special Envoy to president Obama, and the media had questions too. December 8, 2015, the New York Times publishes an article that Prosecutor General Shokin was investigating Burisma and its owner, Zlochevsky. The Times report, here’s their quote. “The credibility of the vice president’s anti-corruption message may have been undermined by the association of his son, Hunter Biden,” with Barisma and its owner, Zlochevsky. Pam Bondi: (20:24) And it wasn’t just one reporter who asked questions about the line between Burisma and the Obama administration. As we learned recently through reporting on Fox news, on January 19th, 2016, there was a meeting between Obama administration officials and Ukrainian prosecutors. Ken Vogel, journalist for the New York Times, asked the State Department about this meeting. He wanted more information about the meeting, “where US support for prosecutions of Burisma holdings in the United Kingdom in Ukraine were discussed,” but the story never ran. Pam Bondi: (21:07) Around the time of the reported story, January, 2016, meeting between the Obama administration and Ukrainian officials took place according to a Ukrainian press report, as translated says. “The US Department of State made it clear to the Ukrainian authorities that it was linking the $1 billion in loan guarantees to the dismissal of prosecutor general Victor Shokin.” Pam Bondi: (21:39) Now, we all know from the Obama administration and from the words of Vice President Biden himself, he advocated for the prosecutor general’s dismissal. There was ongoing investigation into the oligarch, Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, at the time. We know this because on February 2nd, 2016, the Ukrainian … Pam Bondi: (22:03) … 2, 2016, the Ukrainian prosecutor general obtained a renewal of a court order to seize the Ukrainian oligarch’s assets. A Kiev Post article published on February 4th, 2016 says, the oligarch Zlochevsky is, quote, suspected of committing a criminal offense of elicit enrichment, end quote. Over the next few weeks, the vice president had multiple calls with Ukraine’s President Poroshenko. Days after the last call on February 4th … 24th, 2016, a D.C. consultant reached out to the State Department to request a meeting to discuss Burisma. We know what she said because the email was released under the Freedom Of Information Act. The consultant explicitly invoked Hunter Biden’s name as a board member. In an email summarizing the call, the State Department official says that the consultant quote, noted that two high profile citizens are affiliated with the company, including Hunter Biden as a board member, end quote. She added that the consultant would, quote like to talk with Under Secretary Of State Novelli about getting a better understanding of how the U.S. Came to the determination that the country is corrupt, end quote. Pam Bondi: (23:28) To be clear, this email documents that the U.S. government had determined Burisma to be corrupt. And the consultant was seeking a meeting with an extremely senior State Department official to discuss the U.S. government’s position. Her pitch for the meeting specifically used Hunter Biden’s name, and according to the email, the meeting was set for a few days later. And later that month, on March 29th, 2016, the Ukrainian parliament finally votes to fire the prosecutor general. This is the prosecutor general investigating the oligarch, owner of Burisma, on whose board Hunter Biden sat. Two days after the prosecutor general is voted out, Vice President Biden announces that the U.S. will provide $335 million in security assistance to Ukraine. He soon announces that the U.S. will provide one billion dollars in loan guarantees to Ukraine. Now let’s talk about one of the Democrat’s central witnesses, Ambassador Yovanovitch. In May 2016, Ambassador Yovanovitch was nominated to be Ambassador in Ukraine. Here’s what happened when she was preparing for her Senate confirmation hearing. John Ratcliffe: (24:49) Congresswoman Stefanik had asked you how the Obama, Biden State Department had prepared you to answer questions about Burisma and Hunter Biden specifically, you recall that? Amb Yovanovitch: (25:02) Yes. John Ratcliffe: (25:03) Out of thousands of companies in the Ukraine, the only one that you recall, the Obama, Biden State Department prepared you to answer questions about was the one where the vice president’s son was on the board, is that fair? Amb Yovanovitch: (25:15) Yes. Pam Bondi: (25:20) So she’s being prepared to come before all of you, all of you, and talk about world issues, I’m going to be in charge of the Ukraine, and what did they feel the only company, the company that it was important to brief her on in case she got a question, Burisma. Ambassador Yovanovitch was confirmed July, 2016 as the Obama administration was coming to a close. In September, 2016, a Ukrainian court cancels the oligarch Zlochevsky arrest warrant for lack of progress in the case. In mid January, 2017, Burisma announces that all legal proceedings against it and Zlochevsky have been closed. Both of these things happened while Hunter Biden sat on the board of Burisma. Around this time, Vice President Biden leaves office. Years later now, former Vice President Biden, publicly details what we know happened. His threat to withhold more than a billion dollars in loan guarantees unless Shokin was fired. Here’s the vice president. Jay Carney: (26:35) I said, I’m not going to, or we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, “You have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said …” I said, “Call him.” I said, “I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars.” I said, “You’re not getting a billion, I’m going to be leaving here.” And I think it was what, six hours. I looked and I said, “I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money.” Well, son of a bitch. He got fired and they put in place someone who was solid at the time. Pam Bondi: (27:06) What he didn’t say on that video, according to the New York Times, this was the prosecutor investigating Burisma, Shokin. What he also didn’t say on the video was that his son was being paid significant amounts by the oligarch, owner of Burisma, to sit on that board. Only then does Hunter Biden leave the board, he stays on the board until April, 2019. Now in November, 2019, Hunter Biden signs an affidavit saying quote, he’s been unemployed and has no other monthly income since May, 2019. This was in November of 2019, so we know from after April, 2019 to May, 2019 through November, 2019, he was unemployed by his own statement. Pam Bondi: (28:17) April, 2019 to November, 2019, despite his resignation from the board, the media has continued to raise the issue relating to a potential conflict of interest. On July 22nd, 2019, The Washington Post wrote, the fired prosecutor general Shokin quote, believes his ouster was because of his interest in the company, end quote, referring to Burisma. The Post further wrote that, quote, had he remained in his post, he would have questioned Hunter Biden. On July 25th, 2019, three days later, President Trump speaks with President Zelensky. He says, “The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with this attorney general would be great.” Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution said, “If you can look into it. It looks horrible to me, end quote. The House managers talked about the Bidens or Burisma 400 times, but they never gave you the full picture. Pam Bondi: (29:39) But here are those who did. The United Kingdom serious fraud unit, Deputy Assistant Secretary Of State, George Kent. Chris Heinz, the ABC White House reporter, ABC, Good Morning America, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Ukrainian law enforcement and the Obama State Department itself. They all thought there was cause to raise the issue about the Bidens and Burisma. Now the House managers might say without evidence that everything we just have said has been debunked. That the evidence points entirely and unequivocally in the other direction. That is a distraction. You’ve heard from the House managers, they do not believe that there was any concern to raise here, that all of this was baseless and all we are saying is that there was a basis to talk about this, to raise this issue, and that is enough. I yield my time. This is about how five members of Joe Biden’s family got rich through his connections. Political figures have long used their families to route power and benefits for their own self-enrichment. Inthe new book, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,” one particular politician — Joe Biden — emerges as the king of the sweetheart deal, with no less than five family members benefiting from his largess, favorable access and powerful position for commercial gain. In Biden’s case, these deals include foreign partners and, in some cases, even U.S. taxpayer dollars. The Biden family’s apparent self-enrichment involves no less than five family members: Joe’s son Hunter, son-in-law Howard, brothers James and Frank, and sister Valerie. When this subject came up in 2019, Biden declared, “I never talked with my son or my brother or anyone else — even distant family — about their business interests. Period.” James Biden Joe Biden’s younger brother, James Biden, has been an integral part of the family political machine from the earliest days when he served as finance chair of Joe’s 1972 Senate campaign, and the two have remained quite close. After Joe joined the U.S. Senate, he would bring his brother James along on congressional delegation trips to places like Ireland, Rome and Africa. When Joe became vice president, James was a welcomed guest at the White House, securing invitations to such important functions as a state dinner in 2011 and the visit of Pope Francis in 2015. Sometimes, James’ White House visits dovetailed with his overseas business dealings, and his commercial opportunities flourished during his brother’s tenure as vice president. Consider the case of HillStone International, a subsidiary of the huge construction management firm, Hill International. The president of HillStone International was Kevin Justice, who grew up in Delaware and was a longtime Biden family friend. On November 4, 2010, according to White House visitors’ logs, Justice visited the White House and met with Biden adviser Michele Smith in the Office of the Vice President. Less than three weeks later, HillStone announced that James Biden would be joining the firm as an executive vice president. James appeared to have little or no background in housing construction, but that did not seem to matter to HillStone. His bio on the company’s website noted his “40 years of experience dealing with principals in business, political, legal and financial circles across the nation and internationally…” Interesting! James Biden was joining HillStone just as the firm was starting negotiations to win a massive contract in war-torn Iraq. Six months later, the firm announced a contract to build 100,000 homes. It was part of a $35 billion, 500,000-unit project deal won by TRAC Development, a South Korean company. HillStone also received a $22 million U.S. federal government contract to manage a construction project for the State Department. David Richter, son of the parent company’s founder, was not shy in explaining HillStone’s success in securing government contracts. It really helps, he told investors at a private meeting, to have “the brother of the vice president as a partner,” according to someone who was there. The Iraq project was massive, perhaps the single most lucrative project for the firm ever. In 2012, Charlie Gasparino of Fox Business reported that HillStone officials expected the project to “generate $1.5 billion in revenues over the next three years.” That amounted to more than three times the revenue the company produced in 2011. A group of minority partners, including James Biden, stood to split about $735 million. “There’s plenty of money for everyone if this project goes through,” said one company official. The deal was all set, but HillStone made a crucial error. In 2013, the firm was forced to back out of the contract because of a series of problems, including a lack of experience by Hill and TRAC Development, its South Korean associate firm. But HillStone continued doing significant contract work in the embattled country, including a six-year contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. James Biden remained with Hill International, which accumulated contracts from the federal government for dozens of projects, including projects in the United States, Puerto Rico, Mozambique, and elsewhere. Hunter Biden With the election of his father as vice president, Hunter Biden launched businesses fused to his father’s power that led him to lucrative deals with a rogue’s gallery of governments and oligarchs around the world. Sometimes he would hitch a prominent ride with his father aboard Air Force Two to visit a country where he was courting business. Other times, the deals would be done more discreetly. Always they involved foreign entities that appeared to be seeking something from his father. There was, for example, Hunter’s involvement with an entity called Burnham Financial Group, where his business partner Devon Archer — who’d been at Yale with Hunter — sat on the board of directors. Burnham became the vehicle for a number of murky deals abroad, involving connected oligarchs in Kazakhstan and state-owned businesses in China. But one of the most troubling Burnham ventures was here in the United States, in which Burnham became the center of a federal investigation involving a $60 million fraud scheme against one of the poorest Indian tribes in America, the Oglala Sioux. Devon Archer was arrested in New York in May 2016 and charged with “orchestrating a scheme to defraud investors and a Native American tribal entity of tens of millions of dollars.” Other victims of the fraud included several public and union pension plans. Although Hunter Biden was not charged in the case, his fingerprints were all over Burnham. The “legitimacy” that his name and political status as the vice president’s son lent to the plan was brought up repeatedly in the trial. The scheme was explicitly designed to target pension funds that had “socially responsible investing” clauses, including pension funds of labor union organizations that had publicly supported Joe Biden’s political campaigns in the past. Indeed, eight of the eleven pension funds that lost their money were either government employee or labor union pension funds. Joe Biden has “a long-standing alliance with labor.” He closely identifies with organized labor. “I make no apologies,” he has said. “I am a union man, period.” And many public unions have endorsed him over the years. Transcripts from Devon Archer’s trial offer a clearer picture of Hunter Biden’s role at Burnham Asset Management, in particular, the fact that the firm relied on his father’s name and political status as a means of both recruiting pension money into the scheme and alleviating investors’ concerns. Tim Anderson, a lawyer who did legal work on the issuance of the tribal bonds, recounts seeing Hunter while visiting the Burnham office in New York City to meet with Bevan Cooney, who was later convicted in the case. The political ties that Biden and Archer had were considered key to the Burnham brand. As stated in an August 2014 email, Jason Galanis, who was convicted in the bond scheme, agreed with an unidentified associate who also thought the company had “value beyond capital” because of their political connections. In the closing arguments at the trial, one of Devon Archer’s defense attorneys, Matthew Schwartz, explained to the jury that it was impossible to talk about the bond scheme without mentioning Hunter Biden’s name. This “was perfectly sensible,” according to Schwartz, “because Hunter Biden was part of the Burnham team.” Many have criticized Joe Biden’s son Hunter for the perception that he profited off of his family name. He made headlines when it was discovered that despite his inexperience, he was earning at least $50,000 a month to serve on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas firm while his father was vice president. Joe Biden has complained that the criticism of his son on the issue is unfounded. Hunter Biden has said that it was “poor judgment” to take the position. “In retrospect, look, I think that it was poor judgment on my part,” Biden told ABC News. “I know that there was — did nothing wrong at all. However, was it poor judgment to be in the middle of something that is a, it’s a swamp in many ways? Yeah. And so, I take full responsibility for that.” Despite the “poor judgment,” Hunter said he does not regret his decision to work at Burisma. “I don’t regret being on the board. What I regret is not taking into account that there would be a Rudy Giuliani and a president of the United States that would be listening to this ridiculous conspiracy idea, which has, again, been completely debunked by everyone.” Ashley Biden – Joe Biden’s daughter It would be a dream for any new company to announce their launch in the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. StartUp Health is an investment consultancy based out of New York City, and in June 2011 the company barely had a website. The firm was the brainchild of three siblings from Philadelphia. Steven Krein is CEO and co-founder, while his brother, Dr. Howard Krein, serves as chief medical officer. Sister Bari serves as the firm’s chief strategy officer. A friend named Unity Stoakes is a co-founder and serves as president. StartUp Health was barely up and running when, in June 2011, two of the company’s executives were ushered into the Oval Office of the White House. They met with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. The following day the new company would be featured at a large health care tech conference being run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and StartUp Health executives became regular visitors to the White House, attending events in 2011, 2014 and 2015. How did StartUp Health gain access to the highest levels of power in Washington? There was nothing particularly unique about the company, but for this: “I happened to be talking to my father-in-law that day and I mentioned Steve and Unity were down there [in Washington, D.C.],” recalled Howard Krein. “He knew about StartUp Health and was a big fan of it. He asked for Steve’s number and said, ‘I have to get them up here to talk with Barack.’ The Secret Service came and got Steve and Unity and brought them to the Oval Office.” StartUp Health offers to provide new companies technical and relationship advice in exchange for a stake in the business. Demonstrating and highlighting the fact that you can score a meeting with the president of the United States certainly helps prove a strategic company asset: high-level contacts. Vice President Joe Biden continued to help Krein promote his company at several appearances through his last months in the White House, including one in January 2017, where he made a surprise showing at the StartUp Health Festival in San Francisco. The corporate event, open only to StartUp Health members, enabled the 250 people in attendance to chat in a closed session with the vice president. Frank Biden – Joe Biden’s brother In late March 2009, Vice President Joe Biden landed in Costa Rica aboard Air Force Two, and went to the Costa Rican presidential palace for a one-on-one with President Oscar Arias. The Biden visit had symbolic significance. The last time a high-ranking American official had visited the country was back in 1997, when Bill Clinton had come. Joe Biden’s trip to Costa Rica came at a fortuitous time for his brother Frank, who was busy working deals in the country. Just months after Vice President Biden’s visit, in August, Costa Rica News announced a new multilateral partnership “to reform Real Estate in Latin America” between Frank Biden, a developer named Craig Williamson, and the Guanacaste Country Club, a newly planned resort. The partnership, which appears to be ongoing, was wrapped in a beautiful package as a “call on resources available to the companies and individuals to reform the social, economic and environmental practices of real estate developers across the world by example.” In real terms, Frank’s dream was to build in the jungles of Costa Rica thousands of homes, a world-class golf course, casinos, and an anti-aging center. The Costa Rican government was eager to cooperate with the vice president’s brother. As it happened, Joe Biden had been asked by President Obama to act as the Administration’s point man in Latin America and the Caribbean. Frank’s vision for a country club in Costa Rica received support from the highest levels of the Costa Rican government— despite his lack of experience in building such developments. He met with the Costa Rican ministers of education and energy and environment, as well as the president of the country. On October 4, 2016, the Costa Rican Ministry of Public Education signed a letter of intent with Frank’s company, Sun Fund Americas. The project involved allowing a company called GoSolar to operate solar power facilities in Costa Rica. The previous year, the Obama-Biden administration’s OPIC had authorized a $6.5 million taxpayer-backed loan for the project. In June 2014, Vice President Joe Biden announced the launch of the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative (CESI). The program called for increasing access to financing for Caribbean energy projects that he strongly supported. American taxpayer dollars were dedicated to facilitating deals that matched U.S. government financing with local energy projects in Caribbean countries, including Jamaica. In January 2015, USAID announced that it would be spending $10 million to boost renewable energy projects in Jamaica over the next five years. After Joe Biden brought together leaders for CESI, brother Frank’s firm Sun Fund Americas announced that it was “engaged in projects and is in negotiations with governments of other countries in the [Caribbean] region for both its Solar and Waste to Energy development services.” As if to push the idea along, the Obama administration’s OPIC provided a $47.5 million loan to support the construction of a 20-megawatt solar facility in Clarendon, Jamaica. Frank Biden’s Sun Fund Americas later announced that it had signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) to build a 20-megawatt solar facility in Jamaica. Frank Biden has allegedly used his family name to further his career and secure business contracts in Florida. After Joe Biden became vice president, Frank leveraged D.C. connections to secure contracts from Florida officials benefiting a charter school that he ran, according to ABC News. The younger Biden was not shy about the perks of his famous last name and even boasted about it during interviews with the media. He once referred to his name as a “tremendous asset” and told people it brought him “automatic acceptance.” “Joe Biden needs to recognize it’s a problem,” a former chief White House ethics lawyer for George W. Bush, told Politico last year. “You can’t control your brothers. You can’t control your grown son. But you can put some firewalls in place in your own office.” Valerie Biden – Joe Biden’s sister During his years in the Senate, Biden’s family benefited financially in other ways as he leveraged political power. Joe’s sister Valerie ran all of his Senate campaigns, as well as his presidential runs in 1988 and 2008. But she was also a senior partner in a political messaging firm named Joe Slade White & Company; the only two executives listed at the firm were Joe Slade White and Valerie. The firm received large fees from the Biden campaigns that Valerie was running. Two and a half million dollars in consulting fees flowed to her firm from Citizens for Biden and Biden For President Inc. during the 2008 presidential bid alone. Joe Slade White & Company worked for Biden campaigns over eighteen years. Peter Schweizer, author of the new book ‘Profiles in Corruption,’ offers a deep dive into the private finances and secrets deals of some of America’s top political leaders. Hunter Biden is “just the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to examining corruption within the Biden family during the time that Joe Biden was vice president, investigative reporter and author Peter Schweizer said Tuesday. Appearing on “Fox & Friends,” Schweizer said that in his new book, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,” the Bidens — who he reports benefitted from having a family member in the White House — are dubbed the “Biden Five.” “There are five Biden family members that got very, very good deals while Joe Biden was vice president of the United States,” he said. “That’s Hunter, of course. There’s new material in the book about Hunter — about how he actually got taxpayer grants from the Obama administration. We have got his brother James. We have got his other brother Frank. We have got his sister Valerie. And, we’ve actually got his daughter Ashley, as well. “All of whom cashed in while he was vice president of the United States,” said Schweizer. The US increasingly believes that Iran shot down a Ukrainian airliner on Wednesday, according to multiple US officials. The working theory is based on continuing analysis of data from satellites, radar and electronic data collected routinely by US military and intelligence. President Donald Trump on Thursday said he suspected the crash was not due to mechanical issues, indicating that “somebody could have made a mistake on the other side.” Asked during a White House event what he thought happened to the plane, Trump said, “Well, I have my suspicions.” European security officials believe reports suggesting that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface to air missile in error are credible. The timing of the crash has fueled speculation about its cause, coming just hours after Iran fired missiles at two Iraqi bases housing US troops in retaliation for the killing of its top general, also in Iraq. The exchange of attacks between Tehran and Washington on Iraqi soil was a dramatic escalation of tensions between the adversaries, and is raising fears of another proxy war in the Middle East. The head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Authority is questioning the US allegation. Speaking to CNN, Ali Abedzadeh said, “If a rocket or missile hits a plane, it will free fall.” “I don’t want to say that because other people have their suspicions,” Trump said, but added, “Somebody could have made a mistake on the other side … not our system. It has nothing to do with us.” “It was flying in a pretty rough neighborhood. They could’ve made a mistake. Some people say it was mechanical. I personally don’t think that’s even a question.” Asked if he thought it was downed by accident, Trump said, “I don’t know. I really don’t know … that’s up to them. At some point they’ll release the black box.” “Ideally they’d give it to Boeing,” he said, but said giving it to France or “some other country” would be fine, too. “Something very terrible happened, very devastating,” he concluded. One possibility being considered is that an Iranian missile unit saw something on their radar, thought they were under attack and fired. The Ukrainian International Airlines (UIA) flight PS752 came down just minutes after takeoff from Tehran on Wednesday local time, killing all 176 people on board, including dozens of Iranians and Canadians. The Boeing 737-800 was headed for Kiev, where 138 passengers were expected to take a connecting flight to Canada. Ukrainians, Swedes, Afghans, Germans and British nationals were also aboard. Investigation underway! Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization head, Ali Abedzadeh, said it would not hand the flight data recorders to Boeing or the United States after they were found on Wednesday. One of the officials said the US is working closely with the Canadians on the intelligence. Ukrainian officials on Thursday were considering terrorism, a missile strike and catastrophic engine failure as potential causes for the crash, as aviation authorities in Tehran said the jetliner was on fire before it came down. Ukraine’s National Security and Defense council chief, Oleksiy Danilov, said a meeting was taking place with Iranian authorities, where various causes behind the crash were “being studied,” including a theory that the plane was hit by an anti-aircraft missile, according to a statement on Facebook. Conflicting claims about potential causes for the disaster began hours after the crash, when Iranian state media blamed technical issues and Ukraine ruled out rocket attacks. Within hours on Wednesday, officials in both countries had walked back those initial statements. An initial report by the Iranian Civil Aviation Organization on the crash cites witnesses as saying the airliner was on fire while in the air and changed directions after a problem, turning back toward the airport. People on other aircraft at higher altitudes also saw the flames, Iranian officials say. Images of the wreckage show the plane torn to piece, its parts charred and strewn across a field. This story is breaking and will be updated on this site. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s acknowledgement that it shot down a Ukrainian airliner, killing 176 people, raises new challenges for the Islamic Republic both externally amid tensions with the U.S. and internally as it deals with growing discontent from its people. The country demonstrated its incompetence and dishonesty by having its air-crash investigators, government officials and diplomats deny for days that a missile downed the flight, though a commander said Saturday that he had raised that possibility to his superiors as early as Wednesday, the day of the crash. While its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard took responsibility, the same commander claimed it warned Tehran to close off its airspace amid fears of U.S. retaliation over Iran launching ballistic missiles at Iraqi bases housing U.S. forces. That retaliation never came, but the worries proved to be enough to allegedly scare a missile battery into opening fire on the Boeing 737 operated by Ukrainian International Airlines. Wider tensions between Iran and the U.S., inflamed after Iran’s top general was killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike Jan. 3, have for the moment calmed. However, President Donald Trump vowed to impose new sanctions on Tehran and on Friday, his administration targeted Iran’s metals industry, a major employer. Meanwhile, thousands of additional U.S. forces remain in the Mideast atop of the network of American bases surrounding Iran, despite Tehran’s demands the U.S. leave the region. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cast doubt on Iran’s claim that it accidentally shot down a Ukrainian jetliner on Wednesday. DUBAI, Jan 11 (Reuters) – Iran’s religious rulers risk a legitimacy crisis as popular anger has boiled up at the way the state handled a passenger plane crash, which the military took three days to admit was caused by an Iranian missile fired in error. Amid mounting public fury and international criticism, the belated admission of blame by Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards has squandered the national unity seen after the killing of the country’s most influential commander in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq on Jan. 3. Huge crowds had turned out on the streets of Iranian cities to mourn Soleimani’s death, chanting “Death to America”. But since the Ukraine International Airlines plane crashed on Wednesday – an incident Canada and the United States said early on was due to an Iranian missile albeit fired by mistake – social media has been ablaze with criticism of the establishment. All 176 people on board the plane, en route from Tehran to Kiev, were killed. That mood bodes ill for a parliamentary election in February, when Iran’s primitive religious rulers typically seek a high turnout to show their legitimacy even though the outcome will not change any major policy. But instead they are now hearing more rumblings of discontent, after anti-government protests in November in which hundreds of people died. “It is a very sensitive time for the establishment. They face a serious credibility problem. Not only did they conceal the truth, they also mismanaged the situation,” said a senior former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran’s backward clerics have swept aside challenges to their grip on power. But the kind of distrust between the rulers and the ruled that erupted in protests last year may now have deepened. ‘DEATH TO THE DICTATOR’ Video clips on Twitter showed protesters in Tehran on Saturday chanting “Death to the dictator,” a reference to Shia Religious Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Reuters could not independently verify the footage. It followed a welter of criticism in Iran. Iran’s state news agency confirmed the protests. The Guards issued an apology for shooting down the plane, saying air defenses were fired in error during a state of high alert. Iran had expected U.S reprisals after it retaliated for Soleimani’s killing by firing missiles at Iraqi bases where U.S. troops were stationed. Iran’s supreme leader aging Shia Khamenei, may now find Iranians are not so keen to show their support. BEDROCK SUPPORT The dated clerical system in Iran has survived challenges in the pasts. But Khamenei’s support, the ignorant and religious poor and lower middle classes were among the first on the street in November in protests sparked by a hike in gasoline prices – a particularly sensitive issue where many rely on cheap fuel. Protesters’ demands swiftly turned more political, including calls for their rulers to go, before authorities cracked down. Social media was flooded with angry comments from Iranians, many complaining that the authorities had spent more time denying they were to blame for the plane crash than sympathising with victims’ families. Alongside the parliamentary vote, the elections on Feb. 21 will also choose members of the Assembly of Experts, an out-of-touch Islamic clerical body that in future will be responsible for selecting a successor to 80-year-old doddering Khamenei. Khamenei, who has no term limit, has been in office since the death in 1989 of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Islamic Shia fanatic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Trump Fights with Sanctions, not with Arms The Trump administration warned Iraq that it risks losing access to a critical government bank account if Baghdad kicks out American. The U.S. could shut down Iraq’s access to the country’s central bank account held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York! Iraq, like other countries, maintains government accounts at the New York Fed as an important part of managing the country’s finances, including revenue from oil sales. Loss of access to the accounts could restrict Iraq’s use of that revenue, creating a huge cash problem in Iraq’s financial system. It is surprising that this hasn’t been done already. Why does America allow foreigners to use our banks. Iraqi Parliament Votes to Expel U.S. Troops Nevertheless. Abdul-Mahdi moved ahead with those plans this week, requesting the U.S. agree to talks to plan the safe withdrawal of American troops, according to an Iraqi description of a Thursday call with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Why don’t we shut down our banks to Iran and pull out the troops.? The warning regarding the Iraqi central bank account was conveyed to Iraq’s prime minister in a call on Wednesday, according to an official in his office, that also touched on the overall military, political and financial partnership between the two countries. Spokesmen for the Iraqi prime minister, its central bank and its embassy in Washington didn’t respond to requests for comment. The U.S. State and Treasury Departments and the Federal Reserve Board declined to comment. The Federal Reserve Bank in New York, which can freeze accounts under U.S. sanctions law or if it has reasonable suspicion the funds could violate U.S. law, said it doesn’t comment on specific account holders. Mr. Abdul-Mahdi has said the departure of U.S. troops is the only way to avoid conflict in Iraq because the U.S. doesn’t trust the country’s security forces to protect its troops. But there are questions over his authority to evict them, given his status as a caretaker prime minister. Among other potential obstacles are Kurdish and most Sunni leaders, who boycotted the session at which parliamentarians voted on the troop expulsion. The vote is the result of have the Iran-following Shia’s in the Iraqi government. During the parliamentary debate, the speaker, a Sunni, urged Shiite lawmakers to be mindful of the potential backlash: “One of the steps the international community could take is to stop financial transactions with Iraq, and we would be unable to fulfill our commitments to our citizens at any moment,” Mohammed al-Halboosi said, based on a video of the proceedings. The financial threat isn’t theoretical: The country’s financial system was squeezed in 2015 when the U.S. suspended access for several weeks to the central bank’s account at the New York Fed over concerns the cash was filtering through a loosely regulated market into Iranian banks and to the Islamic State extremist group. Al Asad air base in Iraq, housing U.S. troops, was targeted Tuesday by missiles fired from Iran, the Pentagon said. Photo: Nasser Nasser/Associated Press “The U.S. Fed basically has a stranglehold on the entire [Iraqi] economy,” said Shwan Taha, chairman of Iraqi investment bank Rabee Securities. The prospect of sanctions has unsettled ordinary Iraqis, for whom memories of living under a United Nations embargo during the 1990s are still fresh. Pro-Iranian and other Shiite factions leading the charge to oust U.S. forces from Iraq have sought to reassure the public by telling them Iraq could pivot to China. An adviser to the prime minister, Abd al-Hassanein al-Hanein, said that while the threat of sanctions was a concern, he did not expect the U.S. to go through with it. “If the U.S. does that, it will lose Iraq forever,” he said. Besides the financial impact, many politicians, including some Shiites, worry that a U.S. withdrawal would allow Islamic State to re-emerge as a major threat. They also view the U.S. as a necessary counterweight to Iran, which has tightened its grip on the Iraqi government during Mr. Abdul-Mahdi’s premiership. The U.S. is concerned that an exodus of American forces could allow U.S. currency to be redirected to Iranian accounts and to other adversaries, according to people familiar with the matter. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi asked the U.S. to send representatives to put in place a mechanism for the withdrawal of troops from the country. Photo: Burhan Ozbilici/Associated Press The Trump administration’s sanctions campaign against Iran has squeezed the flow of U.S. dollars to the government in Tehran over the past year. The American dollar, the most traded currency in the world, is used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to pay its foreign proxies fighting against the U.S. and its allies in the region, including in Iraq, U.S. officials say. Iranian-owned or controlled foreign exchange houses and banks in Iraq have been an important source of funding for Iran and its proxies active in the country, including those fighting against U.S. forces, U.S. officials say. The New York Fed provides banking and other financial services for around 250 central banks, governments and other foreign official institutions, such as the account owned by Bangladesh from which North Korean agents were able to steal $81 million in 2016, U.S. officials have said. When Iraq needs hard currency, its central bank can request a shipment of bills that it then distributes into the financial system through banks and currency exchange houses. While the country’s official currency is the dinar, U.S. dollars are commonly used. The New York Fed doesn’t publicly disclose how much money it currently holds for Iraq’s central bank. But according to the Central Bank of Iraq’s most recent financial statement, at the end of 2018, the Fed held nearly $3 billion in overnight deposits. Shame on us for letting this happen! Kimia Alizadeh, has announced that she’s permanently left her country for Europe. “Let me start with a greeting, a farewell or condolences,” the 21-year-old wrote in an Instagram post explaining why she was defecting. “I am one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran who they have been playing with for years.” “They took me wherever they wanted. I wore whatever they said. Every sentence they ordered me to say, I repeated. Whenever they saw fit, they exploited me,” she wrote, adding that credit for her success always went to those in charge. “I wasn’t important to them. None of us mattered to them, we were tools,” Alizadeh added, explaining that while the regime celebrated her medals, it criticized the sport she had chosen: “The virtue of a woman is not to stretch her legs!” Reports of her defection first surfaced Thursday, with some Iranians suggesting she had left for the Netherlands. It was unclear from her post to what country Alizadeh had gone. Iran arrests UK ambassador Rob Macaire, who has been Britain’s envoy to the Islamic republic since March 2018, was arrested as he stopped at a barber shop for a haircut after attending a vigil for the victims of a Ukrainian jetliner that crashed in Tehran last week, the BBC reported. Macaire left the vigil after it became a demonstration but was later accused by Iranian authorities of helping to incite the anti-government protest. He was released after three hours but the arrest infuriated the British government. “The arrest of our Ambassador in Tehran without grounds or explanation is a flagrant violation of international law,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in a statement. “The Iranian government is at a cross-roads moment. It can continue its march towards pariah status with all the political and economic isolation that entails, or take steps to deescalate tensions and engage in a diplomatic path forwards.” In a Twitter message, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus called Macaire’s arrest a violation of the Vienna Convention, which she said the Iranian regime “has a notorious history of violating.” In 2016, Hillary Clinton, then presidential candidate, hired an ex-intelligence officer and foreign national, British subject Christopher Steele, to use Russian sources to find dirt on her then political opponent Donald Trump. The public would take years to learn about the funding sources of Steele, because Clinton camouflaged her role through three firewalls: the Democratic National Committee; the Perkins-Coie legal firm; and Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS opposition-research firm. Steele had collected rumor and gossip from mostly Russian sources in an effort to tar Trump as a Russian colluder and asset. We know now that his sources were either bogus or deliberately warped by Steele himself. Almost everything in the Dossier was unverified and later was proved fanciful. Yet with the help of high Obama administration and elected officials, the Dossier’s gossip and rumor were leaked throughout the top echelons of Washington politics and the media. Its lies spread because its chief message — Donald J. Trump was a fool, dangerous, should never be elected, and once elected had no business as president — was exactly what the establishment wished to hear and promote to the American public with the help of the press. The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Justice, Michael Horowitz, after an exhaustive study, found that the Steele Dossier not just unverifiable but unethically and unprofessionally used successfully to delude federal judges to issue warrants to surveil an American citizen. Horowitz simply confirmed that Steele was both a pathological liar and an inveterate hater of Donald Trump who acted to ensure that Trump would not be president. Although the aging and inept special counsel Robert Mueller, in sworn testimony before Congress, seemed to have amnesia about the Steele Dossier and its chief purveyor Fusion GPS, his own investigation was de facto repudiation of the entire Steele Dossier in its conclusion that Donald Trump did not engage in collusion with the Russians to warp the 2016 election. As a result, all who trafficked in the Dossier as if it were factual and disinterested have lost their credibility. Many are now seeing their careers demolished and in ruins. Here is a small sampling of reputations that were marred or destroyed. Rachel Maddow: Many of her 2016–19 evening cable news commentaries focused on the supposed dangers that candidate and then president Trump posed to the republic. She cited the Steele Dossier chapter and verse as factual in making her arguments that Trump was dishonest and amoral and therefore an illegitimate president who should be removed. It will be difficut for any audience to take Maddow’s on-air assertions seriously in the future. She rose to high ratings promoting the Dossier, and she will likely suffer the consequences in reverse. James Comey and the FBI. It is no exaggeration that James Comey, the former director of the FBI, knew intimately of the Dossier, approved its use to spy on American citizens and to launch an investigation into Donald Trump’s purported Russian connection, and then lied about both the Dossier’s authenticity and his own agency’s use of its author Christopher Steele, who was highly paid informant for the FBI. More than a dozen top FBI agents, investigators, and lawyers who worked for Comey have now either been fired, disgraced, reassigned, demoted, or have quit or have abruptly retired. The common denominator to all their fates is that in some fashion they either leaked false information to the media (so far unpunishe, knowingly broke the law, lied to federal investigators, altered documents, deluded federal judges, or were afraid that something they had done would surface. Trace the origins of such misbehavior, and at its font will be the sensational Steele Dossier and the nearly religious belief that it either was true or should be true or somehow could be made to be true. John McCain: The late Senator John McCain. McCain was tipped off about the Dossier by a British intelligence official and Steele’s confidant. McCain, who had engaged in a well-publicized feud with Trump, almost immediately met with federal officials and sent his former associate David Kramer to the UK to talk with Steele. McCain himself then gave the Dossier to FBI Director Comey. In McCain’s final memoir, he and his coauthor were defiant about the senator’s role in spreading the unsubstantiated gossip around Washington: “I would do it again. Anyone who doesn’t like it can go to hell.” It was a misleading and unfortunate comment by McCain. James Clapper and John Brennan: James Clapper, the former director of National Intelligence under Barack Obama, and John Brennan, the former CIA director, both previously had lied under oath to Congress. Both then apologized, and their illegal behaviors were excused – unfortunately without legal consequences. But both once again have not told the truth about their own knowledge of the Steele Dossier, its unverified and mostly false information, and the role they both played in circulating and promulgating the Dossier to the media and high government officials. That both directors were deeply involved in spreading the Dossier around Washington, leaking its comments, and then denying their roles while they worked as paid television commentators on CNN and MSNBC only ensured the rapid erosion of their beltway careers and reputations. And both still may have a rendezvous with federal prosecutors in regard to the Dossier. FISA Court: The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. A number of inept FISA court federal judges approved FBI and DOJ requests to surveille Carter Page both before and after the 2016 presidential election, supposedly as a way to learn of Trump-Russia collusion. None of the judges seriously probed government lawyers about the Dossier before their court. Although they were told in a footnote that it was a product of opposition research, apparently none asked the nature of such sponsorship. Yet if a judge is apprised that the evidence before him to support a federal surveillance warrant is based on political opposition research, would it not be prudent to ask attorneys to name who had paid the Dossier’s author? Worse still, in winter and late spring 2018, Representative Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) had twice warned the eleven-justice FISA court that the Steele Dossier was unreliable and had not been a sound basis to authorize surveilling an American citizen. Nunes and his House colleagues were essentially ignored and dismissed by the court. It was only after the issuance of the Horowitz report that the FISA court’s presiding justice, Rosemary Collyer, blasted the FBI for deluding her court. Fairly or not, the impression remains that FISA judges either were incompetent or simply did not wish to learn evidence that might have discredited their decision to allow the FBI to surveille a former Trump official, as part of a larger effort to discredit Donald Trump. And like it or not, the entire reputation of the FISA court is now in shreds, both for being so easily or willingly fooled, and for so opportunistically and belatedly criticizing those who deluded them. There is a movement to do away with the FISA court as there is no responder in the case, only an accuser. This is called an ex parte court appearance which means a legal proceeding brought by one party in the absence of and without representation of or notification to the other party. Since other Americans were excluded from pleading their side of the story, the FISA court relied only on their accuser, the FBI. This is totally wrong in such cases and there is a movement to abolish the FISA court. Hillary Clinton: There are strict federal election laws governing the role of foreign nationals and their U.S. handlers interfering in an American election. The public became more aware of such statutes paradoxically because Hillary Clinton, almost immediately after losing the November 2016 election, claimed that she was defeated only because Donald Trump had colluded with Russians. Ironically, the origins of that claim were the Steele Dossier, which Clinton herself had paid for and then hidden her sponsorship. In other words, while the Dossier swept through the media, helped to prime FISA warrants, played a key part in launching FBI investigations, and ultimately kick-started the Robert Mueller special-counsel investigation, Hillary Clinton remained immune from scrutiny. Think of the paradox: While Clinton pounded president Trump for supposedly using Russians to win an election, she herself had used fraudulent Russian sources to obtain political advantage by smearing her opponent, apparently in the expectation that she would win the election and her modus operandi would never be discovered, or, even if Steele’s work were publicized and thus discredited, her own fingerprints would never appear — or no one would dare to question President Clinton. Adam Schiff: Adam Schiff’s reputation hit rock bottom in recent years. He lied about his relationship to the so-called whistleblower. His minority-report memo was discredited by Inspector General Horowitz. He read a bogus version of the Trump-Ukraine phone call into the congressional record, and when called out, begged off by claiming it was merely “parody.” And he began the impeachment inquiry in a basement without either transparency or bipartisan rules of cross-examination and disclosure. But Schiff’s two-year insistence that Steele’s research was reliable and that it nonetheless did not provide the chief basis for FISA warrants was demonstrably untrue. (How paradoxical that Steele’s promoters both defended the Dossier and yet denied that it was pivotal.) Schiff may remain a hero to the Never Trump fringe for his any-means-necessary efforts to destroy Trump, but even the media now distrust him. His own party will come to see him as a transiently useful dishonest prevaricator whose utility is already waning. In a rare public order Tuesday, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [FISC] strongly criticized the FBI over its surveillance-application process, giving the bureau until Jan. 10 to come up with solutions, in the wake of findings from Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz. The order, from the court’s presiding judge Rosemary M. Collyer, came just a week after the release of Horowitz’s withering report about the wiretapping of Carter Page, a former campaign adviser to President Trump. “The FBI’s handling of the Carter Page applications, as portrayed in the [Office of Inspector General] report, was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above,” Collyer wrote in her four-page order. “The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.” This was revealed months ago it was revealed that the Justice Department inspector general has determined the three Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant extensions against onetime Trump campaign aide Carter Page were illegally obtained, attorney Joe diGenova said. In an investigation that began last year, Inspector General Michael Horowitz is examining the Justice Department’s and FBI’s compliance with legal requirements as well as policies and procedures in applications filed with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court related to Page as part of a larger counterintelligence probe into Trump’s campaign. “They are doing that as a diversionary tactic away from the inevitable conclusions of the DOJ inspector general, Michael Horowitz, who, by the way, we have learned has concluded that the final three FISA extensions were illegally obtained,” diGenova said on Fox Business. “The only question now is whether or not the first FISA was illegally obtained.” He pointed to memos, obtained by conservative group Citizens United through open-records litigation, that suggest the FBI might have misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in the first warrant application about an unverified dossier. Horowitz “apparently, as a result of those disclosures … which he was unaware of — the bureau hid those memos from Horowitz — as a result of that they’re doing additional work on the first FISA. It may be that all four FISAs will have been obtained illegally,” diGenova said. The dossier, compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, contained salacious and unverified claims about Trump’s ties to Russia. It was used by the FBI illegaly to obtain the authority to wiretap Page, an American who had suspicious connections to the Russians. The first warrant application was submitted in October 2016, after which there were three renewals at three-month intervals, including in January, April, and June 2017. The memos obtained by Citizens United, and shared with the Washington Examiner, show Steele met with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec on Oct. 11 and admitted he was encouraged by a client to get his research out before the 2016 election, signaling a possible political motivation. The timing of the meeting is notable, as it was 10 days before the FBI used Steele’s unverified dossier to obtain the original warrant to wiretap Page. Senate and House investigators told The Hill they too were unaware of the documents, which were given to and redacted by the FBI, and one member of Congress referred the memos to the Justice Department inspector general. “They tried to hide a lot of documents from us during our investigation, and it usually turns out there’s a reason for it,” House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said. A memo from the House Intelligence Committee in February 2018 alleged Steele was paid over $160,000 by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign through the Perkins Coie law firm and opposition research group Fusion GPS to “obtain derogatory information on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.” The memo also said the FBI never informed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of the dossier’s Democratic benefactors or Steele’s anti-Trump bias when it applied to spy on Page, who was investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller over his interactions with Russians but was never charged. In a rebuttal to the House Intelligence GOP memo, Democrats falsely argued the Justice Department and FBI “met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis needed to meet FISA’s probable cause requirement.” In recent days top former officials at the FBI have defended their handling of the warrant applications. Former FBI Director James Comey said during a CNN town hall on Thursday that “the most important part” of the dossier was on “Russians coming for the American election,” which he asserted was “consistent with our other intelligence” and “true.” Former FBI General Counsel James Baker, who acknowledged he “wanted the burden on me to a significant degree” in preparing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application paperwork, said it would have been “gratuitous” to name the U.S. persons — the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC — in the documents. Both Comey and Baker said they are confident the bureau did nothing wrong in obtaining the warrants, although Baker admitted the inspector general makes him “nervous.” Now, even Comey admits that he was wrong. DiGenova appeared on Fox Business with his wife and legal partner Victoria Toensing. She accused FBI Director Christopher Wray of “hiding” Comey’s “sins.” This has now proved to be true. DiGenova served as an independent counsel in the 1990s for a case on former President Bill Clinton’s passport before he was elected. Last year, it was announced diGenova and Toensing were joining Trump’s legal team for the federal Russia investigation, but that plan was nixed within days. Elizabeth Warren and the ex-U.S. Marine In a bizarre press conference held on the porch footsteps of a residential neighborhood, Whelly said he was with 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, an infantry unit out of Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. The U.S. Marine Corps confirmed to Newsweek on Friday that Whelly is a ex-Marine and served with the infantry unit in Hawaii as a machine gunner; However, the former lance corporal does not have any overseas deployments as, apparently, had been claimed. Whelly claimed that last year, Warren had hired him via the male escort agency Cowboys4Angels and engaged in a steamy extramarital affair with him. There was, however, one verifiable fact Cowboys4Angels is, in fact, a real “elite male companion” agency, which is best known for being featured on the Showtime series Gigolos. “My service in Afghanistan, it was very….early in my Marine Corps time [when I was] just getting to my unit,” said Whelly. “I was stationed in Hawaii. 1/3 [1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment]. It’s on Wikipedia but in 2012 we were stationed in Afghanistan…deployed to Afghanistan.” However, Whelly could not have served in Afghanistan in 2012, according to his releasable biographical data provided to Newsweek from Manpower and Reserve Affairs, the Marine Corps’ division which manages the personnel files for both active duty and reserve forces. The dates of service listed for Whelly begin on Aug. 25, 2014 and end on May 11, 2016. Defense Department awards commonly seen among U.S. Marines with service in Afghanistan include the Afghanistan Campaign Medal and the Non-Article 5 North Atlantic Treaty Organization, International Security Assistance Force Medal, known as the NATO ISAF Medal. However, the only awards listed for the ex-Marine is the National Defense Service Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal. During the press conference when asked about receiving the Purple Heart amid shouts of “stolen valor,” Whelly said, “I do not have a Purple Heart, even if you’re wounded you have to put in for a Purple Heart.” Contacted by Newsweek on Friday, Wohl said he could not comment on Whelly’s military record without speaking to him first. Attempts to reach Whelly were unsuccessful on Friday. Newsweek reached out to Warren’s campaign for comment on Friday but no reply was returned before publication. And what about Warren’s husband, Bruce Mann? Warren had recently separated from her first husband Jim Warren with whom she was married for ten years, but fell fast for Mann. It’s hardly surprising that they first crossed paths in a professional setting, given that they’re both law professors. After working at several different universities, Mann ended up alongside Warren at Harvard Law School, where he teaches. She proposed to him.In a 2016 post on Facebook, Warren told the story of their engagement. “I proposed to Bruce in a classroom,” she wrote. “It was the first time I’d seen him teach, and I was already in love with him, but watching him teach let me see one more thing about him—and that was it.” When he asked her what she thought about the class, she quickly replied, “What can I say? Will you marry me?” Wow! And there is more – more from Warren and fellow liars! Elizabeth Warren has a moving sob-story about being fired from a teaching job because she was pregnant, a story that perfectly complements her political narrative that she is the tribune and champion of those who have been treated unfairly by the powerful. Joe Biden has a moving — and horrifying — story about his wife and daughter being killed by a drunk driver, a story that similarly could not have been designed more perfectly to bolster his political image as a man who can be counted on to soldier on in the face of adversity. Both stories are lies. Elizabeth Warren has long pretended to be a person of color — a “woman of color,” the Harvard law faculty called her. Fiction, yes. Deployed, as we are always told when these lies are exposed as lies, in the service of a larger truth, a truth of which such habitual and irredeemable liars as Warren, Biden, Smollett and Lena Dunham, and the so-called journalists of Rolling Stone, and the perpetrators of a thousand phony campus hate-crime hoaxes — are the appointed apostles. “Does anybody seriously believe it was not as everyday as sunrise that employers made pregnant women leave their jobs 50 years ago?” CNBC’s John Harwood demanded in defense of Warren. The minutes of the local school-board meeting quite clearly document that Warren was offered a contract for further employment, which she declined. She was forthright in her account of the episode at earlier points in her life. She seems to have suddenly remembered the discrimination sometime between when she began advertising herself to the Ivy League as a Cherokee and the day when the Cherokee finally shamed her into knocking it off. And Joe Biden? Similarly, people are killed by drunk drivers every day in this country. Joe Biden’s wife and daughter were not among them, in spite of his libelous claims that they lost their lives in an accident involving an irresponsible truck driver who, as Biden put it, “drank his lunch.” The man who oversaw that investigation, Delaware Superior Court judge Jerome O. Herlihy, repeatedly has confirmed that there is no evidence alcohol was involved. The survivors of the driver, who has since passed away, have publicly asked Biden to stop telling this lie and besmirching the memory of their father. Investigators at the time determined that the accident was not even the other driver’s fault — Mrs. Biden seems to have driven accidentally into the path of the truck. Warren’s and Biden’s fictions have in common that they are lies that have been put into the service of the campaign against Donald Trump in 2020. SUBJECT: PARTICIPANTS: (C) Telephone Conversation with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine (S/NF) The President: Congratulations on a great victory. We all watched from the United States and you did a terrific job. The way you came from behind, somebody who wasn’t given much of a chance, and you ended up winning easily. It’s a fantastic achievement. Congratulations. ( J;’HP’President Zelenskyy: You are absolutely right Mr. President. We did win big and we worked hard for this. We worked a lot but I would like to confess to you hat I had n opportunity to learn from you. We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge and were able to use it as an example for our elections and- yes it is true that these were unique elections. We were in a unique situation that we were able to CAUTION: A Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation (TELCON) is not a verbatim transcript of a discussion. The text in this document. records the notes and recollections of Situation Room Duty Officers and NSC policy staff assigned to listen and memorialize the conversation in written form as the conversation takes place. A number of factors can affect the accuracy of the record, including poor telecommunications connections and variations in accent and/or interpretation. The word “inaudible” is used to ind cate portions of a cbnversation that the notetaker was unable to hear. Classified By: 2354726 . Derived From: NSC SCG Declassify On: 20441231 UNCLASSIFIED SECR£T/i’ORCOtMvOFOR1.Ji 2 UNCLASSIFIED achieve a unique success. I’m able to tell you the following; the first time, you called me to congratulate me when I won my presidential election, and the second time you are now calling me when my party won the parliamentary election. I think I should run more often so you can call me more often and we can talk over the phone more often. {-‘/Mfi’)The President: (laughter] That’s a very good idea. I think your country is very happy about that. (S/MF)P.cesident Zelenskyy: Well yes, to tell you the truth, we are trying to work hard because we wanted to drain the swamp here in our country. We brought in many many new people. Not the old politicians, not the typical politicians, because we want to have a new format and a new type of government. You are a great teacher for us and in that. (-‘;’HF’The President: Well it’s very nice of you to say that. I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it’s something that you should really ask them about. When I was speaking to Angela Merkel she talks Ukraine, but she doesn’t do anything. A lot of the European countries are the same way so I think it’s something you want to look at but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. – (:3/Hfil)PresidentZelenskyy: Yes you are absolutely right. Not_ only 100%, but actually 1000% and I can tell you the following; I did talk to Angela Merkel and I did meet with her. I also met and talked with Macron and I told them that they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing on the issues with the sanctions. They are not enforcing the sanctions. They are not working as much as they should work for Ukraine. It turns out that even though logically, the European Union should be our biggest· partner but technically the United States is a much bigger partner than the European Union and I’m very grateful to you for that because the United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine. Much more than the European Union especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation. I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes. BEOOC»tWOftOOtJii’t#OFORH 3 UNCLASSIFIED to/HF’The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our cou try has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible. ( 2!l; 1HP’ PresidentZelenskyy: Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him having your trust and your confidence and have personal relations with you so we can cooperate even more so. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. G1uliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody but fr ends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have. friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition· to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly. That I can assure you. {:’. /HF)The President: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York Ci.ty, a great mayor, and I would like him to UNCLASSIF- !!e ‘f)’>’ottcorq:;’HoroRu .” Cft:E’f’/i’O CO ,YNOFOR!’.J call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney· General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know thal. The ot er thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Eiden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Eiden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds· horrible to me. (S/HF) President Zelenskyy: I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all I understand and I’m knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation., specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can. provide to us, it would be vet:y helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine as far as I recall her name was Ivanovich. It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough. (:3/HF!The President: Well, she’s going to go through some things. I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I’m sure you will figure it out. I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything. Your eco omy .is going to get better and better I predict. You have a lot of assets. It’s a great country. I have many Ukrainian friends, their incredible people. s ,,.”‘” · (!!/HF) President Zelenskyy: I would like to tell you that I also have quite a few Ukrainian friends that live in the United States. Actually last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump UNC .l 5:r!CREI 110ltCO!’l1t<IOPOM s UNCLASSIFIED Tower. I will talk to them and I hope to see them again in the future. I also wanted to thank you for your invitation to visit the United States, specifically Washington DC. On the.other hand, I also want to ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation. As to the economy, there is much potential for our two countries and one of the issues that is very important for Ukraine is energy independence. I believe we can be very successful and cooperating on energy independence with United States. We are already working on cooperation. We are buying American oil but I am very hopeful for a future meeting. We will have more time and more opportunities to discuss these opportunities and get to know each other better. I would like to thank you very much for your support W,’NPThe President: Good. Well, thank you very much and I appreciate that. I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call. Thank you. Whenever you would like ·tQ come to the White House, feel free to call. Give us a date and we’ll work that out. I look forward to seeing you. .w,,nm · PresidentZelenskyy: Thank you very much. I would be·very happy to come and would be happy to meet with you pers·onally and get to know you better. I am looking forward to our meeting and I also would like to invite you to visit Ukraine and come to the city of Kyiv which is a beautiful city. We have a·beautiful country which would welcome you. On the other hand, I believe that on September 1 we will be in Poland and we can meet in Poland hopefully. After that, it might be a very good idea for you to travel to Ukraine. We can either take my plane and go to Ukraine or we can take your _ plane, which is probably much better than mine. ( /MF)‘ThePresident: Okay, we can work that out. I look forward to seeing you in Washington and maybe in Poland because I think we are going to be there at that time. (a;’MF)PresidentZelenskyy: Thank you very much Mr. President. (B;’HP)ThePresident: Congratulations on a fantastic job you’ve done. The whole world was watching. I’m not sure it was so much of an upset but congratulations.- President Trump’s former strategist vows to fight the Italian government’s decision to evict his academy from the Monastery of Trisulti. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s quest to build a school for the far right in Italy has hit a snag thanks to the country’s culture ministry, kinda. On Friday, the ministry said it would summarily Bannon and his academy from the 800-year-old mountaintop monastery where he had foolishly (for Italy) planned to hold masterclasses for leaders and activists. Christened by Bannon as the high-sounding Academy for the Judeo-Christian West, the institute was designed to accommodate 250 to 300 students at a time. The curriculum, which Bannon was developing himself, would be focused on defending the “Judeo-Christian tradition” in politics and the media against what he claims is growing “secularist intolerance.” Eleven, count’em, cardinals are listed on its board of advisors. “Political opinions have nothing to do with [this],” a representative for the ministry of culture, Gianluca Vacca, said in a questionable statement. “We are interested in respecting the law and protecting the national cultural heritage.” Yeah, sure, but behind the decision, however, is alleged to be ultra rightest Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini who is (allegedly again) insanely jealous of Bannon. In 2017, Bannon joined forces with Benjamin Harnwell, the enigmatic British-born director of the Catholic conservative Dignitatis Humanae Institute (another high-sounding name). They won a bid to lease part of the Monastery of Trisulti, which dates back to the early 13th century. The lease, which was finalized in January, granted the building to the duo for 19 years in exchange for annual rent of $112,000. In April, the head of Italy’s European Union ally, leftist Democratic Party, Nicola Zingaretti, wrote to the culture minister that “Trisulti has been a place of peace, prayer, and meditation for eight centuries” and that it “is not compatible with the training activities of nationalist groups who often have openly xenophobic positions.” Now, Italian officials are evicting Bannon from the former monastery, claiming that the he has not met the contractual obligations of the lease, including protecting and maintaining the historic property. A spokesperson for the ministry expressed doubts that the lease was legitimate in the first place, explaining that because the monastery is listed as a national monument, any lease-holder must have demonstrated five years of experience caring for a landmark of cultural significance. Bannon, in Italy – a country of losers rather than winners, is also foolishly deciding to become one of them and in no mood to leave. “The fight for Trisulti is a microcosm of the fight for the Judeo-Christian West,” he declared in, once again, an “high-sounding,” statement. Lots of luck on that one, Steve. You would do better by walking around with the mass of tourists in Rome seeking over-priced brand-name products. A tariff may be described as a sales or consumption tax the consumer pays, but tariffs are also a discretionary and an optional tax. If an American chooses not to purchase Chinese goods and instead buy comparable goods in the USA, then that person does not pay the tariff. In the case of China, China loses the sale. This is why Beijing, which runs $350 billion to $400 billion in annual trade surpluses at our expense is howling loudest. Should Donald Trump impose that 25% tariff on all $500 billion in Chinese exports to the USA, it would cripple China’s economy. Factories seeking assured access to the U.S. market would be devastated. This is why tariffs were the taxes that made America great and they will make America even greater now. They were the taxes relied upon by the first and greatest of our early statesmen, before the coming of the globalists like Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Tariffs, to protect manufacturers and jobs, were the Republican Party’s path to power and prosperity in the 19th and 20th centuries, before the rise of the Rockefeller Eastern liberal establishment and its embrace of the British-bred heresy of unfettered free trade. The Tariff Act of 1789 was enacted with the declared purpose, “the encouragement and protection of manufactures.” It was the second act passed by the first Congress led by Speaker James Madison. It was crafted by Alexander Hamilton and signed by President Washington. After the War of 1812, President Madison, backed by Henry Clay and John Calhoun and ex-Presidents Jefferson and Adams, enacted the Tariff of 1816 to price British textiles out of competition, so Americans would build the new factories and capture the booming U.S. market. It worked. Tariffs financed Mr. Lincoln’s War. The Tariff of 1890 bears the name of Ohio Congressman and future President William McKinley, who said that a foreign manufacturer “has no right or claim to equality with our own. … He pays no taxes. He performs no civil duties.” On March 30, 2019 (UPI), at a crowded downtown intersection less than a mile from the U.S.-Mexico border, Democrat Beto O’Rourke brought his presidential campaign to his native El Paso, Texas, for the first time. “Welcome to the beautiful, magical, safe and secure U.S.-Mexico border,” U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, said as she introduced candidate O’Rourke. “El Paso is the Ellis Island of the border and in Beto O’Rourke we are sending the nation our best.” “We are safe because we are a city of immigrants and asylum seekers,” O’Rourke said in a stump speech that lasted 30 minutes. “El Paso represents America at its best.” President Donald Trump’s El Paso visit is a great opportunity to point out that the west Texas city is a rats’ nest of law enforcement corruption, a major smuggling route into the U.S. for Mexican drugs, illegal immigrants, and Islamic terrorists and the headquarters of a sophisticated narco-terror ring operated by two of the FBI’s most wanted. While local officials promote it as one of America’s safest cities, Judicial Watch has exposed in a years-long investigation the disturbing reality gripping the municipality that sits along the Rio Grande across famously violent Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Beto O’Rourke was dead wrong about El Paso – either he is ignorant or just lying to get votes. Even worse, his statements put the residents of El Paso, and the United States, in danger. Contrary to the dangerous misinformation of T Beto O’Rourke, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says El Paso is a major hub for Mexican opioids and methamphetamine enroute to the rest of the United States. Recently, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released figures showing that the El Paso sector had an astounding 1,588% increase in illegal immigrant apprehensions during the first month of 2019 compared to the first month of 2018. Drugs and Central Americans aren’t the only things being smuggled in through El Paso. Islamic terrorists are also making it into the U.S. with the help of Mexican drug cartels. Judicial Watch exposed an operation in which Mexican drug cartels smuggle foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small rural town near El Paso by using remote farm roads—rather than interstates—to elude the Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers. The foreigners are classified as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) and are transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. Once in the U.S., the SIAs wait for pick-up in the area’s sand hills just across Highway 20. Judicial Watch also broke a story about an ISIS training cell just a few miles from El Paso in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Law enforcement and intelligence sources on both sides of the border confirm that cartel-backed “coyotes” help smuggle ISIS terrorists through the desert and into the U.S. between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas. The areas are targeted for exploitation by ISIS because of their understaffed municipal and county police forces and the relative safe-havens the terrain provides for the unchecked large-scale drug smuggling. In the aftermath of Judicial Watch’s story about Islamic terrorists operating in Juárez, Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman that’s holding an anti-Trump rally during the president’s event at the El Paso County Coliseum, tried to silence federal law enforcement sources. O’Rourke, who represented El Paso in the House before a failed Senate bid, has long declared that Juárez is safe even as the notoriously violent region adjacent to his district is renowned for beheadings, gunfights, kidnappings and drug trafficking. Juárez is among the world’s most dangerous cities and the most dangerous place in the western hemisphere. Beto O’Rourke is OK with spreading false information to get votes even if it gets someone killed.

