From a technical perspective gold prices have been undeniably bullish so far this year with a strong break-out last week. The good news is the trend is solid enough to start bending the 200-day moving average in a positive direction and the 50-day moving average has now crossed above the 200-day; a very bullish sign.
Ironically, gold's strong price move has thrown technical analysis out of kilter as we undergo a brief period of consolidation and establish the new trend. As it crossed above $1,250 an ounce it was inevitable some investors would short-sightedly cash out, which may make some days ahead a little volatile. But the long term for gold is looking bright, even as hopes for the global economy dim.
China remains on a massive gold-buying spree, with imports up 700% since 2010. What's interesting, not to say suspicious, is that by some estimates China's consuming nearly forty percent of the gold mined around the globe, yet government figures show only a minor increase in their reserves. Right now it's hard to separate private demand from government stockpiling but it's safe to say China's amassing huge amounts of gold, which is an overall positive for prices.
It's finally starting to sink in that two of the new realities of our connected global economy are higher levels of instability and volatility. Events in far-off places can have a devastating impact on your investment returns, even if your local economy is healthy. This new "out of the blue" character of sudden, sharp losses puts investors out of sorts and lowers the market's overall appetite for risk. That's especially true for wealth investors, who may decide the chase for a margin just isn't worth the headache. As a result, investment priorities are realigning in favor of wealth preservation, with a consequent shift toward hard or tangible assets, including real estate and especially liquid hard assets like high quality physical gold and silver.
There's a general consensus in the financial world that the Fed waited too long to raise interest rates and then did so at the worst possible time. Letting the dollar continue to fly high against other world currencies is hurting U.S. business interests abroad and keeping downward pressure on commodity prices. So far the Fed hasn't shown any signs of backing off planned interest rate hikes but pressure to ease off is building by the day. Then again, they may go to negative interest. You never can tell with the Fed, except they'll be a day late, and you'll be a dollar short.
In the short term the recent spike in the gold price will likely spur some to cash out, although where they plan to put that cash remains problematic – if they want to keep it. Nevertheless, we'll see some volatility in the days ahead. Such consolidation is necessary to establish a new normal range for prices and will likely take a few days to a few weeks to stabilize.
The good news is all the technicals are pointing to stronger gold prices in the days ahead.


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World AIDS Day Focuses Global Battle with Disease The scourge of HIV and AIDS is regarded as both a potentially manageable infection and the most devastating health problem facing the human race. On World AIDS Day, NPR's Tony Cox speaks about progress in the worldwide fight against HIV and AIDS with Dr. Helene Gayle, president of the International AIDS Society and director of HIV, TB and Reproductive Health at the Gates Foundation, and with Dr. Robert Scott, an HIV-AIDS specialist and chair of the Allen Temple Baptist Church AIDS Ministry based in Oakland, Calif.
World AIDS Day Focuses Global Battle with Disease
December 1, 200412:00 AM ET
Heard on The Tavis Smiley Show
Only Available in Archive Formats.
Real Media
The scourge of HIV and AIDS is regarded as both a potentially manageable infection and the most devastating health problem facing the human race. On World AIDS Day, NPR's Tony Cox speaks about progress in the worldwide fight against HIV and AIDS with Dr. Helene Gayle, president of the International AIDS Society and director of HIV, TB and Reproductive Health at the Gates Foundation, and with Dr. Robert Scott, an HIV-AIDS specialist and chair of the Allen Temple Baptist Church AIDS Ministry based in Oakland, Calif.
African-Americans Bear Brunt of U.S. AIDS Cases Dec. 1, 2004
One Boy's Heroism in the Face of AIDS Dec. 1, 2004
Reflections of AIDS in Pop Culture Dec. 1, 2004
Taking the Pulse of the Global HIV-AIDS Epidemic Dec. 1, 2004
NPR's First-Ever AIDS Story Dec. 1, 2004
My Fellow Americans: Carla Bailey, HIV Survivor Dec. 1, 2004
Valerie's Story: A Saga of Surviving HIV Dec. 1, 2004
Report Spotlights Rising AIDS Infections in Women Nov. 23, 2004
AIDSOnline.com -- 'Official Journal of the International AIDS Society'
Allen Temple Baptist Church
Gate Foundation -- HIV/AIDS & Tuberculosis Information

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Okwui Okpokwasili is a New York-based writer, performer and choreographer. In partnership with collaborator Peter Born, Okpokwasili creates multidisciplinary projects. Their first New York production, Pent-Up: A Revenge Dance premiered at Performance Space 122 and received a 2010 New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award for Outstanding Production; an immersive installation version was featured in the 2008 Prelude Festival. Their second collaboration, Bronx Gothic, won a 2014 New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award for Outstanding Production and continues to tour nationally and internationally. In June of 2014, they presented an installation entitled Bronx Gothic: The Oval as part of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's River to River Festival. Their current project in development is Poor People's TV Room, an early iteration of which was presented by Lincoln Center in the David Rubinstein Atrium in June 2014.
As a performer, Okpokwasili frequently collaborates with award-winning director Ralph Lemon, including How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?; Come home Charley Patton (for which she also won a New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award); a duet performed at The Museum of Modern Art as part of On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century; and, most recently, Ralph Lemon's Scaffold Room. She has appeared as an actor in many productions, including Nora Chipaumire's Miriam; Julie Taymor's A Midsummer Night's Dream; Kristin Marting's Sounding; Young Jean Lee's LEAR; Richard Foreman's Maria del Bosco; Richard Maxwell's Cowboys and Indians; and Joan Dark (The Goodman Theater/The Linz European Capital of Culture). Film credits include Malorie's Final Score, Knut Åsdam's Abyss, The Interpreter, The Hoax and I Am Legend.
Okpokwasili's residencies and awards include The French American Cultural Exchange (2006-2007); Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Choreographic Fellowship (2012); Baryshnikov Arts Center Artist-in-Residence (2013), NewYork Live Arts Studio Series (2013); Under Construction at the Park Avenue Armory (2013); New York Foundation for the Arts' Fellowship in Choreography (2013); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Extended Life Program (2014-15); The Foundation for Contemporary Arts' artist grant in dance (2014), BRIClab (2015), Columbia University (2015) and the Rauschenberg Residency (2015).


