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DUFFY'S CULTURAL COUTURE
Thursday, 11 June 2015
FREE INTERNET FROM SPACE IS HERE
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

 


 

 FREE INTERNET FROM SPACE IS HERE
 
 
By Tammy Duffy 
 
 
In January of this year, we reported that free internet was coming. This is no longer a dream, it's here!
 
 
Today,  Outernet launched their on-line store ( http://store.outernet.is/) 
 
In 2012, only 35% of humanity had internet access. This equates to 4.2 billion people who sit in internet darkness.  Now, imagine a library in every village. A library in every pocket.  Every person in humanity contributing to the world’s educational system. What would that world look like?  What would people read about if their governments no longer had the ability to deprive them of free information? How many dark periods of humanities history could have been avoided if we must knew more?  How many could we avoid in the future and what would that world look like? How many politicians would be exposed of their cheating ways if journalist did not feel threatened by harassment and harm by said politicians?

 

There are inflection points that change the course of humanity.  Access to the internet is an example of one such event.  A new device, called the LANTERN, manufactured by a NY- based company, Outernet, has the potential to change the world.  Their device has the ability to continuously receive radio waves broadcasted by outernets in space and turn them into digital files.  When you want to get onto the internet, one would just turn on your device and enable your wifi enabled device. It is that easy.  It works like an offline version of the internet that updates constantly. 

 

Outernet takes the best of the web and broadcasts it from space for every human on Earth. The content that they broadcast is determined by anyone who chooses to vote on the most important things to share with humanity. Outernet repurposes broadcast satellite TV equipment and we offer instructions on how to build a DIY-receiver. Once a receiver is configured, Outernet’s content can be accessed by any WiFi-enabled device.

 


 

 

 

This new device, the Lantern, will allow us to response faster and more efficiently during the next natural or man made disaster. When cell towers go down and cell towers are compromised, you will not longer be compromised. You will be able to get your news anywhere in the world, even the countries with strong censorship rules. You will never have a huge cell phone bill again during your oversea travels, use your Lantern.

 

The world will be able to create their own digital library. Parents can control what their kids see. The Outernet will have courses available to build literacy in parts of the world where literacy is compromised. This makes education and learning truly universal.

 

Outernet is working with IREX in Namibia and the World Bank in Sudan to turn on Lanterns in those countries. This is just the beginning. Lantern is broadcasting from space, so if you have a government that says you can’t watch this or see that, Lantern lights the path to override this censorship.  Everything a user consumes is anonymous. 

 

Everyone on Earth can use the Lantern. You will be able to use the Lantern to download news, weather, books, videos and audio for FREE. You will have access to information, freedom from censorship and consume Internet content anonymously. You will even be able to charge your phone with Lantern. 

 

 Access to news, civic information, commodity prices, weather, and construction plans for open source farm machinery...anything. Outernet eradicates information poverty and censorship everywhere on Earth. Since Lantern is so small, it can be used discreetly. If your country refuses Lanterns to be imported, no problem, outernet will send you the plans to build your own.  

 

There are projects with similar goals, like Project Loon from Google and Internet.org from Facebook.   These are very different from Outernet’s Lantern.  Both of these alternatives will only provide two-way Internet to everyone. That is a commendable goal, but it will also be a fee-based service. Facebook’s (internet.org) is a partnership between social networking service company FACEBOOK and six mobile phone companies: Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera Software, and Qualcomm) that aims to bring affordable Internet access to everybody by increasing affordability, increasing efficiency, and facilitating the development of new business models around the provision of Internet access. 

 

Google’s Project Loon is a research and development project.  Its mission is to provide Internet access to rural and remote areas. The project uses high-altitude balloons placed in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 32 km to create an aerial wireless network with up to3G-like speeds. The balloons are maneuvered by adjusting their altitude to float to a wind layer after identifying the wind layer with the desired speed and direction using wind data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Users of the service connect to the balloon network using a special Internet antenna attached to their building. The signal travels through the balloon network from balloon to balloon, then to a ground-based station connected to an Internet service provider, then onto the global Internet. This balloon project I suspect will deflate quickly, although a cool concept.

 

Outernet's signal is free to receive. There are no balloons or slick corporate maneuvers involved. There are also sovereign air space issues with Internet devices, like balloons and drones, inside the atmosphere. Breaking censorship will be difficult in places where a free Internet is unwanted this these approaches. You also encounter enormous spectrum regulation when the user device goes from being a receiver to a transmitter (it talks back). So you can see they are not competing services, as we are solving a problem for a different segment of the market. 

 

Outernet is directly hooking into the satellite operator’s infrastructure. Their uplink bandwidth is really not measured. Their download speeds, however, range from 100 kbps to 25 Mbps. Technically, they are able to burst to download speeds of 80 Mbps, but they prefer to make content available to small-sized antenna, so we will likely limit download speeds to 25 Mbps. A 25 Mbps downlink can deliver 10 GB of data over the course of an hour.

 

Is this a new era, no censorship? Outernet works so that if one frequency is jammed, they simply move to an alternative--and can do this across 5 difference channels (or more). Since Outernet is a broadcast solution, the monitoring stations are actually irrelevant, since the reception of broadcast content ensures the anonymity of consumption. Since they use existing spectrum licenses, their anti-censorship plan is all perfectly legal and abides by all restrictions of local jurisdictions. But since they are broadcasting data in a multi-channel, multi-speed, and super duplicated manner, it just makes it hard to selectively censor specific works that we distribute. Of course, a government is always able to continuously jam all of our frequencies (this is a little more difficult for certain bands), but which government wants to be the one that is publicly known for disrupting humanity's public library?

