Author: Serkadis

(This guest post previously appeared at the author’s blog)

It wasn’t easy to find in this sea of bulls, but there is actually a bank out there that is not full-blown bullish following the huge rally of the last month.  Morgan Stanley says investors should prepare for a sell-off in the coming weeks as the market has gotten ahead of itself.  Their equity analysts say the risks have risen in the near-term as sentiment swings wildly positive (see here) and risk assets run ahead of themselves.

Morgan Stanley says these two risks could overshadow the market in the coming weeks as investors adjust their portfolios to account for the large discrepancy between bulls/bears and risk assets versus lower risk assets.  According to Morgan Stanley the put/call ratio represents overly bullish sentiment levels that are historically followed by sell-offs.  In addition, the sign of excessive risk can be best seen in the run-up in the small cap vs. large cap ratio.  Risk assets, represented by the Russell here, have surged to their highest ratio in terms of large caps in the last 12 months:

 

Read more market commentary at The Pragmatic Capitalist >

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See Also:

• Goldman: Here’s How To Find Yield In This Low-Rate World
• JPMorgan: The Uncertainty Is Over, Keep Riding This Risk Rally
• The Sentiment Indicator That’s Warning Of A Market Sell-Off

Article Tags: Gerald Warner

Oops! There go another two bricks, tumbling out of the IPCC wall of deceit on man-made global warming – there is not a lot left now; even the Berlin Wall (to which the AGW construct is ideologically allied) has survived better. Unhappily for Al, Phil, Michael, George and the rest of the scare-mongers, these two discredited components are among the most totemic in the AGW religion.

Firstly, a new study, funded by Nasa (which may be feeling the need to rehabilitate itself post-Climategate) has revealed that the ridiculous claim in the notorious IPCC 2007 report that up to 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest could be drastically affected by even a small reduction in rainfall caused by climate change, so that the trees would be replaced by tropical grassland, is utter nonsense. That assertion has already been exposed as derived from a single report by the environmentalist lobby group WWF.

Now Dr Jose Marengo, a climate scientist with the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research and himself a member of the IPCC, says: “The way the WWF report calculated this 40 per cent was totally wrong, while (the new) calculations are by far more reliable and correct.” These calculations were done by researchers at Boston University and were published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. They used satellite data to study the drought of 2005, when rainfall fell to the lowest in living memory, and found that the rainforest suffered no significant effects.

Source: blogs.telegraph.co.uk

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Facebook has been doing a 180 when it comes to privacy and data openness lately and it is moving further down that path with its newfound focus on search. It has recently introduced a larger and more central search box and now it’s giving search suggestions a revamp hopefully making them more relevant for users. In the best-case scenario, most users w… (read more)

Carlsbad, California: SMAC Inc. has developed next generation moving coil actuator LCA series designed to replace pneumatic cylinders with an expected 10 times improvement in cycle life over pneumatics and a competitive list price starting at $500.

The LCA series is conceived as a complete series, like SMAC’s CA series. The first model in this series, the LCA25, has a small overall footprint 25mm (H) x 50mm (W) and length depending on stroke. Starting with stroke length of 10mm, the range will extend up to 100mm with encoder resolutions from 20micron to 50nanometer. With this level of accuracy the unit is especially useful for precise positioning and measuring. A slide option is available for scanning applications.

The LCA series have one and three coil versions that generate a force of 10N and 30N respectively with accelerations greater than 40G possible.

The LCA series is equipped with linear guide with built-in lubricant that gives >100,000,000 cycle expected life. This enables a reduction of down time and significantly increase production efficiency. The actuator also has a low power consumption of 1.5 amps peak at 24V and 48V, making them highly energy efficient and very quiet compared to old pneumatic technology.

A “Snap Together” design controls tight tolerance stack-up to assures high product quality. There is no adjustment of parts during the assembly of the actuator and maximum tolerance stack-up is held to under 50% of allowable.

