Gustavo Sanchez sometimes goes by "Gerifalte," the Spanish word for gyrfalcon.
The arctic birds have always interested him for their strength and cunning, especially during the hunt.
Yet when he sits outside the Ocracoke Coffee Company, a small cup of espresso in his hand, he is easygoing and smiling.
If it weren't for the USA Judo logo stitched across his polo shirt and stamped across his three-ringed binder, it would be difficult to guess that Sanchez is a fourth-degree black belt in judo. The highest level is 10, and Sanchez says those who reach this level are in their 90s.
Sanchez, 56, and his wife Patricia Lopez (a brown belt) moved from California to Ocracoke in May. They both work at the Ocracoke Day Care Center during the day, and in the evenings, they teach judo at Angie's Gym on Sand Dollar Road.
They already have 22 students. He insists that anyone from age 5 to 100 can participate.
"I don't know if some very long time ago someone brought judo to Ocracoke, but I feel that I might be the first," Sanchez said.
Jigoro Kano developed judo in Japan in 1882. Originally called "Kano's jiu jitsu," the sport involves throwing the opponent and fighting on the ground. It uses a high level of physicality and concentration, with strikes, kicks and other maneuvers aimed at immobilizing the opponent.
It's more than just a fighting sport for Sanchez, who grew up in Colombia, South America.
When Sanchez learned of the sport at the age of 9, he was hooked.
But it would be five more years until Sanchez could find a studio where he could start practicing.
He moved to Bakersfield, Calif., in 1990, and later opened his own studio, Gerifalte Judo.
On Ocracoke, Sanchez hopes to coach his students to a level where they can attend competitions across the state. The closest club to Ocracoke is in Jacksonville, Onslow County.
Sanchez has big ideas about where he can go with judo.
"It has always been my dream to take a student to the Olympics," he said.
This dream is not far-fetched.
USA Judo ranked Sanchez as the "No. 1 National Master Athlete in USA" in 2011 and 2014 in the 73 kg category.
His record speaks for itself.
He has won both the California and the United States tournaments many times. Sanchez has even represented the United States in world tournaments. Already, some of his students from Bakersfield have become California state champions.
Sanchez's classes are Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
For more information, check out "Ocracoke Judo" on Facebook.
Who are Nubbin, Ikey D and the Poker Players?