 

Outernet currently resides on two satellites, Galaxy 19 and the Hotbird in space.  This covers NE, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.  Outernet plans on broadcasting from 5 additional satellites in the near future.  They will be able to broadcast to the entire world, for free once this implementation takes effect.

 Outernet takes the best of the web and broadcasts it from space for every human on Earth. The content they broadcast is determined by anyone who chooses to vote on the most important things to share with humanity. Outernet repurposes broadcast satellite tv equipment and they offer instructions on how to build a DIY-receiver. Once a receiver is configured, Outernet’s content can be accessed by any WiFi-enabled device.

Oh, and Outernet is free to use, always.

 


 

Posted by tammyduffy at 7:40 PM EDT
Sunday, 7 June 2015
$2 Heroin Is Targeting Your Middle School Kids
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

 

 

 

Deadly $2 Heroin Aimed at Young Teens

 

 


Yesterday brought another death in the City of Trenton from a Heroin overdose. A rapid deployment of Narcan could not save a young man's life.  The past six weeks has brought 6 additional deployments of Narcan in Hamilton, Mercer County. A Hamilton parent moved their child to North Carolina in efforts to save their life and remove them from the Big H.  This valiant move by this parent was in vain, their child died in North Carolina.  A youth also died in Bordentown at the tender age of 23 from a heroin overdose. These stories keep compounding. The leadership in the town of Hamilton has been radio silent on this issue. Why is that?  The leadership should be watching the trends and developing plans that are proactive for our residents and youth. However, they react in silence in Hamilton, where the highest deployment of Narcan has been recorded.

 

Parents and their children need to be educated on what is happening as it pertains to heroin. Here is your weekly education on this deadly epidemic. 

 

A cheap highly addictive drug known as "cheese heroin" has killed 21 teenagers in the Dallas area over two years, and authorities say they are hoping they can stop the fad before it spreads across the nation.

"Cheese heroin" is a blend of so-called black tar Mexican heroin and crushed over-the-counter medications that contain the antihistamine diphenhydramine, found in products such as Tylenol PM, police say. The sedative effects of the heroin and the nighttime sleep aids make for a deadly brew.

"A double whammy -- you're getting two downers at once," says Dallas police detective Monty Moncibais. "If you take the body and you start slowing everything down, everything inside your body, eventually you're going to slow down the heart until it stops and, when it stops, you're dead." (Audio slide show: A father describes his teen son's death)

Steve Robertson, a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington, says authorities are closely monitoring the use of "cheese" in Dallas.

Trying to keep the drug from spreading to other cities, the DEA is working with Dallas officials to raise public awareness about the problem. Authorities also are trying to identify the traffickers, Robertson says.

"We are concerned about any drug trend that is new because we want to stop it," he says.

Why should a parent outside Dallas care about what's happening there?

Robertson says it's simple: The rise of the information technology age makes it easy for a drug trend to spread rapidly across the country.

"A parent in New York should be very concerned about a drug trend in Dallas, a drug trend in Kansas City, a drug trend anywhere throughout the United States," he says.

Middle schoolers acknowledge 'cheese'.

"Cheese" is not only dangerous. It's cheap. About $2 for a single hit and as little as $10 per gram. The drug can be snorted with a straw or through a ballpoint pen, authorities say. It causes drowsiness and lethargy, as well as euphoria, excessive thirst and disorientation. That is, if the user survives. (Interactive: What is "cheese"? )

Authorities aren't exactly sure how the drug got its name "cheese." It's most likely because the ground-up, tan substance looks like Parmesan cheese. The other theory is shorthand for the Spanish word "," which is street slang for heroin.

By using the name "cheese," drug dealers are marketing the low-grade heroin to a younger crowd -- many of them middle schoolers -- unaware of its potential dangers, authorities say.

"These are street dealers, dope dealers," Moncibais recently warned students at Sam Tasby Middle School. "They give you a lethal dose. What do they care?"  Moncibais then asked how many students knew a "cheese" user. Just about everyone in the auditorium raised a hand.  At one point, when he mentioned that the United States has the highest rate of drug users in the world, the middle schoolers cheered. (Watch middle schoolers raise hands, admit they know drug users )

"You know, I know being No. 1 is important, but being the No. 1 dopeheads in the world, I don't know whether [that] bears applause," Moncibais shot back.

Authorities say the number of arrests involving possession of "cheese" in the Dallas area this school year was 146, up from about 90 the year before. School is out for the summer, and authorities fear that the students, with more time on their hands, could turn to the drug.

'Cheese' as common a problem as pot School officials and police have been holding assemblies, professional lectures, PTA meetings and classroom discussions to get the word out about the drug. A public service announcement made by Dallas students is airing on local TV, and a hotline number has been created for those seeking assistance.

Drug treatment centers in Dallas say teen "cheese" addicts are now as common as those seeking help for a marijuana addiction. "It is the first drug to have even come close in my experience here," says Michelle Hemm, director of Phoenix House in Dallas.

From September 2005 to September 2006, Phoenix House received 69 "cheese" referral calls from parents. Hemm says that in the last eight months alone, that number has nearly doubled to 136. The message from the parents is always, "My kid is using 'cheese,' " she says.