As with all SMAC actuators the LCA series are fully programmable in force, velocity and position mode. Further to this the SMAC patented ‘Soft-Land’ function is incorporated to allow delicate & controlled force when landing on fragile components. The actuators also give 100% data feedback of all operations as standard. Due to these unique features, no external switches or sensors are required to detect actuator movement or position.

Incorporated in the LCA series are SMAC’s proprietary linear encoders. These have been developed and field proven to be much more reliable than commercially marketed encoders.

Monee, IL – March 3, 2010– Today, Bimba Manufacturing introduced a new safety valve (lock out – tag out style) to its line of Air Preparation Products. The Pneumatic Isolation Valve (PIV Series) is available in nine sizes from 1/4″ to 1-1/2″ with a full range of accessories to help companies conform to OSHA and ANSI/PMMI standards. Many competitive models fail to comply with these standards due to reduced-sized exhaust ports and designs able to lock in a “partially on” condition. Current industry regulations require a lockout valve installed on all air-operated equipment to isolate the equipment from its air supply and to exhaust all downstream air pressure making the equipment safe for maintenance. (Reference OSHA 29 CFR 1910.147 and ANSI/PMMI B155.1-2006).

“We remain focused on our growing line of air preparation equipment” said Jerry Scherzinger, Bimba’s Air Preparation Product Manager. “We feel the addition of this pneumatic energy isolation valve will help our customers conform to current industry requirements set forth by OSHA and ANSI/PMMI, and perfectly complement Bimba’s line of air prep products.”

The new PIV Series catalog is available in electronic format on the Bimba website. Learn more about Bimba’s Pneuamtic Isolation Valve, reference safety standards and view real-time pricing and delivery information at www.bimba.com.

The TAD 3 Weight Processor monitors and controls strain gage load-cell-based weighing systems. It has an A-D resolution
of nearly 14 million counts and easily interfaces with other PC and PLC controllers via two communication ports.

It can also be used with an external alphanumeric or graphical display, in addition to its integral backlit graphic liquid crystal display.

High accuracy and very fast transmission rates make the TAD 3 ideal for advanced process control applications.

The TAD 3 recipe batching version allows storage of up to 30 recipes with up to 24 activities per recipe. Batching is carried out
over separate, digital I/O units.

The batching version of the TAD 3 makes it possible to perform batching of up to six components in coarse and fine feeding phases. Other process functions like stirring, heating, dumping, etc. also can be controlled with the batching version. A menu program leads the operator through all phases of the process.

He can enter alphanumeric information in his own
language on the graphic display. Another way to perform setup and calibration is to use the deltaCOM program on a PC
(please see separate data sheet). The basic version of deltaCOM is included in the TAD 3 processor version.

Article Tags: Letter

What caused the ice ages of 10,000-plus years ago to melt? Environmental activists, 2,500 climate scientists and want-to-be scientists are claiming man is causing the warming trend, leading to drastic earth changes such as icebergs melting, oceans rising, polar bears disappearing, and the climate getting hotter and hotter.

This led to the Copenhagen Conference where world leaders were to decide what percentage of carbon gas emissions a country could eliminate and western, rich countries would give money to the poorer countries to work on the problem.

I am of the opinion that this man made warming trend is a lie. I think the intent is for the UN and a few other organizations to get their hands on a steady flow of money. The UN needs and wants a steady flow of money so it can exist.

Many climate scientists have pushed the man-made warming theory to obtain large grants of money. Many times these grants come from the very people who want to blame man for all ills on the planet for their own purposes. Follow the money and you will learn a lot.

