Author: Serkadis

From Green Right Now Reports

Ready to spend a little time in the dark to show that you aren’t in the dark about climate change? Earth Hour 2010 is just around the corner.

The event – organized by the World Wildlife Fund and scheduled for 8:30 p.m. local time on Saturday, March 27 – once again will feature millions of Americans turning out their lights for one hour in support of action on climate change. In 2009, an estimated 80 million people in the U.S. and nearly a billion around the world participated on some level, resulting in the lights going dim at such iconic venues as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, New York’s Empire State Building, the Sydney Opera House and the Great Pyramids of Gaza.

Earth Hour started in 2007, in Sydney, Australia, when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned off their lights. A year later, more than 50 million people across 35 countries answered the call. Last year, over 4,000 cities in 88 countries officially switched off.

Other famous American sites expected to go without all non-essential lighting this year: Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, Sea World in Orlando, the strip in Las Vegas, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Washington D.C.’s National Cathedral, California’s Santa Monica Pier and the Space Needle in Seattle.

Outside the U.S., the WWF said it expects thousands of cities in more than 105 countries to take part. The list includes Athens, Bangkok, Cape Town, Delhi, Dubai, Geneva, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Manila, Moscow, Rome, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Tel Aviv and Toronto.

When Samuel Worsdale noticed his memory failing, his local Mental Health and Vascular Wellbeing Service provided him with support. Thanks to this, he has been able to adapt to the changes in his life, maintain his independence and live in his own home.

Samuel Worsdale, 72, noticed that his memory had begun to fail in the two years since his wife passed away. He was referred to the Mental Health and Vascular Wellbeing Service in North Staffordshire, who provide a range of personal support tools to help improve quality of life and independence.

“He was forgetting things on shopping lists, getting a bit mixed up,” Samuel’s daughter Emma says.  “Things that he enjoys doing he was finding more tricky, and were therefore making his life more difficult.”

Samuel visited his GP who referred him to the Memory Clinic at the local hospital in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and to the Wellbeing Service.  The Wellbeing Service in North Staffordshire was a new initiative at the time.

“They are trying to not just deal with the physical problems, but with the emotional side of mental health problems,” says Emma.  “The aim of the project is to get people to live as ‘normal’ a life as possible by putting in little things that help build up self-confidence and self esteem.”

A cognitive behaviour therapist works closely with people like Samuel to assess their needs and recommend therapies to help build self-esteem. The therapist visits Samuel every month and works with him to create strategies to help him live independently.

“She’s introduced Dad to things like breathing exercises. So if he feels the stress building up he does his exercises and calms the situation,” says Emma.

Samuel used to have panic attacks when he went to the supermarket. But the support from the Wellbeing Service and his own determination changed this.

“I was going in there and I felt I was being pressed down.  I just had to get out of the place,” Samuel says.  “I didn’t leave it.  I thought, ‘I’m going to go back again’, and now I don’t have a problem.”

The Wellbeing Service has also helped introduce Samuel to other types of support.  He will soon be starting sessions with an occupational therapist to help him get better at tasks that he enjoys and are important to him, such as cooking and reading.

“Because of the things in place, Dad is able to cope,” Emma says.” They are things that perhaps we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves which she is able to suggest, to try and make life easier. They realise that taking somebody out of their own home can often be detrimental to how they’re surviving, and lead to a deterioration quite quickly.”

He has been put in touch with an organisation called Saltbox that operates a telephone support service for people who are on their own.  A support group for people in a similar situation to Samuel to share feelings and tap into a support network has also been recommended to him.

Initially Samuel and Emma found there was little communication between the different health and care services that Samuel was accessing.  But they both agree that now they are working together much more closely.

“It’s a more rounded care, because you’ve got people dealing with every aspect of the illness.  Emotional, practical and the actual medical side of things, you get a better overview of care in the end,” Emma says.

Emma recalls the experience of her grandmother, and is grateful for how much things have changed in a generation.

“My Nan had Alzheimer’s and thinking back to the care she had it was quite different.  It seemed to take a long time to access things.  The same opportunities weren’t there for her as there are now for my Dad,” says Emma.

Samuel hopes to keep working with the Wellbeing Service and is looking forward to the new sessions with the occupational therapist.  He is confident that the Wellbeing Service has helped him think more positively.

“Really, they’re like a friend to you.  She (Samuel’s therapist) is a very good listener, and everything she’s presented to me I felt yes, I can go along with that, yes that’s useful.  And that builds you up a bit.”

Emma is keen to see these kinds of prevention services in place nationwide.

“We are very aware,” says Emma, “that perhaps where I live, only five miles down the road, I wouldn’t get the same.  It is something that should be available to everybody.”

Manchester Adult Social Care Services has transformed the way they work with the aim of giving people ‘a life not a service’.  George Devlin, Head of Workforce Planning and Development, explains how all users are now offered personal budgets, and given advice on how to make the most of them.

In the last three years, Adult Social Care in Manchester has introduced a system of personal budgets as part of a transformation programme aimed at putting customers at the heart of everything they do.