Phoenix House refers them to detoxification units first, but Hemm says at least 62 teens have received additional treatment at her facility since last September. Fernando Cortez Sr. knows all too well how devastating cheese heroin can be. A reformed drug user who has spent time in prison, Cortez had spoken to his children about the pitfalls of drug use. He thought his 15-year-old son was on the right track.

But on March 31, his boy, Fernando "Nando" Cortez Jr., was found dead after using cheese heroin.  "I should have had a better talk with him," he says. "All it takes is once. You get high once and you die, and that's what happened to my son."

He knows it's too late for his son. Now, he is using his son's story to help others.

"All I can do is try to help people now. Help the kids, help the parents."

CNN.com senior producer Wayne Drash contributed to this report.


Posted by tammyduffy at 10:49 AM EDT
Saturday, 6 June 2015


 

 
 Mercer Gallery to Feature Cuban-Born Photographer and MCCC Alumna Alina Bliach

 

 

By Tammy Duffy

 


 

 

Alina Bliach is a Cuban born artist who resides in West Windsor, New Jersey.  She is a registered pharmacist. She grew up having a passion for photography. Her parents, being immigrants to the United States always wanted Alina to get study pharmacy, her mother is a pharmacist as well.

 

Since she was a child she always carried a camera with her. After raising her children here in the United States she went back to school and obtained an AFA in photography from MCCC. She is currently finishing up her MFA in photography at Savannah College of Art and Design.

 

A special photography exhibit featuring Mercer County Community College (MCCC) alumna Alina Bliach ('06) will to the Gallery at Mercer June 13 to June 24.  The exhibition is entitled “A Voyage of Many.”   In this exhibition, Bliach’s includes images and stories of 50 Cuban immigrants over the past half century in their new American homeland.  Her uncle who was an  artist inspired her to do this body of work.  Each photograph is accompanied by a printed excerpt from interviews Bliach conducted of the immigrant.  The photos and narratives tell stories of forced exile, escape, loss, hope, and triumph.

 

A public reception with the artist will be held on Saturday, June 13 from 6 to 8 p.m.  The MCCC Gallery is located on the second floor of the Communications Building on the college’s West Windsor campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road.  Gallery hours for this show are Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Saturday, June 20, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

 

In 1968, Bliach came to the United States from Cuba.  She was 8 years old.  Her family was split up as they traveled to the United States. Her father and two older sisters came first to the United States via Spain. They wanted to leave as a family, but the Cuban government only allowed three members of a family to leave at a time.

When children turn 15 in Cuba they are sent to the manual labor camps to work in the fields. In these camps the young girls could be raped and abused. Her parents not wanting that to happen to the girls so they chose to leave Cuba. Bliach, her mother, and two younger sisters stayed behind.  They did not know if they would ever see each other again when her father and two older sisters left. Several months later the rest of the family left Cuba and came to the United States where the family finally then reunited.

When you schedule to leave Cuba, the government takes everything from you. They want to make it as hard for you as they can to not succeed in the United States. The military came to Bliach's home at 2am and told everyone to leave the house with literally just the clothing on their backs and a very small suitcase with essential items. They had to leave and they went to live with an Aunt for a few months until they could leave Cuba.  She remembers this day vividly.

 

For this exhibition, Bliach interviewed 50 immigrants. She started interviewing her family members and others that they found by word of mouth.  This will be an amazing exhibition that demonstrates what each immigrant experienced. The forced exile, escape, loss, hope, and triumph they all had to live through.

 

There were many ways that the Cuban immigrants entered the United States. One such way was via Operation Peter Pan. This was an exodus of children during the 1960s from Cuba when Cuban parents feared indoctrination and that the Cuban government would take away their parental authority. What is now known as Operation Pedro Pan was the largest recorded exodus of Unaccompanied minors in the Western Hemisphere. It was supposedly through the works of Operation Pedro Pan Group, Inc. that the name Operation Pedro Pan became known throughout the US and the world. Approximately, half of the minors were reunited with relatives or friends at the airport. More than half were cared for by the Catholic Welfare Bureau, directed by a 30-year-old Irish priest, Bryan O. Walsh. The children from the Cuban Refugee Children's Program were placed in temporary shelters in Miami and relocated throughout 30 States in the United States. Many of the parents never got to meet up with their children. They were either adopted or place into the CWB.

 

Another way of entry was via the Camarioca boatlifts in 1965. Soon after Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba in January, 1959, a steady stream of refugees began making the dangerous passage to Florida in a myriad of small boats and craft.  The first Coast Guard rescue of these refugees occurred on 22 July 1959 when a group of nine were picked up in a small boat off the Dry Tortugas near Key West.  By June 1, 1965, the Coast Guard had rescued or assisted 6,862 Cuban attempting to make the journey to freedom by sea.

On the night of 29 September 1965 at the Plaza De La Revolution in Havana Fidel Castro made the surprising announcement that beginning on 10 October 1965, the port of Camarioca would be opened so that any Cubans desiring to leave for "the Yankee paradise" could do so.  Any boats of Cuban exiles that wished to return to Cuba to evacuate relatives would be permitted into Camarioca.  The Cubans who wished to depart Cuba had to submit an application to the Ministry of the Interior.  They would also forfeit any land or property they had in order to leave.

