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North Lands Creative: the world-leading glass studio you may not have heard of
Director Karen Phillips tells us more about the open access studio in Caithness
'What we do is quite unique, even in the world, and we're the only glass studio in Scotland that's open access,' says Karen Phillips, the director of North Lands Creative (NLC). 'There are lots of glass organisations spread across the world, but most of them tend to have a focus on one thing. They might have a wonderful kiln room, or a cold shop, but we cater for every kind of technique in glass; we have a hot shop, a kiln room, a mould room, a cold glass shop … '
As far as Phillips is aware, part of the reason for siting North Lands in the Caithness village of Lybster was because the beautiful beaches of Scotland's far north might allow access to the sand needed for glass-making by those using the studio. 'Sadly it wasn't to be,' she says. 'I believe the chemical composition of the sand wasn't right for making hot glass.' The other influence on the choice of location was the local MP at the time, Robert Maclennan, who established North Lands in 1995 alongside his old university friends: Professor Keith Cummings of the University of Wolverhampton and Dan Klein, the latter a world-renowned expert in glassmaking.
Phillips points out that most aspiring glassmakers will probably find the broadest range of facilities elsewhere if they study the subject at university; but even then, many of these departments are closing down, and the ones which are left don't have anything like the breadth and versatility of equipment as NLC. 'Our facilities mean that people who come to us, if they haven't practised in all of these areas, have space for creativity and support from the technical team we have onsite,' she says. 'They're able to explore far more in their practise than they would have been able to elsewhere.'
'Our Alastair Pilkington Studio was finished when Lady Pilkington bequeathed some money to us on the death of our husband – that's now our main studio,' says Phillips. 'At the top of the High Street we also have a little gallery, office and showcase space. In the studio, we run a host of programmes, much like other studios; an artist-in-residency programme, glassmaking classes and an annual forum which brings together like-minded people to discuss contemporary studio glass.'
NLC also offers open-access classes for locals, while it's also proud of the international esteem in which it's held. 'We're on the periphery,' says Phillips. 'I think we're known more outside Scotland than we are within the country; when I came for an interview here I didn't know about North Lands Creative, and I've been involved in the arts for almost 20 years. But over the last few years, we've been trying to broaden out and look at how glass can support visual arts, performance arts and cross-disciplinary practices.'
North Lands Creative, Lybster, Caithness, northlandscreative.co.uk.
North Lands Creative Glass
Quatre Bras, Lybster, KW3 6BN
Scotland's Workshops Week aims to draw attention to the quality of facilities on offer(19 Nov 2019)
We pick some highlights from the programme, which brings together 11 of the country's sculpture workshops, print-making and photography studios
Art College Degree Shows(11 Jun 2009)
Public access production facilities 'provide a strong foundation for exploring new pedagogies and bringing people together'(17 Apr 2019)
Some of the people behind Scotland's top-class facilities tell us about the role they play, not just for artists, but for their communities as a whole
Life Long(18 Feb 2010)
M. Night Shyamalan cried over bad Glass reviews(18 Apr 2019)
Film gossip
Sarah Paulson struggled to prepare for 'Glass' role(17 Apr 2019)
M. Night Shyamalan: The film business has changed in my favour(22 Jan 2019)
Sarah Paulson: Shooting Glass was surreal(21 Jan 2019)
Sculpture (Visual art)
North Lands Creative


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Ornithopus, im deutschen Sprachraum auch Vogelfuß oder auch Serradella genannt, ist eine Pflanzengattung aus der Tribus Loteae in der Unterfamilie der Schmetterlingsblütler (Faboideae) innerhalb der Familie der Hülsenfrüchtler (Fabaceae).

Beschreibung

Vegetative Merkmale
Die Ornithopus-Arten sind einjährige krautige Pflanzen. Die Stängel sind niederliegend bis aufsteigend.

Die wechselständig und meist schraubig angeordneten Laubblätter sind gestielt oder sitzend und 2 bis 15 Zentimeter lang. Die relativ kleinen Nebenblätter sind linealisch und untereinander frei, aber mit dem Blattstiel verwachsen. Die unpaarig gefiederte Blattspreite besteht aus drei bis 18 Paaren von Fiederblättchen plus das Endfiederblättchen. Der Trivialname Serradella bezieht sich auf die gesägt wirkenden Laubblätter. Es sind keine Nebenblättchen vorhanden. Es können Pulvini vorhanden sein. Die Ränder der Blättchen sind glatt.

Generative Merkmale
Achselständig stehen auf einem Blütenstandsschaft einfache, meist kopfigen Blütenstände, die jeweils nur wenige Blüten enthalten. Die relativ kurz gestielten Blüten stehen meist über einem Tragblatt, das oft laubblattähnlich ist. Es sind meist Deckblätter vorhanden.

Die relativ kleinen, zwittrigen Blüten sind zygomorph und fünfzählig mit doppelter Blütenhülle. Die fünf haltbaren Kelchblätter sind auf mindestens der Hälfte ihrer Länge zylindrisch oder glockenförmig verwachsen mit fünf meist ± gleichen Kelchzähnen. Die weißen, rosafarbenen oder gelben Kronblätter sind in der typischen Form der Schmetterlingsblüte angeordnet. Die Kronblätter sind genagelt. Die Fahne ist längliche oder kreisförmig. Die zwei Flügel sind nicht mit dem Schiffchen verwachsen und ± länglich. Zwei Kronblätter sind zum Schiffchen verwachsen, das ± gerade ist und stumpf endet. Es sind zehn fertile Staubblätter vorhanden. Alle Staubbeutel sind gleich. Es ist nur eine oberständiges Fruchtblatt vorhanden und enthält 7 bis 50 Samenanlagen. Der kahle Griffel ist nach innen gebogen und endet in einer kopfigen Narbe.

Die sitzenden, 20 bis 35 Millimeter langen, geraden bis gebogenen Hülsenfrüchte öffnen sich bei Reife nicht und enthalten 7 bis 25 Samen. Die Hülsenfrüchte sind im Querschnitt rund oder abgeflacht, sie sind stark genervt und zwischen den Samen verengt. Es sind Gliederhülsen, die bei Reife in einsamige Teilfrüchte zerfallen, also Bruchfrüchte. Die relativ kleine Samen sind kugelig bis linsenförmig und enthalten Endosperm und besitzen keinen Arillus.

Chromosomensatz
Die Chromosomengrundzahl beträgt x = 7; es liegt meist Diploidie mit einer Chromosomenzahl 2n = 14. vor.

Ökologie
Bei Ornithopus-Arten handelt es sich um helophytische oder mesophytische Therophyten. Es liegt eine Symbiose vor mit stickstofffixierenden Knöllchenbakterien in den Wurzelknöllchen.

Die Bestäubung erfolgt durch Insekten (Entomophilie). Die Diasporen sind die einsamigen Teilfrüchte der Gliederhülse.

Systematik und Verbreitung
Die Gattung Ornithopus wurde 1753 durch Carl von Linné in Species Plantarum, Tomus II, S. 743 aufgestellt. Typusart ist Ornithopus perpusillus  Synonyme für Ornithopus  sind: Ornithopodium , Artrolobium

Die Gattung Ornithopus  umfasst etwa sechs Arten. Vier von ihnen kommen in Europa vor. Das Hauptverbreitungsgebiet ist der Mittelmeerraum bis Westasien. Eine Art kommt nur in Südamerika vor. Beispielsweise in Australien und Neuseeland sind drei Arten Neophyten.

Je nach Autor gibt etwa sechs Ornithopus-Arten.
 Gelbe Serradella (Ornithopus compressus ): Sie kommt in Südeuropa, in Marokko, Algerien, Tunesien, auf den Kanaren, in Madeira und in Zypern, der Türkei,  Libanon, Iran und Georgien vor und ist auf den Azoren ein Neophyt.
 Ornithopus micranthus : Sie kommt in Argentinien, Uruguay und im brasilianischen Bundesstaat Rio Grande do Sul vor.
 Mäusewicke (Ornithopus perpusillus ), auch Kleiner Vogelfuß genannt: Sie kommt in Europa vor, hauptsächlich in Westeuropa, auf den Kanaren und auf Madeira, in Algerien und ist auf den Azoren ein Neophyt.
 Ornithopus pinnatus : Sie kommt in Südeuropa, in Nordwestafrika, auf den Kanaren und auf Madeira, in der Türkei, Syrien und in der Region Palästina vor und erreicht nördlich die britischen Scilly-Inseln.
  Echte Serradella (Ornithopus sativus ): Sie ist Portugal, Spanien und Südwestfrankreich, Marokko und Algerien verbreitet und ist auf den Azoren ein Neophyt. Es gibt etwa zwei Unterarten:
 Ornithopus sativus subsp. isthmocarpus
 Ornithopus sativus  subsp. sativus
 Ornithopus uncinatus : Sie kommt in Marokko vor.

Nutzung
Die meisten Arten werden vielfältig genutzt. Ornithopus-Arten werden fast weltweit zur Futtermittelproduktion und Beweidung angebaut.

Literatur
 P. W. Ball: Ornithopus L. In:
 Leslie Watson, September 2016: Datenblatt bei Ornithopus L. Florabase — The Western Australian Flora. Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.
 S. Talavera, C. Aedo, S. Castroviejo, C. Romero, L. Sáez, F. J. Salgueiro, M. Velayos: LXXXVIII. LEGUMINOSAE – LOTEAE -  S. Talavera, M. Arista: 49. Ornithopus L. PDF, S. 873–880. In: (Real Jardín Botánico) Castroviejo et al. (Hrsg.): Flora iberica Band 7.
 S. M. Fu, J. G. Hampton, W. M. Williams: Description and evaluation of serradella (Ornithopus L.) accessions. In: New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research, Volume 37, 4, 1994, S. 471–479. doi:10.1080/00288233.1994.9513086 PDF.
 Shimin Fu: IDENTIFICATION AND EVALUATION OF NEW ORNITHOPUS L. GERMPLASM WITII SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SEED CHARACTERS. - A thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Agricultural Science in Seed Technology at Massey University Palmerston North New Zealand, 1992. Volltext-PDF.