Benjamin Kelly is New Brunswick, Canada's Inspirational STEM Teacher of the Year for 2017. He is an Apple Distinguished Educator on the Americas' Board, a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert, a Global Minecraft Mentor and published educational researcher. He is a grade 6-12 classroom technology teacher and holds an additional title of "Lead of Innovative Design." He has been a TeachSDGs Ambassador since 2017. Follow him on Twitter @BBTNB.
Georgina Dimova is a Computer Science teacher of 15 years, curriculum trainer, blogger, and amateur photographer, as well as an Etwinning, Scientix and Edmodo ambassador. Georgina has also been a MIE expert two years in a row.
Dr Olurinola OluwaKemi, a Microsoft Innovative Educator Fellow and Master Trainer, has a PhD in Educational Technology and works with the Faculty of Education, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-iwoye, Ogun state, in Nigeria.
Sharon Davison is a passionate educator who believes in creativity and innovation. She has the privilege of being a public school teacher for over 3 decades. She is committed to making a difference for her students, their families and other educators, who like herself, care, and are committed to making the world better.
Erin Dowd is a global education specialist and the curator of www.JRNEY.org, a website dedicated to amplifying teacher voice through global stories from the field. She is a founding member of Teach SDGs and serves as Committees Liaison. She is also the professional learning chair for the ISTE Global Collaboration PLN and was named an ASCD Emerging Leader for 2017. A former teacher and curriculum director, Erin has spent her career working to provide equitable education for students all over the world. Connect with her on Twitter @eedowd27 and @globaljrney.
Connie Rensink is a passionate global education consultant dedicated to helping teachers integrate global issues and perspectives into existing curriculum. Her vision is to prepare students to be globally collaborative.
Digvijay Sandhu is a graduate in Economics from Delhi University and is currently pursuing his Masters in Development Practice. He has previously been involved in preparing National and State Health Accounts – India, 2013-14 and has worked on projects funded by USAID, UNDP, and European Union. He is currently appointed by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network – Youth as a campus coordinator. Digvijay is passionate about the SDGs and continues to work with student bodies across universities to ensure promotion & local adoption of the Goals. He is part of governing body of the Entrepreneurship Development Cell at TERI University and is leading projects to boost entrepreneurial spirit among the youth. Digvijay is an experienced researcher and has published in reputed journals on health financing in India. He believes that a global change requires local action and youth play a major role in it. He is involved in a School-University Network (SUN) program and is designing classes for school students nurturing them on the importance of the SDGs and how can they be incorporated in day to day lives. He is certain that education has the potential to change the status-quo and make the world a better place.
Maringe is a young philanthropist and dynamic change agent who is inspired and committed to advance ICT for sustainable development in Africa. He has exhibited exceptional passion for developing ICT-enabled collaborative pathways to major problems in society with deliberate emphasis on climate change and youth engagement. He possess strong social and communication skills, with international experience in systematic and collaborative approaches to ICT policies and practices. Since 2012, he has represented Zimbabwe's ICT Civil Sector on a number of both regional and international conferences and workshops. A certified Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Civic Leader and Alumna committed to transforming Africa. Maringe is a co-founder of the Information and Communication Technology Association of Zimbabwe (ICTAZ), Founder of the Institute for Youth Engagement in Sustainable Development (IYESD), and is a member of The International Youth Council (IYC).
Suzy Manuela Prajea, Ph.D. in Mathematics, is a Math teacher and principal of one of the most prestigious middle and high schools in Romania. She is renowned for her contributions in the innovation of the way of teaching mathematics in the classroom. She prepared many generations of national and international Olympics during the years and she was permanently preoccupied to reverse the process of the abstraction of mathematics by bringing the real life applications in her math courses. Voluntarily, she founded the Space Invaders program in her school, a STEM program designed to transfer mathematics in cutting edge contemporary issues from business, industry, medicine or science. She is a Varkey Teacher Ambassador, Global Math Project Ambassador, Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert, and Honeywell Educator. In addition to Space Camp, these are only some of the programs she strived to implement in her school, community, district and country. Promoting applied mathematics, global education principles and the Sustainable Development Goals in their mathematics lessons raised her in this moment to be shortlisted for creating the STEM resource portfolio, a team project in the PISA4u Programme 2017. Her innovative ideas, approaches and work brought her as finalist of the Global Teacher Prize, the 'Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction' and many other national prizes.
Emmanuel Kom Abeng, Master in Comparative Public Policy and Welfare Studies from the University of Southern Denmark. For over five years he has been involved in capacity building of local communities and strategic policy advocacy to achieve a change in local policies in conformity with MDGs and now the new SDGs.
volunteer in Afrika Kontakt - Denmark Health Rights Group focused on capacity building and empowerment of grassroots communities. He also serves as a Promoter for UNICEF-Denmark defending the rights of every child. He believes the most efficient way of alleviating extreme poverty in all its forms and dimensions starts from education and a curriculum with the Global Goals as one of the pillars.
Armand Doucet is a visionary, passionate and globally recognized award-winning educator, social-entrepreneur and business professional.
A sought after leader, inspirational-speaker, author, columnist and blogger in multiple fields, Armand has contributed to CBC, Education Partners, BrainStem Symposium, STEM Educators Symposium, Atlantic Education Summit, #TeachSDGs, Tedx as well as many others. He has led, and collaborated with, teams from around the world, an across different industries, to success in health, education, non-profit and business. Armand was the president and founder of the Ironwill Foundation and was also part of a team of teachers who brought Harry Potter to life at Riverview High School, connecting the school to over 1.8 million people worldwide. He is driven to make a difference in his students' lives and wants every student to inspire, educate and empower others to reach their full potential.
Recently, Armand founded Life Lesson Learning, which is working to change teaching worldwide by giving 21st century skills development its proper place in the classroom through his Passion projects initiative. Armand received the Prime Minister's Award for Teaching Excellence 2015, is a Meritorious Service Medal Recipient Governor General of Canada, is an Apple Distinguished Educator and has just recently been nominated in the Top 50 for the Global Teacher Prize. A two time Ironman athlete, he currently inspires and empowers students at Riverview High School, in New Brunswick, Canada and is working on a children's Picture book series to empower girls to believe that they can do STEAM jobs and find solutions to the UN sustainable goals. As always, Armand is inspired by his incredible wife, Nicole, and his two girls.
The Teaching Changes Lives Award from the University of Oxford and Global e-Innovation Teacher Award from the Bharti Global Foundation in India. He graduated from the Tajik State Pedagogical University and has participated in two American professional exchange programs.
In 2017, he joined the UN and currently serves as a National UN Volunteer in Tajikistan.
As an educator with over 25 years of experience in the classroom, district, and state level, Mark is committed to prepare students for success in the 21st century by designing and implementing curriculum that forges interdisciplinary connections, embeds global competencies, and requires students to utilize technology in a meaningful way in order to solve real-world problems and address authentic audiences. Mark currently serves as the K-12 Supervisor for Curriculum and Instruction for West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District in New Jersey. Previously, he taught high school history and government in Washington D.C. as well as New Jersey where he was acknowledged for his real-world experiential pedagogy running on his students' platform for US Senate. Mark did his undergraduate work at UMASS Amherst in political science/history and received his Master's in Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Mark's work led to his being recognized as the 2010 Visionary Supervisor/Director of the Year for New Jersey along with receiving CTAUN's Best Practices Award in 2007 and 2010 for his design work for middle school students to engage in solving global development challenges.
Mabel Bashorun is the Global Education Specialist at Fairfax County Public Schools based in Northern Virginia. She facilitates student and teacher exchanges and arranges international visitations for the district. She leads professional development workshops on global education for K-12 teachers, using the UN Sustainable Goals as the basis for the curriculum development. Prior to her work in Global Education, Mrs. Bashorun taught 7th grade English for FCPS for 5 years. From 2011-2012, she served as a teacher trainer fellow in Ghana for IFESH, a non-profit organization that focused on improving the quality of education in sub-Saharan Africa. Mrs. Bashorun earned a Graduate Certificate in Incorporating International Perspectives in Education from George Washington University and a B.A in English & Secondary Education from George Mason University.
Mohammad works as lecturer and researcher in Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISE) at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia. He believes that innovation happens at the interference of disciplines, which has led him to pursue interdisciplinary approaches to his job as an academic. Mohammed holds BS. in Electrical Engineering from KFUPM, MS. in Industrial Engineering and MA in Social Pedagogy from Arizona State University. Currently he is a PhD. Students at Virginia Tech University in ISE. His research interests lie in harnessing the power of science, technology, and engineering in catalyzing social change and sustainable development.
Mohammed is a young leader at the Earth Charter International, an international ambassador for Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and a co-founder of "Better Together "an interfaith organization works on creating positive, meaningful relationships across cultural differences.
Naomi Volain is one of the Top 10 Finalists for the 2015 Global Teacher Prize. Most of her teaching career was in the Springfield, Massachusetts inner-city, where she used hands-on and interactive methods in environmental literacy and outdoor education. As a top 10% finalist for the NASA Educator Astronaut Corps, she uses NASA resources in her teaching. Field trips and scientific research are important ways that her students act as student scientists. As a coach of the school Envirothon Team, her students have won several environmental research awards. Naomi also received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science, the Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators (Honorable Mention) and was honored with the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Bridgeport. She worked for NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Education Office.
Sally Edwards is a graduate of the University of Kent, holding an MBA, and an undergraduate degree in English Literature. The majority of her work experience is connected to education, where she has worked in many different educational contexts across Europe. Having seen a lot of schools and classrooms over the years she is passionate about wanting to change the classroom and learning experiences that children encounter. She is convinced that when teachers reach their fullest potential in the class, they can then help kids reach theirs too. The SDGs make perfect sense to her, what can be more powerful than combining teachers and kids to start a global revolution in awareness and change? This is the power she sees in this initiative and is committed and enthusiastic about bringing the SDGs into mainstream education in The Netherlands.