 

Camarioca remained open until 15 November 1965.  A total of  2,979 Cubans took advantage of Castro's offer during the time the port remained open.  Those migrants who were still at the port, numbering in the thousands, were ultimately taken by officially chartered passenger vessels to Florida.  Soon thereafter, the U.S. and Cuban governments negotiated what became known as "Freedom Flights" using commercial aircraft to transport those Cubans who wished to immigrate to the U.S. safely.

 

The Camarioca boatlift was the first instance of a mass migration event the Coast Guard had experienced and it was not to be the last.  Since that time the interdiction of waves of migrants crossing the sea in overcrowded and sometimes unseaworthy craft has become an important, and recurring, mission for the service.

 

Bliach always assumed that when people came to the United States she thought everyone was able to come with their degrees and use these degrees to get work. As she interviewed people for this exhibition she learned that this was not the case. During the Camarioca departure the one interviewee stated that he experienced something quite compelling. As he crossed the field to get onto the boat, he saw that the entire field was riddled with professional diplomas. They were on the ground like garbage. The Cuban government wanted to make it difficult for the professionals who were leaving. They also make it impossible for them to obtain a copy of  their degrees from Cuba. They had to start over when they came to America. Her Mother was able to get her diploma out via a connection at the Spanish embassy. This allowed her to make an easier transition for her family as they entered the United States.

 

The Freedom Flights also transported Cubans to Miami twice daily, five times per week from 1965 to 1973. Its budget was about $12 million and it brought an estimated 300,000 refugees, making it the "largest airborne refugee operation in American history". The Freedom Flights were an important and unusual chapter of cooperation in the history of Cuban-American foreign relations, which is otherwise characterized by Cuban distrust of the United States. The program changed Miami race dynamics and secured the establishment of a Cuban-American enclave still seen today in Little Havana. This enclave, started by earlier waves of immigration but firmly entrenched by Freedom Flights Cubans, aided Cuban-American socio-economic development.

 

The Mariel boatlift was another mass emigration of Cubans who departed from Cuba's Mariel Harbor for the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980.The event was precipitated by a sharp downturn in the Cuban  economy which led to internal tensions on the island and a bid by up to 10,000 Cubans to gain asylum in the Peruvian embassy.  The Cuban government subsequently announced that anyone who wanted to leave could do so, and an exodus by boat started shortly afterward. The exodus was organized by Cuban-Americans with the agreement of Cuban president Fidel Castro. The exodus started to have negative political implications for U.S. President Jimmy Carter when it was discovered that a number of the exiles had been released from Cuban jails and mental health facilities. The Mariel boatlift was ended by mutual agreement between the two governments involved in October 1980. By that point, as many as 125,000 Cubans had made the journey to Florida.

 

Then there were the Balseros.  They were the people who emigrated illegally in self-constructed or precarious vessels from Cuba to neighboring states including the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and, most commonly, the United States. The Cuban Rafters, almost always disagree with communism and the Cuban government of the Castro Family.  This mass  Cuban emigration to the United States is seen as having had four waves. The first wave before the  Cuban Missile Crisis ended travel. The second wave was 1965-1973. The 1980 Mariel Boatlift was the third wave.

 

Some scholars regard the August 1994 Cuban Rafters Crisis as the fourth wave of Cuban immigration.  The 1994 Balseros Crisis was ended by the agreement of the wet feet, dry feet policy between  Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro.  There was also an Immigration Visa Lottery that allowed Cuban immigrants to enter the USA.

 

Bliach's portraits are rich in detail that connects their subjects to their Cuban heritage. "Forced to leave their homeland, their love for family, art, religion, and music is often apparent throughout their homes.  Photographs of loved ones, brightly colored art and religious relics are proudly displayed ...More than decorations, these objects reveal the deep relationship between these immigrants’ cultural background and the new lives they built for themselves in America," she said.

 

Bliach has won numerous awards and honors: as a finalist in Best of Photography 2013; First and Second Prize honors in the Pollux Awards; Merit Awards in the Professional Photographers of America International competitions; PPA Loan Collection honor; Hasselblad Photographer of the Month; and several International Photography Honorable Mentions. Her work has been exhibited at the Borges Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina; The Room in SoHo, NY; Arts Council of Princeton in Princeton; Grounds for Sculpture; Phillips Mill in New Hope, PA; Artworks in Trenton, NJ; and Art Along the Fence in Hoboken, NJ.

 


Posted by tammyduffy at 9:30 AM EDT
Thursday, 4 June 2015
$34 tool mimics $18,000 Lab equipment
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

$34 Diagnostic Tool for STDs Plugs into Smartphone, Rivals $18,000 Lab Equipment

 

By Eliza Strickland

Photo: Tassaneewan Laksanasopin

 

Public health workers in Africa place HIV and syphilis at the top of their lists of diseases they see among pregnant women, and a new tool recently tested in Rwanda may help ease their diagnostic burden. The portable device, which plugs into a smartphone’s audio jack, performs three tests (one for HIV, two for syphilis) using just a fingerprick of blood, and displays results in 15 minutes.

In their report, the inventors estimate the tool’s cost at $34 plus the cost of a smartphone. They say it provides comparable results to gold-standard lab tests, whose cost they estimate at $18,450 plus the cost of a computer. 

“Lots of newborns are dying every year from congenital syphilis,” says Samuel Sia, one of the device’s inventors and an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University. “Should we be looking at new drugs for syphilis? No, it’s a diagnostic issue,” Sia says, noting that treatment for syphilis typically requires only one dose of penicillin. 