"When they all make you feel like a problem girl, remember, you're no problem at all." Rob Thomas, Problem Girl Monday, January 11, 2016 Remember when I said I was waiting to see what The Mighty would do in the wake of our conversation? Well, I found out. And it wasn't pretty. I told Vicki and Megan during the call that I was planning on posting my demands and guidelines on my blog. They made no attempt to convince me to refrain from that. They were well informed and should not have been taken by surprise. So I posted them. And later that night, I got up the courage to post a link to that post in the Mighty Voices Facebook group. I said something along the lines of "I'm probably going to get jumped on by the parents for demanding they write about their kids with respect, so when this hits my breaking point, I'm out of here. Megan and Vicki know where to find me, as do the people in this group who have been willing to listen and learn." I also emphasized that Megan and Vicki were lovely, and that it was many parents in the Mighty Voices group who were nasty and rude to me and other self-advocates. Imagine my shock when less than ten minutes later, my post was removed and I was removed from the group, as were many others, mostly self-advocates. The supposed rationale for this culling of the group was as follows, posted by Vicki in the Mighty Voices group AFTER removing people and emailed to all Mighty contributors: Hi everyone, When we first started Mighty Voices, we designed it to be a place for our frequent contributors to connect and collaborate. We will be making changes to Mighty Voices in the next few weeks as our new community manager comes on board. The first of these changes is that we want to return Mighty Voices to what it was designed to be. For this reason, we are removing anyone who hasn't submitted a story for consideration on The Mighty in the last four months. Please know this doesn't make you any less a part of The Mighty. We are so glad you're a part of our community, and we hope you continue to contribute to our site. If you have any questions or concerns, just let me know. Best regards,Vicki SantillanoSenior Editor | The Mighty Let's say I give The Mighty the benefit of the doubt and take their explanation at face value. What exactly does kicking contributors out of the Facebook group who haven't contributed in four months accomplish? It in no way goes to the root of the problems, not even close. All it does is make the Facebook group easier to manage for them. And as a former Facebook group moderator, I can tell you that when your group is growing, you don't kick people out. You hire more moderators. Hmmm....who suggested that? Oh right, I did. Contributors were given no warning before being removed. None. Zero. The explanation came after the fact. There was no chance for anyone to redeem themselves by submitting a post in a timely fashion if they wanted to stay in the group. We were punished for crimes we didn't even know we committed. But what angers me the most is the swift removal of my honest post with no explanation whatsoever. Vicki and Megan have done no moderation whatsoever over the past two to three weeks in the cesspool that is the Mighty Voices Facebook group. Now, all of a sudden, it was as if they realized that they should be doing something. But instead of moderating hateful and offensive comments (see below for some samples), they removed a post that I warned them I was going to write, which wasn't even offensive towards them (the worst I called them was lackadasical and naive, if you recall, and I pointed out some perfectly understandable reasons that they might be that way). I don't know whether the blog post itself upset them, whether it was my direct commentary on Facebook accompanying the post, or something else entirely, because once again, I got no explanation, no apology, nothing. Meanwhile, posts like this are still up, some in Mighty Voices and some on the main Mighty Facebook page (screenshots posted and described below): This was in response to the post by a mother, written under her real name, with a photo of her son, and going into detail about her son's bathroom problems: A partial screenshot of a Facebook thread. Names and profile pictures are blacked out for privacy, with different colors representing the different commentators. The first comment says "Wow tmi I'm glad my parents never posted my bathroom problems to fb". It has ten "likes", All other comments are replies to the original. First one under the original says "It's more than that. Its a story of hope." It has three "likes". Second one says "I'm sorry that all you see in this story is "bathroom problems". Perhaps you need to broaden your perspective a bit to get the real meaning in this story." It has 12 "likes". Next one says "Although it is a great story of a stranger helping someone else, it's embarrassing for her child if and when he does find out mom put the story all over the internet. Kids with Down Syndrome, even in adulthood, have feelings. And if someone pointed out, "Hey, that's the boy from that bathroom story on The Mighty, I'm sure he would be mortified. Even the lowest functioning can get hurt feelings from this. Next comment says "Very true, that's gonna be humiliating for the kid." It has two "likes". Next comment says "There is a bigger picture here people." It has two "likes". Next comment says "Get a grip people! This little boy had Down's Syndrome and Autism and was non verbal! His mother would be more than thrilled if her son COULD read this and be embarrassed! Forget any embarrassment and look at her horrible predicament...being a mother..." The comment is cut off with a "see more" link and has five "likes". Final comment is from the same person who said that it was gonna be humiliating, and says "So what you're saying is that this kid has no right to privacy because of how severe his disabilities are? That's messed up. Every single person has a right to confidentiality no matter what their ability." It has four "likes". So, in essence, in this thread, we have people saying "People with disabilities have feelings." and other people very nearly literally going "No, they don't." This next screenshot was part of a comment thread on an unknown post. Screenshot of a Facebook comment, with name and profile blacked out for privacy. Comment reads "Disabilities are meant to teach others! To serve, to help, to be humble, to be patient. There is nothing wrong with that. Let disabilities inspire." The reply by Kelly Ford (who gave me her permission to show her name and picture) says "Disability is meant to teach and inspire? Could you perhaps be more clear about this point? My son, myself, and others do not feel our "purpose" in life is to inspire and teach solely on the basis of a disability. Most certainly not as a minor child who will grow up and have a digital caricature of ourselves painted permanently online for the "inspiration" of others. Especially in a narrative we did not choose ourselves. Perhaps I have misunderstood....I apologize in advance if I missed something here. Just looking for clarification." Apparently, I exist solely to inspire people. Silly me, I thought I existed to live my life. This is a complaint I hear frequently from people with visible disabilities in particular and something I encounter often. When I am getting my coffee or going to class or catching a train...I am not there to educate you. I am not there to inspire you. I am there to get my coffee or go to class or catch a train, just like everyone else. No one else has this expectation placed on them that they must be available to satisfy people's every whim every second of every day. Yet, because we are disabled, it is not only expected of us, it is demanded of it. It becomes our obligation, our job, and we are continually expected to do it for free (which is, of course, one of the problems with The Mighty and other sites, though frankly a small problem in comparison with the rampant ableism and inspiration porn that is becoming clearer on The Mighty by the day). These types of posts (and these examples are truly the tip of the iceberg) promote stereotypes and use disabled people as props for the satisfaction of the able. Demeaning, offensive, and frankly dangerous posts are still up....and yet my honest critique of my phone call with the Mighty editors was removed almost as soon as it was put up. It's hard not to suspect ulterior motives here. I have to ask Megan and Vicki, what the hell did you think I was going to do? You knew I was going to put my demands and guidelines up on my blog. Did you think I wasn't going to talk about the call itself? Did you think I wasn't going to post it in Mighty Voices? Did you think I was posting it on my blog just for my own amusement? I'm highly confused here. Obviously, I wasted my time and my breath trying to educate people, including The Mighty editors. I put in my own time, and did a lot of work both putting together my demands and guidelines, and talking on the phone with The Mighty editors (which, incidentally, is a fairly inaccessible medium for me, because phone calls give me severe anxiety). I did all this for free, when I could have spent that time on far more productive things that could actually make me money. I did all this because I thought there was a chance The Mighty would listen. I am beyond disappointed. I am hurt, enraged, and disgusted. The Mighty did not even have the decency to be honest about their extreme indifference and even antagonism towards disabled people. I would have respected them much more if they had. They pretended to care, and then stabbed us in the back with a flimsy excuse and no apology. It's clear that The Mighty does not care. They disrespected me, and they disrespected a lot of other people, both self-advocates and non-disabled parents. I will be asking The Mighty to remove my pieces and my profile from their site. You do not try to silence me, and yet keep my pieces up on your site for the clicks. Goodbye, The Mighty. I'm sorry that actual disabled people had the nerve to critique a disability-related site. 8 comments : I am new to this community but I will tell you, your efforts are not in vain. Your voice may not have reached the people you hoped it would (namely, the people in charge of what goes up on The Mighty), but some of the people in there were reading and following you. You will make your own waves without them! Thank you for being a much-needed voice for humanity. Give it up unless you have incredible mental reserves. I've dealt with parents of kids with disabilities for years. Many are narcissistic (I suppose the stress of having a kid with a disability brings out tendencies that were already there) and you can't argue with a narcissist. They get some head trip from doing the stuff you're posting about and you can't change it - no one can. Take care of yourself. Wow! Ouch! So sorry all of this happened to you Cara. I had a feeling they would not take the criticism well. People do not like to be told how to do their job in general. It could be that they didn't mind you posting on the blog until you posted the blog on the Mighty itself. But if they gave you permission they should keep their word!!!! I ALWAYS ask permission before posting something on Crip Video Productions because I know people must be treated with dignity when it comes to medical conditions, diseases, and disabilities. Please know that you did the right thing by giving them a chance to change and perhaps someday in the future they will learn. Your work is not in vain my friend! The only purpose of The Mighty seems to be perpetuating ignorance of disability issues by over-protecting mothers who are afraid of dealing with their kids' disabilities as well as other adults who are equally bad at dealing with the real issues of disability and culture. It seems like every time I dare open up a story on the site, it reeks of inspiration porn - or it angles for it, which is even worse, imho. I am glad to see you making an effort but unfortunately I think it's in vain. Maybe it's because I have grown into a grumpy old cynic of a man. Who knows? I feel your pain and applaud you for telling it like it is. I tried to encourage the Mighty to make their site accessible to those of us who use large print. They haven't yet bothered to respond. How can I respect a site that doesn't bother to make itself accessible to people with disabilities? I check back periodically to see if they've fixed it yet, but they haven't so I haven't read anything on there in ages. (your site, by the way, works well in large print!).

[Prevalence and distribution of hepatitis B virus genotype D in Galicia (northwest of Spain): influence of age, sex and origin]. Phylogenetically, hepatitis B virus (HBV) is classified into genotypes and subgenotypes used for epidemiological studies. The aim of this study is to know the distribution of HBV subgenotypes D in our environment. From 401 patients HBV surface antigen positive, HBV DNA-positive, partial HBV-DNA S gene was amplified, sequenced and analysed using geno2pheno (hbv) (Max-Planck Institute) on line application. We found 259 (64.6%) patients with HBV genotype D: 53 not subgenotypable, 9 (4%) D1, 61 (30%) D2, 15 (7%) D3 and 121 (59%) D4. Patients with D1 subgenotype were, on average, 23 years younger (p = 0.0001), with a higher proportion of women (p < 0.05). HBV subgenotype D4 was the most prevalent in our area. Patients with D1 subgenotype came from abroad were younger than the other subgenotypes and mostly women. These results show the interest of conducting studies at HBV subgenotype level.

Evidence Supports Use of High-Dose Aspirin for Migraine FRIDAY, Dec. 13, 2019 -- Evidence supports the use of high-dose aspirin for treating acute migraine and low-dose aspirin for prevention of recurrent attacks, according to a review recently published in the American Journal of Medicine. Bianca Biglione, from the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, and colleagues reviewed the evidence to examine the use of aspirin for treatment of acute migraine and prevention of recurrent attacks. The researchers found that based on the totality of evidence, including data from randomized trials, high-dose aspirin (doses from 900 to 1,300 mg) taken at symptom onset is effective and safe for acute migraine headaches. Based on the totality of evidence, including some randomized trials, low-dose daily aspirin (doses from 81 to 325 mg) may be effective and safe for preventing recurrent migraine headaches. "Migraine headaches are among the most common and potentially debilitating disorders encountered by primary health care providers," Biglione said in a statement. "In fact, about one in 10 primary care patients present with headache and three out of four are migraines. Aspirin is readily available without a prescription, is inexpensive, and based on our review, was shown to be effective in many migraine patients when compared with alternative more expensive therapies." Two authors disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical and medical technology industries. Abstract/Full Text (subscription or payment may be required) Editorial (subscription or payment may be required) © 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved. Posted: December 2019

Series of 24-hour stoppages to take place between 18 and 29 September This article is more than 1 year old This article is more than 1 year old Ryanair pilots in the UK are to strike for a further seven days in September, the union has announced. The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) said its members would walk out for a series of 24-hour stoppages between 18 and 29 September, adding that Ryanair had refused to seek conciliation talks at Acas to resolve the dispute over pay and working conditions. The carrier has managed to operate all of its scheduled UK flights this week despite a three-day strike by domestic pilots, partly by bringing in more contractors and moving its pilots from around Europe. The union admitted that the strikes to date, including a two-day stoppage in late August, had a “limited impact” on the travelling public but caused considerable internal disruption at the airline. Balpa blamed Ryanair intransigence for adding the new dates over an extended period. The general secretary, Brian Strutton, said: “We are clear that we want to settle the dispute and bring about a change in Ryanair for the better. “Pilots in Ryanair are seeking the same kind of policies and agreements that exist in other airlines – our demands are not unreasonable. We want to address issues like pensions; loss of licence insurance; maternity benefits; allowances; and harmonise pay across the UK in a fair, transparent, and consistent structure. “Ryanair should stop dragging its feet and get back to the negotiating table.” The airline described the strikes as “pointless and failed”. It said it had operated all 820 flights on Tuesday without cancellation as well as the first wave of flights on Wednesday morning, the last day of the current walkout. It has been embroiled in disputes with cabin crew and pilots across Europe since agreeing to recognise unions last year. A planned strike by Irish pilots, which would have made it far harder for Ryanair to cope with the Balpa walkout, was stopped by an injunction granted by courts in Ireland. Ryanair said: “We call on Balpa to return to talks to resolve any issues of genuine concern for our UK pilots, where Balpa’s strikes have totally failed.”

<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> <title>ip::basic_resolver_iterator::operator *</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="../../../boostbook.css" type="text/css"> <meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.75.2"> <link rel="home" href="../../../index.html" title="Asio"> <link rel="up" href="../ip__basic_resolver_iterator.html" title="ip::basic_resolver_iterator"> <link rel="prev" href="iterator_category.html" title="ip::basic_resolver_iterator::iterator_category"> <link rel="next" href="operator_not__eq_.html" title="ip::basic_resolver_iterator::operator!="> </head> <body bgcolor="white" text="black" link="#0000FF" vlink="#840084" alink="#0000FF"> <table cellpadding="2" width="100%"><tr><td valign="top"><img alt="asio C++ library" width="250" height="60" src="../../../asio.png"></td></tr></table> <hr> <div class="spirit-nav"> <a accesskey="p" href="iterator_category.html"><img src="../../../prev.png" alt="Prev"></a><a accesskey="u" href="../ip__basic_resolver_iterator.html"><img src="../../../up.png" alt="Up"></a><a accesskey="h" href="../../../index.html"><img src="../../../home.png" alt="Home"></a><a accesskey="n" href="operator_not__eq_.html"><img src="../../../next.png" alt="Next"></a> </div> <div class="section"> <div class="titlepage"><div><div><h4 class="title"> <a name="asio.reference.ip__basic_resolver_iterator.operator__star_"></a><a class="link" href="operator__star_.html" title="ip::basic_resolver_iterator::operator *">ip::basic_resolver_iterator::operator *</a> </h4></div></div></div> <p> <a class="indexterm" name="asio.indexterm.ip__basic_resolver_iterator.operator__star_"></a> Dereference an iterator. </p> <pre class="programlisting">const basic_resolver_entry&lt; InternetProtocol &gt; &amp; operator *() const; </pre> </div> <table xmlns:rev="http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~gregod/boost/tools/doc/revision" width="100%"><tr> <td align="left"></td> <td align="right"><div class="copyright-footer">Copyright &#169; 2003-2018 Christopher M. Kohlhoff<p> Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at <a href="http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt" target="_top">http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt</a>) </p> </div></td> </tr></table> <hr> <div class="spirit-nav"> <a accesskey="p" href="iterator_category.html"><img src="../../../prev.png" alt="Prev"></a><a accesskey="u" href="../ip__basic_resolver_iterator.html"><img src="../../../up.png" alt="Up"></a><a accesskey="h" href="../../../index.html"><img src="../../../home.png" alt="Home"></a><a accesskey="n" href="operator_not__eq_.html"><img src="../../../next.png" alt="Next"></a> </div> </body> </html>

Sports Specialization Is Not Associated With Greater Odds of Previous Injury in Elite Male Youth Soccer Players. To determine the relationship between sport specialization and previous injury in elite male youth soccer players. Retrospective survey. U.S. Soccer Development Academy. Male youth soccer players (N = 2123). Sport specialization, weekly training volume, training ratio, and age. Previous sports-related injury, injury type (traumatic vs overuse), injury severity, and injury location. Of 2099 participants (average age 13.2 ± 1.8 years), 61.7% were specialized in soccer (played soccer >8 mo/yr and no other sports) and 38.3% were nonspecialized (played soccer >8 mo/yr and also played other organized sports). Specialized athletes were older than nonspecialized athletes (13.7 ± 1.9 vs 12.5 ± 1.4, P < 0.0001). Thirty-three percent (690/2099) of athletes reported at least one previous sports-related injury for a total of 765 traumatic injuries and 25 overuse injuries. Distribution of injury type was similar for specialized and nonspecialized athletes. Among athletes with overuse injuries, nonspecialized athletes were more likely to report upper-extremity and trunk overuse injuries than specialized athletes. After accounting for age and weekly training volume, specialized athletes had decreased odds of reporting any previous injury compared with nonspecialized athletes [odds ratio (OR), 0.78; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.64-0.95], and similar odds of reporting a previous lower-extremity (LE) overuse injury as nonspecialized athletes (OR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.56-1.1). However, specialized athletes missed more practices due to injury than nonspecialized players [median = 3, interquartile range (IQR) 2-4 vs median = 2, IQR 2-4, P = 0.0003]. In this national sample of elite, male youth soccer players, after accounting for age and weekly training volume, specialized athletes had decreased odds of reporting any previous injury and similar odds of reporting a previous LE overuse injury as nonspecialized athletes. These data suggest the need for further research to determine whether injury risk related to sports specialization depends on sex, chosen sport, and skill/competitive level.

Kvinna i rullstol slogs blodig vid rånförsök Av: Filip Lindahl , TT Publicerad: 03 mars 2018 kl. 23.12 Uppdaterad: 03 mars 2018 kl. 23.54 Foto: Johan Nilsson/TT När rånarna inte fick en mobil slog de den rullstolsburna kvinnan i ansiktet. Arkivbild. En rullstolsburen kvinna har blivit utsatt för rånförsök och misshandel när hon var ute och rastade sin hund i bostadsområdet Stenkällan i östra Malmö på kvällen. – Två för henne okända män kom fram och sade att de ville ha hennes mobiltelefon. När hon svarade att hon inte har någon slår de henne i ansiktet, säger Calle Persson, pressinformatör vid polisregion Syd. Enligt Sydsvenskan började kvinnan, som är i 30-årsåldern, att blöda efter slagen mot ansiktet. När kvinnan väl tagit sig hem tog hon kontakt med polisen. Hon behövde inte uppsöka sjukvård omedelbart. Efter rånförsöket ska männen ha lämnat platsen till fots. Polisen har letat efter de misstänkta i närområdet men har inte lyckats gripa dem. KOPIERA LÄNK

Prabhadevi Temple Prabhadevi Temple, also known as Prabhavati Devi Temple , is a Hindu temple located in the Prabhadevi area, near Dadar, Mumbai. The idol representing the main deity, Prabhavati Devi, dates back to the 12th Century. The temple itself, though, was constructed in 1715, making it only 300 years old. History According to historians, the main deity of Prabhadevi Temple was originally referred to as Shakambari Devi. She was the famous goddess (Kuladevi) of Yadava king Bimba Raja of Gujarat. According to local folklore, Prabhavati Devi appeared in the dreams of a devotee named Shyam Nayak from the Pathare Prabhu (one of Mumbai's earliest native communities), who would go on to build the temple of Prabhadevi. The idol of the goddess was shifted to Karnataka, where it was attacked by muslim invaders known as the Mughals. Later, it was moved back to Mahim Creek and placed in the current Prabhadevi temple. Other Prabhadevi is situated between the Dadar to the north, Worli to the south, and the Arabian Sea to the west. The place is named after the deity of the Prabhadevi Temple. Prabhadevi railway station, a station on the Western line of the Mumbai Suburban Railway is named after Prabhadevi. It was previously known as Elphinstone Road. Gallery References Category:Hindu temples in Mumbai Category:Mumbai Category:Culture of Mumbai

Background {#Sec1} ========== Threatened miscarriage---defined as an ongoing pregnancy associated with vaginal bleeding, with or without abdominal pain \[[@CR1]\]---is the most common gynecological emergency, occurring in 15--20% of ongoing pregnancies \[[@CR2]\], with 25% progressing to spontaneous miscarriage \[[@CR3], [@CR4]\]. Many clinical resources are utilized in attempting a definitive diagnosis of spontaneous miscarriage among women with threatened miscarriage, as not all are at equal risk of miscarriage. Individualizing outpatient management based on an initial risk evaluation would be a boon to clinical care and suggest any additional therapy. While maternal factors like older age (\>33 years) and lower body mass index (BMI) \<20 kg/m^2^ have been found to contribute to spontaneous miscarriage \[[@CR5]\], recent focus has been on identifying serum biological markers prognostic of spontaneous miscarriage. A recent meta-analysis by Pillai et al of prospective studies investigating biomarkers to determine pregnancy outcome for women presenting with threatened miscarriage have showed conflicting results with the need for larger studies and further validation \[[@CR6]\]. Other studies have looked at various biomarkers such as serum beta HCG, estradiol, PAPP-A, inhibin, CA 125 as well as progesterone. In addition, other studies have also looked at using different combination of maternal demographics, serum biomarkers and ultrasound features to predict pregnancy viability that shows promise but require the implementation of a mathematical model and algorithm. This could prove to be unwieldy in a busy clinical service due to multiple variables that need to be collected in order to use the model effectively \[[@CR7]--[@CR10]\]. Presently, the most promising is serum progesterone. A recent prospective cohort study of women with no signs of threatened miscarriage from 4 to 12 weeks of gestation reported risk of miscarriage to be significantly higher among women with low serum progesterone (\<38.3 nmol/L or 12 ng/ml) \[[@CR5]\]. Progesterone levels were 48% lower in women experiencing threatened miscarriage with subsequent spontaneous miscarriage compared to women who delivered at term. \[[@CR9], [@CR11]\] In our group's paper, serum progesterone levels were significantly lower in women presenting with threatened miscarriage who subsequently experienced spontaneous miscarriage by 16 weeks gestation compared to those who did not miscarry. A cut-off serum progesterone level of 35 nmol/L was proposed to prognosticate low and high risk for spontaneous miscarriage after presenting with threatened miscarriage in early pregnancy \[[@CR12]\]. Notwithstanding these findings, serum progesterone is currently not used for miscarriage risk assessment in a clinical setting. One explanation may be insufficient evidence regarding appropriate or 'optimal' serum progesterone cut-off levels for risk stratification of spontaneous miscarriage. Thus, a validated serum progesterone cut-off as a prognostic risk assessment will allow clinicians the means to better stratify patients into low- and high-risk populations. The current study employed a large, prospective cohort (Validation cohort) with the aim of validating the serum progesterone cut-off value of 35 nmol/L based on the results of an earlier, smaller study at the same institution (Pilot cohort). We compared areas under ROC curves (AUCs) as well as sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values between the Pilot and Validation cohorts using 35 nmol/L as the risk prognosis cut-off for spontaneous miscarriage at or before 16 weeks of gestation in women presenting with threatened miscarriage in weeks 6--10 of pregnancy. Methods {#Sec2} ======= A total of 360 pregnant women, aged 21 years and above, presenting at the KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH) 24-h Women's Clinic from September 2013 to June 2015 were recruited in the Validation cohort. Inclusion criteria were a single intrauterine pregnancy between gestation weeks 6 to 10 (confirmed and dated by ultrasonography), with pregnancy-related per vagina bleeding. Women with previous episodes of per vagina bleeding or those treated with progesterone for previous per vagina bleeding in the current pregnancy, or women diagnosed with inevitable miscarriage, missed miscarriage, blighted ovum or planned termination of pregnancy were excluded (Fig. [1](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}).Fig. 1Sample selection flow chart Maternal blood samples were taken to measure serum progesterone level at presentation. Blood was collected in plain tubes and centrifuged for 10 min at 3000 *g* within 2 h of collection. Serum progesterone level was measured in the KKH clinical laboratory using a commercial ARCHITECT progesterone kit (Abbott, Ireland). Covariates for the analysis were maternal demographics, health, obstetric and lifestyle factors collected by an investigator administered questionnaire in either English or Chinese (Table [1](#Tab1){ref-type="table"}).Table 1Comparison of serum progesterone levels and maternal characteristics at baseline by pregnancy status at 16 weeks gestation for Pilot and Validation cohortsMaternal characteristicsOngoing pregnancy at 16 weeks gestationSpontaneous miscarriage at or before 16 weeks gestationPilot Cohort\ (*N* = 89)Validation Cohort (*N* = 276)*p* valuePilot Cohort\ (*N* = 30)Validation Cohort (*N* = 70)*p* valueSerum biological markers Progesterone, mean ± SD (nmol/L)59.8 ± 23.560.3 ± 22.70.84826.4 ± 17.131.4 ± 20.10.237Demographics Age, mean ± SD (years)29.3 ± 4.8330.3 ± 4.100.076931.3 ± 4.7331.6 ± 5.220.774 Age of spouse, mean ± SD (years)32.9 ± 5.4333.1 ± 5.960.77233.9 ± 5.1034.6 ± 6.380.628  Race  Chinese (%)53.952.00.27153.338.60.396  Malay (%)19.125.516.731.4  Indian (%)16.910.216.714.3  Others (%)10.112.413.315.7 Marital status  Married92.194.60.44490.097.10.158  Single7.875.4510.02.86 Highest educational level  University degree (%)42.739.30.17946.742.90.724  ITE or polytechnic (%)30.340.436.732.9  Primary and secondary (%)27.020.416.724.3Health, obstetric and lifestyle factors Planned Pregnancy (%)59.658.20.90263.344.30.126 Gestation age at recruitment, mean (wks)7.49 ± 1.437.48 ± 1.470.9686.89 ± 1.306.63 ± 1.060.311 Fetal pole present (%)93.3100**0.0002**50.0100**\<0.0001** Fetal heart present (%)87.695.6**0.011**30.070.0**0.0003** Number of children  None (%)55.145.50.14343.332.90.367  1 or more (%)44.954.656.767.1 Previous miscarriage (%)20.224.00.56320.022.91.000 BMI, mean ± SD (kg/m^2^)23.7 ± 5.0922.9 ± 4.290.20422.1 ± 3.8123.6 ± 4.810.0903Medical comorbidities Diabetes mellitus (%)00.3601.000001.000 Hypertension (%)001.000001.000 Thyroid disease (%)1.121.091.00001.431.000 Gynecological disease (%)12.412.01.0000100.0991 Smoking during pregnancy (%)3.375.450.57905.710.313 Exposed second hand smoke at home (%)40.544.70.5393038.60.498 Alcohol during pregnancy (%)1.120.721.000001.000 Nausea during pregnancy (%)70.877.50.2034055.70.192Entries in boldface were used to show that these variables were significantly related to different or associated with spontaneous miscarriage*SD* standard deviation, *CRL* crown-rump length, *BMI* maternal body mass index Outcome measures and follow-up {#Sec3} ------------------------------ The primary outcome measured was spontaneous miscarriage, defined by self-reported uterine evacuation after inevitable or incomplete miscarriage, or complete miscarriage with an empty uterus, by the 16th week of gestation. All participants were contacted at the 16th week of pregnancy to verify pregnancy status. Statistical Methods {#Sec4} ------------------- The progesterone cut-off of \<35 nmol/L for high risk of miscarriage before the 16th week of pregnancy was determined and developed using the Pilot study cohort as reported in Ku et al. \[[@CR12]\] The \<35 nmol/L serum progesterone cut-off form the basis for our validation study. Baseline maternal demographics and pregnancy characteristics were statistically compared between the Pilot and the Validation cohorts with respect to two patient subgroups: (i) patients who experienced spontaneous miscarriage at 16 weeks of gestation and (ii) patients with ongoing pregnancy at 16 weeks gestation. The 2-sample *t*-test was used to compare continuous baseline variables and Fisher's exact test to compare categorical variables. Logistic regression equations were fitted to the respective Pilot and Validation cohort data sets. The outcome was the binary response 'Yes/No' corresponding to occurrence/non-occurrence of spontaneous miscarriage. The single predictor was progesterone level (nmol/L). Parameter estimates were obtained for the intercept (*b* ~0~) and progesterone coefficient (*b* ~1~). ROC analysis was performed using progesterone concentration as a continuous variable. The Youden criterion, which consists of identifying the value of progesterone that maximizes the sum of sensitivity and specificity, was applied to identify the 'optimum' progesterone cut-off for each cohort. ROC curves and AUCs for the Pilot and Validation cohorts were computed and compared statistically the using the approach of Hanley and McNeil for comparing independent ROC curves derived from different samples. 95% confidence intervals on the difference between the Pilot and Validation AUCs were obtained. Using the progesterone cut-off of \<35 nmol/L, test parameters of sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV were estimated and compared between the Pilot and Validation cohorts using Fisher's exact test. Exact Clopper-Pearson 95% confidence intervals were calculated on test parameter estimates. Differences in Pilot and Validation parameter estimates were obtained and 95% confidence intervals on differences were calculated using a normal approximation approach. Likelihood ratios corresponding to positive (LR+) and negative (LR-) test outcomes were calculated. Agreement of actual versus predicted Validation cohort miscarriages based on the \<35 nmol/L cut-off was assessed using McNemar's test. Corresponding confidence intervals on the difference were calculated using the Wald *z* method for differences of correlated proportions. Analyses were performed using SAS software version 9.3 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina, USA). Results {#Sec5} ======= Of the 360 women recruited in the Validation cohort, 11 were lost to follow up and 3 withdrew from the study due to induced termination of pregnancy. Of the 346 women included in the analysis, 70 (20.2%) experienced spontaneous miscarriage prior to week 16. Of the 119 women in the Pilot cohort, 30 (25.2%) experienced spontaneous miscarriage prior to week 16 of gestation. The difference (95% Confidence Interval (CI)) in incidence proportions between the Pilot and Validation cohorts was 0.05 (-0.03, 0.14) and not statistically significant (*p* = 0.301). Serum progesterone levels (nmol/L) did not differ significantly between Pilot (P) and Validation (V) cohorts for women with ongoing pregnancies at 16 weeks (P-59.8, V-60.3; *p* = 0.848) or women experiencing spontaneous miscarriage prior to week 16 (P-26.4, V-31.4; *p* = 0.237). In women with ongoing pregnancy at week 16, the only maternal demographic and clinical variables exhibiting a statistically significant difference between the two cohorts were presence of fetal pole (%) (P-93.3, V-100; *p* = 0.0002) and fetal heart (%) (P-87.6, V-95.6; *p* = 0.011). The same held true in women with spontaneous miscarriage prior to week 16, with significant differences in presence of fetal pole (P-50.0, V-100; *p* \<0.0001) and fetal heart (P-30.0, V-70.0; *p* = 0.0003) (Table [1](#Tab1){ref-type="table"}). Logistic regression equations parameter estimates for the intercept (*b* ~0~) and progesterone coefficient (*b* ~1~) were (*b* ~0~, *b* ~1~) = (2.8439, -0.0971) for the Pilot cohort and (2.1063, -0.0782) for the Validation cohort. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed on the Validation cohort data with progesterone level as a continuous variable. Validation of serum progesterone for prognosticating risk of spontaneous miscarriage {#Sec6} ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ AUC (95% CI) for the Pilot and Validation cohort serum progesterone ROC curves was 0.89 (0.81, 0.97) and 0.83 (0.77, 9.89), respectively. The difference (95% CI) was 0.06 (-0.04, 0.15) and not statistically significant (*p* = 0.267) (Fig. [2](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}). In applying the Youden index criterion to the ROC curve, the progesterone concentration in the Validation cohort that maximized sensitivity + specificity was 35 nmol/L, which was consistent with the Pilot cohort result. For the Validation cohort (\<35 nmol/L cut-off), test sensitivity = 65.7%, specificity = 92.0%, Positive Predictive Value (PPV) = 67.7%, Negative Predictive Value (NPV) = 91.3%, LR + = 8.21 and LR- = 0.37 for spontaneous miscarriage by week 16. There were no significant differences between the Pilot and Validation cohorts among any test performance parameters (Table [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"}).Fig. 2Comparison of ROC curves for serum progesterone from Pilot and Validation cohorts at \< 35 nmol/L cut-off Table 2Comparison of sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV between Pilot and Validation cohorts for progesterone at cut-off \< 35 nmol/L for high risk of miscarriage before 16th week of pregnancyStatistic\ (95% CI)\ CountsStudy*P*-value^1^Diff\ (95% CI)PilotValidSensitivity0.767\ (0.577, 0.901)\ 23/300. 657\ (0.534, 0.767)\ 46/700.3490.110\ (-0.093, 0.274)Specificity0.888\ (0.803, 0.945)\ 79/890. 920\ (0.881, 0.949)\ 253/2750.389-0.032\ (-0.119, 0.031)PPV0.697 ^a^\ (0.513, 0.844)\ 23/330. 677 ^b^\ (0.552, 0.785)\ 46/681.0000.021\ (-0.177, 0.196)NPV0. 919 ^a^\ (0.839, 0.967)\ 79/860. 913 ^b^\ (0.874, 0.944)\ 253/2771.0000.005\ (-0.077, 0.062)LR+6.828.21LR-0.260.37^1^ Fisher's exact test, ^a^ Prevalence = 0.25; ^b^ Prevalence = 0.20 Agreement of actual versus predicted miscarriages by 16 weeks in the validation cohort {#Sec7} -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using the \<35 nmol/L serum progesterone cut-off, among the 346 women in the validation cohort, results were True Positive = 46, True Negative = 254, False Positive = 24 and False Negative = 22 translating to accuracy (95% CI) of 300/346 = 0.87 (0.83, 0.90). The null hypothesis of equality of the proportion of miscarriages predicted by the model (0.197 = 68/346) versus the actual proportion (0.202 = 70/346) was non-significant by McNemar's test (*p* = 0.768) for the difference (95% CI) of -0.006 (-0.044, 0.033). Discussion {#Sec8} ========== There is significant interest in developing clinically useful models for risk prognosis of pregnancy complications and outcomes, and to stratify pregnant women as low or high risk. The advantages of serum progesterone as a marker for spontaneous miscarriage in women with threatened miscarriage are three-fold: (1) high reliability for reassuring women at low risk of miscarriage (NPV \> 90%), (2) provides clinical guidance for unnecessary progestogen treatments or bed rest, and (3) may prompt mobilization of resources supporting an expectant mother's psychological wellbeing. Main findings {#Sec9} ------------- Our study was targeted at women presenting with threatened miscarriage in early pregnancy in order to validate a previously suggested serum progesterone cut-off level of \<35 nmol/L for predicting risk of spontaneous miscarriage in this high-risk population. In the past, a reliable marker or model for clinical prognosis of pregnancy outcome in women presenting with threatened miscarriage in early pregnancy has not been available. In this study, we have successfully validated the serum progesterone cut-off value of \<35 nmol/L (11 ng/ml)---originally identified in a previous study \[[@CR12]\], as a clinically useful predictor of miscarriage prior to week 16 of pregnancy in a temporally different population from the same centre. Using this cut-off, individual patients can be quickly stratified as being at low risk or high risk of spontaneous miscarriage. Strengths and interpretation {#Sec10} ---------------------------- Early pregnancy is maintained via mediation by hormones and endocrine-immune interactions \[[@CR13]\]. Progesterone is increasingly recognized as a critical hormone during implantation where it plays an important role in sustaining decidualization, controlling uterine contractility and promoting maternal immune tolerance to the fetal semi-allograft. \[[@CR14]\] Thus, high level of serum progesterone may be protective against early pregnancy loss. In contrast, low level of serum progesterone could contribute to an increased risk of subsequent spontaneous miscarriage, especially in women who presents with threatened miscarriage in the first trimester of pregnancy. However, very few studies have reported a specific cut-off progesterone level with high predictive value for spontaneous miscarriage \[[@CR11], [@CR15]--[@CR17]\]. The serum progesterone cutoff level of \<35 nmol/L originally proposed by Ku et al \[[@CR12]\] provides important information that can be used to provide individualized and patient-specific risk assessment for spontaneous miscarriage. This provides prognostic data available at entry to care. Our validated proposed cut off level for serum progesterone allows clinicians to quickly assess individual patient risk by calculating a probability based on presence or absence of various factors. This threshold level for serum progesterone can be applied in a clinical setting, accurately identifying high-risk patients who may require more therapeutic intervention or heightened surveillance. In addition, this subpopulation of patients may potentially contribute to further pharmacological intervention studies whereby its therapeutic effectiveness and efficacy can be determined. Although measurements of serum progesterone levels are not recommended for routine clinical use at this time, it can be determined that serum progesterone is a highly specific predictive biomarker for spontaneous miscarriage, with a high negative predictive value, allowing us to reassure anxious patients with a low risk of miscarriage. Finally, we are able to demonstrate that our serum progesterone cut off value of 35 nmol/L was highly reproducible in a temporally different patient population, thus supporting the validity of the model. Limitation {#Sec11} ---------- However, our study has a few limitations. This proposed serum progesterone cut-off value was shown to be applicable in women who present with threatened miscarriage in early pregnancy. It is uncertain if the predictive values will be applicable in a low-risk population, but the sensitivity and the specificity should remain constant, as these parameters are independent of disease prevalence. External validation is required before widespread implementation into clinical practice is possible. Conclusion {#Sec12} ========== We present a proposed cut off serum progesterone value of \<35 nmol/L as a validated threshold level to predict spontaneous miscarriage, which demonstrates both excellent accuracy and acceptable reproducibility. This threshold level allows clinicians to perform risk stratification relating to risk of spontaneous miscarriage, allowing for better prognostication and guiding therapeutic interventions. This model is both clinically applicable and easily implemented, as well as provides research opportunities for future miscarriage intervention studies. AUC : Area under the ROC curve (AUC) BMI : Body mass index CI : Confidence interval KKH : KK women's and children's hospital LR : Likelihood ratio NPV : Negative predictive value P : Pilot PPV : Positive predictive value ROC : Receiver operating characteristic V : Validation We wish to thank all the families who participated in our research and all the dedicated staff from all participating departments. Funding {#FPar1} ======= This study is funded by the SingHealth Foundation Research Grant Call research fund. Availability of data and materials {#FPar2} ================================== The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available as further research and analysis are being performed on the datasets for future publications but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Authors' contributions {#FPar3} ====================== SML developed the research design, analysis strategy, conducted patient recruitment and follow-up and was the main co-first author of the manuscript. CWK developed the research design, analysis strategy, conducted patient recruitment and follow-up and was the main co-first author of the manuscript. JCA Jr performed to the statistical analyses and contributed to the interpretation of results and presentation, and provided editorial guidance. RM contributed to the development of research design and analysis strategy, interpretation of results and writing of the manuscript. NST contributed to experimental design and analysis strategy, interpretation of results and presentation, and provided editorial guidance. TØ contributed to the development of research design and analysis strategy, interpretation of results and writing of the manuscript. TCT contributed to the development of research design, analysis strategy, provided editorial support and is the principal investigator of the SingHealth Foundation Research Grant Call research fund. All authors have reviewed and approved the final version of the paper. Competing interests {#FPar4} =================== The authors have no conflicts of interest. Consent for publication {#FPar5} ======================= Not applicable Ethics approval and consent to participate {#FPar6} ========================================== The institutional review board at SingHealth (CIRB ref: 2013/320/D) approved the study. All patients have given verbal and written consent to be included in this study.

