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There might be some bright future for pets left by foreclosed house owners in Greenville, Texas. A big number of cats, dogs and other domestic animals have roamed the city following the increased number of foreclosure activities in the area.

Now, the Cause for Paws and Greenville City’s Animal Control Division and are being offered help in housing the abandoned animals by the Frisco Humane Society. The aid is welcomed by the city as the number of domestic animals left behind by evicted home owners continues to increase in conjunction with the rising number of foreclosed homes for sale in the area.

An agreement between the City Council and the said Society is scheduled for signature at the city’s Municipal Building. Before the signing of the agreement, a short work session will be held in the same building to iron out the details of the domestic animals’ care.

Frisco Humane Society is an association that takes in homeless cats and dogs. Those that cannot be accommodated at cat and dog shelters are offered by the Society for public adoption for fees ranging from five to 15 dollars per animal.

The collaboration with the Frisco Humane Society is not the first time that the city has launched an effort to take care of abandoned pets. Four years ago, it collaborated with the animal welfare association, Cause for Paws.

The agreement allows Cause for Paws to take the animals from cat and dog shelters to be placed in permanent residences. Brandon Krodle, City Supervisor for Animal Control has stated that the partnership has proven to be satisfactory for both Cause for Paws and Greenville City.

Krodle also added that more than 120 dogs and cats have been transferred from the local animal shelter to the care of the welfare association since October 2009.

The huge population of abandoned cats and dogs has caused problems to the city, particularly when the number of foreclosed homes for sale in the city reached its peak. Dog shelters and other animal rescue facilities are overwhelmed by the number of homeless domestic animals and have since been trying to find ways to find accommodations for them.

The agreement with the Frisco Humane Society is expected to provide permanent homes to abandoned pets. It is also expected to decrease the number of homeless domestic animals being processed by local cat and dog shelters.

On Saturday, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli attended the Powhatan Taxpayers’ Alliance Tea Party rally to address his beloved base.  Think Progress has the details of his anti-science pandering:

Cuccinelli reportedly greeted the crowd by saying that it was “great to be with so many people who appreciate the Constitution” and then talked about his challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. In particular, the crowd loved when he made fun of the EPA and joked that they could hold their breath for a few seconds and make the EPA “happy”:

“The Attorney General’s office is a very reactive office. We wouldn’t be suing the EPA if the EPA did not abandon all semblance of science and law to put out its endangerment finding on the CO2. Now, let’s make them all happy just for a moment and everybody just hold your breath,” Cuccinelli waited several seconds before saying “There you go, just a short period of time with no CO2. Now the trees are going protest but at least the EPA will be happy”.

Cuccinelli is a full-on global warming disinfomer, saying that climate change is “unverifiable and doctored” science. However, environmental and energy groups in Virginia are increasingly pushing back on Cuccinelli’s attempts to dismantle regulations.

Related posts:

• Refuting state AG’s anti-science petition, Virginia climate scientists see “great risk” from greenhouse gases
• Cuccinelli’s climate denial lawsuits could junk auto industry’s recovery

Luke Timmerman wrote:

Alkermes (NASDAQ: ALKS), the Waltham, MA-based biotech company, is announcing today it has filed an application with the FDA to start marketing a long-lasting version of naltrexone (Vivitrol) for people who are addicted to opioid-based narcotics. The Alkermes treatment, a once-monthly injection, is already approved by the FDA for treating alcohol dependence. Alkermes has asked the FDA for a faster-than-usual six-month review of its new application.

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UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

I can still remember the details of my wedding day with the most crystalline vividness, from the flower arrangements to the design of the invitations to the contents of my speech. I can also easily recall the sense of elation, hope and fulfilment. These emotional memories are very much fused to my memories of the events themselves, but they aren’t one and the same. A new study suggests that, like everyone else, I recorded these emotional memories independently of the factual aspects of the day.