As for HIV, global health agencies have recently rallied around the goalof ensuring that at least 90 percent of people living with HIV know their HIV status. Right now that figure stands at less than 50 percent. Knowing one’s status is the obvious first step to getting access to anti-retroviral drug treatments. 

imgPhoto: Tassaneewan Laksanasopin

 

The new dongle draws all its power from a smartphone via its audio jack. It performed 41 tests when attached to an older Apple device; Sia says a new smartphone could perform many more before depleting the phone’s battery. His team ensured that the dongle would be low-power by doing away with the pump that often drives blood samples through microfluidic testing devices. Instead, the health care worker depresses a button to activate a vacuum chamber that sucks the sample through microfluidic channels, where reagents react to the presence of HIV or syphilis biomarkers. The dongle draws power only when it performs the optical assessment of the reactions, and when it transmits data back to the phone for read-out.   

Spectrum recently reported on dedicated diagnostic devices that are portable, cheap, and rugged enough to bring lab testing to remote African villages. Sia says his team initially built its own hardware and software, “but then we realized it was a losing proposition.” They decided to work off existing smartphone technology instead. 

That may be a good bet. Africa has been called “the mobile continent” in recognition of the many ways cheap mobile phones are transforming society. According to an Ericsson research report, Sub-Saharan Africa will have about 930 million mobile phones by 2019, three-quarters of which will be smartphones. 

However, the dongle will have to prove more useful than even cheaper paper-based diagnostic tests (based on the same principle as a home pregnancy test), which are already widely available for HIV testing. Sia argues that his device is more accurate and reliable, and can also be used to conduct many lab tests at once from a single fingerprick of blood. He also sees value in the digital record of the tests that the phone can transmit to the cloud for integration into an electronic medical record. “It’s all part of leveraging the smartphone platform,” he says.  


Posted by tammyduffy at 8:19 PM EDT
Small Hearts Big Challenges
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

Small Hearts. Big Challenges

by Mark F. on Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Early Detection Leads to Early Prevention

Small hearts can conceal big challenges, especially when it comes to congenital heart defects. It’s one of the most common birth defects in the U.S. and the leading killer of infants with birth defects.

What if we could do something simple to ensure a strong start for a new life? We can. It is through screening for critical congenital heart defects using pulse oximetry testing.

What is pulse oximetry screening? It is a simple test that helps spot heart defects in newborns. This test is both quick and painless, but more importantly, it saves lives. Before a baby leaves the hospital, the test helps identify heart defects, potentially saving its life.

Despite this, pulse ox is not required in all states, allowing thousands of parents to take their child home without knowing the condition of his or her heart.

This is where we need help! We need pulse oximetry tests in every state!

Why?  The evidence speaks for itself: Wider use of pulse ox screening could help identify more than 90 percent of heart defects.

And in case you need more convincing: Congenital heart defects (CHD), are the most common birth defect in the U.S. and the leading killer of infants with birth defects. And they cost money: In 2004, hospital costs for all individuals with CHD totaled $2.6 billion.

Over 30 states have already passed laws, or are in the process, requiring newborns to have pulse ox screenings prior to being discharged from the hospital. But we won’t stop until all newborns have access to this lifesaving test!

It’s time to ensure every child has a healthy heart. Help us spread the word and tell your legislator to support pulse oximetry testing for all newborns.


Posted by tammyduffy at 8:01 PM EDT
Tuesday, 2 June 2015
Be an Archaeologist at the Trent House Museum
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST
 

 

 
Be an Archaeologist at the Trent House Museum
 
 Public “dig days” are Saturdays June 6, 13 and 20 from 9:00 to 3:00.

 

The 1719 William Trent House Museum in Trenton announces opportunities to work with professional archaeologists from Trenton’s Hunter Research to try to locate the distinctive 1742 kitchen addition referenced in 18th century maps and documents. Public “dig days” are Saturdays June 6, 13 and 20 from 9:00 to 3:00.

 

Hands-on participation may include digging, soil screening, artifact processing and documentation. As well as building remnants, artifacts from the various notable families who occupied the Trent House over the centuries may be found. Instruction and supervision will be provided. This event is free and open to the public.

 

The new archaeology at the Trent House will further the scholarly documentation of this important historic landmark. The house was built for William Trent, who immigrated to Philadelphia from Scotland and became a very successful and wealthy merchant trading with Great Britain and the colonies. About 1719, William Trent built his country estate at the Falls of the Delaware River in the settlement that would come to be known as Trenton. The house is a large, imposing brick structure, built in the Georgian style.

 

After Trent died in 1724, "300 acres plus the brick dwelling house" were sold, and from 1742 to 1746, the house was leased to the first British Governor of New Jersey, Lewis Morris. Upon taking residence, he required that a separate kitchen be built, connected to the main house by a “gangway”, which would also be large enough to “lodge servants.” Subsequent 19th and early 20th century modernizing additions to the Trent House altered its early appearance, and Governor Morris’s distinctive kitchen was lost.

 

In addition to seeking evidence of the actual location of Governor Morris’s kitchen, another goal is to pinpoint the original well location. Artifacts from pre-contact Native Americans may be found, and of particular interest

would be artifacts indicating the use and occupation of the Trent House by enslaved people of African heritage during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

 

 

For more information about becoming involved, please contact the Trent House office at: trenthouseassociation@verizon.net or 609-989-0087. 