“I know people use the word transformation a lot but we really have. The whole organisation has changed,” says George Devlin, Head of Workforce Planning and Development. 

“We have been going through a complete transformation of service delivery as a result of the commitment to personalisation – to transform services to give people a life, not a service – that’s our vision.”

“It’s very much around the principles of putting people first, promoting independence, enabling people to make choices, delivering services early that are preventative and that people can access easily. We are working all the time on the principle that our role is to enable people to build on the things they can do and use their strengths to increase their confidence”, says George.

Personal budgets

As part of the transformation of services, Manchester Adult Social Care introduced a system of personal budgets. 

They set a target that by 2008/09 everyone who was eligible would be able to have a personal budget – over 5,700 people now have one.

Customers’ needs are assessed, a support plan is drawn up and people are allocated a personal budget. This is expressed as a cash amount, but does not mean everyone receives a cash payment. There are three main ways people can receive their personal budget.

“The decision would be, is it a virtual budget, is it a cash budget, or is it a combination of the two?” says George. 

Manchester Adult Social Care works with customers to help them decide which option is best for them.

A cash budget is where someone receives regular cash payments or a single payment and they can choose how they spend it and which services they use.

“Some people take that money and set up their own care,” says George.

“They do it in a whole range of ways. Instead of having meals on wheels, some people have bought a PC with internet access so they can order the meals and have them delivered to them – other use the money to employ a personal assistant.

“Or they can have a virtual budget which tells people the amount of money they are entitled to but we have contracts with a range of providers including homecare and day services – so instead of giving people the money, we ensure the service is provided up to that amount of money.”

The key to the success of a virtual budget is that the customer then has a direct relationship with the service provider who must then involve and engage them in how the service is provided.

The kind of personal budget people chose is up to them – our role is to support them to make the choice and ensure they get what is right for them.

“Currently a higher percentage of older people continue to take a service against a cash budget – people with physical disabilities are very keen to take personal budgets,” says George.

Brokerage service

If people choose to take the cash payments, it does not mean they are left on their own to find their own care without any help.

The team in Manchester have developed a brokerage service which helps people use their money to access the services they need, which reliably looks around the local community and enables people to access what is there, using their money.

“If people want to employ a personal assistant, then we will support them to employ one, supporting with Criminal record checks, payroll and audit support” says George.

Greater choice and independence

George says deciding how to spend your budget can be daunting for some people, but it can offer people more independence and greater choice. The service aims to highlight to customers that there are a range of options available.

“We are saying to people they don’t have to just take what they’ve got, there are a whole range of services and ways to arrange support out there.”

As an example, George tells the story of one young person from Manchester with multiple health needs who has used her personal budget to employ a team of personal assistants.  She used to rely on homecare but she did not regularly see the same carers and they did not get to know her or her needs. 

Employing personal assistants directly using her personal budget has given her a more consistent and personal service.  As their employer, she has even chosen to manage their National Insurance Contributions (NIC’s) and tax.

“We pay her the budget and she manages the support she needs and all aspects of managing her staff team including tax, the insurance, and holidays. She says if is liberating and she has grown in self-esteem and confidence as well as receiving the kind of support that enables her to live her live as she chooses. It is such a powerful example of what personalisation can do and she has become much more articulate herself about what she needs.  She is a good advocate for the introduction of personalisation, and has assisted us in training staff, providers and other customers” George says.

“Not everybody takes on all of the responsibility in terms of recruitment, payment, tax, NIC’s and health and safety.  We enable them to access other companies who will do all that for them and then all they do is directly manage what the person (the carer or Personal Assistant) does when they come.”

A seamless service

George says they have learnt a huge amount from restructuring the Adult Social Care Directorate in Manchester and they constantly reflect on what they are doing. 

They have aimed to make personalisation part of everything they do and ensure that users experience a seamless service whether they need short-term advice or longer term support.

“If advice and guidance is needed, then that is given. If it’s some kind of direct support, then that would be through reablement.  If at the end of reablement people still have long term support needs, then they would have an assessment against Fair Access to Care Services (FACS) criteria and as a result of the assessment and the support plan, they would be allocated a personal budget,” says George.

At each stage, George says, the aim is to give people the information they need to make informed decisions that are right for them.

“The important thing for us is that we enable people to make choices.”

Good news, the ongoing rift between Beijing and Taiwan — a nuisance that constantly interjects itself into international affairs — is coming to an end. Taiwan will eventually submit to Beijing’s will.

Here’s why.

Taiwan’s economic growth is growing more and more dependent on Chinese demand.

From Waverly Advisors:

More signals of stronger than anticipated demand in China over the Lunar New Year holiday arrived from Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs today. The ministry reported that total export orders increased by 36.25% Y/Y, with Critical Electronic and Communications product segments increasing by 41% Y/Y and 44% Y/Y respectively.