Einzelnachweise

Weblinks

Loteae
Loteae (Tribus)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Just finished watching the Superbowl – for someone who doesn't know a whole lot about football it seemed to me to be a pretty fun game. The weather in Miami was pretty bad – rain all the way through – but that maybe made me enjoy it more because there was more randomness. I was glad that we hadn't spent loads of money on a high def TV – the weather meant that rain got on the TV camera lenses so a lot of the pictures were quite blurry; I'm sure our regular old set worked just fine.
Prince seemed pretty good at half time – a tad self-indulgent perhaps so people who weren't already Prince fans possibly wouldn't have been into it but I was impressed. The ads – meh – not too memorable (here's a roundup from Slate).
Seeing the Superbowl always reminds me of the year I visited my college friend Andy in Japan, in 1999 just before I moved to Minnesota. The day of the game we were all pretty wiped – a bunch of us had been out all night clubbing in Tokyo which involved a half hour bike ride to the station, a long train ride into town, trekking around between bars and clubs then the train back at 6am. The game started around 10am – I remember being woken up by the sound of renowned baritone Cher belting out the National Anthem.
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Police have visited Aaron Carter's apartment in Florida multiple times this week, after receiving calls claiming the 29-year-old singer has been struggling with alcohol and drug issues, and is allegedly threatening to kill himself, ET has learned.
The welfare checks came after Carter was involved in a car crash on Tuesday.
According to the St. Petersburg, Florida, police report filed on Tuesday and obtained by ET, Carter was following closely behind another car and struck its rear right-side bumper at around 11 a.m., after not anticipating the vehicle stopping at a stop sign. He was cited for failure to obey a traffic control signal (failing to stop at traffic light) and operating a motor vehicle with an expired registration. According to the report, Carter's registration expired in April.
Carter wasn't hospitalized after the crash, though his BMW was towed from the scene.
Officers visited Carter's home a second time on Tuesday at around 2 p.m. for another welfare check, according to yet another police report. The report notes that Carter refused medical treatment after his car crash earlier in the day, though notes that Carter "did not seem in distress," and the call was cleared.
According to the report, nobody answered the door again when police arrived, and there were "no signs of distress inside."
Interestingly enough, on Wednesday, Carter tweeted he was "having a relaxing night just playing some Zelda & watching Netflix."
ET has reached out to Carter's rep for comment.
Carter's rep did tell ET on Tuesday that the singer was "fine and resting at home" after his car accident. The singer also tweeted about the crash.
"TBH this sh*t hurts, my arms hurt, my legs hurt," he wrote. "All my airbags went off, I broke my nose. This is f**ked up."
He later responded to a fan who asked if he was OK, replying, "All of my airbags went off and I'm cut up all over, at least everyone survived and we're good."
In July, Carter gave a tearful interview to ET, denying he had any issues with drugs, and opening up about suffering from an eating disorder.


According to NYT, Some experts have been quick to predict apocalypse, painting grim pictures of 1,000 miles of irreplaceable wetlands and beaches at risk, fisheries damaged for seasons, fragile species wiped out and a region and an industry economically crippled for years.
The latest satellite image of the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico indicates it has shrunk since last week. But scientists say that only means some of the oil has gone underwater.
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Showing results by author "Roberta M. Gilbert"
Relationships - how people who are important to each other interact - may be the most important area for human understanding today. They are of prime importance in determining our quality of life and even health. They have a huge impact on productivity and efficiency in the workplace. They start and stop wars between nations. Extraordinary Relationships, based upon the observations and theory developed by Dr. Murray Bowen, shows us how emotions affect relationships and how to work on our own part of any relationship.