Introduction {#s1} ============ Venoms and the toxins they include are mostly used by animals for antagonistic interactions, such as prey capture and defense from predators ([@bib15]; [@bib7]). Pharmacological research has been focused almost exclusively on the venoms of the adult stages despite the fact that many animals display remarkable transformations in body architectures and ecology during their development ([@bib55]). Such vast differences may dictate different interspecific interactions for distinct life stages ([@bib66]). As venom is hypothesized to be metabolically expensive, and in many cases highly specific ([@bib46]; [@bib7]), it is plausible that its composition might change between different life stages. Indeed, some ontogenetic variation was reported in the venoms of snakes ([@bib19]), spiders ([@bib57]) and cone snails ([@bib56]), but until now this phenomenon was not studied thoroughly in an animal with a complex life cycle throughout its development. The oldest extant group of venomous animals is the marine phylum Cnidaria, which includes sea anemones, corals, jellyfish and hydroids. Cnidarians are typified by their stinging cell, the nematocyte, that harbors a unique and highly complex organelle, the nematocyst ([@bib26]; [@bib10]). This proteinaceous organelle is utilized as a miniature venom delivery system ([@bib62]; [@bib32]). Most cnidarians have a complex life cycle that includes both sessile benthic and mobile pelagic life stages of wide size distribution and ecological interactions. For example, the canonical life cycle of anthozoans (corals and sea anemones) includes a swimming larval stage (planula) that metamorphoses into a sessile polyp stage that matures into the reproductive adult. The starlet sea anemone, *Nematostella vectensis,* is becoming a leading cnidarian lab model as unlike many other cnidarian species it can be grown in the lab throughout its life cycle. This makes *Nematostella* a unique system to study the venom of an animal with a complex life cycle. Another advantage is that the high genetic homogeneity of the common *Nematostella* lab strain minimizes individual genetic variation, which is far from trivial in most other venomous animals collected from the wild in limited numbers. Further, *Nematostella* has a sequenced genome and stage-specific transcriptomes and various molecular tools are available for its genetic manipulation ([@bib65]; [@bib51]; [@bib53]; [@bib22]; [@bib29]). The *Nematostella* experimental toolbox is unique, not only for cnidarians, but also for venomous animals in general. During the *Nematostella* life cycle, females release a gelatinous egg package and males release sperm into the water ([@bib21]). After fertilization occurs, the zygote cleavage begins, forming a blastula and less than 24 hr post-fertilization (hpf) gastrulation is completed. A planula larva emerges from the egg package 48--72 hpf and starts swimming in the water. Six to seven days after fertilization, the planula settles in soft substrate and starts to metamorphose into a primary polyp and sexual maturation takes about 4 months under lab conditions ([@bib21]) ([Figure 1A](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}). Whereas the egg and planula are roughly spherical and measure only about 250 µm, the morphologically differentiated elongated adult polyp can reach the length of 4 cm in the wild and up to 20 cm in the lab ([@bib67]; [@bib21]). Venom is produced in *Nematostella* by ectodermal gland cells and nematocytes ([@bib42]; [@bib43]). Although prey capture and production of Nv1, a major sodium channel modulator toxin ([@bib39]; [@bib42]), begins at the sessile primary polyp stage, nematocysts appear as early as 48 hpf in the swimming planula ([@bib37]). These are strong indications that venom is likely present already in early life stages and its composition might dramatically change across the *Nematostella* life cycle. Further complexity in the regulation of venom production may be due to *Nematostella* producing different cell types that are unevenly distributed between various tissues ([@bib43]) ([Figure 1B](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}). {#fig1} Using an integrated and comparative approach, we carefully quantify and characterize the spatiotemporal expression of known and novel *Nematostella* toxins across different developmental stages and employ transgenesis to understand the dynamics of venom production in a species with a complex life cycle. We correlate the dynamics of toxin expression in life stages with organismal-level behavior experiments that highlight differential responses of prey and predators when exposed to these stages. Results {#s2} ======= *Nematostella* larvae are venomous {#s2-1} ---------------------------------- To assay the venomous potential of *Nematostella* larvae we incubated 4 days old swimming planulae with nauplii of the brine shrimp *Artemia salina*. Strikingly, within 10 min from the start of the incubation 3 out of 8 *Artemia* were paralyzed or dead, and within 90 min 7 of 8 were dead ([Video 1](#video1){ref-type="video"}), whereas in a control group without planulae all *Artemia* were alive. This experiment revealed that *Nematostella* planulae are capable of rapidly killing a crustacean that is larger than themselves. The relatively rapid effect and the size difference suggest that venom is involved in the process. Numerous discharged nematocysts were found in the water around the dead nauplii as well as in their cuticle ([Figure 1C--D](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}), further suggesting that the stinging capsules are involved in the envenomation process. ###### The interaction between *Nematostella* planulae and *Artemia* nauplii. The panulae are rapidly paralyzing the nauplii after physical interaction. This movie is related to [Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}. 10.7554/eLife.35014.004 Distinct and dynamic expression patterns of toxin genes in *Nematostella* {#s2-2} ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To accurately measure the expression levels of known toxin genes, putative toxins and genes encoding nematocyst structural proteins we used the medium-throughput nCounter platform (see materials and methods), which was previously shown to exhibit high sensitivity and precision similar to that of real-time quantitative PCR ([@bib50]). We assayed the RNA expression levels of the genes encoding the sodium channel modulator neurotoxin Nv1 ([@bib39]), the putative toxins NvePTx1, NEP3, NEP3-like, NEP4, NEP8 and NEP16 ([@bib43]; [@bib47]), the putative metallopeptidases NEP6 and NEP14 ([@bib43]), NvLysin1b, a cytolytic toxin which may also serve for food digestion ([@bib41]), and the structural components of the nematocyst capsule Ncol1, Ncol3 and Ncol4 ([@bib10]; [@bib70]), as well as the putative nematocyst structural component NR2 ([@bib44]). The RNA measurements were performed on nine developmental stages ([Figure 1E](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}), adults of each sex and four dissected tissues of an adult female ([Figure 1F](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}; [Supplementary file 1](#supp1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). The nCounter analysis revealed that many of the genes form informative clusters ([Figure 1E--F](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}). It is noticeable that the expression patterns of NEP3, NEP3-like and NEP4 strongly clustered with those of genes encoding structural nematocyst components in both the developmental and tissue analyses ([Figure 1E--F](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}), which is consistent with the finding that these putative toxins are produced in nematocytes and are released from the capsule upon discharge ([@bib43]). Other toxins such as Nv1, which was shown to be expressed in polyp ectodermal gland cells ([@bib42]), or Nvlysin1b, produced by large gland cells in the pharynx and mesenteries beginning in early developmental stages ([@bib41]), had different expression patterns in the nCounter analysis and did not form large clusters ([Figure 1E--F](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}). Expression levels of *NEP3*, *Nv1* and *NvePTx1* were strikingly distinct across development ([Figure 1G](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}). The expression of *Nv1* is relatively low in early developmental stages and then sharply peaks in the juvenile and adult polyps to extraordinary levels that are higher by almost two orders of magnitude compared to the other toxins ([Figure 1G](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}). These expression levels can be explained by the fact that the *Nematostella* genome contains more than a dozen gene copies encoding Nv1 ([@bib40]) and the peak in transcriptional expression late in development is consistent with earlier observations at the protein level ([@bib42]). In contrast to *Nv1*, *NEP3* is expressed at high levels already at gastrulation, peaks in the early planula and remains roughly stable throughout the rest of development into adulthood. Unlike the other toxins, the expression of *NvePTx1* peaks at the unfertilized egg, drops sharply across development and rises again in the adult female ([Figure 1G](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}). As significant variations between toxin expression at the transcriptional level and protein level were recently reported ([@bib35]), we complemented the expression of toxin genes in *Nematostella* using shotgun proteomics (tandem mass spectrometry MS/MS). We performed these quantifications in four replicates on lysates from four distinct developmental stages, as well as the separate sexes of the adult polyps ([Figure 1H](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}; [Supplementary file 2](#supp2){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). The dynamic expression patterns we observed at the protein level correlated well with the dynamics we observe at the transcriptomic level. NvePTx1 is a maternally deposited toxin {#s2-3} --------------------------------------- NvePTx1 was originally identified as a homolog of the type five potassium channel blocker BCsTx3 from the sea anemone *Bunodosoma caissarum* ([@bib47]). We also identified bioinformatically several homologous sequences in the sea anemones *Anthopleura elegantissima* and *Metridium senile*, and the hydrozoan *Hydractinia symbiolongicarpus* ([Figure 2A](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}). This suggests that this peptide family was already present in the last common ancestor of all Cnidaria but was lost multiple times in various cnidarian lineages. {#fig2} First, to test if NvePTx1 is indeed a toxin we expressed it in a recombinant form and incubated 20 zebrafish (*Danio rerio*) larvae with 0.5 mg/ml of highly pure recombinant peptide (assayed by reverse phase chromatography) for 20 hr. Upon the addition of the toxin, the fish reacted rapidly, with an increase in swimming speed. After 2 hr of incubation 10 fish larvae had died, with the remaining fish dying over the next 18 hr (at which point the experiment had ended) ([Figure 2B](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}). The control group (incubated in 5 mg/ml bovine serum albumin) behaved normally throughout the experiment and all larvae were alive after a 20-hr incubation ([Figure 2C](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}). To complement the nCounter experiment, we assayed the spatiotemporal expression pattern of *NvePTx1* by in situ hybridization (ISH). We observed that while *NvePTx1* is expressed uniformly throughout the unfertilized egg and early post-fertilization stages, in the gastrula the expression becomes spatially-localized and seems to be absent from the oral and aboral poles ([Figure 2D](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}). In the planula, the expression is clearly observed in the ectoderm in packed gland cells absent from the two body poles, and upon metamorphosis, the expression diminishes ([Figure 2D--E](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}). The ISH reveals two types of gland cells, one large and elongated ([Figure 2E--F](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}) and another small and round ([Figure 2G](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}). The results of the ISH and nCounter experiments indicated that *NvePTx1* is maternally deposited at the RNA level. Further, we could detect NvePTx1 peptide hits in our MS/MS analyses data ([Figure 1H](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}) as well as in supplementary datasets available from previous proteomic studies of *Nematostella* eggs ([@bib33]; [@bib31]), suggesting maternal deposition also at the protein level. To directly test this, we have injected into *Nematostella* zygotes a transgenesis construct that carries the gene encoding the fluorescent reporter mOrange2 ([@bib59]) fused to an NvePTx1 signal peptide downstream of a putative *NvePTx1* promoter. Noticeably, several females of the injected first generation (F0) exhibited strong expression of mOrange2 in round structures in their mesenteries, which are most probably the ovaries where the eggs are formed ([Figure 2H--I](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}). This observation is congruent with the fact that the mesentery is the only female adult tissue where high *NvePTx1* transcript levels are detected at high levels by the nCounter analysis ([Figure 1F](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}). Further, upon induction of spawning, the female polyps with the fluorescent mesenterial tissue released egg packages harboring plenty of fluorescent eggs ([Figure 2J](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}), strongly supporting maternal deposition of NvePTx1. Next, by performing an immunostaining assay on F1 transgenic animals we were able to verify the presence of two distinct types of ectodermal gland cells as identified by the ISH results ([Figure 2K--M](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}). Phylogeny, primary structure and activity of NEP3 {#s2-4} ------------------------------------------------- The *NEP3*, *NEP4*, and *NEP8* gene products were previously detected by MS/MS to be released from *Nematostella* nematocysts upon discharge and hence were hypothesized to be putative toxins ([@bib43]). We detected an additional gene encoding a NEP3 homolog in the *Nematostella* genome and named it *NEP3-like*. The four nucleotide sequences were translated in silico and were suggested to encode precursors of secretory proteins equipped with typical signal peptides (according to SignalP online tool) ([@bib48]). An additional search in the Pfam database ([@bib13]) showed that each precursor contains three ShKT sequence motives (PF01549, [Figure 3A](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}) typical for several potent cnidarian toxins ([@bib3]; [@bib8]). Based on these common features and their sequence similarity, we designated *NEP3*, *NEP3-like*, *NEP4*, and *NEP8* as the 'NEP3 family'. We searched publicly available transcriptomic shotgun assembly databases and identified several sequences of homologs from the sea anemones *Edwardsiella lineata*, *Aiptasia pallida* and *Anthopleura elegantissima* as well as the stony corals *Acropora digitifera* and *Stylophora pistillata*, showing significant sequence similarity and identical domain structure to the NEP3 family members in *Nematostella* ([Figure 3---figure supplement 1](#fig3s1){ref-type="fig"}). A phylogenetic analysis revealed that each of NEP3, NEP4 and NEP8 from *Nematostella* formed a strongly supported (bootstrap values \> 0.5) clade with a highly similar protein from *Edwardsiella* ([Figure 3B](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}), indicating orthology. Thus, the new sequences from *Edwardsiella* were named according to their *Nematostella* orthologs. As *Nematostella* and *Edwardsiella* are members of the basally branching sea anemone family Edwardsiidae ([@bib54]; [@bib61]) and possess NEP3, NEP4 and NEP8, we can infer that those three proteins probably originated in the last common ancestor of the Edwardsiidae. Other cnidarian species bear more distantly related NEP3 family members, and their exact orthologous or paralogous nature could not be determined due to low bootstrap values ([Figure 3B](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}). However, their presence in stony corals suggests that those proteins already appeared 500 million years ago in the last common ancestor of stony corals and sea anemones ([@bib60]), but were lost in multiple hexacorallian lineages. {#fig3} To check whether NEP3 serves as a toxin, we planned to express it in a recombinant form. However, it was initially not clear in what native form this protein is found in the animal as we detected a potential Lys-Arg tandem, which is a prominent cleavage signal in nematocyst proteins ([@bib2]), between the first and second domains of NEP3. Hence, we decided to first explore the primary structure of the native mature NEP3. For this aim, we discharged lyophilized nematocysts and analyzed the molecular weight of NEP3 making part of the ejected protein mixture by western blot with custom polyclonal antibodies against the first NEP3 ShKT domain. However, the western blot resulted in two major bands (\~10 and 12 kDa) ([Figure 3C](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}). A gradual three-step FPLC procedure of gel filtration, anion exchange and reverse phase chromatography was applied to purify the dominant NEP3 fragment, and at each stage we carried on with the fraction with the strongest western blot signal. This procedure yielded a nearly pure fraction of mature NEP3 fragment with molecular weight \~10 kDa. Comparison of the electrophoretic mobility of the native mature NEP3 and a recombinant peptide corresponding to the first domain showed that the two peptides possess highly similar molecular weights ([Figure 3C](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}). Thus, we conclude that a native peptide composed of only the first domain of NEP3 is found in *Nematostella* and is released from the nematocyst upon discharge. Following this finding we carried out a toxicity test where we incubated zebrafish larvae with 0.5 mg/ml recombinant mature NEP3. While in the control group (incubated for 20 hr in 5 mg/ml bovine serum albumin) all the 20 fish survived ([Figure 3D](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}), all 17 *Danio* fish larvae in the NEP3-treated group died within 5 hr and the larvae exhibited pronounced contraction and tail twitching ([Figure 3E](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}) suggesting that the mature NEP3 peptide might be neurotoxic. Different nematocytes express different NEP3 family members {#s2-5} ----------------------------------------------------------- To gain improved resolution of the expression of the four NEP3 family members, we employed ISH to localize their expression in five developmental stages. All four genes are expressed in nematocytes on the surface of the early planula ([Figure 4A](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}; [Figure 4---figure supplement 1](#fig4s1){ref-type="fig"}). However, beginning at the late planula stage the expression of *NEP8* shifts to only a handful of nematocytes in the lower pharynx ([Figure 4A](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}). In contrast to *NEP8*, the three other family members, *NEP3*, *NEP3-like* and *NEP4* are expressed throughout the ectoderm in nematocytes, with high concentration of expressing cells in the oral pole. In the primary polyp, expression of *NEP3*, *NEP3-like* and *NEP4* is noticeable in nematocytes in the body wall and physa ectoderm and in the upper and lower pharynx ([Figure 4A](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}). Further, in tentacle tips, which are very rich with nematocytes, there are large numbers of nematocytes expressing the three toxins, fitting well our nCounter results ([Figure 1F](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}). A superficial look on these results may give the impression that in *Nematostella* there is one small population of pharyngeal nematocytes that express *NEP8* and another very large population of nematocytes that express *NEP3*, *NEP3-like* and *NEP4* in much of the ectoderm. However, we decided to use double fluorescent ISH (dFISH) to check if this is truly the case. {#fig4} In the dFISH experiments, we localized the mRNA combinations of *NEP3* with *Ncol3*, *NEP3* with *NEP3-like*, *NEP3* with *NEP4*, and *NEP3-like* with *Ncol3*. Unexpectedly, all the combinations showed only limited overlap in their expression, with *NEP3-like* and *Ncol3* showing the highest overlap and *NEP3* and *NEP4* showing the lowest ([Figure 4B](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}). This result can be explained by two non-exclusive explanations: the first is that the nematogenesis (production nematocysts) is a highly dynamic process that requires different genes to be expressed at different times along the nematocyst maturation process; the second is that the three family members are mostly expressed in different nematocyte populations and only few nematocytes express all family members. To test the latter hypothesis, we injected *Nematostella* zygotes with a construct carrying a chimera of the signal peptide of NEP3 with mOrange2 downstream of the putative promoter of *NEP3*. Zygotes started expressing mOrange2 in nematocytes about 4 days after injection. We raised the positive F0 animals to adulthood and then crossed them with wildtype polyps to identify founders. We found six female and three male founders that the mOrange2 expression in their F1 progeny imitated the expression of the native gene ([Figure 5A--C](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}). To verify this, we performed double ISH on F1 as well as F2 animals (third generation) and found nearly perfect overlap between the transcriptional expression of the mOrange2 transgene and that of the NEP3 toxin gene ([Figure 5D--F](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}). mOrange2 expression was observed in many nematocytes with especially dense populations in the tentacle tips and the mesenteries ([Figure 5C](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}). Strong expression of mOrange2 was also detected in numerous nematocytes within the nematosomes ([Figure 5G--I](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}), defensive structures that *Nematostella* releases to its surroundings and within egg packages ([@bib4]). {#fig5} Next, we dissociated tentacles of transgenic F1 animals by a mixture of commercial proteases into single cells and observed what cells express mOrange2 and hence NEP3. As expected, we observed that NEP3 is expressed in nematocytes, but not in spirocytes ([Figure 5J--L](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}), which are believed to be used for entangling prey and not for venom delivery ([@bib36]). Moreover, we also observed that NEP3 is expressed only in a subpopulation of nematocytes ([Figure 5M--O](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}), suggesting like the ISH and dFISH experiments that different nematocytes express different toxins. However, at that point there was a possibility that the mOrange2 is noticeable only in developing nematocytes and that mature capsules are not glowing due to various technical limitations such as the mature capsule wall obstructing light. In order to test whether there are mature mOrange2-positive capsules in our transgenic line, we challenged the F1 polyps with *Artemia* nauplii and zebrafish larvae. We then took the attacked prey items and visualized them with fluorescent microscopy. Strikingly, mOrange2-positive capsules with glowing tubules were pinned in the crustacean and fish cuticle or skin, respectively ([Figure 5P--Q](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}), indicating that those are mature capsules. However, these capsules were accompanied by other capsules that were mOrange2-negative, strongly suggesting once again that only a certain nematocyte subpopulation in *Nematostella* is expressing NEP3. Interaction between *Nematostella* and potential predators and prey {#s2-6} ------------------------------------------------------------------- At different developmental stages *Nematostella* inhabits various ecological niches, and consequently its interaction with predators and prey may change throughout the life cycle. Here, we tested *Nematostella* interactions with the grass shrimp *Palaemonetes* sp. and the killifish *Fundulus heteroclitus* at egg, planula, primary polyp, and adult life stages ([Table 1](#table1){ref-type="table"}). Grass shrimps are reportedly predators of *Nematostella* ([@bib27]; [@bib28]), however, in our observations, when encountering the tentacles of adult polyps of *Nematostella* burrowed in substrate, shrimps immediately 'jumped' away from the tentacles ([Video 2](#video2){ref-type="video"}). In contrast, in the absence of the typical mud substrate, shrimps in an environment lacking food would consume adult polyps by starting to feed at the side of their body column, avoiding contact with the tentacles. These results are in agreement with a previous study that found that shrimps can generally prey on *Nematostella* polyps, but not when they are burrowed in the substrate ([@bib49]). The response of grass shrimp to tentacle contact correlates well with the high sensitivity (LD~50~ = 1.25 ng/100 mg shrimp) of this species to Nv1 toxin, which is highly expressed in tentacles starting from the juvenile polyp stage. 10.7554/eLife.35014.011 ###### Interaction of *Nematostella vectensis* with potential predators, *Palaemonetes* sp. and *Fundulus heteroclitus*, at different life stages. ++ readily eats/eats when food is restricted for at least 2 days,+eats when food is restricted for at least 7 days, - does not consume or consider a food source, \-- attempted to consume, but exhibited an adverse reaction in all treatments, NA not available. ^\*^Only when the eggs are treated with cysteine. Egg package Individual eggs Planulae Primary polyps Adults (body exposed) Adults burrowed in the substrate -------------- ------------- ----------------- ---------- ---------------- ----------------------- ---------------------------------- Grass shrimp ++ ++ \- \+ \+ \-- Fish larvae \-- ++^\*^ \-- \-- \-- \- Fish adults \- \- \- \+ \- NA ###### The interaction between a burrowed adult *Nematostella* with grass shrimps. Only the *Nematostella* tentacles are exposed and can be encountered by the shrimp. The shrimp readily jumps away once it comes into contact with the tentacles. 10.7554/eLife.35014.012 Our results do indicate that *Nematostella* may be a potential food source for grass shrimp at earlier developmental stages (disassociated eggs, egg packages, planulae larvae, and primary polyps). Grass shrimp kept in an environment without food for more than 2 days consumed disassociated eggs and egg packages, which may be due to young embryonic stages not expressing Nv1. Further, injections of embryonically-expressed NvePTx1 and NEP3 (50 ng/100 mg shrimp) did not produce noticeable symptoms in grass shrimp. We did not observe any planulae larvae being consumed by grass shrimp. However, it is likely that grass shrimp do not regularly encounter planulae larvae as they have the potential to disperse away from the substrate in which the shrimp usually feed. When grass shrimps were provided with primary polyps they were consumed after 7 days when no other food sources were provided, suggesting that this food source is likely not preferred, but is ingested. *Fundulus* is omnivorous, and was reported to feed on a large variety of benthic organisms ([@bib25]; [@bib38]) and possibly prey on *Nematostella* ([@bib68]). In the lab, adult fish did not attempt to eat adult polyps, nor did they attempt to eat disassociated eggs or planulae larvae, which may be due to their small size relative to the adult fish and may not even be recognized as a potential food source. Surprisingly, the fish larvae did feed on eggs when separated from the gelatinous portion of the egg package by cysteine treatment, but ejected from their mouths eggs that were separated from the package mechanically ([Video 3](#video3){ref-type="video"}). This suggests that the eggs might carry defensive compounds that are removed or inactivated by the cysteine. Fish do not eat eggs if encased within the egg package and attempted to remove the gelatinous egg package from their tails following coincidental encounters ([Video 3](#video3){ref-type="video"}). When provided planulae as a prey item, *Fundulus* larvae attempted to swallow the larvae but immediately released them and swam away ([Video 4](#video4){ref-type="video"}). ###### The interaction of *Fundulus* larvae with *Nematostella* egg package.  Upon contact with the egg package, *Fundulus* reacts swiftly and escapes. 10.7554/eLife.35014.013 ###### The interaction of *Fundulus* larvae with *Nematostella* planulae. *Fundulus* actively expels planulae from their mouths, if they were erroneously perceived as food. 10.7554/eLife.35014.014 In the lab, *Fundulus* larvae (1--3 days post hatching) were consumed by adult *Nematostella* without substrate, but managed to avoid predation by *Nematostella* when substrate was present, however, this is likely due to the added vertical space provided to the fish larvae within the dishes containing substrate and anemones. Given more time, a coincidental encounter may occur, resulting in predation of the *Fundulus* larvae. *Fundulus* larvae actively avoid primary polyps, however, adults will consume them when food is limited ([Table 1](#table1){ref-type="table"}). To test the significance of this observation we exposed fish larvae to three treatments: dead *Artemia* (food source), silica beads (inert treatment), and primary polyps. *Fundulus* larvae spent more time in the bottom of the aquarium than the top when silica beads or *Artemia* were present and spent more time at the top than the bottom when the primary polyps were present ([Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}). Time spent at each location was significantly different in our one way ANOVA analysis for top (p value = 0.035) and bottom (p value = 0.01) for each location, with the Tukey analysis indicating that the significant difference was found between primary polyps and the other two treatments, but not when comparing silica beads and *Artemia* at both locations ([Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}). Thus, we can conclude that *Fundulus* larvae tend to avoid interactions with *Nematostella* primary polyps. {#fig6} Discussion {#s3} ========== Our finding of different expression levels of toxins in different developmental stages and adult tissues strongly suggests that venom composition changes across development and that each arsenal of toxins might have been shaped by selection for different biotic interactions. As *Nematostella* develops from a non-predatory, swimming larva to an adult sessile predatory polyp that is 150-fold larger than the larva ([Figure 1A](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}), its interspecific interactions vastly change across development. For example, *Nematostella* egg packages can be consumed by grass shrimp, but it is highly unlikely that adult polyps are part of the grass shrimp diet ([Table 1](#table1){ref-type="table"}; [Video 2](#video2){ref-type="video"}). These observations correlate with the expression dynamics of Nv1 that is highly toxic for shrimps. Unlike the grass shrimp, *Fundulus* larvae do not consume *Nematostella* egg packages and actively expel from their mouths planulae, which were erroneously perceived as food ([Videos 3](#video3){ref-type="video"} and [4](#video4){ref-type="video"}). They consumed only individual eggs following cysteine washes, which do not represent native conditions. The reduced occurrence of predation can be explained by the presence of various toxins, such as members of NEP3 family, which may protect *Nematostella* from fish predators even at very early developmental stages. This notion is supported by the toxic effects of NEP3 on zebrafish larvae. We hypothesize that these dynamic interactions, coupled with the potentially high metabolic cost of toxins ([@bib46]), have driven the evolution of a distinct venom composition in each developmental stage. Moreover, in the case of cnidarians, an additional metabolic cost stems from the fact that nematocysts are single-use venom delivery apparatuses that have to be reproduced in very high numbers after each antagonistic interaction. Hence, there is a clear advantage in using a highly adapted venom in each developmental stage. Because venom in planulae is used purely for defense, whereas the venom in polyps is used both for defense and for prey capture, our results also relate to previous results in scorpions ([@bib24]) and cone snails ([@bib12]), where venom compositions for defense and prey-capture were shown to differ. Further, some of the toxins we localized can be attributed for specific functions based on their expression patterns. For example, it is very likely that NvePTx1 is a defensive toxin due to its occurrence in the egg and in ectodermal gland cells of the planula ([Figures 2D--H](#fig2){ref-type="fig"} and [7](#fig7){ref-type="fig"}), whereas NEP8 is probably used in the polyp for killing prey after it is swallowed, as it is expressed exclusively in the lower pharynx and mesenteries ([Figures 4A](#fig4){ref-type="fig"} and [7](#fig7){ref-type="fig"}). ![Summary of the current knowledge on spatiotemporal toxin expression in early planula and primary polyp of *Nematostella*.\ This illustration summarizes the current work as well as previous works ([@bib41]; [@bib42]; [@bib43]). The degree of expression overlap of NEP8 with other toxins is currently unknown.](elife-35014-fig7){#fig7} Chemical protection of the eggs was reported in several animals such as black widow spiders ([@bib6]; [@bib30]), snails ([@bib11]), octopuses and some fishes and amphibians ([@bib5]). Our data on *Nematostella* NvePTx1 expressed in eggs and embryonic stages further support the idea of ecological importance of chemical defense in early life stages across the animal kingdom. Our findings that NEP3 family members are expressed in different population of nematocytes reveals that nematocyte diversity in *Nematostella* exceeds well-beyond the morphology-based assessments, which revealed only two types of nematocysts in *Nematostella*: basitrichous haplonemas (also called basitrichs) and microbasic mastigophores ([@bib14]; [@bib70]). A study in Hydra discovered that two members of a single pore-forming toxin family are expressed in two morphologically distinct types of nematocytes ([@bib23]), but to the best of our knowledge, similar complexity of toxin expression patterns in morphologically similar nematocytes was never reported before. Further, mechanisms of venom biosynthesis at exact cellular level resolution have not been reported in more complex venomous organisms as well. However, at lower resolution, some reports suggest that within one venom gland different secretory units are specialized on production of a limited number of toxins ([@bib12]; [@bib63]). Thus, specialized venom secretory cells are probably a common trait among venomous animals. The distinct expression patterns of the NEP3 family also provides important indications regarding toxin evolution. For example, the expression of *NEP8* in pharyngeal nematocytes, and its absence from the tentacles and outer body wall, where its paralogs *NEP3*, *NEP3-like* and *NEP4* are expressed ([Figures 4A](#fig4){ref-type="fig"} and [7](#fig7){ref-type="fig"}), is an indication for sub- or neo-functionalization. The specialization of the different family members is also supported by their conservation in *Edwardsiella* ([Figure 3B](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}). Variation in expression patterns of the NEP3 family members and the fact that at least four different types of gland cells at distinct developmental stages and tissues express different toxins (Nv1, Nvlysin1b, NEP6 and NvePTx1) in *Nematostella* suggests a highly complex venom landscape in this species ([Figure 7](#fig7){ref-type="fig"}). At first glance, such a system might seem relatively inefficient. However, we hypothesize that harboring many different toxin-producing cell types, provides modularity and enables evolutionary plasticity of toxin expression. Indeed, our results as well as results of others, suggest that different sea anemones species express similar toxins in different cell types ([@bib42]) and different tissues ([@bib34]). This evolutionary plasticity might be one of the factors that made sea anemones such a successful group that inhabits all the world's oceans for the last 600 million years. Materials and methods {#s4} ===================== Sea anemone culture {#s4-1} ------------------- *Nematostella* embryos, larvae and juveniles were grown in 16‰ sea salt water at 22°C. Adults were grown in the same salinity but at 17°C. Polyps were fed with *Artemia* nauplii three times a week. Induction of gamete spawning was performed according to a published protocol ([@bib18]). nCounter analysis {#s4-2} ----------------- Total RNA from different developmental stages and body parts of adult female *Nematostella* was extracted with Tri-Reagent (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO) according to manufacturer's protocol, treated with Turbo DNAse (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA) and then re-extracted with Tri-Reagent. RNA quality was assessed on Bioanalyzer Nanochip (Agilent, Santa Clara, CA) and only samples with RNA Integrity Number (RIN) ≥8.0 were used. Each sample was prepared from dozens of specimens (adult polyps and their tissues) or from hundreds of specimens (all younger developmental stages) in order to normalize for any individual variation. Those samples were analyzed on the nCounter platform (NanoString Technologies, Seattle, WA, USA; performed by Agentek Ltd., Israel) in technical triplicates, each made from a different batch of specimens following a previously described protocol ([@bib16]). In brief, for each transcript to be tested, two probes were generated and hybridized to the respective mRNA. The mRNAs were immobilized on a cartridge and the barcodes on one of the probes were counted by an automated fluorescent microscope. For normalization we used a geometric mean of the expression levels of 5 reference genes with stable expression across development. The genes were selected as follows: we calculated the Shannon entropy (as described in \[[@bib58]\]) for each of 23,041 *Nematostella* genes based on normalized transcript abundance estimates for six time-points of *Nematostella* development ([@bib22]). We then ranked the genes by entropy, which indicates minimal temporal change in abundance, and from the top 20 chose five genes (NCBI Reference Sequences XM_001629766.1, XM_001628650.1, XM_001625670.1, XM_001640487.1 and XM_001624235.1) with complete gene models and mean abundance levels spanning the expected experimental range. Probe sequences, entropy scores and all raw and normalized nCounter read data are available in [Supplementary file 1](#supp1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}. Semi-quantitative MS/MS analysis {#s4-3} -------------------------------- Hundreds of unfertilized eggs, 4 days old planulae, 9 days old primary polyps, adult males (five individuals), and adult females (five individuals) were lysed in 8M urea, 400 mM ammonium bicarbonate solution and centrifuged (22000 × *g*, 20 min, 4°C). Protein concentrations were measured with BCA Protein Assay Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Ten µg of protein were reduced with DTT and alkylated with iodoacetamide. Tryptic digestion (0.3 µg trypsin/sample) was performed overnight at 37°C, followed by addition of 0.05% ProteaseMAX Surfactant (Promega Corp., USA) and further incubation for 1 hr at 37°C. The tryptic peptides were desalted on self-made C18 StageTips ([@bib52]). A total of 1.25 µg of peptides from each sample were injected into the mass spectrometer. MS analysis was performed in four technical replicates using a Q Exactive Plus mass spectrometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific) coupled on-line to a nanoflow UHPLC instrument (Ultimate 3000 Dionex, Thermo Fisher Scientific). Eluted peptides were separated over a 180 min gradient run at a flow rate of 0.2 µl/min on a reverse phase PepMap RSLC C18 column (50 cm ×75 µm, 2 µm, 100 Å, Thermo Fisher Scientific). The survey scans (380--2,000 m/z, target value 3E6 charges, maximum ion injection times 50 ms) were acquired and followed by higher energy collisional dissociation (HCD) based fragmentation (normalized collision energy 25). A resolution of 70,000 was used for survey scans and up to 15 dynamically chosen most abundant precursor ions were fragmented (isolation window 1.6 m/z). The MS/MS scans were acquired at a resolution of 17,500 (target value 5E4 charges, maximum ion injection times 57 ms). Dynamic exclusion was 60 s. Mass spectra data were processed using the MaxQuant computational platform, version 1.5.3.12 ([@bib9]). Peak lists were searched against translated coding sequences of gene models from *N. vectensis*. The search included cysteine carbamidomethylation as a fixed modification and oxidation of methionine and N-terminal acetylation as variable modifications. Peptides with minimum of seven amino-acid length were considered and the required FDR was set to 1% at the peptide and protein level. Protein identification required at least two unique or razor peptides per protein group. The dependent-peptide and match-between-runs options were used. Relative protein quantification was performed using iBAQ values. MS/MS raw files as well results of MaxQuant analysis were deposited to the ProteomeXchange Consortium via the PRIDE ([@bib64]) partner repository with the data identifier PXD008218. In situ hybridization (ISH) {#s4-4} --------------------------- Single and double ISH were performed as previously described ([@bib17]; [@bib43]). dFISH was performed also according to published protocols ([@bib45]; [@bib69]) with tyramide conjugated to Dylight 488 and Dylight 594 fluorescent dyes (Thermo Fisher Scientific). In ISH and FISH, embryos older than 4 days were treated with 2 u/µl T1 RNAse (Thermo Fisher Scientific) after probe washing in order to reduce background. Stained embryos and larvae were visualized with an Eclipse Ni-U microscope equipped with a DS-Ri2 camera and an Elements BR software (Nikon, Tokyo, Japan). For each gene at least 20 specimens from each developmental stage were tested. Transgenesis {#s4-5} ------------ To generate transgenic constructs, we replaced the mCherry gene with mOrange2 ([@bib59]) and replaced the promoter sequence of the pNvT-MHC::mCH plasmid ([@bib53]). For the *NEP3* gene, we inserted to the plasmid 920 bp upstream of the transcription start site as well as the non-coding first exon, first intron and the part of the second exon that encodes the signal peptide of NEP3 (scaffold_7:1,219,288--1,221,320 of the *Nematostella* genome). For the NvePTX1 gene, we inserted to the plasmid 1033 bp upstream of the transcription start site as well as the non-coding first exon, first intron and the region of the second exon that encodes the signal peptide (scaffold_14:1,246,079--1,247,853 of the *Nematostella* genome). The constructs were injected with the yeast meganuclease *I-SceI* (New England Biolabs, Ipswich, MA) to facilitate genomic integration ([@bib53]). Transgenic animals were visualized under an SMZ18 stereomicroscope equipped with a DS-Qi2 camera (Nikon). Immunostaining {#s4-6} -------------- Immunostaining was performed according to a previously described protocol ([@bib42]), employing a commercially-available rabbit polyclonal antibody against mCherry (Abcam) diluted to 1:400 and DAPI (Thermo Fisher Scientific) diluted to 1:500. Phylogenetics {#s4-7} ------------- Sequences of NEP and NvePTx1 protein families were retrieved using BLAST searches ([@bib1]) against NCBI's non-redundant nucleotide sequence database and the EdwardsiellaBase ([@bib61]). Maximum-likelihood analysis was employed for the reconstruction of the molecular evolutionary histories. Trees were generated using PhyML 3.0 ([@bib20]), and node support was evaluated with 1000 bootstrapping replicates. Tentacle dissociation {#s4-8} --------------------- Tentacles of *Nematostella* were dissociated using a combination of papain (2 mg/ml; Sigma-Aldrich: P4762), collagenase (2 mg/ml; Sigma-Aldrich: C9407) and pronase (4 mg/ml; Sigma-Aldrich: P5147) in DTT (1.3 mM) and PBS solution (1.8 mM NaH~2~PO~4~, 8.41 mM Na~2~HPO~4~, 175 mM NaCl, pH 7.4). The tentacles were incubated with the protease mixture at 22°C overnight. The tissues were then dissociated into single cells by flicking the tubes gently and then by centrifugation at 400 × *g* for 15 min at 4°C, followed by resuspension in PBS. Purification of NEP3 from nematocysts {#s4-9} ------------------------------------- Lyophilized nematocysts were obtained from Monterey Bay Labs (Caesarea, Israel). 2.5 g of the nematocysts were discharged by incubation with 80 ml of 1% sodium triphosphate (Sigma-Aldrich). Following centrifugation (21,000 × g, 20 min), the crude extract was concentrated with Amicon centrifugal filters with 3 kDa cut off (Merck Millipore, Billerica, MA) to 2 ml volume, filtered through Amicon centrifugal filters with 50 kDa cut off (Merck Millipore) and used for further purification. At the first step, the extract was fractionated by size exclusion FPLC on a calibrated Superdex 75 column (60 × 1.6 cm, GE Healthcare, Little Chalfont, UK) in PBS buffer. Protein fractions with molecular weight less than 17.6 kDa were pooled and the PBS buffer was exchanged to 20 mM ethanolamine pH nine using Amicone centrifugal filters, cut off 3 kDa. At the second step, the SEC fractions were separated by anion exchange FPLC using a HiTrapQ HP column (1 ml, GE Healthcare) and a NaCl concentration gradient (0--750 mM NaCl in 30 column volumes, 20 mM ethanolamine pH 9.0). Fractions were analyzed by western blot with anti-Nep3 antibodies and positive ones were pooled. At the last step, Nep3 fragment was purified by reverse phase FPLC on a Resource RPC column (3 ml, GE Healthcare) using acetonitrile concentration gradient (8--60% CH~3~CN in 25 column volumes, 0.1% trifluoracetic acid). Fractions corresponding to individual peaks were collected and analyzed by western blot with anti-NEP3 antibodies. Recombinant expression and purification of toxins {#s4-10} ------------------------------------------------- A synthetic DNA fragment encoding the full NEP3 polypeptide was purchased from GeneArt (Regensburg, Germany). The fragment corresponding to the first domain of NEP3 between the Lys-Arg cleavage sites was amplified by PCR, cloned and expressed as a His~6~-thioredoxin fusion protein in Shuffle T7 *Escherichia coli* strain (New England Biolabs). Nv1 and NvePTx1 synthetic DNA fragments were purchased from Integrated DNA Technologies (Coralville, IA) and cloned into a modified pET40 vector (fragment encoding DSBC signal peptide was erased from it by Protein Expression and Purification facility of the Hebrew University to allow cytoplasmic expression of DSBC). Nv1 and NvePTx1 were expressed in BL21(DE3) *E. coli* (Merck Millipore) strain as fusions with His~6~-DSBC. The polyhistidine tag of the fusion proteins was used for purification from the *E. coli* lysate by nickel affinity FPLC. Purified fusion proteins were cleaved into two fragments by Tobacco Etch Virus (TEV) protease (room temperature, overnight) at a TEV protease cleavage site upstream the toxin fragments. The recombinant toxins were then purified by reverse phase FPLC on a Resource RPC column (GE Healthcare) using an acetonitrile concentration gradient in 0.1% trifluoroacetic acid. Western blot {#s4-11} ------------ Custom polyclonal antibodies specific to the first domain of NEP3 were purchased from GenScript (Piscataway, NJ). Synthetic peptide containing the amino acid positions 47--91 was used as an antigen for immunization of two rats. The antibodies were affinity purified on a column coated with the antigen. Proteins were separated by electrophoresis on 10--20% gradient Tris-tricine gels (Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA) and consequently transferred to 0.2 um PVDF membranes (Bio-Rad). Membranes were blocked by 5% skim milk in TBST buffer (50 mM Tris base, 150 mM NaCl, 0.1% Tween 20, pH 7.6) and incubated with anti-NEP3 antibodies (1 ug/ml) in 5% Bovine serum albumin (BSA) in TBST buffer (4°C, overnight). This was followed by incubation with goat anti-rat IgG antibodies conjugated with horseradish peroxidase (0.1 ug/ml; Jackson ImmunoResearch, West Grove, PA) in 5% skim milk in TBST (room temperature, overnight). ECL reagent (GE Healthcare) was used for visualization of the protein bands interacting with anti-NEP3 antibodies. Chemiluminescence was recorded with an Odyssey Fc imaging system (LI-COR Biosciences, Lincoln, NE) and fluorescent size marker (Bio-Rad) was imaged on the same system. Animals for prey-predator and toxicity assays {#s4-12} --------------------------------------------- *Danio rerio* larvae younger than 120 hr were generously provided by Dr. Adi Inbal (The Hebrew University Medical School). The usage of such young larvae does not require ethical permits according to the European and Israeli laws. Fertilized *Fundulus* eggs from Kings Creek, VA (37°18 16.2\"N 76°24 58.9\"W) and Scorton Creek, MA (41°43\'52.1\"N 70°24\'51.3\"W) were kindly provided by Dr. Rafael Trevisan (Duke University) and Diane Nacci (Environmental Protection Agency), respectively. They were kept in 15 ‰ artificial sea water (ASW) at room temperature until hatching (around 2--3 weeks) and used immediately for behavioral analyses. Experiments on *F. heteroclitus* were performed under permit no. 17--018 granted by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte according to ethical regulations of Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (National Institutes of Health, USA). The first batch of grass shrimps and adult *Fundulus* were collected at an estuary near Georgetown, SC (33°21\'01.0\"N 79°11\'26.1\"W). A second collection of grass shrimps were collected at Sippewissett Marsh, MA (41°35\'22.9\"N 70°38\'17.0\"W). Animals were transported to the lab and kept in 15 ‰ ASW until use. Interaction experiments were conducted in 15 ‰ ASW in 24-well plates or Pyrex bowls (\~150 ml water, \~10 cm diameter), depending on size of animals and interactions being recorded. Grass shrimps were fed every day with either mussels or TetraMin tropical fish food (Tetra Holding, USA). *Fundulus* were fed twice daily with *Artemia* reared in the lab. Toxicity assays {#s4-13} --------------- To assess the toxicity of NEP3 and NvePTx1 on fish, 4 days old *D. rerio* larvae were incubated with 0.5 mg/ml peptides in 500 µl well. Each experiment was conducted in duplicates. 5 mg/ml BSA was used as a negative control. Three replicates were performed per treatment and each replicate included 5--7 larvae. Effect was filmed and monitored under an SMZ18 (Nikon) stereomicroscope after 5 min, 15 min, 1 hr, and 15--17 hr of incubation. To assess the toxicity on grass shrimps, Nv1, NEP3, and NvePTx1 were dissolved in PBS buffer to 2.5--50 ng/µl concentration and 1 µl was injected into the abdomen from the ventral side for every 200 mg of shrimp mass. Ten shrimps were injected at each concentration. Interaction assays between different *Nematostella* life stages and potential prey and predator species {#s4-14} ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For testing the interaction of *Fundulus* with *Nematostella*, fish larvae were put in 24 well plates and preliminary screenings involving duplicate experimental observations were conducted for 5--10 isolated eggs, planula larva, and primary polyps of *Nematostella*. Based on these initial observations, we conducted additional observational experiments in triplicates, with each well containing five *Fundulus* larvae interacting with several egg packages or dozens of planula larvae. For each assay, the fish were observed with portions of their interaction recorded to document how the fish responded to the egg packages or planula larvae. Additionally, for the isolated eggs, observational experiments were conducted with a single *Fundulus* larva in each well along with 10--15 eggs. The number of eggs were noted at the start of the experiment and observed every 2 hr over an 8 hr period. Observational experiments involving two *Fundulus* larvae and two adult *Nematostella* were conducted in duplicates using small Pyrex dishes (\~50 ml of ASW) over a 2-day period, with and without substrate. For the adult *Fundulus*, observational experiments involving a single adult alongside eggs (\>100), egg packages (4-5), larvae (\>100), primary polyps (\>100), and adult *Nematostella* polyps (3) were conducted over 48 hr in small Pyrex dishes (\~200 ml water, \~10 cm diameter). Interactions were assayed in triplicates for shrimps, with a single shrimp interacting with different life stages: three egg packages, \>100 eggs, \>100 planula larvae, \>100 primary polyps, and three adult *Nematostella* (with and without substrate). Across all observational experiments similar behavioral patterns were observed across experimental replicates, however, we were unable to identify exactly how many instances of an adverse reaction occurred during our observations. It was sometimes difficult to discern between the fish exhibiting sporadic swimming patterns, which we could not confidently link with them interacting with *Nematostella*. For testing the potential effect of *Nematostella* primary polyps on *Fundulus* larvae, newly hatched *Fundulus* larvae (N = 10) were placed in a small glass aquarium (\~3 ml) with 15 ‰ ASW. Fish behavior was recorded over 30 min per experiment using the Moticam 580 (Motic, Hong Kong, China), 15 min serving as a control and 15 min with a treatment. Freshly hatched *Artemia* were sacrificed by freezing and used as a positive control (N = 10). Silica beads 0.5 mm in diameter (BioSpec Products, Bartlesville, OK) were used as a negative control (N = 10). For each video, the recording was split into the following sections at these time scales: 0--5 min -- acclimation, 5--15 min -- control, 15--20 min -- acclimation to treatment, 20--30 min -- recorded behavior. The water container was split into three equal parts ('bottom', 'center' and 'top') based on the fish length. If the fish was in the 'center' with no portion of their body crossing either side time was not recorded as this was considered *no preference*. One-way ANOVAs were carried out separately for the upper and lower time points for each treatment. Specific treatments that were statistically significant were identified using the Tukey post hoc analysis. The results were plotted in GraphPad Prism version 7.00 for Windows (GraphPad Software, La Jolla, CA). Funding Information =================== This paper was supported by the following grants: - http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003977Israel Science Foundation Grant no. 691/14 to Yehu Moran. - http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100010665H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship 654294 to Kartik Sunagar, Yehu Moran. - http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001National Science Foundation Award 1536530 to Adam M Reitzel. - http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100006221United States - Israel Binational Science Foundation Grant no. 2013119 to Adam M Reitzel, Yehu Moran. We are grateful to Dr David Fredman (Department of Informatics, University of Bergen) for his invaluable help with quantitative and computational methods. We are also grateful to Dr Mario Lebendiker, Dr Tsafi Danieli and Yael Keren (Protein Expression and Purification Facilities of the Hebrew University) for their help with recombinant expression and chromatography and for the help of Dr Dana Reichmann and Dr Bill Breuer (Department of Biological Chemistry of the Hebrew University) for their help with mass spectrometry. We also thank Amy Klock and Matthew Kustra (Department of Biological Sciences, University of North Carolina, Charlotte) for their assistance with shrimp injections for the organismal assays. KS was supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (654294). This work was supported by Israel Science Foundation grant no. 691/14 to YM, NSF award 1536530 to AMR, and Binational Science Foundation grant no. 2013119 to YM and AMR. Additional information {#s5} ====================== No competing interests declared. Formal analysis, Investigation, Visualization, Writing---original draft, Writing---review and editing. Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Writing---original draft, Writing---review and editing. Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing---original draft, Writing---review and editing. Formal analysis, Investigation, Visualization, Methodology, Writing---review and editing. Investigation, Writing---review and editing. Resources, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing---original draft. Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Writing---review and editing. Conceptualization, Resources, Formal analysis, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing---original draft, Project administration, Writing---review and editing. Animal experimentation: Experiments on Fundulus heteroclitus were performed under permit no. 17-018 granted by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte according to ethical regulations of Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (National Institutes of Health, USA). Additional files {#s6} ================ 10.7554/eLife.35014.017 ###### Information of nCounter probe sequences, nCounter raw and normalized data and entropy list for *Nematostella* transcripts. This file is related to [Figure 1E-G](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}. 10.7554/eLife.35014.018 ###### Results of MaxQuant analysis of tandem mass spectrometry on *Nematostella* lysates from different developmental stages. 10.7554/eLife.35014.019 Major datasets {#s7} -------------- The following dataset was generated: Maria Y SachkovaYehu Moran2018Dynamics of venom composition across a complex life cycle<http://proteomecentral.proteomexchange.org/cgi/GetDataset?ID=PXD008218>Publicly available at ProteomeXchange (accession no. PXD008218) 10.7554/eLife.35014.025 Decision letter Sánchez Alvarado Alejandro Reviewing Editor Stowers Institute for Medical Research United States In the interests of transparency, eLife includes the editorial decision letter and accompanying author responses. A lightly edited version of the letter sent to the authors after peer review is shown, indicating the most substantive concerns; minor comments are not usually included. Thank you for submitting your work entitled \"Dynamics of venom composition across a complex life cycle\" for consideration by *eLife*. Your article has been reviewed by two peer reviewers, and the evaluation has been overseen by a Reviewing Editor and a Senior Editor. The reviewers have opted to remain anonymous. Our decision has been reached after consultation between the reviewers. Based on these discussions and the individual reviews below, we regret to inform you that your work will not be considered further for publication in *eLife*. Although this manuscript reports on the interesting finding that toxin composition of the starlet sea anemone *Nematostella vectensis* is highly dynamic, there are several major concerns that limit the potential significance of this work. These are amply presented in the reviews below. Reviewer \#2: In this manuscript, Columbus-Shenkar et al. report an interesting finding: the toxin composition of the starlet sea anemone *Nematostella vectensis* is highly dynamic, with a potential potassium channel blocker, NvePTx1, being exclusively expressed during larval stages and different NEP3 family toxins being expressed in different subpopulations of mature nematocysts. The authors applied experimental approaches including proteomics, transcriptomics, toxicology and gene profiling to support their findings. However, several major concerns limit the potential significance of this work. 1\) As the authors point out, similar studies focusing on venom composition dynamics have already been reported in both invertebrates (cone snail)\[1\] and vertebrates (rattlesnakes)\[2\]. And like the majority of phylum Mollusca, cone snails also possess a complex life cycle, with a planktonic veliger stage and a highly predatory adult stage. Similar to previous studies, this manuscript provides another descriptive analysis of venom composition changes during different life stages, but fails to touch on the biological relevance or the molecular mechanism behind this phenomenon. 2\) The toxicology experiments were meant to demonstrate the toxicity of *Nematostella* proteins NvePTx1 and NEP3, which was a main argument made by the authors. However, both experiments were carried out and analyzed in a crude manner and definitely require improvement. Synthesis of biologically active toxic peptides has been proven difficult, as the formation of disulfide bridges between evolutionarily conserved cysteine residues is rather inefficient in *E. coli* culture system (even with Shuffle and BL21 strains, in which the cytosolic disulfide bond formation is enhanced)\[3, 4\]. More importantly, the existence of multiple cysteine residues leads to potential disulfide bond formation at different positions. The authors purified both toxins directly from bacterial culture without further analysis of peptide structure, and tried to demonstrate the toxicity of each peptide by incubating them at a single concentration with zebrafish larvae. A series of questions need to be answered: i) What proportion or isoform of purified peptides are biologically active? And why do these peptides only function at such a high concentration compared to previous studies \[4, 5\]? ii\) Is zebrafish a suitable subject to test toxins from *Nematostella* (whose diet likely consists of invertebrates such as small crustaceans and mollusks)? iii\) Is it appropriate to conclude on the neurotoxicity of the peptides simply based on abnormal tail contraction phenotype of zebrafish larvae? These experiments lead to more confusion, rather than providing functional evidence to support the argument that both genes truly function as toxins. 3\) The quality of data in general needs to be improved. Images from double in situ hybridization experiments ([Figure 4B](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}) were meant to demonstrate partial co-localization of different toxins and nematocyst marker gene Ncol3. But the poor quality of these images fails to provide enough cellular resolution to support these claims. Also, the FISH pattern of the same gene NEP3 at primary polyp stage varies from panel to panel, and is not comparable to the double in situ pattern shown in [Figure 5E](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}. The same problem exists with the Ncol3 pattern, which was used as a reference marker, in [Figure 4B](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}, primary polyp stage, row1 versus row 4. References: 1\. Safavi-Hemami H, Siero WA, Kuang Z, Williamson NA, Karas JA, Page LR, et al. Embryonic toxin expression in the cone snail Conus victoriae: primed to kill or divergent function? The Journal of biological chemistry. 2011;286(25):22546-57. 2\. Gibbs HL, Sanz L, Chiucchi JE, Farrell TM, Calvete JJ. Proteomic analysis of ontogenetic and diet-related changes in venom composition of juvenile and adult Dusky Pigmy rattlesnakes (Sistrurus miliarius barbouri). J Proteomics. 2011;74(10):2169-79. 3\. Rosano GL, Ceccarelli EA. Recombinant protein expression in *Escherichia coli*: advances and challenges. Frontiers in microbiology. 2014;5:172. 4\. Luo S, Zhangsun D, Harvey PJ, Kaas Q, Wu Y, Zhu X, et al. Cloning, synthesis, and characterization of alphaO-conotoxin GeXIVA, a potent alpha9alpha10 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor antagonist. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2015;112(30):E4026-35. 5\. Warmke JW, Reenan RA, Wang P, Qian S, Arena JP, Wang J, et al. Functional expression of *Drosophila* para sodium channels. Modulation by the membrane protein TipE and toxin pharmacology. J Gen Physiol. 1997;110(2):119-33. Reviewer \#3: Summary Venom research has primarily focused on pharmacological analyses of venoms and toxins from adult stages of species. While ontogenetic variation has been reported in the venoms of some species of snakes and cone snails, the influence of development and ecology on venom production is poorly understood, particularly in organisms with complex life cycles. This study uses an integrative approach (behavior, transcriptomics, biochemistry, transgenesis) to study venom production across all life stages in the starlet sea anemone *Nematostella vectensis.* Specifically, the authors quantify the spatial and temporal expression of known and novel toxins across the life stages of *Nematostella*. Significance The findings of this study are important for improving our understanding of developmental processes, the evolution of venom and its role mediating interspecific interactions, and the impact of venom-mediated interactions on biodiversity. Isolated toxins from venomous animals (cone snails, scorpions, sea anemones, spiders) have been used for years to study ion channels. Less attention has been paid to the influence of development and ecology on venom production and composition. Most examples are from snake or cone snail species. Few studies integrate development, physiology and ecology of venoms and toxins, mainly because there are few organisms that can be studied both in natural habitats and in the lab, especially organisms with complex life cycles. Distinct patterns of toxin gene expression in *Nematostella* that track developmental stages raise intriguing questions and open new avenues for further exploration of toxins and toxin-producing genes. For example, this study lays the foundation for future work aimed at understanding the selective forces that shape venom production and delivery, the link between functional differences in toxin activity and fitness, and how these processes change during development. Moreover, this research has the potential to uncover novel peptides or molecules that could be used in the discovery of novel drugs and drug targets. There are many channels for which selective blockers or modulators have yet to be identified. For example, there are approximately 90 genes that encode K^+^ channels. Identification of novel toxins from *Nematostella* suggests this venom may be a rich source of small molecules and peptides that can be used to selectively manipulate K^+^ channels for drug discovery. Comments/Suggestions Overall, this is a really nice study that uses multiple techniques to quantify toxin expression across life stages and different adult tissues. The different assays (gene expression, biological activity of toxins, ISH/dFISH, etc.) are rigorous, and the authors do a good job of considering alternative hypotheses. The authors do not need to do more experiments. However, there are some areas of the manuscript that could be improved. Suggestions for the Discussion This study provides robust data that show differences in toxin-gene and toxin expression across developmental stages and adult tissues. This suggests that venom composition changes across developmental stages. While differences in the expression of toxins across developmental stages and tissues suggest there may be functional differences in venom that provide optimal activity at a particular life stage, in a particular ecological setting, or in response to different interspecific interactions, the authors should be careful of over interpreting their data to suggest functional differences for which there is little support. It is plausible that differential toxin expression and venom composition are the result of differential selective forces across developmental stages. However, this study did not explicitly show that differences in venom composition cause different functional effects on planula larvae versus adult polyps. Moreover, while venoms that differ in composition may provide optimal activity at different life stages or in different tissues, the authors should be careful to avoid statements that suggest evolution is purposeful and results in adaptations that are structurally and functionally optimal. For example: 1) \"\[...\] each arsenal of toxin might be tailored for different biological needs.\"; 2) \"Hence, there is a clear advantage in using a highly adapted venom in each developmental stage.\" Regarding the use of venom for defense versus prey capture -- this is an intriguing area of venom physiology and evolution. Localized expression of toxin genes or toxins suggests functional specificity. However, the authors should avoid \"attributing\" functional specificity to localized expression. It is also not clear from the data shown in this study that NvePTx1 is solely a defensive toxin. NvePTx1 was identified as a homolog of the type 5 K^+^ channel blocker BCsTx3 from sea anemone based on sequence similarity. To confirm toxic activity, recombinant NvePTx1 was incubated with zebra fish larvae, which died by the end of the 16 hour incubation period, compared to control larvae incubated with no toxin. The ISH staining showed a developmental pattern consistent with eggs expressing NvePTx1, and expression patterns changing as the eggs developed. But unless I missed this in the data or reference in another publication, has it been shown that eggs expressing incubated with predators actually kills the predators? Regarding the NvLysin1b pore-former toxin, while expression in the pharynx and mesenteries suggests it is for prey capture, perhaps it also functions to help break food down to aid digestion. Perhaps the authors could revise their discussion to distinguish between conclusions that can be drawn from the data, and speculation about differential venom function and future directions. It would be helpful to include a little more information about the toxins and their biological activity. References are provided, but this requires that the reader search for information that could be provided in a concise manner. For example, the authors could briefly define \"pore-forming toxin\". Is this a toxin that lyses cells versus a toxin that blocks ion channel pores or manipulates gating mechanisms? Toxin experts won\'t be bothered by this but other readers will appreciate brief definitions. \[Editors' note: the author responses to the first round of peer review follow.\] 10.7554/eLife.35014.026 Author response > Although this manuscript reports on the interesting finding that toxin composition of the starlet sea anemone Nematostella vectensis is highly dynamic, there are several major concerns that limit the potential significance of this work. These are amply presented in the reviews below. In order to address the idea that the different venom compositions produced during distinct developmental stages of *Nematostella* is facilitating different interactions with other species, we conducted lab experiments where two predatory species that come from native *Nematostella* habitat, the killifish *Fundulus heteroclitus* and the grass shrimp *Palaemonetes* sp., were exposed to different developmental stages of *Nematostella*. Those interactions were tested multiple times with nearly perfect reproducibility. All these details, including the exact description of the interactions and number of animals and replicates are now provided in the Results section and Materials and methods. All the interaction results are provided in the new table, [Table 1](#table1){ref-type="table"}. To provide the reader with visual description of some notable forms of interaction we also provide videos. These videos describe typical interactions that were recorded multiple times (n\>3) in independent experiments. The results of the interaction of killifish larvae with primary polyps of *Nematostella*, originally caught on video, are provided in the new Figure ([Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}) and are quantified and statistically significant. The combination of all of these results show that indeed antagonistic interactions of *Nematostella* change with development. We do not claim to fully solve the very complex picture of *Nematostella* ecology in the field, but we believe that these new results provide a strong support to the idea that the vast changes of venom composition enable different interspecific interactions. We would also like to note that this hypothesis is also supported by the great differences we reveal by transcriptomics, proteomics, and multiple cytology assays. It is likely that the appearance and disappearance of whole cell populations that produce different toxins across development documented here at such magnitude for the first time, is not a neutral process and requires significant metabolic resources. We suggest that these noticeable cellular and biochemical transformations were evolutionarily shaped by the different interspecific interactions. Those interactions obviously also depend on the vastly different sizes of the developmental stages and their motility or lack thereof and we do not claim that venom is the only factor shaping them. However, we do suggest that our results support the idea that the costly changes in venom composition are most probably correlated with predation ecology and were selected via interspecific interactions. > Reviewer \#2: > > \[...\] 1) As the authors point out, similar studies focusing on venom composition dynamics have already been reported in both invertebrates (cone snail)\[1\] and vertebrates (rattlesnakes)\[2\]. And like the majority of phylum Mollusca, cone snails also possess a complex life cycle, with a planktonic veliger stage and a highly predatory adult stage. Similar to previous studies, this manuscript provides another descriptive analysis of venom composition changes during different life stages, but fails to touch on the biological relevance or the molecular mechanism behind this phenomenon. This is in our opinion the single most critical point in the letter, and also the most subjective one as novelty is a matter of opinion. We will do our best to explain in what points our paper is different and novel compared to the previous works where differential developmental expression of toxins was indicated: 1\) First of all, it is important to consider what previous works have established: the work from 2011 of Gibbs et al. \[1\] reported only subtle changes in venom composition between young and adult rattlesnakes, as the authors themselves state (quote: "Juvenile snakes fed from birth with mice, lizards, or frogs showed little evidence for an ontogenetic shift in venom composition from 5 to 26 months in terms of substantial changes in the relative abundance of major classes of venom toxins. However, there were fine-scale changes in the relative abundance of D49-PLA₂ 15, PI-SVMPs, and PIIISVMP 28, and a decline in the abundance of other PIII-SVMPs."). The work by Safavi-Hemami on cone snails \[2\], showed that venom changes between embryos and adults of the species *Conus victoriae*. However, this work showed only two developmental stages, used only two adults as the source of venom and used non-quantitative (normal reverse transcription PCR) at the transcriptomic level. 2\) In contrast to the previous works, the transcriptomic part of our work was done in triplicates on 10 developmental stages and multiple tissues and used thousands of embryos and dozens of adults that normalize any individual variation. This is important as individual variability might have contributed to the differences documented in the previous works (see reviews \[3, 4\]). Further, our *Nematostella vectensis* lab population is highly inbred, controlling for genetic variation in a way that the experiments on cone snails and snakes or any other study on field-collected animals could never control. This is an important point as individuals of various venomous species were shown to exhibit much variation in venom expression due to both genetic and environmental conditions. We now mention this point in the Introduction section. 3\) Further, our work is far more quantitative than the two previous works, as Nanostring nCounter technology was shown in multiple studies to be arguably the most accurate technique for transcript level measurements as it is non-enzymatic. We have now also added a semi-quantitative tandem mass-spectrometry analysis to support our transcriptomic findings also at the proteomic level. 4\) Most importantly, our work also shows highly complex tissue and cellular dynamic localization that to our knowledge was never shown before by others. 5\) We do not agree with the reviewer on the point that our findings fail to touch on biological significance, as we show in the manuscript for the first time that sea anemone planulae larvae are capable of rapidly paralyze and kill other animals and that they discharge their nematocysts in this process. Coupled with the highly different venom composition between young and adult stages, we do touch a new biological relevance of venom variation and venom utilization by larva. The cone snail work \[2\], as elegant as it is, did not do anything parallel to this point. 6\) We now also support the biological relevance of our findings by presenting detailed analysis of interactions between different *Nematostella* developmental stages and two potential predators from the same habitat (see [Table 1](#table1){ref-type="table"}, [Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"} and videos). 7\) Lastly, this might be an obvious point, but our work is performed in a cnidarian, and not on cone snails or snakes that are separated from our model organism by 600 million years. In our opinion, saying that it just repeats previous findings in other systems (which is wrong for all of the above reasons), is analogical to saying that finding a phenomenon in mouse is not exciting because it was already described in *Drosophila*. > 2\) The toxicology experiments were meant to demonstrate the toxicity of Nematostella proteins NvePTx1 and NEP3, which was a main argument made by the authors. However, both experiments were carried out and analyzed in a crude manner and definitely require improvement. Synthesis of biologically active toxic peptides has been proven difficult, as the formation of disulfide bridges between evolutionarily conserved cysteine residues is rather inefficient in E. coli culture system (even with Shuffle and BL21 strains, in which the cytosolic disulfide bond formation is enhanced)\[3, 4\]. More importantly, the existence of multiple cysteine residues leads to potential disulfide bond formation at different positions. The authors purified both toxins directly from bacterial culture without further analysis of peptide structure, and tried to demonstrate the toxicity of each peptide by incubating them at a single concentration with zebrafish larvae. A series of questions need to be answered: > > i\) What proportion or isoform of purified peptides are biologically active? And why do these peptides only function at such a high concentration compared to previous studies \[4, 5\]? > > ii\) Is zebrafish a suitable subject to test toxins from Nematostella (whose diet likely consists of invertebrates such as small crustaceans and mollusks)? > > iii\) Is it appropriate to conclude on the neurotoxicity of the peptides simply based on abnormal tail contraction phenotype of zebrafish larvae? These experiments lead to more confusion, rather than providing functional evidence to support the argument that both genes truly function as toxins. As we described in the Materials and methods section, the two toxins were purified by metal ion chromatography, and more importantly by reverse phase chromatography. The fish larvae were incubated only with highly purified toxins. We provide in [Author response image 1 a](#respfig1){ref-type="fig"} figure showing the reverse phase results of purified toxins and it is easy to see that the vast majority of toxin molecules represent a single isoform as demonstrated by the highly symmetric peak in the chromatogram. From our substantial experience with recombinant cysteine-rich peptides (please see numerous relevant publications by Drs. Moran and Sachkova where this technique was successfully applied), this is a clear evidence for a high degree of homogeneity. The pure peptides were also assayed on electrospray mass spectrometry, yielding masses that fit the formation of disulfide bonds. Solving the 3D structures of these peptides in X-ray or NMR is completely out of the scope of the current manuscript and will be futile unless compared to structures of the native peptides. However, the structure of a Type V sea anemone toxins was never described and they have no homology to other toxin families, whereas NEP3 is only very-far related to the ShK or BgK toxins, making any structural comparisons highly hypothetical. Such an experimental work will take years and is again completely unrelated to the core of the current manuscript and its focus. Further, even in the work by Luo et al. \[5\] that the reviewer is providing as an example, the three synthetic isoforms of the cone snail toxin all show quite potent activity on the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor tested (alpha9alpha10, please see [Figure 2A](#fig2){ref-type="fig"} in that paper). {#respfig1} The reason for the high concentration that is needed for killing the zebrafish might be that penetration is not very efficient and takes a long time as the fish larvae are incubated with the toxins. Alternatively, some toxins are just not very active alone but are highly synergic with other venom components (see for example \[6\]). Whatever the reason is, the toxins were able to kill the fish in a few hours whereas the control group, incubated with a non-toxic protein, was alive and well even after overnight incubation. We have now expanded our zebrafish experiments by using more specimens and monitoring more frequently the toxic effects. Is zebrafish the right model for our question? Well, are lab mice good model for scorpion, conesnail and spider toxins? That's a highly debatable topic, with many possible answers. In our paper that focuses on completely different topics, we believe that documenting toxicity is enough for supporting our claim that these are toxins. It is important to remember that this proof is corroborated by the fact that the peptides, show homology to previously characterized sea anemone neurotoxins and were found to be expressed in venom-related nematocytes and gland cells. In our opinion, zebrafish is a suitable model. After all, it represents teleost fish and vertebrates in general because even if it is a freshwater fish from southeastern Asia, it shares the vast majority of ion channel subtypes with other fish species. Please also note that *Nematostella* lives in brackish lagoons that host fish larvae and young-feeding developmental stages of fish. Further, fish can serve as predators and not necessarily as prey, which is anyway much more relevant in the case of NvePTx1 (expressed only in non-feeding stages) and NEP3 (expressed in both feeding and non-feeding stages). We also provide now in our new results ([Table 1](#table1){ref-type="table"} and videos) evidence that killifish larvae from the same habitat try to feed on *Nematostella* eggs and planulae, but fail to consume them and release them unharmed. The reviewer is providing the works of Warmke et al. \[7\] and Luo et al. \[5\] as examples for high toxin activity. In the first work the authors applied a sea anemone sodium channel modulator (ATX-II) on a fruit fly sodium channel expressed in frog oocytes and in the second work the authors applied a cone snail acetylcholine receptor antagonist on DRG neurons from rat and on mammalian acetylcholine receptors heterologously expressed in frog eggs. Of course one cannot compare apples and oranges, but if the reviewer accepts these highly artificial systems as biologically relevant, our zebrafish experiment is not so bad after all. Further, very high activity of toxins is not a strong proof for ecological relevance, as very strong toxic effects on ecologically irrelevant species (such as sea anemones and flies or cone snails and rats) and off-target effects of toxins, yet with high activity, on pharmacologically irrelevant targets are both well documented in the field of toxinology (see review \[3\]). For all the above reasons, we believe that our toxicity tests on fish are relevant and provide sufficient proof for the activity of NEP3 and NvePTx1 as toxins. However, we agree with the reviewer that the claim for neurotoxic effects based only on tail twitching should be toned down and this is why we use the word "might". > 3\) The quality of data in general needs to be improved. Images from double in situ hybridization experiments ([Figure 4B](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}) were meant to demonstrate partial co-localization of different toxins and nematocyst marker gene Ncol3. But the poor quality of these images fails to provide enough cellular resolution to support these claims. Also, the FISH pattern of the same gene NEP3 at primary polyp stage varies from panel to panel, and is not comparable to the double in situ pattern shown in [Figure 5E](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}. The same problem exists with the Ncol3 pattern, which was used as a reference marker, in [Figure 4B](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}, primary polyp stage, row1 versus row 4. Honestly, we are struggling to understand the basis for this remark. We suspect that this has to do with quality of PDF transferred to the reviewer as there is a very significant decrease in quality between our high resolution TIF pictures and the PDF created by the *eLife* system. We provide in [Author response image 2](#respfig2){ref-type="fig"} an example for the reviewer so they can clearly see a cellular-resolution figure demonstrating the partially-overlapping expression patterns of *NEP3* and *NEP3-like*. This figure is part of our original [Figure 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"} that we uploaded to the *eLife* system. Additionally, we further solve this problem by adding to [Figure 4B](#fig4){ref-type="fig"} in the manuscript zoomed in panels to better show the co-localization. Further, we also suggest to take the following important point into consideration: In situ hybridization patterns of nematocyte markers or toxins will never be identical between panels as there is considerable animal to animal and even layer to layer variation like with any single cell pattern, i.e., a salt-and-pepper pattern, in *Nematostella*. In most animals (basically almost any animal species which is not a nematode) even under full genetic homogeneity, embryos are not 100% identical to one another in their spatiotemporal expression patterns. For example, if we would use in situ hybridization to localize a gene in a fly brain that is expressed in only a subpopulation of the neurons, every specimen would be slightly different from the other. That's perfectly normal. {#respfig2} > Reviewer \#3: > > \[...\] This study provides robust data that show differences in toxin-gene and toxin expression across developmental stages and adult tissues. This suggests that venom composition changes across developmental stages. While differences in the expression of toxins across developmental stages and tissues suggest there may be functional differences in venom that provide optimal activity at a particular life stage, in a particular ecological setting, or in response to different interspecific interactions, the authors should be careful of over interpreting their data to suggest functional differences for which there is little support. We agree with the reviewer and hence toned down our interpretations regarding function. > It is plausible that differential toxin expression and venom composition are the result of differential selective forces across developmental stages. However, this study did not explicitly show that differences in venom composition cause different functional effects on planula larvae versus adult polyps. Moreover, while venoms that differ in composition may provide optimal activity at different life stages or in different tissues, the authors should be careful to avoid statements that suggest evolution is purposeful and results in adaptations that are structurally and functionally optimal. For example: 1) \"\[...\] each arsenal of toxin might be tailored for different biological needs.\"; 2) \"Hence, there is a clear advantage in using a highly adapted venom in each developmental stage.\" Of course, we completely agree with the reviewer that evolution is not purposeful and we did not mean to convey such an erroneous idea. We rephrased the text to avoid such misunderstandings. > Regarding the use of venom for defense versus prey capture -- this is an intriguing area of venom physiology and evolution. Localized expression of toxin genes or toxins suggests functional specificity. However, the authors should avoid \"attributing\" functional specificity to localized expression. It is also not clear from the data shown in this study that NvePTx1 is solely a defensive toxin. NvePTx1 was identified as a homolog of the type 5 K^+^ channel blocker BCsTx3 from sea anemone based on sequence similarity. To confirm toxic activity, recombinant NvePTx1 was incubated with zebra fish larvae, which died by the end of the 16 hour incubation period, compared to control larvae incubated with no toxin. The ISH staining showed a developmental pattern consistent with eggs expressing NvePTx1, and expression patterns changing as the eggs developed. But unless I missed this in the data or reference in another publication, has it been shown that eggs expressing incubated with predators actually kills the predators? This is the only point where we somewhat disagree with reviewer \#3. Because NvePTx1 is found only in the egg, embryos that do not feed, and in the gonads of adult females (but not in adult males), we think we can safely assume it is not used for predation, but solely for defense. However, we agree that this is still a suggestion as we did not prove directly that NvePTx1 is used in defense and hence we edited the text accordingly. > Regarding the NvLysin1b pore-former toxin, while expression in the pharynx and mesenteries suggests it is for prey capture, perhaps it also functions to help break food down to aid digestion. We completely agree and we included this idea in a previous publication (18) and also now in the revised text. > Perhaps the authors could revise their discussion to distinguish between conclusions that can be drawn from the data, and speculation about differential venom function and future directions. We think that this is a good idea and this is why we declare hypothetical parts as such (now highlighted in blue for the referee). > It would be helpful to include a little more information about the toxins and their biological activity. References are provided, but this requires that the reader search for information that could be provided in a concise manner. For example, the authors could briefly define \"pore-forming toxin\". Is this a toxin that lyses cells versus a toxin that blocks ion channel pores or manipulates gating mechanisms? Toxin experts won\'t be bothered by this but other readers will appreciate brief definitions. Thank you for bringing up this idea. That's an excellent way to make the paper more accessible to readers from other fields. 1\. Gibbs HL, Sanz L, Chiucchi JE, Farrell TM, Calvete JJ (2011) Proteomic analysis of ontogenetic and diet-related changes in venom composition of juvenile and adult Dusky Pigmy rattlesnakes (Sistrurus miliarius barbouri). *J Proteomics* 74: 2169-79 2\. Safavi-Hemami H, Siero WA, Kuang Z, Williamson NA, Karas JA, Page LR, MacMillan D, Callaghan B, Kompella SN, Adams DJ*, et al.* (2011) Embryonic toxin expression in the cone snail Conus victoriae: primed to kill or divergent function? *J Biol Chem* 286: 22546-57 3\. Casewell NR, Wüster W, Vonk FJ, Harrison RA, Fry BG (2013) Complex cocktails: the evolutionary novelty of venoms. *Trends Ecol Evol* 28: 219-229 4\. Sunagar K, Morgenstern D, Reitzel AM, Moran Y (2016) Ecological venomics: How genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics can shed new light on the ecology and evolution of venom. *J Proteomics* 135: 62-72 5\. Luo S, Zhangsun D, Harvey PJ, Kaas Q, Wu Y, Zhu X, Hu Y, Li X, Tsetlin VI, Christensen S*, et al.* (2015) Cloning, synthesis, and characterization of alphaO-conotoxin GeXIVA, a potent alpha9alpha10 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor antagonist. *Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A* 112: E4026-35 6\. Cohen L, Lipstein N, Gordon D (2006) Allosteric interactions between scorpion toxin receptor sites on voltage-gated Na channels imply a novel role for weakly active components in arthropod venom. *FASEB J* 20: 1933-5 7\. Warmke JW, Reenan Ra, Wang P, Qian S, Arena JP, Wang J, Wunderler D, Liu K, Kaczorowski GJ, Van der Ploeg LH*, et al.* (1997) Functional expression of *Drosophila* para sodium channels. Modulation by the membrane protein TipE and toxin pharmacology. *J Gen Physiol* 110: 119-33 8\. Moran Y, Praher D, Schlesinger A, Ayalon A, Tal Y, Technau U (2013) Analysis of soluble protein contents from the nematocysts of a model sea anemone sheds light on venom evolution. *Mar Biotechnol (NY)* 15: 329-39 9\. Lapidot M, Pilpel Y (2006) Genome-wide natural antisense transcription: coupling its regulation to its different regulatory mechanisms. *EMBO Rep* 7: 1216-22 10\. Yelin R, Dahary D, Sorek R, Levanon EY, Goldstein O, Shoshan A, Diber A, Biton S, Tamir Y, Khosravi R*, et al.* (2003) Widespread occurrence of antisense transcription in the human genome. *Nat Biotechnol* 21: 379-86 11\. Ho MR, Tsai KW, Lin WC (2012) A unified framework of overlapping genes: towards the origination and endogenic regulation. *Genomics* 100: 231-9 12\. Bradshaw B, Thompson K, Frank U (2015) Distinct mechanisms underlie oral vs aboral regeneration in the cnidarian Hydractinia echinata. *ELife* 4: e05506 13\. Kraus Y, Aman A, Technau U, Genikhovich G (2016) Pre-bilaterian origin of the blastoporal axial organizer. *Nat Comm* 7: 11694 14\. Sinigaglia C, Busengdal H, Leclère L, Technau U, Rentzsch F (2013) The Bilaterian Head Patterning Gene six3/6 Controls Aboral Domain Development in a Cnidarian. *PLoS Biol* 11: e1001488 15\. Watanabe H, Schmidt HA, Kuhn A, Hoger SK, Kocagoz Y, Laumann-Lipp N, Ozbek S, Holstein TW (2014) Nodal signalling determines biradial asymmetry in Hydra. *Nature* 515: 1125 16\. Levitan S, Sher N, Brekhman V, Ziv T, Lubzens E, Lotan T (2015) The making of an embryo in a basal metazoan: Proteomic analysis in the sea anemone *Nematostella vectensis. Proteomics* 15: 4096-104 17\. Lotan T, Chalifa-Caspi V, Ziv T, Brekhman V, Gordon MM, Admon A, Lubzens E (2014) Evolutionary conservation of the mature oocyte proteome. *EuPA Open Proteomics* 3: 2736 18\. Moran Y, Fredman D, Szczesny P, Grynberg M, Technau, U (2012) Recurrent horizontal transfer of bacterial toxin genes to eukaryotes. *Mol Biol Evol* 9: 2223-30 [^1]: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Mourners flocked to his funeral in Casper, Wyo., but so did protesters carrying derogatory signs. His parents wrestled with a location for a burial after that, fearing it would be at risk of desecration. The family had considered other options, including spreading his ashes over the mountains and plains of Wyoming. But they settled on the cathedral because they wanted a place they could visit to talk to him. And that is what his father during his speech on Friday encouraged others to do. “Matt was blind just like this beautiful house of worship,” Dennis Shepard said. “He did not see skin color. He did not see religion. He did not see sexual orientation. All he saw was a chance to have another friend. Just like this beautiful home we have here right now.” He thanked those gathering for “helping us take Matt home.” Mr. Shepard and others who addressed the congregation emphasized that the cathedral was an inclusive, accepting place, whether they were religious or not, and regardless of their sexual orientation. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, who became the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church in 2003 but has since retired, gave the homily. “If you close your eyes and open your hearts, Matt is right here,” he said. Then later, weeping, he said there were three things he wanted to say to Matthew: “Gently rest in this place. You are safe now. Oh yeah, and Matt, welcome home. Amen.” Bishop Robinson had been working with Mr. Shepard’s parents on issues affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people for years. When Judy Shepard asked him about the possibility of interring her son’s ashes at the cathedral, he said, he helped to make it happen.