The impact of last year’s direct trade agreement and other economic partnerships with China leaves Taiwan with a quandary: how to balance the massive opportunity presented by trade with the mainland with Beijing’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge the ROC as an independent state –let alone accept it.  To date officials from both nations have for the most part politely sidestepped the issue in public in a process akin to family at a holiday dinner silently refusing to acknowledge underlying tensions. Inevitably it will bubble to the surface, but for now the denial is paying off handsomely for all.

More important that Taiwanese/Mainland relations this data –massive orders from Chinese purchasing managers remained in February despite the PBOC’s second reserve hike and the Holiday, supports the argument for further tightening measures by Beijing in the near term. 

Join the conversation about this story »

The equity markets are already having a rough day and commodities are no different.

Gold is getting slammed, down 2% or $22.80 to $1104.70 an ounce as it nears the ever-important $1100 level. Silver is even worse, down 2.2% to $17.04 an ounce.

Oil is down 2.6% to $80.08 a barrel. Conversely, natural gas futures are up 1.1% to $4.1235.

In the futures market, metals are down, grains are down, and soft goods are down with the exception of lumber and orange juice.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Commodities Soaring As Equities, US Dollar Fall
• Equities Flying High While Commodities Remain Mixed
• Stocks End Snoozy Day Mixed

Filed under: Etc., Subaru

John Haugland, the man tasked with turning us flacks into ice racers, advised us to do several things the night before our instruction. For whatever reason, being “water positive” stuck with me the most. So before heading to bed I chugged a bottle and a half of water, woke up in the middle of the night, downed the other half and then drank another bottle before heading out to the makeshift circuit. When the time came to man-up in one slightly modified Subaru WRX, I had to liberate some liquid… badly.

Exacerbating my bursting bladder was the near-freezing temps of Park City, Utah, but despite the mid-30s weather and an early morning departure, by the time I rolled up to the staging lights, a fair amount of the course had succumbed to the sun. The result was a circuit comprised of equal parts snow and ice, with a few mud pits thrown in for dramatic measure.

But no matter the state of terra firma, sliding is sliding, grip is grip and opposite lock antics were mine for the taking, so after a quick trip to the port-o-potty I dialed in a few thousand revs, dropped the clutch and sped my way towards the first chicane. It took all of two turns and several muffled orders from Haugland to begin to see the allure of ice racing and understand what our man Tim has been proselytizing in his ongoing series.

My first go-round was suitably slow and occasionally sideways, but for the most part it was an exercise in anticlimactic understeering. And then… epiphany!

Continue reading There Will Be Mud: An express course in ice racing with Subaru

There Will Be Mud: An express course in ice racing with Subaru originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s time to start worrying that credit markets may be seriously underestimating the probability of losses arising from a Greek funding crisis.

European credit markets have been way too subdued this week. It seems that the market is discounting the insistence from Germany’s Angela Merkel that there will not be an EU bailout of Greece. Why doesn’t the market find Merkel credible?

The situation reminds us of the summer of 2008. All through that summer, Treasury officials were explaining that they were not going to bail out a failing investment bank. Although the comments were generally on background, there were several prominent instances in which Treasury officials telegraphed their willingness to let Lehman fail.

In June 2008, when I was still writing for DealBreaker, I explained:

Government officials who spoke to DealBreaker on the condition of anonymity said they are worried that the market is convinced the Federal Reserve won’t let a major US securities firm collapse. This is a cause for alarm because it indicates that investors are not taking into account full range of risks faced by investment banks, which could in turn remove an important market check on risky behavior. Although Lehman and its rivals have been pushing down debt levels recently, cheap debt that is unlinked to institutional risk could encourage a new round of re-levering, one official warned.

Ugh. It’s tough to read that in retrospect. We now know that Lehman did in fact decide that its access to cheap credit meant that it did not really need to delever, only to look like it was delvering.

The markets simply failed to find this credible, expecting a bailout. Lots of smart money bets were made on the return to normalcy via a bailout of Lehman, which exasperated the pain of Lehman’s failure.

The “lesson” of the government’s role in Bear Stearns’ collapse, in which equity got hit hard but bond holders were fine, created systemic risk. Similarly, betting on the effectiveness of governmental rescue plans for financial institutions was perhaps the most profitable trade of 2009. Although we only have anecdotal evidence, it seems that lots of hedge funds and trading desks at large financial firms are betting on the side of a European bailout of Greece.

Just today we published a note from Mike O’Rourke at BTIG castigating Germany for a lack of leadership on and describing its approach to the Greek debt crisis as a “comedy of errors.”

From O’Rourke:

Are Merkel’s statements the equivalent to Hank Paulson’s bluff when his office leaked to the media that there would be “no government participation” in a bailout of Lehman (although had a buyer emerged the government would have helped). his situation is different because these are different sovereigns, so one cannot expect that it is a bluff. If it is a bluff, it is truly irresponsible. In addition, we know Paulson’s hand did not play out too well.