Kiyotaka Horii is a teacher at Nishimachi International School in Tokyo. He is working as the Elementary Japanese Curriculum Coordinator. As a Head of Minecraft Language Institute and Super Science Kids Academy, board member of Japan ASCD, Intel Master Teacher, Apple Distinguished Educator and Microsoft Innovative Educator Experts, he has been developing different type of curricula and organizing several technology focused events in Japan. He supervised to develop an SDGs focused curriculum for WWF Japan and launched a contest called "WWF Japan Picture Book Contest". Oji Holdings Corporation is sponsoring this event and the children in Japan are studying about FSC. Kiyotaka believes that his action to change the education system in Japan is possible to carry out. KiyotakaH.com is his site that provides variety of lesson plans.
Bijal Damani is an international educator teaching Business and Entrepreneurship to Grade 11-12 students at S N Kansagra School in India. Bijal believes that for any education to make sense to the students, it must be taught in the context of real life. A firm believer of connecting her classrooms to real life – she has pioneered two projects. Social Entrepreneurship Project Galaxy Bazaar teaches students the trick of the trade and makes them creative capitalists. Not only that, the net profits earned from project Galaxy Bazaar are used to provide free quality education to girls from the underprivileged sections of the community. Project Galaxy Bazaar has earned and donated more than $125,000 U.S. for educating more than 1500 students. The project aims to support UN SDG 4 ( Quality Education) and SDG 10 ( Reducing Inequalities) Another project is in form of a competition called Innovative Product and Marketing Competition. In this competition, students team up, look around their own communities, spot a problem and come up with an innovative product to make this world a better place. Students also create an entire Marketing plan including radio jingle, television advertisement, and a website to launch that product. More than 125 such products have been innovated by her students. Bijal's classroom practices and projects have been appreciated by many of international educational organizations. She was one of the Top 50 educators for $ 1 Million Global Teacher Prize. She is also the only Asian teacher to have been honoured by Association for Supervision , Curriculum Development (ASCD) and International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and Turn Around Management ( TMA) She has also been honoured with a 'Good Samaritan Award' from Forbes for her attempt at bridging the gap between two sections of the community through Galaxy Bazaar. Bijal also believes in effect use of technology of classroom. She is the first teacher to become a Google Certified Teacher from Mountain View. She is a Microsoft Expert Educator and a winner at Microsoft Global Forum as well. Not only that, Bijal is one of the Indian Edmodo Ambassadors and was an invited speaker at EdmodoCon 2013. Bijal is also a TEDx speaker and is heading the TED Club in her school.
I am an IB educator that holds a degree in Chemical Engineering and Education.
I believe that while learning new concepts and world issues (such as the Sustainable Development Goals) students will develop positive attitudes towards what they are learning and by default will initiate actions that will help and support their communities, thus activating the service learning projects that will promote a more peaceful world.
I am a previous Primary School Principal and am currently working at the Bishop School in Amman, Jordan as an IB/PYP Coordinator.
strongly believe that through proper curriculum mapping and creating a culture of passionate educators that share the same mission, true learning will come to life.
A citizen of the world, Trish has grown up in a bilingual (Italian and English) home and has traveled to several countries. It is her passion for our cultures that help her in her profession as an E.L.L. teacher. Ms. O'Neill is in her ninth year teaching English Language Learners from around the world. When teaching her students she believes that each student has many voices from their countries, cultures and becoming new members of the Philadelphia community; to create their own stories. When teaching her students she connects these "stories" into the lessons that they are learning. Often times lessons are collaborated with local organizations to make them more hands-on and to have students understand their community.
Some of these projects have been creating a video about how different countries get clean water, using Genius hour to create projects that students can do in school to help the global community and reading about Noble Peace Prize winners. Ms. O'Neill hopes to develop more lessons this year with the help of an expanding network of educators.
Lisa Parisi is a veteran elementary teacher, with over 30 years of experience. She is the co-author of Making Connections with Blogging, published by ISTE, and a frequent conference presenter on such topics as Globalizing the Classroom, Project Based Learning, UDL, and Responsive Classroom. She is a Global Teacher Prize finalist, as well as an award winner for various global projects she created and ran.
Lisa believes that it will be up to this next generation of children to make the work better. Her passion for improving the world and teaching her students about the SDGs is demonstrated frequently with her work at Denton Avenue School, a public elementary school on Long Island, NY, USA, where she teaches gifted elementary students, project Lead The Way, and is the Science Lead Teacher for her school. She uses her time with her gifted students to promote her global SDG projects, helping her students learn about and create action plans to solve the problems of the world. She promotes her work and her students' work globally, posting blogs, using social media sites, and running projects for other children to join in the fight for a better planet.
Jonathan Butemba is a Public Health practitioner with over 10 years' volunteer experience working with community-based organizations in peri-urban slum communities in Uganda. He is currently a postgraduate student at New York University's College of Global Public Health pursuing a Masters of Public Health Degree-Sustainable Development Goals and an ACFEE Fellow. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Social Sciences from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, and has previously worked with the Global Emergency Care Collaborative to develop pre hospital emergency care systems in rural Uganda. He is passionate about the role of Education in achieving the UN Agenda 2030, and will be working to mobilize and inspire Teachers and Students in schools to take actions towards the Sustainable Development Goals through TeachSDGs and Microsoft Educator Communities of Practice. Jonathan lives in Kampala, Uganda (East Africa). Alex Birchenall is an assistant principal at the North Broward Preparatory School in South Florida. He believes that students can and should have a voice in the future of sustainable development. He has helped to develop curriculum for Nord Anglia Education, using design thinking to create student action projects that address the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development. UN Global Goals Projects give students the opportunity to connect with experts and organizations in order to gain a deep understanding of global issues while engaging in authentic real-world problem solving. In July 2017 Alex led workshops for high school students from around the world at Nord Anglia's inaugural UN Global Summit. Students at the summit presented to world leaders at the UN High Level Political Forum on how students can take action on the SDGs. Through his work with #teachsdgs, Alex hopes to expand a network of educational and organizational partnerships that can create ambitious learning opportunities for the next generation of global citizens.
Deepti is a post-graduate student of Environment Management and has been working on developmental issues for the last thirteen years. She has conducted workshops with school children including informal schools, college students and communities on hygiene, waste management, climate change and disaster resilience, water conservation, and pollution. Building upon her work on the Millennium Development Goals, she is passionate about strengthening the knowledge of the Global Goals. Besides designing workshop material and conducting workshops, she has prepared proposals, reports, articles, newsletters and other communication material related to the SDGs for international organizations. She is a member of the Climate Reality Leader Corps network initiated by Nobel Laureate and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. As a Climate Reality Leader, she raises awareness on climate change, shares knowledge on best practices and resilience initiatives, advocates the uptake of local solutions with communities and local public bodies, and facilitates adoption of climate resilience and carbon footprint reduction measures.
Emma Nääs is a teacher in Sweden. She has a masters degree in Swedish, Social Studies, and English from Gothenburg University. She teaches at a very small school with only 100 students, but when she teaches, she has the whole world as her classroom. Her vision is that "with a friend in as many countries as possible, it is harder to start a war." She thinks that the SDGs should be present in everything we do in school to educate students to become empathic citizens of the world. For her work, she received the European Language Label from the European Commission and Swedish Board of Education.She is also one of three finalists for the prestigious Swedish Teacher Award "Guldäpplet," and has been selected a Microsoft MIE Fellow, a Skype Master teacher, and Ambassador for Project Kakuma. She strives to make learning real and have students feel that their voices are heard. She believes that if we teach our future generations that they matter and that we take them seriously, we will create future leaders ready to take responsibility for making this world a better place for all. She is honored and excited to become a TeachSDGs ambassador and is ready to begin this important work.
Susanna is a math, biology, chemistry and physics teacher, a Project Kakuma Ambassador, and a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert and Fellow. As a Skype Master teacher She loves to open her classroom to the world and to use new technologies in education. As a mentor she is teaching pre-service teachers at the Pedagogical High School of Vienna.
Susanna joined the Human Differences Project in summer 2017 and will work on the Climate Action Project in October 2017.
Eileen Heller is honored to work with teachers in the Omaha Public Schools district in Omaha, Nebraska, USA as an instructional technology trainer. She also serves as a Microsoft Innovative Educator and Skype Master. She is focused on supporting teachers in their effort to prepare students for success in the 21st century by designing and implementing learning activities that combines curriculum with interdisciplinary connections, fosters global competencies, and empowers students to utilize technology in a meaningful way in order to solve real-world problems and address authentic audiences.She is passionate about working with teachers to connect their students globally through project based learning and believes the Global Goals along with Skype in the Classroom can lead to powerful learning experiences. The ability to connect with experts in the field, sharing ideas with other students, or showcasing projects wrapped around the Global Goals via Skype allows the students to learn with no boundaries. Being new to the Global Goals herself since December 2016, she was overwhelmed by the amazing resources and the magnitude of projects others were creating. She wanted to share with educators in her district a way to get started with the Global Goals in their classroom and developed the Global Goals Starter Kit. This allowed for teachers to feel comfortable leading their students towards learning and working towards the goals along with successful connections via Skype with other classrooms across the world that were taking part in similar efforts. Eileen is excited to learn from other #TeachSDGs ambassadors through the program. She looks forward to spreading the mission of the program across her district and beyond. You can read more about why she became passionate about #Teach SDGs in her blog post, "How Can You and Your Students Make and Impact on the World". You are part of the solution.