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Concord Monitor: Remote sensors and vacuum pumps battle climate change on maple syrup farms
On 10, Mar 2020 | In Featured, Future of Ag | By Admin
Maple sugaring is as traditional an activity as you can find, but for commercial operations, tradition is increasingly being replaced by technological improvements in a battle against modern climate obstacles.
"If you just wait until town meeting day, like they used to do, you'll miss half the season. You can't do that too many years or you'll go under," said Jeff Moore, whose family runs Windswept Maples farm in Loudon. "We've got to be ready, able to gather sap whenever it runs."
Times Argus: High-tech chestnuts: US to consider genetically altered tree
On 07, Nov 2019 | In Blog, Featured, Future of Ag, latest-news | By Admin
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — Chestnuts harvested from high branches on a chilly fall morning look typical: they're marble sized, russet colored and nestled in prickly burs. But many are like no other nuts in nature.
In a feat of genetic engineering, about half the chestnuts collected at this college experiment station feature a gene that provides resistance to blight that virtually wiped out the American chestnut tree generations ago.
GMO's and The Environment
Farm to Food Gene Editing: The Future of Agriculture
On 25, Apr 2019 | In Blog, Featured, Future of Ag, GMO's and The Environment, latest-news | By Admin
Curious about what gene editing is? Watch this video to learn how CRISPR is helping farmers grow better crops to feed our growing population.
USA Today: Earth Day for a dairy farmer: Thinking decades down the line
On 23, Apr 2019 | In Featured, Future of Ag, latest-news | By Admin
What U.S. dairy farmers of today are doing to preserve our environment
I've had the honor of working with dairy farmers for years, and a lot of what you think about them is true. They're modest. They're connected to the earth. And they work incredibly hard. Every day, they're up before dawn, working 12 and 14-hour days, whether it's 90 degrees out or 50 degrees below zero.
They choose this hard work because they believe in the importance of providing nutritious, great-tasting food, like the milk in your child's glass or the slice of cheese on her favorite sandwich.
What you might not know is that dairy farmers are working just as hard to ensure our children inherit a healthy planet. They know it's the right thing to do. And when 95% of dairy farms are family-owned, they do it to ensure the land is there for their children.
But the issues facing our planet require more than just individual action, which is why the U.S. dairy community has made sustainability an industry-wide priority. Years' worth of investments, research — and, yes, hard work — have allowed us to address critical environmental issues, like climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.
Dairy farmer and environmental scientist Tara Vander Dussen with her family on their farm, Rajen Dairy. (Photo: Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy)
Ten years ago, the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy — created by dairy farmers to identify best practices and unite around common goals — established a voluntary yet aggressive goal for the industry. The U.S. dairy community would reduce greenhouse gas emissions intensity 25% by 2020.
Today, we are on track to meet that goal.
In making the investments necessary to meet the goal set, U.S. dairy farmers have become global leaders in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. According to a report earlier this year from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Climate Change and the Global Dairy Cattle Sector, North American dairy farmers are the only ones who have reduced both total GHG emissions and intensity over the last decade.
Dairy farmer and nutritionist Rosemarie Burgos-Zimbelman, who has dedicated her life to dairy nutrition. (Photo: Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy)
It's not just greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. dairy farmers work more closely with animals than just about anyone, and they know that while they are taking care of the cows, the cows are taking care of them. That's why they created the National Dairy FARM (Farmers Assuring Responsible Management) Program, the first internationally-certified animal welfare program in the world.
The U.S. dairy community's commitment to sustainability isn't new. It has been going on for generations. Indeed, producing milk now uses fewer natural resources than it ever has before. Over the course of the lifetime of today's average dairy farmer, producing a gallon of milk now requires 65% less water, 90% less land and 63% less carbon emissions.
While progress has been made, there is still a lot to be done. That's why the U.S. dairy community and dairy farmers are committed to identifying new solutions, technologies and partnerships that will continue to advance our commitment to sustainability.
So why do America's dairy farmers work so hard to farm more sustainably? Why spend countless hours looking for innovative ways to be more efficient when they've already put in a 14-hour day?
It's not because anyone told them to, or because regulation forced them to. It's because so many of them are farming land their families have been farming for generations. They know they're just the latest people entrusted as stewards of the earth. Farmers came before them, and farmers will come after them. Sure, they have more information than any of their predecessors did, and they are now tackling challenges, from climate change to global trade, that their forefathers could scarcely dream of. But the responsibility of today's dairy farmer — leaving the planet better than they found it — is no different.
This Earth Day, and every day, America's dairy farmers are living up to that responsibility. May they never tire.
Vilsack is the former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and the current president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sponsor-story/innovation-center-for-us-dairy/2019/04/22/earth-day-dairy-farmer-thinking-decades-down-line/3521007002/?mvt=i&mvn=400ecb525a984b48bdeecbe607c274e8&mvp=NA-GANNLOCASITEMANA-11238693&mvl=Size-2×3+%5BDigital+Front+Redesign+Tile%5D
Science makes bread taste better
On 27, Nov 2018 | In Blog, Featured, Future of Ag | By Admin
Renegade bakers and geneticists develop whole-wheat loaves you'll want to eat
BY VERONIQUE GREENWOOD BOSTON GLOBE
riving up through the rolling farmland north of Seattle this July, I was thinking about my next meal. I arrived in the small industrial park, home to the Washington State University Bread Lab, for a gathering of wheat geneticists and other grain professionals. I'd missed the explanation of the items on the buffet tables, made by attendees. I loaded my plate with about a pound of cookies from the dessert end and steadily consumed the lot. They were soft and nutty, with a rich ruddy color and a delicate crumb. I wiped buttery crumbs from my fingers. I went back for more.
"What are these?" I asked the volunteer by the coffee pots, brandishing a blondie bar. "I'm not sure," she said. They must be made from some delicious heirloom grain, or something, I thought, surreptitiously loading my pockets.
They're whole wheat, the lab's head, Stephen Scott Jones, later told me. One hundred percent. That was a surprise; whole wheat baked goods are often eaten more out of obligation than pleasure. They are not known for their can't-stop-eating flavor. And yet, the Bread Lab is making its name by doing something that is almost unique in the industry: Breeding wheat — especially wheat for whole wheat flour — for taste. They and their collaborators across the country have quietly launched an effort that they hope will create something new — a whole wheat loaf that people would actually like to eat.
Wheat breeders who develop new strains for the global market aim for traits like the right height for mechanized harvesting, the right texture for mechanized baking, and a high yield. As odd as it sounds, flavor more or less faded from breeders' awareness somewhere along the line. Jones says that for most of his decades-long career as a breeder, it was not discussed. At the same time, knowledge of the importance of whole grains has been on the rise: Eating whole wheat and other unrefined grains correlates with better heart health, healthier weight, and even longer life, according to epidemiological studies.
So maybe the time is right. At the Bread Lab's headquarters this summer, a plucky group of about 40 bakers, millers, breeders, and others met to test-bake a loaf they've been discussing and fine-tuning for the last two years. They call it the Approachable Loaf.
The loaf they're all dreaming of has a simple recipe. Start, first of all, with the right wheat for the job. The lab grows thousands of newly generated strains of wheat every year to test them. Steve Lyon, the Bread Lab's head technician, took me out to one of the experimental fields this summer, where the stalks stood in a patchwork of yellows and tans, all different heights and shapes. The researchers make the same basic test loaf from the freshly milled flour — whole wheat goes rancid quickly, so using fresh-milled is important — and then they taste it. They have identified one new wheat, which they've dubbed Skagit 1109, that makes a reliably tasty whole wheat bread. For the moment, a bakery making the Approachable Loaf will likely have to use commodity wheat, but ideally, they'll develop better options.
The story of bread as we've known it is the story of our food system as a whole: In the 19th and 20th centuries, the advance of technology on farms, in mills, and in factories allowed the mass production of foods from an ever-longer list of ingredients, both natural and artificial. The Approachable Loaf symbolizes something else — the possibility that, through the application of science, even a food as humble and maligned as whole wheat bread can be both simpler and tastier.
Nutritionally, whole wheat flour is better for you than white. The germ and the bran, the portions of the wheat kernel with the most fiber and other nutrients, stay in whole wheat flour when it's milled, giving it its distinctive dark color. But they usually curb your desire to put it in your mouth. Compared to the seductive quality of a good white sourdough — tangy and just a little stretchy — or even the gentle squish of a soft white grocery store loaf, melting seamlessly into a slab of grilled cheese, the ashy, faintly bitter whole wheat loaf is no competition.
The battle between light and dark in the matter of bread is longer and weirder than most people realize. While many might assume the rise of whole wheat bread as a health food started with the counterculture of the 1960s and '70s, anthropologist Aaron Bobrow-Strain traces it back far earlier. Over thousands of years, the color of bread has carried various meanings, he writes in his book "White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf." Hearty dark loaves were better for building a society than wimpy white ones, Plato argued in "The Republic"; Socrates, on the other hand, felt whole-meal bread was essentially animal food.
By the 19th century in the United States, activists claimed whole wheat would bring people closer to God, and thus to health. One influential obsessive was Sylvester Graham, the New England minister who gave his name to the graham cracker. A sickly child, he eventually turned to vegetarianism as an adult. Today, he might have started a blog about clean eating. Eating foods in their most natural form, like whole wheat, was what God intended man to do, Graham argued in lectures that caused riots in Boston and New York, and anything that was wrong with you could be taken care of with whole wheat bread and water.
Grahamism had adherents of all stripes: Educational reformer Amos Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May Alcott, the author of "Little Women," founded a farm commune northwest of Boston to live in the manner prescribed by the movement. It lasted only seven months. Louisa May, who was 10 at the time, later lampooned the endeavor in her satire "Transcendental Wild Oats." She noted that the vast majority of the labor fell to women and children, while the men sat around discussing the philosophy of food. "About the time the grain was ready to house," she wrote dryly, "some call of the Oversoul wafted all the men away."
Today, the benefits of eating more whole grains are among the rare things that virtually all nutrition experts agree on. The US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recommends that half of all grains should be whole. But 2015 numbers show that almost nobody eats that way.
Past efforts to make virtue a little tastier have achieved the opposite. The food historian Maria Trumpler visited the Bread Lab recently and demonstrated whole wheat bread recipes from the 1970s and '80s — an era when adding molasses, powdered milk, and other substances to try to hide the whole wheat was in vogue.
"They were just absolutely horrible," says Jones, nearly awed by the badness. "If you have a bread book from the '70s, you should burn it! I'm not into book burning, but, God — you should just get rid of it." There must, he and colleagues think, be a better way.
Wheat breeder David Van Sanford, a professor at University of Kentucky, recalls when he first learned of Jones, who had become fed up with the situation and helped found the Bread Lab in 2011. I've gone to scads of meetings, Jones had told a reporter, and never heard the term "flavor" used once. "That really resonated with me," Van Sanford says. Wheat flour can, in fact, have a taste: For a good bread wheat, "the words we use are nutty, chocolate tones, and a bit of spice tone," Jones says. A wheat used for cookies and pie dough has a different, more mellow profile.
When most wheat breeders assess the outcomes of their efforts and decide what to do next, however, they evaluate what the wheat is like without the bran and germ. The bran and the germ are what give whole wheat much of its taste. As a result, a wheat that's bred for an inoffensive-tasting white flour might make a whole wheat flour that's depressingly like sawdust. When no one is breeding for a whole wheat that tastes good, Jones argues, it is not all that surprising that it winds up bad. Jones's savvy as a scientist and his conviction are persuasive; his lab has relationships with well-known companies such as King Arthur Flour, Clif Bar, and Chipotle.
If a whole wheat loaf has a good flavor, is affordable, and meets the needs of those who don't frequent artisanal bakeries — which have a dedicated but small clientele — it wouldn't be nearly so hard for people to eat more of it, think the people behind the Approachable Loaf, many of whom have attended annual gatherings at the Bread Lab over the last few years.