Source: jg-tc.com

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Homebrew coder Master Sonic is back to release a new version of Smash Bros Ultimate, another homebrew clone of Super Smash Brothers for the Nintendo DS. The latest update of the brew has added two new characters,

Pneumatic linear balancer with gripping tool with jaws parallel opening and closing, with gripping height regulating device, for handling of packs of different thickness stacked on top of each other.
The parallel opening and closing of the jaws allows to grip the pack to handle always corresponding with the center of gravity. A proper device, designed to regulate the height of the gripping jaws, allows the operator to catch, depending on the necessities, one or more packs at the same time, reducing the and optimizing the working processes.
It is particularly indicated for quick handling operations, no regulations or adjustment are required and it allows the operator to work ergonomically and with the minimum effort.
Max capacity 150 kg.
Max work radius up to 7 m.
Max vertical stroke up to 2 m.

The Industrial Automation Group of Advantech introduces the UNO-1140F X86-based DIN-rail PC equipped with a VGA port, an Ethernet port, 2 x USB ports and 8 x isolated serial com ports which can handle 921.6 Kbps max speed per port.
The UNO-1140F can operate in temperatures of -20 ~ 75° C, has IP40 protection, grounding isolation between chassis and system, providing robust performance in a compact package making it highly suitable for micro controller and communication gateway tasks for machine automation, factory automation and building automation applications.
In addition, the UNO-1140F adopts Advantech’s EVA-X4150 SoC (System-on-Chip), which is an open system architecture supporting WinCE™, DOS and Linux, and has 10-year longevity warranty. Unlike RISC-based PC’s, the x86-based SoC not only integrates general PC functions into a single chip, which supports open architectures for easy development and migration, but also provides a VGA port and PC/104 expansion for wider application.
Advantech has also released the UNO-1140, a cost-effective version of the UNO-1140F which features four standard Serial COM ports, as opposed to the UNO-1140F’s 8 x Isolated COM ports.

Available in a wide range of dimensions. Standard models with a range of accessories. Custom-made equipment to customers’ specifications.

Special equipment such as rotary baskets, rotary tables, satellite tables, moving nozzles, etc.

Nozzles use the injection principle to achieve acceleration and are therefore indirect (the injector system)

… and Improves Overall Read Rates

Without a doubt, the electronic devices we see in the market today are shrinking in size. Be it an MP3 player, a DVD recorder or a laptop computer, small and slim is the way to go. As such, the printed circuit boards (PCBs) that go into these electronic gadgets have inevitably downsized in terms of overall design and form factors.
At Beyonics Technology they faced the following two challenges:
1. Smaller PCBs mean less real estate for the barcode labels.
2. The increasing demand of product traceability requires more manufacturing related information to be labelled onto every PCB. Information like lot code, vendor ID, product number, serial number, etc. all need to be encoded onto this smaller label size.
Beyonics and its customers resolved these issues by migrating to a 2-Dimensional Data Matrix ID code.
Migration of Reading 1D Linear and Stacked Codes to 2D Data Matrix Codes
Even though Beyonics had identified the right approach, the real challenge was with the actual implementation. Within the plant itself, Beyonics has many in-circuit and functional testers with different reader configurations. Their existing readers were in poor condition and could not read 2D codes. Many of the systems require custom cabling to handle various triggering inputs from the PCs and I/O modules and some were configured to communicate with different protocols for non-standard outputs. It became obvious that they needed to find a new reader that could handle these demands and that the migration effort needed to be kept to a minimum.
Cognex’s DataMan 100 Provides Versatile Communication
Through a few sessions of on-site troubleshooting and testing, the Cognex’s sales and engineering team was able to perform a direct replacement of Beyonics’ current fixed-mount readers without altering any existing software programming or hardware wiring configurations. Beyonics’ process engineers spent little time on this migration and so they could continue concentrating on their primary tasks of keeping the production lines up and running.
“I did not wish to perform any re-cabling or re-programming on my current setup. Writing a set of new documentation would have been a nightmare. Hence, the new readers had to be plug-and-play, and the DataMan 100 from Cognex did exactly that, to my delight,” said Parthiban Periayah, Engineering Specialist at Beyonics.
Shanker Kaneson, Engineering Specialist at Beyonics added, “Prior to installing the DataMan readers, we were experiencing unacceptable read rates with the current readers. Our operators often had to reload the PCBs when a no-read situation happened. This caused the SMT machines to come to a halt until manual intervention took place. With the DataMan 100 readers installed, we witnessed a production throughput increase of about 10%.”
Deployment into Other Operations
Beyond the deployment within the SMT Machines, Beyonics also replaced their existing handheld ID readers with the DataMan 700 series.
Shanker added, “The DataMan 750 uses the same Setup Tool software as the DataMan 100 series, making our deployment so much easier since we don’t have to go through another new product orientation or training. Moreover, compared with our existing handheld readers, the DataMan 750 is an electrostatic discharge safe device that conforms to the specifications published in the IEC 61340 standard. In the past, we had to wrap the handheld scanners with an ESD-safe jacket which was awkward and non-IEC compliant.”