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January 31, 2018 Featured, Review, Theatrical, This Week Leave a Comment
For his first foray into feature directing, much-lauded playwright, screenwriter, and TV maven Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing, The Social Network) brings to the screen the true story of Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), who found fortune and eventual infamy running high stakes covert poker games for the great and the not-so-good in Los Angeles and New York City before her downfall and subsequent book deal which led, inevitably, to the subject at hand.
We get a brief prologue, narrated by Chastain in Sorkin's trademark rapid-patter dialogue, that outlines the young Bloom's aspirations as an Olympic-hopeful skier before a career-ending injury and a fractious relationship with her philandering father (Kevin Costner, great) sends her fleeing the nest to Los Angeles. However, our real point of ingress comes years later when Bloom engages the services of lawyer Charlie Daffy (Idris Elba, bringing the gravitas) after a dawn raid by Federal agents presages prosecution for past misdeeds. As the case against Molly proceeds and Daffy tries to get the guarded Bloom to give up her secrets, we delve into her life and her fascinating career, following her journey from there to here.
It's engrossing stuff. For one thing, there's nothing so enticing as being allowed a glimpse into a hidden world of power and privilege, and Molly's world is certainly that: organising secret poker games in five star hotel rooms for celebrities and multi-millionaires with all the luxury that entails, seeing hundreds of thousands won and lost on the turn of a card, watching massive egos crash against each other like tectonic plates in high risk tests of nerves and resources. Even the driest account would be endlessly entertaining, and this raw grist is honed to perfection by Sorkin's nimble script, which heightens the drollness and drama with quickfire dialogue that also serves to reveal character and motivation with sly accuracy.
From a certain angle, the game of poker is all about controlling the flow of information – figuring out what your opponents are holding while concealing your own hand, and so too is Molly's Game. Throughout the film there's a tension between Daffy and Bloom; the former needs to know everything in order to do his best to keep Molly out of jail, while the latter keeps her secrets close, doling out information only when she has to, only to best effect and with her reputation for discretion always foremost in her mind. In Sorkin's hands this becomes a powerful rhetorical tool, allowing him to lay out his narrative in a deft way that avoids the more obvious pitfalls of the biopic form.
Still, it would be to little effect if we didn't have such an arresting (and arrested!) figure at the centre of it all. Chastain's Molly Bloom is a complex figure: fiercely intelligent and ambitious, but driven to succeed in a manner that veers dangerously into self-destructive behaviour. She's an enigmatic figure who keeps her own counsel – a trait that confounds Daffy, her real-life counsel – and so we're forced to try and glean what we can about her motives and drives from what she reveals and what others in the course of the story uncover. Late in the game we get a fantastic two-hander scene where Costner's character, a psychologist, lays out to Molly what he sees as the fundamentals of her psyche (it wouldn't be a Sorkin joint without a middle-aged white male liberal telling us the way of the world) but such blunt tools only penetrate out heroine so far – she retains her selfhood, and her power, even in what appears to be defeat.
Gendered power is the other big throughline here: the appearance and performance of masculine power, as seen around the poker table and embodied by Michael Cera's "Player X", an amalgam of several celebrity players (but mostly Tobey Maguire) and the actual, by necessity more subtle, feminine power wielded by Molly and her all-woman team, who go out of their way to present as decorative waitresses and hostesses grateful for thousand dollar tips, but are in fact a shrewd and canny machine devoted to separating grandstanding men from their money. More obviously powerful and sinister forces come into play – the Mafia makes a play for a piece of Molly's action in one harrowing sequence, and the Russian Mob make their presence known as well – but thematically speaking they're very much in the background compared to the age-old gender struggle that informs every scene and interaction.
That makes Molly's Game a much more timely biopic than usual, but it never overplays its hand in this regard – drama and character remain the focus. And yet it's also frequently laugh-out-loud funny. Sorkin's zingers zing as always, and there's a brick joke about Arthur Miller's The Crucible that absolutely slays when it finally lands. The film's tonal control is impressive, pivoting from electrifying aspirational scene-setting to fraught drama to droll, world-weary dark comedy often within the same scene – a trick last week's I, Tonya found harder than a triple axel. Ultimately, though, what lifts this film above the pack is that, like its subject, it knows what it's about – even if it expects you to do some work figuring out exactly what that is.
Hark to the tale of Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie), an ice skating prodigy from an impoverished background who endures years of abuse from her mother, Lavona Golden (Allison Janney) and husband, Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) in her pursuit of glory on the ice. Her dreams of Olympic gold are just about realised, too – unfortunately, being implicated in the brutal 1994 attack on rival skater Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver) scuppers her career.
Craig Gillespie's brisk but uneven account of Harding's life pulls out every tool in the post-modern biopic box, including breaking the fourth wall, unreliable conflicting narrators, a seemingly endless supply of period needle drops and the by-now-ubiquitous footage of the real participants playing over the credits.
Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to know which tool to use where, meaning he's frequently using a screwdriver handle to bang in a nail, stretching a metaphor past breaking point. We get the requisite details of Harding's life, from her early days as a button-cute four year old skating ingenue through her tumultuous personal life, her clashes with the ice skating orthodoxy, her rise and, with the assault on Kerrigan almost accidentally organised by Gillooly and his delusional right hand man, Shawn (Paul Walter Hauser), her fall into ignominy. What the film fails to do is imbue these events with any meaning.
The problems stem from the script by Steven Rogers. Tonya, Jeff and Lavona share the bulk of the narration duties (Bobby Cannavale steps in to fill in the gaps as a muckraking journalist), but the film puts us so deep in Tonya's corner that any pretense that the views we're presented with are balanced or of equal value is ludicrous. Really, it's right there in the title – this is I, Tonya, not Rashomon On Ice, and we are heavily encouraged to take her account at face value – the presence of other accounts, especially from characters portrayed as the villains of the piece, is baffling. We're given no insight into the inner lives of any of the other players; everyone bar Tonya is opaque.
At times this leads to some questionable omissions. The film understandably focuses on the Kerrigan attack, and rightly so – it was a massive scandal that captivated the media of the time. Here, Kerrigan is almost a bystander to her own story, relegated to a few brief appearances and Harding's assertion that they were actually friends – a claim left unexplored.
That relationship is not the only road not taken here. While arguably an account of talent hammered flat on the anvil of circumstance, I, Tonya takes a shallow and arguably glib view of the milieu in which Harding was raised. Much is made of how this girl from the wrong side of the tracks is ostracised by the ice skating community, to the point of judges docking her points during competitions, but no attempt is made to really take into account the real cost, psychological and situational, of the life lived. Gillespie's chosen tone is black comedy, frequently straying into farce, and the film treats so many of the tangible details of lower working class life – the clothes, the decor, the food, the attitudes – as fodder for jokes and objects of ridicule. At times, this even extends to the shocking amount of domestic violence and emotional abuse Tonya endures on screen at the hands of both her husband and mother. Narratively, remarkably little is done to measure the impact of the beatings, yelling, and general day-to-horrors heaped upon our heroine.
Performance-wise it's another story altogether, and if anything what lifts I, Tonya out of mid-range biopic territory are the fantastic turns by Janney and Robbie. The reliably excellent Janney crafts a fascinatingly loathsome character in Levona, a bitter, unavailable, endlessly cold and cruel woman whose relationship with her daughter remains maddeningly impossible to quantify. There's an expectation in this sort of thing for the other shoe to drop, for a late stage revelation of the heart of gold generally hidden under the rough hide of a tough mentor figure – we get none of that here. Attempts to dig into Lavona's depths just reveal colder, harder terrain – it's difficult to recall a more singularly loathsome figure in recent cinema history.
And then there's Robbie's Harding. Robbie leaves it all out on the field here, unafraid to make her Tonya abrasive, naive, at times bitchy and cruel – but also driven, vulnerable, and frequently lonely. Her prickly demeanour is armour and, given the people she's surrounded by, it's not hard to understand the reason for its existence. It's a stellar turn; in being willing to risk being unlikable, Robbie makes Harding relatable, and the fact that she is endlessly fascinating in the film is all down to her work, not the script's. Robbie's Harding is so watchable that we remain engaged with her story even after she is denied almost all agency for the last third of the film, being propelled along by the mechanisms of plot rather than her own choices. It's a great, great performance – imagine what she could do with a great script.
Ultimately, I, Tonya is a three star film buoyed by a couple of five star turns. That Janney and especially Robbie bring the thunder here is a tribute to them, not the material ,which does nothing of much interest with either Harding's life or the biopic form. It's a shame these shining performances don't have a better setting, but perhaps they shine just that bit brighter by contrast.
Despite his exotic name (from his Italian father), writer/director Armando Iannucci is Scottish. He is a huge cult to those who share his deliciously vicious and richly-dialogued comedies. He is the brains behind Veep, In the Loop and The Thick of It. That list alone will be enough to have a lot of people lining up to see his recent foray into cinema. The other thing this film has is a fantastic ensemble cast of comedic and theatrical talents (Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Michael Palin, Rupert Friend, Jeffrey Tambor and half a dozen other recognisable faces). Clearly, casting agents would have no problem persuading actors to work with this material.
It is set in Moscow. The year is 1953 and the feared peasant-tyrant Stalin is still terrorising all and sundry. His 'court' consists of those remaining Bolsheviks who have managed to toady their way into not being shot or sent to Siberia. They loathe and fear Beria (Russell Beale), Stalin's chief spy and torturer who has the dirt on all of them. When Stalin has a stroke, Khrushchev (Buscemi) leads the crazed politburo in a madcap attempt to orchestrate the state funeral whilst out-manoeuvring each other's schemes.
The film has some genuinely hilarious set ups and a nice mixture of farce and other styles of comedy. The banter between the players is expertly delivered and the author's placing of the killer one-liner is much in evidence. The tradition of satirising the absurdities of Stalinism is a well-worn path of course. It has been done for decades, not least by many Russian and Eastern European playwrights and directors who lived through that era. That said, there are some aspects of Stalin and Beria's cruelties that are so vile that it is hard to keep up the mask of comedy. Russell Beale has the range to cover all of this, of course, and he gives us a Beria worth hating. Still, the overall tone of the film is of an insane ride through an insane time. As one of the characters remarks, "I have had nightmares that made more sense than this." That says it all.
November 14, 2017 Featured, Review, Theatrical, This Week 1 Comment
Anyone familiar with the work of writer/director Martin McDonagh – in particular, his movies In Bruges (2008) and Seven Psychopaths (2012) – will be aware of his signature style of dark humour, bleak storylines and use of profane language paired with ultra-violence.
The British/Irish screenwriter and film director is also renowned as a playwright, especially for The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996), The Cripple of Inishmaan (1997), and The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001). His plays have been produced all over the world, including Australia.
His newest Hollywood film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, offers everything you might expect and more. It delves deeper into the darkest recesses of the human psyche than most storytellers dare to go, and the result is uproariously funny as well as disturbing and utterly harrowing.
Frances McDormand is superb as the central protagonist within an equally all-star ensemble that includes Woody Harrelson, John Hawkes, and Peter Dinklage. Also, McDonagh has cast three of the fine actors he used for Seven Psychopaths – Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, and Abbie Cornish. Caleb Landry Jones is remarkable as a key supporting character Red, the savvy salesman who arranges the rental of the titular billboards.
McDormand plays Mildred Hayes. We learn that several months earlier her daughter was raped and murdered in an especially gruesome way. McDonagh does not spare us any of the details. Frustrated by the lack of police action, she sets out to provoke a response from the town officials and from the townspeople themselves. She wants justice at any cost. But her incensed activism does have a cost – on everyone, including herself and her high schooler son Robbie played by Lucas Hedges (known for Moonrise Kingdom and Manchester by the Sea). Despite her escalating extreme behaviour, McDonagh ensures we are in step with Mildred's fury throughout.
Exquisitely crafted, McDonagh's story is set in a US Midwest town small enough that everyone knows each other's business, yet large enough that not everyone knows each other by sight – a device that allows for McDonagh to maximise his drama at every opportunity.
The film is populated by authentic and well-rounded characters, from the sympathetic police chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) – the main subject of her ire – to his dunderheaded colleague, the clearly incompetent and openly racist police officer Jason Dixon, played perfectly with on-point character detail by Sam Rockwell.
Around the one-hour mark – the midpoint – the movie plummets off a cliff into far darker territory than anticipated. Everything that follows is far from predictable, and therefore has you squirming uncomfortably in your seat with each new outrage.
This is a movie that illuminates the multifarious despicable ways that humans treat each other, and yet there are occasional flashes of decency offered by way of contrast or respite. The accusatory speech Mildred fires at the local priest forms a gratifying and triumphant moment – her "Crips and the Bloods" speech. The "orange juice" scene in the hospital may render you gutted thanks to its unexpected grace within a series of horrendous episodes. There's a lot to admire about this film; not just its unflinching stance, but also its crumbs of redemption.
Click here for nationwide movie times for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
November 13, 2017 Featured, Review, Theatrical, This Week Leave a Comment
It's 1934 and a disparate cast of characters are traveling by train from Istanbul to Paris, among them famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh). After the train is stopped by a rockslide on the tracks during a snowstorm, a fellow passenger, the shady Mr Ratchett (Johnny Depp), is found stabbed to death in his locked compartment, and Poirot is presented with the challenge of divining who the killer is. The truth is, of course, much stranger than he could anticipate.
Agatha Christie's classic novel was famously filmed by Sidney Lumet back in '74, and it's kind of incredible that it has taken this long for another big screen version to be mounted. It's a nigh-perfect basis for a film, offering a clear narrative goal, an interesting location, and – most importantly – a panoply of intriguing and eccentric roles just begging to be brought to life by a talented company of character actors.
Which is exactly what we get here, although the line between "character actor", "rising star" and "dear God, it's Johnny Depp" is blurry. What we do get is (deep breath) Michell Pfeiffer as a husband-hunting American widow, Judi Dench as an imperious Russian princess, Olivia Colman as her long-suffering maid, Josh Gad as the alcoholic secretary to the murdered man, Derek Jacobi as the victim's valet, Penelope Cruz as a devout missionary, Daisy Ridley as a governess, Willem Dafoe as an Austrian professor, Leslie Odom Jr. as a doctor, and more. They're all uniformly great (yes, even Depp), and are clearly having a ball, embracing director Branagh's heightened, theatrical take on the material.
Branagh is, of course, Poirot, and why not? He is, after all, the director's favourite actor. If everyone present is having fun, Branagh is having the most fun as Christie's famous and fastidious flatfoot, sporting one of the greatest mustaches in cinematic history giving full play to Poirot's suite of tics and quirks. It's such a great role, and Branagh manages the rather neat balancing act of making Poirot brilliant and heroic but at the same time fussy and funny, a strange little man driven to try and correct a world made imperfect by crime and carelessness.
As a director, Branagh revels in the sumptuous details and textures of his setting – the polished brass and rich, dark wood of the train carriages, gleaming in the lamplight; the clean, blinding white drifts of snow outside; the luxurious fabrics of the costumes; the hair, the make up and accessories of his characters. It's the James Bond model in microcosm, cinema as luxury tourism, showing us an aspirational world we can't really afford to visit except for a couple of hours at a time. Branagh also doesn't let the location limit him too much in terms of his camerawork – our point of view is always on the move, tracking down carriages, swooping overhead, pushing in to highlight tangible details. Orient Express is absolutely worth catching on theatrical release; while it may not fit the current tentpole model, it is a timely reminder that it's not just explosions and spectacle that benefit from the cinema.