One of them, Louie Prager, who runs the Prager Brothers bakery in Carlsbad, Calif., has noticed that some of his own employees prefer a soft brown supermarket loaf. It has no holes for mustard to leak through, it's good for sandwiches for packed lunches, it doesn't go bad very quickly, it's familiar, and it's inexpensive, something you can't say about some artisanal loaves. But it often has many stabilizers, colorants, and dough conditioners that artisan bakers avoid, as well as a surprising amount of sugar.
Other than better wheat, the only other ingredients in the Approachable Loaf are sourdough starter, salt, small amounts of oil and sugar, and water. Using starter to leaven the bread gives it a longer shelf life than a standard yeasted bread; the sugar and oil give the bread a flavor and texture that's closer to the supermarket loaf.
Experience and skill on the part of the baker helps in getting a good product, of course: Those bizarrely delicious cookies I tasted at the Bread Lab's headquarters did involve a good choice of wheat, but the flour was also probably freshly milled and the bakers knew what they were doing, notes Van Sanford. The loose network of people testing and fine-tuning the Approachable Loaf includes professional bakers in Washington, California, and Vermont, working to bring their technical knowledge of artisanal bread making to bear on something closer to the supermarket loaf. Jones estimates that at least eight bakeries are currently making some version of it.
Can the Approachable Loaf go big? Bringing together breeding, farming, processing, and food production to make something that both satisfies the consumer and is nutritious is not a simple process, says Tim Griffin, a professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University who collaborates with Bread Lab researchers. But for the past year and a half or so, he and colleagues have been discussing it in the context of the Approachable Loaf. "We're seeing bread as our first test case for that," he says. "What would the system have to look like if we successfully used whole grains?" They are investigating what businesses would need to exist, how the supply chains for bread would need to change, and other logistical barriers to a loaf that's both nutritious and legitimately attractive.
If the bakers can come up with a tasty loaf, then the millers will need to come up with a procedure to mill large quantities of whole wheat flour while keeping it from going bad, and farmers will need to learn to grow and profit from breeds of wheat that make whole wheat worth eating. These are the kinds of challenges he's considering.
In Montana, wheat breeder and Flathead Valley Community College professor Heather Estrada has her eyes on the near term: using wheat she and her students have grown to bake the Approachable Loaf together. "We were able to clean all our grain and it's ready for milling," she said gleefully when I spoke to her October. The loaf is a way for her students to see all the pieces of the food system they've been studying all semester, from field to lab to kitchen, come together in a way that's more than glancing. "There's a lot of cultural depth," Estrada says, "to the story of bread."
http://apps.bostonglobe.com/ideas/graphics/2018/11/the-next-bite/the-seeds/
Boston Globe: 3 policies for the future
On 26, Nov 2018 | In Blog, Featured, Future of Ag, GMO Labeling | By Admin
Food is going high-tech — policy needs to catch up with it
BY THE BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL BOARD
or generations newspaper editorials have been the "eat your spinach" part of the operation. But what if that spinach can now be organic baby spinach, or hydroponically grown? What if we can eat it year round — and from just around the corner?
With a warming planet, the need for high-tech food and high-tech food policies is undeniable. Both are going to play an increasingly vital role in the planet's future — and the way we eat. Here are a few ways to use science to steer food into a more sustainable path.
Learn to love GMOs, and resist efforts to demonize or prohibit them. Genetically modified food sets off alarm bells for purists, but crops designed to last longer or resist disease are increasingly necessary.
The good news is that new federal labeling regulations, which could become final by Dec. 1, will preclude the kind of state-by-state labeling regulations that Vermont had already indulged in and that Massachusetts has been perpetually on the cusp of enacting.
The even better news is that the science of food — of producing fruits with a longer shelf life, wheat that requires less water or fertilizer — is advancing so fast that even the foodie fearmongers can't keep up.
First on the federal role: While moving at a glacial pace, the US Department of Agriculture has at long last brought forth a final set of regulations designed to implement a law passed by Congress in 2016 to deal with standards for disclosing bioengineered ingredients. Not surprisingly the new regs generated a huge amount of controversy — more than 14,000 comments received by the agency during the public comment period.
Assuming the regs are indeed finalized Dec. 1, they won't go into effect until Jan. 1, 2020. What consumers are likely to notice is that GMO labeling will become "BE food," or "bioengineered food." And since at least two-thirds of all foods sold in the US contain some ingredients in that category — consumers are indeed likely to see it everywhere.
What it will accomplish is to prevent every state and locality from drafting its own labeling laws and, in the process, making the free movement of good products from state to state difficult if not impossible. And it will let innovation continue unhindered.
The future of seafood in the United States is aquaculture. Even the king of seafood, Roger Berkowitz, acknowledges that. "The technology has gotten so good with submersible pens," said Berkowitz, chief executive of the Legal Sea Foods empire. "It's a game changer."
Berkowitz is particularly excited about the prospect of fish farms in federal open waters. Aquaculture in Massachusetts is largely confined to shallow waters; think oyster beds on Cape Cod. Of course, this country for years has talked about offshore fish farming, but the time has come, with wild fish stocks dwindling. In 2017, the US imported a record amount of seafood, more than 6 billion pounds, and exported only about 3.6 billion pounds.
While Massachusetts and some municipalities have regulated aquaculture, what's needed now is a federal regulatory framework to support aquaculture in the ocean. It hasn't been easy navigating the concerns of environmentalists, fishermen worried about their own livelihoods, and ships attached to particular routes. The ocean may be big, but surprisingly not big enough to accommodate everyone's needs.
Congress can play a big role: Get a bill that everyone likes. Here's another thought: How about supporting aquaculture as part of the farm bill, something US Representative Seth Moulton would like to see. With Democrats taking back the majority in the House, maybe this could get done next year.
Clear federal policies could enable the prospect of fish farming using the infrastructure of offshore wind turbines. Without such policies, the future of fish farming will remain murky, because these operations are expensive and investors don't like uncertainty.
"No one would spend a dime on that," said Peter Shelley, senior counsel at the Conservation Law Foundation, which has been closely following the development of aquaculture in the ocean. "It makes Cape Wind look like a sure bet."
Assume change. Farm and food policies tend to deal with what we eat and grow now, but climate change should end that way of thinking. The government and industry need to anticipate disruption, and be ready to adapt, rather than pour money into trying to preserve vanishing industries that can't be sustained any longer.
Rising temperature of oceans, for example, have forced the cod and lobsters to flee north to colder waters. We lament the loss of cod in Massachusetts, but Southern fish species are flocking to us now. In other words, we need to get used to "Cape Mahi-Mahi."
Warmer temperatures in New England could extend the growing season for blueberries, strawberries, peaches, and corn. That could be a silver lining for consumers and farmers' markets.
Food policy is often inherently conservative: organic food fans and proponents of farm subsidies want different versions of the same thing, which is to cling to the way food's always been. But food is going to change whether we like it or not — and our food policies should try to direct those changes, not stop them.
http://apps.bostonglobe.com/ideas/graphics/2018/11/the-next-bite/the-supply-chain-editorial/
VT Digger: Tebbetts, Moore & Schirling: Innovating for water quality
On 17, May 2018 | In Featured, Future of Ag | By Admin
Editor's note: This commentary is by Anson Tebbetts, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets; Julie Moore, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources; and Mike Schirling, secretary of the Department of Commerce and Community Development.
From Vermont's inception, freedom and unity have spurred innovation. John Deere invented the tractor. Ben and Jerry created world-class ice cream. Environmental leaders like George Perkins Marsh defined conservation. The state's rich history highlights how Vermonters and their values have led the way.
Innovation continues today. Farmers are working with engineers, scientists and researchers on projects that improve the environment while improving their finances. Biodigesters transform manure to electricity. Perennial plants and grasses transform bare soils into buffers to protect rivers, and lasers help milk cows.
Our next challenge is phosphorous innovation. Phosphorus is essential for plant growth, and both human and animal health. Too much phosphorus can be harmful to our waterways. Farmers deploy a bevy of conservation measures to keep phosphorous on their fields. Adopting these best management practices to protect water has also improved soil. And efforts are currently underway to spark further innovation in phosphorus management, building on that progress.
Gov. Phil Scott has challenged the agencies of Natural Resources, Agriculture and Commerce to find engineers, innovators and entrepreneurs who can work with farmers to deploy new and innovative approaches to capture and reuse phosphorus. That innovation could take the form of extracting phosphorus from manure, processing waste to produce energy, and perhaps generating revenue and creating jobs. Possible approaches include production of compost, fertilizers and bio-char. There are many companies working on these solutions and, through the Phosphorus Innovation Challenge, Vermont is at the table.
In phase one of this project the state has made $250,000 available for "proof-of-concept" grants to support several projects. The state is accepting proposals for this seed money over the next two months. A panel comprised of scientists, entrepreneurs, and business experts will help guide the selection. If you would like to take up the challenge, we look forward to hearing from you!
We know that achieving Vermont's clean water goals will require us to deploy both traditional conservation measures and new methods and ideas. We look forward to a day when products or processes that ensure clean water and farm viability are the standard, taking their place alongside other tools on our farms, many of which have their roots in Vermont. Freedom and unity includes innovation which continues to move Vermont forward, as it has for centuries, improving our environment, families and communities.
Tebbetts, Moore & Schirling: Innovating for water quality
60 Minutes: CRISPR: The gene-editing tool revolutionizing biomedical research
On 04, May 2018 | In Blog, Featured, Future of Ag | By Admin
A new tool could be the key to treating genetic diseases and may be the most consequential discovery in biomedicine this century.
It's challenging to tell a story about something that's invisible to the naked eye and tricky to explain. But it's one we undertook, because rarely does a discovery come along that could revolutionize medicine. It's called CRISPR and it stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. CRISPR sounds more like a refrigerator compartment than a gene-editing tool, but it's giving scientists power they could only imagine before – to easily edit DNA – allowing them to reprogram the genetic code of living things. That's opening up the possibility of curing genetic diseases. Some researchers are even using it to try to prevent disease entirely by correcting defective genes in human embryos. We wanted to see for ourselves, so we went to meet a scientist at the center of the CRISPR craze.
"There are about 6,000 or more diseases that are caused by faulty genes. The hope is that we will be able to address most if not all of them."
Bill Whitaker: This is CRISPR?
Feng Zhang: This has CRISPR in it.
Bill Whitaker: So– this is what's revolutionizing science and biomedicine?
Feng Zhang: This is what many people are using– in research — and trying to develop treatments.
Bill Whitaker: That's wild.
Feng Zhang: Yeah.
That little vial is igniting a big revolution that is likely to change the way doctors treat disease in the future. One of the brains behind it, is baby-faced Feng Zhang.
Feng Zhang speaks with correspondent Bill Whitaker
At 36, he's already a tenured professor at MIT and a scientific celebrity because he figured out a way to override human genetic instructions using CRISPR.
Bill Whitaker: So, the CRISPR is not the liquid, the CRISPR is in the–
Feng Zhang: It's dissolved in the liquid. There are probably billions of molecules of CRISPR…
Bill Whitaker: Billions?
BOTH: In here.
Feng Zhang: That's right. And the way we use it is we take the liquid and apply it to cells.
For the last seven years, Zhang has been working on CRISPR at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's a research mecca brimming with some of the brightest scientific minds from Harvard and MIT on a mission to fight disease. CRISPR is making medical research faster, cheaper, easier. Zhang's colleagues predict it will help them tackle diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's.
Bill Whitaker: How many diseases are we talking about that this could be used to treat?
Feng Zhang: There are about 6,000 or more diseases that are caused by faulty genes. The hope is that we will be able to address most if not all of them.
Bill Whitaker: Most if not all of them?
Feng Zhang: That's the long-term hope.
Bill Whitaker: So we're talking diseases like Huntington's—
Feng Zhang: Uh-huh.
Bill Whitaker: Sickle Cell.
Feng Zhang: Yup. ALS—hemophilia.
Eric Lander: I think CRISPR, it's fair to say, is perhaps the most surprising discovery and maybe most consequential discovery in this century so far.
Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute, speaks with correspondent Bill Whitaker
To understand exactly what CRISPR is, we went to Eric Lander for a quick science lesson. He's director of the Broad and Zhang's mentor. He's best known for being a leader of the Human Genome Project that mapped out all of our DNA, which is like a recurring sequence of letters.
Eric Lander: During the Human Genome Project, we could read out all the human DNA, and then, in the years afterwards, find the misspellings that caused human diseases. But we had no way to think about how to fix 'em. And then, pretty much on schedule, this mind-blowing discovery that bacteria have a way to fix those misspellings, appears.
Bill Whitaker: This comes from bacteria?
Eric Lander: This comes from bacteria. Bacteria, you know, they have a problem. And they came up with a real clever solution. When they get infected by viruses, they keep a little bit of DNA, and they use it as a reminder. And they have this system called CRISPR that grabs those reminders and searches around and says, "If I ever see that again, I am gonna cut it."
Zhang used that same bacterial system to edit DNA in human cells. Our DNA is made up of chemical bases abbreviated by the letters A, T, C, and G. As you can see in this animation from Zhang's lab at MIT, a mutation that causes disease reads like a typo in those genetic instructions. If scientists can identify the typo, they can program CRISPR to find it and try to correct it.
Bill Whitaker: You program it? You say–
Feng Zhang: That's right.
Bill Whitaker: "I'm looking for this string of letters."
Bill Whitaker: And the CRISPR will go in, and out of all of the billions and billions and billions of– of letters on your DNA, find the exact ones that you have programmed?
Feng Zhang: That's right. CRISPR will allow you to– do many different things. You can cut it– to edit it.
Bill Whitaker: So you can snip out the bad part and you can add something that you want as well?
Feng Zhang: That's right. You can give the cell a new piece of DNA that carries the sequence you want to incorporate into the genome.
Bill Whitaker: You say this so matter of factly. This is amazing.
Feng Zhang: It is pretty cool.
Bill Whitaker: How many other labs around the world are working with CRISPR like this?
Feng Zhang: Many. One of the things that we have been doing is to make the tool available to researchers. To date I think we have gotten it out over– 45,000 times, to 2,200 labs, in 61 countries.
Bill Whitaker: What are they doing with it?
Feng Zhang: They are using it to do everything. A lot of applications of CRISPR. It's really a Swiss army knife.
Cue the worldwide CRISPR frenzy. At the University of California, scientists used a form of CRISPR to edit mosquitos so they can't transmit malaria. Their colleagues are modifying rice to better withstand floods and drought. In China, scientists tweaked a gene in beagles to make them more muscular.
A CRISPR vial from Zhang's lab made its way to Dr. Kang Zhang. He is an ophthalmologist and a professor at the University of California, San Diego and wanted to see what all the hype was about.
Bill Whitaker: What did you think when you first heard of CRISPR?
Kang Zhang: I was a little bit skeptical.
Bill Whitaker: Why skeptical?
Kang Zhang: It worked so well. Too well to be believable.
He decided to experiment on mice with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic form of blindness. He conducted a vision test using a mouse with the disease.
Bill Whitaker: This is the blind mouse?
Kang Zhang: This is the blind mouse. And– obviously, you can see that he is ignoring the rotating stripes.
His researchers injected CRISPR into the eye of another blind mouse. The CRISPR was programmed to find the main gene associated with the disease and turn it off. It takes three months to see the results.
Kang Zhang: Now, let's see how he's responding to the light.
Bill Whitaker: He's following it around.
Kang Zhang: Yes.
Bill Whitaker: Look at that. You're sure that he is seeing these lights?
Kang Zhang: This is actually a very commonly used test for vision.
Bill Whitaker: How much of their sight do they recover?
Kang Zhang: About 30, sometimes even 50% of the sight for– for mice.
The next phase of Dr. Zhang's research is to see how CRISPR works on one of our closer relatives. He sent us this video from his lab in China where he's studying monkeys with retinitis pigmentosa. The blind monkey ignores the food. He says this monkey was treated with CRISPR and it's easy to see the difference. Dr. Zhang hopes to try this on humans soon.
If CRISPR is used to treat disease or make a drug it could mean big bucks. The Broad and Feng Zhang hold a primary patent for CRISPR's use in human cells in the United States. But no technology is developed in a vacuum. Biochemist Jennifer Doudna at the University of California, Berkeley and her team made landmark CRISPR discoveries.
This week, they are challenging Zhang and the Broad in court for the rights arguing in part that Zhang's advance was derived from her team's breakthrough. It's a high stakes battle. CRISPR is projected to be a multi-billion dollar market in a decade.
Bill Whitaker: Does that mean big business for you?
Feng Zhang: I think we're– we're still– quite a ways away from developing– CRISPR into a real therapeutic.
Bill Whitaker: I think you're being a little bit modest. I mean this is sparking an incredible boom in biomedicine. And you're in the center of it.
Feng Zhang: I think there is still really a lot of work that still needs to be done, developing the systems so that they are efficient enough, making sure that they are safe enough, but these are things that– that we're working hard to– to make possible.
"While it's not gonna affect somebody who might be dying of a disease today, this is gonna have a real effect over the course of the next decade and couple of decades."
But, what if it were possible to stop disease from even occurring? That sounds like science fiction, but a team of researchers in Portland, Oregon say with CRISPR, it's now a reality.
Bill Whitaker: You correct it at the very, very earliest stages of life.
Shoukhrat Mitalipov: Right.
Bill Whitaker: In the womb.
Shoukhrat Mitalipov: Even before the womb.
Manipulating embryos has been the focus of Shoukhrat Mitalipov's career. He runs the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at Oregon Health and Science University. Mitalipov is a maverick. He regularly makes headlines with his innovative, sometimes controversial methods to prevent genetic disease.
Shoukhrat Mitalipov: Preventing is always more effective– so there would be no– no recurrence of new disease. Particularly when we're talking about heritable– diseases that parents pass to children.
So Mitalipov and an international team of scientists decided to use CRISPR on human embryos to correct a single genetic mutation that causes a deadly heart disease called hypertropic cardiomyopathy.
They got healthy eggs from donors and sperm from a man who carries the disease. At the same time the eggs are fertilized, they also get an injection of CRISPR. Mitalipov enlarged the microscopic procedure over three hundred times so we could see it.
Shoukhrat Mitalipov: Here we have our pipette with sperm inside, which has been already exposed to CRISPR. And this is a egg. And so what we need to do is pierce through, and then we break membrane. And now –
Bill Whitaker: Release the sperm into the egg.
Shoukhrat Mitalipov: Yeah. And now this is the sperm coming in.
Bill Whitaker: Wow.
Shoukhrat Mitalipov: Now it's inside there.
Bill Whitaker: Just like that, that egg has been CRISPRed?
Shoukhrat Mitalipov: CRISPRed, fertilized.
Bill Whitaker: And you have changed the genetic destiny of that embryo.
Shoukhrat Mitalipov: Yes, we believe so.
These embryos will never be implanted, but they are grown in an incubator for three days and then checked to see if they carry the disease mutation.
Normally, 50 percent would. Mitalipov says with CRISPR, 72 percent were free of the mutation that would cause the heart disease.
Bill Whitaker: This is a huge– advance in science and medicine.
Shoukhrat Mitalipov: We hope so. I think we– we're still kind of in the early stages. I wouldn't say that we are ready to– to go to clinics now.
He knows his results have to be replicated by an outside lab before they're accepted by the scientific community. But if they hold up, one day CRISPR could be used to help families that have been plagued by inherited disease for generations.
Bill Whitaker: Is that what drives you?
Shoukhrat Mitalipov: Yes. Of course, it's a suffering of children, but also the guilt the parents have at saying, "I passed it to my child." So it's like, "I caused this disease." And I think now, we have a tool where we could help these families.
Mitalipov wants to use CRISPR to eliminate disease, but the concern is his research has created a blueprint for less scrupulous doctors to design human beings – to edit embryos to make babies that are smarter, taller, stronger. Mitalipov says that's not even possible right now.
Bill Whitaker: Your critics say that you're playing God.
Shoukhrat Mitalipov: I think– you could say to– to every treatment that they– humans and doctors develop that– we– we're playing God. God gave us brains so we could find a way to eliminate suffering of human beings. And if that's– you know, playing God, I guess that's the way it is.
Bill Whitaker: So what do you think about editing an embryo to prevent disease?
Feng Zhang: We don't really understand how complicated biology is. There's a gene called PCSK9. If you remove PCSK9, you can reduce cardiovascular disease, heart attack– risks significantly. But it also has been shown recently to increase risk for diabetes. So how do you make the judgment call between these tradeoffs? And there will likely be other—impacts we haven't yet identified. So I think we need to wait and be more cautious.
Eric Lander: I don't think we're close to ready to use it to go edit the human population. I think we've gotta use it for medicine for a while. I think those are the urgent questions. That's what people want right now, is they want cures for disease.
Those urgent questions might soon be answered. A small clinical trial, the first in the U.S. using CRISPR to target certain types of cancer, is now enrolling patients.
Eric Lander: I wanna always balance hope versus hype here. While it's not gonna affect somebody who might be dying of a disease today, this is gonna have a real effect over the course of the next decade and couple of decades. And for the next generation, I think it'll be transformative.
Produced by Nichole Marks. Associate producers, Kate Morris and Jaime Woods.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/crispr-the-gene-editing-tool-revolutionizing-biomedical-research/
BARDA, Department of Defense, and SAb Biotherapeutics to Partner to Develop a Novel COVID-19 Therapeutic
Published by Medical Counter Measures
A therapeutic to treat novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is moving forward in development through a partnership between BARDA, the Department of Defense Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense (JPEO – CBRND), and SAb Biotherapeutics, Inc. (SAb), of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Using an interagency agreement with JPEO's Medical CBRN Defense Consortium, BARDA transferred approximately $7.2 million in funding to (JPEO – CBRND) to support SAb to complete manufacturing and preclinical studies, with an option to conduct a Phase 1 clinical trial.
Read the full press release here.
Agri-Pulse: Can cows be used to fight coronavirus?
Bovine plasma donors genetically engineered to produce human antibodies are in the front lines of the struggle against coronavirus.
SAB Biotherapeutics, a Sioux Falls, S.D., biotechnology company that has been successfully testing use of antibodies from cows to fight diseases such as another coronavirus, Middle East respiratory syndrome, now is engaged in developing a treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Usain Bolt hopes of making professional football debut, Borussia Dortmund trials in March
Even after growing up playing cricket in Jamaica, Usain Bolt has expressed on trying his luck in professional football. German football club Borussia Dortmund has also called him up for trials.
File image of Usain Bolt | Photo Credit: BCCL
New Delhi: Usain Bolt is a champion athlete who needs no introduction in the world of sports. In 2017, the Jamaican sprinter dubbed as 'fastest man alive' hung his boots up from athletics holding the world record in 100 and 200 meters to his name. The sprinter did retire himself from the track and field but has not ruled out playing any other sports professionally. Even after growing up playing cricket in Jamaica, Bolt has expressed on trying his luck in professional football. So far, he can be considered lucky as the German football club Borussia Dortmund has called him up for trials. (READ: Nisar Ahmad, rickshaw puller's son, to train at Usain Bolt's club in Jamaica)
In an interview to Indian Express, Bolt reiterated his passion for the beautiful game and prospects of having a professional career in that arena.
"In March, we're going to do trials with Dortmund and that will determine what I do with that career, which way it goes. If they say I'm good, and that I need a bit of training, I'll do it."
Bolt added that the idea of playing professional football makes him nervous. "It makes me nervous. I don't get nervous but this is different, this is football now. It'll take time to adjust but once I play a few times I'll get used to it. One of my biggest dreams is to sign for Manchester United. If Dortmund says I'm good enough, I'll crack on and train hard," he said.
"I've spoken to Alex Ferguson and I told him he needs to put in a good word. He told me if I get fit and ready, he will see what he can do," added Bolt
Bolt retired in August after his participation in the IAAF World Championships London 2017. The 31-year old didn't get the best end of his career as he limped off in the 4 x 100m relay final and finished with a bronze medal in the 100m sprint at the Athletics World Championship.
Bolt is the only sprinter to capture 100 and 200-meter track titles at three consecutive Olympics. He holds the world record of 9.58 seconds in the 100m and 19.19 in the 200m – both set in Berlin in 2009.
The story of the 'Dhing Express', Hima Das
Star Indian sprinter Hima Das won her second international gold in women's 200m with a top finish at the Kutno Athletics Meet on Sunday. But what to her becoming a legend? Here's the story!
Kangana Ranaut to do another biopic after Jaya? | Bollywood Gossip
Usain Bolt hopes of making professional football debut, Borussia Dortmund trials in March Description: Even after growing up playing cricket in Jamaica, Usain Bolt has expressed on trying his luck in professional football. German football club Borussia Dortmund has also called him up for trials. Times Now