Actually, Mike, it was not a bluff and Paulson’s hand played out perfectly. He did not bailout Lehman. Those betting on a bailout—assuming it was a bluff—saw enormous losses. Those whose investments are premised on a European bailout of Greece may be in for a similarly rude awakening.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• You Should Be Absolutely Terrified By Europe’s War Against Speculators
• Greece Approaches The Final Showdown
• Euro Crashing On Greece IMF Cry For Help

Here is an update on the price-to-rent ratio using the First American CoreLogic price index released yesterday for house prices through January.

In October 2004, Fed economist John Krainer and researcher Chishen Wei wrote a Fed letter on price to rent ratios: House Prices and Fundamental Value. Kainer and Wei presented a price-to-rent ratio using the OFHEO house price index and the Owners’ Equivalent Rent (OER) from the BLS.

The following graph uses the First American data …

Price-to-Rent Ratio

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

This graph shows the price to rent ratio (January 2000 = 1.0).

This suggests that house prices are still a little too high on a national basis. But it does appear that prices are much closer to the bottom than the top.

Also, OER declined slightly again in February. The price index has declined 6 of the last 8 months, although most of the declines have been very small. With rents still falling, the OER index will probably continue to decline – pushing up the price-to-rent ratio.

Join the conversation about this story »

Patent system supporters regularly point (slightly misleadingly) to the claim that the patent system gives patent holders the right to exclude others from using their inventions. And, thus, most lawsuits we see around patents revolve around cases involving a company manufacturing a product that includes a patented invention. But what about a lawsuit for a company that deliberately chose not to license or use a patented technology, because it was too expensive?

Welcome to today’s world.

A few years back, there was a lot of attention paid to videos from a company called SawStop that made a pretty cool product that protected your fingers from a table saw. You may have seen the videos:

The company tried to license the invention to various table saw makers, but after evaluating the technology, many were not convinced how well it worked and felt that the cost was way too high (both for themselves, and for consumers). In fact, some appeared to fear that if they did adopt this technology and then someone still got hurt, they were asking for a big lawsuit for promoting this technology as a safety feature.

But what about the other way around? Could someone be so bold as to actually sue for using a table saw that did not have this technology?

ChurchHatesTucker alerts us to the story of a lawsuit in Boston that involved a guy whose hand was damaged in a table saw accident while using a table saw from Ryobi. The guy’s complaint was that Ryobi should have included this technology and that it should be required to protect hands. And, amazingly, the jury sided with the guy.

Yes, you read that right. The jury effectively claimed that any table saw maker is liable for injuries if it does not license this technology and build it into its table saws.

That, of course, conflicts with that basic “exclusivity” part of patent law — and would effectively mean that SawStop has now been given total defacto control over who can be allowed to sell table saws in the US. That clearly is not what the law was intended to do. The government should never require companies to have to purchase a patent license for a technology they don’t believe the market wants. And, in this case, the ruling has resulted in numerous other lawsuits against other table saw makers — and a near guarantee that the price of table saws will go way up. Old saws can’t be retrofitted, and table saw makers need to totally change their manufacturing process and greatly increase costs to offer this technology.

This seems blatantly wrong. If the government is going to require companies to use a patented technology, it seems that the only reasonable solution is to remove the patent on it and allow competition in the market place.

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Filed under: Minivan/Van, Government/Legal, Work, Ford

Ford scored a big deal this week for its new Transit Connect when Canada Post chose the compact commercial van to replace its current fleet of mail carriers. The Canadian post office went through a competitive bidding process to select a new vehicle that included total lifecycle costs, which favored the relatively fuel efficient Transit Connect that’s rated 22 miles per gallon in the city and 25 mpg on the highway by the EPA. One of the key selling points of the Transit Connect is its fuel efficiency advantage over full-size vans.

Canada Post will buy 1,175 Transit Connects this year as part of its fleet modernization effort, which makes it the largest single order yet for the Transit Connect in Canada. Canada Post currently uses the same small box vans as the U.S. Postal Service.

[Source: Ford]

Continue reading Canada Post to replace fleet with Ford Transit Connect

Canada Post to replace fleet with Ford Transit Connect originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Over $100,000 Awarded During America East Conference Basketball Championship

Westport, Connecticut — Yesterday, during the America East Conference Basketball Championship, Newman’s Own Foundation unveiled the top three grant recipients of its first-ever Campus Community Service Challenge. Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf in connection with University of Vermont’s Campus Kitchen received the top grant of $25,000. Best Buddies Connecticut working with University of Hartford’s Best Buddies chapter received $15,000. $10,000 was awarded to The River Coalition in partnership with University of Maine’s Black Bear Mentors. In total, over $100,000 was awarded to nonprofits throughout the tournament.

»Read the entire press release at http://newmansownfoundation.org/Content/389.php

This week marked the official publication of a book whose arrival the Apollo Alliance has long awaited: Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development. The book, written by Joan Fitzgerald, director of the Law, Policy and Society Program at Northeastern University, is an eminently readable primer on the diversity of policies and programs American cities have implemented to create local economic development as they transition to clean energy.