Simple operation – fully automatic measurement, analysis and cleaning!

The Laser Particle Sizer ANALYSETTE 22 MicroTec plus fascinates with an unachieved union of extra-wide measuring range 0.08 µm (80 nm) up to 2000 µm, high resolution and sensitivity, marginal space requirements and a reasonable price.

MicroTec plus – Perfect Dispersion – Maximum Flexibility
Any particle size measurement is only as good as its dispersion. For this reason, we place great importance on this aspect and bring all our experience to bear.

We developed the ANALYSETTE 22 MicroTec plus as an especially practical modular system with perfectly conceived units for dry and wet dispersion or for combination with a small volume wet dispersion unit. When switching between wet and dry measurement, the measuring cell, which is located in a practical cartridge, can be easily exchanged – without changing any hoses or modifying the instrument! The cartridge you are not using now, can be easily stored within the dispersion unit.

Measurement with the dry dispersion unit
The Laser Particle Sizer ANALYSETTE 22 MicroTec plus, is an universally applicable instrument for the determination of the particle size distribution of dry solids. It is suitable for the utilization in quality and process control. Due to the highly flexible programmability of the entire dispersion and measuring process, it is also very apt for research and development.

Your advantages with the dry dispersion unit
– Ideal measuring of powdery samples in an accelerated air flow
– Suitable for sample volumes of less than 1 ccm to approx. 100 ccm
– Degradation of agglomerates with a special annular gap Venturi nozzle
– High-frequency feeder (hard-anodized) for continuous and residue-free sample feeding
– Automatic computer-controlled adjustment of the dispersion pressure
– Freely programmable fully automatic measurement processes
– Especially fast and easy to clean
– Multifunctional exhaust system for automatic sample exhaustion during the measurement and for cleaning (e.g. of surplus sample material) after the measurement

The FRITSCH MaS control Software, which is delivered with every Laser Particle Sizer guarantees simple operation, completely open programmability for maximum flexibility, especially fast and efficient cleaning as well as many other advantages that simplify your work and ensure the quality of your measuring results.

EUROFILTRAZIONE is a leading company in
the production of filter elements for industrial
applications, and produces a complete range of
filter cartridges for EDM machines, of both edge
and plunge type. The use of filtering materials
specifically conceived for this purpose, ensures
the best possible results. EUROFILTRAZIONE
filter cartridges are in fact top of the range both
in relation to national and foreign production
output. The winning features of these cartridges
being a high filtering capacity with low charge
loss, and considerable storage capacity in even
the most severe operating conditions, thereby
ensuring the long working life of the product.
Thanks to these features, and highly competitive
price levels, it possible to greatly reduce filtering
and electro-erosion costs without in any way
jeopardizing performance levels. EUROFILTRAZIONE
is therefore a truly top-level manufacturer,
capable of meeting customer requirements
both with a range of standard products
as well as with special products, suitable to face
specific challenges

AGME has recently designed and manufactured a special purpose machine for automating the assembly of car hinges. Due to the automation of most assembly operations the production cycle time is approximately 10 seconds. This special machine meets clients´ automation needs in components assembly.