text:
The 1960–61 1re série season was the 40th season of the 1re série, the top level of ice hockey in France. Chamonix Hockey Club won their 18th league title.

First round

Paris Group
Athletic Club de Boulogne-Billancourt qualified for the final.

Alpes Group

Final
 Chamonix Hockey Club - Athletic Club de Boulogne-Billancourt 6:3/3:1

External links
Season on hockeyarchives.info

Fra
1960–61 in French ice hockey
Ligue Magnus seasons

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Presenter: Emilia Halton-Hernandez
Emilia Halton-Hernandez is a first year MA student in English at UBC. She previously completed a BA in History in the UK. She is particularly interested in Victorian literature, psychoanalysis and gender studies. She hopes to go onto a PhD.
Hoarding Orientations: Jane Bennett, Wilfred R Bion and Mansfield Park
In Jane Bennett's chapter "Powers of the Hoard", she takes an interest in hoarding because "it is one site where the call of things seems particularly insistent". Bennett argues that hoarders are "preternaturally attuned to the call of things", and like the artist, they may be more perceptive of the vibrancy of the material than non-hoarders. I would like to extend and critique some of Bennett's theories about hoarding through Wilfred R Bion's psychoanalytic notions of psychic impoverishment and material substitution. He writes that for this kind of person the "pursuit of a cure takes the form of a search for a lost objects and ends in increased dependence on material comfort; quantity must be the governing consideration, not quality." Though Bennett seeks to ignore the pathological dimension of hoarding in order to "put the things in the foreground and the people in the background", I would argue that extreme hoarding is inextricably bound to a pathology that is not attuned to the animacy or vibrancy of the material. I think Bennett's understanding of hoarders is instead more helpful to thinking about the collector or connoisseur whose preoccupation with the material is in a greater degree aesthetic. Taking into consideration speculative realist and psychoanalytic understandings of the links between the subject and the object, I would then like to explore the representations of hoarders, collectors, misers and fetishists in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. I will aim to interrogate the different types of collecting/material attachment presented by individuals in this text.


It is always an act of kindness to show support when a friend is going through hard times such as death. On the other hand, you have to appreciate your friends for being there for you during that tough moment. So, how do you show appreciation to the people who supported you? It is as simple as sending a message saying thank you for sympathy. It is not easy to sit down and write the appreciation notes as you grieve, but it is also important that you acknowledge people who were there for you. However, if you are not in a position to do so, let a close family member or a friend do it for you.
You can write the appreciation notes anytime from the funeral day. Most people find it more appropriate to write after two to three weeks after the beloved one was laid to rest.
The people who brought or sent flowers. You might think they are just flowers, but it shows they were thinking about you. If someone sends you flowers, it means they had a good relationship with the deceased.
The people who supported you financially. They might have donated money for the funeral or memorial. Do not mention the amount of money they contributed. It does not matter how little someone provided, they all went out of their comfort zone to give out that dollar.
People who helped you in various ways. Some people might not have had money to offer, but at least they showed their support in tangible ways such as to babysit your child, provided a means of transport, brought food and any other thing.
The band that performed at the funeral. It could be a single musician or various people who offered to perform. It takes a lot of courage to perform in a funeral where everyone is sad.
The pastor or any other person that conducted the funeral. Most people might not find it relevant to thank the pastor since they think it is their duty to conduct the memorial service. That's wrong; imagine what would happen if the pastor did not turn up.
When is it Too Late to Send Thank You Sympathy Notes?
Mourning a beloved one's death can take the best part of you. It might take you a month or even two to remember that you need to acknowledge people for sympathizing with you. Well, you might not have forgotten, but you lacked the energy to write those notes. It is more than a month after the funeral, you feel better than before, and you are wondering whether it is still a good time to send the thank you for sympathy notes?
It is never too late to appreciate to those who sympathized with you. However, your gratitude should be accompanied by an apology for taking so long to express your appreciation for their support. Your appreciation notes will be appreciated regardless of the funeral being months ago.
You will get many calls and visit during this time. If you depend on your memory, you might not remember every person who deserves to be sent a thank you for sympathy. It would be a smart move for you to write down the names of these people on a sheet of paper or maybe a notebook.
Get someone to keep records of every visitor and call you get. A visitor's book would help so much on this one. The person assigned to keep records of the guests should ensure that every guest signs in the book before leaving.
People you do not know might show their support because they were close to the deceased. Make sure you get their first names and phone numbers as well.
The people who were there for your loved one before the tragedy. This mostly includes nurses or anyone else who volunteered to nurse. Do not forget to thank the close friends who used to spend most of their time with the deceased too as they feel a great loss as you do.
A thank you for sympathy note should be very brief. You only need to write two lines or two at most. You can either buy preprinted sympathy cards or blank sympathy cards; whichever you chose will do. However, since writing a appreciation note for sympathy does not require much writing, you can just buy a preprinted one and sign your name on it. Hand delivery is not appropriate for this kind of notes. It is best you send them by mail.
Thank you so much for the financial support you gave to my family in memory of my father. The message you sent touched my heart, and it will be of help to me during this challenging moment.
I appreciate your help during this sad moment.
More about funeral letters here.


Binham is a beautiful, peaceful village retaining all the charm and character of a bygone age. There is a well-stocked village shop, an excellent butcher, gift shop and traditional pub – The Chequers Inn dates back to the 17th Century, here you can enjoy delicious food by the cosy fireplace or sit outside during summer, the pub has a relaxed friendly atmosphere and welcomes families and dogs.
The village has the remains of an early 12th century Benedictine priory, where classical concerts are held throughout the summer. This area is perfect for nature lovers and walkers looking to explore the delights of North Norfolk Coastline from a prime location.
Nearby is the picturesque village of Blakeney, where narrow streets slope down to the tidal creek, we would recommend taking one of the many boats trips from here or nearby Morston to see the seals, on a selection of the tours - depending on the tides you are able to get out of the boat to walk along the sand.
Just five miles away the popular harbour town of Wells-next-the-Sea can be found, with its beautiful sandy beach popular with families and the best place to have fish & chips – sitting on the quay wall while taking in the stunning views out to sea.
There really is so much to do for all ages and interests in this area, from beautiful beaches for picnics, swimming or walking, exploring hidden creeks on the saltmarshes, fantastic birdwatching, easy cycling, lake or sea fishing, quaint villages, and shopping in the sophisticated small towns of Holt and Burnham Market.