Fitzgerald was inspired to write the book by a trip she took to Europe, where she visited cities in Germany that were creatively integrating environmental and economic-development goals. She wanted to find out if American cities were undertaking similar efforts and whether those cities’ strategies to transition to a low-carbon economy were in fact leading to local economic growth.

Fitzgerald discusses renewable energy initiatives in Austin and Cleveland; energy efficiency efforts in Milwaukee and Los Angeles; programs to promote clean energy manufacturing in Pittsburgh and New York City; and public transit policies in Denver and Portland; among many other examples. Although she highlights cities that have been successful in meeting their environmental and economic development goals, she also describes the challenges some cities have faced as they implemented what they thought were model policies that didn’t end up producing their desired effect.

This book is required reading for clean energy, good jobs advocates who work at the local and regional level. Not only does it cover many of the policies that cities should consider implementing if they haven’t already done so, it also touches on some of the issues that Apollo holds most dear: equity (making sure green economic opportunities are accessible to everyone, including low-income and people of color communities), job quality (making sure green jobs are good jobs) and industrial policy (a policy to promote domestic manufacturing of clean energy systems and components).

Fitzgerald concludes the book by emphasizing a concept that should be familiar to Apollo Alliance supporters. She writes, “… the parts are linked to the whole, and to each other. We must only connect them. Renewable energy, energy efficiency, green building, recycling, waste reduction, fewer cars, more trains, walking, and biking are not individual policies but parts of the whole of how cities must be transformed. As impressive are the efforts of many American cities, they will realize their full potential only when the exercise is understood to be comprehensive and only when federal and state policy is working to support them.”

Emerald Cities is available from Amazon.com or you can purchase it directly from the publisher, Oxford University Press.

New Report on How to Make Weatherization Jobs Good Jobs

This Tuesday, the Apollo Alliance and the Green Justice Coalition released a new report about the importance of making the fast-growing weatherization field a “high road” industry. According to the report, An Industry at the Crossroads: Energy Efficiency Employment in Massachusetts, the state of Massachusetts could gain 6,000 high-quality jobs in weatherization by taking a high road approach. Although this is a state-specific report, many of its recommendations are relevant to weatherization programs anywhere in the United States.

The report’s findings include the following:

• Right now, weatherization wages are poverty wages. Prevailing wages in home weatherization are $11.26 to $17.59 per hour in Massachusetts, so low that workers qualify for low-income weatherization assistance.

• “Low-road jobs” cost workers, taxpayers, and the state. Employers who underpay workers shift the cost of supporting their families onto taxpayers. This can cost the state and federal government more than $28,000 a year per family.

• “High road” jobs are a good bargain. Paying all of Massachusetts’s energy efficiency workers $18 an hour + $4 in benefits would bring in $32 million a year in income taxes, unemployment contributions, and worker compensation premiums.

The report recommends that the state, cities, and utility companies can make weatherization jobs “good jobs” by aggregating individual retrofit jobs to create larger “bundled” contracts;  and requiring contractors to meet “responsible employer” standards, which would ensure that contractors pay living wages and offer benefits, provide quality training and safe workplaces, and hire local residents; among other recommendations.

The report can be downloaded at the Apollo Alliance website or the Community Labor United website.

In other news …

*Labor, business and environmental groups urge Sens. Kerry, Graham and Lieberman to support clean energy manufacturing. On Thursday, the Apollo Alliance sent a letter of support for the Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technologies (IMPACT) Act to Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman. The letter urged the senators to include investments in domestic clean energy manufacturing in their bipartisan climate and clean energy bill. It was signed by 17 major labor unions, businesses, industry associations, environmental organizations and social justice groups, including the AFL-CIO, Environmental Defense Fund, and the Solar Energy Industries Association. Nearly 2,000 Apollo Alliance supporters have emailed their Senators with a similar message during the last week. Are you one of them? Click here to email your senators about making sure the Kerry/Graham/Lieberman bill supports clean energy manufacturing.

*Bureau of Labor Statistics Defines Green Jobs! The Bureau of Labor Statistics has just published its definition of green jobs and is seeking feedback. The  BLS says that, “broadly defined, green jobs are jobs involved in economic activities that help protect or restore the environment or conserve natural resources.” It lists those economic activities, which include renewable energy, energy efficiency, greenhouse gas reduction, pollution, and others. Click here to read the details about the BLS green jobs definition and its request for written comments, which must be submitted by April 30.

*Become a communications intern at the Apollo Alliance. The Apollo Alliance is seeking a smart, organized, energetic person with strong research, writing and internet skills to assist our communications department this summer. Responsibilities will include writing projects and website maintenance, among others. Click here to read the job description.

Research Opportunities in Materials Science – This is a NASA Research Announcement (NRA) which solicits proposals to conduct ground-based research in materials science.  Proposals are solicited by the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) Advanced Capabilities Division for hypothesis-driven materials science research investigations in the following areas: thermo physical data, micro-structural development and morphological evolution. This call is for ground-based research that may eventually lead to research on the International Space Station (ISS). Because some of the selections may be considered for a future flight experiment, the proposers must show a clear path from the proposed ground-based research to an experiment that can feasibly be conducted in the Low Gradient Furnace (LGF) or the Solidification and Quenching Furnace (SQF) on the ISS. Eligibility: All.  Proposal Due Date: April 30, 2010.  Full solicitation will be posted on or about March 31, 2010.