Plus, it's a really good time. For all that it deals with murder and (slight spoiler from an 80 year old book) conspiracy, there's something quite cosy and comforting in Christie's story, and that translates perfectly here. The solution to the mystery is pretty well known by this stage of the game, but we don't necessarily go to these things to be surprised, any more than we go to see Hamlet expecting to be scared by the ghost of the King. Rather, the joy is in seeing how these familiar narrative forms are being re-interpreted by a new set of creatives. Branagh never colours outside of the lines on this one, and that's fine – this is a respectful romp through one of literature's most famous mysteries, and well worth your time.
Click here for nationwide movie times for Murder on the Orient Express
November 9, 2017 Featured, Review, Theatrical, This Week 3 Comments
After years of terrifying international audiences via the Wolf Creek films and TV series (along with similarly horrific detours like Rogue, The Darkness, and The Belko Experiment), Australian director, Greg McLean, takes a hard-left out of genre filmmaking with Jungle, but crafts something just as unsettling as his previous cinematic bloodbaths. While there are no serial killers or supernatural entities, this internationally-flavoured local production boasts a truly dangerous "villain" in the form of the eponymous wilds of Bolivia, a place of unrivaled savagery that McLean can't help but apply his horror filmmaker's instincts to. The results are chilling, harrowing, and occasionally near puke-inducing.
Based on the true life book by Yossi Ghinsberg, this gut-churning tale of survival is worthy of placement next to the highly impressive likes of Into The Wild, Deliverance, Wild, 127 Hours, and Alive. In a richly physical and immensely sympathetic performance, Daniel Radcliffe (whose continuing quest for challenging roles doesn't receive nearly as much praise as it should) is superb as Ghinsberg, a young man travelling the world in the early 1980s, against the better wishes of his strict parents.
In the insular backpacking community of Bolivia, he meets two new friends in robust American, Kevin Gale (an excellent Alex Russell) and sensitive Swiss teacher, Marcus Stamm (a fine turn from rising Aussie star, Joel Jackson). Thirsty for adventure and new experiences, they take up the unlikely offer of enigmatic adventurer, Karl Ruprechter (played with an imaginative streak of the unpredictable by Thomas Kretschmann), to head into the jungle in search of a lost tribe of Indians, and perhaps a little gold along the way. But once in the wild, the three travelers soon start to question the credentials of their guide, and then realise how enormous and truly horrifying the jungle that surrounds them truly is.
Just as nervous urban-bound horror filmmakers have found treachery and evil in the backwater towns of America and the dark unknown of Europe (and, of course, the Australian outback), Greg McLean locates terror in the jungles of the Amazon. Yes, we've seen this winding, tangled river used as the backdrop for the gruesome likes of Cannibal Holocaust and The Green Inferno, but the nightmare of Jungle is much more real and far less sensationalist. Never have bug infestations, starvation, dehydration, pounding rain, wild river rapids, fire ants, and blistered feet registered with such force and fury – McLean grinds the gore here with admirable aplomb, giving Jungle the kind of kick that a non-genre filmmaker wouldn't even have considered. But he's in touch with his characters too, and as we endure the horrors of the jungle with them, the film soars in strange and unexpected ways. A survival film that marches to the delirious beat of its own hallucinogenic drum, Jungle bows inventively before the bad guy to end all bad guys: Mother Nature.
Click here for nationwide movie times for Jungle.
There's no getting around it: Detroit, the latest offering from director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) is a tough watch. The entire middle third of the film, some 40 minutes, is an extended sequence of interrogation and torture, book-ended by murder. Under the leadership of a cold-eyed uniformed cop, Philip Krauss (Will Poulter), a group of Detroit Police, Michigan State Police, and National Guardsmen try to get a group of civilians – black men and two young, white women – to hand over a gun and the man that was using it.
There is no gun. The authorities don't believe them. Or they don't care. Or they need there to be a gun, to shield themselves from recriminations. It doesn't matter. Caught in the frame of cinematographer Barry Ackroyd's jittery, roving cameras, there's nowhere to hide. It's an incredibly tense scene, more horrible than horror, and it really happened.
Detroit is based on the Algiers Motel Incident that took place in 1967 during Detroit's 12th Street Riot, when angry African Americans took to the streets in response to a police raid on an illegal after hours club. The street violence and paramilitary response will be familiar to anyone who saw footage of the LA riots after the Rodney King verdict – indeed, seeing handwritten signs in the windows of businesses proclaiming them to be black-owned is a jarring sight – and the causes and tensions are remarkably similar: economic disenfranchisement, ghettoisation, a smouldering sense of injustice, white cops, black civilians.
Bigelow and Boal force us to look at these parallels, refusing to consign Detroit to the rather safe and separate category of historical fiction, even though it is set almost precisely 50 years ago. The militarised police presence, the fires in the streets, the barred windows and fearful faces we're confronted with again and again – swap out the fashions and the music and very little has changed. Intriguingly and perhaps depressingly, a look at Bigelow's 1995 sci-fi film Strange Days, which boasts similar imagery, gives you the sense that she doesn't think it's going to change any time soon, either.
Perhaps that's why Detroit sketches its scenario and characters so quickly and economically – we don't need a lot of breadcrumbs to get us where we need to be, in the annex of the Algiers Motel, because what we're going to see there has already happened, will happen again, is happening now. A brightly animated prologue, done in the style of late 20th century African American street art, sketches the economic and social situation for us, then we're briskly and efficiently introduced to our key players: security guard Melvin Desmukes (John Boyega), tasked with guarding a nearby store from looters and a man used to defusing both black and white aggression; Larry Reed (Algee Smith) and The Dramatics, a black singing group who take shelter at the Algiers after their gig is shut down in the face of the riots; Julie Ann (Hannah Murray) and Karen (Kaitlyn Dever), white party girls staying at the motel; and Greene (Anthony Mackie), recently returned from Vietnam and staying at the Algiers while looking for work.
Things kick off when Carl Cooper (Jason Mitchell) another man staying at the Algiers, decides, playfully, provocatively, stupidly, to fire a starter pistol out the window to scare some nearby cops and guardsmen. What follows has the tragic inevitability of an incoming tsunami. Not that the film lets anyone off the hook – individual choices and morals still matter, but the events are positioned in such a way that we understand that each person here is on the leading edge of titanic social forces, being either ground to a mean point or irreparably broken.
But all that is abstract – what matters in the moment is the cruelty, the callousness, the violence and the fear, which is wrought in an absolutely scarring way. It's worth reflecting on one of the key early scenes in Bigelow and Boal's Zero Dark Thirty, where Jason Clarke's interrogator puts the hard word on a terrorist suspect while Jessica Chastain's CIA analyst looks on. That film was accused of endorsing torture; Detroit puts you in the shoes of the tortured, and it doesn't let you out.
Worse, it offers little in the way of catharsis, which will frustrate some viewers. Justice is not done, and the film offers no pat moments of false triumph to salve us as we exit the theatre. We're left in a state of anger, confusion, and moral outrage – and that's as it should be, because this stuff is still happening, and we know it. Detroit is a simply extraordinary and uncompromising film, and if it's almost unbearably punishing as a result, that's because it needs to be to drive its point home. Absolutely unmissable.
Click here for nationwide movie times for Detroit
September 7, 2017 Featured, Review, Theatrical, This Week Leave a Comment
It is an enormous 1,138 page novel from Maine's maestro of the macabre, Stephen King. It was released in 1986 and remains one of the most iconic horror novels of all time. It spans eras, time, dimensions and, frankly, is close to unadaptable. That hasn't stopped people from trying, mind you.
In 1990 the US ABC network had a crack with a 3+ hour miniseries that was released in other territories as a really long "movie". It featured a bloodless, bare bones retelling of the book's biggest beats – but was too truncated and toothless to capture the menace and suspense of the novel. Although Tim Curry was fun as the villain.
In 2009 director of the "good season" of True Detective, Cary Fukunaga, attempted an ambitious take on the book that ultimately fell through due to that most nefarious Hollywood monster, "creative differences".
That brings us to 2017. It, directed by Andrés Muschietti (Mama) is finally here, and the result is likely to have Stephen King fans and general audiences alike riveted. After 31 long, grumpy years they finally made an It adaptation worthy of the source material.
For those who haven't made the literary journey into King's masterpiece, It tells the tale of a group of kids – a self described "Loser's Club" – who live in the strange and eerie town of Derry, Maine. Children have been disappearing in Derry and when Bill Denbrough's (Jaeden Lieberher) little brother, Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) is taken by something lurking in the sewers, it begins an adventure that is part coming of age story/part unrelenting horror rollercoaster.
From the arm-ripping opening sequence It lets you know it's not fucking around. This is a horror movie with a capital "H" and isn't trying to pretend otherwise. Bill Skarsgård delivers an eerie performance as the main form of the titular menace, Pennywise the Dancing Clown. His drooling, wall-eyed Pennywise manages to straddle the line between absurdity and fear; making him a fascinating monster to watch.
The Losers are also fantastic for the most part, with superb takes on the characters of Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis), Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard) and Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer). Of course with a cast this large some characters get short shrift, and sadly Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs) feels relegated to a near cameo, with most of his character work given to Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor), which will have ardent fans of the book baffled.
While we're talking negatives it has to be said that not all of the horror beats land. There's a sense that director Andrés Muschietti really wants to make sure everyone in the damn audience is scared, so he'll often machine gun the horror right into your face, noisily and prolifically. That said, when it does land it does so beautifully, often cleverly juxtaposed with a moment of laugh out loud humour or genuine pathos.
It is not a perfect adaptation. At 135 minutes It is long for a movie and yet doesn't even cover 50% of the book. While the book becomes a strange, surreal tale of interdimensional chaos, the movie veers more towards a pulpy popcorn horror experience. The good news is: it's a really bloody good pulpy, popcorn experience.
Ultimately It is a big, ballsy, crowd-pleasing monster movie with wonderful characters, creative scares and a sense of style and place that anchors the tall tale. It's dense with wonderful little touches, stylish flourishes and pathos that actually works. Put simply, It is very likely to be the best wide release horror movie of 2017 and the best executed Stephen King adaptation in a long damn time.
The Go-Betweens: Right Here
September 5, 2017 Australian, Featured, Review, Theatrical, This Week Leave a Comment
"There were no hits," singer/songwriter, Robert Forster, says emphatically of his group, The Go-Betweens. "We didn't have any hit songs." No case of false modesty, The Go-Betweens indeed failed to crack the Top 40, despite making appearances on Countdown and inspiring collective swoons from the local music press. But proving (again) that commercial success and true artistry rarely go hand in hand, many of their songs – most notably "Cattle And Cane" and "Streets Of Your Town" – are now justifiably part of the Australian lexicon.
While the band's (formed by Forster and fellow songwriter, Grant McLennan, in Brisbane in the late '70s) music is deceptively simple, their tortured, angst-ridden history is deeply, heatedly complex. Refusing to play to its more sensationalist qualities, busy director, Kriv Stenders (Boxing Day, Red Dog, Lucky Country, Australia Day), crafts this melancholy story into wonderfully cohesive and richly intimate documentary form with The Go-Betweens: Right Here.
Mixing starkly shot talking head interviews (irreverent music journo and friend of the band, Clinton Walker, steals the show) with artful recreations and stylish bridging visuals, along with vintage interviews and music clips, the story of The Go-Betweens: Right Here – in which two friends innocently form a band while at university, and eventually fall prey to ego, booze, drugs, and complicated relationships – is a familiar one, it's also entertainingly perverse. Like a far less successful ABBA or Fleetwood Mac, the internal romantic machinations of The Go-Betweens are the stuff of legend, with the relationship of Forster and the band's drummer, Lindy Morrison (a truly unusual and endearing figure), crumbling, only to be replaced by the equally intense coupling of McLennan and the group's gifted violinist, Amanda Brown.
Stenders is obviously fascinated by these wonderfully eccentric characters and their fractious entanglements, but he's also compelled by the complex nature of creativity and collaboration, and he incisively works these two central strands together seamlessly. Refreshingly, Stenders is far less interested in McLennan's dalliances with drugs and alcohol, and his sad, curious death at the age of just 48 from a heart attack. Though less astute directors would opportunistically hone in on these more sordid story points, Stenders knows that there's even more interesting stuff going on elsewhere, and cannily avoids merely making another doco about a muso who falls to the sway of narcotics and drops way before his time. With wit, warmth, and a lovingly bent sense of pathos, The Go-Betweens: Right Here digs through the surface details, and gets right to the battered heart of one of Australia's most important and under-valued bands.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day 3D
August 16, 2017 Featured, Review, Theatrical, This Week Leave a Comment
In 1991 director James Cameron unleashed Terminator 2: Judgement Day on an unsuspecting world. If you weren't alive – or just too young to be aware of films at the time – you should know the effect on cinema was seismic and indelible. T2 redefined what action movies were capable of, set a new standard for storytelling in genre cinema and showcased a director (Cameron) and actors (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton) at the height of their powers.
Cut to 2017 and cue the limited release of Terminator 2 in 3D. While you may question the need for the re-release there's no doubt time has been extraordinarily kind to the movie. Time and James Cameron remastering the film for a crisp 4K print, that is.
The plot may not have the dark poetry of the original The Terminator (1984), but the story of young John Connor (Edward Furlong), his damaged but fearless mother, Sarah (Linda Hamilton) and reprogrammed, protector T-800 aka "Uncle Bob" (Arnold Schwarzenegger) remains engaging and surprisingly layered. The screenplay contains not one single wasted beat – which is impressive for a movie that clocks in at a hefty 137 minutes – and the action is of a quality that's damn near timeless. In fact the only jarring moments that occur are with the use of then-groundbreaking CGI, which looks like a low res screensaver now, and "cool" 90s slang, which was always a bit rubbish to be honest.
The one dud note in the whole enterprise is the 3D, which isn't bad per se, but doesn't add much to the proceedings – except in the future war opening and Sarah Connor's still-harrowing nuclear strike dream. Still, if 3D is the price that needs to be paid to get a stone cold classic like T2 back in the cinema, it seems a small one.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day was a great film when it was released 26 years ago and remains a great film today. If you've never seen it on the big screen, or want to experience it properly again, head to the cinema in the week starting August 24. Before Skynet becomes sentient.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Montreal, Quebec – According to new research coming out of the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting, chondroitin sulfate was more effective in reducing long-term progression of knee osteoarthritis (OA) than celecoxib, a drug commonly accepted as the best treatment in the disease.
Knee OA, is a condition in which the cartilage (cushioning between joints) wears away over time. When cartilage wears away, the bones of joints rub closely against one another resulting in swelling, stiffness and joint pain.
During the study, 194 patients with knee OA and inflammation of the synovial membrane in the knee were evaluated by Jean-Pierre Pelletier; professor of medicine, University of Montreal; director, Rheumatic Disease Unit, Department of Medicine, University of Montreal School of Medicine; head, Arthritis Division, University of Montreal Hospital Centre (CHUM); head, Chair in Osteoarthritis of the University of Montreal; and director, Osteoarthritis Research Unit, University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM) and his team. The participants were followed for two years and divided into two groups, of which one group took 1,200 mg of pharmacological prepared chondroitin daily, while the other took 200 mg of celecoxib daily.
Over the course of the study, participants were evaluated with MRIs to detect any cartilage loss, changes in bone marrow lesions, thickening of the synovial membrane in the knee, and swelling or fluid in the knee.
While both groups had similar success in lowering swelling and fluid in the knee, as well as a decrease in the use of the pain reliever acetaminophen, participants on chondroitin had a better reduction of cartilage loss in the whole knee and some also had a decrease in synovial membrane thickness.
Dr. Pelletier concluded the study, by noting that pharmaceutical-grade chondroitin was used and results may not be comparable for all chondroitin products such as food supplements.