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So what's the fuss about Swati Snacks?
Yes I know I am Bengali. A non vegetarian. Didn't eat the palki when I went there. Nor did we have the 'snacks'.
And Swati Snacks is the vegetarian icon for many in Mumbai.
What would I know about it?
But I did try about 5 things and spent Rs 1100 between 3 people. If that wasn't enough to alert me to the charms of Swati Snacks then what is?
And yet people rhapsodise about it. Even normal people. Non-vegetarians. Bengalis.
I remember a revered food writer friend of mine, a non vegetarian, and a Bengali food blogger…both men whose tastes in food I respect … ribbed me one evening for not having tried SS. Unless they were pulling a fast one on me.
I know of loads of people who go to Swati Snacks. In fact we did have to queue up for about 30 minutes in a mid week afternoon to get in.
I must say that there were a few on twitter who said Swati Snacks is overrated when I shared my plans to go there. Some said Soam is better. In fact a couple of folks even clubbed Swati Snacks with Bade Miya on the 'overrated scale'.
Well I stopped going to bade Miya six or seven years back. Didn't like the food. Found it over-priced.
Swati snacks was over-priced but air-conditioned, had a clean loo….AND the food wasn't bad.
It's just that after having lost my Swati Snacks virginity a few days back, after close to 15 years at Mumbai, I was left completely underwhelmed.
Well to be honest the green chilli pickle that they gave with each dish was really good. Pungent yet not fiery. Teased you in a nice way.
Fine, I won't be mean.
The satpadi roti with gatte ke sabzi was quite memorable. Suggested by someone on twitter. Satpadi, as our waiter explained, meant rotis whirled out into seven layers on the tava while cooking. It had a rough rustic feel whose wholesomeness was accentuated as it was bathed in ghee…a dish of near tribal purity which combined so well with the slightly tangy cooling gatte (besan dumpling) curry.
This was the one and only standout dish of the afternoon. The only one I called for repeats of.
The other twitter recommendation…corn handvo…seemed to be like a fried dhokla with an identity complex. Call me a barbarian but this didn't work for me. The proclivity of Mumbai restaurants to add corn to make anything vegetarian seem exotic is quaint to say the least and can often be trying.
The drinks? My non Bengali lunch mate who had the aam panna said that the one in the Bengali Bijoli Grill was better.
I would have told you how my sugarcane juice was if I could have tasted anything beyond ginger in it. Give me the Linking Road sugarcane juicewallahs any day.
We had paneer chillas. I was told that chillas are 'like dosas but are not dosas'. Well given that it tasted like a greasy dosa I would be better of at the Shiv Sagar restaurants who are adept at churning out corrupted dosas.
The other dish which we went for was the fadani khichdi. The waiter recommended it and the menu described it as a cracked wheat pulao.
Well it tasted like a regular sloppy daal and rice khichdi and didn't have the magic of the bhoger khichudi that talks to us Bongs.
I am not fond of coconut based ice creams. My Bengali colleague went for the fresh coconut ice cream. I shook my head with disapproval at his youthful folly.
Was guilty of saying 'I knew it' when he said he didn't like it. He was looking for the 'Naturals Ice Creams like taste'.
I chose for the fresh mango one looking for the creaminess of the sancha ice creams of Bohri Mohalla's Taj Ice Creams.
Yes, you could say that the five minutes I spent chatting with my Bong colleague about pomfret fry and tava prawns of Malvani Asvad, while we waited for the food, biased my views.
But the fact is that I have had better vegetarian food at Mumbai. The Punjabi fare of Uttam da Dhaba, the Keralite Onam Sadiyas of Deluxe, the Marathi fare at Prakash and Aswadh and the Udipi delights of Swagath of Fort. These were memorable.
Swati Snacks, as they say in cricket, was military medium.
But if you are Gujarati or vegetarian and plan to troll me then hold on.
The man they call 'God' on twitter, Anaggh Desai or @anaggh, not Tendulkar, saw my anguished tweets from Swati Snacks that afternoon. He DM'd me 'come over to my place for dinner if you want to try authentic Gujarati vegetarian food'.
I jumped at the offer and headed to his place and joined some of our other friends from twitter.
Anaggh is the perfect host and his mom and his wife did all the cooking.
We started with snacks or farsan which combined perfectly with Tallisker for me and Old Monk for some of the others. Dhoklas, patrels, the pasta like things (khandvi?) and there was those little medu vada like balls which I just couldn't get enough of.
Dinner was a proper sit down affair with Anaggh's wife and daughter serving us on proper thaalis (plates and bowls). The three of them attentively fed us without joining in. Hospitality at its warmest.
And what an outstanding dinner it was. Pity I wasn't carrying my camera but still let me tell you about the lovely fresh rotis, the potato bhaaji tempered with mustard seeds, the dry okra sabzi with a slight tang which we lapped up, a lovely nourishing wholesome daal, a thin and delicate Guajarati kadi and at the end homemade aamraas. I had three of these bowls of mango nectar.
Still, what a wonderful comeback thanks to Anaggh after the disappointment of the afternoon.
I am now a fan of Gujarati vegetarian food.
And that's when it struck me. The truth is that if you want to appreciate and experience the beauty of any cuisine, be it Bengali or Gujarati or anything in the world, your best hope is to find yourself a great host and hope to get lucky.
And with the Desai family you have got the best around.
Next time it's my turn to cook for you.
I think it may be a sacrilege for me to admit to my love of Gujarati home cooked food. But there it is. As you rightly said, the best food is found at home, and that's why I show up at my friend's place (even if he isn't in town) and persuade aunty to whip up some delicious veggie goodness for me.
The Panki, Baked Masala Khichadi, The Dahi Puri & The Dahi Misal. I pretty much avoid the rest.
Next time you are around give me a shout.
I first ate at Swati snacks on a trip to Ahmedabad. You wont believe me, but the dhansakh I had there tasted a dozen times better than what I've had at Britannia or even Cafe Universal in Bombay. I am not a Parsi and I don't know to what an extent the guys at SS stuck to the original recipe...what mattered to me was the taste and it was mind blowing.
Somehow,none of the SS outlets at Bombay have been able to recreate that taste for me.
lovely tempting ... I love vegetarian meals they r light .. and more hygienic.
Swati is most certainly over-priced, and over the years I find they've gone the same way as many people who's fame gets to their head.
That said, I do hope you get around to giving it a second shot with these dishes.
Shall definitely check out these places. Danke !


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You are here: Home / All / Demonstrating sepsis detection in Hywel Dda
Demonstrating sepsis detection in Hywel Dda
April 16, 2018 by Dr Mike Simmons 2 Comments
Medicine is a serious business and when you hear harrowing stories of sepsis, how do you respond? Certainly, many of the accounts you will read, or perhaps you have witnessed through personal exposure to family or friends who have had some form of sepsis, can be very disturbing. Survivor accounts can be as equally distressing to all those allied to the caring professions and for all of us beg the question, what more can we do to improve diagnosis? In Wales, as in other parts of the UK early recognition and detection of sepsis is key to early interventions. The 1000 Lives team have been instrumental in working with health boards in developing tools to support this early recognition.
The microbiology laboratory plays an important role in early detection. If a patient presents to hospital with signs of sepsis, then the one key microbiology sample taken is a blood culture. This very act has led to an interesting dilemma, which has recently been published (currently available on-line and as an accepted manuscript) by the Journal of Hospital Infection. At the end of 2013, but formally in 2014, the Hywel Dda University Health Board approved our internal paper, which included the proposal that E. coli blood stream detection (bacteraemia) as a global marker of healthcare associated infection, which of course includes sepsis. We had proposed to the board that we should look to try and reduce E. coli bacteraemia by 20% over a 3 years period. Our paper to the journal detailed our investigations into why in 2016 we saw a further increase in E. coli bacteraemia rates, despite a very extensive healthcare associated infection programme.
What our paper uncovered somewhat unexpectedly, was the success of the sepsis programme and gave us pause to reflect how easy is it to nominate a target without considering all the consequences. Our choice of target we found was inappropriate because the NHS is always in a state of change and we had not allowed for the fact that the total number of blood cultures being taken in our area was increasing as a result of another service aiming at a different target. The sepsis awareness team in Hywel Dda was developing, emphasising, sharing and succeeding in their early recognition of sepsis. They were taking more blood cultures than they ever had in previous years and this was then impacting on our target (but in a good way, please don't get me wrong!) What our paper confirms is we are now detecting more E. coli than at any other point previously but also other organisms that can equally be responsible. The recent winter flu season, which is still spluttering on as I write, has shown us how quickly people can tip into sepsis through secondary bacterial infection. This year has brought some very serious sepsis presentations and we are pleased with the additional evidence our paper highlights around sepsis detection in our part of Wales.
However, as I have shared previously, in a similar way that the increase in E. coli bacteraemia was unexpected, so too was the change in submissions of urine samples.
The impact of this work is highlighted on page 5 of the economic evaluation by Professor Nick Rich of the first Bevan Commission exemplar programme. When we analysed the impact of our programme, we demonstrated we had reduced waste in our part of the NHS by a reported £125,000 per annum, although we now believe this is an underestimate. We hope to see the results of this work published in the near future and will let readers know when the formal paper becomes available.
Filed Under: All, Complexity, Infection Tagged With: HCAI, healthcare associated infection, microbiology, sepsis
Vivienne Weston says
We too have show a correlation with increasing number of BC sets taken with the rise in the number of E coli BSIs identified, We have been listed as one of the top sites for rate of E coli BSIs but we also take the most BCs .
Thank you for looking at and publishing this data, which helps to reinforce our point that we have been making in Nottingham , that more E coli BSIs identified may actually be a marker of improved sepsis diagnosis and care and need to factor in number of BCs taken when comparing centres.
Dr Mike Simmons says
From looking at Welsh data for many years, it is clear our health board area has always taken at least 1,000 more blood cultures per 100,000 population that the next highest board yet our positivity rate has been the same as others.
Nobody is really clear why we take more. Talking to colleagues around Wales, I don't believe we have a different microbiological stance. We do have an older population than most other health boards. However, that is also true of North Wales but they do not sample at our levels. Looking at the collective data, such as it is, seems to indicate an increase in blood culture taking by all health boards more recently.


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Playing in public is stressful for a child by itself. While playing, a child has to listen to melody, have the right tempo, often to memorize the piece and play it from a memory. If, additionally, instead of a smiling and supportive teacher he will receive negative emotions, then he will get scared and will tell his parents the he does not want to play. I write about emotions a lot, since in learning to play it is crucial. A child will not play well, creatively, if he will play out of fear of criticism. To play well, you have to have self-confidence, in case of children it is very important and very difficult to achieve. I write these words both as a person, who has musical education, and as a mother, who is considering development of an own child.
This attitude of acceptance can be transferred to every aspect of a child's education, but while stress may not inhibit performance on a mathematics exam, too much fear during a piano lesson or a piano exam prevents good performance of a music piece.
Playing a music instrument is not only about reading the notes well. It is the basis, but it is not sufficient. To perform a music piece well, one should like the piece, to know and to think through each note. One should create out of music notes a "story", and to be able to tell the created story in public, mastering the music piece. In absence of a supportive teacher, the student is just "playing" the piece, does not control or master it, not listens, accelerates the tempo, as he wants to finish as soon as possible. Good emotions and support of a teacher are necessary, when both a student and a teacher during the class create together this "story" by interpreting the piece, and then during a public performance a student will have courage to show in public his interpretation.
Regardless whether the child will be thought during private lessons at home, or at a music school, before selecting classes I recommend to get to know the teacher or to enroll the child to classes already recommended by other parents.
How to choose a piano bench?