Posted Date: March 16, 2010

Solicitation Number: NNH10ZTT001N

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Cubesat Launch Initiative – The NASA Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD) anticipates that launch opportunities for a limited number of CubeSats may be available on launches currently planned for 2011 and 2012. These launch opportunities would constitute a pilot project intended to demonstrate viable launch opportunities for CubeSat payloads as auxiliary payloads on planned missions. The pilot project is intended to support, and will be limited to, CubeSat development efforts conducted under existing NASA-supported activities. The pilot project will be open to not-for-profit and educational organizations.  Response Date: April 15, 2010.

Posted Date: February 23, 2010

Reference Number: NNH10SOMD001L

Operations, Maintenance, Instrumentation and Analysis Support for Railroad Research – This program of the Office of Research and Development (ORD) focuses on the development and advancement of railroad safety technology through Federally sponsored research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) efforts, which have the goal of improving the safety of an economically viable, efficient, and reliable national railroad system.  This may involve studies of existing or improved conventional railroad systems, as well as investigation of more advanced train concepts such as high speed or magnetically levitated (maglev) vehicles.  Specific investigations may include measurement and analysis of tracks, guideways, vehicles and associated signaling, communication, and train control systems, as well as environmental considerations.  The objective of this contract is to obtain contractor support for field data acquisition activities which may include the design, acquisition programming, operation, maintenance, and storage of sophisticated computer-based measurement and recording systems, as well as data recording and analysis activities utilizing such systems.  Closing Date: April 14, 2010.

Posted Date: March 12, 2010

Solicitation Number: DTFR53-10-R-00005

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Small Business Innovation Research Solicitation – The Volpe National Transportation System Center, (Volpe Center) is issuing a solicitation pursuant to the Small Business Innovation Development Act of 1982, PL 97-219, as amended by PL 99-443 and PL 102-564 and reauthorized by PL 106-554. The solicitation will be issued on or about April 2, 2010. The purpose of this solicitation is to invite small businesses with their valuable resources and creative capabilities to submit innovative research proposals that address high priority requirements of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Each concern submitting a proposal must qualify as a small business.

Posted Date: March 4, 2010

Solicitation Number: DTRT57-10-R-SBIR2

Water Bag Disrupter – The U.S. Research, Development and Engineering Command Contracting Center (RDECOMCC) has a requirement for a Water Bag Disruptors prototype that must be capable of containing an explosion from IEDs by cutting the wires and contain the explosion to the immediate area without creating a crater in support of the Rapid Equipping Force.  This proposed procurement is unrestricted. The Government intends to procure this requirement under NAICS 325212. This request for proposal requires cost proposals to be evaluated for award. Competitive proposals will be evaluated based on the evaluation criteria set forth in the solicitation package. All responsible sources may submit a quote which shall be considered by the agency. The solicitation will be provided in an electronic format, free of charge. The media through which the Government chooses to issue this solicitation will be the Internet only. This solicitation will not be issued in paper. Contractors requests for this solicitation will be performed through ASFI (https://acquisition.army.mil/asfi/). This RFP will be issued on or around March 30, 2010.  Proposals will be due around April 30, 2010.

Posted Date: March 12, 2010

Solicitation Number: W91CRB10R0041

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Pre-Solicitation – Studies Supporting the Medical Chemical Defense Research Program – The mission of the Department of Defenses (DODs) Medical Chemical Defense Program as executed by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command and the Chemical Biological Medical Systems Joint Project Management Office is to protect the soldier against any chemical threat requiring a medical response. One of the major responsibilities is establishing and maintaining an effective medical chemical defense posture for our Armed Forces to augment the DOD in-house scientific endeavors by improving the survivability of soldiers in chemically-contaminated environments. A Request for Proposal (RFP) will be issued to solicit a Contractor to answer and validate applied and developmental biomedical questions critical to providing medical countermeasures against existing chemical warfare agents and emerging threats. The RFP work statement requires writing study protocols and conducting tests for potential decontamination and protective systems, as well as antidotal and therapeutic compounds against chemical agent contamination. Studies will involve in vivo and vitro experiments, animal models, alternatives to animal models, and comprehensive bench top procedures utilizing chemical surety materials (CSM) RDT&E dilute solutions of CSM, and other hazardous chemicals.

Posted Date: March 3, 2010

Solicitation Number: W81XWH10R0001

This is a guest post written by Brad Kearns, my long-time friend and integral member of the Primal Blueprint team. He’ll be speaking at this year’s PrimalCon, instructing athletes and non-athletes alike on how to properly train for endurance events the Primal Blueprint way.