story: the second try with stenciling. since my brother really likes bob dylan i did this for his birthday. i hope he likes it!
technique: prepared a stencil image in photoshop, used a 0.3 mm overhead transparency and cut out the bits that should be coloured later, sprayed the stencil with spray mount, put it on the shirt and painted it with black fabric colour (for dark fabrics). this time i used one of these little "painter foam rubber roll thingies" to apply the color to the shirt, which worked quite nicely. a lot more smooth and steady than with a brush.
Vorheriger Beitrag: My first pair of socks!


Ingredients: Coriander, Chili, Black Pepper, Cumin, Garlic, Ginger, Onion, Sea Salt, Olive Oil, White Pepper, Nutmeg, Mace.
A rub of fragrant spices and herbs—including cumin, coriander, paprika, nutmeg and ginger— creates a crust of exotic Moroccan flavor on a roast leg of American lamb. This versatile Moroccan spice rub can be used with other meats and cooking methods too. For a taste of Morocco, add this exotic spice blend to your kitchen pantry.


text:
package br.uff.labtempo.osiris.controller;

import br.uff.labtempo.omcp.common.exceptions.AbstractRequestException;
import br.uff.labtempo.osiris.model.request.VsnFunctionRequest;
import br.uff.labtempo.osiris.model.response.ErrorResponse;
import br.uff.labtempo.osiris.service.VsnFunctionService;
import br.uff.labtempo.osiris.to.virtualsensornet.FunctionVsnTo;
import br.uff.labtempo.osiris.util.OmcpUtil;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.http.HttpStatus;
import org.springframework.http.MediaType;
import org.springframework.http.ResponseEntity;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.*;

import javax.validation.Valid;
import java.net.URI;
import java.util.List;

/**
 * Controller class that provides a REST API
 * that handles HTTP requests for GET/POST/PUT/DELETE
 * Functions from VirtualSensorNet module
 * @see br.uff.labtempo.osiris.to.virtualsensornet.FunctionVsnTo
 * @author andre.ghigo
 * @since 10/07/2017
 * @version 1.0.0
 */
@RestController
@CrossOrigin
@RequestMapping(value = "/virtualsensornet", consumes = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8_VALUE, produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8_VALUE)
public class VsnFunctionController {

    @Autowired
    private VsnFunctionService vsnFunctionService;

    /**
     * Get all Functions from VirtualSensorNet module
     * @see FunctionVsnTo
     * @param count
     * @return List<FunctionVsnTo> (if count = true), int total of the list (if count = true)
     */
    @RequestMapping(value = "/functions", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public ResponseEntity<?> getAll(@RequestParam(required = false, defaultValue = "false") boolean count) {
        try {
            List<FunctionVsnTo> functionVsnToList = this.vsnFunctionService.getAllFunctionsFromVirtualSensorNet();
            if(count) {
                return ResponseEntity.ok(functionVsnToList.size());
            } else {
                return ResponseEntity.ok(functionVsnToList);
            }
        } catch (AbstractRequestException e) {
            ErrorResponse errorResponse = OmcpUtil.formatErrorResponse(e);
            return ResponseEntity.status(e.getStatusCode().toCode()).body(errorResponse);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            ErrorResponse errorResponse = OmcpUtil.formatErrorResponse(e);
            return ResponseEntity.status(HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR).body(errorResponse);
        }
    }

    /**
     * Get all Functions from VirtualSensorNet module
     * @see FunctionVsnTo
     * @return FunctionVsnTo
     */
    @RequestMapping(value = "/functions/{functionId}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public ResponseEntity<?> getById(@PathVariable long functionId) {
        try {
            FunctionVsnTo functionVsnTo = this.vsnFunctionService.getFunctionFromVirtualSensorNetById(functionId);
            return ResponseEntity.ok(functionVsnTo);
        } catch (AbstractRequestException e) {
            ErrorResponse errorResponse = OmcpUtil.formatErrorResponse(e);
            return ResponseEntity.status(e.getStatusCode().toCode()).body(errorResponse);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            ErrorResponse errorResponse = OmcpUtil.formatErrorResponse(e);
            return ResponseEntity.status(HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR).body(errorResponse);
        }
    }

    /**
     * Creates a new function into VirtualSensorNet module
     * @see FunctionVsnTo
     * @return ResponseEntity with status 201 Created, empty body and Location header with
     * new URI of the created resource.
     */
    @RequestMapping(value = "/functions", method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public ResponseEntity<?> post(@RequestBody @Valid VsnFunctionRequest vsnFunctionRequest) {
        try {
            URI uri = this.vsnFunctionService.createFunctionOnVirtualSensorNet(vsnFunctionRequest);
            return ResponseEntity.created(uri).build();
        } catch (AbstractRequestException e) {
            ErrorResponse errorResponse = OmcpUtil.formatErrorResponse(e);
            return ResponseEntity.status(e.getStatusCode().toCode()).body(errorResponse);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            ErrorResponse errorResponse = OmcpUtil.formatErrorResponse(e);
            return ResponseEntity.status(HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR).body(errorResponse);
        }
    }

    /**
     * Updates an existing function into VirtualSensorNet module
     * @see FunctionVsnTo
     * @return ResponseEntity with status 200 OK and empty body
     */
    @RequestMapping(value = "/functions/{functionId}", method = RequestMethod.PUT)
    public ResponseEntity<?> post(@PathVariable long functionId, @RequestBody @Valid VsnFunctionRequest vsnFunctionRequest) {
        try {
            this.vsnFunctionService.updateFunctionFromVirtualSensorNetById(functionId, vsnFunctionRequest);
            return ResponseEntity.ok().build();
        } catch (AbstractRequestException e) {
            ErrorResponse errorResponse = OmcpUtil.formatErrorResponse(e);
            return ResponseEntity.status(e.getStatusCode().toCode()).body(errorResponse);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            ErrorResponse errorResponse = OmcpUtil.formatErrorResponse(e);
            return ResponseEntity.status(HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR).body(errorResponse);
        }
    }