Ask HN: Where do I go from here? - VolatileVoid I've been working as a developer at the same job for almost 5 years. While the work is somewhat interesting and challenging, I'd hardly say it's something I'm passionate about. On top of that, I'm working with proprietary technology in a proprietary programming language.<p>My problem is that I don't have much inspiration to come up with my own project ideas. I'd like to do <i>something,</i> but I feel like I'm dry on ideas. I'm not looking to create "the next hotness" or to become some Social Media Kingpin. I'm really just looking to do something fun and useful, that others might find useful as well.<p>My problem is - or, rather, one of my many problems (because I surely have more than <i>one</i> problem) - is that my hobby, my passion is programming. The problem therein is that programming - at least in my mind - is akin to writing poetry. If you're a poet and the topic of all your poems is poetry (whoa, that's meta, dude), well, you're not going to be a very profound poet.<p>I'm a programming nerd. My dream project is, "Hey, we need someone to develop an infrastructure for scheduling and running thousands of jobs on hunreds of different boxes and to keep the status of said jobs, etc." But that kind of makes me an architecture astronaut which, supposedly, is A Bad Thing (tm). And, besides, the above problem has been solved many times over.<p>I guess my question is: what should I do? What do you do for inspiration? How do you come up with your personal projects? When do you find time to do them outside of work? ====== chipsy If the suggestion of solving other people's problems or entrepreneuring doesn't (directly) interest you: Find a second skill to cultivate that complements programming. (Prime examples would come from the arts and science.) Seek a novel interdisciplinary approach to using both the new skill and your current ones. You don't become passionate about hard work overnight, yet you've somehow reached that point with your programming abilities. So lifestyle changes notwithstanding, if you can do it once, you can do it again with a new skill. Doing this will bring you out of the "meta" realm where it looks like everything in software is one of (hugely complex, painful to maintain, already built, a pointless hack). Instead, you will have the benefit of perspective and can start to apply your technical armaments to some other field where computer-oriented problems are obvious, commonplace, never-ending, and usually - at first - easy to solve. ~~~ Ixiaus This is an excellent response. Diversification can do nothing but assist you, even if you deviate only by a small degree. Example: I used to have a similar issue with "idea paralysis" and it wasn't until I created a focus by recognizing my desire to write (but not replace programming, mind you) that I was able to come up with a solid idea and follow through with it (a decentralized content API is the app I've built and that atleast two of my sites run their content off of). Follow the advice of above, it is very good. ------ angelbob _"Hey, we need someone to develop an infrastructure for scheduling and running thousands of jobs on hunreds of different boxes and to keep the status of said jobs, etc." But that kind of makes me an architecture astronaut which, supposedly, is A Bad Thing (tm)_ Just doing it to do it makes you an architecture astronaut. Finding somebody with that problem and solving it, especially in a different way, _is_ a desirable thing. You could either out-compete an existing solution by doing it better, or find a chunk of problem space they don't really address (or don't address well). Then you're an entrepreneur, which around here is certainly a desirable thing :-) That is to say, figure out what it's useful for and keep that in mind. ~~~ cmars232 Yes, this general "solution template" arises in many different applications, each with their own domain-specific constraints or specialized technology, requiring a customized solution. ------ patio11 _What do you do for inspiration? How do you come up with your personal projects? When do you find time to do them outside of work?_ I talk to people who have problems. (I recommend meatspace for this since if you just go to HN or Twitter you'll tend to select the problems that people on HN or Twitter have, and they'll say something like "I am really involved in too many social networks and need like a meta-social network, with RSS feeds and Twitter integration", and you'll go off and build something that will never be used by someone without a Twitter account which, by last count, excludes 99.9% of the population of earth.) For my personal project, I solved that problem. Finding time was a matter of looking at what I did between leaving from work and going to sleep and deciding what mattered to me less than being a successful businessman. Bye, WoW, it was nice while it lasted. ~~~ HeyLaughingBoy _I talk to people who have problems_ I'll second this, but add that you can reach more people online than in meatspace. Change your focus: instead of only reading blogs frequented by programmers, read car enthusiast forums, gardening blogs, dry cleaning business forums... you get the idea. Spend time listening to people whose problems are completely alien to you. And get another hobby :-) ------ stephen If your dream job is "thousand of jobs on hundreds of boxes", why not start hacking on something like Hadoop/Hive (or any one of the other new/popular distributed data stores) and, after proving yourself to the community, try to get a job for one of the companies that sponsors/offers support for the project? E.g. cloudera, engineyard, something like that. That way you're programming on a project that is technically challenging, more mainstream, and also a core part of the company employing you (instead of just being an enterprise IT cost center), all while leaving the business stuff to the company's sales/execs/etc. My hunch is that those types of companies are more open to telecommuting as well, which might be nice given you mentioned having a family. ------ csomar You are stuck with ideas but you have a potential. Try something simple, if you are not working for money so you'll really not care if 10 or 20K users use it every day. Look around, what can help people? Something simple, small and easily maintainable. Finding it is a little hard. Don't forget that no one will give you the idea; but you can find it yourself. Do a little search on forums, what are people looking for? what causes them headaches? May be the solution is a little Firefox plugin, but it can help kill your free time... if you finished it, go to the next one. One of those projects may turn big and take to what you have never thought of... ------ edw519 _While the work is somewhat interesting and challenging, I'd hardly say it's something I'm passionate about._ The reason you are not passionate about your work is because something is missing. Identifying what is missing is your first step in determining where to go from here. I have been in a similar situation to you. Always working. Important stuff. Sometimes cool, often not. But something was always missing. Architecture not rigorous enough. Inadequate data base design. Insufficient requirements definition. Lousy code base. Unable to scale. Unable to expand or handle completely new features. But I always managed to make it work anyway. Then it occurred to me, if such mediocre systems were able to produce adequate results in commercial environments, what would be possible with great systems? So now I'm building a framework/architecture/environment that beautifully handles everything I thought was missing before. The passion is built-in. Instead of, "Look at me, ma!" now it's "Look at this, everybody!" Where do you go from here? Fill in the gaps that should have been providing passion all along. That oughta keep you busy for a while. ------ alain94040 Easy: keep your day job. Work night and weekends on something you are passionate about. Where to find cool stuff? As a programmer, the world is your oyster: there is a 100:1 ratio of people with ideas vs. people who can implement them. You probably don't know that I run a website to help people find such ideas: <http://fairsoftware.net/publicProjects> If nothing else works, there got to be some open source project which you think could use some serious rewriting. In my case, I wish I had the time to design a better shell (bash just isn't smart enough for the way I work - if you ever used the Mac MPW in the late 90s, you know what I mean). For others, it's a better, smarter GUI framework. I also think you could build something really cool to display Google search results: coverflow is just one starting point, but you can easily beat Google at the display part because of their fanaticism with providing simple page results. There is a better way for sure. ------ turkishrevenge "My problem is - or, rather, one of my many problems (because I surely have more than one problem) - is that my hobby, my passion is programming." I know its been said over and over again, but I think the advice still holds: join an open source project. Contribute to a piece of software you and others enjoy using. Software only gets better when people are willing to work on it. ------ mtrimpe Start a company. Just pick some interesting idea you're actually capable of executing and just start building it. Don't worry so much about whether you will actually make money, to keep it a hobby, but make it in such a way that you might, to keep alive hopes of actually making a living out of it. Doing it that way will allow you to make it however you please and to make it as beautiful as you want. The fun part is that along the way you will encounter critical areas you never thought about, but which are quite interesting to do once (setting up a build infrastructure, migration etc.) Just make sure your code stays a thing of beauty, something so solidly engineered that you're truly proud of it. Don't rush things but take the time to make them 'just right'. That way you'll have had a great time writing it, and if your company ever gets off the ground you'll have an amazing code base to start off with. ~~~ VolatileVoid _Start a company. Just pick some interesting idea you're actually capable of executing and just start building it._ Ideally, I'd do just this. I'd leave my job, take a few months and do my own thing. The problem is that I'm not prepared to take that risk; I have a good job, it pays well, and it supports my family. If I walk away and succeed (where success >= the same amount I'm making now), awesome. If I fail, however, I've left a job I'm good at, and that I'm comfortable at. Perhaps that's the crux of the issue right there. I don't want to take the risk of putting all my eggs in one basket, but I find it difficult to get inspired if I'm not fully invested. Thus, if given the option after a long day of work to either watch Top Chef with my wife or do something interesting in Python, Top Chef+Wife wins every time. ~~~ mtrimpe Somehow I forgot to mention "as a side project" in my original post. Your job will most likely always be shitty, at least I know it is for me. No company I can find excites me and the ones that do generally don't stay exciting for more than a year, after which you'll be hunting for a great job for several years before you find another one. If you don't want to work on it in your spare time, your only choice is to find a kick ass job that pays enough to keep your family happy. If you figure out how to do that; let me know... ;) ------ jacquesm Why is being an architecture astronaut supposedly a bad thing ? There are plenty of places that are in dire need of people with that skill, it's taking system administration to a whole new level and not that many people are capable of doing that. If you're up for a challenge find some fledgling open source project that tries to solve a real world problem that you have some affinity with and start contributing. Sooner or later inspiration will strike. It usually does when you stop looking for it! best of luck, Jacques ~~~ btilly The reason why being an architecture astronaut is a bad thing is the tendency for building complex systems that solve all of the problems they thought about which then makes it virtually impossible to do some simple things that other people need to do which they _didn't_ think about. Oh, and the other problem I have encountered is the tendency for the astronaut to be unable to explain the complexities of their system in ways that people back on Earth can understand. (More than once I've been assigned such systems because I actually _can_ figure them out. I don't enjoy it, but I can do it.) ------ bhousel Find a local meetup, and try to connect with people in your area who have cool ideas. Then put together a team and start building. BTW, if you happen to be in the NYC or Philly area, email me. ------ jrockway Go to conferences. Make friends with like-minded people. Get another job. Then you will be closer to your dream than you are now. ------ coryrc Read HackADay www.hackaday.com and improve on one that sounds fun. ------ vaksel start a blog, build a following, then once you decide to do your own startup, you'll have that first 1000-2000 early users ~~~ RevRal Can you recommend a guide? I would like to start a blog, which is technically no problem. It's just, running into all the abandoned blogs on the internet has been discouraging.

Saturday, 5 November 2011 Locks & Condition Variables - Latency Impact In a previous article on Inter-Thread Latency I showed how it is possible to signal a state change between 2 threads with less than 50ns of latency. To many developers, writing concurrent code using locks is a scary experience. Writing concurrent code using lock-free algorithms, i.e. algorithms that rely on the use of memory barriers and an intimate understanding of the underlying memory models, can be totally terrifying. To me lock-free / non-blocking algorithms are like playing with explosives or corrosive chemicals, if you do not understand what you are doing, or show the ultimate respect, then very bad things can, and most likely will, happen! In this article, I'd like to illustrate the impact of using locks and the resulting latency they can impose on your designs. I want to use a very similar algorithm to that used in my previous inter-thread latency article to illustrate the ping-pong effect of handing control back and forth between 2 threads. In this case, rather than using a couple of volatile variables, I will employ a pair of condition variables to signal a state change so control can be passed back and forth. The above is a typical set of results I've seen in the middle of the range from multiple runs. There are a couple of interesting observations I'd like to expand on. Firstly, this is 3 orders of magnitude greater latency than what I illustrated in the previous article using just memory barriers to signal between threads. This cost comes about because the kernel needs to get involved to arbitrate between the threads for the lock, and then manage the scheduling for the threads to awaken when the condition is signalled. The one-way latency to signal a change is pretty much the same as what is considered current state of the art for network hops between nodes via a switch. It is possible to get ~1µs latency with InfiniBand and less than 5µs with 10GigE and user-space IP stacks. Secondly, the impact is clear when letting the OS choose what CPUs the threads get scheduled on rather than pinning them manually. I've observed this same issue across many use cases whereby Linux, in default configuration for its scheduler, will greatly impact the performance of a low-latency system by scheduling threads on different cores resulting in cache pollution. Windows by default seems to make a better job of this. I recently had an interesting discussion with Cliff Click about using condition variables and their cost. He pointed out a problem he was seeing. If you look at the case where a sleeping thread gets signalled within the lock, it goes to run and then discovers it cannot get the lock because the signalling thread already has the lock, so it gets put back to sleep until the signalling thread releases the lock, thus causing more work than necessary. Modern schedulers would benefit from being more aware of communication mechanisms between threads to have more efficient location and rescheduling logic. As we go more concurrent and parallel our schedulers need to become more aware of IPC mechanisms. Conclusion When designing a low-latency system it is crucial to avoid the use of locks and condition variables for the main transaction flows. Non-blocking or lock-free algorithms are key to achieving ultra-low latency but can be very difficult to prove correct. I would not recommend designing lock-free algorithms for business logic but they can be very effectively employed for low-level infrastructure components. The business logic is best run on single threads following the Single Writer Principle from my previous article.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HYPNOSIS The practice of Hypnosis in some form or another has been around a very long time. In ancient Egypt, there existed what would be called today a Renaissance man. Knowledgeable in the fields of medicine, religion, and scholastic pursuits he was also a famous architect who designed the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. His name was Imhotep, and he had Sleep Temples dedicated to him. Over 4000 years ago Sleep temples were hospitals of sorts, healing a variety of ailments, perhaps many of them psychological in nature. The treatment involved chanting, placing the patient into a trance like or hypnotic state, and analysing their dreams in order to determine treatment. Meditation, fasting, baths and sacrifices to the patron deity or other spirits were often involved as well. This can be seen as early psychotherapy. (1) In the 4th and 5th Centuries, Greeks and Romans had the Asklepieion which was the name for their healing temple. It was dedicated to the god, Asclepius which was the Greek god of medicine. The 2 stage process of purification ended with the patient spending the night at the temple to have their dreams analysed in the morning by the temple priest. This would occur if they had not been lucky enough to be visited by the god Asclepius who would have given them medical advice directly in their dream. (2) Reconstruction drawing of the Asklepieion Moving forward in history we reach the time of Franz Friedrich Anton Mesmer who was a 19th century German physician who coined the term mesmerism meaning an invisible natural force that exists between all living beings, also called animal magnetism. The term mesmerism would later be associated with hypnosis. A student of Mesmer, the Marquis de Puységur, was the first to describe and use the terminology of somnambulism or what is known today as sleep walking. Interestingly enough somnambulism is the name for the 3rd stage of Hypnosis, and it is considered by many Hypnotists and Hypnotherapists to be a necessary state of relaxation before any suggestions can be accepted. It is perhaps why the idea of Hypnosis makes many people uncomfortable as those who do sleep walk seem to not have any control of their situation and actions. This is not true of those in a hypnotic state but more on that later! History is filled with fascinating information about Hypnosis. During the American Civil War (1861 to 1865) field doctors used Hypnosis on injured soldiers but once they reached the field hospitals, modern medicines of ether and chloroform were considered easier and faster to use to calm and sedate those who were injured. Hypnosis was also used during both World Wars to help soldiers suffering from PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. SIGMUND FREUD ​Did you know that Sigmund Freud used aspects of Hypnosis to create Psychoanalysis? Today thanks to the work of pioneers such as Clark L. Hull, Andrew Salter, Bob Neill, Pope Pius XII (Hypnosis was banned by the church until he gave his approval of Hypnosis in 1956) The American Medical Association, The British Medical Association, The American Psychological Association, and work of Weitzenhoffer and Aron, Hypnosis is widely used and accepted around the world today. (4) WHAT IS HYPNOSIS? In a nutshell: Hypnosis is a relaxation technique. It is used to be able to experience a state of deep physical relaxation, while the mind experiences a sense of hyper-focus. In this altered state of awareness, the subconscious (sometimes called the unconscious) mind becomes open to new suggestions. THE CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS MIND The conscious mind is what we think of when we think of our mind. The ability to know and understand the difference between reality and fantasy is due to our conscious mind. The fact that we can tell the difference between the past, present and future is due to this as well. When we wake from a nightmare, our heart pounding, it’s our conscious mind that tells us it was not real. Our conscious mind is also responsible for our ability to identify all of our beliefs that we are aware of, and reminds us of what we SHOULD be doing. Our unconscious mind knows WHY we do the things we do. The unconscious mind (also referred to as the sub-conscious) is far more flexible than the conscious mind. For the unconscious mind, time is irrelevant and everything is real. Past, present and future happen at the same moment. This explains why an event that happened years ago, can feel as real as if it happened yesterday. Think of those popular media posts that showcase the top blockbuster movies from 20 years ago. More often than not they tend to shock people because the emotional connection is in the unconscious mind. It doesn’t feel like 20 years have passed! Any event which impacts us in a way that is emotionally significant to us is not only recorded in our unconscious mind as real, every single event and feeling associated with it is recorded as real as well, even if it wasn’t. So a child watching their parents fighting, records every single aspect of that, including how they were feeling, what they imagined the parents to be feeling and every fantasy and reality associated with it as real. HOW CAN HYPNOTHERAPY HELP? Hypnotherapy is a therapeutic method of Hypnosis is used to program new suggestions at the core levels the mind. These are existing beliefs that were formed in childhood.Let’s look at an example of how It can help someone using the fictitious character of Susan, who represents that child mentioned above who witnessed her parents fighting: Susan has the belief that money is bad. She believes that money leads to heartache and lost love, so for her, it’s been better not to be financially successful. Why does Susan believe this? As a young child Susan witnessed her parents fighting repeatedly about money. The child she was saw her parents fighting and decided (imagined) that they must not love each other and that money was the reason, so money was bad. In reality it was the lack of money along with other factors she knew nothing about which led her parents to fight with one another. As she grew up, Susan took the memory of her parents fighting, and everything associated with it that was lodged in her subconscious, and used that information to formulate the message that money was something she didn’t need in her life.Since money was bad, she subconsciously decided to sabotage herself so that she would never have enough money, thus fulfilling her childhood belief that money is bad and it leads to heartache and loss of love. HOW DO WE CHANGE THE MESSAGE WITH HYPNOSIS? Let’s look at the example of Susan again: In a Hypnotherapy session, Susan is taken through a process which encourages her to relax to a level in which she will be more receptive to suggestion. Once in that very relaxed state, she is given a new message which will break the repeating behavior pattern. The new messages will replace the old one Susan has existing in her subconscious if she allows her conscious mind to accept the change. You see, Hypnosis is not like a Hollywood movie where the unwilling participant is blindly following plans implanted in their subconscious. In real life, Hypnosis works if you want it to. If Susan were to resist the new messages, then the effects would only be temporary and she would be back where she started. Interesting Fact: Remember that Hypnotic state called somnambulism? Well sometimes there are people that need to reach that level in order to accept the new messages. Not because they will have lost control at that point, but because it is a level where they are able to relax their conscious mind enough to allow it to happen. IS HYPNOSIS REAL? Hypnosis is very real. It is a natural and normal state of the mind. We all experience states of Hypnosis throughout every day of our lives. Have your sensations and perceptions of the world ever been altered through suggestion? THAT is Hypnosis. Let’s look at a very common and pervasive system that is present in our daily lives. So present that in this modern age we don’t even think about it anymore. Advertising and Marketing occur on a daily basis and greet us in every aspect of our lives. From the moment we wake up until we fall asleep at night it is there. No you say, I am not influenced by marketing at all! Really? How many times a day do you look at your phone? As a matter of fact just what kind of phone do you have? Is it one of the big name brands? (Maybe even the one named after a fruit?) How often do you check your social media accounts? If you have ever bought a name brand product or told someone that something was “the best” even if you were not sure that was true, you have been the recipient ofHypnotic Suggestion. When you decide to purchase one alternative over another, the ads that you were exposed to implanted the message into your subconscious mind that one product is better than another, and that makes you choose brand x over brand y. Marketing uses the power of suggestion to make you think about a particular product or brand name to be the first mental/emotional association you make with that product.Let’s play a little game: Think of the words “toothpaste” and “fights cavities” What brand comes to your mind? Why that brand and not another? The answer for all of it isHypnotic Suggestion (also known as Marketing.) This fake but awesome retro ad was created by the Sao Paulo ad agency Moma Propaganda WHY DOES IT WORK? Hypnotherapy works because Humans by nature are easily influenced, and because we have a conscious and subconscious mind. In our very own world history there are examples of individuals who were was able to sway the opinions of others to follow those individual leaders’ desires. Now of course there were many other factors at play, but by reinforcing an existing bias or belief by repeating the same message over and over again and presenting “evidence” (Marketing a.k.a. Hypnotic Suggestion) these persons were able to implant a subconscious message which had a profound impact on not just their country, but the world. Authors Note: Having a lifelong love of history, learning about human behaviour and how fascinating marketing can be, has led me to this observation. WAKING UP There is no such thing as waking up in Hypnosis because you are not actually asleep. True Hypnosis is a very relaxed state in which a person’s senses become hyper focused. This hyper focus allows for information to be readily received while being relaxed, but the person being hypnotised has complete control of the situation. If someone falls asleep during a Hypnotherapy session it is most likely due to external forces in their life, combined with the relaxation they feel during the session. Once they reach sleep, they are past the point of actual Hypnosis. WHAT DOES HYPNOSIS FEEL LIKE? Imagine yourself watching television lying comfortably on your couch. You don’t actually remember doing it but suddenly you are having a moment where you are not sure if you are awake or not. You can hear the television on but you could also swear you were in the program just a second ago! How is that possible? What you just experienced was the power of Hypnotic suggestion, as your subconscious mind accepted all the information it was receiving as reality. As you became more and more relaxed, your subconscious mind started to accept the messages that were being received. In your case it was what was being said on the program you were watching. BECOMING STUCK What about people who attend Stage Hypnosis shows and become “stuck” or unable to wake up? Stage Hypnosis is a show in the truest sense of the word. They are well planned out and organized utilizing aspects of human nature that people seldom think about. Social and peer pressure are very strong factors of influence that most people do not consider, but Stage Hypnotists use it to their advantage to see just who is willing to follow along! An example of this is using the hand clasping test. Audience members are asked by the Hypnotist to hold their hands together, and then he/she tell the audience that they can’t pull their hands apart. The Hypnotist will keep track of which audience members were unable to pull their hands apart as possible volunteers for the show. Why can’t they separate their hands? Well in reality they could if they tried to, but the pressure of being in a room full of people who can’t seem to tear their hands apart combined with their own internal dialogue (low self-esteem, self-doubt, not wanting to be singled out as different etc.) causes them to keep their hands together. Other tactics that are used are to tell the audience that only those with an open mind can be hypnotized. “So what?” you may say, but do you want to be seen as the only boring, closed minded person in a room full of open minded, receptive people who came to see a Stage Hypnosis show? What about those people who have become “stuck”? People who become “stuck” by the Hypnotist are either one of three things: 1. They enjoy the drama and the attention so they committed to “staying in a trance”2. They are enjoying the feeling of such deep relaxation that they don’t want to give it up.3. It is a publicity stunt. For a Hypnotherapist, there is no value in having clients remain in a “trance state” after the scheduled session is over. True Hypnotherapists would rather you emerge from your “trance”, pay your bill and free up the space for the next client! It’s amazing how fast a client will come out of “trance” once their Hypnotherapist tells them they have to pay for the extra time (over their appointment ) they stay in “trance”! Many other methods are used in shows, but in the end no one can make you do anything without your consent. If someone clucks like a chicken in a show it is because on some level, they wanted to act silly, and clucking like a chicken on stage gave them that chance. Hypnosis is not magic. Your morals and ethics determine what your limits are. A Stage Hypnotist or Hypnotherapist can’t make you do anything against your will. A persons capacity is generally far beyond what they imagine it is though, so that is often why Hypnosis can alternately enthrall and scare people. It is not the Hypnosis itself, but what they are actually capable of doing that is the real magic. HYPNOSIS IN ACTION Based on individual acceptance levels, Hypnosis in general can work on a variety of issues ranging from breaking habits, overcoming fears and phobias, aiding with insomnia, smoking, confidence, concentration, aid in studying/learning something new, and issues around body image. Hypnosis can also be specialized to target areas such as Dentistry, Surgery (Hypnosurgery) and Labour and Delivery (HypnoBirthing), Traumas such as PTSD, can also be helped with Hypnosis. Areas of body/comfort/acceptance /transition can also be aided by Hypnosis. (e.g. Body Dysmorphia and Transgender) SELF-HYPNOSIS Hypnosis is not just for those who want to be on the stage or train to become a Hypnotherapist. Self-Hypnosis is something almost anyone can learn and in fact most people practice it daily without even realizing it. Any time a person gives themselves a message, whether it is positive or negative, that is Self-Hypnosis: “That meal was so good. I cooked the chicken perfectly.”“These pants make my butt look awesome. Hello fabulous me!”“I did great today. I really nailed that interview. They will hire me for sure!” “I burned the dinner again. I really can’t cook!”“This outfit looks terrible on me. I need to lose weight!”“I can’t believe I got lost again. I have the worst sense of direction!” HOW TO CHANGE THE NEGATIVE MESSAGE People talk to themselves all the time. Some people talk both out loud and internally, but many others just have ongoing conversations, statements and rants inside their own head daily and that is okay. If however those conversations take over your life to the point that you are having severe trouble functioning in daily life, then you need to seek medical/professional help and Self-Hypnosis could be used as an aid in addition to other ongoing treatments. 1. DETERMINE THE NEGATIVE MESSAGE To begin to change the message you first have to know what that message is. A person may give themselves multiple messages all the time, and each one can be worked on, but to start, it is best to choose the one that is the most predominant in your life, especially if it affects your life negatively. Examples: You refuse to date because you think you are not attractive enough, or you rarely socialize because you are too nervous to talk to people. 2. WRITE DOWN THE NEGATIVE MESSAGES THAT YOU WANT TO CHANGE Make a list of all the messages that you want to change with the most persistent one at the top of that list. 3. WRITE A NEW POSITIVE MESSAGE THAT IS A REALISTIC OPPOSITE OF YOUR NEGATIVE OLD MESSAGE This new message has to be a complete opposite that you will believe. If you write that you will lose 100 pounds in 2 months, it will not work. Not only is that a dangerous message to give yourself, it is so unrealistic that you will not believe it. Let’s look at our previous negative messages and see how we can change them: EXISTING NEGATIVE MESSAGES “I burned the dinner again. I really can’t cook!” “This outfit looks terrible on me. I need to lose weight!” “I can’t believe I got lost again. I have the worst sense of direction!” NEW SELF HYPNOSIS REALISTIC POSITIVE MESSAGES Regarding Cooking: “I can cook. I make delicious lasagna.” “I know the basics of cooking. It will be fun to take a course and learn more.” Regarding Clothing/Body Image: “I am excited to go through my wardrobe and clean it out. I am sure there are many great outfits that I have forgotten about that will look amazing on me” “I feel wonderful when I exercise. I am going to walk up the stairs 3 times this week” Regarding Driving/Navigation: “I accept that I need help and that’s okay. I will install a GPS in my car” “I remember directions differently than others. I will add looking for landmarks when driving to help me, and that’s okay.” 4. POST THOSE POSITIVE MESSAGES EVERYWHERE YOU WILL SEE THEM Purchase a large poster board and write down your top positive message and then all the others underneath it. Write BIG and BOLD so that you can see it clearly. Place it in a central location of your home where you are sure to see it, like your living room or bedroom. Get yourself some sticky notes and place those all around your home with the same realistic positive messages. You can post them on your bathroom mirror, your kitchen cabinets, in your car and many other places. GET CREATIVE. Bonus points if you chose the brightest sticky notes you can find! 5. KEEP A JOURNAL Start to write your day down in a journal. It doesn’t have to a fancy one, but it can be if that makes you feel good about doing it and it motivates you to write. Keep track of your day but also note when you expressed negative messages to yourself. Take a moment to re-read what you have written and see if you can start to see any patterns. Start to notice if there are any events or persons that trigger your negative messages to yourself. If you find for example that you are extremely negative to yourself at work, consider the reasons. Perhaps your boss is overly critical or you have a heavy workload that is unrealistic for one person. Look into avenues that can assist you. Whether that is talking to your boss or HR Department about a resolution or delegating work to others if possible. You may also consider working on your resume in anticipation of looking for a new job. Rework any negative messages to yourself to reflect a realistic positive message. You may also want to relay those new positive messages as needed, if possible. For example: The next time the overly critical boss makes a negative comment to you, He/she can be told that you are doing your job to the best of your ability, and you are proud of your strong work ethic. You can even remind your boss of a contribution that you made that was a benefit to the company. If it was an excellent presentation, well worded report or even a time management strategy that was of benefit, remind yourself and others of the positive things that you have done. 6. CREATE A SPACE THAT HONOURS YOU Find a space on a wall in your home that will be seen by anyone who enters it. On that wall place every accomplishment, certificate, image, drawing, writing piece etc. that you are proud of and have achieved. Purchase frames that you like and frame everything that can be framed. If you have trophies or other pieces that can’t go on a wall you can create a beautiful alter to showcase them. Find a sturdy small table and place that underneath your wall where you can put those pieces. You can decorate it any way that you like, add candles or incense and even add your own picture as well. It’s a tribute to all that you have done. Be proud of what you have accomplished and your negative messages will start to change. You are worth it. Remind yourself of that every day when you look at that space. 7. TAKE A BREAK Find time for yourself to rediscover who you are and what you really want out of life. Sometimes that means disconnecting or reducing your connections to Social Media and the Internet in order to avoid the constant bombardment of messages that can make you feel unhappy and can increase your negative messages to yourself. The perceived perfection that is presented to people every day in media can be very wearing on the soul. Try to lessen or disconnect from it if possible. Even if it is only for a few hours a day, choose to spend that time in other ways. Have dinner with family or friends, take a walk, or visit a local art show or festival. Be a tourist in your own city/town/village. Volunteer to take yourself out of your own head and help others. The following sources helped me with some of the information that is written here. or contact the National Guild of Hypnotists to find one in your area:https://ngh.net/ ​ "Hypnosis is a fascinating subject. There is much more information available from many sources such as books, lectures, classes and more, including my website and blog.If you are interested in learning more about Hypnosis I encourage you to do your own research, see what is out there and what speaks to you." ~Jade

Management of apathy in nursing homes using a teaching program for care staff: the STIM-EHPAD study. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a nursing home (NH) staff education to manage apathy in older individuals with a diagnosis of dementia. Sixteen NHs agreed to participate, and 230 demented apathetic residents were randomly assigned to the reference group (RG) or the intervention group (IG). IG received a month of weekly 4-h training. Qualitative evaluation was performed through interviews and questionnaires regarding work practices and knowledge about dementia. Quantitative evaluation was at baseline, at the end of the training program (week 4), and 3 months after the end of it with the use of the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI), the Apathy Inventory, and two observation scales. In the qualitative evaluation, very few staff responded to the questionnaire. Concerning the difficulty that managing residents' behavioral symptoms presented, aggressiveness was ranked as the most difficult behavior to manage and apathy as the least difficult. In the quantitative evaluation, the results are as follows. NPI: the IG scores increased from baseline to week 4 more than the RG for symptoms belonging to the affective and the psychotic NPI item subgroup. Apathy Inventory: there was a significant decrease of the emotional blunting score dimension in the IG. Group Observation Scale: significant improvement was observed for the emotional blunting dimension in the IG only. Apathy is rarely identified as a problem in NH. Emotional blunting was the only dimension sensitive to change. Failure to improve residents' level of interest could be explained by the difficulties encountered in accessing information regarding the subjects' personal interests. But it remains possible to modify residents' emotional reactivity and staff's perceptions of residents' behaviors and emotions.

My use case is an application that has one "main" GLDrawable which is always visible, and one or more "secondary" GLDrawables that can be opened and closed any number of times (e.g. in a separate window). I want all these drawables to do GL context sharing. As long as the main drawable exists, however, GLContextShareSet seems to keep strong references to all the secondary ones that I have ever created. Hence, even though they have been destroyed, the secondary ones cannot be GC'ed. I couldn't see a good reason for this, and was able to work around it by replacing the maps in GLContextShareSet with "weak key" maps. Hi I agree with your main statement, GLContextShareSet shouldn't keep strong references on objects that could become useless, it shouldn't prevent their garbage collection. I just wonder if there is a more simple solution to fix this bug. I have looked at your pull request. Hi Tom, 1st of all I would like to see a specific unit test for this, we should have some already available - maybe we can fine tune them. The actual bug you are hinting would be (using our terminology): "GLContextShareSet seems to keep strong references to all the shared ones that I have ever created. Hence, even though they have been destroyed, the shared ones cannot be GC'ed" 'GLContextShareSet.unregisterSharing(this)' never gets called? Which points us to the logic in GLContextImpl.destroy() #498: +++ if( GLContextShareSet.contextDestroyed(this) && !GLContextShareSet.hasCreatedSharedLeft(this) ) { GLContextShareSet.unregisterSharing(this); } +++ I will investigate this one now. The 'hard lifecycle' with strong references is intended to enforce a proper user lifecycle call hierarchy, e.g. calling 'destroy()'. Let's see what we can do here ..

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Chemokine saliva levels in patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome, associated Sjögren's syndrome, pre-clinical Sjögren's syndrome and systemic autoimmune diseases. To assess the saliva levels of CXCL13, CXCL10, CCL2, CCL3, CXCL12 and CCL5 in patients with primary SS (pSS), patients with associated SS (aSS), patients with systemic autoimmune disease (SAD) without SS, pre-clinical SS and healthy controls. We included 44 patients with pSS (Group A), 30 with aSS (Group B), 49 with SAD without SS (Group C), 14 patients with SAD and focal lip infiltrates, but who do not fulfil SS criteria (Group D, pre-clinical SS) and 32 healthy controls (Group E). Saliva samples were collected and analysed for chemokine levels by luminometry. We used descriptive statistics and the Mann-Whitney U-test and Kruskall-Wallis test. All the studied chemokines were found at low concentration in controls with the exception of CCL2. Patients with pSS had higher levels CXCL10 and CCL2 than controls (P = 0.05). However, they had similar levels of CXCL13, CCL5, CXCL12, CCL2 and CXCL10 than patients with aSS and SAD without SS. Patients with pre-clinical SS had higher levels of CXCL10 than patients with pSS (P = 0.03), aSS (P = 0.04) and controls (P = 0.001). CCL2 levels were higher in all patients with an autoimmune background when compared with controls (P < 0.05 for each comparison). We found no difference in salivary chemokines between patients neither with pSS or aSS nor in patients with SAD. CCL2 and CXCL10 were increased in all patients with an autoimmune background. CXCL10 was notably increased in pre-clinical SS, suggesting it could be an early inflammatory salivary biomarker.

What Morrison does very well in Supergods is offer an analytical history of superhero comics from the perspective of a fan and talented insider. The book is organized chronologically and progresses through the Golden Age, Silver Age, Dark Age, and Renaissance. Unfortunately, Morrison interjects his own memoir and belief systems, which are not all about comics. The book reads as if it should be two or three separate books, and the further Morrison gets away from analyzing the history of superhero comics, the more disjointed the book becomes. Being human Supergods is subtitled, “What masked vigilantes, miraculous mutants, and a sun god from Smallville can teach us about being human.” That sounds like a great germinating idea for a critical examination of superhero comics. The first section of the twenty-six chapter, 426 page book comes the closest to living up to the subtitle. Morrison begins at the logical beginning: In Superman, some of the loftiest aspirations of our species came hurtling down from imagination’s bright heaven to collide with the lowest form of entertainment—and from their union, something powerful and resonant was born, albeit in its underwear. Superman was the ferocious attempt of two young men to show us ourselves at our very best. Golden Age Morrison goes on to write an engrossing analysis of the Golden Age of comics. He discusses the creation of Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, and the small cast of popular early superheroes. He includes the perfect amount of historical context, pop references, and commentary on the writers and artists to keep the book from becoming overly academic. I found his detailed analyses of the covers of the first issues of Superman, Batman, and Fantastic Four fascinating. Morrison’s prose is full of hyperbole, and his imagery keeps the discussion lively, although at times it’s self-indulgent. At the end of the Golden Age section, he writes: Alone at night, in the midst of unprecedented luxury after a successfully won World War, Americans were more frightened than ever before… There was the space race, with its launch into the limitless unknown, and Kinsey’s groundbreaking surveys into the sexual habits of Americans, opening the dripping treasure chest of a buttoned-up country’s inner life, revealing a sleep world of polychromatic polymorphous perversity acted out behind a camouflage of pipe-smoking patriarchs and Stepford wives. There were as many different kinds of fear as there were brands of gum. silver age As the book moves into the Silver Age section, Morrison examines the fifties and sixties era comics. He looks at them in the context of the growing popularity of psychoanalysis and the space race. Along those same lines, He injects his own initiation to comics, but this quickly turns from comics to his family life, his belief systems regarding time, the fifth dimension, and the multiverse. At that point Morrison begins to interrupt the analysis of superhero comics with his own memoir. Morrison had many identity crises. He performed drug inspired occult experiments, and dove into new age philosophy. weirdness Morrison’s career takes off in the Dark Age and Renaissance. His memoir takes over, and the organization and logic of the book are derailed. He writes: If I found some dangerous or interesting ritual in a book, I’d give it a go to see what effect it would have on my consciousness. The results were never less than revelatory. Psychedelics gave these experiences the fidelity of a Star Trek 3-D holodeck experience. Demons and angels had faces now of white-hot, razor-edged purity or grotesque puzzle box monstrosity… I have no really explanations for a lot of this but numerous speculations that may find their way into another book one day. I simply allowed all this to happen under some vague direction from a diamond-interior Protestant straight-edge self that seemed to never lose control. Morrison says that his “Protestant straight-edge self” never lost control while he was taking drugs and performing occult experiments. That seems completely illogical to me, especially since he claims to have rejected the Bible at an early age. He also completely botches the central theme of the Gospel message early in the book. Alan moore and frank miller Between the memoir sections in the last half, Morrison gives an excellent analysis of Alan Moore and Frank Miller’s work. Yet, he could not restrain himself from including his previously mentioned “speculations” about his mystical experiences. Morrison explains that a life-changing drug induced epiphany he had in Kathmandu gave him his “very own superpower.” He can now “’see’ 5-D perspective.” The last section of the book discusses his “experiments” and explains his new found understanding of time and the universe. His analysis of more recent comics is painfully thin and focuses on his own work. The end of the book loses all coherence. A whole chapter is dedicated to movie adaptations, rather than following the established chronological order of the book. The history and analysis of superhero comics is excellent, but after the Silver Age, the reader has to pick through the new age philosophy and identity-crisis memoir to find the good stuff. I’m sure there are readers, especially diehard fans of Morrison, who will find the memoir and personal philosophy interesting. But as Morrison even seems to recognize, those topics would be better suited for another book. Check it out here.