Typically, the happiness of a wedding day or the sadness of a death becomes inextricably linked to the details of those events, as we repeatedly replay and reflect on them in our heads. To see the true split between an emotional event and the emotions it triggers, you need some very special conditions. Justin Feinstein from the University of Iowa College of Medicine found some – the brains of amnesiac patients.

Feinstein worked with a group of five patients who had a rare condition called anterograde amnesia, the same one that afflicted the protagonist of Memento. All the patients had suffered severe brain damage to both halves of their hippocampus, a part of the brain that’s essential for long-term memory. As a result, they couldn’t form any lasting memories after the point when they sustained their injuries. For the rest of their lives, new facts and experiences are like whispers on a breeze, lingering for moments before vanishing again.

However, it seems that these patients can retain feelings of happiness or sadness long after they’ve forgotten the events that triggered these emotions. Feinstein asked the quintet to watch film clips that either portrayed tragic scenes of loss or death, or comedic scenes of humour and laughter.

Around 5-10 minutes after the clip finished, each patient did a memory test about what they saw. Despite this short gap, the amnesiacs had little or no factual memory for the clips. Most could only remember a handful of details and some couldn’t recall any. A group of five normal people with a working hippocampus had no such problems; they remember around 6 to 8 times as many details as the amnesiacs.

They also answered a detailed questionnaire about their current feelings, before watching the clips, immediately after, just after the memory test, and a final time after half an hour or so. These results were very different. All five amnesiacs responded in the right way, frowning and crying at the sad clips while laughing and smiling at the happy ones. Even afterwards, when their memories of the films’ content had faded, they still stayed emotional for at least half an hour. Even those with the most severe factual deficits managed to hold onto the film’s emotional stings.

Of course, when you’ve only got a sample size of five people (and patients with anterograde amnesia aren’t exactly easy to come by), statistics aren’t really working in your favour. Feinstein acknowledges this, but he notes that every one of the amnesiacs showed the persistent emotions. Consider just one of the patients, known as Am1. The sad clips really got to her and she cried for several minutes. Afterwards, she couldn’t remember a single detail about them, but her sadness lingered for well over half an hour.

This separation between emotional and factual memories seems incredibly counter-intuitive and Feinstein stresses that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to see it in patients without amnesia. For now, we don’t know how long these emotional memories last for, but the important point is that they can be dissociated from factual recollections. Nor do we know how the amnesiacs keep their emotional memories; perhaps the state of their bodies gives them a clue.

Nonetheless, these results support a fascinating and widely misinterpreted study that I wrote about last year, which showed that a drug called propanolol could erase the emotional sting of scary memories. Merel Kindt trained volunteers to fear images of spiders by pairing them with electric shocks. If they were given propranolol, they still expected to receive a shock when they saw the spidery picture but they weren’t afraid of the prospect. The drug hadn’t so much erased their memories, as dulled their emotional sting.

Kindt describes Feinstein’s research as “fascinating” and says that “the data are nicely in line with our own”. But the result that really grabbed her attention was that sad memories lingered to a greater extent in amnesiacs than in normal volunteers. One of the patients, Am2, described her feelings in an interview after the experiment. She said, “It’s not so much with the happy or the good feelings. You just kind of accept them. You don’t worry about why. It’s more for what I would call negative feelings… like when I’m feeling really sad, then I have to find out why. “ She added, “They don’t go away.”

Feinstein suggests that the emotions stick around precisely because the patients don’t have a clear understanding of why they’re feeling sad. Bereft of that knowledge, they can’t deal with their feelings. Kindt says that this could easily have been tested by giving the volunteers an explicit reason for their lingering sadness, and she’s disappointed that this wasn’t done. “Nevertheless,” she says, “the data are strong.”

That has big implications for the way people with memory disorders are cared for. It suggests that something could affect the mood of a person with, say, Alzheimer’s disease, even if they’ve forgotten about the event itself. They might quickly forget a visit from a family member or a funny joke but the good mood might last long after their company has gone and the punchline is forgotten.