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Category Archives: The Founder's Fund
Business, Facebook, Founders Fund, Founders Fund II, Funding, Internet, Investments, Money, Peter Thiel, Semantic Web, Social Networking, Software, Technology, The Founder's Fund, Venture Capital, Web 2.0
The Founders Fund creates Founders Fund II
January 30, 2008 Web 2.0 Innovations	Leave a comment
Founders Fund, a non-traditional investment group, has raised an institutional fund in the amount of $220 million. The new fund, Founders Fund II, will allow this team of four managing partners, who themselves are founders and entrepreneurs, to leverage their individual expertise and deliver their unique business model, which puts the entrepreneurs first. Founders Fund has developed a comprehensive package designed to create near perfect alignment of interests between founders and their investors.
Founders Fund II will be invested in approximately 15-20 innovative early-stage start-up companies. This is the first institutional money raised for the Founders Fund, representing a significant increase over the original fund of $50 million, which was raised from personal investments by the managing partners and select outside investors.
San Francisco based Founders Fund launched in 2005 with a $50 million venture fund. They've had two liquidity events since then, and a number of other very high profile participations like Facebook, Powerset, Ooma, Quantcast, Slide, Geni and Causes.
"We believe entrepreneurs are looking for people like themselves, people who also have taken ideas and made them a reality. This second fund allows us to invest in areas for which we have deep insight, personal experience and passion for seeing the companies succeed," said Luke Nosek, a Founders Fund managing partner. "Our collective experience starting companies and funding innovative start-ups positions the Founders Fund as a unique, valuable resource at the early investment stage."
The Founders Fund will continue to offer Series FF stock, which is being adopted across the industry adding to the unique approach to funding entrepreneurs. The stock is offered to start-up founders who can convert Series FF stock to preferred stock during subsequent rounds of funding. This allows Series FF stock holders to sell a portion of their stock and aligns their interests with their investors.
"The traditional venture capital model is broken," said Sean Parker, a Founders Fund managing partner. "By offering tools like the Series FF stock, we are helping create a new model of investment and alignment of interests, confirming our commitment to the founders of our companies. This fund is truly for founders by founders."
A couple of investments have been made out of the new fund, they say, but have not yet been disclosed.
The four managing partners have all started their own companies and between them have seen the process from inception to start up to IPO.
"Founders Fund was started to make a difference for companies looking for funding to execute on their big ideas. We believe the alignment of interests with our portfolio companies is the next step in the evolution of collaborative investments," said Ken Howery, a Founders Fund managing partner. "Founders Fund II will give us the opportunity to continue to invest in the people and ideas that are truly bringing innovation to the Internet industry."
Peter Thiel, one of four managing partners for The Founders Fund and an early backer and board member of the social network Facebook said, "This is one of the most innovative venture teams ever assembled. Our unique skill set, expertise and perspective support our shared desire to build and invest in great companies from the ground up."
Parker says he learned a powerful lesson about the importance of taking time to build a business from observing the trajectories of some of the valley's most successful businesses. What would have happened if the founders had sold those companies before fine-tuning them? PayPal started out as an encryption product that beamed money between mobile devices before hitting on the online payment business that it ultimately sold to eBay for $1.5 billion. Google didn't strike Internet ore until the paid search market had time to fully develop.
"Largely because we were all founders ourselves, we're inherently more interested in helping new entrepreneurs develop into successful leaders than we are in getting rich," Parker said. "As someone who has started and run a few companies myself, my primary interest is in helping creative people build companies and run those companies over the long-term. I also happen to believe that this is the best way to create value for my limited partners, and by extension, for myself."
However, some institutional investors were skeptical of the partners and passed on the opportunity to put in money. Parker confirmed that the fund-raising process turned out to be more time consuming than the firm had expected. But he also said limited partners had invested because their model — namely, a venture firm run by founders with experience — was needed in the industry. The firm originally sought to raise $150 million, but ended up raising $220 million.
More about The Founders Fund
Based in San Francisco, Calif. and founded in 2005, Founders Fund is a group of four proven entrepreneurs with a shared vision: to change the way venture investments are made. Founders Fund seeks to provide the capital, insights and support required to build a company from the ground up and sustain successful enterprises with a non-traditional, founder-focused approach. Their current portfolio includes Facebook, Geni, Powerset, Ooma, Quantcast, Slide and others.
The Managing Partners
Peter's experience with venture finance began in the 1990s, when he ran Thiel Capital Management, a Menlo Park-based hedge fund that also made private equity investments. In 1998, Peter co-founded PayPal and served as its Chairman and CEO until the company's sale to eBay in October 2002 for $1.5 billion. Peter's experience in finance includes managing a successful hedge fund, trading derivatives at CS Financial Products, and practicing securities law at Sullivan & Cromwell. Peter sits on the Board of Directors of the Pacific Research Institute and on the Board of Visitors of Stanford Law School. Peter received his BA in Philosophy and his JD from Stanford.
Peter Thiel is a 39-year-old maverick money manager who in the past four years has turned his $60 million payout from the sale of the PayPal online payment service he co-founded into a growing financial fiefdom. He runs Clarium Capital Management LLC, one of the nation's most successful and daring hedge funds with $3 billion in assets, and The Founders Fund, a tiny but increasingly influential venture capital firm with a laser-beam focus on consumer Internet startups.
In late 2004, Peter Thiel made a $500,000 angel investment in Facebook. Microsoft recently purchased 1.6 percent of the company for $240 million, which values Facebook at roughly $15 billion and Thiel's stake at roughly $1 billion.
Ken Howery
Ken is a co-founder of PayPal and served as the company's first CFO. While at PayPal, Ken helped raise over $200 million in private financing, worked on the company's public offerings, and assisted in the company's $1.5 billion sale to eBay. Ken has also been a member of the research and trading teams at Clarium Capital Management, a global macro hedge fund based in San Francisco with over $3 billion under management, and at Thiel Capital Management, a multistrategy investment fund, where Ken made venture investments beginning in 1998. Ken received a BA in Economics from Stanford.
Luke Nosek
Luke Nosek is a co-founder of PayPal and served as the company's Vice President of Marketing and Strategy. While at PayPal, Luke oversaw the company's marketing efforts at launch, growing the user base to 1 million customers in the first six months. Luke also created "Instant Transfer," PayPal's most profitable product. Prior to PayPal, Luke was an evangelist at Netscape. Luke has also co-founded two other consumer Internet companies, including the web's first advertising network, and has made a number of venture investments since 2000. Luke received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Sean Parker
Sean Parker is the co-founder and Chairman of "Project Agape," a new network that aims to enable large-scale political and social activism on the Internet. Previously, Sean was the co-founder of the category defining Web ventures Napster, Plaxo, and Facebook. At Napster, Sean helped to design the Napster client software and led the company's initial financing and strategy. Under Sean's leadership, Napster became the fastest adopted client software application in history. Following Napster, Sean co-founded and served as President of Plaxo, where he pioneered the viral engineering techniques used to deploy Plaxo's flagship smart address book product, ultimately acquiring more than 15 million users. In 2004, Sean left Plaxo to become the founding President of Facebook, one of the most rapidly growing sites on the Internet today. Sean sits on the boards of several private companies.
http://www.foundersfund.com/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/12/13/MNGECMUMRE1.DTL
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/17/founders-fund-closes-220-million-second-fund/
http://www.businesswire.com/news/google/20071217006220/en
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel
http://www.latimes.com/business/investing/la-fi-founders18dec18,1,6840237.story?coll=la-headlines-business-invest&ctrack=2&cset=true
http://venturebeat.com/2007/12/18/founders-fund-raises-new-fund-aims-for-more-vc-disruption/
dealsFounders Fund IIFundinginstitutional fundMoneyPayPalPeter ThielThe Founder's FundVCVenture Capital
Amidzad, Foundation Capital, Peter Thiel, Search Engines, Semantic Apps, Semantic Web, Software, Technology, The Founder's Fund, Web 2.0
Powerset – the natural language processing search engine empowered by Hbase in Hadoop
December 4, 2007 Web 2.0 Innovations	2 Comments
In our planned series of publications about the Semantic Web and its apps today Powerset is going to be our second company, after Freebase, to be featured.