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1. Introduction {#sec1} =============== Oxygen-carrier-mediated solar thermochemical reduction--oxidation (redox) cycling is a promising approach to produce renewable fuels utilizing solar energy \[[@B1]--[@B8]\]. A typical solar-thermochemical redox cycle consists of two steps: (1) reduction of the oxygen carrier under an inert or reducing gas atmosphere (Reaction ([1](#EEq1){ref-type="disp-formula"})) and (2) reoxidation of the reduced oxygen carrier by CO~2~ (Reaction ([2](#EEq1){ref-type="disp-formula"})) and H~2~O (Reaction ([3](#EEq1){ref-type="disp-formula"})). For methane as the reducing gas, the two-step cycle read: $$\begin{matrix} \left. \text{Methane partial oxidation }\left( \text{MPO} \right)\text{:\  }\text{MO}_{x} + \delta\text{CH}_{4}\longrightarrow\text{MO}_{x‐\delta} + \delta\text{CO}_{2} + 2\delta\text{H}_{2} \right. \\ \end{matrix}$$$$\begin{matrix} \left. \text{CO}_{2}\text{ splitting }\left( \text{CDS} \right)\text{:\  }\text{MO}_{x‐\delta} + \delta\text{CO}_{2}\longrightarrow\text{MO}_{x} + \delta\text{CO} \right. \\ \end{matrix}$$$$\begin{matrix} \left. \text{H}_{2}\text{O splitting }\left( \text{WS} \right)\text{:\  }\text{MO}_{x‐\delta} + \delta\text{H}_{2}\text{O}\longrightarrow\text{MO}_{x} + \delta\text{H}_{2} \right. \\ \end{matrix}$$ The process results in the production of synthesis gas (syngas), a mixture of H~2~ and CO, which can be converted into liquid hydrocarbon fuels *via* the Fischer--Tropsch (FT) process \[[@B9]--[@B11]\]. In order to achieve high fuel (syngas) yields and high process efficiency in the redox cycling, the oxygen carriers should have a high oxygen exchange capacity and excellent cyclability \[[@B12]\]. Intensive research has been carried out to develop suitable catalyst/oxygen carriers. Some redox-material pairs such as Fe/FeO, CeO~2~/CeO~2-*δ*~, Mn~3~O~4~/MnO, and perovskites have been studied in the temperature range of 600--1500°C \[[@B9], [@B13]--[@B19]\]. The use of these materials has been demonstrated at laboratory and pilot-scale systems. However, their performance still requires improvements for the successful commercial deployment \[[@B20]\]. Ceria (CeO~2~) is one of the most efficient oxygen carriers with excellent oxygen ion mobility and redox kinetics. It shows high and stable fuel production rates *via* a nonstoichiometric oxygen exchange process. The fast redox kinetics and high fuel selectivity are distinct characteristics of CeO~2~ as compared to other redox materials \[[@B10], [@B11], [@B15], [@B21]--[@B27]\]. Fuel selectivity indicates the percentage of product gases (CO, H~2~) produced upon splitting of CO~2~, H~2~O, CH~4~, etc. Doping CeO~2~ with transition metals has been proposed to further improve the material chemical, thermal, mechanical, and optical characteristics. However, transition metal-doped CeO~2~ has so far demonstrated inferior redox reaction rates and oxygen ion mobility as compared to pure CeO~2~ \[[@B11], [@B26]--[@B28]\]. In addition, doped CeO~2~ shows extensive sintering at high temperatures, which decreases gas-phase mass transfer and consequently decreases the overall fuel production performance \[[@B10]\]. Hence, further research is required to develop new combinations of CeO~2~ and suitable cations to overcome the above-mentioned challenges. Vanadia (V~2~O~5~) is recognized as one of the most efficient catalytic metal oxides. It is utilized for selective redox reactions in batteries \[[@B29]\] and gas-sensing applications \[[@B30], [@B31]\]. V~2~O~5~ supported with SiO~2~, TiO~2~, Al~2~O~3~, MgO, and CeO~2~ is also used in the selective oxidation of hydrocarbons for H~2~ and CO production \[[@B30]--[@B35]\]. Consequently, vanadia--ceria tertiary metal oxide systems have been widely studied for their structural, chemical, and oxidative properties \[[@B36]\]. Thermochemical redox performance and structural changes of vanadia--ceria multiphase systems were investigated for a sample with a V-to-Ce ratio of 25% \[[@B37]\]. However, the effects of V and Ce concentrations in vanadia--ceria systems have not been systematically studied. In this work, we investigate the thermochemical performance of vanadia--ceria systems as oxygen carriers *via* solar thermochemical redox cycles for syngas production. Ultrafine particles of vanadia--ceria systems are produced using a facile liquid-phase precursor thermal-combustion method. V-to-Ce atomic ratios of 0 to 100% are investigated. The changes in the physicochemical characteristics of the oxide systems before and after methane looping reforming are studied. Sequential CO~2~ splitting (CDS) and water splitting (WS) reactions after methane partial oxidation (MPO) are investigated for syngas yield and purity. This study advances the field of solar thermochemistry towards achieving efficient and low-cost oxygen carriers for enhanced solar fuel production via thermochemical redox cycles. 2. Materials and Methods {#sec2} ======================== 2.1. Synthesis of Vanadia--Ceria Metal Oxide Systems {#sec2.1} ---------------------------------------------------- Ultrafine particles of pure CeO~2~, pure V~2~O~5~, and vanadia--ceria systems (V-to-Ce atomic ratios of 25%, 50%, and 75%, denoted as CV25, CV50, and CV75, respectively) are prepared using a liquid-phase precursor thermal-combustion method \[[@B38]\]. This technique allows for a large-scale production of the nanoparticles with controlled particle size and morphology. Briefly, stoichiometric ratios of Ce (III) nitrate hexahydrate (CeN~3~O~9~·6H~2~O, Aldrich) and vanadium oxytripropoxide (VC~9~H~21~O~4~, Aldrich) precursors are dissolved separately in a mixture of 4 mL ethanol and 4 mL deionized (DI) water, respectively. After stirring for 1 hour, both solutions are mixed together and stirred for 3 hours at room temperature. Finally, the precursor solutions are transferred into an alumina crucible and heat treated at 1173 K for 3 hours. During the heat treatment, temperature is raised stepwise: first, the temperature is held at 353 K for 1 hour, then increased to 1173 K at a ramp rate of 3 K min^−1^. 2.2. Thermochemical Cycling {#sec2.2} --------------------------- The cyclic thermochemical redox performance of metal oxide powders is evaluated in a vertical tube reactor (99.98% Al~2~O~3~) placed inside an infrared gold image furnace (P4C-VHT, Advance Riko). Highly porous and refractory alumina fiber mats (AIBF-1, 97% Al~2~O~3~ and 3% SiO~2~, ZIRCAR) are used as a sample stage and as an upper protective layer for the powder samples (250 ± 10 mg). To facilitate the solid--gas transfer, a gap of \~2 cm is set between the powder and the upper protective layer mat. The samples and fiber layers are placed in the tube axially in the middle of heating zone to ensure uniform heating. The LabVIEW (National Instruments) software platform is used to operate the flow rate controllers (F201CV, Bronkhorst) and actuated valves (1315R, Swagelok) to achieve desirable gas flow rates in "mL min^−1^." A B-type thermocouple sealed in an alumina sheath is located immediately beneath the fiber mat sample stage to monitor the sample temperature. The composition of reactant and product gasses is recorded by a quadrupole mass spectrometer (OmniStar™ GSD 320, Pfeiffer Vacuum). A schematic of the experimental setup used for thermochemical redox cycling is shown in Figure [](#supplementary-material-1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}. First, Ar (grade 5.0) gas is purged with a flow rate of 500 mL min^−1^ to remove any gas species (H~2~, CO, and CO~2~) from the surface of the tube and gas lines. The reactor is heated under an Ar flow (500 mL min^−1^) from ambient temperature to an optimized isothermal operating temperature of 1173 K at a ramp rate of 100 K min^−1^. The reduction (methane partial oxidation, MPO) of the powder samples is carried out under an 8% CH~4~ flow (20 mL min^−1^, grade 4.5) diluted with 92% of Ar (230 mL min^−1^). The reduced samples are reoxidized by a 4% CO~2~ flow (10 mL min^−1^) during CO~2~ splitting (CDS) reactions. For H~2~O splitting (WS) reactions, steam vapor is generated at 368 K in a water bubbler filled with DI water, then an Ar flow of 30 mL min^−1^ is passed through the bubbler to carry H~2~O vapors and further diluted with an Ar flow of 220 mL min^−1^ before it is delivered to the tubular reactor. Inert gas sweeping with Ar is done with a flow rate of 500 mL min^−1^ before and after each reduction and oxidation step of the thermochemical cycle. Four different redox sequences are investigated and denoted as MPO--CDS, MPO--WS, MPO--WS--CDS, and MPO--CDS--WS. The details of the sequence and duration of each step and gas flow rates during these redox cycles are as follows: $$\begin{matrix} {\text{MPO}–\text{CDS}:\text{Ar}\left( {5\,\min} \right)/\text{CH}_{4}\left( {20\,\min} \right)/\text{Ar }\left( {5\,\min} \right)/\text{CO}_{2}\left( {10\,\min} \right)} \\ {\text{MPO}–\text{WS}:\text{ Ar}\left( {5\,\min} \right)/\text{CH}_{4}\left( {20\,\min} \right)/\text{Ar}\left( {5\,\min} \right)/\text{H}_{2}\text{O}\left( {10\,\min} \right)} \\ {\text{MPO}–\text{WS}–\text{CDS}:\text{Ar }\left( {5\,\min} \right)/\text{CH}_{4}\left( {20\,\min} \right)/\text{Ar}\left( {5\,\min} \right)/\text{H}_{2}\text{O}\left( {7\,\min} \right)/\text{Ar}\left( {5\,\min} \right)/\text{CO}_{2}\left( {7\,\min} \right)} \\ {\text{MPO}–\text{CDS}–\text{WS}:\text{Ar }\left( {5\,\min} \right)/\text{CH}_{4}\left( {20\,\min} \right)/\text{Ar}\left( {5\,\min} \right)/\text{CO}_{2}\left( {7\,\min} \right)/\text{Ar}\left( {5\,\min} \right)/\text{H}_{2}\text{O}\left( {7\,\min} \right)} \\ \end{matrix}$$ The redox performance of ultrafine powders is evaluated over 10 cycles. The vanadia--ceria systems are structurally and chemically analyzed before and after 10 cycles, and the results are compared to those obtained with the as-prepared samples. 2.3. Material Characterization {#sec2.3} ------------------------------ All powder samples are characterized as prepared and after 10 thermochemical cycles. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis of powder samples is carried out using a D2 phaser diffractometer (Bruker) with a Cu k*α* (1.54 Å) radiation source operated at 300 W power (30 kV, 10 mA). XRD patterns are recorded in a diffraction angle range of 10--80° with a step width of 0.02° and a scanning rate of 0.75°min^−1^. The Scherrer equation is applied onto the most intense peaks of XRD patterns to calculate the crystallite size of the powders. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis is carried out using a ThermoFisher ESCALAB 250Xi X-ray photoelectron spectrometer equipped with a 180° double focusing hemispherical analyzer. A monochromatic Al k*α* source with a spot size of 200--900 *μ*m is utilized at 12 kV and 12 mA. A total pressure in the chamber is 10^−8^ mbar. Samples are scanned at various spots on an area of 25 mm^2^ and depth of 4 mm with a beam energy of 40--160 eV. XPS spectra are processed using the CasaXPS software version 2.3.18 (Casa software Ltd., Teignmouth, UK). The binding energy of aliphatic carbon peak C 1s at 284.8 eV is used as a reference in the survey spectra. A Raman imaging microscope (Renishaw Plc, model 2000) equipped with an Olympus BH2 microscope is utilized for the structural analysis of powder samples. Samples are placed on a motorized XYZ stage of the microscope equipped with an air-cooled CCD detector and a CCD camera. The excitation wavelength of the NIR laser is 785 nm. Raman spectra are recorded in a Raman shift range of 100--1200 cm^−1^. The exposure time is 20 s with an accumulation up to 3, and laser power is adjusted in the range of 0.01--0.5% (\<6 MW), depending on the sample response to laser excitation. Morphological information of the powder before and after the redox cycles is obtained by using a field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM, Zeiss Ultraplus). A high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM, JEOL 2100F) is utilized for the measurements of particle size distribution and lattice spacing. Operating voltage of the microscope is adjusted up to 200 kV according to the resolution and sample response. A lacey carbon-coated 200 mesh copper grid is used as a substrate for samples. The powder is first dispersed in ethanol, and a drop of particle suspension is dried on the copper grid. Information about composition of samples is obtained by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy elemental mapping (EDX) analysis carried out by scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) mode on JEOL 2100F. The quantification of Ce and V was carried out using an Agilent 5110 ICP-OES (Agilent Technologies, Australia), operating in Synchronous Vertical Dual View (SVDV) mode, allowing simultaneous detection of axial and radial emission signals. The sample introduction system was made up of a double pass cyclonic spray chamber, a SeaSpray nebuliser, and a 2.4 mm quartz injector. Operating parameters for ICP-OES analysis of oxygen carriers before and after cycling are tabulated in Table [](#supplementary-material-1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}. All dilutions and sample preparation for ICP-OES measurement were performed using ultrapure water (MilliQ, Merck), as well as subboiling distilled HNO~3~. Calibration solutions for Ce and V measurements were prepared from single element solutions in concentrations ranging from 0.1 to 10 *μ*g mL^−1^; for analysis, samples were diluted to fall within the calibration curve. Ce and V from a single element standard were diluted to 0.1, 0.5, 1, 5, and 10 ppm concentrations to make a calibration curve for each element. 3. Results and Discussion {#sec3} ========================= [Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"} shows transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images of as-prepared vanadia--ceria systems, at the same magnification. The particle size increases with increasing V concentration. The average particle size of pure CeO~2~ is 12 ± 3 nm, which increases to 55 ± 5 nm with addition of 75% V, while pure V~2~O~5~ has the highest average particle size of 89 ± 3 nm. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) images of as-prepared vanadia--ceria systems confirm these values (Figure [](#supplementary-material-1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). The morphological study of vanadia--ceria systems after MPO--CDS cycles is carried out by FESEM. It reveals an extensive sintering in pure V~2~O~5~ and CeO~2~ samples, showing individual particles fused into large microparticles. However, the sintering is prominent in V-rich vanadia--ceria mixed-metal-oxide particles (Figure [](#supplementary-material-1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). The TEM image of a reduced CV75 sample before MPO--CDS cycles shows sintering of small particles forming a sheet like morphology, while individual particles can also be observed (Figure [](#supplementary-material-1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). The CV75 sample after MPO--CDS cycles shows extensive sintering which results in increased particle sizes of \>500 nm (Figure [](#supplementary-material-1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). Energy dispersive spectra (EDS) and an overlaid elemental map of as-synthesized as well as reduced CV75 samples before and after MPO--WS--CDS cycles are shown in [Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}. As-prepared samples show no noticeable presence of carbon. Since V-K*α* and Ce-L peaks are situated in the same energy range in EDS spectra, the presence of both elements shows a combined overlay color (Figures [2(a)](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}--[2(c)](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}). A nonuniform distribution of V in CV75 is observed after MPO--WS--CDS cycles, indicating a possible V loss during the redox cycles or segregation of V~2~O~5~ and CeO~2~ phases in powder samples. XRD patterns of as-prepared CeO~2~, V~2~O~5~, and vanadia--ceria ultrafine particles are presented in [Figure 3(a)](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}. The diffraction patterns of pure CeO~2~ and V~2~O~5~ are in good agreement with that of cubic CeO~2~ (JCPDS \# 72-0076) and orthorhombic V~2~O~5~ (JCPDS \# 75-0298), respectively. Addition of V in CeO~2~ promotes the formation of cerium vanadate:*V*~2~*O*~5~ + 2*CeO*~2~⟶2*CeVO*~4~ + 1/2*O*~2~ (CeVO~4~, JCPDS \# 72-0282), accompanied by a change in the valence of Ce from Ce^+4^ to Ce^+3^, while the valence of V remains V^5+^. With increasing V content to 25%, an increase in the CeVO~4~ phase with a considerable amount of CeO~2~ is observed. A maximum conversion of CeO~2~ into CeVO~4~ is achieved with 50% V loading, while a small amount of CeO~2~ remains in the structure. With further increase of V content to 75%, the amount of CeVO~4~ becomes the smallest (16.9%) with a major portion of V~2~O~3~, as listed in Table [](#supplementary-material-1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}. The structural changes caused by the addition of V greatly affect the rates of thermochemical redox reactions, which is discussed in the following sections. XRD patterns of reduced vanadia--ceria systems are presented in [Figure 3(b)](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}. Reduced pure CeO~2~ does not undergo any structural change except shifting of diffraction peaks to lower angles, possibly caused by oxygen depletion. However, reduction of pure V~2~O~5~ results in the conversion of V^5+^ to V^4+^, which can be seen as the presence of a VO~2~ phase in the XRD pattern of reduced V~2~O~5~ and CV75 \[[@B39]\]. The presence of vanadium carbide (JCPDS\#89-1096) and metallic V indicates the catalytic interaction of pure V~2~O~5~ with methane to produce carbon during the methane partial oxidation reaction \[[@B40]--[@B42]\]. A decline in the peak intensities of a CeVO~4~ phase is observed for CV25, which indicates the conversion of V^5+^ to V^3+^ due to the formation of a CeVO~3~ phase. The XRD patterns of pure V~2~O~5~, CV25, CV50, and CV75 samples after 10 consecutive cycles of MPO--CDS, MPO--WS, MPO--WS--CDS, and MPO--CDS--WS are presented in Figures [3(c)](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}--[3(f)](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}. In CV25, the diffraction angles of CeVO~4~ shift to lower angles after 10 MPO--CDS cycles. The presence of peaks associated with CeVO~3~ indicates the partial oxidation of CeVO~3~ to CeVO~4~ due possibly to incomplete recovery of oxygen. Segregated phases of CeVO~3~, CeVO~4~, and VO~2~ are observed in the XRD patterns of CV75. However, oxidation of reduced V~2~O~5~ results in the oxidation of vanadium carbide and metallic V to V~2~O~3~ and VO~2~. The XRD analysis of V~2~O~5~--CeO~2~ systems after the redox cycles reveals that the formation of a CeVO~4~ phase increases with increasing V content, reflecting contribution of V in the redox reactions. Ce^3+^ sites are stabilized by the valence change (Ce^4+^ to Ce^3+^) during the formation of CeVO~3~/CeVO~4~ \[[@B32], [@B36]\]. The surface analysis of as-prepared samples complements the findings of XRD analysis. A typical XPS spectrum of pure CeO~2~ is composed of two multiplets of 3d 3/2 at 900 and 898 eV, 3d 5/2 at 888 and 882 eV, and neighboring 2 peaks at 907 and 916 eV \[[@B43]\], as presented in [Figure 3(a)](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}. The locations of these six peaks corresponding to the spin-orbit doublets of 3d 3/2 and 5/2 are in good agreement with the reported XPS analysis of Ce^4+^/Ce^3+^ \[[@B43]\]. The binding energy of O 1s is 529.02 eV, corroborating the presence of lattice oxygen species, while the neighboring peak at 531.46 eV refers to the presence of adsorbed oxygen molecules (Figure [](#supplementary-material-1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). The binding energy of Ce 3d3/2 peaks changed from 888.5 eV to 885.2 eV with increasing V contents, due to an increase in CeVO~4~ content. In addition, the disappearance of Ce^4+^ peak at \~916 eV confirms the change of Ce valence from +4 to +3 due to increasing concentrations of CeVO~4~ in CV75 sample. The binding energies of 516.9 eV and 524.66 eV shown in [Figure 4(b)](#fig4){ref-type="fig"} correspond to V 2p~3/2~ and V 2p~1/2~ spin orbits of pure V~2~O~5~, respectively, depicting the +5 valence state of V \[[@B44]\]. In addition, 3d 3/2 to 3d 5/2 ratio decreases with increasing V content in vanadia--ceria systems. An increase in the binding energies of O 1s with V addition also indicates the presence of Ce (III) states and Ce--O--V interactions. XPS spectra of reduced V~2~O~5~, CV25, and CV75 are shown in Figure [](#supplementary-material-1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}. Higher V(V) content can be confirmed from the increasing intensities of V 2P~1/2~ and V 2P~3/2~ in Ce--V systems with V content (CV25⟶CV75⟶pure V~2~O~5~). The O 1s peaks shift to high binding energies with higher V content, due to higher CeVO~4~ contents \[[@B43]\]. An additional shoulder peak of V 2P~3/2~ is observed in reduced V~2~O~5~ due to the presence of VO~2~. An additional O 1s peak is also observed at 531.89 eV for reduced V~2~O~5~. After the first MPO--CDS cycle, the additional O 1s peak merged into the main O 1s peak. This may be due to neighboring V species with multiple oxygen states. High concentrations of surface-adsorbed oxygen molecules may also contribute to the presence of the additional O 1s peak. The information obtained from the XPS spectra provides an insight into the phenomenon of possible V volatilization. By obtaining Ce/V and V/O ratios, the loss of V can be quantified. In as-prepared powders, the V/O ratio increases, and Ce/V ratio decreases with increasing the V content. After the methane partial oxidation reaction, an increase in the V/O and Ce/V ratios is observed due to oxygen and V loss. However, after 10 consecutive cycles, a further decrease of the V/O ratio is observed, which suggests the loss of V and incomplete oxygen recovery. Ce/V segregation is also a possible reason for variable V concentrations at the surface. This can be further investigated by quantifying Ce and V concentrations in the bulk *via* the ICP-OES technique with a precision of up to parts per billion (ppb) level. The Ce/V ratios before and after thermochemical redox cycles are presented in [Figure 4(d)](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}. An expected decline in the Ce/V ratio is observed in as-prepared Ce--V oxide samples due to higher V content. However, an irregular trend is observed after redox cycles, which suggests that segregation of Ce/V and V loss both contribute to the variable concentrations of V. Raman spectra of vanadia--ceria systems are presented in [Figure 4(c)](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}. Pure CeO~2~ has a Raman shift at 461 cm^−1^ \[[@B30], [@B45]\], while pure V~2~O~5~ shows multiple signature peaks at 122, 144, 197, 229, 257, 284, 303, 376, 405, 463, 528, 703, 788, 801, and 863 cm^−1^ \[[@B46], [@B47]\]. The V=O interaction seen at 998 cm^−1^ is dominant in pure V~2~O~5~ and CV75, while it diminishes in CV25 and CV50 samples. The intensities of peaks at 144, 197, 284, 303, 405, 528, and 703 cm^−1^ indicate the presence of CeVO~4~. 3.1. Thermochemical Redox Performance {#sec3.1} ------------------------------------- The performance of vanadia--ceria systems is evaluated based on the oxygen exchange capacity and the yield of syngas per mole of V during 10 consecutive thermochemical redox reaction cycles. Moles of Ce ions are considered for the calculation of rates and yields of syngas production for pure CeO~2~ sample. [Figure 5](#fig5){ref-type="fig"} shows the oxygen evolution rates during reduction and oxidation steps of MPO--CDS, MPO--WS, MPO--WS--CDS, and MPO--CDS--WS cycles. The oxygen rates calculated from CO/CO~2~ evolution rates are referred to as "O1 rates," while oxygen rates deduced directly from the oxygen signal obtained during gas analysis are referred to as "O2 rates" in the following discussion. This set of data provides an insight into material\'s ability to react with reducing and oxidizing atmospheres. During MPO--CDS cycles, pure CeO~2~ shows stable average O1 evolution rates of around 0.08 mol mol^−1^~Ce~ min^−1^ with a peak of 0.107 mol mol^−1^~Ce~ min^−1^. In contrast, pure V~2~O~5~ exhibits the highest rates of 0.5 mol mol^−1^~V~ min^−1^. An increase in O1 rates from 0.27 mol mol^−1^~V~ min^−1^ to 0.43 mol mol^−1^~V~ min^−1^ is observed with addition of V from 25% to 75%. In addition, the vanadia--ceria multiphase system demonstrates high and stable oxygen evolution rates during the CO~2~ splitting reactions with the highest rate of 0.35 mol mol^−1^~V~ min^−1^ for 75%V. During MPO--WS redox cycles, a similar trend of increasing O1 rates with the addition of V (25--75%) content is observed. Pure V~2~O~5~ shows the highest oxygen evolution rates up to 0.45 mol mol^−1^~V~ min^−1^, followed by CV75 with rates up to 0.38 mol mol^−1^~V~ min^−1^, during the reduction step of MPO--WS redox cycles. Interestingly, pure V~2~O~5~ shows considerable O1 rates in water splitting reaction, which refers to oxidation of vanadium-carbide carbon species formed during methane partial oxidation reaction, *C* + *H*~2~*O*⟶*CO* + *H*~2~. This phenomenon supports the findings of XRD analysis of reduced and oxidized pure V~2~O~5~. Following this result, in order to investigate the effect of oxidation atmosphere on the reactivity of reduced oxygen carriers with steam and CO~2~, a combination of WS and CDS reactions following the methane partial oxidation step, i.e., MPO--WS--CDS, is performed. During the methane partial oxidation step of MPO--WS--CDS cycles, pure V~2~O~5~ and CV75 demonstrate the highest O1 rates of 3.75 mol mol^−1^~V~ min^−1^, closely followed by CV50 at 3.69 mol mol^−1^~V~ min^−1^ and CV25 at 2.85 mol mol^−1^~V~ min^−1^. During the WS step, the O1 rates are the highest for pure V~2~O~5~ followed by the rates for CV75, which confirms the findings of vanadium carbide presence in pure V~2~O~5~ and CV75. Lowering the V content minimizes the carbide formation, resulting in pure H~2~ release during water splitting reaction. Consequently, CV25 and CV50 show moderate to high O1 rates with pure H~2~ production during MPO--WS--CDS cycles. A similar trend is observed during the MPO--CDS--WS cycles. During the methane partial oxidation reaction, pure V~2~O~5~ shows the highest O1 rates at 3.35 mol mol^−1^~V~ min^−1^, closely followed by CV75 and CV50 at 3.25 mol mol^−1^~V~ min^−1^. However, the O1 rates significantly increase during the oxidation step, with more than fivefold increase in CO production as compared to MPO--CDS cycles. The high VO~2~ content observed in the XRD patterns also confirms a higher oxygen recovery in reoxidized pure V~2~O~5~ and CV75 samples during MPO--CDS--WS cycles as compared to V~2~O~5~ and CV75 reoxidized to V~2~O~3~ during MPO--CDS cycles. An increase in the CeVO~4~ phase also supports efficient reoxidation of CV25 and CV50 during MPO--CDS--WS cycles. The rates of O2 evolution during all four types of redox cycles are presented in [Figure 5(b)](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}. The O2 oxygen rates increase with V content (25--100%) during the methane partial oxidation step of MPO--CDS cycles, while the highest O2 rate of 20 mmol mol^−1^~V~ min^−1^ is observed for pure V~2~O~5~. The evolution rates tend to decrease over multiple cycles due to the oxidation of the deposited carbon and the carbide formation. Interestingly, no considerable O2 rates are observed after the first MPO--WS cycle, while these rates are high in sequential WS and CDS cycles. In addition, O2 rates are higher for high-Ce systems than high-V systems. This is in agreement with the results of XRD study, where V^4+^ of VO~2~ is observed in CV75 and pure V~2~O~5~ samples, representing better reoxidation capacity of these samples. In contrast, V^3+^ of CeVO~3~ is observed in CV25 and CV50 samples, demonstrating incomplete reoxidation during WS reactions in these samples. The average total yield of syngas during the reduction and oxidation reactions over 10 redox cycles is presented in [Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}. In MPO--CDS cycles, CV25 shows the highest H~2~ and CO yields, up to 8.2 mol mol^−1^~V~ and 3.95 mol mol^−1^~V~, respectively, and a H~2~/CO ratio of 2.21. This is followed by the H~2~ and CO yields observed for pure V~2~O~5~, 3.54 mol mol^−1^~V~, and 1.39 mol mol^−1^~V~, respectively. As discussed earlier, carbon deposition is observed during MPO--WS cycles, while higher V contents promote the cyclic oxidation of vanadium carbide. This phenomenon leads to a controlled H~2~/CO ratio with a minimum of 2.6 with 75% V, while all other samples show their H~2~/CO ratios greater than 4. A combination of WS and CDS cycles significantly improves the H~2~/CO ratio, where CV25 produces the highest syngas yield with a moderately high H~2~/CO ratio. During MPO--CDS--WS cycles, the H~2~/CO ratios tend to increase drastically in Ce-rich samples up to 50%V as compared to pure V~2~O~5~ and CV75. Despite the decline in performance, Ce-rich vanadia--ceria systems demonstrate stable reaction rates as compared to the rates obtained with CV75 and pure V~2~O~5~. The average total yields of H~2~ and CO for pure V~2~O~5~ are 3.8 mol mol^−1^~V~ and 1.04 mol mol^−1^~V~, respectively. The highest yields of H~2~ (31.24 mol mol^−1^~V~) and CO (6.56 mol mol^−1^~V~) are obtained for CV25, with a H~2~/CO ratio of 4.7. The average total fuel yield during the oxidation step of MPO--CDS, MPO--WS, MPO--WS--CDS, and MPO--CDS--WS cycles is shown in [Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}. During MPO--CDS cycles, CV25 showed the highest CO yield of 1.59 mol mol^−1^~V~, followed by pure V~2~O~5~ with 1.29 mol mol^−1^~V~. However, the fuel production rates for CV75 are more stable than those for pure V~2~O~5~, as discussed previously. The high yield of CO during oxidation of pure V~2~O~5~ also suggests the presence of carbon species deposited in V~2~O~5~. During MPO--WS cycles, no considerable CO is observed in Ce-rich vanadia--ceria systems containing up to 50% V, for which a high H~2~ yield of 3.04 mol mol^−1^~V~ is observed. Here, the H~2~ yield decreases with the increasing V content. Sequential WS and CDS cycles result in an improved H~2~/CO ratio and a high H~2~ yield during WS reaction. Pure V~2~O~5~ shows the highest average total H~2~ yield of 3.07 mol mol^−1^~V~, followed by 1.87 mol mol^−1^~V~ for CV25. Considerable amounts of H~2~ are observed during the WS step of MPO--CDS--WS cycles, indicating incomplete reoxidation of reduced samples by CO~2~. Furthermore, an addition of WS steps to MPO--CDS cycles lowers the CO yield during the CDS step, as compared to MPO--CDS cycles. By analyzing the product yields of the methane partial oxidation reaction during MPO--CDS--WS and MPO--CDS cycles, it is found that water splitting reaction suppresses methane reforming and promotes methane cracking, increasing the H~2~/CO ratio. The subsequent CDS reaction results in gasification of the deposited carbon and suppresses methane cracking. 4. Conclusions {#sec4} ============== Synthesis gas production and oxygen exchange capacity were investigated for thermochemical redox cycling of vanadia--ceria multiphase systems with V concentrations in the range 0--100%. The materials were synthesized using a facile method involving combustion of liquid phase Ce and V precursors. Improved structural stability was achieved in mixed vanadia--ceria systems as compared to pure CeO~2~ and pure V~2~O~5~. A phase transformation of CeVO~4~ to CeVO~3~ accompanied by the formation of other segregated phases such as VO~2~ and V~2~O~3~ was observed after the thermochemical redox cycling. A mixture of CeO~2~ and CeVO~4~ with notable V concentrations showed a synergic effect in syngas yields as compared to CeO~2~ and CeVO~4~ alone. High V content facilitated carbide oxidation, which resulted in the H~2~/CO ratios as low as 2.14 due to low deposited carbon contents. The sequence of H~2~O and CO~2~ splitting reactions significantly affected the yields and rates of syngas production. Sequential H~2~O and CO~2~ splitting reactions in individual cycles improved the H~2~ purity and H~2~/CO ratio (up to 70%) as compared to H~2~O splitting alone. This study provides important information to advance the experimental investigation of metal-metal and metal-oxygen interactions in oxygen carrier material during thermochemical redox cycles. This study used the facilities and the scientific and technical assistance at the Centre for Advanced Microscopy at the Australian National University. We also acknowledge the technical assistance provided by Colin Carvolth and Kevin Carvolth. This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC Future Fellowship FT140101213 by W. Lipiński). Data Availability ================= Data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its Supplementary Materials. Conflicts of Interest ===================== The authors declare no competing financial interests. Authors\' Contributions ======================= A. Riaz conceived the idea of utilizing vanadia--ceria systems for synthesis gas production and conducted the experiments. A. Riaz wrote the manuscript with the professional guidance of A. Lowe and W. Lipiński. A. Riaz, T. Tsuzuki, A. Lowe, and W. Lipiński contributed to the discussion and revisions of the manuscript. M. Umair performed and processed the XPS analysis of the materials. T. G. Enge performed and interpreted the ICP-OES measurements of the materials. Supplementary Materials {#supplementary-material-1} ======================= ###### Figure SI 1: schematic of the experimental setup for thermochemical redox cycling. Figure SI 2: effect of V addition on morphology: scanning electron microscopy images of as-prepared (a) pure CeO~2~, (b) CV25, (c) CV50, (d) CV75, and (e) pure V~2~O~5~, representing the change in particle growth and size of pure CeO~2~ with the addition of V. Figure SI 3: morphological investigation of cycled V~2~O~5~--CeO~2~ systems after MPO--CDS redox cycles: scanning electron microscopy images of after MPO--CDS cycled (a) pure CeO~2~, (b) CV25, (c) CV50, (d) CV75, and (e) V~2~O~5~, showing the change in morphology of the metal oxides due to high temperature sintering and chemical reactions occurring on surface/bulk. Figure SI 4: morphological investigation of after cycled CV75: transmission electron microscopy images of CV75 (a) after reduction and (b) after MPO--WS--CDS cycles, depicting drastic changes in particle size and morphology due to high temperature sintering. Figure SI 5: surface chemical analysis of after cycled samples: X-rays photoelectron spectra of reduced CV25, CV75, and V~2~O~5~ and MPO--CDS-cycled V~2~O~5~ samples, depicting the binding energy shift and change in intensities. Table SI T1: operating parameters for ICP-OES measurements. Table SI T2: phase percentages present in as-prepared vanadia--ceria systems, quantified by the Rietveld refinement technique on XRD patterns. ###### Click here for additional data file. {#fig1} {#fig2} {#fig3} {#fig4} {#fig5} {#fig6}

UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,  Plaintiff-Appellee, v.  No. 02-4847 LADORA EDWARDS, a/k/a DeDe, Defendant-Appellant.  Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, at Abingdon. James P. Jones, District Judge. (CR-01-70) Submitted: May 6, 2003 Decided: May 21, 2003 Before WILLIAMS, MOTZ, and KING, Circuit Judges. Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion. COUNSEL David L. Harmon, Bristol, Virginia, for Appellant. Morgan E. Scott, Acting United States Attorney, Eric M. Hurt, Assistant United States Attorney, Abingdon, Virginia, for Appellee. Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. See Local Rule 36(c). 2 UNITED STATES v. EDWARDS OPINION PER CURIAM: Ladora Edwards appeals her jury convictions of conspiracy to dis- tribute less than five grams of cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846 (2000), and possession with intent to distribute less than five grams of cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) (2000). Edwards challenges whether venue was appropriate in the Western District of Virginia regarding her possession count and whether the evidence was sufficient to sustain her convictions. Find- ing these issues meritless, we affirm. Edwards argues the district court erred by declining to grant her motion for judgment of acquittal on the ground the evidence was insufficient to show she committed the offense as alleged in the West- ern District of Virginia. This Court reviews de novo the district court’s decision to deny a motion for judgment of acquittal. United States v. Gallimore, 247 F.3d 134, 136 (4th Cir. 2001). If, when con- strued in the light most favorable to the Government, substantial evi- dence exists to support a verdict, the verdict must be sustained. United States v. Burgos, 94 F.3d 849, 862 (4th Cir. 1996) (en banc) (citing Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 80 (1942)). We have reviewed the evidence and find it was sufficient to support the allega- tion in the indictment that the acts of possession occurred in the West- ern District of Virginia. Edwards also challenges the sufficiency of the evidence by arguing the witnesses were not credible and contradicted each other. This Court does not review the credibility of the witnesses and assumes that the jury resolved all contradictions in favor of the Government. United States v. Wilson, 115 F.3d 1185, 1190 (4th Cir. 1997). We therefore reject this claim. Thus, we affirm Edwards’ convictions and sentence. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are ade- quately presented in the materials before the court and argument would not aid the decisional process. AFFIRMED 

Introduction of Bovine-Based Nutrient Fortifier and Gastrointestinal Inflammation in Very Low Birth Weight Infants as Measured by Fecal Calprotectin. Fecal calprotectin (fCP) is a biomarker of gastrointestinal tract (GIT) inflammation that is currently being used investigationally among very low birth weight (VLBW) infants. Stool was collected weekly from 20 breastmilk-fed VLBW infants for up to 8 weeks after birth during the establishment and fortification of feeds, and fCP concentrations were measured. Mean fCP levels increased significantly in stools collected immediately following bovine-based nutrient fortification of feeds (p = 0.005). Addition of bovine fortifier to breastmilk feeds appeared to be associated with an acute increase in GIT inflammation.

583 F.3d 896 (2009) In re TRAVEL AGENT COMMISSION ANTITRUST LITIGATION. Tam Travel, Inc., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Delta Airlines, Inc., et al., Defendants-Appellees. No. 07-4464. United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit. Argued: October 24, 2008. Decided and Filed: October 2, 2009. *898 ARGUED: Joseph M. Alioto, Jr., Thomas Paul Pier, Alioto Law Firm, San Francisco, California, for Appellants. Peter K. Huston, Latham & Watkins, San Francisco, California, James A. Reeder, Jr., Vinson & Elkins L.L.P., Houston, Texas, Lee H. Simowitz, Baker & Hostetler, Washington, D.C., for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Joseph M. Alioto, Jr., Thomas Paul Pier, Joseph Alioto, Sr., Alioto Law Firm, San Francisco, California, for Appellants. James A. Reeder, Jr., Lauren J. Harrison, Elizabeth A. Pannill, Vinson & Elkins L.L.P., Houston, Texas, for Appellees. Before: MERRITT, BOGGS, and GRIFFIN, Circuit Judges. GRIFFIN, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which BOGGS, J., joined. MERRITT, J. (pp. 911-16), delivered a separate dissenting opinion. OPINION GRIFFIN, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff travel agencies appeal the district court's dismissal of their Amended Complaint for failure to state a claim under § 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Plaintiffs allege that defendants conspired to reduce, cap, and eventually eliminate the payment of base commissions in a concerted effort to drive plaintiffs out of business in violation of 15 U.S.C. § 1. We affirm. In doing so, we hold that plaintiffs' claims against United Airlines were discharged in bankruptcy and that plaintiffs' claims against the remaining defendants failed to allege sufficient facts to plausibly suggest a prior illegal agreement. I. A. Plaintiffs are the owners of forty-nine travel agencies engaged in the business of *899 selling defendants' airline services.[1] When a plaintiff sold an airline ticket before 2002, it received a sales commission from the servicing airline that equaled a percentage of the purchased ticket price. This practice, commonly referred to as the payment of "base commissions," was industry-wide. Plaintiffs allege a § 1 conspiracy based on a series of uniform base commission cuts adopted by defendants over a seven-year period. According to plaintiffs, each defendant's decision to match its competitors' base commission cut was the product of defendants' prior illegal agreement to eliminate the practice of paying all base commissions — a result achieved in March 2002. Plaintiffs assert the conspiracy began in 1995, when Delta, American, Northwest, United, and Continental each announced a $25 cap on base commissions for one-way domestic tickets and a $50 cap for round-trip domestic tickets. Plaintiffs further contend that United's decision to cut its base commission rate on September 18, 1997, from 10% of the purchased ticket price to 8% is further evidence of the alleged illegal agreement because American, Delta, Northwest, U.S. Airways, Continental, and America West each matched United's commission cut on or before September 29, 1997. On March 31, 1998, Frontier Airlines announced that it, too, would reduce its base commission rate from 10% to 8%, as did Alaska Airlines on September 30, 1997. Plaintiffs allege that defendants' conspiracy continued into mid-November 1998, when United imposed base commission caps of $50 and $100 for one-way and round-trip international airfare, respectively. By December 2, 1998, American, Delta, Continental, Northwest, and U.S. Airways each adopted United's $50 and $100 base commission caps. Almost one year later, on October 7, 1999, United instituted its third commission cut, reducing its base commission rate from 8% to 5% on all domestic and international flights. American, Delta, Northwest, Continental, and U.S. Airways each adopted United's 5% commission cut by the following week. America West and Alaska each matched United's 5% commission cut on October 18, 1999, as did Frontier in November 1999. On August 17, 2001, American implemented base commission caps of $10 for one-way tickets and $20 for round-trip tickets, effective the following day. Within ten days, United, Delta, Northwest, Continental, U.S. Airways, and America West each adopted American's $10 and $20 caps. Frontier and Alaska followed suit on September 4, 2001, and November 1, 2001, respectively. Finally, on March 14, 2002, Delta announced that it would eliminate its practice of paying base commissions to travel agencies for both domestic and international airfare, effective immediately. Within ten days, American, United, Northwest, Continental, U.S. Airways, and America West likewise eliminated the payment of base commissions. Frontier and Alaska followed suit in late May 2002. Plaintiffs allege that each defendant's decision to cut, cap, and eventually eliminate its practice of paying travel agencies *900 a base commission would not have occurred without collusion because such action, if taken independently, was contrary to the individual defendant's economic self-interest. Plaintiffs point to United's unsuccessful attempt to cut base commission rates in 1981 and American's similar failed attempt in 1983 as evidence of collusion in the present case. In addition, plaintiffs' Amended Complaint refers to the deposition of a former American Airlines executive, Michael Gunn, who testified that "industry consensus" was necessary for industry-wide commission cuts to hold. Gunn also testified that "he had to match commission cuts exactly or he would undercut the movement." Plaintiffs assert that Gunn's statements are persuasive evidence of defendants' common motive to conspire. As additional support for the alleged conspiracy, plaintiffs point to several meetings where defendants had an opportunity to conspire, including committee meetings of the International Air Transport Association in 1997 and 1998, as well as industry meetings such as the "Conquistadores Del Cielo" (Conquerors of the Sky), the Air Transport Association, the Japan Air Summit, the British Air Summit, the Paris Air Show, the Alex Brown Transportation Conference, the International Aviation Symposium, and the Merrill Lynch conference. Plaintiffs do not identify defendants' attendees by name or title. More specifically, the Amended Complaint asserts that "in mid-1999 an Executive Vice-President of Marketing & Distribution for Northwest Airlines, a Senior Vice President of Planning for U.S. Airways, and a Senior Vice President of Marketing for American met for three hours in a Dallas hotel conference room." Plaintiffs further allege that "[i]n 2001, a Delta senior executive met for a weekend of golf and socializing at the home of an American executive responsible for setting American's commission levels." By May 31, 2002, each defendant had eliminated its practice of paying travel agencies a base commission. In addition, several defendants filed for and have emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, including Delta, Northwest, and United.[2] B. On April 9, 2003, plaintiff Tam Travel, Inc. and forty-eight other travel agencies filed a complaint against defendants for illegally agreeing to cap, cut, and eliminate base commissions in violation of § 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. 15 U.S.C. § 1.[3] On September 13, 2007, plaintiffs had dismissed defendants U.S. Airways and U.S. Airways Group from the suit without prejudice. On September 14, 2007, the district court determined that the Supreme Court's decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007), could impact the present case and allowed plaintiffs to file an Amended Complaint. On September 28, 2007, several defendants filed a joint motion to dismiss the Amended Complaint under FED.R.CIV.P. 12(b)(6). On October 29, 2007, the district court granted defendants' motion to dismiss, ruling that: (1) plaintiffs failed to allege any conduct other than sporadic parallel conduct regarding America West, Alaska, Frontier, and Horizon; (2) plaintiffs failed to allege any parallel conduct as to KLM; *901 (3) the emergence of Northwest, United, and Delta from bankruptcy discharged plaintiffs' claims; (4) with regard to Continental and United, plaintiffs failed to aver sufficient facts to plausibly suggest an illegal agreement under Twombly;[4] and (5) with regard to AAG, a holding company that does not itself pay commissions, plaintiffs failed to allege any facts. Plaintiffs filed a timely motion for reconsideration, which the district court denied on March 13, 2008. This appeal followed.[5] II. Plaintiffs first contend that the district court erred when it ruled that their § 1 claims against United were discharged by the bankruptcy court. By operation of the Bankruptcy Code, confirmation of a reorganization plan "discharges the debtor from any debt that arose before the date of ... confirmation." 11 U.S.C. § 1141(d). Section 101(12) of the Bankruptcy Code defines a "debt" as "liability on a claim." Pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 101(5), a "claim" includes a "right to payment, whether or not such right is reduced to judgment, liquidated, unliquidated, fixed, contingent, matured, [or] unmatured." The district court ruled that because United filed for bankruptcy in December 2002 and its reorganization plan was not confirmed until January 2006, United's emergence from bankruptcy discharged any liability on claims that arose before its reorganization. Because plaintiffs alleged that United made its last commission cut in March 2002, the district court dismissed plaintiffs' claims against United as discharged debt under 11 U.S.C. § 101(5). As a preliminary matter, plaintiffs' brief does not challenge the district court's decision to dismiss United under 11 U.S.C. § 101(5), other than to mention in a single sentence that "[e]ach of these airlines emerged from bankruptcy before Travel Agents filed their complaint." Moreover, the record and the Amended Complaint refute this assertion. Because plaintiffs present only a perfunctory argument regarding United's dismissal under 11 U.S.C. § 101(5), plaintiffs have waived this argument. See United States v. Phinazee, 515 F.3d 511, 520 (6th Cir.2008) (issues adverted to in a perfunctory manner, unaccompanied by some effort at developed argumentation, are deemed waived). In any event, we find no error in the district court's ruling that United's potential liability qualified as discharged debt under 11 U.S.C. § 101(12). Plaintiffs assert that United is nonetheless liable under a continuing violation theory because United allegedly rejoined the conspiracy after emerging from bankruptcy in 2006. Specifically, plaintiffs contend that United's decision to "continue" the "conspiracy commission rate" (which, at this point, was 0%) after its reorganization *902 created a new § 1 claim under the Sherman Act. As a general rule, a successfully reorganized debtor under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code is liable for any independent conduct that arises after the confirmation of its bankruptcy plan. In re WorldCom, Inc., 546 F.3d 211, 221 (2d Cir.2008); O'Loghlin v. County of Orange, 229 F.3d 871, 875 (9th Cir.2000). In short, the debtor gets a fresh start, but that "does not [provide] a continuing license to violate the law." Id. In the present case, the district court concluded that United's post-reorganization 0% commission policy did not create a new § 1 claim because its decision was "merely a reaffirmation of a previous act." Plaintiffs rely on Klehr v. A.O. Smith Corp., 521 U.S. 179, 117 S.Ct. 1984, 138 L.Ed.2d 373 (1997), to argue that United's conduct qualifies as a continuing violation. The Klehr case, however, did not involve a formerly bankrupt corporation. Id. at 186, 117 S.Ct. 1984. Klehr simply reiterates that the antitrust laws recognize continuing violations and, more precisely, that a new § 1 claim arises each time a company sells a price-fixed product. Id. at 188, 117 S.Ct. 1984. We have held that an "antitrust cause of action accrues ... each time a defendant commits an act that injures the plaintiff's business." DXS, Inc. v. Siemens Med. Sys., Inc., 100 F.3d 462, 467 (6th Cir.1996) (citing Zenith Radio Corp. v. Hazeltine Research, Inc., 401 U.S. 321, 338, 91 S.Ct. 795, 28 L.Ed.2d 77 (1971)). "[T]he focus is on the timing of the causes of injury, i.e., the defendant's overt acts, as opposed to the effects of the overt acts." Peck v. Gen. Motors Corp., 894 F.2d 844, 849 (6th Cir.1990) (per curiam) (emphasis added). "[T]he fact that [] injuries have a rippling effect into the future only establishes that [plaintiffs] might have been entitled to future damages...." Id. Here, we reject plaintiffs' attempt to characterize United's decision to maintain its 0% commission policy as an overt act. "Since the Supreme Court decided Zenith, federal courts have uniformly defined a continuing antitrust violation as one in which the plaintiff's interests are repeatedly invaded." Peck, 894 F.2d at 849 (quoting Pace Indus., Inc. v. Three Phoenix Co., 813 F.2d 234, 237 (9th Cir. 1987) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted)). Although United's participation in the alleged conspiracy would certainly create a rippling effect, plaintiffs assert that United's final act to effectuate that conspiracy occurred in 2002, long before United emerged from bankruptcy. We also cannot ignore the consequence of concluding that an overt act occurred under these facts. If we were to adopt plaintiffs' continuing violation theory, the applicable limitations period for a § 1 claim would be infinite — an antitrust plaintiff could routinely salvage an otherwise untimely claim by asserting that it continues to lose revenue because of past alleged anticompetitive conduct. We therefore hold that the district court properly dismissed plaintiffs' claims against United. III. We review de novo the district court's dismissal of plaintiffs' Amended Complaint under FED.R.CIV.P. 12(b)(6). Johnson v. City of Detroit, 446 F.3d 614, 618 (6th Cir.2006). In Twombly, the Supreme Court held that a complaint alleging violations under § 1 of the Sherman Act cannot survive a motion to dismiss unless it avers facts that raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal evidence of an illegal agreement. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556, 127 S.Ct. 1955. In the wake of Twombly, allegations of parallel *903 conduct and bare assertions of conspiracy no longer supply an adequate foundation to support a plausible § 1 claim. Id. Specifically, the complaint's "[f]actual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level," id. at 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955, and "state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face." Id. at 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955. Of course, we must still "construe the complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, accept its allegations as true, and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff." Jones v. City of Cincinnati, 521 F.3d 555, 559 (6th Cir.2008) (internal quotation and citation omitted). "Yet, to survive a motion to dismiss, the complaint must contain either direct or inferential allegations respecting all material elements to sustain a recovery under some viable legal theory." Eidson v. State of Tenn. Dep't of Children's Servs., 510 F.3d 631, 634 (6th Cir. 2007). "We need not accept as true legal conclusions or unwarranted factual inferences," Jones, 521 F.3d at 559 (alteration and internal citation omitted), and "[c]onclusory allegations or legal conclusions masquerading as factual allegations will not suffice." Eidson, 510 F.3d at 634 (internal citation omitted). A. Allegations of concerted action by competitors are frequently based on a pattern of uniform business conduct, which courts often refer to as "conscious parallelism." Conscious parallelism, however, is not in itself prohibited under § 1 of the Sherman Act. As the Supreme Court explained in Twombly: Because § 1 of the Sherman Act "does not prohibit [all] unreasonable restraints of trade ... but only restraints effected by a contract, combination, or conspiracy," Copperweld Corp. v. Independence Tube Corp., 467 U.S. 752, 775, 104 S.Ct. 2731, 81 L.Ed.2d 628 (1984), "[t]he crucial question" is whether the challenged anticompetitive conduct "stem[s] from independent decision or from an agreement, tacit or express," Theatre Enters. v. Paramount Film Distrib. Corp., 346 U.S. [537, 540, 74 S.Ct. 257, 98 L.Ed. 273 (1954)]. While a showing of parallel "business behavior is admissible circumstantial evidence from which the fact finder may infer agreement," it falls short of "conclusively establish[ing] agreement or ... itself constitut[ing] a Sherman Act offense." Id. at 540-41, 74 S.Ct. 257. Even "conscious parallelism," a common reaction of "firms in a concentrated market [that] recogniz[e] their shared economic interests and their interdependence with respect to price and output decisions" is "not itself unlawful." Brooke Group Ltd. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 509 U.S. 209, 227, 113 S.Ct. 2578, 125 L.Ed.2d 168 (1993). The inadequacy of showing parallel conduct or interdependence, without more, mirrors the ambiguity of the behavior: consistent with conspiracy, but just as much in line with a wide swath of rational and competitive business strategy unilaterally prompted by common perceptions of the market. Accordingly, we have previously hedged against false inferences from identical behavior at a number of points in the trial sequence. An antitrust-conspiracy plaintiff with evidence showing nothing beyond parallel conduct is not entitled to a directed verdict, see Theatre Enters., supra; proof of a § 1 conspiracy must include evidence tending to exclude the possibility of independent action, see Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Serv. Corp., 465 U.S. 752, 104 S.Ct. 1464, 79 L.Ed.2d 775 (1984); and at the summary judgment stage a § 1 plaintiff's offer of conspiracy evidence must tend to rule out the possibility *904 that the defendants were acting independently, see Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986). Twombly, 550 U.S. at 554, 127 S.Ct. 1955 (some internal citations omitted). The Twombly decision provides an additional safeguard against the risk of "false inferences from identical behavior" at an earlier stage of the trial sequence — the pleading stage. A district court's early assessment of the sufficiency of a § 1 claim under FED.R.CIV.P. 12(b)(6) or FED. R.CIV.P. 12(c) addresses the dilemma of the extensive litigation costs associated with prosecuting and defending antitrust lawsuits. As the Twombly Court acknowledged, "the costs of modern federal antitrust litigation and the increasing caseload of the federal courts counsel against sending the parties into discovery when there is no reasonable likelihood that the plaintiffs can construct a claim from the events related in the complaint." Id. at 558, 127 S.Ct. 1955 (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). In Ashcroft v. Iqbal, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 1950, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009), the Supreme Court explained the Twombly decision as follows: [In Twombly], we considered the sufficiency of a complaint alleging that incumbent telecommunications providers had entered an agreement not to compete and to forestall competitive entry, in violation of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1. Recognizing that § 1 enjoins only anticompetitive conduct "effected by a contract, combination, or conspiracy," Copperweld Corp. v. Independence Tube Corp., 467 U.S. 752, 775, 104 S.Ct. 2731, 81 L.Ed.2d 628 (1984), the plaintiffs in Twombly flatly pleaded that the defendants "ha[d] entered into a contract, combination or conspiracy to prevent competitive entry ... and ha[d] agreed not to compete with one another." 550 U.S. at 551, 127 S.Ct. 1955 (internal quotation marks omitted). The complaint also alleged that the defendants' "parallel course of conduct ... to prevent competition" and inflate prices was indicative of the unlawful agreement alleged. Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court held the plaintiffs' complaint deficient under Rule 8. In doing so[,] it first noted that the plaintiffs' assertion of an unlawful agreement was a "`legal conclusion'" and, as such, was not entitled to the assumption of truth. Id., at 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955. Had the Court simply credited the allegation of a conspiracy, the plaintiffs would have stated a claim for relief and been entitled to proceed perforce. The Court next addressed the "nub" of the plaintiffs' complaint — the well-pleaded, nonconclusory factual allegation of parallel behavior — to determine whether it gave rise to a "plausible suggestion of conspiracy." Id., at 565-566, 127 S.Ct. 1955. Acknowledging that parallel conduct was consistent with an unlawful agreement, the Court nevertheless concluded that it did not plausibly suggest an illicit accord because it was not only compatible with, but indeed was more likely explained by, lawful, unchoreographed free-market behavior. Id. at 567. Because the well-pleaded fact of parallel conduct, accepted as true, did not plausibly suggest an unlawful agreement, the Court held the plaintiffs' complaint must be dismissed. Id., at 570. Id. (emphasis added). B. Plaintiffs first argue that Twombly is distinguishable because their Amended Complaint "makes independent allegations of actual agreement." Plaintiffs contend *905 that ¶¶ 90, 91, and 121 independently allege an illegal agreement. In ¶ 121, plaintiffs use the word "agreement," asserting that "the conduct of Defendants described hereinabove, and ... the agreement between and among Defendants to reduce, cap and eliminate commissions paid to plaintiffs" violates the Sherman Act. (Emphasis added.) This averment is nothing more than a legal conclusion "masquerading" as a factual allegation. See Eidson, 510 F.3d at 634. The Supreme Court rejected a similar argument in Twombly, holding that "a few stray statements speak[ing] directly of agreement ... are merely legal conclusions resting on [] prior allegations." Twombly, 550 U.S. at 564, 127 S.Ct. 1955. Paragraphs 90 and 91 of the Amended Complaint assert that defendants' executives, who were "responsible for [] setting [] commission levels ... met frequently during the period of cuts and caps," which "afforded these persons the opportunity to... conspire" and "communicate[] with one another for the purpose of ... implementing... their common plan...." These allegations, however, aver only an opportunity to conspire, which does not necessarily support an inference of illegal agreement. In fact, ¶¶ 90 and 91 are located in a section of the Amended Complaint entitled "Opportunities for Defendants to Combine and Conspire." We conclude that plaintiffs' attempt to distinguish Twombly on the basis that plaintiffs allege "actual agreement" fails. C. Next, plaintiffs argue that the district court erred when it dismissed their § 1 claim against Alaska, AAG, Horizon, and America West because the Amended Complaint contained more than bare assertions of conspiracy and parallel conduct. We disagree. In each of the four references to Alaska in the Amended Complaint, plaintiffs allege only that Alaska adopted uniform commission cuts in 1997, 1999, 2000, and 2001. The Amended Complaint does not contain any factual allegations to support Alaska's involvement in the conspiracy, beyond its parallel behavior. America West is also referred to four times but, like Alaska, plaintiffs allege parallel conduct alone and fail to aver facts sufficient to implicate America West in any conspiracy. AAG and Horizon are also named defendants and parties to this appeal, but neither is mentioned in the body of the Amended Complaint, nor do plaintiffs specify how these defendants are involved in the alleged conspiracy. Consequently, if these "defendant[s] [sought] to respond to plaintiffs' [] allegations in the § 1 context, [they] would have little idea where to begin." Twombly, 550 U.S. at 564 n. 10, 127 S.Ct. 1955. Plaintiffs attempt to implicate these defendants in the purported conspiracy by relying on several vague allegations contained in the Amended Complaint that refer to "defendants" or "defendants' executives." However, plaintiffs' reliance on these indeterminate assertions is misplaced because they represent precisely the type of naked conspiratorial allegations rejected by the Supreme Court in Twombly. See Twombly, 550 U.S. at 565 n. 10, 127 S.Ct. 1955 (stating that where "complaint [] furnishes no clue" as to which defendants supposedly agreed or when and where the illicit agreement took place, the complaint fails to give adequate notice as required by Fed.R.Civ.P. 8). "A statement of parallel conduct, even conduct consciously undertaken, needs some setting suggesting the agreement necessary to make out a § 1 claim; without that further circumstance pointing toward a meeting of *906 the minds, an account of a defendant's commercial efforts stays in neutral territory." Id. at 557, 127 S.Ct. 1955. For these reasons, we hold that the district court properly dismissed plaintiffs' § 1 claim against Alaska, AAG, Horizon, and America West. Thus, only defendants Continental and American remain. D. Finally, plaintiffs argue that factual allegations in their Amended Complaint raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal circumstantial evidence sufficient to suggest an antitrust conspiracy similar to that present in Interstate Circuit v. United States, 306 U.S. 208, 59 S.Ct. 467, 83 L.Ed. 610 (1939). In this regard, plaintiffs' Amended Complaint alleges that: Each Defendant knew that concerted action to reduce and cap commissions was contemplated and invited. Each Defendant adhered to the common scheme to reduce and cap commissions and participated in it. Each Defendant was advised that every other Defendant was invited to participate. Each Defendant knew that cooperation was essential to successful operation of the plan. In Interstate Circuit, the Supreme Court held that a pattern of uniform admission ticket prices at subsequent-run theaters was sufficient to permit a factfinder to infer the existence of an illegal agreement.[6] Plaintiffs focus on the following language of Interstate Circuit: Each was aware that all were in active competition and that without substantially unanimous action with respect to the restrictions for any given territory there was risk of a substantial loss of the business and good will of the subsequent-run and independent exhibitors, but that with it there was the prospect of increased profits. 306 U.S. at 222, 59 S.Ct. 467. However, plaintiffs fail to acknowledge the salient evidence of unlawful collusion presented in Interstate Circuit. Specifically, in Interstate Circuit, a Texas movie theater chain sent an identical letter to eight major movie distributors threatening to discontinue showing their films if the distributors did not require all subsequent-run theaters to charge a minimum admission price of twenty-five cents. Id. at 216-17, 59 S.Ct. 467. The admission price customarily charged in independently operated subsequent-run theaters in Texas at that time was less than twenty-five cents. Id. at 217, 59 S.Ct. 467. Soon thereafter, each distributor required all subsequent-run theaters showing their films to charge a minimum of twenty-five cents. The Supreme Court concluded that Interstate Circuit's letter, which listed all eight distributors as addressees, provided uncontested evidence that each distributor knew about the involvement of the others and constituted persuasive evidence of a conspiracy, particularly because the defendants could offer no alternative reason for their parallel pricing demands. Id. Plaintiffs point to the Airline Reporting Corporation ("ARC"), which is an *907 information clearinghouse for airlines. The ARC provides information on ticket distribution, reporting and settlement services, and base commission rates paid to travel agents. However, there is no allegation in the Amended Complaint that ARC could provide defendants with commission reduction information before defendants implemented their rate reductions. According to the Amended Complaint, every leader airline (the first to announce and implement a commission cut) publicly announced its cut and implemented the change almost immediately. Thus, defendants' access to ARC does not suggest a viable means to collude on commission rates before such reductions occurred. In Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., 465 U.S. 752, 768, 104 S.Ct. 1464, 79 L.Ed.2d 775 (1984) (emphasis added), the Supreme Court established the modern standard to evaluate evidence bearing on concerted action: The correct standard is that there must be evidence that tends to exclude the possibility of independent action.... That is, there must be direct or circumstantial evidence that reasonably tends to prove that the [defendant] and others had a conscious commitment to a common scheme designed to achieve an unlawful objective. We applied this standard in Re/Max Int'l, Inc. v. Realty One, Inc., 173 F.3d 995 (6th Cir.1999), wherein the plaintiff, a national real estate brokerage franchiser, sued two local real estate firms, alleging a violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act.[7] Under the local firms' adverse-splits policy, whenever Re/Max agents were involved in a transaction, defendants paid them only 25 or 30 percent of the commission, rather than the industry norm of a 50/50 split. Re/Max alleged that the adverse-splits policy, the means by which defendants controlled the market for hiring real estate agents, violated § 1. 173 F.3d at 1010. Re/Max claimed that the adverse-splits policy lowered its sales revenue and prevented it from recruiting knowledgeable and experienced sales agents because both defendants adopted a policy that paid its agents less than the industry norm. Id. We reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants, holding that the plaintiff provided sufficient circumstantial evidence tending to exclude the possibility of independent conduct. Id. at 1025. We concluded the following "plus factors" were important when evaluating circumstantial evidence of concerted action: (1) whether the defendants' actions, if taken independently, would be contrary to their economic self-interest; (2) whether defendants have been uniform in their actions; (3) whether defendants have exchanged or have had the opportunity to exchange information relative to the alleged conspiracy; and (4) whether defendants have a common motive to conspire. Ordinarily, an affirmative answer to the first of these factors will consistently tend to exclude the likelihood of independent conduct. Id. at 1009 (internal citation omitted). Key to our decision in Re/Max was evidence that use of the adverse-splits policy would not be in either defendant's independent economic interest. If only one *908 defendant adopted the policy, Re/Max agents would simply deal with the other defendant, and thus sales and revenue would shift away from one defendant to the other. Id. at 1010-11. Moreover, even if one defendant adopted the "adverse splits policy on its own (a `highly unlikely' event in the first place)," the other local real estate firm had a strong incentive not to do likewise. Id. Thus, we concluded that the local firms' decision to adopt the adverse-splits policy, despite a natural inclination not to do so, was persuasive evidence of prior agreement. Id. Citing Re/Max, plaintiffs assert that no rational airline would attempt to cut commission rates without entering into a prior agreement because the leader airline would lose revenue to its competitors. In support of this position, plaintiffs point to American's unsuccessful attempt to cut base commission rates from 10% to 7% in 1983 and United's similar attempt to reduce base commission rates in 1981. Plaintiffs assert that both airlines quickly retracted their base commission cuts because the travel agencies retaliated by booking their customers on airlines that maintained the status quo commission rate. Plaintiffs contend that when one of defendants' competitors announced a base commission cut, each defendant had a strong incentive not to adopt that cut because its natural economic inclination would be to absorb any revenue shifted away from its competitor. First, Michael Gunn, former Executive Vice President of Marketing and Planning at American, testified that an independent reduction in commission rates would advance each defendant's economic self-interest. Each defendant could have calculated reasonably that a successful commission cut would yield greater net revenue than the likely net loss due to business diverted by plaintiffs to their competitors. This decision is especially plausible in a marketplace that has changed fundamentally since 1983 due to technological advances in airline ticket purchasing. Defendants contend that new, alternate methods for airfare purchase — including direct purchases by customers on the internet — provided a greater economic incentive to cut commission rates on a trial-and-error basis. Defendants also assert that it was simple and inexpensive for a leader airline to innovate and then wait and see, with the hope and expectation that its competitors would institute similar cuts. If the industry did not follow, the leader airline could simply retract the cut. Thus, defendants have offered a reasonable, alternative explanation for their parallel pricing behavior. In addition, if we follow plaintiffs' argument to its logical end, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where a commission cut could ever occur without collusion. Based on these facts, we conclude that each defendant had a reasonable, independent economic interest in adopting a competitor's commission cut rather than to maintain the status quo. We therefore hold that plaintiffs have failed to allege sufficient facts plausibly suggesting (not merely consistent with) an agreement in violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act because defendants' conduct "was not only compatible with, but indeed was more likely explained by, lawful, unchoreographed free-market behavior." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1950.[8] Pursuant to *909 Twombly, district courts must assess the plausibility of an alleged illegal agreement before parties are forced to engage in protracted litigation and bear excessive discovery costs. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 558-59, 127 S.Ct. 1955. In this regard, we note that the plausibility of plaintiffs' conspiracy claim is inversely correlated to the magnitude of defendants' economic self-interest in making the cuts.[9]See Matsushita, 475 U.S. at 574 (defining ambiguous evidence as that which is as consistent with permissible competition as with illegal conspiracy). We are not persuaded by plaintiffs' argument that defendants would not seek to reduce base commissions independently, especially during the late 1990s and into 2002, where changes in the marketplace provided consumers with alternate ticket-purchasing options. As the Court stated in Twombly, "there is no reason to infer that [these defendants] had agreed among themselves to do what was only natural anyway." 550 U.S. at 566, 127 S.Ct. 1955. Next, plaintiffs rely upon ¶ 87 of their Amended Complaint, which includes an excerpt from the deposition of Michael Gunn. Gunn testified that "industry consensus" on new commission levels was necessary for the commission cuts and caps to hold. Gunn also testified that "he had to match commission cuts exactly or he would undercut the movement." Plaintiffs argue that Gunn's testimony provides strong evidence of an antecedent agreement. We disagree. The district court reviewed Gunn's deposition testimony in its entirety and carefully considered all of the factual allegations which, taken as true, could plausibly imply that defendants entered into a preceding agreement. After doing so, the district court ruled that there were insufficient facts to raise a reasonable expectation that discovery would reveal evidence of an illegal agreement. In reaching its conclusion, the district court noted the importance of the following portion of Gunn's testimony: Q. [Mr. Alioto (counsel for plaintiff)]: It was, in fact, represented to you by another person at American that in order for these reductions of commissions to work that you had to get common agreement of the industry; that was the most important thing? A. [Mr. Gunn]: I would respond again that my belief is you have to be matched if the cut is to be [successful]. But I don't know I don't care if there's a common agreement or other. All I care about is how people behave if I do something or how I believe if they do something. To me that's not consensus. That's taking a common action after the fact which is to me a lot different than consensus. Consensus speaks to prior *910 agreement. There certainly wasn't any prior agreement in these cases. Based on the facts alleged by plaintiffs, it is just as likely that American's 2001 commission cap was an effort to reduce its internal commission costs, with the ancillary hope that its competitors would follow its lead. As stated by a respected antitrust authority: When one oligopolist raises its price, each of its rivals must decide whether to follow. Continuing the previous price would allow each of the others to increase its sales if the leader persists in charging a higher price. But each knows that the leader is likely to retract an increase that is not followed. Accordingly, each rival asks itself whether it is better off at the lower price when it is charged by all or at the higher price when charged by all. If the latter, as will often be the case, the leader's price increase is likely to be followed. * * * The price leader may assume that others have made a similar calculation about which price will maximize profits. Or the leader may simply proceed by trial and error: raise the price and see what happens, especially where reversing an unfollowed price rise is not very costly. 6 PHILLIP E. AREEDA & HERBERT HOVENKAMP, ANTITRUST LAW ¶ 1410b (2d ed.2003). In addition, the matching of American's 2001 commission cap by the other defendants is not necessarily indicative of prior agreement. On this issue, the Seventh Circuit has observed that: [a] firm in a concentrated industry typically has reason to decide (individually) to copy an industry leader. After all, a higher-than-leader's price might lead a customer to buy elsewhere, while a lower-than-leader's price might simply lead competitors to match the lower price, reducing profits for all. One does not need an agreement to bring about this kind of follow-the-leader effect in a concentrated industry. Reserve Supply Corp. v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp., 971 F.2d 37, 53 (7th Cir. 1992). Thus, each defendant's decision to match a new commission cut was arguably a reasoned, prudent business decision. Moreover, if each defendant asked "itself" whether it was "better off" paying base commissions (paid by all) or not paying base commissions (eliminated by all), each defendant would plausibly elect the latter (from a purely economic standpoint). Plaintiffs also argue that their factual allegations regarding defendants' opportunities to conspire are enough to nudge their § 1 claim across the line from conceivable to plausible. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955. Specifically, plaintiffs rely upon ¶ 100, which alleges that "an Executive Vice-President of Marketing & Distribution for Northwest Airlines, a Senior Vice President of Planning for U.S. Air, and a Senior Vice President of Marketing for American met for three hours in a Dallas hotel conference room"; and upon ¶ 102 as well, which avers that "in 2001, a Delta senior executive met for a weekend of golf and socializing at the home of an American executive responsible for setting American's commission levels. Four months later, American led an industry-wide reduction on commission caps from $20 to $10...." However, plaintiffs' Amended Complaint does not cite any specific meetings that involved both Continental and American, the only two remaining defendants. The fact that American and Continental gathered at industry trade association meetings during the seven-year period when defendants reduced commission rates *911 should not weigh heavily in favor of suspecting collusion. The Supreme Court rejected a similar argument in Twombly: From the allegation that [defendants] belong to various trade associations, ... the dissent playfully suggests that they conspired to restrain trade, an inference said to be buttressed by the common sense of Adam Smith. If Adam Smith is peering down today, he may be surprised to learn that his tongue-in-cheek remark would be authority to force his famous pinmaker to devote financial and human capital to hire lawyers, prepare for depositions, and otherwise fend off allegations of conspiracy; all this just because he belonged to the same trade guild as one of his competitors when their pins carried the same price tag. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 567 n. 12, 127 S.Ct. 1955 (internal citation omitted). Moreover, a mere opportunity to conspire does not, standing alone, plausibly suggest an illegal agreement because American's and Continental's presence at such trade meetings is more likely explained by their lawful, free-market behavior. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1950. Finally, plaintiffs argue that we should rely upon a statement made in 1983 by a former American Airlines executive who "approved commission cuts that are the subject of this action." Plaintiffs allege that this unnamed American executive encouraged an executive of a competitor airline (also unnamed) to increase its fares by 20% to "make more money." Plaintiffs presumably refer to a statement made by Robert Crandall, former President of American, to Howard Putnam, former President of the now-defunct Braniff airlines. See United States v. Am. Airlines, 743 F.2d 1114, 1116 (5th Cir. 1984). First, we note that Crandall made this statement more than twenty-five years ago. Second, the Amended Complaint avers only that Crandall "approved commission cuts" and fails to allege that he was actually involved in the conspiracy at issue here. In addition, we note that Crandall retired from American in 1998, placing his departure as CEO at the very beginning of plaintiffs' conspiratorial time line. We conclude that Crandall's prior statement is too remote in time to support a plausible inference of agreement. We also do not view his statement as tending to raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal evidence of an illegal agreement between Continental and American. See Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555-56, 127 S.Ct. 1955. IV. For these reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court. MERRITT, Circuit Judge, dissenting. In the recent Twombly and Iqbal cases, quoted and discussed at length by my colleagues in their majority opinion, the Supreme Court has started to modify somewhat, but not drastically, the notice pleading rules that have reigned under Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45, 78 S.Ct. 99, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957) ("a complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief"). These two cases now require more than simple notice and conclusory statements of ultimate facts about the case. Instead plaintiffs must plead "sufficient factual matter" to state a legal claim or cause of action that is not only "conceivable" but also "plausible," independently of the notice given and the legal conclusions stated — in short, a set of "well-pleaded factual allegations" that make the cause of action "plausible." *912 Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1949-51 (2009). The Supreme Court majority has made clear that it is not making a major change in the law of pleading with Twombly and its progeny.[1] As with any other new, general legal standard, the nature and meaning of the newly modified standard can be understood and followed only by analyzing how the standard is applied in actual cases like this case. Here my colleagues have seriously misapplied the new standard by requiring not simple "plausibility," but by requiring the plaintiff to present at the pleading stage a strong probability of winning the case and excluding any possibility that the defendants acted independently and not in unison. My colleagues are requiring the plaintiff to offer detailed facts that if true would create a clear and convincing case of antitrust liability at trial without allowing the plaintiff the normal right to conduct discovery and have the jury draw reasonable inferences of liability from strong direct and circumstantial evidence. I. Twombly itself was a telephone antitrust case in which the only non-conclusory factual allegations in the complaint of a "contract, combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade" was that the former Baby Bell telephone companies continued to do business in their former home territories and did not "attack" and try to take market share away from the other operating Baby Bell companies in their home region. This was the full extent of the Twombly factual allegations of anti-competitive behavior. There was no allegation of action, as opposed to nonaction, misfeasance as opposed to nonfeasance. The Supreme Court sensibly pointed out that there could be many explanations for this similar economic nonaction other than the kind of agreement not to compete required for liability under § 1 of the Sherman Act. Thus the Supreme Court held that this one specific factual allegation of similar conduct was insufficient alone to state a "plausible" claim, though the Court seems to say that this kind of factual statement alone makes the pleading issue "close." Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557, 127 S.Ct. 1955 ("allegation of parallel conduct ... gets the complaint close to stating a claim"). If the Twombly pleading issue was "close," but insufficient, based only on similar, stand-pat nonfeasance toward each other's historical territory, the allegations concerning the in unison, affirmative behavior of the airlines in this case are obviously sufficient. The factual allegations in this case create an overwhelming case for the plaintiff to get by a motion to dismiss on the pleading. Five times the airlines acted affirmatively, aggressively and publicly in unison to cut, fix and hold the price the airlines would pay the travel agents. Although at present there is no written contract to that effect, the facts alleged present so plain a case that they might as well have put the plan in writing. 1. The complaint alleges that United and American tried in 1981 and 1983, respectively, to fix the price lower to the travel agents but the other airlines would not go along. The allegations recite the *913 statements of an American Airlines executive that the airlines learned not to try again until everyone was on board. The complaint alleges inside information tantamount to a partial confession. 2. Then when they tried again in 1995 the plan went like clock-work. Everyone followed the leader five straight times until the price reached zero. The allegations of fact, based on testimony of insiders, was that the plan could not work without agreement but could work if the airlines acted in unison. Since the plan worked like a charm, the allegations raise a strong inference of agreement. Not as strong as allegations raising an inference that "the sun will rise in the morning" based on history, but strong enough to be more than "plausible." 3. The airline executives in charge must not only have had hundreds of telephone conversations with each other and through intermediaries, but the specific, time-and-place factual allegations are that they met frequently over the period the airlines were acting in unison and according to plan. To suggest that they did not ever in all the meetings and personal contacts discuss their union of interests and how the cuts were working defies belief. The father of laissez faire economic theory, the liberal Scottish moral philosopher, Adam Smith, made the same basic point even more forcefully in The Wealth of Nations (1776), 230 years ago: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public." Book 1, Chap. 10, part 1, 148 (New York: Modern Library, 2000). If the factual allegations of meetings are true — a matter not yet determined by an impartial fact finder — the case of liability is certainly strong enough to go to the jury. 4. The airlines, and specifically American Airlines' CEO Robert Crandall, attempted this type of coordinated scheme in the past. In 1984, Crandall was implicated in a price-fixing conspiracy because of comments he made to a competing airline president. In a recorded telephone conversation, the president of the competing airline asked Crandall how both airlines could continue to enjoy a monopoly over service to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, and Crandall instructed his competitor to raise its price and American would follow suit the very next day with a price increase of its own. U.S. v. American Airlines, Inc., 743 F.2d 1114, 1116 (5th Cir. 1984). Having proposed to fall in line behind one another before strongly suggests that the airlines would do it again. In fact, when Delta announced a cap on travel agent commission in 1995, Crandall was responsible for setting American Airline's travel agent commissions. Appellants' Reply Brief at 18. Unsurprisingly, American followed Delta's lead the very next day. Id. To summarize, the complaint alleges that price cuts could not be made absent unilateral, follow-the-leader action by all of the defendants. It provides specific times and locations of numerous meetings attended by the defendants. Finally, and most importantly, the complaint ties the dates of those meetings with industry-wide simultaneous rate cuts that followed immediately thereafter. Reading these allegations as a whole, the complaint clearly satisfies the Twombly standard. In fact, the Supreme Court in Twombly noted that multiple competitors making "complex and historically unprecedented changes in pricing structure ... for no other discernible reason" would properly state a claim under § 1 of the Sherman Act. 550 U.S. at 557 n. 4, 127 S.Ct. 1955. That appears to be exactly the situation here. *914 II. The antitrust cases decided in both courts of appeals and district courts since Twombly and Iqbal are few, and most of the cases decided by district courts have yet to reach the courts of appeals. But see St. Clair v. Citizens Fin. Group, No. 08-4870, 2009 WL 2186515 (3rd Cir. Jul.23, 2009). That said, district court judges across the country have dismissed a large majority of Sherman Act claims on the pleadings misinterpreting the standards from Twombly and Iqbal, thereby slowly eviscerating antitrust enforcement under the Sherman Act. See, e.g., In re Hawaiian & Guamanian Cabotage Antitrust Litig., No. 08-md-1972 TSZ, 2009 WL 2581510 (W.D.Wash. Aug.18, 2009); Bailey Lumber & Supply Co. v. Ga.-Pac. Corp., No. 1:08CV1394LG-JMR, 2009 WL 2872307 (S.D.Miss. Aug.10, 2009); Burtch v. Milberg Factors, Inc., No. 07-556-JJF-LPS, 2009 WL 1529861 (D.Del. May 31, 2009). The uniformity needed for the rule of law and equal justice to prevail is lacking. This irregularity may be attributed to the desire of some courts, like my colleagues here, to use the pleading rules to keep the market unregulated, while others refuse to use the pleading rules as a cover for knocking out antitrust claims. Compare In re California Title Ins. Antitrust Litig., 2009 WL 1458025 (N.D.Cal. May 21, 2009) (dismissing price-fixing complaint against major title insurance agencies who jointly set rates in states where they belonged to statutorily authorized rate setting organizations and employed similar rates in other states) with Standard Iron Works v. Arcelormittal, 639 F.Supp.2d 877 (N.D.Ill. 2009) (finding plausibility despite lack of direct evidence of collective action by looking at a series of industry meetings attended by steel executives that were followed by industry-wide production cuts). III. The Sherman Act was enacted in 1890 at the height and in the heat of controversy during a former Gilded Age. It was enacted to deter price fixing, market allocation among producers, and monopolization at a time of extreme disparities in economic power and wealth brought on by an extreme version of laissez faire economic theory.[2] After a long, slow climb toward a more equal distribution of economic power over the past century, in part because of the enforcement of the Sherman Act, we have recently returned to the great disparities that formerly existed. The failure to regulate the marketplace through antitrust enforcement is probably related to the mind-set that has dramatically reversed the earlier trend toward equality.[3] *915 There are many, including my colleagues, whose preference for an unregulated laissez faire market place is so strong that they would eliminate market regulation through private antitrust enforcement. Using the new Twombly pleading rule, it is possible to do away with price fixing cases based on reasonable inferences from strong circumstantial evidence. As in this case, the proponents of this strategy propose to require either an express written agreement among competitors or a transcribed oral agreement to fix prices. Nothing less will do. Insider testimony, a strong motivation to collude, and aggressive, lock-step unanimity by competitors in pricing become insufficient to state a case. Over time, the antitrust laws fall further into desuetude as the legal system and the *916 market place are manipulated to benefit economic power, cartels, and oligopolies capable of setting prices. This case is just one small step in that direction. But this direction is unlikely to be changed unless the Supreme Court steps in to make it clear that Twombly may not be used, as my colleagues propose, as a cover for repealing regulation of the marketplace through private antitrust enforcement. NOTES [1] The following airlines were named as defendants in plaintiffs' Amended Complaint: Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, Inc. ("Alaska"), Alaska Air Group, Inc. ("AAG"), ATA Airlines, Inc., American Airlines, Inc., America West Airlines, Inc., Continental Airlines Inc., Delta Air Lines, Inc., Hawaiian Airlines, Inc., Horizon Air Industries, Inc., Frontier Airlines, Inc., KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Inc., United Airlines, Inc., U.S. Airways, Inc., and U.S. Airways Group, Inc. [2] For the purposes of this appeal, only United's bankruptcy is relevant. United filed its Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition on December 9, 2002, and the bankruptcy court confirmed its reorganization plan on January 20, 2006. [3] Plaintiffs opted out of the putative class in Hall v. United Air Lines, Inc., 296 F.Supp.2d 652 (E.D.N.C.2003). [4] The district court unintentionally omitted American from its identification of "remaining Defendant airlines" for the purposes of this holding. It is clear from the substance of the opinion however, that the district court did not intend to suggest that claims against American were any more meritorious than against Continental and United. [5] After the parties filed their appellate briefs, we were notified that Frontier and ATA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy under 11 U.S.C. § 362(a)(1). The filing of a bankruptcy petition operates as an automatic stay of the continuation of a judicial action against the debtor. Spirit Airlines, Inc. v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., 431 F.3d 917, 921 n. 1 (6th Cir. 2005) (automatic stay under § 362(a)(1) applies to appellate proceedings). Following oral argument, we also accepted the stipulated dismissal of defendants Delta, Northwest, and KLM. [6] We recognize that Interstate Circuit was decided at a more advanced stage of the legal process, and we do not suggest that the same standards ought to be applied on a motion to dismiss, even under Twombly. However, plaintiffs argue that they have alleged enough factual matter "to raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal" circumstantial "evidence of illegal agreement," Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556, 127 S.Ct. 1955, analogous to the circumstantial evidence discovered in Interstate Circuit. Thus, we examine plaintiffs' complaint with an eye to any factual allegations that would make it "reasonable" to "expect []" that similar circumstantial evidence would surface during discovery. Id. [7] We note that Re/Max Int'l, Inc. was an appeal from a grant of summary judgment. Here, our review is constrained by Fed. R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). Nonetheless, plaintiffs argue they have put forth factual allegations that would make it reasonable to expect that discovery will reveal evidence of the Re/Max "plus factors." This analysis is instructive insofar as it illuminates the plausibility of defendants' lawful, unchoreographed free-market behavior. [8] We note that plaintiffs opted-out of a class action that alleged an identical § 1 claim against these defendants. Hall v. United Air Lines, Inc., 296 F.Supp.2d 652 (E.D.N.C. 2003), aff'd sub nom. Hall v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 118 Fed.Appx. 680 (4th Cir.2004). In Hall, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of defendants, finding "overwhelmingly compelling evidence that the commission cuts and caps ... were just as likely the result of competitive conduct and natural changes in the market as of the illegal conspiracy alleged by plaintiffs." Id. at 671. Although a district court decision affirmed by the Fourth Circuit is not authoritative in the Sixth Circuit, we think that the result in Hall is something we should at least consider (when analyzing plausibility), "both for its persuasive power, and because it involves the same facts." Premier Elec. Constr. Co. v. Nat'l Elec. Contractors Ass'n, Inc., 814 F.2d 358, 367 (7th Cir. 1987) (citation omitted) (considering Fourth Circuit decision in antitrust action involving defendants whose activities spanned more than one court of appeals). We also acknowledge the Seventh Circuit's statement in Premier, which warned, "[o]nly the gravest reasons should lead [a] court in [an] opt-out suit to come to a conclusion that departs from that in the class suit." Id. at 367-68. [9] Defendants assert that "each percentage point reduction in travel agent commissions was worth approximately $56 million, and that by 2002, the combined value of the commission cuts was more than a billion dollars." [1] The Court has been careful to point out that Twombly should not be read to impose a "probability requirement," or a "`heightened' pleading standard." Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556, 595 n. 14, 127 S.Ct. 1955. The Court commented that an otherwise "well-pleaded complaint may proceed even if it strikes a savvy judge that actual proof of those facts is improbable, and that recovery is very remote and unlikely." Id. at 556, 127 S.Ct. 1955 (internal quotations omitted). [2] See 21 Cong. Rec. 2460 (1889) (This inequality "has grown within a single generation out of the concentration of capital into vast combinations to control production and trade and to break down competition."). [3] A picture of the recent reversal of the long trend toward equality is as follows: Forty years ago the average CEO made twenty times what the average worker did; now it is nearly 400 times. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, Income Inequality in the United States: 1913-1998, 118 Q.J. Econ. 1 (2003), data updated through 2007 available at http:// elsa.berkeley.edu/saez/. From the time of Herodotus in 500 B.C. to the present, historians and political philosophers have believed that a high level of inequality of economic and political power undermines the basis of constitutional democracy and stable government generally: "So the Athenians had increased in strength, which demonstrates that an equal voice in government has beneficial impact not merely in one way, but in every way." THE LANDMARK HERODOTUS: THE HISTORIES 400 (Robert B. Strassler ed.2007). "The constitutional essential here is rather that below a certain level of material and social well-being, and of training and education, people simply cannot take part in society as citizens, much less equal citizens ... it is what is required to give due weight to the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation between free and equal citizens...." JOHN RAWLS, POLITICAL LIBERALISM 166 (1993).