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William Sadler II (c.1782 – 1839), also known as William Sadler the Younger, was an Irish painter. He was a noted landscape painter who is remembered today for his depiction of the Battle of Waterloo.

Life
William Sadler II was born around 1782. He was the son of William Sadler, an English portrait painter and engraver who came to Ireland as a boy with his father.

Sadler lived at a number of different addresses before settling in Manders' Building, Ranelagh, where he died on 19 December 1839. With his wife, Caroline, Sadler had a number of children including 2 sons became painters, the eldest being William Sadler III, and Rupert Sadler. William Sadler III emigrated to the United States.

Career
Sadler, who grew up in Dublin, exhibited his paintings between 1809 and 1821 in the city. In 1828 and 1833 he exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy. Sadler also taught painting and one of his pupils was James Arthur O'Connor. Sadler was greatly influenced by Dutch genre painting and made many copies of the Old Masters. He mostly painted in oils, with many of his works featuring Dublin's cityscape, crowds, or military scenes painted on mahogany wood panels.

Sadler, his father, and his son, William, all painted in a similar style which has led to some confusion in identifying which Sadler produced some paintings. Though Sadler is generally considered the better of the three artists.

List of paintings
A View of the Salmon Leap, Leixlip, c. 1810 – Oil on panel; National Gallery of Ireland.
Donnybrook Fair, c. 1839 – Oil on panel; Collection of Brian P. Burns.
A View of the Deputy Master's House at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, overlooking Phoenix Park

References

Further reading
Hutchinson, John. James Arthur O'Connor. Dublin: The National Gallery of Ireland, 1985. .

External links

Sadler at Island Online

1782 births
1839 deaths
19th-century Irish painters
Irish male painters
19th-century Irish male artists

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Revised Review)
Yep, it's "Revised Review" time again. This time, the subject is "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," the fifth entry in the Harry Potter movie franchise. When I first reviewed it, I gave it three stars. I liked it, but I think my mind was more focused on the previous films, particularly "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (one of my personal-favorite films, period). To me, the pace seemed off, I was confused where the story was going, and I just knew that it was going to lead to another cliffhanger which would pave the way for another sequel which would pave the way for another cliffhanger which would lead to the ultimate climactic battle to end all battles in this Harry Potter universe.
(By the way, if you're wondering, I haven't read all of the books. I read the first three and then quit, only because I enjoyed the movies so much, I wanted them to surprise me.)
As time went on, however, I re-watched all the "Harry Potter" movies in a row, once in a while. And suddenly, as I was taking in more of what "The Order of the Phoenix" had to offer, I realized its success in what it was trying to do. This was a different "Harry Potter" movie—one that would provoke thought, ask questions about similarity/difference, and prepare us for something darker and heavier to come. As a result, it is now my second-favorite "Harry Potter" movie (behind "The Chamber of Secrets," which is as fun as this is insightful).
"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" begins with 15-year-old budding wizard Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) sitting bitter and alone on a swingset in a playground. This shot alone sets the tone for the film—Harry feels isolated and knows that something is coming that will transform him from a child to an adult, and he's not sure he wants to let go of childhood yet. (Maybe I'm reading too deep, but that's always what I got out of it.) In the previous film, the dreaded Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) was brought back from the dead, and Harry was the sole witness. For a while, it seems nobody believes him and he's all alone. But after a seemingly-predetermined incident causes Harry to be expelled from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry for using magic outside of school to protect himself, it turns out there's a small secret society of witches/wizards called the Order of the Phoenix, including Harry's godfather Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), that has formed outside the Ministry of Magic since Harry's allegation of Voldemort's return. They're preparing for a fight that is sure to come, and they try to keep Harry out of it as much as possible, despite Harry's desperate need to get involved.
The Order, along with Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), manage to get Harry enrolled back in school, but trouble soon comes brewing, as it always does whenever Harry and his two best friends, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson), get involved in whatever's happening at this dangerous school (keep your kids away from this place, parents!). Firstly, most of Harry's classmates think Harry is lying about Voldemort's return to cover up another reason for the death of another student (caused by Voldemort). Secondly, the school is slowly but surely being controlled by a new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor: Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), who also aids in the Ministry. She and Harry clash because of Harry's "lies" and because she won't teach defensive spells to students.
Oh, and need I also mention that hormones come creeping in during all of this, leading to Harry's first kiss with his crush Cho Chang (Katie Leung)? Hasn't this kid gone through enough confusion in his already-loaded life?
Once it becomes clear to other students that Harry is telling the truth, Harry, Ron, and Hermione bring them together to start their own secret group, called Dumbledore's Army, to teach/learn defensive spells for when the time comes to battle Voldemort's forces. And it seems they may have to begin defending themselves sooner than they thought…
I'm going to look at my original review (posted on this site) and point out some things I wrote then that I change my mind about now.
"It is […] my least favorite in the franchise." Right away, I take that back.
"Harry's best friends […] aren't given anything special to do, save for a few short scenes of humor." We already had four whole movies prior to set up the characters and their friendship together, and the focus in this one is entirely on Harry. So why did I let that bother me?
"And it's annoying when Hermione is correcting Harry for something he knows is right." Hermione doesn't see the things that Harry sees, leading to a friendship with Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch) who sees the strange and unusual (I mean, by Hogwarts' standards). Jeez, younger-critic-Tanner—picky much?
"I'm sorry, but I didn't like Luna Lovegood. It's a one-note loony role that just plain annoyed me." OK, fine, I did think that was the case for one of the most beloved characters in the series. Yes, I still think the character is one-note loony, but my feelings towards her have softened a bit the more times I watched the later Harry Potter movies. She's sweet, she's likable, and she didn't deserve the slam I gave her in my original review.
It seems the problems I had with the movie were mere nitpicks for being "different." Reading my old review of this movie again, I can't help but be reminded of the initial reception critics/audiences had toward "Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back." Now known as one of the greatest sequels of all time, it took a while for people to warm up to its new ideas back then. That's essentially how I feel about "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"—I wasn't ready for the darker directions it was going to take (and it was darker compared to the new directions taken in "The Prisoner of Azkaban" and "The Goblet of Fire"). Subsequent viewings caused me to admire it for taking the series in a more complicated turn, which was also used to develop the character of Harry even further.
And that's something I didn't even notice the first time I reviewed the film, let alone acknowledge in the review. Harry is a role model—he wants to do what is right, he wants to do his part in protecting his friends and others, and he demands justice for wrongdoings. That's fine and all, but what makes the character more compelling here is his inner turmoil. He's still a kid going through struggles in growing up, and on top of that, he's experienced tragedy, such as the murders of his parents and peers, and he's constantly being ignored for either negligence of knowing the truth or for a greater cause when he wants to be involved. This makes him angry, and he gets even angrier as the movie continues. At one point, he admits he's afraid of becoming more and more like Voldemort. He even notices some similarities between him and Voldemort growing up as Tom Riddle.
Voldemort knows this. He wants to use Harry's anger to tempt him into joining him and/or giving into the dark arts. In a wonderful moment near the end, Harry has a chance to kill one of Voldemort's cohorts out of anger for the murder of one of Harry's most trusted companions, and this is when Voldemort strikes into his mind, using his subconscious against him. Harry has experienced such tragedy and guilt and turmoil, which can lead to further such issues if he acts on them out of vengeance. An important line of dialogue from earlier in the film comes to mind during this scene, as Sirius Black assured Harry, "We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are." Harry is able to win the inner battle with Voldemort by recognizing the differences between himself and Voldemort. As he puts in a wonderfully biting statement, "You're the weak one. And you'll never know love. Or friendship. And I feel sorry for you."
(I'm not going to lie—every time I watch this scene, I feel a lump in my throat every time he says that line. It's delivered perfectly by Radcliffe.)
In my original review, I did praise the final half for giving us a gripping glimpse into "magic battle," which both sides of the fight attacking one another, with Harry and friends in the middle. "Magic battle" would become better realized by "Deathly Hallows: Part 2," but this climax is still intriguing. And I also praised Imelda Staunton's performance as Umbridge. Who wouldn't? She portrays one of the most despicable creatures in any movie I've ever seen, and I will not use that as an exaggeration. She punishes students severely for speaking out about issues that go against authority (whether she believes Voldemort is back and is trying to cover it up for the Ministry or not, it's no excuse to scar Harry's hand for telling "lies"). She won't teach students to defend themselves for practically-conservative reasons. She has a sweet demeanor most of the time, but tick her off and she will find a way to get you. Staunton plays the role perfectly; it's frightening, the way she pulls it off. I think it's the smile… anyone who can do terrible things and keep that smile is worthy of hatred. (I mean hatred towards the character, not the actress—I'm certain Imelda Staunton is a nice woman in reality.)
This was director David Yates' first going into the Harry Potter universe (and he would go to direct more Harry Potter films since). The tone he uses is very effective; it almost feels like we're walking into a dream. We're not entirely sure what's real and what's imagined, and so there's that sense of unease that settles throughout the film.
I may have underappreciated "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" when I first saw it (and reviewed it), but this is my chance at redemption for my mistakes. I love this film even more today, and I have no second thoughts in giving it a four-star rating. (In hindsight, this deserves a four-star rating more so than "The Sorcerer's Stone," which does not hold up as well for me today. Maybe I'll do a revised review for that one too, someday…)
Categories 2007, Four Stars ****, Three-and-a-Half Stars ***1/2
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One Response to "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Revised Review)"
diyingmachine July 12, 2018 at 4:36 am #
Good review 🙂 Very detailed.


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Q: How to multiply tensors of different shapes? (broadcasting) I want to multiple the elements in a tensor of shape [a,b,c], each in the 3rd dimension with a scalar from a tensor of shape [a,b].
For example,
x =
|[1,2][3,4][5,6]|
|[1,2][3,4][5,6]|
|[1,2][3,4][5,6]|

y =
|0 0 1|
|1 0 0|
|0 1 0|

I want to multiply x and y to obtain:
res =
|[0,0][0,0][5,6]|
|[1,2][0,0][0,0]|
|[0,0][3,4][0,0]|

Could you tell me any method to achieve this?
P.S: maybe I can make a y' from y which is
y' =
|[0,0][0,0][1,1]|
|[1,1][0,0][0,0]|
|[0,0][1,1][0,0]|

then I can use tf.mul() to obtain the result. But I don't find anything to duplicate elements in a tensor in this way.