Powerset is a Silicon Valley based company building a transformative consumer search engine based on natural language processing. Their unique innovations in search are rooted in breakthrough technologies that take advantage of the structure and nuances of natural language. Using these advanced techniques, Powerset is building a large-scale search engine that breaks the confines of keyword search. By making search more natural and intuitive, Powerset is fundamentally changing how we search the web, and delivering higher quality results.
Powerset's search engine is currently under development and is closed for the general public. You can always keep an eye on them in order to learn more information about their technology and approach.
Despite all the press attention Powerset is gaining there are too few details publicly available for the search engine. In fact Powerset is lately one of the most buzzed companies in the Silicon Valley, for good or bad.
Power set is a term from the mathematics and means a set S, the power set (or powerset) of S, written P(S) P(S), or 2S, is the set of all subsets of S. In axiomatic set theory (as developed e.g. in the ZFC axioms), the existence of the power set of any set is postulated by the axiom of power set. Any subset F of P(S), is called a family of sets over S.
From the latest information publicly available for Powerset we learn that, just like some other start-up search engines, they are also using Hbase in Hadoop environment to process vast amounts of data.
It also appears that Powerset relies on a number of proprietary technologies such as the XLE, licensed from PARC, ranking algorithms, and the ever-important onomasticon (a list of proper nouns naming persons or places).
For any other component, Powerset tries to use open source software whenever available. One of the unsung heroes that form the foundation for all of these components is the ability to process insane amounts of data. This is especially true for a Natural Language search engine. A typical keyword search engine will gather hundreds of terabytes of raw data to index the Web. Then, that raw data is analyzed to create a similar amount of secondary data, which is used to rank search results. Since Powerset's technology creates a massive amount of secondary data through its deep language analysis, Powerset will be generating far more data than a typical search engine, eventually ranging up to petabytes of data.
Powerset has already benefited greatly from the use of Hadoop: their index build process is entirely based on a Hadoop cluster running the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and makes use of Hadoop's map/reduce features.
In fact Google also uses a number of well-known components to fulfill their enormous data processing needs: a distributed file system (GFS) ( http://labs.google.com/papers/gfs.html ), Map/Reduce ( http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce.html ), and BigTable ( http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable.html ).
Hbase is actually the open-source equivalent of Google's Bigtable, which, as far as we understand the matter is a great technological achievement of the guys behind Powerset. Both JimKellerman and Michael Stack are from Powerset and are the initial contributors of Hbase.
Hbase could be the panacea for Powerset in scaling their index up to Google's level, yet coping Google's approach is perhaps not the right direction for a small technological company like Powerset. We wonder if Cuill, yet another start-up search engine that's claiming to have invented a technology for cheaper and faster indexation than Google's, has built their architecture upon the Hbase/Hadoop environment. Cuill claims that their indexing costs will be 1/10th of Google's, based on new search architectures and relevance methods. If it is true what would the Powerset costs then be considering the fact that Powerset is probably having higher indexing costs even compared to Google, because it does a deep contextual analysis on every sentence on every web page? Taking into consideration that Google is having more than 450,000 servers in several major data centers and Powerset's indexing and storage costs might be even higher the approach Powerset is taking might be costly business for their investors.
Unless Hbase and Hadoop are the secret answer Powerset relies on to significantly reduce the costs.
Hadoop is an interesting software platform that lets one easily write and run applications that process vast amounts of data.
Here's what makes Hadoop especially useful:
Scalable: Hadoop can reliably store and process petabytes.
Economical: It distributes the data and processing across clusters of commonly available computers. These clusters can number into the thousands of nodes.
Efficient: By distributing the data, Hadoop can process it in parallel on the nodes where the data is located. This makes it extremely rapid.
Reliable: Hadoop automatically maintains multiple copies of data and automatically redeploys computing tasks based on failures.
Hadoop implements MapReduce, using the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) (see figure below.) MapReduce divides applications into many small blocks of work. HDFS creates multiple replicas of data blocks for reliability, placing them on compute nodes around the cluster. MapReduce can then process the data where it is located.
Hadoop has been demonstrated on clusters with 2000 nodes. The current design target is 10,000 node clusters.
Hadoop is a Lucene sub-project that contains the distributed computing platform that was formerly a part of Nutch.
Hbase's background
Google's Bigtable, a distributed storage system for structured data, is a very effective mechanism for storing very large amounts of data in a distributed environment. Just as Bigtable leverages the distributed data storage provided by the Google File System, Hbase will provide Bigtable-like capabilities on top of Hadoop. Data is organized into tables, rows and columns, but a query language like SQL is not supported. Instead, an Iterator-like interface is available for scanning through a row range (and of course there is an ability to retrieve a column value for a specific key). Any particular column may have multiple values for the same row key. A secondary key can be provided to select a particular value or an Iterator can be set up to scan through the key-value pairs for that column given a specific row key.
According to Quantcast, Powerset is basically not popular site and is reaching less than 20,000 unique visitors per month, around 10,000 Americans. Compete is reporting the same – slightly more than 20,000 uniques per month. Considering the fact the search engine is still in its alpha stage these numbers are not that bad.
Powerset has assembled a star team of talented engineers, researchers, product innovators and entrepreneurs to realize an ambitious vision for the future of search. Our team comprises industry leaders from a diverse set of companies including: Altavista, Apple, Ask.com, BBN, Digital, IDEO, IBM, Microsoft, NASA, PARC, Promptu, SRI, Tellme, Whizbang! Labs, and Yahoo!.
Founders of Powerset are Barney Pell and Lorenzo Thione and the company is actually headquartered in San Francisco. Recently Barney Pell has stepped down from the CEO spot and is now the company's CTO.
Barney Pell, Ph.D. (CTO) For over 15 years Barney Pell (Ph.D. Computer science, Cambridge University 1993) has pursued groundbreaking technical and commercial innovation in A.I. and Natural Language understanding at research institutions including NASA, SRI, Stanford University and Cambridge University. In startup companies, Dr. Pell was Chief Strategist and VP of Business Development at StockMaster.com (acquired by Red Herring in March, 2000) and later had the same role at Whizbang! Labs. Just prior to Powerset, Pell was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Mayfield, one of the top VC firms in Silicon Valley.
Lorenzo Thione (Product Architect) Mr. Thione brings to Powerset years of research experience in computational linguistics and search from Research Scientist positions at the CommerceNet consortium and the Fuji-Xerox Palo Alto Laboratory. His main research focus has been discourse parsing and document analysis, automatic summarization, question answering and natural language search, and information retrieval. He has co-authored publications in the field of computational linguistics and is a named inventor on 13 worldwide patent applications spanning the fields of computational linguistics, mobile user interfaces, search and information retrieval, speech technology, security and distributed computing. A native of Milan, Italy, Mr. Thione holds a Masters in Software Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
Aside Barney Pell, who is also serving on the company's board of directors, other board members are:
Charles Moldow (BOD) is a general partner at Foundation Capital. He joined Foundation on the heels of successfully building two companies from early start-up through greater than $100 million in sales. Most notably, Charles led Tellme Networks in raising one of the largest private financing rounds in the country post Internet bubble, adding $125 million in cash to the company balance sheet during tough market conditions in August, 2000. Prior to Tellme, Charles was a member of the founding team of Internet access provider @Home Network. In 1998, Charles assisted in the $7 billion acquisition of Excite Network. After the merger, Charles became General Manager of Matchlogic, the $80 million division focused on interactive advertising.
Peter Thiel (BOD) is a partner at Founders Fund VC Firm in San Francisco. In 1998, Peter co-founded PayPal and served as its Chairman and CEO until the company's sale to eBay in October 2002 for $1.5 billion. Peter's experience in finance includes managing a successful hedge fund, trading derivatives at CS Financial Products, and practicing securities law at Sullivan & Cromwell. Peter received his BA in Philosophy and his JD from Stanford.
In June 2007 Powerset has raised $12.5M in series A round of funding from Foundation Capital and The Founder's Fund. Early investors include Eric Tilenius and Peter Thiel, who is also early investor in Facebook.com. Other early investors are as follows:
CommerceNet is an entrepreneurial research institute focused on making the world a better place by fulfilling the promise of the Internet. CommerceNet invests in exceptional people with bold ideas, freeing them to pursue visions outside the comfort zone of research labs and venture funds and share in their success.