Give the officer some credit, folks. He did have a gun in case someone’s dog was nearby. A police officer stood by, chatting on his cellphone while the men rescued the 62-yr-old woman, who is now in critical condition. According to witnesses the woman was trapped in her vehicle for at least six minutes. Update: Unfortunately, the woman is now dead. Sudsburystar reports: “Two sources have confirmed to The Sudbury Star that the 62-year-old woman rescued from her sport utility vehicle after it left Municipal Road 80 on Thursday near McCrea Heights and plunged into a marsh has died.” Related:

<template> <div class="navbar-user" v-clickoutside="clickOutside"> <div id="userDropdownBox" class="user" :class="{open: !isOutside}"> <div @click="onAvatarClick"> <a class="avatar" href="javascript:void(0);"> <img :src="theAvatarURL"> </a> </div> <ul class="dropdown-menu" :style="menuStyle[menuAlign]"> <li><a href="/editor/drafts/new"><i class="fa fa-pencil"></i><span>写文章</span></a></li> <li v-if="userID === 44"><a href="/handbooks/new"><i class="fa fa-book" aria-hidden="true"></i><span>写小册</span></a></li> <li><a href="/editor/drafts"><i class="fa fa-file-text" aria-hidden="true"></i><span>草稿</span></a></li> <li class="dropdown-menu-sep"></li> <li><a :href="`/uc/${userID}`"><i class="iconfont ic-navigation-profile"></i><span>我的主页</span></a></li> <li><a :href="`/uc/${userID}/like/articles`"><i class="fa fa-thumbs-up" aria-hidden="true"></i><span>我赞过的</span></a> </li> <li><a :href="`/uc/${userID}/writehandbooks`"><i class="fa fa-sticky-note" aria-hidden="true"></i><span>我的小册</span></a></li> <li><a :href="`/uc/${userID}/collections`"><i class="fa fa-star" aria-hidden="true"></i><span>我的收藏集</span></a></li> <li><a :href="`/uc/${userID}/buyhandbooks`"><i class="iconfont ic-paid"></i><span>已购</span></a></li> <li class="dropdown-menu-sep"></li> <li><a href="/tags"><i class="fa fa-tags" aria-hidden="true"></i><span>标签管理</span></a></li> <li><a href="/settings/profile"><i class="iconfont ic-navigation-settings"></i><span>设置</span></a></li> <li class="dropdown-menu-sep"></li> <li><a @click="onSignout"><i class="iconfont ic-navigation-signout"></i><span>退出</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </template> <script> import { addClass, removeClass, hasClass, } from '~/js/utils/dom.js'; import { myHTTP } from '~/js/common/net.js'; import { ErrorCode } from '~/js/constants/error.js'; import { globalEventEmitter, EVENTS } from '~/js/utils/event.js'; export default { props: [ 'menuAlign', 'userID', 'avatarURL' ], data () { return { theAvatarURL: this.avatarURL, menuStyle: { left: { left: 0 }, right: { right: 0 } }, isOutside: true, } }, methods: { onSignout() { myHTTP.delete('/users/signout').then((res) => { if (res.data.errorCode === ErrorCode.SUCCESS.CODE) { location.reload(); } }); }, clickOutside() { this.isOutside = true; }, onAvatarClick() { this.isOutside = !this.isOutside; }, onAvatarChange(avatarURL) { this.theAvatarURL = avatarURL; } }, mounted() { globalEventEmitter.on(EVENTS.USER_AVATAR_CHANGE, this.onAvatarChange, this); } } </script> <style> .navbar-user .avatar { width: 40px; } </style>

// go run mksyscall.go -l32 -tags linux,386 syscall_linux.go syscall_linux_386.go // Code generated by the command above; see README.md. DO NOT EDIT. // +build linux,386 package unix import ( "syscall" "unsafe" ) var _ syscall.Errno // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func FanotifyInit(flags uint, event_f_flags uint) (fd int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FANOTIFY_INIT, uintptr(flags), uintptr(event_f_flags), 0) fd = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func fanotifyMark(fd int, flags uint, mask uint64, dirFd int, pathname *byte) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_FANOTIFY_MARK, uintptr(fd), uintptr(flags), uintptr(mask), uintptr(mask>>32), uintptr(dirFd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(pathname))) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func fchmodat(dirfd int, path string, mode uint32) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FCHMODAT, uintptr(dirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(mode)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func ioctl(fd int, req uint, arg uintptr) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_IOCTL, uintptr(fd), uintptr(req), uintptr(arg)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Linkat(olddirfd int, oldpath string, newdirfd int, newpath string, flags int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(oldpath) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(newpath) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_LINKAT, uintptr(olddirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(newdirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), uintptr(flags), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func openat(dirfd int, path string, flags int, mode uint32) (fd int, err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_OPENAT, uintptr(dirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(flags), uintptr(mode), 0, 0) fd = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func ppoll(fds *PollFd, nfds int, timeout *Timespec, sigmask *Sigset_t) (n int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_PPOLL, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(fds)), uintptr(nfds), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(timeout)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(sigmask)), 0, 0) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Readlinkat(dirfd int, path string, buf []byte) (n int, err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } var _p1 unsafe.Pointer if len(buf) > 0 { _p1 = unsafe.Pointer(&buf[0]) } else { _p1 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_READLINKAT, uintptr(dirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(_p1), uintptr(len(buf)), 0, 0) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Symlinkat(oldpath string, newdirfd int, newpath string) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(oldpath) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(newpath) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_SYMLINKAT, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(newdirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1))) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Unlinkat(dirfd int, path string, flags int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_UNLINKAT, uintptr(dirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(flags)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func utimensat(dirfd int, path string, times *[2]Timespec, flags int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_UTIMENSAT, uintptr(dirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(times)), uintptr(flags), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Getcwd(buf []byte) (n int, err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(buf) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&buf[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_GETCWD, uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(buf)), 0) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func wait4(pid int, wstatus *_C_int, options int, rusage *Rusage) (wpid int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_WAIT4, uintptr(pid), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(wstatus)), uintptr(options), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(rusage)), 0, 0) wpid = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func KeyctlInt(cmd int, arg2 int, arg3 int, arg4 int, arg5 int) (ret int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_KEYCTL, uintptr(cmd), uintptr(arg2), uintptr(arg3), uintptr(arg4), uintptr(arg5), 0) ret = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func KeyctlBuffer(cmd int, arg2 int, buf []byte, arg5 int) (ret int, err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(buf) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&buf[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_KEYCTL, uintptr(cmd), uintptr(arg2), uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(buf)), uintptr(arg5), 0) ret = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func keyctlJoin(cmd int, arg2 string) (ret int, err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(arg2) if err != nil { return } r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_KEYCTL, uintptr(cmd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), 0) ret = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func keyctlSearch(cmd int, arg2 int, arg3 string, arg4 string, arg5 int) (ret int, err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(arg3) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(arg4) if err != nil { return } r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_KEYCTL, uintptr(cmd), uintptr(arg2), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), uintptr(arg5), 0) ret = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func keyctlIOV(cmd int, arg2 int, payload []Iovec, arg5 int) (err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(payload) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&payload[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_KEYCTL, uintptr(cmd), uintptr(arg2), uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(payload)), uintptr(arg5), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func keyctlDH(cmd int, arg2 *KeyctlDHParams, buf []byte) (ret int, err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(buf) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&buf[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_KEYCTL, uintptr(cmd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(arg2)), uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(buf)), 0, 0) ret = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func keyctlRestrictKeyringByType(cmd int, arg2 int, keyType string, restriction string) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(keyType) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(restriction) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_KEYCTL, uintptr(cmd), uintptr(arg2), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func keyctlRestrictKeyring(cmd int, arg2 int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_KEYCTL, uintptr(cmd), uintptr(arg2), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func ptrace(request int, pid int, addr uintptr, data uintptr) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_PTRACE, uintptr(request), uintptr(pid), uintptr(addr), uintptr(data), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func reboot(magic1 uint, magic2 uint, cmd int, arg string) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(arg) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_REBOOT, uintptr(magic1), uintptr(magic2), uintptr(cmd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func mount(source string, target string, fstype string, flags uintptr, data *byte) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(source) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(target) if err != nil { return } var _p2 *byte _p2, err = BytePtrFromString(fstype) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_MOUNT, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p2)), uintptr(flags), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(data)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Acct(path string) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_ACCT, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func AddKey(keyType string, description string, payload []byte, ringid int) (id int, err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(keyType) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(description) if err != nil { return } var _p2 unsafe.Pointer if len(payload) > 0 { _p2 = unsafe.Pointer(&payload[0]) } else { _p2 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_ADD_KEY, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), uintptr(_p2), uintptr(len(payload)), uintptr(ringid), 0) id = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Adjtimex(buf *Timex) (state int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_ADJTIMEX, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(buf)), 0, 0) state = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Capget(hdr *CapUserHeader, data *CapUserData) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_CAPGET, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(hdr)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(data)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Capset(hdr *CapUserHeader, data *CapUserData) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_CAPSET, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(hdr)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(data)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Chdir(path string) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_CHDIR, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Chroot(path string) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_CHROOT, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func ClockGetres(clockid int32, res *Timespec) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_CLOCK_GETRES, uintptr(clockid), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(res)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func ClockGettime(clockid int32, time *Timespec) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_CLOCK_GETTIME, uintptr(clockid), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(time)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func ClockNanosleep(clockid int32, flags int, request *Timespec, remain *Timespec) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_CLOCK_NANOSLEEP, uintptr(clockid), uintptr(flags), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(request)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(remain)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Close(fd int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_CLOSE, uintptr(fd), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func CopyFileRange(rfd int, roff *int64, wfd int, woff *int64, len int, flags int) (n int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_COPY_FILE_RANGE, uintptr(rfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(roff)), uintptr(wfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(woff)), uintptr(len), uintptr(flags)) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func DeleteModule(name string, flags int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(name) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_DELETE_MODULE, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(flags), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Dup(oldfd int) (fd int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_DUP, uintptr(oldfd), 0, 0) fd = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Dup3(oldfd int, newfd int, flags int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_DUP3, uintptr(oldfd), uintptr(newfd), uintptr(flags)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func EpollCreate1(flag int) (fd int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_EPOLL_CREATE1, uintptr(flag), 0, 0) fd = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func EpollCtl(epfd int, op int, fd int, event *EpollEvent) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall6(SYS_EPOLL_CTL, uintptr(epfd), uintptr(op), uintptr(fd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(event)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Eventfd(initval uint, flags int) (fd int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_EVENTFD2, uintptr(initval), uintptr(flags), 0) fd = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Exit(code int) { SyscallNoError(SYS_EXIT_GROUP, uintptr(code), 0, 0) return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Fallocate(fd int, mode uint32, off int64, len int64) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_FALLOCATE, uintptr(fd), uintptr(mode), uintptr(off), uintptr(off>>32), uintptr(len), uintptr(len>>32)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Fchdir(fd int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FCHDIR, uintptr(fd), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Fchmod(fd int, mode uint32) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FCHMOD, uintptr(fd), uintptr(mode), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Fchownat(dirfd int, path string, uid int, gid int, flags int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_FCHOWNAT, uintptr(dirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(uid), uintptr(gid), uintptr(flags), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func fcntl(fd int, cmd int, arg int) (val int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FCNTL, uintptr(fd), uintptr(cmd), uintptr(arg)) val = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Fdatasync(fd int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FDATASYNC, uintptr(fd), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Fgetxattr(fd int, attr string, dest []byte) (sz int, err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(attr) if err != nil { return } var _p1 unsafe.Pointer if len(dest) > 0 { _p1 = unsafe.Pointer(&dest[0]) } else { _p1 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_FGETXATTR, uintptr(fd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(_p1), uintptr(len(dest)), 0, 0) sz = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func FinitModule(fd int, params string, flags int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(params) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FINIT_MODULE, uintptr(fd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(flags)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Flistxattr(fd int, dest []byte) (sz int, err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(dest) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&dest[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FLISTXATTR, uintptr(fd), uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(dest))) sz = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Flock(fd int, how int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FLOCK, uintptr(fd), uintptr(how), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Fremovexattr(fd int, attr string) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(attr) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FREMOVEXATTR, uintptr(fd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Fsetxattr(fd int, attr string, dest []byte, flags int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(attr) if err != nil { return } var _p1 unsafe.Pointer if len(dest) > 0 { _p1 = unsafe.Pointer(&dest[0]) } else { _p1 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_FSETXATTR, uintptr(fd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(_p1), uintptr(len(dest)), uintptr(flags), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Fsync(fd int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FSYNC, uintptr(fd), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Getdents(fd int, buf []byte) (n int, err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(buf) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&buf[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_GETDENTS64, uintptr(fd), uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(buf))) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Getpgid(pid int) (pgid int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_GETPGID, uintptr(pid), 0, 0) pgid = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Getpid() (pid int) { r0, _ := RawSyscallNoError(SYS_GETPID, 0, 0, 0) pid = int(r0) return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Getppid() (ppid int) { r0, _ := RawSyscallNoError(SYS_GETPPID, 0, 0, 0) ppid = int(r0) return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Getpriority(which int, who int) (prio int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_GETPRIORITY, uintptr(which), uintptr(who), 0) prio = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Getrandom(buf []byte, flags int) (n int, err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(buf) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&buf[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_GETRANDOM, uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(buf)), uintptr(flags)) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Getrusage(who int, rusage *Rusage) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_GETRUSAGE, uintptr(who), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(rusage)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Getsid(pid int) (sid int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_GETSID, uintptr(pid), 0, 0) sid = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Gettid() (tid int) { r0, _ := RawSyscallNoError(SYS_GETTID, 0, 0, 0) tid = int(r0) return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Getxattr(path string, attr string, dest []byte) (sz int, err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(attr) if err != nil { return } var _p2 unsafe.Pointer if len(dest) > 0 { _p2 = unsafe.Pointer(&dest[0]) } else { _p2 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_GETXATTR, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), uintptr(_p2), uintptr(len(dest)), 0, 0) sz = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func InitModule(moduleImage []byte, params string) (err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(moduleImage) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&moduleImage[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(params) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_INIT_MODULE, uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(moduleImage)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1))) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func InotifyAddWatch(fd int, pathname string, mask uint32) (watchdesc int, err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(pathname) if err != nil { return } r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_INOTIFY_ADD_WATCH, uintptr(fd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(mask)) watchdesc = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func InotifyInit1(flags int) (fd int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_INOTIFY_INIT1, uintptr(flags), 0, 0) fd = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func InotifyRmWatch(fd int, watchdesc uint32) (success int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_INOTIFY_RM_WATCH, uintptr(fd), uintptr(watchdesc), 0) success = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Kill(pid int, sig syscall.Signal) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_KILL, uintptr(pid), uintptr(sig), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Klogctl(typ int, buf []byte) (n int, err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(buf) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&buf[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_SYSLOG, uintptr(typ), uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(buf))) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Lgetxattr(path string, attr string, dest []byte) (sz int, err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(attr) if err != nil { return } var _p2 unsafe.Pointer if len(dest) > 0 { _p2 = unsafe.Pointer(&dest[0]) } else { _p2 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_LGETXATTR, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), uintptr(_p2), uintptr(len(dest)), 0, 0) sz = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Listxattr(path string, dest []byte) (sz int, err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } var _p1 unsafe.Pointer if len(dest) > 0 { _p1 = unsafe.Pointer(&dest[0]) } else { _p1 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_LISTXATTR, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(_p1), uintptr(len(dest))) sz = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Llistxattr(path string, dest []byte) (sz int, err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } var _p1 unsafe.Pointer if len(dest) > 0 { _p1 = unsafe.Pointer(&dest[0]) } else { _p1 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_LLISTXATTR, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(_p1), uintptr(len(dest))) sz = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Lremovexattr(path string, attr string) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(attr) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_LREMOVEXATTR, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Lsetxattr(path string, attr string, data []byte, flags int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(attr) if err != nil { return } var _p2 unsafe.Pointer if len(data) > 0 { _p2 = unsafe.Pointer(&data[0]) } else { _p2 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_LSETXATTR, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), uintptr(_p2), uintptr(len(data)), uintptr(flags), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func MemfdCreate(name string, flags int) (fd int, err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(name) if err != nil { return } r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_MEMFD_CREATE, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(flags), 0) fd = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Mkdirat(dirfd int, path string, mode uint32) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_MKDIRAT, uintptr(dirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(mode)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Mknodat(dirfd int, path string, mode uint32, dev int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_MKNODAT, uintptr(dirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(mode), uintptr(dev), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Nanosleep(time *Timespec, leftover *Timespec) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_NANOSLEEP, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(time)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(leftover)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func PerfEventOpen(attr *PerfEventAttr, pid int, cpu int, groupFd int, flags int) (fd int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_PERF_EVENT_OPEN, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(attr)), uintptr(pid), uintptr(cpu), uintptr(groupFd), uintptr(flags), 0) fd = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func PivotRoot(newroot string, putold string) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(newroot) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(putold) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_PIVOT_ROOT, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func prlimit(pid int, resource int, newlimit *Rlimit, old *Rlimit) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall6(SYS_PRLIMIT64, uintptr(pid), uintptr(resource), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(newlimit)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(old)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Prctl(option int, arg2 uintptr, arg3 uintptr, arg4 uintptr, arg5 uintptr) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_PRCTL, uintptr(option), uintptr(arg2), uintptr(arg3), uintptr(arg4), uintptr(arg5), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Pselect(nfd int, r *FdSet, w *FdSet, e *FdSet, timeout *Timespec, sigmask *Sigset_t) (n int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_PSELECT6, uintptr(nfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(r)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(w)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(e)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(timeout)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(sigmask))) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func read(fd int, p []byte) (n int, err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(p) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&p[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_READ, uintptr(fd), uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(p))) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Removexattr(path string, attr string) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(attr) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_REMOVEXATTR, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Renameat2(olddirfd int, oldpath string, newdirfd int, newpath string, flags uint) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(oldpath) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(newpath) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_RENAMEAT2, uintptr(olddirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(newdirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), uintptr(flags), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func RequestKey(keyType string, description string, callback string, destRingid int) (id int, err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(keyType) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(description) if err != nil { return } var _p2 *byte _p2, err = BytePtrFromString(callback) if err != nil { return } r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_REQUEST_KEY, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p2)), uintptr(destRingid), 0, 0) id = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Setdomainname(p []byte) (err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(p) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&p[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_SETDOMAINNAME, uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(p)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Sethostname(p []byte) (err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(p) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&p[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_SETHOSTNAME, uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(p)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Setpgid(pid int, pgid int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_SETPGID, uintptr(pid), uintptr(pgid), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Setsid() (pid int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_SETSID, 0, 0, 0) pid = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Settimeofday(tv *Timeval) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_SETTIMEOFDAY, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(tv)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Setns(fd int, nstype int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_SETNS, uintptr(fd), uintptr(nstype), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Setpriority(which int, who int, prio int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_SETPRIORITY, uintptr(which), uintptr(who), uintptr(prio)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Setxattr(path string, attr string, data []byte, flags int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(attr) if err != nil { return } var _p2 unsafe.Pointer if len(data) > 0 { _p2 = unsafe.Pointer(&data[0]) } else { _p2 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_SETXATTR, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), uintptr(_p2), uintptr(len(data)), uintptr(flags), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func signalfd(fd int, sigmask *Sigset_t, maskSize uintptr, flags int) (newfd int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_SIGNALFD4, uintptr(fd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(sigmask)), uintptr(maskSize), uintptr(flags), 0, 0) newfd = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Statx(dirfd int, path string, flags int, mask int, stat *Statx_t) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_STATX, uintptr(dirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(flags), uintptr(mask), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(stat)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Sync() { SyscallNoError(SYS_SYNC, 0, 0, 0) return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Syncfs(fd int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_SYNCFS, uintptr(fd), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Sysinfo(info *Sysinfo_t) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_SYSINFO, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(info)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Tee(rfd int, wfd int, len int, flags int) (n int64, err error) { r0, r1, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_TEE, uintptr(rfd), uintptr(wfd), uintptr(len), uintptr(flags), 0, 0) n = int64(int64(r1)<<32 | int64(r0)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Tgkill(tgid int, tid int, sig syscall.Signal) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_TGKILL, uintptr(tgid), uintptr(tid), uintptr(sig)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Times(tms *Tms) (ticks uintptr, err error) { r0, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_TIMES, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(tms)), 0, 0) ticks = uintptr(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Umask(mask int) (oldmask int) { r0, _ := RawSyscallNoError(SYS_UMASK, uintptr(mask), 0, 0) oldmask = int(r0) return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Uname(buf *Utsname) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_UNAME, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(buf)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Unmount(target string, flags int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(target) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_UMOUNT2, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(flags), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Unshare(flags int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_UNSHARE, uintptr(flags), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func write(fd int, p []byte) (n int, err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(p) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&p[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_WRITE, uintptr(fd), uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(p))) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func exitThread(code int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_EXIT, uintptr(code), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func readlen(fd int, p *byte, np int) (n int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_READ, uintptr(fd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(p)), uintptr(np)) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func writelen(fd int, p *byte, np int) (n int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_WRITE, uintptr(fd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(p)), uintptr(np)) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func munmap(addr uintptr, length uintptr) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_MUNMAP, uintptr(addr), uintptr(length), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Madvise(b []byte, advice int) (err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(b) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&b[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_MADVISE, uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(b)), uintptr(advice)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Mprotect(b []byte, prot int) (err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(b) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&b[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_MPROTECT, uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(b)), uintptr(prot)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Mlock(b []byte) (err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(b) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&b[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_MLOCK, uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(b)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Mlockall(flags int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_MLOCKALL, uintptr(flags), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Msync(b []byte, flags int) (err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(b) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&b[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_MSYNC, uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(b)), uintptr(flags)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Munlock(b []byte) (err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(b) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&b[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_MUNLOCK, uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(b)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Munlockall() (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_MUNLOCKALL, 0, 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func faccessat(dirfd int, path string, mode uint32) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FACCESSAT, uintptr(dirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(mode)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func nameToHandleAt(dirFD int, pathname string, fh *fileHandle, mountID *_C_int, flags int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(pathname) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_NAME_TO_HANDLE_AT, uintptr(dirFD), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(fh)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(mountID)), uintptr(flags), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func openByHandleAt(mountFD int, fh *fileHandle, flags int) (fd int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_OPEN_BY_HANDLE_AT, uintptr(mountFD), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(fh)), uintptr(flags)) fd = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func pipe(p *[2]_C_int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_PIPE, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(p)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func pipe2(p *[2]_C_int, flags int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_PIPE2, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(p)), uintptr(flags), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Dup2(oldfd int, newfd int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_DUP2, uintptr(oldfd), uintptr(newfd), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func EpollCreate(size int) (fd int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_EPOLL_CREATE, uintptr(size), 0, 0) fd = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func EpollWait(epfd int, events []EpollEvent, msec int) (n int, err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(events) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&events[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_EPOLL_WAIT, uintptr(epfd), uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(events)), uintptr(msec), 0, 0) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Fadvise(fd int, offset int64, length int64, advice int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_FADVISE64_64, uintptr(fd), uintptr(offset), uintptr(offset>>32), uintptr(length), uintptr(length>>32), uintptr(advice)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Fchown(fd int, uid int, gid int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FCHOWN32, uintptr(fd), uintptr(uid), uintptr(gid)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Fstat(fd int, stat *Stat_t) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FSTAT64, uintptr(fd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(stat)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Fstatat(dirfd int, path string, stat *Stat_t, flags int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_FSTATAT64, uintptr(dirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(stat)), uintptr(flags), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Ftruncate(fd int, length int64) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FTRUNCATE64, uintptr(fd), uintptr(length), uintptr(length>>32)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Getegid() (egid int) { r0, _ := RawSyscallNoError(SYS_GETEGID32, 0, 0, 0) egid = int(r0) return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Geteuid() (euid int) { r0, _ := RawSyscallNoError(SYS_GETEUID32, 0, 0, 0) euid = int(r0) return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Getgid() (gid int) { r0, _ := RawSyscallNoError(SYS_GETGID32, 0, 0, 0) gid = int(r0) return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Getuid() (uid int) { r0, _ := RawSyscallNoError(SYS_GETUID32, 0, 0, 0) uid = int(r0) return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func InotifyInit() (fd int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_INOTIFY_INIT, 0, 0, 0) fd = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Ioperm(from int, num int, on int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_IOPERM, uintptr(from), uintptr(num), uintptr(on)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Iopl(level int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_IOPL, uintptr(level), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Lchown(path string, uid int, gid int) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_LCHOWN32, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(uid), uintptr(gid)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Lstat(path string, stat *Stat_t) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_LSTAT64, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(stat)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Pread(fd int, p []byte, offset int64) (n int, err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(p) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&p[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_PREAD64, uintptr(fd), uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(p)), uintptr(offset), uintptr(offset>>32), 0) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Pwrite(fd int, p []byte, offset int64) (n int, err error) { var _p0 unsafe.Pointer if len(p) > 0 { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&p[0]) } else { _p0 = unsafe.Pointer(&_zero) } r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_PWRITE64, uintptr(fd), uintptr(_p0), uintptr(len(p)), uintptr(offset), uintptr(offset>>32), 0) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Renameat(olddirfd int, oldpath string, newdirfd int, newpath string) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(oldpath) if err != nil { return } var _p1 *byte _p1, err = BytePtrFromString(newpath) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_RENAMEAT, uintptr(olddirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(newdirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p1)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func sendfile(outfd int, infd int, offset *int64, count int) (written int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_SENDFILE64, uintptr(outfd), uintptr(infd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(offset)), uintptr(count), 0, 0) written = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Setfsgid(gid int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_SETFSGID32, uintptr(gid), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Setfsuid(uid int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_SETFSUID32, uintptr(uid), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Setregid(rgid int, egid int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_SETREGID32, uintptr(rgid), uintptr(egid), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Setresgid(rgid int, egid int, sgid int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_SETRESGID32, uintptr(rgid), uintptr(egid), uintptr(sgid)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Setresuid(ruid int, euid int, suid int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_SETRESUID32, uintptr(ruid), uintptr(euid), uintptr(suid)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Setreuid(ruid int, euid int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_SETREUID32, uintptr(ruid), uintptr(euid), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Splice(rfd int, roff *int64, wfd int, woff *int64, len int, flags int) (n int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_SPLICE, uintptr(rfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(roff)), uintptr(wfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(woff)), uintptr(len), uintptr(flags)) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Stat(path string, stat *Stat_t) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_STAT64, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(stat)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func SyncFileRange(fd int, off int64, n int64, flags int) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_SYNC_FILE_RANGE, uintptr(fd), uintptr(off), uintptr(off>>32), uintptr(n), uintptr(n>>32), uintptr(flags)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Truncate(path string, length int64) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_TRUNCATE64, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(length), uintptr(length>>32)) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Ustat(dev int, ubuf *Ustat_t) (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_USTAT, uintptr(dev), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(ubuf)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func getgroups(n int, list *_Gid_t) (nn int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_GETGROUPS32, uintptr(n), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(list)), 0) nn = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func setgroups(n int, list *_Gid_t) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_SETGROUPS32, uintptr(n), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(list)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Select(nfd int, r *FdSet, w *FdSet, e *FdSet, timeout *Timeval) (n int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS__NEWSELECT, uintptr(nfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(r)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(w)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(e)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(timeout)), 0) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func mmap2(addr uintptr, length uintptr, prot int, flags int, fd int, pageOffset uintptr) (xaddr uintptr, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall6(SYS_MMAP2, uintptr(addr), uintptr(length), uintptr(prot), uintptr(flags), uintptr(fd), uintptr(pageOffset)) xaddr = uintptr(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Pause() (err error) { _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_PAUSE, 0, 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func getrlimit(resource int, rlim *rlimit32) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_GETRLIMIT, uintptr(resource), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(rlim)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func setrlimit(resource int, rlim *rlimit32) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_SETRLIMIT, uintptr(resource), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(rlim)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func futimesat(dirfd int, path string, times *[2]Timeval) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_FUTIMESAT, uintptr(dirfd), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(times))) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Gettimeofday(tv *Timeval) (err error) { _, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_GETTIMEOFDAY, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(tv)), 0, 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Time(t *Time_t) (tt Time_t, err error) { r0, _, e1 := RawSyscall(SYS_TIME, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(t)), 0, 0) tt = Time_t(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func Utime(path string, buf *Utimbuf) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_UTIME, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(buf)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func utimes(path string, times *[2]Timeval) (err error) { var _p0 *byte _p0, err = BytePtrFromString(path) if err != nil { return } _, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_UTIMES, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(_p0)), uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(times)), 0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return } // THIS FILE IS GENERATED BY THE COMMAND AT THE TOP; DO NOT EDIT func poll(fds *PollFd, nfds int, timeout int) (n int, err error) { r0, _, e1 := Syscall(SYS_POLL, uintptr(unsafe.Pointer(fds)), uintptr(nfds), uintptr(timeout)) n = int(r0) if e1 != 0 { err = errnoErr(e1) } return }

Even a big discount needs an eye-catching ad campaign. Ikea's new magazine ad is trying to catch something else. Award-winning Swedish advertising agency Akestam Holst created an ad for Scandinavian furniture giant that doubles as a pregnancy test, Adweek reported Wednesday. The ad encourages women to dab urine on a modified pregnancy test strip included at the bottom of the magazine ad and wait a few minutes. But instead of a simple change in color to indicate a pregnancy, a positive test result reveals a roughly 50 percent discount on a crib — if the respondent is a member of Ikea's loyalty program. "You don´t have to hand in any ad with urine on it or anything," Ikea Sweden spokesman Magnus Jakobsson told CNBC in an email. "Simply join IKEAs Family Club." "Peeing on this ad may change your life," the ad's headline reads. "If you are expecting, you will get a surprise right here in the ad." The promotional campaign is being published in Amelia magazine, an influential Swedish women's magazine. The ad was created in collaboration with Mercene Labs, Adweek reported. A video released by the agency shows a positive test result slashing the price of an Ikea Sundvik crib to 495 kronor, or about $61. Asked by CNBC for comment about the ad, Ikea spokesman Patrik Nygren-Bonnier responded in part: "Everyday life can be dull at times, but it also contains those magical, life-changing moments. We want to be right there when they happen, and through the 'where life happens' campaign we take that idea all the way. What could be more true to this than the moment of creating life?" Read the full story on Adweek here.

Following his defeat to Democrat John Bel Edwards in Saturday’s Louisiana gubernatorial election, GOP Sen. David Vitter announced that he will retire from the Senate next year, ensuring another busy year of campaigning in a state with no shortage of ambitious politicians. Voters’ rejection of Vitter was a stunning turn of events for the U.S. senator, who has been a political powerhouse in the state for years and started his campaign nearly two years ago as the race’s front-runner. However, after months of attacks, include those about his 2007 prostitution scandal, Vitter barely defeated his two Republican challengers in last month’s open primary and finished second behind Edwards by roughly 14 percentage points. Vitter made the announcement during an appearance to campaign supporters in the New Orleans suburbs Saturday evening after it became apparent that he would not win the governor’s race. To be sure, Democrats didn’t expect to win the Louisiana governorship, considering Republicans now control every governorship and state legislature in the Deep South. And when Vitter entered the race in January 2014 as the frontrunner, he was pulling in tremendous sums of campaign cash and firing up a dominant political machine that he’s used to get himself and his allies regularly elected to Louisiana offices. A more promising red state Democrat could hardly have been found than Edwards, a Catholic social conservative from a family of rural law enforcement officers who graduated from West Point and served eight years of active duty in the Army. Louisiana has all-party primaries. “I’ve reached my personal term limit,” Vitter said as he conceded the gubernatorial race. “I’m very confident we’re going to elect another strong conservative to fill this Senate seat next year.” One thing is clear: After a big loss in a damaging gubernatorial race, Vitter’s decision to step aside increases Republicans’ chances of holding his Senate seat. Edwards focused on his West Point degree and military resume, and he pledged a bipartisan leadership style. “The people have chosen hope over scorn, over negativity and over distrust of others,” Edwards said in his victory speech, before leading a second-line parade with a jazz band through the French Quarter hotel ballroom. Vitter’s decision likely comes as a relief to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has an obligation to protect incumbents and would rather devote its resources to swing states like Ohio, New Hampshire and Wisconsin than to helping a damaged red-state incumbent. Vitter is frequently a thorn in the side of the GOP leaders who control the campaign committee, but more importantly, Republicans would rather not have to spend money defending territory their presidential nominee will easily carry by a double-digit margin. Neither Edwards nor Vitter offered detailed roadmaps for tackling the budget woes, and the general outlines they touted were largely similar in approach. But it apparently didn’t work. “I had decided when I decided to make this race with (wife) Wendy that I wanted to pursue new challenges outside the Senate no matter what. Three of the potential Republican candidates — Boustany, Fleming and Kennedy — endorsed and campaigned with Vitter, hoping he would appoint them to fill his seat once he took control in Baton Rouge. The race has also been a slugfest of attack ads and one of the most expensive governor’s races in Louisiana history, with at least $30 million spent by candidates and outside groups. Republican strategists in Washington had expressed reluctance to put money behind him, preferring a candidate who would be an easier sell in a tricky election year for Senate Republicans. Vitter was thought to be that Republican, given his overwhelming fundraising advantage, unquestioned conservative reputation and proven skill at crushing challengers. Vitter attacked the other Republicans as free-spending liberals while they labeled Vitter “vicious” and “a liar,” bringing up the prostitution scandal in debates. Madam.” He had trouble uniting Republicans after a blistering primary competition in which Vitter trashed two GOP rivals and received heavy criticism for his scorched-earth political style. Soon after, a private investigator working for the Vitter campaign was arrested after surreptitiously filming a group of men at a cafe outside New Orleans – a gathering that included another private investigator, one who had tracked down the escort in the online video. Kennedy spent about $1 million on television advertising for his non-competitive 2015 race in an effort to boost his name identification, and he still has about $2.5 million he could transfer to a federal super PAC set up to back him. Vitter, 54, limped into Saturday’s runoff after finishing far behind Edwards, 49, in the primary, and became the standard-bearer for a Republican Party splintered by infighting. Edwards, in turn, tried to keep the focus away from party or ideology and on his military background, Vitter’s scandal and the increasingly unpopular Jindal, who after two terms was barred by term limits from seeking re-election. Edwards’ victory may give Democrats an emotional boost heading into the Senate contest, but it’s unlikely any Republican who emerges from the pack will be as damaged as Vitter. Still, Edwards returned to a theme he had emphasized in contrasting himself with his opponent. “I will always be honest,” he said. “I will never embarrass you. With his anti-abortion and pro-gun stances and tenure as an Army Ranger, Edwards downplayed his Democratic roots, positioned himself as a moderate and said he’d govern in a way that unites the state, claiming Vitter would bring his divisive, Washington-style politics to Louisiana. Vitter said Edwards was misrepresenting a record filled with votes supporting teacher unions and trial lawyers and opposing business interests and education reform efforts. “His campaign is built on a myth that he is some sort of a conservative, that we don’t differ on the issues, when we definitely do,” Vitter said. The candidates did little to mask their distaste for each other in the two televised runoff debates, both of which escalated into near shouting matches at various points.