A: You are right, you can just use tf.mul(). In fact, the multiply operation in TensorFlow handles broadcasting, so you don't need to create another vector of shape [a, b, c].
To make sure that the broadcasting is on the expected dimension, you can add a third dimension to your second vector y:
x = tf.random_normal([3, 3, 2])
y = tf.constant([[0., 0., 1.], [1., 0., 0.], [0., 1., 0.]])

y = tf.expand_dims(y, 2)  # y will now have a matching shape of [3, 3, 1]
res = tf.mul(x, y)

sess = tf.Session()
sess.run(res)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Busy night for PSB
By Staff, 09/27/17 10:05 AM
PRESCOTT – It was a busy night for the Prescott School Board at its September meeting Tuesday night.
The first order of business was the elect a slate of officers as the annual school election was held last week. There was no change as Patricia Blake remains president, JoBeth Glass is vice president and Sandra Evans is secretary. Robert Poole, superintendent of the Prescott School District, congratulated the board members on being reelected, saying it's a thankless job with no pay, but the district's success depends on having a good school board.
The board also approved mandated assurances for driver's education standards and an annual district statement of assurances stating the district will follow all state and federal guidelines.
Linda Benton brought three students from her orientation to teaching class to the board meeting so they could see what happens at such meetings and how the board makes its decisions. All three, Benton said, are planning careers as educators. She pointed out the class is creating a pamphlet on what makes students succeed in school and how parents can become more involved with the district.
Missy Walley followed providing an update on the Professional Learning Community (PLC). She said money was given to the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) to be used in PLC programs in schools across the state. The Arkansas Legislature voted to require schools apply for grants to make sure they would be more involved in the program from start to finish, instead of simply giving money to districts.
Walley said 83 schools applied for grants with 10 being approved. However, Prescott was the only district in the state to be awarded a grant. The grant doesn't involve cash, but provides $360,000 in goods and services for the district to help identify and improve weak areas. The district has already had a needs assessment done, addressing the problem areas. The results of the assessment, she added, should be ready for the October meeting.
The district, she continued, was said to have a "family atmosphere and foundation" which is good, but needs direction academically for the teachers. Walley told the board, and audience, the PLC covers the entire district, not just one portion of the schools. The district's "official coach" David LaRose spent two days in the schools talking to teachers and administrators.
Part of the problem, Walley said, is teachers need a specific time to meet and talk about nothing but curriculum, with no side issues involved. She said LaRose suggested norms be set for these meetings and the teachers hold one another accountable for upholding the norms. He and a senior account manager with the program will return on Oct. 9 to do project planning. By then, she said, the district should have the needs assessment back and will be able to work on a mission, vision and goal statements.
She pointed out the district's standards aren't being changed, but more focus will be placed on what is being taught to and mastered by the students. This is a three-year program the district will be working on under the grant. Tina Smith, with the ADE, who's over the program, will be in Prescott on Oct. 6 to talk with board members and let the district know what the state expects it to accomplish.
The board approved the 2017-18 minority teacher and administrator recruitment plan. The short term goals are to recruit qualified minority teaching candidates from surrounding colleges and attend career fairs at local universities; develop a plan to help area residents discuss potential minority candidates to be hired; and develop strategies to recruit more minority teachers and administrators.
However, as Willie Wilson, Dean of Students, pointed out, the problem is there are few minority students going into education in areas the district needs. He added, just because a person is in a minority and has a teaching degree doesn't guarantee them a job automatically as the district seeks only qualified applicants for all positions. The plan also includes a "grow your own" concept by establishing a Future Educator of America Club to get and keep students interested in careers in education.
Former PSD graduate Brandon Marks is an intern with the district, teaching fifth and sixth grade math and science, as well as acting as a football coach. He's earned a degree from Ouachita Baptist University, where, he said, he was the only minority in the education program the last four or five years. "I understand where the administration is coming from where minorities can make a difference with students being successful and seeing students find the passion to learn, realizing they don't have to become "hood rats" in order to succeed.
Poole said the fifth and sixth grade students run up to Marks, who's already made an impact as the students look up to him.
Former Prescott Elementary School Principal Howard Austin, who's on the recruitment committee, gave a history of the district, saying it fully integrated in 1969 and no teachers lost their jobs when this occurred. He said, in a nutshell, the PSD has been at the forefront when it came to hiring and retaining minority personnel, but the problem is finding qualified people anymore. Part of the reason for this, he continued, is the salary schedule, because those with teaching degrees can go elsewhere and make more money.
PHS Principal Tommy Pooole said Marks will be able to get a job anywhere in the state once he completes his certification, but what he really wants to do is be a coach. Robert Poole said most of the coaches in the district are also full-time classroom teachers, and if a person wants to coach, they should be allowed to do so, as coaches have a big impact on children in Prescott.
The panel also approved a program for English Speakers from Other Languages (ESOL). Frank Henson said the program deals with those students who live in homes where English isn't the dominant or primary language spoken, and who, themselves, aren't proficient in the English language, whether it's reading, writing or listening.
Students, he said, are tested to see what their skills are with English. Many, he added, are already proficient in English, but those who aren't are placed in the program. When these students become proficient in English, they are monitored for four years, and if they show signs of losing this proficiency, they're returned to the program.
A homeless program was also approved by the board. Henson defined being homeless as having inadequate or unstable night housing. There are times, he said, when students may stay a night or two with a relative, but never be sure where they'll spend the next night, or they'll have a regular roof over their heads, but no access to utilities.
These students, he said, are identified with help from teachers and law enforcement, along with other agencies. The idea is to help these children with school supplies, meals and transportation, along with other needs they may have, such as shoes and hygiene items. Food Share and the clothing ministry also work with these students and their families, as do local civic clubs and organizations.
Henson said at this time there are no homeless students in the district, but added, it's hard to identify those who are.
Tia Blakely, administrator for the 21st Century grant program, updated the board on what's going on. She said this is an after school program for students in grades K-8 from 3:20-6:20 p.m. There are 105 students enrolled at this time, with around 25 more on a waiting list. The program operates Monday through Thursday, with students doing homework and other activities. The student rotate on a weekly basis to learn about the various activities, such as cooking, scrapbooking and photography. The program, she continued, works with the Arkansas Department of Health, the Extension Service and other groups, as well as partnering with Prevention Services on programs such as bullying, alcohol and drug use, etc…
The district has also entered into an agreement with the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope (UACCH) to teach a night welding class at PHS using the new agriculture facility. The classes will start in January and will be open to anyone interested in learning the fundamentals of welding as this is a foundation class. Poole said he'll have more information, such as the cost of the course, course requirements and meeting times, at the October meeting, which will be moved up a week to Oct. 17. This class will last a full semester, and plans are to have more courses offered in Prescott through UACCH.
The board approved the 2017-18 budget, with a budget workshop to be held in the near future. Poole said the budget is as conservative as it could be made and the goal is to end the year with more than the district started with, but this isn't always possible.
He pointed out a new law won't allow districts to carry over more than 20 percent of their operating budgets. Those that do will be penalized and the amount over 20 percent withheld from their state aid.
Poole updated the board on construction projects for the district. He said the cameras have already been installed and are being used, though a couple need to be readjusted. These cameras, he added, provide more coverage than before. Plans to air condition the gym have been finalized and will be submitted to the ADE for approval. Once the ADE approves, bids for this project will be let. New seating for the PHS auditorium has been ordered, but will take about two months to be built, shipped and installed.
In closing, Poole said the Oct. 17 meeting will also be the district's annual report to the public, which is required by law.
The district currently has 979 students enrolled, with 526 at PES and 453 at PHS.


Analysis of the evolution of the polarisation of users on the Twitter platform during the Italian elections. Study of the dynamics of the exchange of contents, especially focusing on the keywords used during that time. Detection of statistically significant signals of interaction among different communities and analysis of the contents therein.
The candidate should have a strong expertise in entropy-based techniques for network analysis and in their implementations. A good knowledge in statistics is needed, in order to provide a correct interpretation of the results. A good experience in the analysis of social network is required. The candidate should be expert at programming in Python and at using its modules for the analysis of complex networks.
Masters degree or 4-year degree in Statistics, Informatics, Physics, Mathematics or similar field.


text:
Казимир Іванович Патриляк (; *16 грудня 1938, с. Нагоряни Сяноцького повіту Ряшівського воєводства у Польщі, (Лемківщина) -  † 3 квітня 2015, м. Київ) — вчений-хімік, доктор хімічних наук, керівник відділу каталітичного синтезу Інституту біоорганічної хімії та нафтохімії (ІБОНХ) НАН України, професор Національного технічного університету України «Київський політехнічний інститут»

Біографія
Казимир Іванович Патриляк народився 16 грудня 1938 р. на Лемківщині, в с. Нагоряни Сяноцького повіту Ряшівського воєводства (Польща). У 1946 р. родину Патриляків було переселено до с. Гаї Розтоцькі Зборівського району Тернопільської області, де у 1956 р. К. І. Патриляк закінчив середню школу. У 1961 р. закінчив Львівський політехнічний інститут за спеціальністю «Технологія нафти та газу».

У 1969 р. захистив кандидатську, а в 1986 р. — докторську дисертацію. З 1991 р. очолював відділ каталітичного синтезу Інституту біоорганічної хімії та нафтохімії (ІБОНХ) НАН України. Обіймав посаду професора Національного технічного університету України «Київський політехнічний інститут».

К. І. Патриляк є автором і співавтором понад 200 наукових праць. Досліджував складні гетерогенні й гетерогенно-каталітичні системи. Сформулював закономірність аномальної зміни тиску насиченої пари над речовиною у масивному та кластерному станах, проаналізував наслідки, що з неї випливають. Відкрив явище коливальної адсорбції, виявив його роль, як перемикального механізму певних коливальних процесів. Запропонував механізми практично важливих карбоній-іонних реакцій. Розробив низку вітчизняних каталізаторів.