Greetings MDA readers. It’s been a wonderful experience to work closely with Mark Sisson over the past two years on the Primal Blueprint book and the many ambitious projects we have announced for 2010. I look forward to meeting PrimalCon attendees in April and discussing the application of Primal Blueprint principles to endurance training. Mark and I go back over two decades, when we first crossed paths on the professional triathlon circuit in the 80’s. Mark was my coach and mentor for the majority of my professional career, helping guide me into training and lifestyle practices that were counter to Conventional Wisdom (sound familiar?) and basically save me from the extreme burnout risk that was (and still is) endemic to training and racing at the elite level.

What an amusing journey it’s been! Mark and I used to debate the intricacies of interval workouts and swim technique on 100-mile training rides. Today our workouts are beach sprints or quick, intense plyometric sessions, and debate is about the ingredients for our post-workout BAS (Big Ass Salad). Having both been through the hard-core endurance scene, spit out the other end, and catapulted headlong into the Primal world, we share a valuable perspective of both appreciation for the passion expressed by endurance athletes, and also a conviction that the Conventional Wisdom approach and mindset toward endurance training and racing is deeply and dangerously flawed.

As Mark has mentioned often on the blog and in the book, trying to apply the Primal Blueprint Fitness principles to a gung-ho endurance athlete with extreme and highly specialized goals is a challenge. As the landmark post, A Case Against Cardio explained in detail, serious endurance training is detrimental to your health, period. However, there is a way to do this stuff correctly, have fun, preserve your health, and enjoy all the benefits of the endurance experience which is so popular these days. Anyone who has browsed through the Primal Blueprint or read much of the blog is aware of Chronic Cardio’s drawbacks, and the benefits of integrating the three Primal Blueprint exercise laws (Move Frequently at a Slow Pace, Lift Heavy Things, and Sprint Once in a While) to achieve well-balanced, functional fitness without compromising health. This stuff is all fine and dandy until you catch the fever and sign up for a marathon or half-ironman triathlon. Then, as most of the magazine articles, books and coaches will tell you, you have to get focused, put in the miles, be consistent and basically struggle and suffer in the name of preparing for your daunting fitness goal.

The promotion of this approach and mentality is a massive scam, preying upon the frailties of the Type A personality drawn to extreme challenges, and fed by the hype and marketing influences of those who stand to make a buck off of people struggling and suffering. For example, consider the “Ironman”, which today has evolved from a description of a triathlon race distance to a multimillion dollar global brand with dozens of events replicating the original Hawaii “product”. Let us not forget that Ironman is an arbitrary distance, entirely inconsiderate of the health, lifestyle factors and overall best interests of those who participate. What if the distance around Oahu was only 56 miles? (the derivative of the 112-mile Ironman bike ride is the 112-mile ‘Ride Around Oahu’ bike ride) Or what if the standard marathon distance (born from the legend of Pheidippides running from Marathon to Athens, Greece to announce a battle victory) was only 13 miles instead of 26, and thus the Ironman was actually a half-ironman? It might be a superior competitive event and would surely be a more sensible competitive and peak performance goal for the vast majority of the participants.

The contention I have is the media and corporate influence that have lured the masses to believe that running a marathon or finishing an Ironman is the ultimate endurance achievement. To me this seems backwards – to get persuaded by hype, mystique and peer pressure into an athletic goal and then re-arrange your lifestyle in order to pursue that goal. It makes better sense to make a careful analysis of your life circumstances, responsibilities, obligations and potential impact on your family, career and overall well-being, and then choose an appropriate competitive goal. Aspiring to a less challenging event that requires less training time and less physical stress might be a win/win situation all around. For comparison, look at the sensibility of a community soccer league, where field size, game length, and number of players escalate steadily as the kids get older and more competent. If instead we put Under-6 kids on an international 100-meter field for 90 minutes, what might happen? They’d probably become exhausted and burnt out, something that happens with alarming frequency in the endurance world. As an endurance athlete, you must take control of your destiny, choose appropriate goals, and train according to some simple guidelines that will allow you to protect health, moderate the stress of an extremely stressful endeavor, increase your enjoyment of the endurance experience, and finally, believe it or not, actually improve your competitive performances.

1. Align Workout Efforts with Energy Level, Motivation Level and Health

Throw out the fancy log books, graphs, magazine articles, books and Internet coaches spitting out detailed 6-week or 12-week training plans designed to produce peak performance. Get a spiral notepad for 99 cents and start keeping score of these three markers with a simple 1-10 rating each day: 10 being outstanding, 5 being medium, and 1 being terrible. Conduct and rate your workouts similarly, with 1 being an easy recovery effort and 10 being a maximum effort. Strive to match up the energy/motivation/health numbers with the workout degree of difficulty scores, and realize the long-term negative repercussions of misaligning these markers. When you rate your workouts, include psychological components as well as physical. Cutting short sleep for a swim session on a brisk early morning, followed by a hurried drive to work while inhaling a processed snack for breakfast is far more stressful than the same workout on a more relaxed time schedule. Govern your workout decisions by asking yourself, “Is this healthy?” and be clear with your specific purpose for every workout: recovery/rejuvenation, fitness maintenance or fitness improvement.