    /**
     * Updates an existing function into VirtualSensorNet module
     * @see FunctionVsnTo
     * @return ResponseEntity with status 200 OK and empty body
     */
    @RequestMapping(value = "/functions/{functionId}", method = RequestMethod.DELETE)
    public ResponseEntity<?> post(@PathVariable long functionId) {
        try {
            this.vsnFunctionService.deleteFunctionFromVirtualSensorNetById(functionId);
            return ResponseEntity.ok().build();
        } catch (AbstractRequestException e) {
            ErrorResponse errorResponse = OmcpUtil.formatErrorResponse(e);
            return ResponseEntity.status(e.getStatusCode().toCode()).body(errorResponse);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            ErrorResponse errorResponse = OmcpUtil.formatErrorResponse(e);
            return ResponseEntity.status(HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR).body(errorResponse);
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


room for God to bless them.
We know that we cannot earn God's blessings. The scriptures says that the just and unjust alike experience both rain and sunshine.
Yet, the Bible reveals that we can facilitate the outpouring of God's blessings. How can we make room for a blessing?
Jews. James, writing to all believers everywhere, said that those who are obedient to God will be blessed in whatever they do.
as well. Jesus told the disciples that giving to others is the same as giving to Him.
because Christ continually empowered him to face every situation.
Philip to join him and to explain the scripture. As a result he gained understanding, accepted Christ, and was baptized by Philip.
If you have an unmet desire exercise faith and make room for a blessing!


text:
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What constitutes a criminal offense?
Published Wednesday, Jun. 19, 2019, 8:29 am
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No matter where you live in the US, there are laws you must obey. If you fail to follow those laws, you could find yourself in a sea of legal troubles. It's important to learn about the long list of criminal offenses and how you can prevent finding yourself facing criminal charges.
The Definition of a Criminal Offense
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Every state has unique laws regarding criminal offenses. However, there is some overlap. Some laws are federal, which makes them applicable in every state. State laws are only enforceable in the individual states. For instance, you can't be arrested in Texas for something that's only a minor ticketable offense in Louisiana.
Because of the differences in state laws, it's impossible to give a strict definition of a criminal offense. But it is possible to give a general definition of the term. A criminal offense is an act that is harmful to an individual as well as a community, society, or state. It's a public wrong that can come with penalties.
There are many different types of criminal offenses. Typically, they can be divided into five different categories.
The Types of Criminal Offenses
To better understand what constitutes criminal offenses, you need to know the types of offenses. Here are the four most common categories:
1. Personal Crimes
If you perform an act that causes physical or mental harm to another individual, you are guilty of a personal crime. This can involve hurting or killing someone. For instance, causing physical harm that causes death is a type of personal crime known as homicide.
Other violent crimes are considered personal crimes, as well. All of the following could be considered a violent crime:
2. Property Crime
Interfering with another individual's property is a property crime. In some cases, this type of crime involves some physical or mental harm. However, the main issue is taking away another person's property.
Examples of property crimes include burglary, shoplifting, and car theft. Whether the theft is on a small scale or a large scale, you can face penalties.
3. Inchoate Crimes
If you start a crime but fail to complete it, you may have committed an inchoate crime. The term also refers to actions that help another crime take place. Those who are involved in a conspiracy could be charged with this type of crime.
For a court to find you guilty of an inchoate crime, there needs to be evidence that you took a step towards completing the crime. Therefore, simply thinking about committing a crime isn't enough.
4. Statutory Crimes
Statutory crimes are those that are detailed in a statute. For example, there are statutes for alcohol-involved crimes, traffic offenses, and some white collar crimes.
Generally, statutory crimes are created in an effort to prevent people from deterring the act. Because driving under the influence has killed so many, there is a statute prohibiting drinking and driving in every state.
Sometimes, statutory crimes become much more. Although drinking and driving can be a statutory crime, it can also be a personal crime. This is the case if the drunk driver causes serious harm or death to someone else involved in the accident. In the US, there are 29 people every day who die as a result of alcohol-impaired driving. It's a common crime with serious consequences.
5. Financial Crimes
Lying to someone for your own personal gain is a financial crime. Usually, they involve acts like blackmail, tax evasion, and internet crimes.
If you find yourself facing charges for a criminal offense, contact us at ColePaschallLaw.com. You can protect your rights and have a fair trial.
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Provide comfort for the family of Phillip Bauer with a meaningful gesture of sympathy.
Phillip Thomas Bauer, "P.T.", 75, a resident of Zachary, LA and a native of Baker, LA, died on Monday, March 18, 2019. He was retired, after working for over 30 years for Deltech Corporation. He is survived by two daughters, Jeree Bauer Chaney and husband Mark of Ethel, LA; Jaime Bauer Engels and her husband Hugh of Zachary; one son, Jeff Joseph Bauer and his wife Anissa Peairs Bauer of Pride; two sisters: Joe Ann Walls of Norwood, LA; Tammy Burton and husband Jerry of Broomfield, CO; one brother, Dennis Bauer and wife Jenny of Watson, LA; eleven grandchildren: Ashton Bauer Graham, Kristian Bauer, Cailyn Bauer, Charles Allen, Peairs Bauer, Philip Bauer, Chelley Bauer, Mckae Chaney Troth, Griffen Chaney, Gracie Engels, and Ellie Engels; and nine great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his wife Mary Sue Long Bauer and his parents Jeff and Julia Bauer. He was an avid hunter and outdoorsman. The family would like to extend a special, and sincere thank you to Jordyn, Holly, David, and Dr. Cody Ford of the NCCU at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital. There will be a memorial service at the Wilson Community Church in Wilson, LA on Friday, March 22, 2019 at 10am.
To send flowers in memory of Phillip Thomas Bauer, please visit our Heartfelt Sympathies Store.
Families of Charles & John Edmonson sent flowers to the family of Phillip Thomas Bauer.
Sorry to hear of Philips passing. My thoughts and prayers are with all of his family.
May God wrap you all in his loving arms. Shirley, Darin, Becky, Jacob VanStavern, Charles Salveter, John & Juanita Edmonson and family.
Families of Charles & John Edmonson purchased flowers for the family of Phillip Bauer.


The Ibos are very happy people. When driving through the countryside as a white man the children would start calling you "Onyocha or Oyibo!" (white man) waving their hands and running towards your car. If you are a man with long hair (like my brother) you'll be a complete attraction. They like to laugh a lot. They have learnt to be happy with what they have got - the amount of sun does its bit.
If an Ibo wants to visit his or her friends or family relatives, he or she would just go to them without the need to make an appointment. It may happen that nobody is at home but in that case you can visit someone else in the neighbourhood. Because of that practice you can sometimes have a full house, and that doesn't matter at all. A Nigerian can't imagine not to know his neighbours at all. Everyone lives in a big community which is looking for a common ground on which to base. When an Ibo meets another Ibo from his hometown they are brothers even if they are not from the same parents. When an Ibo meets another Ibo not from his hometown and out of Iboland, they are brothers too. When an Ibo meets another Nigerian or a Black in a foreign country he treats him like a brother also.
The Ibos are lovers of their traditions. They celebrate Christmas without a Christmas tree and Santa Claus. You may see some Christmas trees in shops but they are only for the rich. For the common man it is a useless stuff. During Christmas period most people go to their villages and celebrate it with their relatives and friends. It is the time to meet family and friends, time for wedding ceremonies (traditional & white), time for fund raising events, time for different ceremonies in the villages. For example in Mbaise Christmas lasts from 25th of December till 2nd January. Every day a different village of the community is hosting. A lot of people from neighbour villages come to the host village to meet their friends, to watch masquerades, to eat, drink and laugh a lot.
The Christian missionaries did a good job in Ibo land - you can see a lot of churches and most Ibos are Catholics. Unfortunately, I had the feeling that the importance of religion suppresses the humanistic enlightenment. Having no religion is unimaginable for many Ibos even for well-educated ones. That is why they may look at you in amazement or with a contemptuous smile when declaring you don't believe in God. Because of the high integration into ones family, it is totally uncommon to bury their dead in a central grave yard. You have to bury your deceased next to your house. Otherwise people may think you expelled a family member.
Remarkable is also the importance of hierarchy in society. The hierarchy is determined by age and by affluence. The first born has more privileges than the next born in a family. The rich has privileges than the poor. A white man is supposed to be rich (per definition) and as a big man you may get served first in any occasion.


text:
4x4 (; literally, "Nordic quadrille") is a 1965 Nordic co-production drama film directed by Palle Kjærulff-Schmidt, Klaus Rifbjerg, Rolf Clemens, Maunu Kurkvaara and Jan Troell. It was entered into the 4th Moscow International Film Festival, winning a Special Diploma.

Cast
 Niels Barfoed (segment "Sommerkrig")
 Christoffer Bro (segment "Sommerkrig")
 Robert Broberg as Frank Citter (Pike med hvit ball)
 Allan Edwall as Banvakten (segment "Uppehåll i myrlandet")
 Karl Erik Flens as Station master (segment "Uppehåll i myrlandet")
 Vegard Hall as an old musician (Pike med hvit ball)
 Yvonne Ingdal
 Anne Marit Jacobsen as Jenta (Pike med hvit ball)
 Ole Sørlie as Gutten (Pike med hvit ball)
 Max von Sydow as Kvist (segment "Uppehåll i myrlandet")
 Kari Øhrn Geelmuyden as Vibeke (Pike med hvit ball)
 May-Britt Stierncreutz (segment "Pourquoi?")
 Jaakko Ahvonen (segment "Pourquoi?")
 Sinikka Hannula (segment "Pourquoi?")

References

External links

1965 films
1965 drama films
1960s Danish-language films
1960s Finnish-language films
1960s Norwegian-language films
1960s Swedish-language films
Danish black-and-white films
Finnish black-and-white films
Norwegian black-and-white films
Swedish black-and-white films
Films directed by Jan Troell
Swedish multilingual films
Norwegian multilingual films
Finnish multilingual films
Danish multilingual films
Films scored by Erik Nordgren
Norwegian drama films
Swedish drama films
Danish drama films
Finnish drama films
1960s multilingual films
1960s Swedish films


Type-C supports Fast Charging for USB-C devices. Thank you for your review. We appreciate all feedback we receive.. We look forward to taking care of you and your friends next time you visit. Thank you again.
Body is of plastic aur aluminium?
You can use Output USB port for Charging your Oppo F9 Mobile.
then of its output is 3.0amp on ctype device it should show quick charge message on s8 and note 8.
Yes, Type-c PD output is 3A, but we con't confirm for Mobiles that it will display the message or not because its mobile end functionality.