У 1978 р. в інтересах «Південмашу» і тодішньої оборонної промисловості вирішив проблему прогнозування на період до 20 років експлуатаційних характеристик матеріалів без тривалих і дорогих натурних випробувань.

Впродовж 1986–1988 рр., після аварії на Чорнобильській АЕС, розробив найефективніші способи пилопригнічення й закріплення курних територій, що дозволило знизити рівні радіації повітряного басейну в десятки разів. Керував цими роботами АН України в зоні відчуження ЧАЕС. Було закріплено понад 5 тис. га курних площ різних типів, курні узбіччя шосейних доріг протяжністю в сотні кілометрів, усунуто пиління сотень кілометрів ґрунтових доріг.

К. І. Патриляк підготував 10 кандидатів та одного доктора наук, понад 20 інженерів-технологів і магістрів. Він був членом вчених рад ІБОНХ України та Інституту фізичної хімії ім. Л. В. Писаржевського НАН України із захисту кандидатських і докторських дисертацій, членом державної екзаменаційної комісії НТУУ «КПІ» зі спеціальності «Хімічна технологія неорганічних речовин». Входив до складу редколегій журналів «Каталіз і нафтохімія», «Теоретическая и экспериментальная химия» (обидва НАН України) і «Нефтехимия» (Російська АН).

Нагороджений трьома медалями, Грамотами Урядової комісії з питань ліквідації наслідків аварії на ЧАЕС, Почесною грамотою Президії НАН України, Грамотою Верховної Ради України.

Лауреат Державної премії України в галузі науки і техніки 2014 року..

Похований у Гаях-Розтоцьких.

Родина
Донька — Любов Казимирівна Патриляк, завідувач відділу каталітичного синтезу Інституту біоорганічної хімії та нафтохімії імені В.П. Кухаря НАН України, доктор хімічних наук.

Син — Богдан Казимирович Патриляк, кандидат історичних наук (2013), заступник генерального директора з наукової та фондової роботи Національного музею історії України.

Син — Іван Казимирович Патриляк, доктор історичних наук (2013), декан історичного факультету, професор кафедри новітньої історії України Київського національного університету імені Тараса Шевченка (з 2014).

Примітки

Джерела
 Історичне видання. Національний університет «Львівська політехніка». — К., 2009. — С. 386

Посилання
 Відділ каталітичного синтезу Інституту біоорганічної хімії та нафтохімії НАН України

Українські хіміки
Українські нафтохіміки
Випускники Львівської політехніки
Доктори хімічних наук СРСР
Уродженці Сяноцького повіту
Лауреати Державної премії України в галузі науки і техніки


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text:
Standing guard around trees to increase stormwater infiltration
Jun 23, 2018 | Flooding & Watersheds, Green Infrastructure | 2
Trees can pack a big punch when it comes to reducing stormwater. But Robert Elliott, former Columbia University (New York) graduate student and co-founder of Get Urban Leaf (New York), believes there is untapped potential for using trees to manage runoff in cities. He led a university study that provides urban planners with information that can help increase this potential.
Small change makes a big difference
While many of New York City's 684,000 street trees were installed for their aesthetic benefits, they also capture stormwater, a benefit that could be enhanced by installing tree-pit guards. Robert Elliott.
Most city-dwellers have seen trees growing out of tree pits along walkways and streets. Soil permeability in tree pits can affect the amount of runoff that can be absorbed. A team of Columbia University researchers examined the elements of tree pit design and management to identify ways to improve their stormwater infiltration.
The researchers found that the most significant factor influencing infiltration rate in tree pits was the presence of a guard between the soil and concrete. Tree pits with a barrier blocking pedestrians from walking on the soil experienced significant increases in the amount of runoff absorbed.
"I was surprised at the magnitude of installing a guard and how quickly that infiltration was recovered," Elliott said. Guards were installed in 2014. By 2015, researchers saw an "8-fold increase in infiltration capacity," he said.
The team examined infiltration rates at 40 tree pits with various physical conditions common in New York City. They observed the presence or absence of a guard; mulch, and ground cover plants; the elevation of the pit's soil in relation to the sidewalk; and size of the pit and tree.
After studying 40 tree pits throughout the city, researchers determined that a barrier to prevent pedestrians from compacting soil in tree pits proved the most beneficial for stormwater infiltration. Robert Elliott.
Elliott was especially surprised to see that installing tree guards provided the most significant benefit, far above adding ground cover plants that could help open up the soil, or even the tree's health, he said.
The study, "Stormwater infiltration capacity of street tree pits: Quantifying the influence of different design and management strategies in New York City," was published in February in the journal Ecological Engineering.
Accessing untapped potential
Since 86% of New York City's 684,000 street trees do not have guards, this change can make a big difference. But Elliott thinks there's more that can be done with trees to obtain a more natural "urban hydrology," he said.
"There's room for improvement," Elliott said. "This existing vegetation could be modified to perform more stormwater management services."
Elliott joined other Columbia University researchers in conducting another study comparing the costs and benefits of guarded tree pits with bioswales. He wanted to compare the benefits of retrofitting tree pits with the city's strategy to build bioswales anywhere possible, he said.
In this study, researchers modeled the installation of tree guards in the Harlem River watershed. The area contains nearly 20,000 street trees and only 6% currently have guards. Guard installation is estimated to capture an additional 31,416 m3/yr (8.3 million gal/yr) of stormwater.
Installing a guard around a tree pit increased the amount of stormwater infiltration 8-fold. Depending on the runoff area, a guard can increase a single tree's stormwater infiltration anywhere from 1264 L/yr (334 gal/yr) to 4285 L/yr (1132 gal/yr). Robert Elliott.
Tree pits often will not overflow unless rainfall occurs quickly. Installing tree guards becomes beneficial when rainfall levels exceed 5 mm/h (0.2 in./h). And this installation remains less cost-effective then a bioswale unless the storm intensity is 9 mm/h (0.35 in./h) or higher, the study says.
While bioswales often are more cost-effective, retrofitting tree pits for stormwater management may be a beneficial strategy, Elliott said. Incorporating bioswale design elements such as a curb-cut into the tree pits would increase the impermeable area that can drain to these areas while maximizing infiltration. Installing less expensive guards around pits or involving the community in building their own guards could help improve cost-effectiveness of using tree pits for stormwater management, he said.
PreviousStorms as destructive as Hurricane Harvey projected to happen more frequently
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NGICP involvement prepares water associations for the future of stormwater
iRecarga on June 24, 2018 at 5:29 am
Thank you for your blog post.Really thank you! Awesome.
Amitava Basu Sarkar on July 17, 2018 at 1:06 am
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Our IT is one of the key success factors at QSL since it covers the entire value creation process. The decisive advantage: CSB, our IT ERP solution, is completely geared to the quick service restaurant business concept. This enables us to offer unique functions to our customers that regular logistics service providers or ERP support systems do not possess. CSB maps all processes along the supply chain and can be flexibly managed. It simply offers all functions in one solution.
Furthermore we work with Digiarch, the electronic document management & workflow management system, which ensures a paperless office and quick communication. For inventory planning we use Remira, a statistical planning tool. With our business intelligent tool Qlickview we offer our customers individual and comprehensive reporting. Through evaluation of the data the customer often learns much more about his supply chain and can manage it more efficiently and effectively.


text:
Q: Show Current Date onclick using jquery datepicker I am using the datepicker ui for jQuery. The calendar is loading fine. Now I want to fire an event showing the current date when I select a day. I am trying to use this but not having any luck.
The function looks like this:
$(document).ready(AllPageLoads);

    function AllPageLoads()
    {
        $('#datepicker').datepicker();
        $('table.games tbody tr.top').each(function (index) { if (index % 2 == 0) { $(this).addClass("even"); } else { $(this).addClass("odd"); } });
        $('table.games tbody tr.bottom').each(function (index) { if (index % 2 == 0) { $(this).addClass("even"); } else { $(this).addClass("odd"); } });
    }

    function EpicFail(response, status, error)
    {
        alert(response + " / " + status + " / " + error);

}
$('.selector').datepicker("option", "onSelect", function (dateText, inst) {
  alert(dateText);
 });

html:

Current Data

All Times Pacific/p>

            Date
            Data
            Col1
            Col2
            Data1
            Data2
            Data3

        6/9/2011

        901

        Team1

        Payer1

        info1

        OFF

        OFF

        4:05 PM

        902

        Team2

        Palyer2

        info2

        OFF

        OFF

A: It's not working because you initialized the datepicker at least once before what you are trying to do now. The binding (inside options as dictionary) you are using works only when initializing the first time.
Either move it to the 1st initialization statement or use:
$('.selector').datepicker("option", "onSelect", function (dateText, inst) {
                                                    alert(dateText);
                                                });

A: When you use $('.selector'). you are telling to jQuery: Look for the element who has class="selector" and perform this function.
But you don't have any element with this class name.
So, to solve the problem, simple add the code:
    function AllPageLoads()
    {
        $('#datepicker').datepicker({
           onSelect: function (dateText, inst) { alert(dateText); }
        });
        $('table.games tbody tr.top').each(function (index) { if (index % 2 == 0) { $(this).addClass("even"); } else { $(this).addClass("odd"); } });
        $('table.games tbody tr.bottom').each(function (index) { if (index % 2 == 0) { $(this).addClass("even"); } else { $(this).addClass("odd"); } });
    }


text:
È noto al pubblico televisivo per aver interpretato l'Agente 86 nella serie televisiva Get Smart, ruolo per il quale si aggiudicò tre Emmy Award.

Biografia
Nato a Manhattan, figlio dell'ebreo William Yarmy e della cattolica Consuelo Deiter, crebbe nella religione materna. Praticò molti lavori e durante una successiva intervista alla TV canadese ammise di aver presentato false credenziali universitarie per poter essere assunto in una ditta che si occupava di ingegneria fognaria, dove lavorò per sei mesi prima di essere scoperto.