On the flipside, Feinstein writes, “Routine neglect from staff at nursing homes may leave the patient feeling sad, frustrated, and lonely (even though the patient can’t remember why).” He adds, “We provide clear evidence showing that the reasons for treating amnesic patients with respect and dignity go beyond simple human morals.”

Studies like these show that the fanciful world of Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind is very much a fictional one. Erasing a painful memory may not erase the emotional stings that accompanied them. In fact, it might make things worse, which has ramifications for treatments aimed at selectively erasing fearful memories in, say, people with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Remember that Feinstein’s amnesiacs held onto their sad feelings longer than usual because they couldn’t remember the source of their sadness. If this effect applies more generally, it might mean that “erasing negative memories could have the paradoxical effect of actually prolonging (rather than alleviating) feelings of distress.

Addendum: It is rare to read a scientific paper that is written so nicely that I end up liberally quoting large chunks of it, because my own take would be less eloquent. It’s also relatively rare to see the ethical and social implications of the research considered in a meaty portion of the discussion, rather than in a throwaway concluding line. Hats off to Feinstein and his co-authors Melissa Duff and Daniel Tranel for their efforts.

Reference: PNAS http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0914054107

More on memory:

• The memory molecules – interview with Todd Sacktor (and a feature in Eureka)
• Rewriting fearful memories by bringing them back to mind
• The guardians of fear – molecules that provide safety nets for scary memories
• Molecule’s constant efforts keep our memories intact
• Beta-blocker drug erases the emotion of fearful memories

There’s good news for those Android users who are looking for a budgeting and expense tracking app! Mint, the company behind the popular finance app that has been very successful on the iPhone platform is coming to the Android Market.

If you are unfamiliar with Mint, it is an extension of mint.com, which is a personal finance site which allows you to bring all your accounts into one place. It also gives you tools to budget, analyze and track your spending.

The Mint app ties into an account made on the mint.com site.  This makes it useful when you are out an about to keep track of your money flow. Having used this app on the iPod Touch, I can say that it is a well thought out app, and is well put together.  Sporting 2 million registered users, Mint has been rated the #1 personal finance app out there.

There is no word on an exact release date as of yet, but mint.com is announcing the app on their site with the following quote:

In the coming months, the Mint team plans to address user requests, adding support for thousands of additional financial institutions and an Android application to expand its mobile presence beyond its award-winning iPhone application.

Check out the Mint site for more info on how the whole system works.

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General Motors engineers held a little update for the Chevrolet Volt late Monday and announced that the extended-range electric-vehicle (they hate calling it a plug-in hybrid) has been returning 40 miles on battery power alone as promised. Engineers at GM are driving around six pre-production Chevrolet Volt units on a day-to-day basis.

Andrew Farah, the Volt’s chief engineer said that GM still has a “few things to tweak” with the car, including computer software and controls, but the car is on schedule for full production in November.

Farah also confirmed that he got 41.5 miles and 42.5 miles on his last two electric trips in the Volt. He said he achieved those figures under normal driving conditions on running errands like picking up tax preparation software and groceries.

“I’m not speeding, I’m not taking it particularly easy either, because I’m driving the way I would normally drive,” he said.

Farah also said that the Chevrolet Volt will get about 50 mpg when it is in extended-range mode with the engine running. While GM won’t confirm how many gallons of gas the tank will hold, they say the range of the Volt should be more than 300 miles.

Click here for more news on the Chevrolet Volt.

2011 Chevrolet Volt:

– By: Omar Rana

Source: MSNBC

The Frontal Cortex reports on an interesting study that found that the personality characteristics teachers define as creative are the same ones that make their pupils least likeable in the classroom.

Eric Barker recently referred me to this interesting study, which looked at how elementary school teachers perceived creativity in their students. While the teachers said they wanted creative kids in their classroom, they actually didn’t. In fact, when they were asked to rate their students on a variety of personality measures – the list included everything from “individualistic” to “risk-seeking” to “accepting of authority” – the traits mostly closely aligned with creative thinking were also closely associated with their “least favorite” students. As the researchers note, “Judgments for the favorite student were negatively correlated with creativity; judgments for the least favorite student were positively correlated with creativity.”