Posted by tammyduffy at 11:45 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 2 June 2015 11:53 AM EDT
Monday, 1 June 2015
Call Me Caitlyn. Bruce Jenner Reveals
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

Bruce Jenner Reveals Caitlyn on Vanity Fair Cover

WriterJune 1, 2015
Bruce Jenner Reveals Caitlyn on Vanity Fair Cover

Caitlyn Jenner, photographed by Annie Leibovitz on the cover of June’s Vanity Fair. 

Over the weekend, reports surfaced that Bruce Jenner would debut his female identity on the next cover of Vanity Fair, photographed by Annie Leibovitz—of course. We didn’t know what to expect from the images,but as soon as we clicked on the link from Vanity Fair, we were blown away.

“OH MY GOD!” reverberated throughout the office. 

Caitlyn Jenner is a beautiful woman. 

In an interview with Buzz Bissinger, who wrote Friday Night Lights, Jenner says, “If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, ‘You just blew your entire life.’ ”

With the glamour of Marilyn Monroe and the sass of Jessica Lange, Caitlyn is stunning in a champagne satin corseted leotard, styled by Vanity Fair’s Fashion Director Jessica Diehl. Legendary hairstylist Oribe was responsible for her retro waves, while makeup artist Mark Carrasquillo gave Caitlyn a feminine flush. A behind-the-scenes video reveals equally glam outfits, including an off-the-shoulder dress and long sequined gown, while Jenner says over voiceover: 

“I was probably at the Games because I was running away from a lot of things. I’m very, very proud of the accomplishment, I don’t want to diminish that accomplishment. The last few days in doing this shoot, was about my life and who I am as a person. It’s not about the fanfare. It’s not about people cheering in the stadium. It’s not about going down the street and everybody giving you ‘Thatta boy, Bruce!’ pat on the back. This is about your life. Bruce, always had to tell a lie. He was always living that lie. Everyday he always had a secret. From morning until night. Caitlyn doesn’t have any secrets. As soon as the Vanity Faircover comes out, I’m free.” 

The editorial has yet to be released — the July 2015 issue will hit newsstands on June 9th — buy a sneak peek of the editorial, shared on Twitter by @DKNY, shows Jenner pictured in the front seat of her Porsche wearing a red Donna Karan dress. 

image

Jenner also posed in a red carpet-worthy Zac Posen gown. 

“Be who you are and feel beautiful,” Zac Posen wrote. Photo: @zacposen/Instagram


Posted by tammyduffy at 6:20 PM EDT
DUCKY is COMING!!!
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

61-Foot, 11-Ton Duck Coming to Philadelphia Waterfront

We talk with the man responsible for bringing it to the Tall Ships festival next month.

BY   |  MAY 28, 2015 AT 12:12 PM

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image: http://cdn.phillymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/large-duck1.jpg

World's Largest Rubber Duck

Photo courtesy of Craig Samborski

A 61-foot tall, 11-ton duck is coming to Philadelphia next month.

As part of the 2015 Tall Ships Philadelphia/Camden festival, being held from June 25th to the 28th, Draw Events is bringing the World’s Largest Rubber Duck to the Delaware River.

Based on a the plans for an installation called Rubber Duck originally made by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, this version of the giant rubber duck — actually made of an inflatable vinyl covering — also appeared at last year’s Tall Ships Festival Los Angeles. Hofman unveiled the first version of the rubber duck in his native Amsterdam in 2007; the first North American appearance was in Pittsburgh in 2013.

"In my estimation, you need to go big or go home," says Draw Events president Craig Samborski. "Then someone floated the idea of the duck past us." Yes, a six-story high duck floating by is big enough. Samborski's company bought the plans from Hofman, modified the specs — the version coming to Philadelphia is larger than what was indicated in the plans provided — and set out on building an 11-ton vinyl duck that sits on a 10-ton steel pontoon.

image: http://cdn.phillymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/large-duck2.jpg

World's Largest Rubber Duck

Photo courtesy of Craig Samborski

Here's how it'll end up at the festival: The duck has been pre-assembled and tested in Los Angeles. It was shipped to a "very safe place" in New Jersey in November per Samborski. In the next few weeks, the duck will undergo a test inflation with the local crew working the Philadelphia/Camden Tall Ships show. (Samborski will be living in Philadelphia for about a month to coordinate everything for the Tall Ships.)

When it's time for the show, the giant duck will be loaded into the Delaware with a 15-ton crane, then tugged to a spot in front of the Nipper Building in Camden. Each night, the duck will be towed back to a location at the port of New Jersey. It will be deflated for the night and re-inflated each morning.

Other giant ducks have captivated tourists; a 2013 installation in Hong Kong was so popular it led to a huge number of knockoffs in China. Pittsburgh's duck was similarly popular. But there have been down times, too. That one in Hong Kong deflated while on display (organizers later said it was planned), while a duck burst on New Year's Day while on display Taiwan in 2014.

In 2009, vandals stabbed huge holes in the rubber duck when it was in the city of Hasselt, Belgium. "The duck had just been repaired having been badly damaged in a storm and had only been back in the water for four days," Radio Netherlands Worldwide reported.

Samborski says this duck will not be able to be popped by a nefarious waterfowl-hater while on the Camden waterfront. "It's pretty hard to pop this thing," he says. "It's made out of a very heavy gauge vinyl. I suppose if you took a shot at it with a gun or a harpoon you could damage it. You really need to hit it with a bazooka — or maybe one of the guns from the Battleship New Jersey." Samborski has a "MacGuyver-like guy" on who travels with the duck and an emergency maintenance kit, but hasn't had any problems yet.