A team of scientists at the University of California San Diego sought to address this by spending six months co-designing robots with family members, social workers, and other caregivers who care for people with dementia. They presented their findings recently at the Human Robot Interaction conference in South Korea.
"Caregivers conceived of robots not only managing difficult aspects of caregiving – but also for supporting joyful and fun activities," says Laurel Riek, a professor of computer science at UC San Diego, and the paper's senior author.
Spouses or adult children provide 75 per cent of the care for people with dementia. That is equivalent to 15 million people in the United States alone, providing 18 billion hours of unpaid care per year with little support and few resources. Caregivers are also likely to overlook their own health and wellbeing, which can put both parties at risk.
As dementia progressed, caregivers wanted robots to interact more with the person with dementia by helping with daily tasks and offering reminders. The robots that caregivers imagined acted as counselors and facilitators – and sometimes as the 'bad guys' who could say 'no' to the person with dementia.
For the study, researchers led by Riek built relationships with three different dementia day care centres in San Diego County.
A series of interviews and hands-on workshops with caregivers were conducted by two UC San Diego cognitive science undergraduate students, Sanika Moharana and Alejandro E. Panduro, and one computer science postdoc, Hee Rin Lee.
A total of 18 people participated in the research, including 13 family members who acted as caregivers for people with various types of dementia, five social workers who led the day care centres, and three geriatric nursing students who work at the centres.
Based on everyone's feedback, the team identified 16 major challenges that caregivers had to deal with, from difficulty accepting dementia, to isolation, to difficulty prioritising self-care.
Then, with the students' help, caregivers selected key problems and collaboratively co-designed robots to tackle them. They used pre-cut foam shapes to build the robot prototypes.
They also selected functions for the robots (such as playing games, reviewing photo albums, exercising, and so on) and a mode of interaction between the robot and person with dementia and caregivers (for example, voice commands and touch screens).
1.) Robots should help redirect conversations when repetitive questioning becomes burdensome.
2.) Robots should be integrated into everyday objects that the people with dementia are already familiar with, or borrow features from those objects. For example, one caregiver wanted her husband to get messages through the TV, which he spends a lot of time watching.
3.) Robots should be able to adapt to new situations and to the behaviour of the person with dementia. This is particularly important because dementia is a progressive disease and each stage brings new challenges for caregivers. In addition, patterns of progression vary from person to person and as a result are almost impossible to predict.
4.) Robots should be able to learn from end users, and customise and personalise their interaction and responses.
5.) Robots should have human-like components. That is not to say that they should look human. Rather the machines could, for example, use a real human voice or face. "When caregivers wanted robots to take active roles in persuading people with dementia to do something, they designed robots with more human-like features," the researchers write. Related to this, caregivers wanted robots to include features that would help build trust, such as looking like a friend or clinician.
6.) Robots should interact with humans via voice activation – much like a smart speaker. More specifically, caregivers wanted the robots to use voices that their loved ones would be familiar with – caregivers or doctors. Caregivers also wanted robots to be capable of facial recognition.


text:
The Torbico Torrefaction System
TGoC's unique process design and process control
Configuration and scope your solution
Sources of feedstock
Waste materials as a source of torrefaction
Non-waste sources eligible for using torrefaction
Realising the vision
The energy in biomass
Burning (torrefied) biomass is carbon neutral
The excellent business case for torrefaction
Torrefied material can be used in different applications and markets
The torrefaction process
We deliver systems world-wide
to enable sustainable and commercially viable conversion
of fibrous bio-waste
into valuable soil fertilizer, fuel and electricity.
Burning or allowing the waste materials to rot not only wastes the remaining energy, it also emits greenhouse gases as the complex molecules are decomposed into CO2 and the more devastating methane (CH4).
We do not consider the remainders of farmed crops as 'waste', but a valuable source for soil enrichment, electricity, and fuel.
Using a robust easy to operate stand-alone system to convert bio-waste into hydrophobic, energy dense black pellets
A highly profitable solution for owners of industrial bio-waste, agricultural bio-waste, and owners of barren wasteland and energy-crop farmers worldwide.
Download the company profile.
In the last decade several initiatives have been started in Europe and the United States to produce torrefied biofuels on small scale basis. All these initiatives are failing or struggle to provide an economically viable proposition due to two design challenges:
Process technology: the process design in previous attempts has been proven unable to produce a consistent homogeneous torrefied biofuel.
Production location: to provide an economically viable proposition it is required to produce near the source of the base material and store and transport the torrefied biofuel instead of the base material.
The Torbico Torrefaction system uses a 2-phase torrefaction chamber with a unique process control to ensure a consistent homogeneous end product.
The TGoC Torrefaction System consist of 2 stacked 40-foot containers on top of which the combustor for the torrefaction gases and the feed-in system for the biowaste are located. This design provides a mobile construction that can be placed on site anywhere on the globe eliminating costly storage and logistics of source materials.
In the upper ("warm") container the biomass is heated to a temperature close to the biomass' ideal torrefaction temperature and subsequently biomass is torrefied.
In the lower ("cold") container the torrefied material is cooled and finally densified optionally in pellets or various forms of briquettes depending on the end-user's needs.
Up to four units, each capable of producing 3 tons per hour of torrefied material depending on the type of biomass, can be clustered to combine densification and maintenance scheduling.
A separate, conditioned container holds the control-room and the switch panels.
The complexity of torrefaction is caused by the nature of biomass, an in-homogeneous product. Biomass particles always differ in size, moisture content, chemical and physical composition, proving it difficult to produce a consistent torrefied end product.
Two elements are crucial in producing a consistent end-product:
Stage separation: the core production process consists of drying, heating and torrefying. Each step has its own characteristics and requires its own process implementation. The TGoC process design is unique in its separation of the heating and torrefaction stage.
Advanced process control: During torrefaction, the process risks becoming exothermic (it generates its own heat). TGoC's proprietary process control manages to keep the material in the narrow temperature bandwidth required to obtain a consistent end-product.
TGoC has applied for patents for both its process design and its unique process control mechanism, which is simple, cheap, and very effective.
The Torbico Torrefaction System needs to be configured to the processed feedstock. Different biomass materials have different characteristics in the areas of drying, mixing, heat penetration and off-gassing, requiring a specific system configuration and torrefaction recipe tailored to the particular biomass.
In addition, the Torbico Torrefaction System may need to be integrated in an existing environment. TGoC can handle the EPC-work related to the integration, which may involve installation or connection to dryers, silo's, bagging equipment, etc.
The end-result is a turnkey delivered, integrated system that will transform the available biomass waste into a carbon neutral solid biofuel.
The best source materials to be used in torrefaction are biological materials consisting primarily of fibres such as plants and trees.
TGoC focuses on creating sustainable carbon neutral biofuel out of waste materials. Many agricultural and industrial processes create biomass waste streams eligible for biofuel conversion. The TGoC systems are scalable to service a wide range of quantities from industrial scale processing.
TGoC has decided to start developing recipes for three categories of waste materials with a very high potential for torrefaction conversion. In the near future more recipes will be developed. These three categories of waste materials are:
Industrial and agricultural waste
Wasteland conversion
The industrial production of sugar, tequila and palm oil result in high quantities of waste materials in continuous supply and, due to the industrial character of manufacturing, a relatively homogeneous and pure (unpolluted) content. These industries usually have methods of recycling in use already, using the waste material for process heating but leaving a large percentage of the waste material unused. In some industries the waste material is processed to extract essential elements. For example, sugar cane bagasse is used to extract bio-ethanol. The bio-ethanol process extracts the oils from the bagasse leaving pulped fibre waste. This pulped fibre waste is an ideal feedstock to be torrefied and the TGoC torrefaction system can be used in addition to the existing recycling efforts.
Torrefaction converts waste materials at the production location into a dry, energy dense, and very compact biofuel that is impervious to water or rot. This eliminates the inefficient bulk transportation of the waste material to processing plants which is economically not viable.
Wasteland conversion and energy crop farming
In parts of Africa, South America and Asia overextended farming leads to depletion of the soil resulting in vast amounts of wasteland and ongoing deforestation to replace the lost farming grounds. Studies show the positive effects of planting bana grass on wastelands to revitalise the soil and to reclaim the wastelands for future agriculture while bana grass can be processed into life stock feed (20%) and a valuable source of biomass feedstock. By using and converting existing wastelands the growth of biomass can play a positive role in the food-for-fuel discussion.
Similar to the use of industrial waste material the bana grass waste must be processed into high density torrefied biomass near the farming locations to avoid decay and to avoid economically unviable bulk transport.
In our local backyard in Europe the intensive greenhouse horticulture as well as local municipal initiatives to meet sustainability goals by reusing the pruning waste both provide a source of biological material to be torrefied. The torrefied biomass can be sold or used locally to lower the energy consumption.
The scalable TGoC systems provide a small/medium scale solution to process the waste materials locally and stimulate self-sufficiency and minimise transportation
Wood pellet producers looking to expand or replace equipment will be surprised with the business case for the production of black pellets with Torbico Torrefaction Systems.
The relatively little energy that is required for the production of black pellets compared to the production of wood pellets, reduces the Opex significantly. In addition, the higher energy density reduces the transportation cost by as much as 40%.
The end-users will appreciate the better storage and handling characteristics of black pellets as they do not absorb water, are insensitive to rot and decay, and are easily grindable. Of course, the end-users also benefit from the increased energy density, resulting in reduced storage and transportation costs as well as less logistics.
In order to meet the anticipated 20% biomass contribution in the total energy mix in 2050 (IEA), the biomass or its waste materials need to be converted into an energy dense, easily transportable solid biofuel at the source to prove transport to high consumption areas economically viable.
Untreated biomass, from waste, trees or otherwise has a low energy density and therefore not economically viable to transport and it cannot be stored for long periods of time. The solution is to use a heat treatment (torrefaction) to process the biomass close to the source into a high-density biofuel with a near perpetual shelf life and creating a economically viable end product.
TGoC has created the Torbico Torrefaction System, a mobile production plant that can be used in remote rural environments and is scalable to suit both small-scale agricultural initiatives and industrial scale production sites. The Torbico System transforms biomass waste material, like bana grass or sugar cane bagasse, into easily transportable solid biofuels.
The TGoC team is a well balanced and complementary team with over 10 years of experience in biomass and biomass related technologies combined with solid business sense.
The no-nonsense attitude and intrinsic motivation to improve the world has determined both the company culture and the product quality and simplicity.
Arthur van Wylick
Experienced general manager with strong background in (sustainable) energy and retail.
Roland van Exel
Combining long term experience in torrefaction technology and business with product management capabilities
For more information on business opportunities or funding, please contact Arthur van Wylick
arthur.vanwylick@torbico.com
For more information on technology, systems and technology related jobs, please contact Roland van Exel
roland.vanexel@torbico.com
Only plants, including algae, can absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, and use sunlight and water to convert it into complex carbon structures to grow and store energy in the form of sugars, starch, oil, etc. Even if we have used all food and feed from the plants, the remaining fibers still contain an enormous amount of energy. Leaving these fibers on the field or in the woods, the rotting process will turn it back into carbon dioxide. The same applies if fields with straw or other remaining fibers are set on fire.
Assuming the plants are replaced, the carbon dioxide from the rotting process or burning is absorbed again making it a carbon neutral cycle in itself but the energy that was stored in the biomass is wasted. Enabling the use of the remaining energy from the fibers after all food en feed and usable chemicals were extracted is our mission.
Unfortunately the energy density of biomass is relatively low as it also contains up to 60% moist and has a low bulk weight. This makes shipping biomass not an economical option.
In today's green energy market, wood pellets are the most commonly used biomass product. Trees are chopped and debarked, chipped and dried and subsequently milled and pressed into pellets. Although this does increase the energy density the drying, chipping, milling and pressing also requires substantial amounts of external energy, This process only works with wood and is hardly suitable for other types of biomass.
This is where torrefaction comes in. Many types of fibrous waste which have no other value, can easily be dried, torrefied and densified to make it both an ecologically smart energy source and an economically viable one.
While growing, biomass absorbs CO2 and using sunlight and water, converts the CO2 in complex chemicals, mostly sugars, used to grow and store energy. Even if the edible parts of the plants are harvested, there still is an abundance of fibrous material left. This material can be left to rot, but doing so will cause it to degrade into CO2 again and, even worse, will also create methane.
Burning the same material will also create CO2, however no methane, but now we have utilized the energy that was stored in the biomass.
If we plant new biomass, which we usually do to grow new edible material, that newly growing biomass will absorb the CO2 that was released during burning: making the CO2 go full circle.
By utilizing torrefied biomass roughly 85% in CO2 production will be saved relative to fossil coal. Of course, there is some CO2 involved in the process of harvesting and transportation.
Currently the use of untreated biomass for energy purposes is limited due to the moisture content, the low bulk density, and low energy density. Only if the biomass is available in the vicinity of the power plant it is worthwhile transporting the biomass. Wood pellets, the only form of biomass that can be transported economically, is limited to wood only. Pellets from straw and other materials turn out to be inferior and not durable enough for transportation.
TGoC Torrefaction Systems produce black pellets from wood cheaper than wood pellets can be produced when compared per unit of energy. Adding the advantage of lower feedstock costs when using waste streams further increases that margin. Adding the lower transportation and handling cost due to the higher energy density makes it even more interesting for the producer and the end user.
At this time, the international standardization organization ISO, is working on standards for solid bio fuels just as they have provided standards for wood pellets. This clearly shows the worldwide believe in the use of biomass as energy source and torrefaction as the process to make that economically and ecologically feasible.
Torrefied material has many of the characteristics of fossil coal but without the downside of carbon emissions. This product can be used in various types of boilers and furnaces. This makes it a suitable fuel for domestic heating, replacing fossil coal, lignite or brown coal, and even natural gas although the latter would require a change of furnace. Also in semi-governmental and municipal settings like hospitals, swimming pools and offices torrefied material in the form of pellets of pillow shaped briquettes is a sensible, carbon neutral fuel that can compete with existing fuels. Smaller industries that currently use coal, cokes or natural gas for heating purposes can make the same switch and make a strategic choice to reduce their carbon footprint dramatically.
The current combined heat and power plants running on fossil coal could also transition although their enormous volumes and thus buying power would require (national) subsidies as torrefied biomass cannot be produced at the price level of fossil coal in the current (non-level) playing field.
In some places, biomass is gasified and the biogas is used in small scale industrial boilers. The fluctuating characteristics of biomass tend to cause fluctuating gas quality. In addition, this process is only commercially viable if the need for gas is close to the biomass source. Torrefaction solves both problems: the biomass can be converted close to the source into an economically transportable solid fuel and the gasification process at a location close to the end-users produces a very stable output.
Another, more high-end, market for torrefied material is the market of active carbon. Torrefying biomass to the extreme leads to a product that has little energy, no volatiles (gases), but a maximum amount of carbon molecules with a huge contact surface in it microscopic structure. As the microscopic structure strongly depends on the originating biomass, for this attractive market, it is important to select the right biomass as feedstock.
Mankind has heated biomass without burning it for different purposes for a long time. The simplest reason would have been drying of biomass but in Western Africa, wood would be lit and buried under sand to produce charcoal for cooking and in France wood would be kept in sealed ovens to make it less sensitive to rot and decay. The most known use, however, would be the roasting of coffee beans.
The process of heating biomass without burning it, i.e. keeping it deprived from oxygen during the process, is called torrefaction. As said, the reasons for torrefaction are various. The torrefied and densified material is dry, very energy dense, insensitive to rot and decay and easily grindable, allowing it to be safely and economically transported, stored outside and preserve its energy over time.
This makes torrefaction the ideal process to turn fibrous biomass waste streams into an economically feasible solid bio fuel.