This shouldn’t be too surprising: Would you really want a little Picasso in your class? How about a baby Gertrude Stein? Or a teenage Eminem? The point is that the classroom isn’t designed for impulsive expression – that’s called talking out of turn. Instead, it’s all about obeying group dynamics and exerting focused attention. Those are important life skills, of course, but decades of psychological research suggest that such skills have little to do with creativity.

This is a classic example of the conflict where an institution that imposes strict group standards of behaviour claims to promote individuality and self-expression.

A lovely study published last year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology demonstrated how people who don’t go along with a task for justifiable moral reasons are typically rejected by the group, even when the individuals in the group might otherwise agree with their moral stand.

In other words, we like rebels as long as they are not bothering us.

Link to Frontal Cortex on ‘Classroom Creativity’.

The DA Series Rate Controls by ITT Enidine Inc. are ideally suited for high-energy, heavy load applications requiring rate control in tension, compression or both directions. These non-adjustable, custom-orificed units are designed to specific input conditions, and allow for single and multiple orifice configurations.

Upon compression of the rate control, the compression check ball seats. As the piston head moves, oil is forced through the orifice hole(s) located in the shock tube, producing the required damping force. After the oil has passed through the orifice hole(s), a portion of the oil passes through the extension check valve and fills the rod end of the shock tube. The remainder of the oil volume displaced by the piston rod compresses the foam accumulator.

Upon extension of the rate control, the extension check ball seats. As the piston head moves, oil is forced through the orifice hole(s) located in the shock tube producing the required damping force. The compression check ball is unseated by the flow of oil that fills the blind end of the shock tube.

ITT Enidine Inc.’s DA Series models can be custom orificed to provide increasing resisting force over the stroke through the use of multiple orifices in the shock tube. This can be beneficial when controlling the velocity of a lid as it closes, since the torque from the weight of the lid changes as it closes.

Notching device equipment fitted in the middle of transversal carriage.
It is a box structure , appropriately dimensioned with suitable ribs. It offers maximum rigidity and ensures chatter free operations, also during the most severe working conditions.

The notches are produced by a rotating cutting tool: the combined rotation of the tool and of the spindlel where the roll is mounted, generates the helix notches while their number and angle depend on the ratio between tool and spindle rotation speed.
Generally the CNC control works on four axis: the tool rotation, the spindle rotation and the two horizontal axis.

With such a control the machine can automatically recognise the number of principles and if the number of notches is divisible for them, the tool is automatically positioned over one notch for each roll rotation.

Thanks to the longitudinal axes control, even a different distance between each groove centreline can be easily handling.
All equipment works by CNC control. To execute in very simple way all kind of notching operations we realized a special CNC graphic software.

TECHNICAL DATA
Notching rebar diameter range ø mm 6…50
Tooling spindle speed inclined notches rpm 1…500
Tooling spindle speed horizontal notches rpm 1…500
Notching for roll on request
Notching angle on request
Omitting ribs on request
Enlarging ribs on request

TURNING TOOL HOLDER
Shank clamping capacity mm 40×40(*)

Turning tool holder fitted on right or left side of integrated notching device equipment

(*) more capacity on request

ROBOPLANET has registered several patents covering devices for the performance of metal thickness measurement effected by means of ultrasounds.

Our technological breakthrough versus the current state of the art materializes from several factors :

– over 40’000 measurements per m2 of inspected surface
– 400 times more measures than the state of the art, 25% faster
– A light and simple tool (5 Kgs), fully controlled by a single operator
– 2D picture hull map taking automated report issuance
– systematic archiving of all meansurement data
– significant time saving leading to competitive economics

The world’s first full automatic palletiser with servo control, kinetic energy recovery system and automatic pattern set up.