2. Train Intuitively Instead of Robotically

The world’s foremost expert on your training program is you, even if you are a complete novice. No one will ever be as skilled at rating and aligning the numbers described in item #1 as you are right now. I counsel the endurance athletes I coach to make every workout feel effortless. I’m obviously taking license with the literal definition here, but the goal is to make training decisions based on gut instinct, biofeedback, even visualization – in order to promote physical and mental ease rather than struggle. Physically, workout pace and length should be dictated by factors discussed in #1 – energy, motivation, and health. Mentally, you want to nurture your passion and your will at all times, and never abuse these attributes in the name of your ego or insecurities. If you don’t feel like working out, this is a powerful message to reflect upon and honor. Sure, sometimes inertia is involved and you feel better once you get out the door and get moving, but often developing the discipline to hit the snooze button and sacrifice the instant gratification of logging more miles is what can take you to the next level as an athlete. Restraining your obsessive/compulsive tendencies and rejecting the unhealthy influences of Conventional Wisdom and peer pressure offers a tremendous growth experience that can translate to many other areas of life. Conversely, a lack of restraint and intuition will cause your athletics to become just another outlet to express your insecurities and obsessive/compulsive tendencies. The choice is yours!

3. Increase the Severity of Stress/Rest Fluctuation

The recommendation for consistency is the context of athletic training is deeply flawed. Extensive research suggests that your body will plateau and even regress unless you vary workload carefully. While most everyone agrees with this basic concept, I believe that we haven’t taken it far enough. Experts touting sage advice like “rest one day a week”; “build three weeks, then recover one week”: or “never increase your mileage more than 10% per week” are interpreting only a narrow slice of a very big picture. The balance between stress and rest is a constant challenge, represented best by our waking days and sleeping nights. When it comes to training, it’s difficult to predict the ideal stress/rest balance, and most people err on the stress side. Partly to blame are the elite athletes who serve as de facto role models and share their secrets with eager enthusiasts. An Olympian who eats, sleeps and runs 130 miles a week has little in common with someone immersed in busy family, career, school, and community life. While exercise is an excellent “stress release” from other forms of mental and emotional stress in your life, it’s merely a different form of stress, pulling on the very same adrenal glands that service your boardroom presentations, domestic arguments, and financial concerns.

Understanding the Primal Blueprint exercise laws, it makes sense to promote optimal gene expression by reducing the stress of your endurance workouts (by limiting heart rate to 75% of max or less), and reducing the frequency and duration (but possibly even increasing the difficulty) of high-intensity workouts. The body does not require a consistent application of stress to thrive, but rather a strategic balance between stress and rest. Make your easy-to-moderate workouts much easier and shorter, and make your hard workouts much less frequent and in many cases, harder. Don’t be afraid to spike that graph more than Conventional Wisdom suggests, and do everything you can to run screaming from the “flatline” approach that has produced widespread burnout.

Applying these three principles requires a skill set that, quite frankly, tends to be a little deficient amongst the masses of endurance enthusiasts. However, an evolved training program is well within your reach, and can pay great dividends starting immediately. Once you expand your horizons beyond the “struggle and suffer’ paradigm, and see how fun it is to train intuitively, healthily and Primally, there is no turning back, believe me!

Brad’s Bio

Brad Kearns is a noted speaker, author and coach in the health & fitness world for over two decades. Over the past two years, he has worked closely with Mark Sisson on Primal Blueprint projects, editing the Primal Blueprint book and DVD, and co-authoring the upcoming Primal Leap 30-day weight loss program Guidebook. Brad has written nine other books on health, fitness, and peak performance, including Breakthrough Triathlon Training (2006, McGraw-Hill), which offers a healthy, balanced approach to triathlon peak performance, and How Lance Does It (2007, McGraw-Hill), which details the attitude and behavior qualities of the Tour de France legend and how you can apply these attributes to your own goals. During his nine-year career as a professional triathlete, Brad was a 2-time national champion and ranked #3 in the world in 1991. Brad produces the Auburn, CA Triathlon annually, and is the Founder and Executive Director of a non-profit organization promoting cardiovascular fitness for kids called Running School. Brad graduated cum laude from UC Santa Barbara in 1985, majoring in Business/Economics and minoring in running injuries and surfing. He enjoys coaching youth sports and dominating sixth graders in both soccer and basketball. Brad’s offbeat competitive outlets include high jumping and Speed Golf. A 3.7 handicap, Brad placed 8th in the world Speed Golf championships, shooting 80 on a regulation 18-hole course in 40 minutes. In spring 2008, Brad attained a lifetime best high jump of 5’5”, which would rank him 13th in the USA Masters 40+ track and field list.

Related posts:

1. Can You Be an Endurance Athlete and Primal?
2. Primal Strength Training for Women: Not So Different After All
3. Battling the Python: Swinging Rope Training