Grosvenor Britain & Ireland is opening a concept store in Mayfair to showcase independent fashion and accessories brands.
Situated at 55 Duke Street, North Mayfair Emporium aims to help new fledging retail brands to access physical selling space in the heart of the West End.
North Mayfair Emporium offers menswear, womenswear, gifts and accessories by six independent brands including Bailey Nelson, Lumitrix, Roscomar, Sons of London, Winser London and YOUPEOPLE.
Designed by HARTH, the store's interior makes a playful use of colour and features gallery pieces, statement artworks and prints.


The name in luxury! The 2008 Land Rover Range Rover Sport HSE 4x4 with Navigation System, Harman Kardon Sound System, Power Moon Roof, and Leather Seats! The HSE is equipped with 19-inch wheels, an adjustable air suspension, front and rear parking sensors, a rearview camera, xenon headlights, a sunroof, tri-zone automatic climate control, leather upholstery and 12-way driver and 10-way passenger power-adjustable front seats. Bluetooth, a navigation system with "bread crumb" off-road tracking and a 14-speaker Harman Kardon Logic7 stereo with six-CD changer, satellite radio and an auxiliary audio jack are also standard. The Range Rover HSE gets a 4.4-liter V8 with 305 horsepower and 325 pound-feet of torque. This vehicle passed our 110 multi-point inspection and is backed by our National Quality Dealer of the Year Award. We are an ''A+'' Better Business Bureau Rated Business. We offer low interest rate financing, low down payments and the highest trade allowances in the state! Here at McCloskey we do things a bit differently, we shop our competition every day to ensure a great value to you. Come on down and experience it for yourself. This McCloskey Assured vehicle includes a 2 month/2000 mile Warranty and a Vehicle History Report!! At McCloskey we strive to provide ASSURANCE, TRUST, VALUE AND QUALITY! Call 719-434-4492.


text:
Comprehensive analysis of thermodynamic properties of calcium nitrate
D. Sergeev, B. H. Reis, M. Ziegner, I. Roslyakova, M. to Baben, K. Hack, M. Müller.
J. Chem. Thermodynamics, 134, 187-194, (2019)
Thermodynamic properties of calcium nitrate are of interest for development of thermodynamic databases, which can be applicable for thermal energy storage technologies. In the present work thermodynamic properties of Ca(NO3)2, i.e. heat capacity (Cp) and enthalpy of fusion, were determined experimentally. The enthalpy of fusion of Ca(NO3)2 (33.4 ± 1 kJ/mol) was measured in a closed Ptcrucible at the melting temperature 823 K for the first time. The heat capacity of Ca(NO3)2 was measured in the temperature range from 143 K to 723 K by three different differential scanning calorimeters. High temperature X-ray diffraction was used for determination of the temperature dependence of volume from 298 K to 723 K. Combination of heat capacity and volume allowed us to calculate the molar volume at 0 K and to obtain the thermal expansion. The Grüneisen parameter and bulk modulus were deduced from combination of the available ab initio values of Cv and the values of Cp as well as the thermal expansion obtained in this work. This methodology allowed us to perform a comprehensive analysis of experimental values and first principal calculations. A complete thermodynamic dataset for solid and liquid Ca (NO3)2 has been derived.
Keyword(s): calcium nitrate; fusion enthalpy; heat capacity; thermal expansion; Grüneisen parameter; bulk modulus
Cite as: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021961419300114?via%3Dihub
DOI: 10.1016/j.jct.2019.03.007


We will have 24 bundle/ 36,000 board foot truckloads of factory seconds (XPS) in 1" thicknesses, 1,100 sheets per truckload. We are accepting deposits for April delivery. If you can take full truckloads of rigid foam insulation (XPS) please feel free to inquire and be sure to include your name and number so we can contact you.


So far Hani has created 17 blog entries.
By Hani| 2018-03-24T00:17:30+00:00	June 15th, 2016|General|Comments Off on Terrorist or Tortured Soul?
Does God have a favorite race? Does God have a favorite place? Does God have a favorite bloodline? Does God have a favorite nationality? Does God have a favorite gender? Does God have a favorite language?
You will laugh; you will cry; you will fall in love; you will hate me, but then you will love me again. I have a vision; I have a dream and I dare to chase it. Care to chase it with me?