Dr. Tenenbaum is a world-renowned Internet commerce pioneer and visionary. He was founder and CEO of Enterprise Integration Technologies, the first company to conduct a commercial Internet transaction (1992), secure Web transaction (1993) and Internet auction (1993). In 1994, he founded CommerceNet to accelerate business use of the Internet. In 1997, he co-founded Veo Systems, the company that pioneered the use of XML for automating business-to-business transactions. Dr. Tenenbaum joined Commerce One in January 1999, when it acquired Veo Systems. As Chief Scientist, he was instrumental in shaping the company's business and technology strategies for the Global Trading Web. Earlier in his career, Dr. Tenenbaum was a prominent AI researcher, and led AI research groups at SRI International and Schlumberger Ltd. Dr. Tenenbaum is a Fellow and former board member of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, and a former Consulting Professor of Computer Science at Stanford. He currently serves as an officer and director of Webify Solutions and Medstory Inc., and is a Consulting Professor of Information Technology at Carnegie Mellon's new West Coast campus. Dr. Tenenbaum holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT, and a Ph.D. from Stanford.
Allan Schiffman was CTO and founder of Terisa Systems, a pioneer in communications security Technology to the Web software industry. Earlier, Mr. Schiffman was Chief Technology Officer at Enterprise Integration Technologies, a pioneer in the development of key security protocols for electronic commerce over the Internet. In these roles, Mr. Schiffman has raised industry awareness of role for security and public key cryptography in ecommerce by giving more than thirty public lectures and tutorials. Mr. Schiffman was also a member of the team that designed the Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) payment card protocol commissioned by MasterCard and Visa. Mr. Schiffman co-designed the first security protocol for the Web, the Secure HyperText Transfer Protocol (S-HTTP). Mr. Schiffman led the development of the first secure Web browser, Secure Mosaic, which was fielded to CommerceNet members for ecommerce trials in 1994. Earlier in his career, Mr. Schiffman led the development of a family of high-performance Smalltalk implementations that gained both academic recognition and commercial success. These systems included several innovations widely adopted by other object-oriented language implementers, such as the "just-in-time compilation" technique universally used by current Java virtual machines. Mr. Schiffman holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Rob Rodin is the Chairman and CEO of RDN Group; strategic advisors focused on corporate transitions, customer interface, sales and marketing, distribution and supply chain management. Additionally, he serves as Vice Chairman, Executive Director and Chairman of the Investment Committee of CommerceNet which researches and funds open platform, interoperable business services to advance commerce. Prior to these positions, Mr. Rodin served as CEO and President of Marshall Industries, where he engineered the reinvention of the company, turning a conventionally successful $500 million distributor into a web enabled $2 billion global competitor. "Free, Perfect and Now: Connecting to the Three Insatiable Customer Demands", Mr. Rodin's bestselling book, chronicles the radical transformation of Marshall Industries.
The Founders Fund – The Founders Fund, L.P. is a San Francisco-based venture capital fund that focuses primarily on early-stage, high-growth investment opportunities in the technology sector. The Fund's management team is composed of investors and entrepreneurs with relevant expertise in venture capital, finance, and Internet technology. Members of the management team previously led PayPal, Inc. through several rounds of private financing, a private merger, an initial public offering, a secondary offering, and its eventual sale to eBay, Inc. The Founders Fund possesses the four key attributes that well-position it for success: access to elite research universities, contact to entrepreneurs, operational and financial expertise, and the ability to pick winners. Currently, the Founders Fund is invested in over 20 companies, including Facebook, Ironport, Koders, Engage, and the newly-acquired CipherTrust.
Amidzad – Amidzad is a seed and early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in emerging growth companies on the West Coast, with over 50 years of combined entrepreneurial experience in building profitable, global enterprises from the ground up and over 25 years of combined investing experience in successful information technology and life science companies. Over the years, Amidzad has assembled a world-class network of serial entrepreneurs, strategic investors, and industry leaders who actively assist portfolio companies as Entrepreneur Partners and Advisors.Amidzad has invested in companies like Danger, BIX, Songbird, Melodis, Freewebs, Agitar, Affinity Circles, Litescape and Picaboo.
Eric Tilenius brings a two-decade track record that combines venture capital, startup, and industry-leading technology company experience. Eric has made over a dozen investments in early-stage technology, internet, and consumer start-ups around the globe through his investment firm, Tilenius Ventures. Prior to forming Tilenius Ventures, Eric was CEO of Answers Corporation (NASDAQ: ANSW), which runs Answers.com, one of the leading information sites on the internet. He previously was an entrepreneur-in-residence at venture firm Mayfield. Prior to Mayfield, Eric was co-founder, CEO, and Chairman of Netcentives Inc., a leading loyalty, direct, and promotional internet marketing firm. Eric holds an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he graduated as an Arjay Miller scholar, and an undergraduate degree in economics, summa cum laude, from Princeton University.
Esther Dyson does business as EDventure, the reclaimed name of the company she owned for 20-odd years before selling it to CNET Networks in 2004. Her primary activity is investing in start-ups and guiding many of them as a board member. Her board seats include Boxbe, CVO Group (Hungary), Eventful.com, Evernote, IBS Group (Russia, advisory board), Meetup, Midentity (UK), NewspaperDirect, Voxiva, Yandex (Russia)… and WPP Group (not a start-up). Some of her other past IT investments include Flickr and Del.icio.us (sold to Yahoo!), BrightMail (sold to Symantec), Medstory (sold to Microsoft), Orbitz (sold to Cendant and later re-IPOed). Her current holdings include ActiveWeave, BlogAds, ChoiceStream, Democracy Machine, Dotomi, Linkstorm, Ovusoft, Plazes, Powerset, Resilient, Tacit, Technorati, Visible Path, Vizu.com and Zedo. On the non-profit side, Dyson sits on the boards of the Eurasia Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Santa Fe Institute and the Sunlight Foundation. She also blogs occasionally for the Huffington Post, as Release 0.9.
Adrian Weller – Adrian graduated in 1991 with first class honours in mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge, where he met Barney. He moved to NY, ran Goldman Sachs' US Treasury options trading desk and then joined the fixed income arbitrage trading group at Salomon Brothers. He went on to run US and European interest rate trading at Citadel Investment Group in Chicago and London. Recently, Adrian has been traveling, studying and managing private investments. He resides in Dublin with his wife, Laura and baby daughter, Rachel.
Azeem Azhar – Azeem is currently a technology executive focussed on corporate innovation at a large multinational. He began his career as a technology writer, first at The Guardian and then The Economist . While at The Economist, he launched Economist.com. Since then, he has been involved with several internet and technology businesses including launching BBC Online and founding esouk.com, an incubator. He was Chief Marketing Officer for Albert-Inc, a Swiss AI/natural language processing search company and UK MD of 20six, a blogging service. He has advised several internet start-ups including Mondus, Uvine and Planet Out Partners, where he sat on the board. He has a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University. He currently sits on the board of Inuk Networks, which operates a IPTV broadcast platform. Azeem lives in London with his wife and son.
Todd Parker – Since 2002, Mr. Parker has been a Managing Director at Hidden River, LLC, a firm specializing in Mergers and Acquisitions consulting services to the wireless and communications industry. Previously and from 2000 to 2002, Mr. Parker was the founder and CEO of HR One, a human resources solutions provider and software company. Mr. Parker has also held senior executive and general manager positions with AirTouch Corporation where he managed over 15 corporate transactions and joint venture formations with a total value of over $6 billion. Prior to AirTouch, Mr. Parker worked for Arthur D. Littleas a consultant. Mr. Parker earned a BS from Babson College in Entrepreneurial Studies and Communications.
Powerset.com is the 2nd Semantic App being featured by Web2Innovations in its series of planned publications where we will try to discover, highlight and feature the next generation of web-based semantic applications, engines, platforms, mash-ups, machines, products, services, mixtures, parsers, and approaches and far beyond.
The purpose of these publications is to discover and showcase today's Semantic Web Apps and projects. We're not going to rank them, because there is no way to rank these apps at this time – many are still in alpha and private beta.
[ http://www.powerset.com ]
[ http://www.powerset.com/about ]
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_set ]
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerset ]
[ http://blog.powerset.com/ ]
[ http://lucene.apache.org/hadoop/index.html ]
[ http://wiki.apache.org/lucene-hadoop/Hbase ]
[ http://blog.powerset.com/2007/10/16/powerset-empowered-by-hadoop ]
[ http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/04/cuill-super-stealth-search-engine-google-has-definitely-noticed/ ]
[ http://www.barneypell.com/ ]
[ http://valleywag.com/tech/rumormonger/hanky+panky-ousts-pell-as-powerset-ceo-318396.php ]
[ http://www.crunchbase.com/company/powerset ]
HadoopHbasenatural language processingPowersetsearch enginesemantic appSemantic Web