The duck has more enemies than just the Hasselt vandals. "Cities that cash in with Rubber Duck are outsourcing their public art, meaning they aren't doing their artists or themselves any favors in the long run," CityLab's Kriston Capps wrote last year. "When I see images of it floating in a new harbor, I can almost hear Rubber Duck whispering, in a raspy duck voice: The place you love is no more."

The duck does get results, though. Samborski says the Tall Ships Los Angeles festival drew just under 300,000 visitors over five days last year, even though the police forced it to close early on Saturday and Sunday due to overcrowding. "The LAPD wasn't really happy with me those days," he says. He says there was a $10 million economic impact to the area from Tall Ships LA last year. Though the giant rubber duck is not a particular or obvious fit for a tall ships festival, he says the attention it attracts is good for the ship owners, captains and crews.

"Several people warned me on the way [to the show-ending crew BBQ], 'Craig, there's some unhappy people there who want to talk to you,'" Samborski says. "I'm like, 'Oh man, this is just going to suck.' I walked in and, literally, every one of the tall ships captains was patting me on the back. They said, 'Wednesday we would have killed you, but we literally never had so many people on our ships.'"

Samborski gushed over the lineup for this year's Tall Ships Philadelphia/Camden festival. "This lineup of ships in Philadelphia/Camden is a spectacular one that I've never had at a festival before," he says. "And I'm not sure I will be able to have ever again." That lineup includes L’Hermione (a replica of the French ship that brought Lafayette to the U.S. in 1780), Barque Eagle (a 1930s German ship given to the U.S. as part of war reparations, and owned by the Coast Guard), El Galeon (a replica of a 16th century merchant vessel) and Gazela (Philadelphia's tall ship).

Tall Ships Philadelphia/Camden runs from June 25th to the 28th and will have ships on both sides of the river. It's being organized by four groups: The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation and the Independence Seaport Museum on the Philly side, and the Adventure Aquarium and Coopers Ferry Partnership on the Camden side. The festival will shuttle attendees across the river on the ferry. Tickets are as cheap as $7 for admission to both sides of the festival, or $16 for admission and tours of the ships. Sailing on one of the tall ships costs $85.

"A family can come and enjoy this event for many hours and not spend a lot of money," Samborski says. "And they can really have a quality experience — not just with attractions, but also get some education and history out of the deal."


Posted by tammyduffy at 6:16 PM EDT
Your Body Is a Race Car. McLaren Wants to Optimize Its Performance
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

Your Body Is a Race Car. McLaren Wants to Optimize Its Performance

By Eliza Strickland
Posted 14 Mar 2015 | 15:38 GMT
Photo: McLaren Applied Technologies
human os icon

It’s probably not good for the soul to think of life as a race to be won. But if you do accept that metaphor, you’d likely be happy to have McLaren managing your pit stops as you make your way along the course.

The engineering company is famous for building Formula One race cars featuring computerized engine control systems and dozens of sensors that transmit data to remote analytics teams. Over the last few years, McLaren first began applying lessons learned from managing race cars to managing elite athletes, and now it’s bringing its tools to health and medicine. 

Today at SXSW Interactive, Geoff McGrath described the origin and evolution of McLaren Applied Technologies, the business unit he founded within the company. McGrath also articulated three conditions that must be met in order to turn our bodies into high performance machines, with instruments and analytics helping us operate at our peak capacity. 

McLaren got drawn into human performance by helping British teams prepare for the 2010 and 2012 Olympics. “We understand data, remote analytics, and monitoring,” McGrath said, “but the real value is in the actionable intelligence you extract from that data.” His engineers embedded sensors in racing gear like skeleton racing sleds and bicycles, then fed the data into sophisticated models that examined the interplay between equipment, environment, and human behavior and physiology. Such models produced “prescriptive intelligence,” McGrath says, and could determine which design changes to a sled or bike would produce the best outcomes. 

After gaining this experience with Olympic athletes and their gear, McLaren next struck up a relationship with the UK rugby team, which is preparing for the Rugby World Cup this September. The coaches wanted to know whether training sessions, which include regular tackles, increase the athletes’ risks of injury.

“Let’s transmit the insights, not the data” —Geoff McGrath, McLaren Applied Technologies

McGrath said his team originally pulled out all the technological stops: They outfitted the rugby players with accelerometers, vital sign sensors, and body area networks, and used satellite tracking to precisely map their movements on the field. “But we were gathering so much data, it took hours to process,” McGrath says. “By the time we’d processed it the training session was over, and maybe they’d over-trained, but it was too late to do anything about it.” 

That experience led McGrath to his first principle of wearables: Instead of what he calls the “ham-fisted approach” of measuring things just because they can, McLaren tries to measure as little as possible, and ignores the bulk of relatively unvarying data to focus on the meaningful anomalies. “Let’s transmit the insights, not the data,” McGrath said. Using simple accelerometer data from the rugby players, the McLaren team built models showing each individual player’s typical playing patterns, and could then watch for changes that might signal the precursor of a serious injury. 

McLaren’s experiments in sports involved highly motivated participants, since these elite athletes were eager to improve their performance. But getting the broader public to embrace wearables and the quantified-self movement is a much bigger challenge, McGrath said. That brought him to his second principle: Wearable biometric gadgets must offer meaningful insights that typical people are willing to pay for, he says, and they just don’t do that yet.