EXPLORING WRECKS IN THE GULF OF FINLAND Badewanne explore the German destroyer Z36 On a dark, stormy December night in 1944 a fleet of five German warships was cruising the labyrinthine waters of the Gulf of Finland. Due to navigation error two of the ships ran into their own German minefield between Porkkala and Naissaari and were lost. Badewanne, a Finnish, non-profit organization representing a group of voluntary divers that have been documenting shipwrecks in the Gulf of Finland for more than 15 years, recently dove down to one of the destroyers, the Z36. Juha Flinkman, one of the Badewanne divers, gives us a guided tour: “Diving to the wreck of Zerstörer (Destroyer) Z36 is a unique and eerie experience. As you glide down the shotline into the darkness, the beam of your light first picks up a scary mess of mast, radar aerials and – trawl, lots of it! Carefully avoiding the trawl you descend towards the superstructure past a quadruple 20 mm flak gun wrapped in netting, barrels sticking through the mesh. Passing over the port side of the bridge wing, you suddenly stare at the muzzles of a twin 20 mm Flak gun mounted on the fo’csle deck. The barrels vainly aim at the unreachable sky far above. This flak gun is situated a little aft of “Bertha Geschütz”, that is B-gun of the main armament of 127 mm guns. These Mob 36b type destroyers weren’t supposed to have any such armament here, but what the heck, maybe the Skipper just wanted some extra anti-aircraft hardware installed! Later, swimming from the gracefully arching bows towards midships, your lights pick up mighty Rheinmetall-Borsig barrels of Anton and Bertha Geschütze still defiantly pointing forwards, but never to be fired again. Even the riflings inside the barrels are clearly visible. Even when diving in the clear parts of the wreck, the ever-present trawl netting looms, if not in your vision, then in your mind. You must always be aware of this danger – there is no room for carelessness. This wreck is very big. It was distinctly once a very powerful warship, but now lays with her back broken on the seafloor, wrapped in trawl, and her payload of death strewn all around. A dark and a lonely place.”

Introduction ============ Pelvic fracture urethral injury (PFUI) is a rare, potentially devastating genitourinary trauma, which occurs in up to 10% of pelvic fractures ([@r1],[@r2]). The injury occurs secondary to pelvic fracture sheering forces that tear the bulbomembraneous urethra in the area of the prostate apex or external sphincter ([@r3]). A well-described surgical procedure to treat this injury is to perform a posterior urethroplasty via a perineal approach, which has an 85% to 97% success rate ([@r4],[@r5]). However, this is usually delayed for several months to allow urethral inflammation to resolve ([@r3]) leading to a potentially cumbersome proximal urinary diversion with a suprapubic cystostomy tube (SPT) ([@r6]-[@r8]). An alternative to SPT placement alone for the management of acute PFUI is immediate primary urethral realignment (PR). Originally PR was described via an open approach with the passage of sounds or catheters through the pelvic hematoma and urethral defect ([@r9],[@r10]). More recently, PR has been accomplished endoscopically with the use of a simultaneous antegrade and retrograde cystoscope, which is used to bridge the urethral injury gap ([@r11]). Proponents of PR report up to 50% of patients undergoing this technique may avoid prolonged SPT, stricture, and urethroplasty altogether ([@r10]-[@r12]). Further, in bringing the severed ends of the urethra in closer proximity, PR may reduce the complexity of future urethroplasty if ultimately required ([@r12]). There are several problems in the existing literature addressing acute management of PFUI with PR. Most studies are small, retrospective series reporting disparate efficacy of urethral realignment ([@r11]-[@r14]). Bias is potentially introduced into study results, as PR may be easier to perform in patients with minor disruptions or partial urethral injuries, which may heal regardless if PR is performed. This selection bias may make it appear the PR has a greater success than in reality. The current evidence for PFUI management is grade 3A (systematic review of case-control studies) in support of PR ([@r15]). Yet despite a grade 3A recommendation, studies have demonstrated that PR can worsen injuries ([@r16]), expose the patient to additional operations during trauma management ([@r4]). PR has been associated with higher risk of sexual dysfunction and incontinence ([@r11],[@r16]). The controversy over the benefits of PR continues to be highly debated among urologists involved in trauma management; however, these arguments are generally backed with poor quality evidence and opinion. Therefore, we designed a prospective cohort multi-institutional study comparing PR in patients with complete urethral disruption versus SPT placement. We hypothesize that this study will determine the utility of PR compared to SPT for the acute management of PFUI. Methods ======= Study design ------------ A prospective observational cohort trial was designed to analyze outcomes between two PFUI management protocols. After receiving individual medical center institutional review board approval, participating centers will begin enrolling patients after PFUI. A centralized de-identified database via Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) will be used for data entry. The study has been advertised through the American Association for Surgery of Trauma Multi-Institutional Trials Committee (<http://www.aast.org/Research/MultiInstitutionalStudies.aspx>). The inclusion criteria for this study includes: age \>18 years old, male gender, blunt mechanism, and the presence of a traumatic pelvic fracture. Exclusion criteria will include patients treated outside of the agreed treatment protocol at a given center. We will also exclude patients that did not undergo cystoscopy to confirm a full transection prior to undergoing a SPT placement or PR. Other exclusion criteria include minor or partial injuries, death, inability to remove a Foley catheter due to injuries (i.e., spinal cord injury, severe head trauma), and loss to follow up. The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on request. Treatment groups ---------------- Two treatment groups were developed ([*Figure 1*](#f1){ref-type="fig"}). All patients presenting with PFUI to respective participating sites will be entered in the study. Prior to study initiation, centers must designate which treatment group they will join, which may be the closest to their current practice or if there is no preference will be assigned by the primary investigator to balance the number of centers in each group. If patients are treated outside of the treatment group for a given center, they will be excluded from the study. Each patient will undergo an attempt at simple retrograde catheter placement and if this fails the patient will undergo cystoscopy and a gentle attempt to traverse the gap and place a catheter retrograde with the scope. Usually this would be accomplished by passing the scope past the defect into the bladder and leaving a wire in the bladder exiting the meatus and penis. Then using a Seldinger technique, a catheter is placed over the wire, which serves as a guide, into the bladder. Among those failing retrograde catheter placement by attempting both methods, urologists will manage the injury with PR (endoscopic or open) (group 1) or SPT placement (group 2) as outlined in [*Figure 1*](#f1){ref-type="fig"}. {#f1} Important aspects of these treatment groups are the need to perform retrograde cystoscopy exam and attempted retrograde catheter placement, regardless of whether patients are being treated with PR or SPT placement alone. The purpose of this is to eliminate selection bias and create homogenous comparator groups by determining if patients have partial or minor urethral injuries traversed easily with a retrograde cystoscope. Demographics will be collected including age, BMI, comorbidities (diabetes, stroke, peripheral vascular disease, myocardial infarction within 6 months, congestive heart, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, end stage renal disease, failure, cirrhosis, tobacco use, alcohol use, illicit drug use). Additional index injury characteristics will include overall injury severity score ([@r17]), concomitant injuries, method of urethral injury diagnosis (urethrogram, cystogram, or cystoscopy), injury management, and trauma/urinary complications quantified by the Clavien-Dindo grading system ([@r18]). Sexual function will be followed with the Sexual Health Inventory for Men (SHIM) ([@r19]). Potential delayed complications including urinary tract infection, fistula, urethral diverticulum will also be recorded. Study aims ---------- Aim 1: determine if there is a significant reduction in urethral obstruction based upon PR. Aim 2: determine if urethroplasty complexity is reduced by PR. Aim 3: evaluated the effect of PR on various clinical outcomes and complications associated with PFUI. Outcomes -------- Primary and secondary outcomes are summarized in [*Table 1*](#t1){ref-type="table"}. ###### Outcome measures Outcome measures Data point/data collection tool --------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- Primary outcome    Urethral obstruction Atraumatic passage of a 17-F flexible cystoscope Secondary outcomes    Treatment rates for urethral obstruction Dilation DVIU Urethroplasty CIC Indwelling catheter Urinary diversion    Urethroplasty complexity Gap length Bulbar mobilization length Corporal splitting Inferior/total pubectomy Corporal rerouting Total obstruction Diverticulum Fistula    Erectile dysfunction Sexual Health Inventory for Men (SHIM) ED intervention    (I) Pharmacologic    (II) Surgical    Incontinence rate Procedures for incontinence    (I) Bulking injections    (II) Artificial urinary sphincter    (III) Urethral sling    (IV) Other incontinence procedures    Post-injury complications Clavien-Dindo grading DVIU, direct vision internal urethrotomy; CIC, clean intermittent catheterization; ED, erectile dysfunction. ### Primary outcome #### Urethral obstruction Urethral obstruction will be determined by inability to atraumatically pass a flexible cystoscope retrograde through the urethra. Prior studies have demonstrated the large heterogeneity in urethral stricture definitions and follow up practice patterns ([@r20],[@r21]). Direct exam of the urethra at the site of injury or previous urethroplasty is a very accurate way of determining anatomic occurrence of a stricture or obstruction ([@r21]). Functional success is not as well defined and can be based upon patient's symptoms or need for additional procedures. Given the large number participating centers, it is not practical to monitor compliance with the extensive questionnaires needed to define patient's symptoms and outcomes. ### Secondary outcomes #### Urethral obstruction treatment Treatment rate of urethral obstruction after injury, including: urethroplasty, direct vision internal urethrotomy (DVIU), urethral dilation, intermittent self-dilation, chronic dependence upon Foley catheter or SPT due to obstruction, and other types of urinary diversion. The need for secondary procedures including urethroplasty is a very important outcome measurement for the study. For instance, patients may experience obstruction of the urethra as assessed in the primary outcome; however, they may be asymptomatic and not require urethroplasty. Alternatively, these men, although symptomatic, might respond well to less invasive management, such as simple endoscopic treatment (DVIU or dilation) and may not need urethroplasty. #### Urethroplasty complexity Urethroplasty complexity as measured by: the length of the urethral gap, degree of bulbar mobilization, need for: corporal splitting, inferior or total pubectomy, corporal rerouting, abdominal-perineal approach, and presence of urethral diverticulum, urethral fistula, or complete obstruction of the urethra at the time of urethroplasty (versus a patent but narrowed urethral lumen). Advocates of PR argue that even if the procedure does not have as much success as some studies report, urethroplasty is made much easier, because the severed ends of the urethra are brought into rough alignment and there may be less of a urethral gap or there may be a persistent stenotic lumen rather than complete obstruction ([@r12]). Posterior urethroplasty has been described as a step-wise approach with four steps, each used to increase distal bulbar mobility to reach the prostate apex. The four steps are (I) bulbar mobilization; (II) corporal splitting; (III) inferior pubectomy; and (IV) corporal rerouting. Urethroplasties have been described as more complex when more steps are required, however, assessing urethroplasty complexity is not as simple, as surgeons may use different techniques at different frequencies depending upon their training and experience with posterior urethroplasty. A good example of this is corporal rerouting, which is rarely utilized by surgeons trained at the San Francisco General Hospital and the mentees of Dr. Jack McAninch, but utilized in up to 35% of patients treated at Duke and would likely have a higher incidence in patients treated by surgeons trained by Dr. George Webster ([@r5],[@r20]). Some intraoperative variables, however, should be consistent between surgeons, such as the measurement of the urethral gap, persistent urethral lumen rather than complete obliteration, and the presence of fistula or diverticulum. #### Erectile dysfunction (ED) Rates of ED will be measured by the SHIM, use of medical and/or surgical management, and questions about the presence of ED ([@r19]). Studies have demonstrated moderate correlation between SHIM and patient ED self-assessment ([@r22]). There have been few comparisons of ED in the more recent series of PR utilizing endoscopic realignment ([@r11],[@r16],[@r23]). The SHIM has been used for assessment of ED post operatively after urethroplasty and will be administered in follow-up and after urethral specific interventions, such as urethroplasty. #### Incontinence Similar to ED rates, incontinence has only been compared between small PFUI management series ([@r11],[@r16],[@r23],[@r24]). In this study, incontinence rates will primarily be determined by interventions for incontinence. These interventions include artificial urinary sphincter placement, male urethral sling placement, injection of urethral bulking agent, and bladder neck reconstruction. Due to the large number of participating sites and the heterogeneity of multi-center data collection with regard to pad weight or incontinence questionnaires, these measures will not be used as outcome measures. Sample size determination ------------------------- Ninety-six men (48 per treatment group) will be required to detect a 15% difference in stricture rates between groups \[80% power, 0.05 significance level for a 2-sided z-test of proportions, assuming a 20% loss to follow up or death rate and an intracluster correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.03\]. Since each institution will perform the acute management protocol of choice, we hypothesize this will invariably cause treatment effect clustering. In order to account for this, our sample size estimate was adjusted with an ICC or "the proportion of variation in the outcome that can be explained by the variation between clusters". Specifically, our sample size estimates were multiplied by a design effect of: 1+ (n−1) × ICC (where n is the cluster size, which we assumed to be 3 patients/center) ([@r25]). Demographics, index trauma characteristics, and retrograde urethrogram and/or cystoscopy findings (complete versus partial urethral disruption) will be compared between groups. The outcomes of interest as described above will be compared using both univariate and multivariate Cox regression models, given our interest in time-to-event outcomes, which include: acute injury complications, rates of subsequent urethral stricture, number of subsequent urethral procedures, complexity of urethroplasty, ED, and incontinence. Kaplan-Meier plots will be used to visualize outcomes. Treatment and analysis groups are summarized in [*Figure 2*](#f2){ref-type="fig"}. {#f2} Trial duration -------------- Busy trauma centers manage/treat PFUI approximately 1--6× per year, thus our goal is to recruit at least 25 trauma centers and enroll patients for 3 years with a goal of 100 total patients with complete urethral disruption (50 per arm). Patients will be followed for the duration of the study or a minimum of a year. The trial duration will therefore be planned for 4 years. Safety ------ All sites will obtain approval from their respective institutional review board (IRB). The data, which would be collected and de-identified would not pose any risk to the patients. A centralized de-identified database via REDCap will be used for data entry housed at University of Utah. REDCap allows protection of de-identified data by secure access based upon invitations to investigators and staff only. In addition, participating institutions are made a 'designated access group' and can only view and modify their own data. Only the primary investigator and designated personnel can view all of the de-identified data. Results ======= Data accrual began January 1^st^, 2016. Trauma centers have joined the study slowly over time. If centers followed a consistent group protocol than they entered data retrospectively back to January 1^st^ 2016. If they did not follow a consistent method than once their IRB was approved they began following the designated group protocol. Discussion ========== Acute management of PFUI remains a controversial topic primarily due to the lack of high quality evidence. While urinary diversion with SPT is an established initial PFUI management, numerous retrospective studies over the last 3 decades have demonstrated potential benefit of PR by reducing need for and or complexity of subsequent urethroplasty. No prospective study to date has evaluated the potential of PR in preventing urethral obstruction or the need for urethroplasty as compared to initial SPT diversion. The major theory supporting urethral realignment is the ability of catheter placement to allow the torn ends of the urethra to heal together without a stricture ([@r9]). Retrospective series have demonstrated that PR may decrease the need for subsequent urethroplasty ([@r12]-[@r14],[@r26]). Notably, Mouraviev *et al.*, in one of the largest studies of 91 PFUI patients found a stricture rate in only 49% of the PR group as compared to 100% in the SPT diversion group ([@r12]). This finding was corroborated by a recent meta-analysis by Barrett *et al.* evaluating nine studies, which also showed a decreased stricture rate among those undergoing PR compared to SPT placement alone ([@r13]). In this meta-analysis, the reduction was significantly lower in the PR group \[odds ratio (OR) =0.12, 95% CI: 0.04--0.41, P\<0.001\]. In contrast to these studies, a more recent contemporary series of 19 patients from Harborview, Seattle, Washington (a high-volume trauma and reconstructive urology center) reported that patients undergoing PR, nearly universally required urethroplasty when they had a full urethral transection ([@r23]). Furthermore, PR is not without risk in the acute injury period. PR, either endoscopically or open, can be difficult and may increase complications associated with the urethral injury and is best suited for the stable trauma patient ([@r4]). Often, posterior urethral distraction injuries may be associated with a pelvic hematoma. In a complete distraction injury, urethral instrumentation may lead to hematoma infection due to foreign body exposure, likely colonize shortly after placement ([@r4]). In addition to the immediate concerns, some studies have suggested that in the trauma population, the complication rate for urethroplasty in patients who have undergone prior urethral instrumentation might be higher, arguing against PR ([@r3],[@r16],[@r24]). Early studies also suggested that ED and incontinence were higher in men undergoing PR. More recent studies suggest these complications are likely related to the underlying traumatic injury, rather than the choice of immediate urethral injury management ([@r27]) however, this has yet to be established in any longitudinal comparison study as proposed here. Implicit in outcomes research is the need for longitudinal data bases that not only capture disease/injury incidence, prevalence, and management but also follow post intervention functional status, patient reported health status, quality of life, and resource utilization ([@r28]). Although inferior to a prospective randomized controlled study, numerous data base projects have demonstrated the ability to pool data and produce meaningful prospective, observational research ([@r29]). Due to the relatively sparse incidence of PFUI, one could describe this as a rare event as it affects a small percentage of the US population ([@r30]). As such, many barriers to data collection have prevented randomized controlled trials of PFUI management. As we propose in this study, multi-institutional prospective cohort data bases have been suggested as a means to increase study power in rare disease processes ([@r30]). The current proposed, prospective multi-institutional study would determine the utility of acute urethral realignment after PFUI and would increase the management level of evidence from 3A (systematic review of case-control studies) to 2B (individual cohort study) ([@r15]). None. *Conflicts of Interest:* This study is registered on clinicaltrials.gov (identifier NCT03195179). *Ethical Statement:* The trial is in recruitment phase, all sites will obtain approval from their respective institutional review board (IRB). A waiver of consent for the study was granted by participating institutional review boards. [^1]: *Contributions:* (I) Conception and design: JB Myers, RA Moses; (II) Administrative support: RA Moses; (III) Provision of study materials or patients: All authors; (IV) Collection and assembly of data: All authors; (V) Data analysis and interpretation: JB Myers, RA Moses; (VI) Manuscript writing: All authors; (VII) Final approval of manuscript: All authors.

Q: Injecting string into src attribute I am attempting to add to a src of multiple images using jQuery as follows: <img src="image.jpg"> to <img src="image-thumb.jpg"> For some reason I can't seem to wrap my head around this. Any ideas? A: First, add a class to the img tags you want the script to affect (e.g. <img src="image.jpg" class="foo">). Then, use jQuery's .attr() method to set the src attribute of all the img tags you want: $('.foo').attr('src', 'image-thumb.jpg'); If your images are named differently and you just want to add -thumb to each one all at once, use a callback function: $('.foo').attr('src', function(index, attr) { return attr.replace(/\.[^.]*$/, '-thumb$&'); }); In this second code example, I am using a regular expression to find and replace the ending of the image URL.

How does storytelling influence individuals, communities, and nations? How does the concept of “story” apply to contemporary methods of healing? Sarah D Posted Feb. 05, 2012 | | | shelleyc Join Date: 01/31/12 Posts: 4 RE: What role does storytelling play in The Healing? It keeps the story of the slaves alive. It allows them to know of a time before slavery. And after emancipation it allows the future generations to take pride in the survival of their ancestors under oppressive and hideous conditions. Posted Feb. 06, 2012 | | | beverlyj Join Date: 12/22/11 Posts: 45 RE: What role does storytelling play in The Healing? Storytelling allows for the slaves (and others) to know themselves and their history from their pov.Because written history is the history (storytelling) of the victor - this is the history usually presented to the world and presented as the truth.It allows the enslaved people to be informed and to understand while your body may be enslaved your mind and soul can understand the truth. Posted Feb. 06, 2012 | | | sarahd Join Date: 10/16/10 Posts: 84 Expert RE: What role does storytelling play in The Healing? I would argue that Granada doesn't fully become Gran Gran - doesn't fully achieve the recognition of her roots and cure herself of her soul sickness - until she tells the story to the young girl. Sarah D Posted Feb. 07, 2012 | | | gwendolyndawson Join Date: 10/20/10 Posts: 63 Expert RE: What role does storytelling play in The Healing? I think storytelling is a way to make sense of senseless circumstances. Storytelling helps us to understand our histories and to understand those around us. On the negative side, storytelling can "whitewash" atrocities. Posted Feb. 14, 2012 | | | janec Join Date: 09/06/11 Posts: 12 RE: What role does storytelling play in The Healing? Storytelling is a way for life to be remembered. This booik uses the technique very well. Many slaves never learned to read or write. Telling stories was the only way to move the history of a civiization from one generation to another. Listening to stories gives children an understanding of their hi8story. Posted Feb. 14, 2012 | | | jww Join Date: 05/31/11 Posts: 97 Expert RE: What role does storytelling play in The Healing? Storytelling is how the community remembers...their lives before slavery, during slavery and after slavery. It is the glue that binds families and the community as a whole. As the newer generations become modern, they begin to forget the stories - their history. Sometimes on purpose and sometimes from carelessness. It is the stories that bring them back to each other and show them what they are as people.

Two men who allegedly mugged a couple sitting on a Central Park bench were arraigned early Monday. Lorenzo Devone, 29, and Dwayne Turner, 23, were charged in Manhattan Criminal Court with robbery for allegedly attacking the 20-year-old man and 19-year-old-woman early Saturday morning. Cops said Devone punched the victims and took the man’s iPhone while Turner allegedly was his accomplice. A third suspect Nashir Whitaker, 19, will be arraigned tomorrow. Four other people were detained after the incident but later released.

J-S03028-15 NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37 COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA Appellee v. ERIC ELROD Appellant No. 1758 EDA 2014 Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence May 16, 2014 In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Criminal Division at No(s): CP-51-CR-0000057-2011 BEFORE: FORD ELLIOTT, P.J.E., PANELLA, J., and OTT, J. MEMORANDUM BY PANELLA, J. FILED APRIL 07, 2015 Appellant, Eric Elrod, appeals from the judgment of sentence entered May 16, 2014, in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County. Additionally, Elrod’s court-appointed counsel, Bobby Ochoa III, Esquire, has filed an application to withdraw as counsel pursuant to Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967), and Commonwealth v. Santiago, 978 A.2d 349 (Pa. 2009). After careful review, we affirm Elrod’s judgment of sentence and grant counsel’s petition to withdraw. On February 12, 2014, Elrod entered a negotiated nolo contendere plea to indecent assault of a person less than 13 years of age1 and ____________________________________________ 1 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 3126. J-S03028-15 corruption of minors.2 At the plea hearing, the Commonwealth set forth the facts underlying the plea as follows. Your Honor, had this matter gone to trial the Commonwealth would have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that between the dates of October 1, 2009 and January of 2010 on diverse dates the defendant did place his hand on the private area of the complainant who is [S.C.T.] who was at the time ten years old. Her date of birth is September 26, ’99. That touching was over the clothing. … It occurred on at least three occasions. Plea Hearing, 2/12/14 at 10. Pursuant to the agreement, the trial court sentenced Elrod to one and one-half to three years’ imprisonment for corruption of minors. Following a hearing, Elrod was determined to be a sexually violent predator, and the trial court sentenced him to a consecutive seven years’ probation for indecent assault. This timely appeal followed. Preliminarily, we note that Attorney Ochoa has requested to withdraw and has submitted an Anders brief in support thereof contending that Elrod’s appeal is frivolous. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has articulated the procedure to be followed when court-appointed counsel seeks to withdraw from representing an appellant on direct appeal. [I]n the Anders brief that accompanies court-appointed counsel’s petition to withdraw, counsel must: (1) provide a summary of the procedural history and facts, with citations to the record; (2) refer to anything in the record that counsel arguably believes supports the appeal; (3) set forth counsel’s conclusion that the appeal is frivolous; and (4) state counsel’s reasons for concluding that the appeal is frivolous. Counsel should articulate the relevant facts of ____________________________________________ 2 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 6301. -2- J-S03028-15 record, controlling case law, and/or statutes on point that have led to the conclusion that the appeal is frivolous. Commonwealth v. Santiago, 978 A.2d 349, 361 (Pa. 2009). We note that Attorney Ochoa has substantially complied with all of the requirements of Anders as articulated in Santiago. Additionally, Attorney Ochoa confirms that he sent a copy of the Anders brief as well as a letter explaining to Elrod that he has the right to proceed pro se or the right to retain new counsel. A copy of the letter is appended to Attorney Ochoa’s petition. See Commonwealth v. Daniels, 999 A.2d 590, 594 (Pa. Super. 2010); Commonwealth v. Millisock, 873 A.2d 748, 749 (Pa. Super. 2005). We now proceed to examine the issues counsel set forth in the Anders brief.3 Elrod first contends that the trial court imposed an illegal sentence. It is well-established that “[i]f no statutory authorization exists for a particular sentence, that sentence is illegal and subject to correction.” Commonwealth v. Cardwell, 105 A.3d 748, 750 (Pa. Super. 2014) (citation omitted). “An illegal sentence must be vacated.” Id. “Issues relating to the legality of a sentence are questions of law[.] ... Our standard of review over such questions is de novo and our scope of review is plenary.” Id. (citation omitted). ____________________________________________ 3 Elrod has not filed a response to Attorney Ochoa’s petition to withdraw. -3- J-S03028-15 We find no indication that the trial court imposed an illegal sentence. Elrod entered a nolo contendere plea to indecent assault, a felony of the third degree and corruption of minors, a misdemeanor of the first degree. See 18 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 3126(b)(3) and 6301(a)(1)(i), respectively. A third- degree felony carries a maximum term of imprisonment of seven years; a first-degree misdemeanor carries a maximum term of imprisonment of five years. See 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 1103(3) and 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 1104(1), respectively. As previously noted, the trial court sentenced Elrod to one and one-half to three years’ imprisonment for corruption of minors a consecutive term of seven years’ probation for indecent assault. These sentences fall squarely within the standard range and clearly do not exceed the statutory maximum permitted for the crimes committed. We therefore concur with counsel’s assessment that a challenge to the legality of the sentence imposed is indeed frivolous. Elrod next maintains that his negotiated nolo contendere was involuntarily, unknowingly or unintelligently entered. A review of the record, however, reveals that Elrod did not challenge his nolo contendere plea either at sentencing or in a post-sentence motion. As such, we are constrained to find that Elrod has waived this issue on appeal. See Pa.R.A.P. 302(a) (“Issues not raised in the lower court are waived and cannot be raised for the first time on appeal.”); Commonwealth v. Tareila, 895 A.2d 1266, 1270 n.3 (Pa. Super. 2006) (“Where an appellant fails to challenge his guilty plea in the trial court, he may not do so on appeal.”). -4- J-S03028-15 Finally, Elrod purports to challenge trial counsel’s effectiveness. Apart from two limited exceptions not pertinent here, claims of ineffective assistance of counsel cannot be raised on direct review. See Commonwealth v. Holmes, 79 A.3d 562, 563 (Pa. 2013). Accordingly, Elrod cannot raise this claim on direct review; this issue of ineffectiveness of trial counsel must await collateral review. After examining the issues contained in the Anders brief and after undertaking our independent review of the record, we concur with counsel’s assessment that the appeal is wholly frivolous. Judgment of sentence affirmed. Permission to withdraw as counsel is granted. Jurisdiction relinquished. Judgment Entered. Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq. Prothonotary Date: 4/7/2015 -5- 

Zwieback Zwieback is a form of rusk eaten in Germany, Scandinavia, Austria, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. It is a type of crisp, sweetened bread, made with eggs and baked twice. It originated in East Prussia. The Mennonites brought Zwieback to the Russian Empire; before the Russian Revolution, when many emigrated to the west, they brought Zwieback to Canada, the United States and other parts of the world. There are two types of zwieback. One type is made by pinching round pieces of dough, placing one piece on top of another, pressing them together by pushing a finger down through both pieces. It is then baked and served as warm soft rolls. This type is identified with Mennonites. The other type is a bread sliced before it is baked a second time, which produces crisp, brittle slices that closely resemble melba toast. Zwieback is commonly used to feed teething children and as the first solid food for patients with an upset stomach. The name comes from German zwei ("two") or zwie ("twi-"), and backen, meaning "to bake". Zwieback hence literally translates to "twice-baked". The French and Italian names, respectively, biscotte and fette biscottate have the same origin, biscotto (biscuit), which also means twice ("bis-") baked (-"cotto"). Slovene name is prepečenec which would imply baked over ordinary or overbaked. Serbo-Croatian name is dvopek which, again, is literally twice (dvo) baked (pek). See also Biscotti Brandt (company) Rusk Russian Mennonite zwieback (Tweebak) Toast References Category:German breads Category:Sweet breads Category:Twice-baked goods

Ya maybe NDSU will get beat this year. I don't really care too much. I just watched them complete the greatest run in FCS history. I'll be satisfied for a long time. I realize you guys can't wait to see it happen. Hopefully you you guys will get to enjoy it as much as your hypothetical playoff run has been this year. I don't really care. The point of the game is to win. NDSU did that. 34-9.-Ass kicking.The position of QB is important to winning games. Maybe UND should recruit and develop one so they can win big games. Yes I did enjoy his time there. I have also enjoyed watching his freshman backup go 5-0 and put up awesome numbers. NDSU will be spoiled for the next 3 years. Best of luck to the Fighting Hawks in 2016. If if's and buts were candy and nuts , every day would be Christmas.... Glad to see you are salivating about a rematch with a weakened NDSU team. Nice to see the real competitor in you wouldn't want to prove UND could hang in there with Carson. UND didn't prove anything. They were a mediocre 7 win team. Meh I don't really care. NDSU kicked UND's ass. UND was selling out the run so NDSU took what the defense gave them. NDSU proved they were the vastly superior team. UND proved they are not quite plsyiff caliber. Best of luck in 2016. UND has a cakewalk schedule. 8 wins should be possible. UND had 4, yes I repeat , 4 yards of rushing offense ......but you are the one saying NDSU had a horrible rushing offense? LMFAO UND got smoked. Guess you guys can fantasize all you want about a rematch. It didn't happen because UND was not good enough to make the playoffs. They had more than 61 yards of total offense and 3 first downs against NDSU. UND was the worst team I have seen NDSU play since they went D1. NDSU's defense is mediocre at best this year and they looked like the freaking '85 Bears against UND. No real point in debating whether UND should have been a playoff team. They weren't. Move on and good luck next season. NDSU didn't need to thump their chest about beating a crappy FBS team in order to say "this is why we should be playoff eligible". You can argue that the 2010 team might have got in due to beating Kansas, but they had several wins over ranked teams that year and were never blown out. UND looked like a high school team against NDSU and Montana. They also played a relatively weak schedule. They were obviously not a slam dunk playoff team. You can say EIU did not deserve it. I'll give you that. With that being said WIU is definitely a better team than UND. They did not have a single cupcake Drake type team , which UND had, in order to get to 7 wins. They had a significantly harder schedule and beat 3 playoff teams. There are 43 teams in the FCS who have a higher Sagarin rating than Wyoming. There are also only 7 FBS teams rated lower than Wyoming. Keep calling it a quality win all you want, but it wasn't. Wyoming is garbage and would not be a playoff team in the FCS. If you open your eyes and see it how it really is, UND had 1quality win in PSU. They were absolutely blown out by the two other playoff teams they faced, Montana and NDSU, and were beat by two other weak teams. Nothing about that screams playoff team to me. The FCS playoffs have become too watered down when we have to debate whether a mediocre UND team was playoff worthy. They weren't, and neither was WIU and EIU. The playoffs should maybe be 16 teams max. Not when it is Wyoming, who might be the worst FBS team in the country. There are probably 40 FCS teams better than them. Maybe UND should join the MVFC so they can compete with the best every week and have a stronger strength of schedule and opportunity for more quality wins.

Alabama Bob Higgins stepping down at Baldwin County EDA Bob Higgins is retiring from his position as vice president of the Baldwin County Economic Development Alliance. (Bill Starling/Press-Register) ROBERTSDALE, Alabama -- After 10 years, Bob Higgins will leave the Baldwin County Economic Development Alliance on Wednesday, but that doesn’t mean things will slow down for Higgins or the alliance, he said. Higgins will retire as senior vice president of the EDA. He will continue his work as chairman of the Coastal Resiliency Commission, chairman of the Business Advisory Council for the Alabama Department of Education and other duties. He said the change will allow him more time to work on efforts to train workers and help businesses prepare for the future while the EDA concentrates on its task of bringing in new industry. He said that with Robert Ingram retiring as EDA president and a new director, Lee Lawson, taking over, this was a good time for a change. "The alliance really, really needs to focus on industrial recruiting, for the megasite, for Airbus and other things," Higgins said. "What this will allow them to do is get me off the payroll and staff up under Lee Lawson so they can focus on that. In the course of that, I’m going to stay engaged in most of the things that I was engaged with here with the alliance, especially with workforce development." Higgins joined the EDA in 2002 to lead development of the Baldwin Business Incubator. In one of his most recent efforts, he has worked to bring an aviation training center to the Fairhope airport that will help local high school students prepare for the growth in aircraft production jobs expected as Airbus opens its assembly facility. In the years between, he was active in efforts to help local companies deal with the economic effects of the 2010 oil spill, setting up the "War Room" network of businesses and officials that led to the development of the Coastal Resiliency Coalition and the Business Support Center. He said he plans to remain active with both programs. While the economy is recovering from the effects of the spill, the need for programs such as the support center will continue. "What we discovered in the oil spill is that there were a lot of companies that were on the edge anyway, probably from a couple of years of economic downturn leading up to the oil spill," he said. "What we learned was a lot of them didn’t know what they didn’t know. They didn’t quite know how to make best use of the accounting information or marketing or how to outsource some stuff that really wasn’t within their own areas of expertise so they could focus more on what they do really well. That’s what we decided — that if the Business Support Center can reach out to businesses continuously, and help them be aware of better ways to run and operate their businesses so they can be more profitable, then they’re far more resilient whatever disaster comes by next time." Joe Bullock, alliance chairman, said Higgins is always looking for ways to "fix the system" by developing new programs, such as the Southwest Alabama Workforce Development Council. Ingram also praised Higgins’ work with the alliance and other programs. "Bob has been the heart and soul of our community development efforts at the alliance," Ingram said in a statement. "His work has resulted in Baldwin County being a much better place for people to live and work. I have been blessed to have had Bob as a trusted partner in economic development and as a friend." Higgins said Wednesday that he was also looking forward to having more opportunities for personal activities, such as spending time with his four grandchildren who live in the area. "I admit that I will be able to go to more of their events," he said. 

A cell-biological model of p75NTR signaling. Neurotrophin stimulation of tropomyosin-related kinase (Trk) and p75 receptors influences cellular processes such as proliferation, growth, differentiation, and other cell-specific functions, as well as regeneration. In contrast to Trk receptors, which have a well-defined trophic role, p75 has activities ranging from trophism to apoptosis. Continued neurotrophin stimulation of differentiating neurons transforms the initially trophic character of p75 signaling into negative growth control and overstimulation leads to apoptosis. This function shift reflects the signaling effects of ceramide that is generated upon stimulation of p75. The use of ceramide signaling by p75 may provide a key to understanding the cell-biological role of p75. The review presents arguments that the control of cell shape formation and cell selection can serve as an organizing principle of p75 signaling. Concurrent stimulation by neurotrophins of p75 and Trk receptors constitutes a dual growth control with antagonistic and synergistic elements aimed at optimal morphological and functional integration of cells and cell populations into their context.

Synixais fuscomaculata Synixais fuscomaculata is a species of beetle in the family Cerambycidae. It was described by Per Olof Christopher Aurivillius in 1911. It is known from Borneo. References Category:Lamiinae Category:Beetles described in 1911

Parents Protest High School’s Ban on Cultural Headdresses When a school makes wearing a specific item of clothing off-limits, it’s usually the students who stage a protest to have the rule changed. But in one North Carolina district, about two dozen parents rallied outside a high school for an hour on Monday, demonstrating against a policy that banned students from wearing “headgear” (such as hats, hoods, and bandannas). The protest stemmed from an incident earlier this month, when a group of female students, the Young Women of Excellence, decided to celebrate Black History Month by each wearing a traditional colorful African headdress called a gele to their school, the School for Creative Studies. According to the parents, when the students arrived at school in their geles, the principal demanded that the teens remove them, citing the headgear policy. If they didn’t, their daughters were threatened with disciplinary action, parents told Raleigh, N.C.’s Eyewitness News/WTVD. “This is not right. This is not fair. We will not stand for it,” Afiya Carter, mom of a 15-year-old girl who wore a gele to school, told WTVD. “This is about supporting these young people and letting them know that their cultural expression is something to be valued, and value other people’s cultural expressions.” “They’re having to alter who they are in order to assimilate into society, and I don’t feel like that’s right,” parent Dosali Reed-Bandele told North Carolina news station WNCN. But a spokesperson for Durham Public Schools tells Yahoo Parenting that though city schools do ban headgear and that the students were asked to comply by removing their geles, no student was threatened with punishment. “The principal and others at the school tell me they never threatened the students with suspension, and indeed would not have found suspension to be an appropriate discipline for students breaking the policy against hats and headwear,” Durham Public Schools chief communications officer Chrissy Deal tells Yahoo Parenting. After talking to the students, “The principal met with those young women and encouraged them to share their lessons with the rest of the school,” says Deal. The way some parents see it, their daughters should be able to wear geles as often as they want. “We’re saying that it’s not just for one day; we’re saying our daughters who express themselves should be able to express themselves culturally every single day of the their lives,” Reed-Bandele told WTVD. In a statement sent to Yahoo Parenting, Durham Schools superintendent Dr. Bert L’Homme said that as a result of the incident and protest, his office is reviewing the code of conduct. “I have heard the concerns of parents and community members who feel our policy prohibiting hats and headwear is too strict or that it infringes on students’ cultural expression,” he wrote. “I understand their concerns and assure them that I will share their thoughts with the committee that is currently reviewing and suggesting revisions to our Code of Student Conduct.” L’Homme added that he appreciates “both the initiative shown by the young women at SCS and the school’s willingness to give these student leaders an opportunity to incorporate their ideas into a schoolwide program. The gele, its history, and how to wear it are now part of the school’s Black History Month activities for both middle school and high school students.” Allowing teens to express their culture and identity through clothing is a smart policy because it prevents students from feeling marginalized or shamed, Beverly Hills child psychotherapist Fran Walfish tells Yahoo Parenting. “Banning cultural displays is detrimental because it implies that kids have to hide who they are, and that forces them to go underground” and not be integrated into the world, she says. “Whether it’s a cultural expression, a religious one, or relating to their sexual identity, displaying it is important to healthy self-esteem.” Please follow @YahooParenting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, andPinterest. Have an interesting story to share about your family? Email us at YParenting (at) Yahoo.com.

Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2007 9:40 pmPosts: 10824 Comment: Palladium Books Canon is set solely by Kevin Siembieda, either in person, or by his approval of published material. As my Phaseworld game is now over I am beginning work on my next game. The game will be set in my personal homebrew world. The world is SDC, has magic, and a technological base approximately equal to earth circa the 1930s. Mechanics stuff Spoiler: I will be using the RUE rule set as the core rules, with heavy use of the various SDC game lines rules since this is SDC. Where the rules conflict RUE will take precedence. In general, MDC will convert to SDC on a 1:1 basis with armor ratings being calculated as needed.Yes this does mean that MDC is not always superior to SDC. Welcome to the wonderful world of dimensional travel. You can talk to me about specifics if you have an issue.Characters may be built with up to 5,000 XP as 'background competence' you can start with the basic gear of your class, additional material is on a case by case discussion basis. Characters will be non-natives who are brought to the world due to a plot complication in the first adventure. Due to the needs of said plot there is a requirement for all characters, specifically all characters must be either human, ex-humans, descended from humans, human kin, ect. (basically you will need to plausibly have a human as one of your ancestors). Since this is basically the theme the campaign is being written around I will not be waiving the rule, and exceptions will not be considered. You can find a (rather lengthy if incomplete) list of various examples of human-kin in the game folder The Game Folder is found hereThis includes my house rules, character creation rules, and world information as I make it available. The game has openings for 6-8 players. I will be filling these on a first come first served basis.Due to the fact that I will be limiting the game I would ask that people not sign up if they don't intend to play, or are planning to drop out. Organizational Stuff Spoiler: Current slots Used/Total7/8 Date will be Sundays.I am aiming for a start time of 5:30 MST, with the first ~30 minutes being recap, getting in character, and answering questions. I will be starting by 6:00 and hope to run 4-5 hours.I will take questions during the week, either in the chat, or via PM or E-Mail. _________________The rules are not a bludgeon with which to hammer a character into a game. They are a guide to how a group of friends can get together to weave a collective story that entertains everyone involved. We forget that at our peril. Edmund Burke wrote: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Last edited by eliakon on Thu Jan 25, 2018 12:13 am, edited 9 times in total. Name: J.R. Smith. He is called J.R. by his friends and colleagues, well, all accept those two old senior professors who call him Junior. OCC: BTS Arcanist/Mage. Description: JR stands at 6’1” tall (186 cm), looks like he weighs approximately 185 lbs. (84kg) and appears to be somewhere between 24 and 27 years of age. His hair is coal black and his eyes are a shining blue in color. He works at the university and tends to dress casually for most things, choosing comfort and utility over fashion if he can. He off gives off the brand new, young professor vibe, as blue jeans and a sport coat are one of his favorite style choices, and happened to be what he was wearing when he was abducted/summoned to this strange new world. (His Aura will read as follows: Low Experience, No active magic, No psychic abilities, High PPE, Not possessed, Very Healthy and Human with a slight aberration or mutation (perhaps the source of said extreme health?). in order to make tech users a bit more useable, i have suggested we use a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio for MDC to SDC.basically, something like a 1D6md pistol would do 2D6 or 3D6sd. a suit of 90 mdc body armor would get 180 sdc or 270 sdc. etc. this may means some of the bigger/more durable stuff gets a lower AR to balance out, though. Eli suggest i post the idea here to see what people think. _________________Author of Rifts: Deep Frontier (Rifter 70)Co-author of Rifts:Scandinavia (current project)* All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.* Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter. -Max BeerbohmVisit my Website Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2007 9:40 pmPosts: 10824 Comment: Palladium Books Canon is set solely by Kevin Siembieda, either in person, or by his approval of published material. I am looking to have a first session on Sunday July 2nd Time will be 5:30 MSTThis will be a meet and greet to introduce everyone, make sure everyone is on the same page, answer any questions, and generally get things organized.If everyone is actually both present, and has their characters finaly turned in I would like to start the first session and the arrival to Tellas...though it is looking like that will have to wait until the 9th. If the game does not start on the 2nd then it will start on the 9th. I will not be waiting further, as I feel that a month of lead time here, and an additional month in the chat room should be sufficient time to get all characters in.If there are openings after game begins new players may be able to join, but there will be some conditions on new characters once the world secrets start to be revealed (since I am not going to simply let people metagame to build characters optimized for the world. Don't bother trying it will simply make me... upset, and more than likely result in me having to ramp up one of the other complications to compensate.) _________________The rules are not a bludgeon with which to hammer a character into a game. They are a guide to how a group of friends can get together to weave a collective story that entertains everyone involved. We forget that at our peril. Edmund Burke wrote: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." I am looking to have a first session on Sunday July 2nd Time will be 5:30 MSTThis will be a meet and greet to introduce everyone, make sure everyone is on the same page, answer any questions, and generally get things organized.If everyone is actually both present, and has their characters finaly turned in I would like to start the first session and the arrival to Tellas...though it is looking like that will have to wait until the 9th. If the game does not start on the 2nd then it will start on the 9th. I will not be waiting further, as I feel that a month of lead time here, and an additional month in the chat room should be sufficient time to get all characters in.If there are openings after game begins new players may be able to join, but there will be some conditions on new characters once the world secrets start to be revealed (since I am not going to simply let people metagame to build characters optimized for the world. Don't bother trying it will simply make me... upset, and more than likely result in me having to ramp up one of the other complications to compensate.) I will definitely be there. Can't wait to blow up another world...err, I mean have fun saving the day once more. Would be nice to see some small tags for the other PCs on this thread. *Hint Hint* Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2007 9:40 pmPosts: 10824 Comment: Palladium Books Canon is set solely by Kevin Siembieda, either in person, or by his approval of published material. Just a friendly reminder on Tellas. The open enrollment period for the campaign ends when the second session starts on Sunday the 9th and all characters must be approved before then. While I will still approve characters for the game after this period they will be on a 'reserve status' and will not be joining the game until there is another 'enrollment period' for new players. _________________The rules are not a bludgeon with which to hammer a character into a game. They are a guide to how a group of friends can get together to weave a collective story that entertains everyone involved. We forget that at our peril. Edmund Burke wrote: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2007 9:40 pmPosts: 10824 Comment: Palladium Books Canon is set solely by Kevin Siembieda, either in person, or by his approval of published material. OkayI have to askIs there really any actual interest in this game or am I just wasting my time each week?If only 2 of my 5 players are going to actually do stuff then its not worth my time. _________________The rules are not a bludgeon with which to hammer a character into a game. They are a guide to how a group of friends can get together to weave a collective story that entertains everyone involved. We forget that at our peril. Edmund Burke wrote: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2007 9:40 pmPosts: 10824 Comment: Palladium Books Canon is set solely by Kevin Siembieda, either in person, or by his approval of published material. I will be allowing new players to join the game due to the loss of other players.(this is the 'open enrollment period' I mentioned before)There has been a bit more information learned and it can therefore be shared. Tellas appears to be some sort of areal world. The land as such appears to be formed of 'levistone' a floating rock of some kind. Theses masses range from vast continental masses, down to islands, or small chunks...even pebbles and dust. There are several native races including Humans, Orcs, Sleeth, and Janak (the latter two are custom races so you will not find them in books) It appears that the group has been summoned as a spoiler in a political plot and that they all are descendants of a common ancestress which gives them hereditary rights to a title......a title which is now, due to circumstances, 'in play'. _________________The rules are not a bludgeon with which to hammer a character into a game. They are a guide to how a group of friends can get together to weave a collective story that entertains everyone involved. We forget that at our peril. Edmund Burke wrote: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2007 9:40 pmPosts: 10824 Comment: Palladium Books Canon is set solely by Kevin Siembieda, either in person, or by his approval of published material. Due to the loss of most of my players this game will be going on hiatus.If I can get 2-4 additional players who wish to play then I can restart it, but as it is I am left with only 2 regular players and that isn't enough to keep things going. _________________The rules are not a bludgeon with which to hammer a character into a game. They are a guide to how a group of friends can get together to weave a collective story that entertains everyone involved. We forget that at our peril. Edmund Burke wrote: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Page 1 of 1 Who is online Users browsing this forum: No registered users Display posts from previous:Sort by Jump to: You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum

Fantome Island lock hospital and aboriginal venereal disease sufferers 1928-45. In this article the Queensland government's response to suspected and confirmed cases of venereal disease amongst the state's Aboriginal population is examined through the micro history of Fantome Island lock hospital, which operated between 1928 and 1945. This history offers an interesting case study into the complexities of medical and racial segregation in twentieth century Queensland. While other scholars have positioned Fantome Island lock hospital as a justifiable attempt to control syphilis and gonorrhoea infections amongst the Queensland Aboriginal population, I propose a different interpretation and argue that white perceptions of Aboriginal sexuality and health contributed to government depictions of an Aboriginal venereal disease 'epidemic.' I demonstrate that disease diagnosis was still highly problematic prior to World War II and was differentially applied across different sub-populations.

Halifax is declaring its latest gun amnesty campaign a success after the two-week program saw 152 guns turned over to police for safe disposal. Through the Fares for Firearm program, people were given 50 bus tickets — a $100 value — in exchange for their unwanted guns. "I believe that with these weapons off the streets, it certainly increases the safety at large for the Halifax Regional Municipality," said Ted Upshaw, a public safety advisor with the city. Out of the 152 guns turned in to police, 123 were long guns or rifles, 18 were handguns and 11 were pellet guns. In total, 128 bus ticket incentives were donated by Halifax Transit. The original offer of $5,000 worth of tickets had to be increased to $12,800 to provide enough for every residents who wanted to participate. HRM homicides The proposal for the firearm amnesty program came after a number of shooting deaths in the Halifax area this spring. To date, there have been nine homicides in the Halifax Regional Municipality in 2016, and at least five of those involved firearms. Admittedly, RCMP Insp. Jeffrey Dowling said the guns turned in through the program are not coming from criminals, but every gun removed from the streets help make the region safer. "I don't think a criminal would voluntarily hand over their weapon. In this case what we've got is unwanted firearms in people's residences," he said. "But by handing them in, it decreases the chance they would be stolen by a criminal and used in a crime." Pixels for Pistols The overall objective of the campaign was to raise awareness that residents can turn guns over to police at any time of year. According to Halifax Regional Police Staff Sgt. Scott MacDonald, just under 200 guns were voluntarily handed over to police in 2015. Halifax's last gun amnesty program was held back in 2009. Pixels for Pistols, which allowed residents to trade in guns for digital cameras, saw 1,074 firearms and more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition turned in to police.