This special machine is made up of a rotary transfer with 8 workstations. In the first and third stations the parts are loaded manually and their presence and position are controlled by laser sensors. In the second station there are bush automatic insertions and 90º flaring processes. Then in the fourth and fifth station the pins are automatically inserted and riveted by an AGME radial riveting machine RR-14. After this, in station 6 and 7 the parts are crimped and the components marked. Finally in station 8 the machine controls the turning torque and selects the Ok parts that are automatically unloaded. The failed parts will be taken to a red box. In all hydraulic units, the reached pressure and levels are controlled by a hydraulic presostate and a linear transducer respectively.

Due to the automation of the hinge assembly operations, the production times are reduced and the assembled components are equal in dimensions and quality. In this way human errors are avoided and a thoroughly control quality is done, separating the failed parts from the ok parts

Marechal Electric, a leader in the field of industrial plugs and socked-outlets, presents its complete range of watertight and corrosion resistant plugs and socket-outlets and decontactors from 5 to 250 A.
However the decontactor is also switch-rated and thus safe to make and break and provide visible isolation. As such a mechanic can disconnect on load and isolate an equipment in seconds without incurring the costs of an electrician. Downtime is reduced with lower labour costs.
Downtime is reduced with lower labour costs.
Automatically IP66/IP67 watertight when the plug is inserted, Marechal products provide excellent resistance to shocks and corrosion.
Marechal Electric’s advanced technology with silver-nickel butt contacts, guarantees superior electrical performance. Moreover, it can simplify and reduce installation costs thanks to its dual voltage: 3pne 415 V sockets which accept 3pne 415 V, 3p+e 415 V and spne 230 V plugs.
Plugs and socket-outlets and decontactors are ideally suited for food and drink industries: butcheries, dairies, bakeries, etc. ATEX version available for explosive atmospheres: grain silos, alcohol and spirits, sugar refineries.

The A-Line Construction Series Sets New Benchmarks in the EPS Processing

Shape Moulding Machines Providing Maximum Freedom for EPS Processors. You will straight away be enthusiastic on the advantages of the completely newly developed A-LINE construction series! Finally you can benefit from freedoms which you have always desired from a shape moulding machine.

Freedom in regard to mould size
3 models (S, M, L) for 0,2 – 2,5 m² moulding area
A-LINE S moulding area up to 0.9 m²
A-LINE M moulding area up to 1.7 m²
A-LINE L moulding area up to 2.5 m²

Freedom in regard to process technology
conventional, monoblock, LTH and ECO-LTH

Freedom in regard to mould change
with or without steam chamber in quick mould change system
product or format related useable areas
simple reception of competitor moulds and systems

Advantages Process
generously dimensioned media supply, separately adjustable and controllable mould halves, large-volume condenser with high efficiency for central and single vacuum, process optimised valve technology with exact reproducibility

Opening Stroke
1,500 mm stroke, nearly unlimited design possibilities of the steam chamber – especially with deep mouldings. On all sides good accessibility for mould change and maintenance

Hydraulics
precise positioning with mechanic parallel guiding, soft ejector contact to plate over the complete distance

Quality
solid steel construction with aluminium coated frame
modular design
usage of TOP BRANDS
CE conformity also in detail

Peter Molyneux, the brilliant and soft-spoken boss of Lionhead Studios has praised Heavy Rain, calling the story-based thriller “a first glimpse of future video games.”
 

Huperzine A is a natural compound extracted from the Chinese club moss Huperzia serrata. Worldwide studies have shown that Huperzine A supports learning and memory by protecting acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that acts as a messenger molecule in the brain. Huperzine A may be used for both short-term “brain boost” needs, such as preparing for a test, as well as more long-term needs, such as reducing the mild memory loss associated with normal aging.