Iniziò a recitare e assunse il cognome Adams dopo essersi sposato con la cantante Adelaide Efantis, nota come Adelaide Adams. Dall'unione nacquero quattro figlie.

Carriera televisiva
Adams iniziò a lavorare in televisione nel 1954, quando vinse un concorso per giovani talenti con un pezzo scritto da Bill Dana, che gli valse la partecipazione al Bill Dana Show, dove interpretò il personaggio di Byron Glick, un detective pasticcione precursore di Maxwell Smart.

I creatori di Get Smart, Mel Brooks e Buck Henry, scrissero la serie pensando al ruolo di protagonista per l'attore Tom Poston. La serie doveva essere trasmessa dalla CBS, ma quando questa fu acquisita dalla NBC, Adams fu scritturato essendo già sotto contratto con questa emittente.

Fin dal suo inizio nel 1965, la serie fu un successo anche grazie all'affiatamento tra Adams e l'attrice Barbara Feldon, nel ruolo della compagna di Smart Agente 99. Adams produsse e diresse alcuni episodi, e fu candidato all'Emmy Award per quattro anni consecutivi, nel 1966, 67, 68 e 69, premio che si aggiudicò in tre diverse occasioni. La serie finì nel 1970 per un totale di 138 puntate.

Dal 1985 al 1988 interpretò il ruolo del direttore Howard Bannister nella serie Il supermercato più pazzo del mondo. In seguito partecipò ad altri progetti, rimanendo però legato alla figura dell'agente segreto imbranato. Prestò la voce all'Ispettore Gadget, Franc Frac e Giancanino e a se stesso nello speciale di Natale di Scooby-Doo. Nel 1999 fu la voce del cane Brian nel film Inspector Gadget.

Morte
Adams morì il 25 settembre 2005, mentre era ricoverato presso il Cedars-Sinai Medical Center di Los Angeles, California. Soffriva di un linfoma e di un'infezione polmonare. La sua salute aveva cominciato a peggiorare dopo la morte della figlia Cecily.

Premi e riconoscimenti
Primetime Emmy Awards
1967 - Migliore attore protagonista in una serie commedia - Get Smart
1968 - Migliore attore protagonista in una serie commedia - Get Smart
1969 - Migliore attore protagonista in una serie commedia - Get Smart

Note

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

Attori televisivi statunitensi
Primetime Emmy al miglior attore protagonista in una serie commedia


Speaking to Q magazine, Adam Clayton has said that U2 are already working on the follow-up to Songs of Innocence and it is called Songs of Experience. Clayton said, ""I think we've probably got 70 per cent of the material that we think will go onto it. The 30 per cent that we're missing I think we'll be able to generate relatively easily. But the amount of energy it will take to refine the perspective of those songs is hard to predict." Though, fans should take this with a grain of salt, considering that after No Line on the Horizon was released in 2009, the band confirmed they were working on a record called Songs of Assent and it was going to be released soon after, and alas, it never was.
Arca who is having a big year after working with Kanye West and FKA Twigs, and who is set to release his debut later this year, has confirmed that he is working on Bjork's new album and is the sole producer to her follow-up to Biophilia. No word as to when the album will arrive.
Following yesterday's announcement that Rancid will release their new album ...Honor Is All We Know, the band confirmed it will arrive at the end of October.
Speaking to NME, Jimmy Page has confirmed that there are no plans for a Led Zeppelin reunion of any kind. Then, speaking at a Q&A session, Page did confirm that he wants to assemble a band to play his own material and tour his various bodies of work from solo material, Zeppelin tunes, and others. He said, "If I was to play again it would be with musicians that would be… some of the names might be new to you. I haven't put them together yet but I'm going to do that next year. If I went out to play, I would play material that spanned everything from my recording career right back to my very, very early days with The Yardbirds. There would certainly be some new material in there as well. I love playing live, I really do. Live concerts are always an interesting challenge because it means you can always change things as you're playing every night. You can make it even more of an adventure. I would play all of the things I'm known to play – instrumental versions of 'Dazed And Confused' etcetera, etcetera…"
Unlocking the Truth on Colbert!
EXCLUSIVE: Hercules & Love Affair INTV!


text:
https://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/2545/page/4082/display?use_mmn=1
> Rumford's Notable Citizens in the Civil War
Rumford's Notable Citizens in the Civil War
(Page 1 of 4) Print Version
Civil War soldier's monument, Rumford Center, 1921
Item Contributed by
Greater Rumford Area Historical Society
Text by Jane Peterson and Nghia Ha
Images from Greater Rumford Area Historical Society and David Kimball Family
The rural communities of Rumford Center, Rumford Point, and Rumford Corner with a combined population of 1,935, answered President Lincoln's calls for volunteers by sending 236 men and one woman to the Civil War, according to Len Greaney's veterans list. These men served in all of the Maine Volunteer regiments. Most were sent to the Army of the Potomac in the mid-Atlantic States.
A significant proportion of Rumford's soldiers served with the 12th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment. This regiment was sometimes called the "lawyers and Democrats" as many of its officers were lawyers or law students -- and a number were Democrats.
The 12th Maine was part of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler's brigade in Louisiana. The 12th Maine was mustered in at Portland on November 16, 1861 and reached General Butler's Expeditionary Corps, Department of the Gulf, and New Orleans on May 4, 1862, after spending several months at Ship Island, Mississippi.
William King Kimball, Rumford Point, 1861
Maine State Archives
William King Kimball of Rumford Point, who had enlisted as a lieutenant colonel, was promoted to colonel and commander of the 12th Maine in July 1862 when Col. George F. Shepley became military governor of Louisiana.
Kimball was born June 7, 1820, the son of Moses F. and Mary (Bean) Kimball of Rumford Point. He attended Bethel and Bridgton academies, graduated from Harvard Law School, and began a practice in Dixfield.
Kimball moved to Paris in 1844 where he was elected County Attorney, an office he held for four years. He then became Clerk of Courts for ten years, and served as a U.S. Marshal from 1857 to 1861.
He enlisted on November 15, 1861 and spent the next four years in the Department of the Gulf. After his promotion to colonel, Kimball was breveted a brigadier general in March 1865 and became colonel of the 2nd Maine Infantry on April 10, 1865.
Major Gen. Benjamin F. Butler commended King in June 1863 to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, writing, "the news of the brilliant achievement of Lieutenant-Colonel Kimball, of the Twelfth Maine Volunteers, and the brave men under his command, at Manchac Pass was very gratifying to the Department, and it entirely approves your action in allowing the regiment to retain the colors which they had so gallantly taken from the enemy." He also received a commendation in December 1864.
Following his mustering out on April 18, 1866, he returned to Paris Hill. He died by suicide September 2, 1875 and is buried in Rawson Knoll Cemetery in the Rawson family plot.


The Downtown Prescott Inn is a 56-room independent, limited service hotel. The property also includes a 3,000 sf commercial space currently operating as a full-service restaurant & bar that accommodates 125 seats. The entire property is being offered For Sale @ $3,495,000 (or $55,000/unit & $415,000 for the commercial restaurant lease offered at a 10 CAP). The property spans 3 floors totaling approx. 25,597 sf (sf to be confirmed by Buyer) and is elevator served. The main level consists of a large lobby/reception area, managers office, storage & mechanical rooms and Papa's Italian Restaurant. All 56 units are located on the second and third floors with 31 units having their own private bathroom and 25 units that share a total of 6 common bathrooms (3 bathrooms per floor) Click More Tab...The Downtown Prescott Inn is a 56-room independent, limited service hotel. The property also includes a 3,000 sf, commercial space currently operating as a full-service restaurant & bar that accommodates 125 seats. The entire property is being offered For Sale @ $3,495,000 (or $55,000/unit & $415,000 for the commercial restaurant lease offered at a 10 CAP). The property spans 3 floors totaling approx. 25,597 sf (sf to be confirmed by Buyer) and is elevator served. The main level consists of a large lobby/reception area, managers office, storage & mechanical rooms and Papa's Italian Restaurant. All 56 units are located on the second and third floors with 31 units having their own private bathroom and 25 units that share a total of 6 common bathrooms (3 bathrooms per floor) due to the nature of this property's historic design and configuration. All units are fully furnished and include a refrigerator, microwave, a sink, and TV with cable service. Units range in size from approx. 300 sf to 600 sf with a mix of both studio and 1 bed room units. All utilities including cable TV are included with the rent as well as weekly maid service. Property amenities include a guest coin operated laundry facility (newly purchased by the owner in 2018), shared balconies on selected units, and a full-service restaurant. The property currently operates as hybrid between an extended-stay hotel and apartment, offering daily, weekly, and monthly rentals. Guest rooms are typically leased on a monthly basis with security deposits and one month's rent paid in advance. Most patrons stay for more than one month at a time. Due to its high concentration of longer-term occupants, the property experiences lower turnover and greater operating efficiency compared to a traditional hotel operation. There is currently a waiting list for rooms at the property. Present room rates are below market. Other potential operating scenarios for this property include the following: upgraded traditional daily or weekly hotel operations, VRBO, assisted living, group home setting or traditional apartment complex. The restaurant space is currently leased to a third-party operator (Papa's Italian Restaurant). This tenant has occupied the space since 2012 and has exercised a 5-year option which will expire on 6/30/21. The improvements were originally constructed between 1901 and 1906, and have undergone various renovations, upgrades, and modernization over the past 110 years. In 2016, the property was update with new electrical service (600 amp), new life safety systems and fire sprinkler system throughout. The property is situated on a 7,154-square-foot building envelope with frontage along Cortez Street. The site is rectangular in shape at ground level; however, the second and third floors are constructed in air space and offer "air rights" above the first floor of two adjoining properties (Lots 8, 10, and 12). The site area for the air rights space is 11,141 square feet. All information to be confirmed by buyer.


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