195 So.2d 807 (1966) BLUE CROSS-BLUE SHIELD OF ALABAMA v. Doris T. TURNER. 6 Div. 106. Court of Appeals of Alabama. August 16, 1966. Rehearing Denied December 13, 1966. *809 Clement, Rosen, Hubbard & Waldrop, Tuscaloosa, and Lange, Simpson, Robinson & Somerville, Birmingham, for appellant. E. D. McDuffie and Norma Holcombe, Tuscaloosa, for appellee. JOHNSON, Judge. Suit was brought by appellee, Mrs. Doris T. Turner, to recover from appellant, Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Alabama, for various hospital and medical expenses incurred by appellee. The verdict and judgment for appellee was for the amount of $422.85. Appellant's motion for a new trial was overruled and the company appeals. The appellee was the only witness called by either party. Appellee testified that she first obtained insurance from appellant eight or nine years previous to the trial. In January of 1962 her coverage was transferred from the Tuscaloosa County group to the group organized at the Central Foundry Company where the appellee's husband was employed. In March of 1962 appellee became pregnant. On July 31, 1962, appellee received notice that the group insurance plan in which she participated would be discontinued by appellant effective August 25, 1962. During the month of August the parties exchanged letters and telephone calls and in one instance appellee told an agent of appellant that she was pregnant. On December 7, 1962, appellee was admitted to Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and on the same day gave birth to a daughter by normal delivery. The appellee introduced two different hospital service certificates, one providing for $25.00 deductible coverage and the other providing for a $50.00 deductible coverage. Both certificates contained the same provision with respect to termination of the coverage, which certificates state: "Option of either party—The contract between the subscriber and the corporation and all rights hereunder may be terminated by either party at any time on Thirty (30) days written notice to the other." The bill from the hospital was in the amount of $277.35. The obstetrician's bill for prenatal care and delivery of the child was for $150.00. Appellant contends that no liability attaches under the policy until the hospital services and benefits covered are actually rendered in the hospital. The only case cited by either party which involves similar facts is Lundquist v. Illinois Life & Accident Co., 24 Ill.App.2d 316, 164 N.E.2d 293. The policies in that case provided: "When the Insured, if a married woman, or the wife of the Insured, if a dependent, shall, while this policy is in force and after 10 months from the effective date hereof, give birth to a child or children, the Company will pay the expense actually incurred in connection therewith * * *" In holding that the insurance company was not liable, the Illinois court stated: "The claim for indemnity here, * *, originates, so far as material, only if the mother `give birth to a child or children', at a time while this policy is in force, * * * and it is only for the expense actually incurred in connection with that birth * * * that this policy insures against." In the case at bar the policies provide: "SECTION V—MATERNITY CARE —$25 [$50] DEDUCTIBLE PROVISION "In any case where benefits are provided to a member wife for maternity care and for any condition arising out of and during pregnancy, including, but not limited to, any condition or disease of the genito-urinary tract, gastritis, hyperemesis or anemia, the deductible amount specified in Sections II and III hereof to be paid by the member shall not exceed Twenty-Five (25.00) [or $50.00] Dollars, regardless of the number *810 of hospital admissions, during any one pregnancy, subject to the limitation herein contained of ten (10) days for each such pregnancy." * * * * * * "SECTION VII—LIMITATIONS "1. MATERNITY CARE—Hospital service for maternity care and for any condition arising out of and during pregnancy, including, but not limited to, any condition or disease of the genito-urinary tract, gastritis, hyperemesis or anemia, shall be limited to ten (10) days for any one pregnancy." * * * * * * "SECTION VIII—WAITING PERIODS "1. MATERNITY CARE—Hospital service for maternity care and for any condition arising out of and during pregnancy, including, but not limited to, any condition or disease of the genitourinary tract, gastritis, hyperemesis or anemia, shall be available hereunder to a member wife only in the event she was, on the date of her hospital admission, covered by a Blue Cross hospital service contract providing maternity benefits, and only in the event she had been covered by such a contract for a period of nine (9) consecutive months immediately preceding the date of her hospital admission; provided, however, that hospital service shall be available to a member wife covered by such a contract in the event of termination of pregnancy by abortion or miscarriage, or termination of an ectopic pregnancy, if normal delivery would have occurred on a date after the said nine (9) months waiting period." The $50.00 deductible policy provides: "14. `Maternity Care' means care or treatment provided to a member who is subscriber or the wife of a subscriber, while such member is covered under a family contract, for any condition arising out of and during pregnancy, including but not limited to any condition or disease of the genito-urinary tract, gastritis, hyperemesis or anemia." The words and phrases used in the policies in the case at bar and the policies in the Lundquist case, supra, can be distinguished. In the Lundquist case, supra, the phrase "child birth" is used to denote the event insured. In the case at bar the following words are used, "maternity care", "pregnancy", "arising out of", and "during". Under these policies of appellant, benefits are provided not just for child birth but "for any condition arising out of and during pregnancy". Pregnancy is the state of a female who has within her ovary or womb a fecundated germ. Dunglison, Dictionary of Medical Science and Literature. Necessarily, this condition begins at the moment of conception and terminates with delivery of the child. This condition of pregnancy raised such a high probability of belief by appellee that medical and hospital expenses would be incurred that appellee repeatedly resisted the cancellation of the policy. Liability of the insurer attached at the moment of the insured's conception regardless of the possibility of occurrence of events relieving it of liability. Appellee's interest in the policy was obtained through an expenditure of her and her husband's own money. This interest is sufficient to prevent cancellation or modification if such prevents the insured from timely exercise of any conversion privilege which may be available to her under the terms of the policy or, where such privilege is not given, if it prevents her from reasonably obtaining similar insurance protection on her own account elsewhere. Shears v. All State Life Ins. Co., 242 Ala. 249, 5 So. 2d 808. Upon protest of the cancellation appellee was informed by appellant that similar *811 coverage with appellant could not continue on a direct basis or by transferring to another payroll deduction group. The requirement of a waiting period in most, if not in all, hospital service policies which include maternity care precluded appellee at the time her policy was cancelled from obtaining similar protection from other insurance companies. The event insured against had happened prior to the cancellation and the insurer is not relieved from liability under the contract. The trial court did not commit error in refusing at the request of appellant the affirmative charge without hypothesis. The verdict and judgment was in the amount of $422.85. The amended complaint alleged appellee's damages at the same amount. Why this particular amount was sued for is not understandable. If the amount of the hospital bill of $277.35 is added to the amount of the obstetrician's bill of $150.00, the total is $427.35, not $422.85. The difference is $4.50. The obstetrician's bill is not itemized in any manner. The hospital bill contains no item for which the amount of $4.50 is charged. Two separate policies were introduced into evidence by appellee. One policy was described as a $25.00 deductible, and it's date of revision was January, 1958. The other policy was described as a $50.00 deductible and its date of revision was March, 1962, and its effective date was June 1, 1962. This effective date is about two months after she became pregnant. It is reasonable to assume that the $25.00 deductible policy was in effect up to June 1, 1962, when an attempt was made to change to the $50.00 deductible policy. Payment of premium was continued after June 1, 1962, and under the terms of paragraph one of Section XII of the $25.00 deductible policy such payment was conclusive evidence of appellee's acceptance of the modification of the policy. Therefore, only the $50.00 deductible policy was in effect at the time of the attempted cancellation. Section II, Part A, lists the benefits available under the policy. The list does not include charges for telephone service. Therefore, the amount of $7.00 should not be included in that part of the hospital bill for which appellant is liable. For hospital service, appellant is only liable for the amount of $220.35. This particular amount is arrived at by reducing the hospital bill of $277.35 by $50.00 for the normal amount of deduction and by $7.00 for telephone service. Paragraph I of Section II of the $50.00 deductible policy expressly excluded from the hospital service available the services of attending physicians. However, appellee's identification card stated that she was entitled to Type 4 surgical benefits which entitles her to the coverage given by Surgical Benefit Rider No. 4. This rider contained a schedule of surgical benefits which listed the various operative procedures available under the rider and stated the maximum payment that the appellant would assume in connection with each procedure. Under the heading, "Obstetrical", the maximum payment for a normal delivery is $50.00. Since appellee will be required to remit the amount recovered for surgical benefits in excess of $50.00, there is no need to reverse the cause for the error of the trial judge in refusing to give for appellant a written charge which limited appellant's liability for surgical benefits to $50.00. Appellant's total liability can be computed by adding to the amount of $220.35 for hospital service the $50.00 for services of the attending physician. The total is $270.35. Ground 14 of the motion for a new trial is based upon the refusal of the trial court to give at the request of defendant the following written charge: "The Court charges the jury that the first written notice of cancellation Mrs. Turner received would be effective under the law of Alabama as an effective cancellation thirty days from the date Mrs. *812 Turner received such notice regardless of the cancellation date specified in said notice." Mrs. Turner received a written notice of cancellation on July 31, 1962. The notice stated that the Group Insurance Plan would be discontinued effective August 25, 1962. The hospital service certificate states that the contract might be terminated by either party at any time on 30 days' written notice to the other. Even if it is assumed that the written instruction requested by appellant correctly stated the applicable legal principle, yet it does not appear that appellant was harmed by the refusal to give the instruction. Whether the policy was cancelled on August 25, 1962, or 30 days after notice was received (August 30, 1962) is not an issue in this case. Therefore, the trial court did not commit reversible error by refusing to give for appellant the instruction in question. Ground No. 22 of the motion for a new trial was based upon the following statement made by the trial judge in his oral charge to the jury: "Of course, under this evidence, it would be a question for the jury to determine whether it was, under all the circumstances whether it was cancelled in order to keep from paying for births that would happen, that happened after they cancelled the policy, including this one. Of course, if the jury finds that they did, then they would certainly be justified in finding that the company would be liable, if it was a fraudulent act, them cancelling the policy." Appellant argues that the statement hypothesizes a statement of facts which had no basis or support in the evidence. The evidence was very clear to the effect that the appellant had a sound business reason for wishing to discontinue group coverage with the company which employed plaintiff's husband. By considering the entire oral charge of the trial judge in connection with the evidence, the statement complained of does not impress this court as being prejudicial. Protective Life Ins. Co. v. Wallace, 230 Ala. 338, 161 So. 256. Ground No. 25 of the motion for a new trial states that appellee failed to prove the existence of her entire contract because her application for insurance coverage was not introduced into evidence. Appellant in its pleading does not deny the existence of a binding contract. Therefore, the failure of appellee to introduce into evidence her application is not prejudicial to appellant. The errors complained of are not sufficient to reverse this cause. However, the verdict and judgment is in excess of the legally proved damages. Therefore, the cause is affirmed upon condition that appellee, within thirty days from the date hereof, file a remittitur of all damages in excess of $270.35. Otherwise, this cause will be reversed and remanded for new trial. Affirmed conditionally. On Rehearing JOHNSON, Judge. Appellant admits that appellee was relieved of the burden of proving the execution of her contract since appellant did not deny it by a sworn plea as required by Tit. 7, Sec. 375, Code of Alabama, 1940. Appellant's contention is that appellee failed to prove the existence of her application of insurance and that the application is an essential element of plaintiff's prima facie case. For authority appellant cites Southern Life & Health Ins. Co. v. Whitfield, 238 Ala. 243, 190 So. 276, wherein it is stated: "The plea was the general issue in short by consent, with leave to present any defense available by special plea and leave to plaintiff to present any matter available by special replication. *813 " This plea put in issue the existence of the policy alleged in the complaint; and cast on plaintiff the burden of proof in that regard. National Life & Accident Ins. Co. v. Winbush, 215 Ala. 349, 110 So. 571; Life Ins. Co. of Virginia v. Mann [28 Ala.App. 425] 186 So. 583." In the Winbush case cited in the Whitfield case, it is stated: "Plaintiff, to establish a prima facie case, must prove: (1) The existence of the contract or policy sued on; (2) the death of the insured or the happening of the event provided for in the policy; and (3) the giving of notice and proof of death, as required by the policy." Appellant's contention relates only to element number one, i.e., "The existence of the contract or policy sued on." It is only where there is no evidence tending to establish the plaintiff's case that the court may direct a verdict for defendant; and in considering the propriety of the affirmative charge, we review the tendencies of the evidence most favorable to the plaintiff, regardless of any view we may have as to the weight of the evidence. United Ins. Co. of America v. Ray, 275 Ala. 411, 155 So.2d 514 Some of the evidence more favorable to appellee was that at the time appellant attempted to cancel the policy, appellee had been pregnant several months. She was told that she could not continue her coverage by transferring to another group and she could not pick up new coverage because of the "condition"; that she had been a paying subscriber for eight or nine years; that one of the provisions of the policy stated: "`Maternity care' means care or treatment provided to a member who is subscriber or the wife of a subscriber, while such member is covered under a family contract, for any condition arising out of and during pregnancy, including but not limited to any condition or disease of the genito-urinary tract, gastritis, hyperemesis or anemia."; that the only defense presented by appellant was its attempted cancellation of the policy which attempt was held to be ineffective by this court in the original opinion. The evidence when considered most favorable to appellee does certainly furnish "a mere glimmer, spark or smallest trace" in support of the issue of the existence of the contract. This is true even if appellee was held bound by the very ambiguous provision of the hospital service certificate which defines "contract". The $25.00 deductible policy states under the headlings, "TERMS AND CONDITIONS. SECTION I—DEFINITIONS: WHEN USED HEREIN" that: "2. `Contract' means this certificate and all riders and endorsements, thereto, if any, which together with the subscriber's application and the subscriber's identification card, constitutes the entire contract between the Corporation and the subscriber." There is no authority cited which requires a plaintiff to present all of the evidence in support of a particular element of his cause of action. This is true despite the case of Provident Life & Accident Ins. Co. v. Pressley, 37 Ala.App. 153, 64 So.2d 618, wherein the certificate issued to the employee provided in plain and specific terms that it was issued subject to the terms and conditions of the group policy issued to the employer. Considering the evidence most favorable to appellee, the trial court did not err in refusing to give the requested affirmative charges. Application overruled. CATES, Judge (concurring specially). I would not rely on Shears v. All States Life Ins. Co., 242 Ala. 249, 5 So.2d 808, *814 because of its being later restricted by Hill v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 266 Ala. 285, 96 So.2d 185. Also, I doubt that Mrs. Turner had a "group policy" since there is no proof of her employer being in privity of contract with Blue Cross-Blue Shield. See Blue Cross-Blue Shield v. Fowler, Ala. App., 195 So.2d 910. Pennsylvania Cas. Co. v. Perdue, 164 Ala. 508, 51 So. 352, should control this case. I agree with Judge Johnson that here conception eo instanti fixed liability at least as to maternity benefits. Aside from our statute[1] making certain kinds of abortion misdemeanors, public policy in this State does not (and probably cannot[2] prohibit planned parenthood. Section IV, subsection 2 (Maternity Care), of the Certificate prescribes that the wife must have been covered for the nine consecutive months just before her confinement. Mrs. Turner's identification card bears a notation (R. 36). "All waiting periods completed." When husband and wife plan parenthood so as to abide by the policy waiting period, it is clear to me that enlightened self-interest has afforded the insurer an opportunity to plan its premiums with an actuarial loading factor to prepay the hospital service. Also, it is to be noted that the provision for maternity care also covers pregnancy foreshortened by abortion or miscarriage. It would be ironic to say that if Mrs. Turner were to have had a miscarriage before September 16, 1962, Blue Cross-Blue Shield would have been liable; whereas, if when she goes to full term, the policy has lapsed by virtue of cancellation. I think such an intent would have to be expressed in specific words so that the subscriber would be fully aware of how tenuous his (or her) coverage is. NOTES [1] Code 1940, T. 14, § 9, as amended, which exempts cases needful for the woman's "life or health." [2] Griswold v. State of Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510.

Synchronous digital systems are electronic systems that are driven by one or more clock signals. Because a clock signal is periodic, a clock signal has a narrow frequency spectrum. Synchronous digital systems generate electromagnetic energy on narrow frequency bands that include the frequency of the clock signal and its harmonics. The frequency spectrum of the clock signal and its harmonics may exceed desirable limits for electromagnetic interference at certain frequencies. Some synchronous digital systems use spread-spectrum techniques to reduce electromagnetic interference. In a synchronous digital system that uses a spread-spectrum technique, the bandwidth of a signal is spread in the frequency domain to generate a signal having a wider bandwidth. Spread-spectrum techniques reduce the peak energy radiated by the system. Some synchronous digital systems use spread-spectrum clocking (SSC). Serial AT-Attachment (SATA) and DisplayPort are examples of interface standards for electronic devices that require spread-spectrum clocking (SSC). As an example, a data transmission system that transmits a data signal from a transmitter to a receiver according to the SATA 2.0 standard using a spread-spectrum technique and a modulation frequency of 30-33 kilohertz (kHz) has a triangular down-spreading profile that varies between 0 and 5000 parts per million (PPM) of a unit interval of the data signal. In this example, the data rate of the data signal transmitted by the transmission system varies between 3.0 gigabits per second (Gbps) and 2.97 Gbps over time in a triangular waveform.

// Copyright 2011 The Go Authors. All rights reserved. // Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style // license that can be found in the LICENSE file. package norm import ( "fmt" "testing" "golang.org/x/text/transform" ) func TestTransform(t *testing.T) { tests := []struct { f Form in, out string eof bool dstSize int err error }{ {NFC, "ab", "ab", true, 2, nil}, {NFC, "qx", "qx", true, 2, nil}, {NFD, "qx", "qx", true, 2, nil}, {NFC, "", "", true, 1, nil}, {NFD, "", "", true, 1, nil}, {NFC, "", "", false, 1, nil}, {NFD, "", "", false, 1, nil}, // Normalized segment does not fit in destination. {NFD, "ö", "", true, 1, transform.ErrShortDst}, {NFD, "ö", "", true, 2, transform.ErrShortDst}, // As an artifact of the algorithm, only full segments are written. // This is not strictly required, and some bytes could be written. // In practice, for Transform to not block, the destination buffer // should be at least MaxSegmentSize to work anyway and these edge // conditions will be relatively rare. {NFC, "ab", "", true, 1, transform.ErrShortDst}, // This is even true for inert runes. {NFC, "qx", "", true, 1, transform.ErrShortDst}, {NFC, "a\u0300abc", "\u00e0a", true, 4, transform.ErrShortDst}, // We cannot write a segment if successive runes could still change the result. {NFD, "ö", "", false, 3, transform.ErrShortSrc}, {NFC, "a\u0300", "", false, 4, transform.ErrShortSrc}, {NFD, "a\u0300", "", false, 4, transform.ErrShortSrc}, {NFC, "ö", "", false, 3, transform.ErrShortSrc}, {NFC, "a\u0300", "", true, 1, transform.ErrShortDst}, // Theoretically could fit, but won't due to simplified checks. {NFC, "a\u0300", "", true, 2, transform.ErrShortDst}, {NFC, "a\u0300", "", true, 3, transform.ErrShortDst}, {NFC, "a\u0300", "\u00e0", true, 4, nil}, {NFD, "öa\u0300", "o\u0308", false, 8, transform.ErrShortSrc}, {NFD, "öa\u0300ö", "o\u0308a\u0300", true, 8, transform.ErrShortDst}, {NFD, "öa\u0300ö", "o\u0308a\u0300", false, 12, transform.ErrShortSrc}, // Illegal input is copied verbatim. {NFD, "\xbd\xb2=\xbc ", "\xbd\xb2=\xbc ", true, 8, nil}, } b := make([]byte, 100) for i, tt := range tests { nDst, _, err := tt.f.Transform(b[:tt.dstSize], []byte(tt.in), tt.eof) out := string(b[:nDst]) if out != tt.out || err != tt.err { t.Errorf("%d: was %+q (%v); want %+q (%v)", i, out, err, tt.out, tt.err) } if want := tt.f.String(tt.in)[:nDst]; want != out { t.Errorf("%d: incorrect normalization: was %+q; want %+q", i, out, want) } } } var transBufSizes = []int{ MaxTransformChunkSize, 3 * MaxTransformChunkSize / 2, 2 * MaxTransformChunkSize, 3 * MaxTransformChunkSize, 100 * MaxTransformChunkSize, } func doTransNorm(f Form, buf []byte, b []byte) []byte { acc := []byte{} for p := 0; p < len(b); { nd, ns, _ := f.Transform(buf[:], b[p:], true) p += ns acc = append(acc, buf[:nd]...) } return acc } func TestTransformNorm(t *testing.T) { for _, sz := range transBufSizes { buf := make([]byte, sz) runNormTests(t, fmt.Sprintf("Transform:%d", sz), func(f Form, out []byte, s string) []byte { return doTransNorm(f, buf, append(out, s...)) }) } }

[Toxicity of recent and less recent drugs on the optic nerve. Does Viagra cause blindness?]. The optic nerve is quite vulnerable to the toxic effect of drugs. Since the last thirty years new drugs have appeared that are potentially harmful to the optic nerve. They are described.

!***************************************************************************** ! ! Routine to fill a grib2map structure (linked list). ! !***************************************************************************** subroutine load_grib2map(filename, msg, ierr) USE grib2tbls_types Implicit None character*(*), intent(in) :: filename character*(*), intent(inout) :: msg integer , intent(out) :: ierr integer :: status = 0 integer :: fileunit logical :: foundunit character*(maxLineSize) :: line integer :: firstval integer :: numtables = 0 character*(1) :: delim integer :: lastpos integer :: pos integer :: idx integer :: end logical :: lerr ! Open the file ! First pass: ! Scan the file to determine how many tables are included, and how many ! entries are in each table. ! ! Find an open fileunit foundunit = .false. do fileunit = 10,100 inquire(unit=fileunit,opened=lerr) if (lerr .eqv. .false.) then foundunit = .true. exit endif enddo if (foundunit .neqv. .true.) then write(msg, *)'Could not find unit to open ',filename ierr = -1 return endif ! Open the file open ( unit = fileunit, file=filename, status = 'old', iostat = status) if (status .ne. 0) then write(msg, *)'Could not open file ',filename ierr = -1 return endif ! Loop through each line to count the number of tables and entries in ! each table. READLINE: do ! ! Read the line, skip line if line is comment, blank or invalid ! read(fileunit,'(A)',iostat=status) line line = adjustl(line) if (status .lt. 0) then exit endif if (len_trim(line) .eq. 0) then cycle READLINE endif if (line(1:1) .eq. '#') then cycle READLINE endif ! ! Read the first value in the line ! read(line,*,iostat=status) firstval if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Skipping Invalid line in',trim(filename),':' print *,'''',trim(line),'''' cycle READLINE endif ! ! If the first value is -1, weve found a new table. Allocate ! a new member in the linked list, and add the information ! to that member ! if (firstval .eq. -1) then numtables = numtables + 1 ! ! Create and allocate the next member of the linked list ! if (.NOT. ASSOCIATED(TblHead)) THEN ALLOCATE (TblHead, stat=status) if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Could not allocate space for TblHead' exit READLINE endif TblTail => TblHead else ALLOCATE (TblTail%next, STAT=status) if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Could not allocate space for TblTail%next, continuing' cycle READLINE endif TblTail%previous => TblTail TblTail => TblTail%next endif nullify(TblTail%next) nullify(TblTail%ParmHead) ! ! Parse the header line ! lastpos = 0 do idx = 1,5 pos = index(line(lastpos+1:maxLineSize), "|") if (pos .lt. 0) then print *,'Found invalid header line: ' print *,'''',trim(line),'''' if (associated(TblTail%previous)) then TblTail => TblTail%previous else nullify(TblTail) endif cycle READLINE endif SELECT CASE (idx) CASE (1) ! Do nothing, since this is just the indicator value CASE (2) read(line(lastpos+1:lastpos+pos-1),*,iostat=status) TblTail%center if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Found invalid header line: ' print *,'''',trim(line),'''' cycle READLINE endif CASE (3) read(line(lastpos+1:lastpos+pos-1),*,iostat=status) TblTail%subcenter if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Found invalid header line: ' print *,'''',trim(line),'''' cycle READLINE endif CASE (4) read(line(lastpos+1:lastpos+pos-1),*,iostat=status) TblTail%MasterTblV if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Found invalid header line: ' print *,'''',trim(line),'''' cycle READLINE endif CASE (5) read(line(lastpos+1:lastpos+pos-1),*,iostat=status) TblTail%LocalTblV if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Found invalid header line: ' print *,'''',trim(line),'''' cycle READLINE endif END SELECT lastpos = lastpos+pos enddo #ifdef TEST ! Test print *,'Header Line: ' print *,TblTail%center, TblTail%subcenter, TblTail%MasterTblV, & TblTail%LocalTblV #endif ! ! We found the header, cycle so that the header is not interpereted ! as a parameter line. ! cycle READLINE endif if (.NOT. ASSOCIATED(TblTail%ParmHead)) then ALLOCATE (TblTail%ParmHead, stat=status) if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Could not allocate space for TblTail%ParmHead, continuing' cycle READLINE endif TblTail%ParmTail => TblTail%ParmHead else ALLOCATE (TblTail%ParmTail%next, STAT=status) if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Could not allocate space for TblTail%ParmTail%next, continuing' cycle READLINE endif TblTail%ParmTail%previous => TblTail%ParmTail TblTail%ParmTail => TblTail%ParmTail%next endif nullify(TblTail%ParmTail%next) ! ! Parse the Parameter line ! lastpos = 0 do idx = 1,7 pos = index(line(lastpos+1:maxLineSize), "|") if (pos .lt. 0) then print *,'Found invalid header line: ' print *,'''',trim(line),'''' if (associated(TblTail%previous)) then TblTail => TblTail%previous else nullify(TblTail) endif cycle READLINE endif SELECT CASE (idx) CASE (1) read(line(lastpos+1:lastpos+pos-1),*,iostat=status) TblTail%ParmTail%Disc if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Found invalid line: ' print *,'''',trim(line),'''' cycle READLINE endif CASE (2) read(line(lastpos+1:lastpos+pos-1),*,iostat=status) TblTail%ParmTail%Category if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Found invalid line: ' print *,'''',trim(line),'''' cycle READLINE endif CASE (3) read(line(lastpos+1:lastpos+pos-1),*,iostat=status) TblTail%ParmTail%ParmNum if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Found invalid line: ' print *,'''',trim(line),'''' cycle READLINE endif CASE (4) TblTail%ParmTail%WRFNameString = & trim(adjustl(line(lastpos+1:lastpos+pos-1))) CASE (5) TblTail%ParmTail%Description = & trim(adjustl(line(lastpos+1:lastpos+pos-1))) CASE (6) read(line(lastpos+1:lastpos+pos-1),*,iostat=status) TblTail%ParmTail%DecScl if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Found invalid line: ' print *,'''',trim(line),'''' cycle READLINE endif CASE (7) read(line(lastpos+1:lastpos+pos-1),*,iostat=status) TblTail%ParmTail%BinScl if (status .ne. 0) then print *,'Found invalid line: ' print *,'''',trim(line),'''' cycle READLINE endif END SELECT lastpos = lastpos+pos enddo #ifdef TEST ! Test Code delim = '|' write(6,'(I4,A1,I4,A1,I4,A1,A12,A1,A42,A1,I4,A1,I4,A1)') & TblTail%ParmTail%Disc, delim, & TblTail%ParmTail%Category, delim, & TblTail%ParmTail%ParmNum, delim, & trim(TblTail%ParmTail%WRFNameString), delim, & trim(TblTail%ParmTail%Description), delim, & TblTail%ParmTail%DecScl, delim, & TblTail%ParmTail%BinScl, delim #endif ! ! Parse the WRFNameString ! status = 0 lastpos = 0 idx = 1 do while (pos .gt. 0) pos = index(TblTail%ParmTail%WRFNameString(lastpos+1:maxLineSize), ",") if (pos .le. 0) then end = lastpos+maxLineSize else end = lastpos+pos-1 endif read(TblTail%ParmTail%WRFNameString(lastpos+1:end),*) & TblTail%ParmTail%WRFNames(idx) lastpos = lastpos + pos idx = idx + 1 enddo TblTail%ParmTail%numWRFNames = idx-1 #ifdef TEST write(6,*)'WRFNames: ',& (trim(TblTail%ParmTail%WRFNames(idx)),' ', & idx=1,TblTail%ParmTail%numWRFNames) #endif enddo READLINE close ( unit = fileunit) end subroutine load_grib2map !***************************************************************************** ! ! Routine to find and return the grib2 information associated with a WRF ! parameter. ! !***************************************************************************** subroutine get_parminfo(parmname, center, subcenter, MasterTblV, & LocalTblV, Disc, Category, ParmNum, DecScl, BinScl, ierr) USE grib2tbls_types Implicit None character*(*),intent(in) :: parmname integer ,intent(out) :: center, subcenter, MasterTblV, LocalTblV, & Disc, Category, ParmNum, DecScl, BinScl TYPE (grib2Entries_type), pointer :: ParmPtr TYPE (grib2tbls_type) , pointer :: TblPtr integer :: idx logical :: found integer :: ierr ! ! Loop through tables ! found = .false. TblPtr => TblHead TABLE : DO if ( .not. associated(TblPtr)) then exit TABLE endif ! ! Loop through parameters ! ParmPtr => TblPtr%ParmHead PARAMETER : DO if ( .not. associated(ParmPtr)) then exit PARAMETER endif ! ! Loop through WRF parameter names for the table parameter entry ! WRFNAME : do idx = 1,ParmPtr%numWRFNames if (parmname .eq. ParmPtr%WRFNames(idx)) then found = .true. exit TABLE endif enddo WRFNAME ParmPtr => ParmPtr%next ENDDO PARAMETER TblPtr => TblPtr%next ENDDO TABLE if (found) then center = TblPtr%center subcenter = TblPtr%subcenter MasterTblV = TblPtr%MasterTblV LocalTblV = TblPtr%LocalTblV Disc = ParmPtr%Disc Category = ParmPtr%Category ParmNum = ParmPtr%ParmNum DecScl = ParmPtr%DecScl BinScl = ParmPtr%BinScl ierr = 0 else ierr = 1 endif end subroutine get_parminfo !***************************************************************************** ! ! Routine to free the lists. ! !***************************************************************************** subroutine free_grib2map() USE grib2tbls_types Implicit None TYPE (grib2Entries_type), pointer :: ParmPtr TYPE (grib2Entries_type), pointer :: ParmSave TYPE (grib2tbls_type) , pointer :: TblPtr TYPE (grib2tbls_type) , pointer :: TblSave TblPtr => TblHead TABLE : DO if ( .not. associated(TblPtr)) then exit TABLE endif ! ! Loop through parameters ! ParmPtr => TblPtr%ParmHead PARAMETER : DO if ( .not. associated(ParmPtr)) then exit PARAMETER endif ParmSave => ParmPtr%next deallocate(ParmPtr) ParmPtr => ParmSave ENDDO PARAMETER TblSave => TblPtr%next deallocate(TblPtr) TblPtr => TblSave ENDDO TABLE end subroutine free_grib2map

Q: Calculating the Galois group of $f = X^4+20$. I am trying to calculate the Galois group of $f = X^4+20$. Here is my attempt so far. Firstly we determine the roots of $f$ in al algebraically closed field, in this case in $\mathbb{C}$. Write $x = re^{i\phi}$ for a root of $f$. Then we have \begin{align*} (re^{i \phi})^4 = -20 \ & \Longleftrightarrow \ r^4e^{4\phi i} = 20e^{k\pi i}, \ k \in \{1,3,5,\ldots\}, \\ & \Longleftrightarrow \ r^4 = 20 \textrm{ en } 4\phi = k\pi, \ k \in \{1,3,5,\ldots\}, \\ & \Longleftrightarrow \ r = \sqrt[4]{20} \textrm{ en } \phi = \frac{\pi}{4} \cdot k, k \in \{1,3,5,\ldots\}. \end{align*} So for $\phi \in [0,2\pi]$ we find that the roots are given by $$ x = \sqrt[4]{20} e^{\pi/4}, \sqrt[4]{20} e^{3\pi/4}, \sqrt[4]{20} e^{5\pi/4}, \sqrt[4]{20} e^{7\pi/4}. $$ Notice that $e^{\pi/4} = e^{2\pi i /8} = \zeta_8$, an eight primitive root of unity. Hence, the roots are given by $$ x = \sqrt[4]{20} \cdot \zeta_8, \sqrt[4]{20} \cdot \zeta_8^3, \sqrt[4]{20} \cdot \zeta_8^5, \sqrt[4]{20} \cdot \zeta_8^7. $$ So we see that the splitting field of $f$ is given by $\Omega_f = \mathbb{Q}(\sqrt[4]{20} \cdot \zeta_8, \zeta_8^2)$. Notice that $\zeta_8^2 = \zeta_4 = i$, and that we can $\sqrt[4]{20} \cdot \zeta_8$ denote as $\sqrt[4]{-20}$, since $(\sqrt[4]{20} \cdot \zeta_8)^4 = 20 \zeta_8^4 = -20$. So from this we see that $\Omega_f = \mathbb{Q}(\sqrt[4]{-20},i)$. Now the field extension $\mathbb{Q} \subset \mathbb{Q}(\sqrt[4]{-20})$ is of degree $4$, since the polynomial $f = X^4+20$ is irreducible, namely Eisenstein for $p = 5$. Now I am trying to show that $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt[4]{-20}) \subset \mathbb{Q}(\sqrt[4]{-20},i)$ has degree $2$. Then we could conclude that $\# Gal(f) = 8$, and as a subgroup of $S_4$ it has to be $D_4$, the Dihedral group on 8 elements. However, I am stuck at this last step, how do I show this extension has degree 2? I could not show that $i \notin \mathbb{Q}(\sqrt[4]{-20})$. A: It is enough to show that $f$ remains irreducible over $\Bbb{Q}(i)$ because that would show that the splitting field has degree $4$ over $\Bbb{Q}(i)$. Since $[\Bbb{Q}(i):\Bbb{Q}] = 2$ and $f$ is irreducible of degree 4 over $\Bbb{Q}$, $f$ can have no root in $\Bbb{Q}(i)$. So if $f$ is reducible over $\Bbb{Q}(i)$, $f$ would factor as a product of two quadratic polynomials. The constant terms of these polynomials would be the product of two roots of $f$. Those products are $\pm\sqrt{20}$ and $\pm i\sqrt{20}$ which are not in $\Bbb{Q}(i)$. Hence $f$ is irreducible over $\Bbb{Q}(i)$.

Cognitive functions in smoking and non-smoking patients with schizophrenia: A systematic review and meta-analysis of comparative studies. The "Self-medication hypothesis" that has been developed to explain the effect of nicotine in improving aspects of cognitive impairment in schizophrenia remains controversial. This systematic review and meta-analysis compared cognitive functions between smoking and non-smoking schizophrenia patients. The PubMed, PsycINFO, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library databases were systematically and independently searched. Basic demographic and clinical characteristics, smoking history and cognitive performance were recorded. Seven of the 11 studies included in the study, had meta-analyzable data. Compared to non-smoking schizophrenia patients, their smoking counterparts showed significant deficits on the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS)-immediate memory (n = 739), the RBANS-total score (n = 739) and the Continuous Performance Test-Identical Pairs (n = 157). Two of the 4 studies without meta-analysable data did not report significant group difference in performance on the Wechsler Digit Span Task and the Beck Cognitive Insight Scale, while the other 2 studies found that non-smokers outperformed than smokers in problem solving and visual learning. In conclusion, this systematic review and meta-analysis found that smoking schizophrenia patients had worse performance in certain cognitive tasks than non-smoking patients, casting doubts on the validity of the "self-medication hypothesis" that needs to be further examined.

Q: Reflection for F# units of measure Support for reflection has been currently added into F#, but it is not working for measure types. Is it possible to use reflection in F# for measure types? I've read this. It was for 2008, but if you check some code like bellow in ildasm you cannot see anything about Units of Measure. // Learn more about F# at http://fsharp.net [<Measure>] type m [<Measure>] type cm let CalculateVelocity(length:float<m> ,time:float<cm>) = length / time The ildasm output: .method public static float64 CalculateVelocity(float64 length, float64 time) cil managed { // Code size 5 (0x5) .maxstack 4 IL_0000: nop IL_0001: ldarg.0 IL_0002: ldarg.1 IL_0003: div IL_0004: ret } // end of method Program::CalculateVelocity So there are somethings that cannot be reflected in F#. Is it true or not? see the comment : Units actually don't get seen at all by the CLR ... in the article. A: As others already pointed out, when you need to get some information about compiled F# types, you can use standard .NET reflection (System.Reflection) and F# reflection which provides information about discriminated unions, records, etc. (Microsoft.FSharp.Reflection). Unfortunatelly, information about units of measure cannot be accessed using any of these two APIs, because they are checked only during the compilation and do not actually exist at runtime (they cannot be represented in the CLR in any way). This means that you'll never be able to find out whether e.g. a boxed floating point value has some unit of measure... You can get some information about units of measure using Metadata namespace from F# PowerPack. For example, the following prints that foo is a unit: namespace App open System.Reflection open Microsoft.FSharp.Metadata [<Measure>] type foo module Main = let asm = FSharpAssembly.FromAssembly(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()) for ent in asm.Entities do if ent.IsMeasure then printfn "%s is measure" ent.DisplayName This reads some binary metadata that the compiler stores in compiled files (so that you can see units when you reference other F# libraries), so you should be able to see informaiton about public API of F# libraries. A: Units of Measure is just a compile-time thing, it doesn't exist in the assembly/CLR. From part one: Units-of-measure are not just handy comments-on-constants: they are there in the types of values, and, what's more, the F# compiler knows the rules of units.

I will be heading out next week on my first multi-day camping excursion with my 2011 Rockwood Roo 233s. The water heater is bypassed now, because of the winterization process - the pros did it for me using antifreeze. Of course, I plan to push all the antifreeze out of the pipes before I reverse the bypass. But my question is this: when needed, how the heck do I reach those bypass valves? From the outside of the trailer, it seems like I would have to crawl into the storage door to reach them. I need to look again, but from inside the trailer, maybe the storage/cabinet doors under the sofa or the bed would allow me to reach the valves? On the 233S you will need to swing the back of the couch over like you are making the bed. Pick up the front of the bottom cushion on the couch & I will lift up as it is on a hinge. You can see the water heater to the front left behind a false wall. The bypass valves are within easy reach using this method. There are 3 ways to access that front storage compartment, outside, through the inside door & by lifting the bottom cushion which allow full access to everything under the couch storage area. With my Grey Wolf 28BH I made a turn key from a piece of wood 2" X 7/8" onto which I attached 2 cleats extending beyond the length of wood about 2". This fits over the water heater valves and easily turns them. The length of this device reaches from outside the trailer through the storage compartment door which is on the opposite side of the wh. This saves me from lifting the queen bed and removing the small panel to gain access to the wh. Crawling through the storage compartment door along the full width of the trailer was not an acceptable alternative. 2013 Grey Wolf Select 28BH 2012 Ford F250 Lariet Super Duty 4X4 Nights camped in 2015 = 36 and counting

Q: Removing an element from Stack If I were to remove an element from a stack, what runtime error could occur, and how could I prevent the program from terminating abnormally? Also can you give me an example? I am having a hard time understanding this concept in my book here. A: I am having a hard time understanding this concept in my book here. I always thought of the Stack data structure as a stack of lunch trays. To add a new tray to the stack, you have to place it on top of the other trays (push). Whenever you need to remove a tray, you are only able to remove the top tray in the stack (pop). If I were to remove an element from a stack, what runtime error could occur, and how could I prevent the program from terminating abnormally? When removing an element from a stack, you are only able to take off the most recent element put into. This is called LIFO order (Last In First Out). To prevent any problems from occurring, you'll always need to make sure the stack is not empty when attempting to remove an item.

What Happened After Raw With CM Punk, Colt Cabana Comments - According to fans in attendance at tonight’s RAW in Las Vegas, after tonight’s show went off the air Michael Cole announced that WWE has suspended CM Punk indefinitely. – ROH wrestler Colt Cabana commented on Twitter after C.M. Punk said hello to him during Monday’s WWE Raw. “Love Ya @CMPUNK. Just watching you make HISTORY!!! This is soooo fucking amazing…AMAZING!!!” Cabana wrote.

Q: Segundo botão substituindo conteúdo do primeiro Com esse código abaixo quando clico no botão mat ele me trás os dados em uma table. Gostaria que ao clicar no botão sp substitua o conteúdo da tabela por outro. Código: <button id="mat" class="button"></button> <button id="sp"></button> <table id="matriz"> </table> <table id="saopaulo"> </table>   <script> $(document).ready(function(){ $("#matriz").hide(); $("#mat").click(function(){ if($("#matriz").is(":visible")){ $("#matriz").hide(); } else{ $("#matriz").show(); } $.ajax({ url: "../Conteudo/Matriz.html", cache: false, dataType: 'html' }) .done(function(retorno) { $("#matriz").html(retorno); }) .fail(function() { alert("Algo está errado"); }); }); $("#saopaulo").hide(); $("#sp").click(function(){ if($("#saopaulo").is(":visible")){ $("#saopaulo").hide(); } else{ $("#saopaulo").show(); } $.ajax({ url: "../Conteudo/saopaulo.html", cache: false, dataType: 'html' }) .done(function(retorno) { $("#saopaulo").html(retorno); }) .fail(function() { alert("Algo está errado"); }); }); }); </script> A: Basta adicionar dentro da function do done no ajax antes de atribuir o retorno no método .html(...); adicionar a seguinte linha: No ajax de do click sp: $("#matriz").empty(); //remove todos os nós filhos da table Mesma coisa no ajax do click mat: $("#saopaulo").empty(); //remove todos os nós filhos da table

Rightsizing U.S. Mission Iraq Special Briefing Thomas NidesDeputy Secretary for Management and Resources Via Teleconference Washington, DC February 8, 2012 MS. NULAND: Thank you, Operator, and thanks to all of you for joining us. We are pleased today to have with us Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides to talk on the record about a review that he is conducting for the Secretary on rightsizing the U.S. mission in Iraq. Let me, without further ado, turn it over to the Deputy, and then we’ll take about three or four questions. Unfortunately, his time is a little compressed. Go ahead, Mr. Deputy Secretary. DEPUTY SECRETARY NIDES: Hi. Thank you all very much. I just wanted to touch on a couple of facts as it regards to Iraq and what we’re planning to do and what we planned to do when we started the mission. As you know, we had the largest transition since the Marshall Plan taking place as of January 1st, and I think many folks thought that it was a difficult mission set and we – I think arguably – could suggest we’ve had a very successful mission. We – the military is now gone. We have a robust diplomatic presence. We have a diplomatic presence both in up north and down south and in Baghdad. We have been fully and completely engaged on the – all of the political aspects, which you all have been covering quite clearly. And Jim Jeffrey, in particular, I want to give enormous credit to of being fully engaged at all levels of the Iraqi political situation. We have stood up a robust police-training program, which is doing a terrific job working with the local police in training and developing a program, which I think will pay enormous dividends, too. We’re working on economic development, because as you know, they’re producing almost a million two barrels a day out of Basrah. And we’re working with the IO community to make sure that that, as well as all the other economic development all over the country – we have economic officers accomplishing that. We have, the probably the most sophisticated OSC-I site, which we’re working with – or OSC-I sites – which we’re working with the military. As you know, the Iraqis have been purchasing tens of millions of dollars of equipment from us, and they will be continuing to do that. We’re training the Iraqis on that equipment, and that is U.S. equipment which they’re purchasing. And as I’ve pointed out at the beginning is, we’re fully and completely engaged on the political deployment. And with that – knock on wood – we’re doing this, with the first and foremost, the security of our people. It’s certainly still a complicated situation there, but to the credit of our security and our diplomats and our locally engaged employees – knock on wood – we’re doing a better than fine job at accomplishing the goals that we set out. That said, when we put this mission set up, it was very clear to us that we were going to make sure that over time – and what I mean by over time meaning over this year – we begin to try to right size the Embassy to look at – like so – there’s never such a thing as a normal embassy, but a more normalized embassy presence. And principally, our goal has been to shift our reliance on contractors to basically hiring local Iraqis. This is what the Iraqis want, and quite frankly, that’s what we want because it’s cheaper, it’s more important to be part of the community. And so first and foremost, our goal has always been to, over this year, is to shift more and more of our purchasing, and quite frankly, just our whole operations more to local – locally hired individuals. So that is our first priority, with the understanding that our main priority is making sure our people are secure. So number one, we’re going to be looking at how we can do that over the next year. We’ll continue to look at our footprint, which is something we’ll always do. And we’re meeting with folks on a daily basis, along with my colleague Pat Kennedy and his team, to make sure that our footprint is appropriate for the period of time as we proceed. We’ll be looking at the – as we look at the programs that we’re offering, most of the programs that we’re offering will continue to be offered. But we’ll continue to look at how we can hire like we do in many countries around the world, that we hire Iraqis to help us with the programs that we’re executing. So I am – we’re doing exactly what we said we were going to do when we set up this mission set, which is we’re going to constantly continue to look to ways to shift more of the cost structure to locally, which is going to be, obviously, substantially cheaper for us, but most importantly, to continue evaluating it as this mission set is accomplished and is being accomplished. So I am – feel quite good about where we are. I will tell you, contrary to some of the news reports, we are not reducing our operations by 50 percent. But I will hope – quite frankly, I am hopeful that over the next few months that we’ll be able to reduce our size by, again, reducing the dependency on contractors, by focusing on the things that we said we were going to focus on. But that is – quite frankly, I think we owe it to our – the taxpayers. We owe it to the men and women who are working there. We owe it to all the men and women who have spent time there. And quite frankly, that’s what a good bilateral relationship will do. So I am quite pleased as we are proceeding here, and I think we’ll have more opportunity in the next few weeks to continue to brief you about how our planning is going. But I should tell you, it’s going to be a process that we’ll go through over the next few months about how we do this plan and continue to do the planning in Iraq. So why don’t I pause and take a couple questions. MS. NULAND: Thanks, Operator. We’re ready to go to questions. OPERATOR: Thank you. And at this time, if you do have questions, please press * followed by 1 on your touchtone phone. If you would like to remove your question, that is *2. Again, *1 for any questions or comments. One moment for that, please. I am currently showing no questions. Again, that is *1 on your touchtone phone for any questions or comments. DEPUTY SECRETARY NIDES: Boy, I must have been really good. OPERATOR: I do have a question from Karen DeYoung. Ma’am. QUESTION: Hi, Tom. DEPUTY SECRETARY NIDES: Hi. QUESTION: You said it won’t be 50 percent, but have you come up with any sense of what it would be? And do you see Iraqis actually taking over security functions, whether static or movement security or any kind of security? DEPUTY SECRETARY NIDES: I would – to be honest with you, I don’t know where the 50 percent number came from. But I am – it is what it is. But I think that the – I don’t know what the number is. What I – here’s the direction I gave people, okay? We made a commitment to try to reduce the dependency on contractors. There’s been a lot of press written about how many contractors we had. Much of that is security, but its food service, right? If I can get food purchasing – more food purchasing done in Iraq and not have to bring it in, that will dramatically decrease our dependency on contractors to do food service. And that goes through a lot of the service that we are providing now. So my view of this is we will also look aggressively on perimeter security and how we manage that. But I should be honest with you, Karen. My – the only thing I worry about – the only thing I worry about is the security of our people. Okay? We have a diplomatic mission. We owe it to make sure that we fulfill the diplomatic mission that we set out to do when we made this transition. But the most important thing to do is to make sure that we are making sure that we have – our people are secure. And so I – as much as I would love to reduce – continue to reduce the numbers of people and the cost, I will not sacrifice the security of our people. That said, I think as we go through this year, we’re going to see many, many opportunities to allow us to have a – the footprint that we can accomplish the goals around economic development and the OSC-I and the police training, the political engagement, with hopefully some fewer people and then also a lesser dependency on the contractors, which I think we all want to do. And we’ll do that. And it will take – it’s going to take time. And what we’re not going to do is make kind of knee-jerk decisions. This has to be – there was several years of planning goes into these as the Embassy was stood up, and we will be very thoughtful as we begin moving – transitioning this is into a more – what I refer to as a normal-looking embassy. But that will take time, and so we’re going to be doing this very thoughtfully, and in consultation with the Congress, I mind you. I will have many conversations with the Congress, which we’re doing. And they get it. I mean, they totally understand what we’re trying to do. MS. NULAND: Operator, next question. OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Myers of The New York Times. Your line is open. QUESTION: Hi, Tom and Victoria. DEPUTY SECRETARY NIDES: Hey, buddy. QUESTION: The – two questions, which are related: Why is this review happening now as opposed to over the last year when you knew this was coming? Even on the question of buying local food, for example, that could have been done years ago, but it wasn’t. And now you’re looking at it, so I wonder why. DEPUTY SECRETARY NIDES: Well, I mean -- QUESTION: If I can just ask my second, because it’s related: The Iraqis have put up a lot of obstacles, some small but some rather significant, on movements, on visas. They’ve complained about the size of the security footprint. How much of the Iraqi obstructionism is causing you to rethink the number of people that you have there as well? DEPUTY SECRETARY NIDES: Okay. Well, let me answer the first question. The first one’s a good question. I mean – and I should say let’s just step back and remind us where we were, okay? A year ago, we had almost 40-50,000 American troops there, okay? The military was the – was predominately the way we got around. It was certainly a major part of our presence, if not the greater preponderance of our presence, and all of our – much of our diplomatic presence was dependent upon everything from how we were fed and our medical care and all those activities, right? So as we made the largest transition – again, I hate to use this line, but I’ll use it anyways again – since the Marshall Plan, our decision was – which was rightly so – is that we’re going to have to stand this mission set up. Because remember, we set a hard deadline to have those troops gone. So we knew that – starting January 1st – that we were going to have to have a mission set up to basically allow us to do exactly what our mission was, which is the diplomacy, the political engagement, the police training. And so our goal was – at that point was to make sure we had a mission that’s set up. We always said – if you go and talk to Senator Leahy or you talk to Kay Granger, I was very clear that this was going to be – we’re going to do this in stages. You and I had this conversation. We were going to basically have a glide path, which was we would do – like on police training, our original police training program had us this year – our original plan was to do a billion dollar police training, and we started the plan – the training with a half a billion dollar program, because we want to see how these programs work. And as I said to everyone on the Hill, we are going to stand this mission set up because it’s critically important as we get those – we get the military out that we have a very strong diplomatic presence and we don’t have any gaps between the military and our diplomatic presence. But that said, I – we have been totally upfront and straight about this, that over time we want to have a more normalized embassy, and that will mean making a decision over time about contractors, the numbers of contractors, the size of some of our mission sets, without losing sight of our core mission, which is, number one, political engagement, economic development, kind of the – and then this – and then the OSC-I piece of this, which is very, very important as they purchase U.S. equipment. So I – again, I’m – one thing about what we have said and certainly what I’ve said and I think our team has said is we were very clear with everyone what we were planning to do and how we will execute this over. And this is not going to happen overnight. I mean, we’re not going to have – tomorrow, we’re not going to be able to sit here and say okay, X numbers of – hundreds of thousands of people have departed. We’re going to be doing this over a period of time as we think about how this mission set should look like, and quite frankly, as we procure more goods and as we operate more. Now, on your second question, I – we’ve had an unbelievable cooperation from the Iraqis, okay? Listen, is it always perfect? No. I’m sure it’s not always perfect. It’s not always perfect. And I’m sure they don’t think we’re always perfect. But the reality is, is they’ve given us the visas that we’ve needed. It hasn’t been always smooth, but we’ve been given the visas. We’ve set up an operation in Iraq which allows our diplomats to be safe, allows us to do political engagement, it allows us to have an OSC-I site that are training people on military equipment which they’re purchasing from us. So I’d have to say, as cynical as all of us are – and I think most of us are pretty cynical – pretty darn good, I mean, if you ask us come January 30 – January or February 6th where we are today. So I think you all would be questioning us if you weren’t asking us a question, “Well, what are you guys going to do over the long term? What is your long-term view of how big your footprint should be? How much should you be relying up on local contractors?” So we’re asking the tough questions. We’re going to continue asking the tough questions. And we’re going to, over time, allow ourselves to have this Embassy look like – more like a normal embassy, but it will take time without compromising our core missions. MS. NULAND: And for those of you who aren’t wonked up on Iraq, Office of Security Cooperation is what OSC-I is. We have time for one last question, Operator. Thank you. OPERATOR: Thank you. And I have a question from Matthew Lee from the Associated Press. Your line is open. QUESTION: Yeah. Hi. DEPUTY SECRETARY NIDES: Hi. QUESTION: Thanks. You say that you’ve been very clear about this with everybody, but apparently not, because that’s why this 50 percent number is floating around – I presume – that’s floating around in Baghdad. And whether or not it’s true or not, I’m wondering if it isn’t, in fact, the case if you are simply getting rid of the expensive contractors and replacing them with local contractors. While I see a reduction in cost, I don’t see a net reduction in contractors. DEPUTY SECRETARY NIDES: Oh, well that – yeah. Listen, we’re not there to make – I mean, listen. We will go – we’ll go contractor by contractor, we’ll try to figure out over time what goods we can purchase locally in which we will not rely upon goods that are coming in over the border. But I think the more – which – and I certainly appreciate the question – I think you also should recognize the fact we were spending last year almost $50 billion through DOD, and we’re now spending approximately $5.5 billion or – I mean, correct my numbers, but in that ballpark, right? For the taxpayers, okay, they’ve had a very positive gain. Okay? That said, I think most of us would agree that the – if you look at what’s happened in Iraq over the last month and a half, our political engagement there has been at the top end of the scale. The engagement of Jim Jeffrey and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and Barack – President Obama and all the players have been very strong and has been really done by the strength of our diplomatic presence there. But listen, I think the reality is, as I said at the onset, my hope is that as we go through this next year, I’ll be having conversations which you’ll say, listen, we had X thousands of contractors. We have Y now because we are procuring more of our goods in Iraq, or we have concluded that we – the footprint that we currently have, we can have a smaller footprint. We don’t need as big a footprint. So consequently, we don’t need as many, quote, “static guards.” I mean, that’s what every good operation does. We should be – you – people should be pushing us all the time to continue to evaluate over the next couple years, which we will be doing. Our goal has been, quite frankly, upfront, which is we will continue to look at this – the mission set to make sure that we do not compromise on our core responsibilities, which is, number one, the security of our people. So regardless of what the size is, we are going to make sure that the people there – our diplomats and our – and the people that we have hired there are secure, number one, and two, that the ability for us to be involved in the political engagement of Iraq is at the highest possible level because there’s – clearly, as you all know, there’s – this is as important a diplomatic mission that we have anywhere in the world. The stakes are high, and we plan to be engaged. So -- QUESTION: I understand that, but what I’m getting at is that barring – or unless – until there is development, until the circumstances allow for a dramatic reduction in, say, security guards, the security footprint, if you are just getting rid of the expensive contractors and hiring local people at less cost, isn’t it possible that there won’t be that significant a reduction in the number of personnel at all, at least until we get to the point where there doesn’t have to be that many – where there doesn’t -- DEPUTY SECRETARY NIDES: I mean, Matt, my – the way I’d answer the question is: I mean, having spent a lot of time in the business world as well, so I guess I’m somewhat uniquely qualified since I’ve had – I’ve done this a few times – there’s a variety of ways to do this, right? One is, obviously, the numbers of people that are working on different programs. And again, I go back to this notion that we want to make sure we have enough people to do the programs that we believe are critically important. The second way to make sure that you are smart about it is the numbers of locations you have, right? The amount of space you have, because obviously, the number of, quote, “security guards” you’re talking about is a total derivative of how many square feet we have, right? I mean, how many locations you have, because you have to obviously protect the perimeters of those. So as we proceed over the next year, and as we look at our mission set and look at what we’re trying to achieve on the diplomatic side, my hope is, is that we’ll conclude over – in the period of time that we can consolidate some of the locations and space, and that will allow us to rely more upon local Iraqi contractors. But the most important thing is what we’re going to do is we’re going to be studying it, we’re working on it, we’re going to work very closely with our staff at our – in Baghdad and around the country, and we’re going to work with the Iraqis. They – we are a team working closely with them as we look at this diplomatic mission now and into the future. So guys, I’ve got to run. But thank you all. And if I can be of any other help, I’m sure you’ll let us know. The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. Sign-in Do you already have an account on one of these sites? Click the logo to sign in and create your own customized State Department page. Want to learn more? Check out our FAQ! 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Saturday, August 27, 2016 I couldn't help it. Even though when I'm on vacation in a week or so, I have many Disney fashion sewing projects to already do (sewing my Minnie floral maxi dress, altering my Flower Crowns & Disney Bound t-shirt, adding a strip of fabric for length to my Beauty and the Beast skirt, adding lace accents to my Haunted Mansion dress) I still had to buy this fabric when I saw it at JoAnns today. And a silly picture of me holding it around my waist like a sarong. I'm thinking a knee-length full circle skirt perhaps? It's hard to tell in the first two pictures, but the texture is like a satin, which surprised me, since I assumed this fabric was only available in a quilter's cotton type fabric. I got all the store had left, which was 1 1/2 yards. Looks like I have no shortage of Disney projects coming up! Friday, August 19, 2016 About a week ago I posted about a new Haunted Mansion toile pattern tank top that showed up in Memento Mori at the Magic Kingdom. I immediately jumped on the Disney Shop Parks app and nabbed one. It arrived last night, and I am entirely pleased with it! The toile pattern is highly detailed and good quality. I bought the top in a size large, as it's the racer-back tank style with a curved bottom hem that I feel looks better on my body type if I belt it to keep a waist. Otherwise the curved bottom hem can accentuate any midsection weight I'm carrying. But a size large drapes well on me. The lace at the top of the racer back is a nice touch, and since I have to wear this tank layered with another, it works! Some of the details of the toile pattern: Overall, I highly recommend this shirt to any Haunted Mansion fans who want a classical and romantic looking wardrobe piece! One bonus picture: I tried to get a shot with my own black cat, Corvin, but he resisted. Thursday, August 18, 2016 My husband has been tracking my Haunted Mansion toile tank top, and I knew it was set to arrive today. Sadly it hadn't arrived by the time I had to leave for work, so I will be eagerly anticipating it when I get home tonight. But one thing DID arrive today that I wasn't expecting: my Haunted Mansion dress from Amazon! And am I ever tickled with it. The color is lighter than the actual mansion wallpaper, being more of a periwinkle shade of purple than a deep shade. But the Haunted Mansion wallpaper is easy to identify in any color, so that doesn't bother me too much. The dress fits me perfectly, and is the best possible length for wearing in the parks. You can see above, I'm wearing the dress with my new Haunted Mansion wallpaper mouse ears, from MouseBands on Etsy. I'm quite pleased with these ears, especially for the price. It's quite hard to find a good pair of HM wallpaper ears at a decent price, and these were. Today I wore my favorite Haunted Mansion necklace I made from shrinky dink plastic. I still need to do a step by step how-to on here of how to make a shrinky dink necklace for your Disney trip wardrobe. You can see my necklace features the famous bat stanchions from the Haunted Mansion. I love all of the symbols and icons of this, my favorite ride, but my favorite by far are the bat stanchions. I tap all of their wee heads as I walk through the queue to get to my Doombuggy, every time. 13 in a row. In fact, in the above first photo, I'm "ringing a bell" with my bat stanchion bell I purchased on our last trip. So what's your favorite ride at Disney World? And how would you dress to celebrate it? Stay tuned for my review of the Haunted Mansion toile tank! I should be receiving its sympathetic vibrations tonight! Tuesday, August 16, 2016 I'm sure this is old news to some, but the other day I stumbled across a Beauty and the Beast dress by the Japanese clothing brand Secret Honey. I was absolutely smitten with it, but after posting on a Facebook group about it, I was told that apparently the sizing is more pre-teen than teen. So sadly, with my non-petite frame, I'll have to just look for now, until they decide to make these in larger sizes. This is the dress I saw. The top has images from Beauty and the Beast, done up as constellations. The model is wearing the dress with a turtleneck, but I can picture how lovely it would be to wear on its own as a sundress. The bottom of the dress features images of the characters in Beauty and the Beast, in front of a series of castles. What I love about Secret Honey's designs is that they are definitely inspired by Lolita fashion, and some of them verge on being too cutesy for my own taste, but I can see how most could be dressed down into more elegant and fairy tale inspired styles. Even their sweaters are romantic-looking. I love the design of this Tiana dress below. Once again, it's close to cosplay, but they interpreted her gown so stylishly. I've seen plenty of Alice in Wonderland dresses, but this one is about the sweetest I've seen without veering into saccharine. You know I love my maxi dresses, so I love this one, inspired by Aladdin. Tangled lanterns adorn this dress. And aren't these pants adorable? This Megara maxi dress is beautiful too Of all their designs, this Bambi one is by far the most Mori. I love love love it. And they even have a dress that features my favorite tapestry art from Frozen! This art appears in several places in the parks, but I haven't found it on anything I've wanted to buy till now. My favorite items I've found are this Beauty and the Beast dress.... Once again, it's paired with a shirt under it, but I can see it worn alone: and this oh so stunning Merida skirt that could be GORGEOUSLY paired with a top for a Disneybound in the parks. This Merida skirt I may just have to try to hunt down in the largest size Secret Honey makes and hope it fits. So if you want to know what sort of "romantic Disney style" I'm talking about on this blog? Monday, August 15, 2016 So this morning I was on the Disney Shop Parks app after a tip-off from Disney Fashionista informed me that the new Beauty and the Beast Dooney and Bourke purses were for sale as of today. I decided not to get the Dooney, but while I was on the app, I did a search under keywords "Haunted Mansion" and came across this "Haunted Mansion Lolita Dress" I don't think I've ever seen anywhere on the app or in Facebook groups or in the parks in person before. It appears to be another optical illusion skater dress, like their "Haunted Mansion Maid" ensemble with its faux printed buttons and collar. But it appears at least from the pictures as if the ribbon bows are actually on there and not just printed. And I love the greyed-out version of the wallpaper at the bottom, and the greyed-out stripe on the rest of it. There's hardly a bit of information about it...no description beyond the fabric content (94% polyester, 6% spandex) and the sizes to choose. There isn't even an option to find it in the realm of the Disney parks, so I'm guessing it's an app exclusive? Has anyone seen this before and can tell me more about it? I'm quite intrigued. Tomorrow, a post about another source for lovely Disney Lolita dresses. Friday, August 12, 2016 The Disneylifestylers.com Facebook group shared this photo yesterday of a new tank top at Memento Mori in the Magic Kingdom, and I flipped my lid. It's Haunted.Mansion.Toile. Look at it! Every scene is from the Haunted Mansion! I ran, not walked, over to the Disney Shop Parks buying app, and it was there. Now it's on its way to me! I like how the top looks all drapey on the hanger, so I bought it in a size large so I can belt it. Just a heads-up to anyone who might think this is as amazingly awesome as I do.