In cooperation with the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, the McLaren team is looking for those valuable insights in the medical sector. The companies are collaborating on clinical trials for drugs that treat disorders like stroke, lung disease, arthritis, and Lou Gehrig’s disease. They’re starting simple: Patients in these trials wear accelerometers and vital sign monitors to determine how their medications affect their mobility and general wellbeing.

GSK’s head of digital clinical trial research Julian Jenkins, who was also on the panel at SXSW, said such data not only provides a better understanding of how patients fare between clinic visits, it also reduces the burden on patients. “It seems incredible that we still ask people to come in to the clinic to measure something like blood pressure or pulse,” Jenkins said. It remains to be seen, however, if this data will give GSK new insights into its products and ultimately result in better treatments for patients. 

Even if such wearables do ultimately prove themselves in pharmaceutical trials, McGrath argues that biometric monitoring won’t go mass-market unless designers satisfy his third principle of wearables: “I think these will take off when they fit into things [like clothes and accessories] that we’re already used to wearing,” he says. He believes the technology in today’s sensors is more than adequate for our needs, but says their awkward forms prevent wide-scale adoption. Devices that require users to change their behaviors (even in small ways) typically get put aside after a couple of months, once the initial burst of motivation wears off.

McGrath said his company’s designers are experimenting with sensors that vanish into collars, earrings, earbuds, and other existing trappings of daily life. As those designers work for a company that makes some of the sexiest race cars in the world, it will be interesting to see what they come up with. 


Posted by tammyduffy at 5:31 PM EDT
Updated: Monday, 1 June 2015 5:33 PM EDT
Saturday, 30 May 2015
Painting on Paper: American Watercolors at Princeton on View June 27 - Aug. 30, 2015
Topic: ART NEWS

 

 

Painting on Paper: American Watercolors at Princeton on View June 27 - Aug. 30, 2015

Rarely seen masterworks from the Princeton University Art Museum offer a sweeping survey of two centuries of American watercolors

Rarely on view due to their sensitivity to light, the Princeton University Art Museum’s extensive holdings of American watercolors are distinguished by their quality and breadth as well as by the institution’s sustained commitment to the collection’s growth over time. Painting on Paper: American Watercolors at Princeton presents 90 selections from this remarkable collection, supplemented by select loans, providing a potent overview of American art as well as a survey of the importance and evolution of watercolor painting in the U.S. since the early 19th century.

Among the noted artists included in the exhibition are John James Audubon, Milton Avery, Charles Burchfield, Alexander Calder, Dorothy Dehner, Charles Demuth, Richard Diebenkorn, Arthur Dove, Thomas Eakins, Sam Francis, William Glackens, Adolph Gottlieb, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, John Marin, Claes Oldenburg, Maurice Prendergast, John Singer Sargent, Ben Shahn, James McNeill Whistler, and Andrew Wyeth.

The exhibition will be on view at the Princeton University Art Museum from June 27 through Aug. 30, 2015.

Cocurated by Laura Giles, Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970, Curator of Prints and Drawings, and Karl Kusserow, John Wilmerding Curator of American Art,  at the Princeton University Art Museum, Painting on Paper features standout works from the Museum’s collection supplemented by loans from the Graphic Arts, Rare Books and Manuscripts, and Western Americana collections housed at Princeton University’s Firestone Library as well as loans from alumni and other private collections.  

“Initially assembled under the museum’s pioneering director Frank Jewett Mather Jr. (dir. 1922–46), Princeton’s watercolors are first and foremost extraordinary works of art that offer unusually personal insights into the artists who made them, and taken together they also provide a compelling survey of some of the most profound works of American art,” said Princeton University Art Museum Director James Steward. “The selections in this remarkable overview afford special ways of understanding the nuanced output of many of the nation’s greatest artists.”

Edward Hopper, Universalist Church, 1926. Watercolor over graphite on cream wove paper. Laura P. Hall Memorial CollectionThe works in the exhibition address broad artistic and historical trends while revealing the medium’s distinctive technical properties as an amalgam of painting and drawing. They also represent a wide range of subject matter and styles. Highlights include Winslow Homer’s Eastern Point Light (1880), an evocative portrayal of two ships, one brilliantly silhouetted by moonlight;Universalist Church (1926) by Edward Hopper, a dramatically cropped study of New England light on a historic church steeple and the structures that surround it; and Jacob Lawrence’s The Workshop (1978), whose signature flattened colors embody the artist’s modernist sensibility. Landscape plays a major role in the medium, as seen in such images as the dramatic mountain scene (ca. 1908) by John Singer Sargent, Arthur Dove’s interlocking Two Trees (1937), and the swirling forms and life-affirming spirit of Charles Burchfield’s Summer Benediction (1948). While Adolph Gottlieb’s Untitled (1946) and Alexander Calder’s The Two Arrows (1966) explore abstract shapes and formal relationships, portraiture in watercolor ranges from the traditional—Thomas Eakins’s profile of an elderly woman seated in historicized surroundings in Seventy Years Ago (1877)—to the irreverent—Claes Oldenburg’s Blueberry Pie à la Mode, Tipped Up, and Spilling (1996).

Painting on Paper: American Watercolors at Princeton has been made possible by generous support from the Kathleen C. Sherrerd Program Fund for American Art.  Further support has been made possible by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; the Curtis W. McGraw Foundation; and the Partners and Friends of the Princeton University Art Museum.


Posted by tammyduffy at 8:48 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, 30 May 2015 8:50 AM EDT

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