Besides that it is the most compact palletiser available, Ehcolo has entered the future and upgraded its palletisers with servo control, so that its palletisers are now even more accurate, because of the use of encoders mounted on all positioning motors, are much faster and with soft stop and start on all motors, resulting in low noise and long life time, this combined with parts of the highest quality available, enables Ehcolo to give as standard 2 years warranty on all parts.

The nature of palletisers is that motors stops and start all the time and many of those same number as the capacity of bags per hour, so there is a lot of braking energy which usually just is converted to heat and even on some palletisers still stops are done by mechanical brakes, which gives a lot of noise and a lot of wear and tear on brakes and naturally also on the equipment itself. Ehcolo has for years used frequency converters on all motors, and thus created a lot of heat for no use except in cold areas. The new servo controllers on Ehcolo palletisers are now inter connected in the KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System), that means that all braking energy (like on the modern hybrid cars) are collected and re-used, so there is a substantial saving in power consumption, so we are proud to say, that we can now supply the world’s first “GREEN” palletiser.

New is also the 15” color touch screen, which is very operator friendly, and where also new patterns easily can be made by Ehcolo’s new automatic pattern set up system, just by choosing pallet size and keying in the product dimensions. Of course many ways of communication like Ethernet for remote control etc.

Ehcolo can supply 14 different models of palletisers for all types of bags on all types of pallets and standard with capacities from 300 to 2500 bags per hour.

The design of Ehcolo palletisers are also made for container shipment in such way that assembly on site takes only two days and as all palletisers are tested with product in the factory, the full production can start on the third day.

The EHCOLO palletisers are being exported worldwide. Many references in supplying complete bagging-palletising-wrapping lines, where we cooperate with the worlds leading manufacturers of bagging, wrapping and hood stretching equipment.

The company is situated in the southern western part of Denmark.
The international airport Billund is less than one hour away from the factory, so it is easy to come and visit us and see the new palletiser in our show room.

PHOTO: A typical flour bag palletiser, in this case for CEREALIA.

IDS Imaging Development Systems GmbH has been awarded the prestigious ISO 14001 environmental management certification on March 1st, 2010. The certification is proof that the German machine vision specialist has implemented an efficient environmental management system and complies with all applicable requirements and regulations. The ISO 14001 international standard provides the most important accreditation of environmental management in the manufacturing industry. Certification is voluntary. Currently, only about 4,000 companies in Germany have achieved certification.

IDS is a leading manufacturer of high-quality cameras and frame grabbers for industrial and non-industrial machine vision applications. Founded as a two-man enterprise in 1997, the company today has more than 70 employees in the development, production, sales, marketing and support departments at the Obersulm headquarters. IDS is internationally represented by a subsidiary in the USA and through a network of distributors in almost all European and Asian countries.

The machine vision specialist has been ISO 9001 certified since 2005. Certification to the ISO 14001 environmental standard was thus the next logical step for IDS, which had introduced a resource-saving production and sustainable economic management system long before the eco audit. “Environmental protection has always been a very important issue for us. In concrete terms, this means that we aim at developing and manufacturing products with minimal impact on our environment and workplace throughout the product lifecycle,” explains Eric Zimmermann, Quality and Environment Manager at IDS.

The new production and office building, which was finished in 2008, is powered by geothermal and solar energy. The building is carbon neutral on the annual average. In the nine-month preparatory phase leading up to the eco audit, additional measures were implemented, including lead-free electronics production and reusable packaging. In addition, software is no longer provided on CD. The next improvements of the environmental management system have already been defined: Maximum reduction of paper consumption and further optimization of the building’s energy balance.

KINTO is the leading supplier in China for manufacturing of flexible insulated busbars. Such busbars consist of several layers of uncoated or tinned copper strips and are insulated with flexible high quality PVC compound.

The main features of flexible insulated busbars:
– Easy assembly.
– Possibility of reducing sizes of the equipment.
– The bending-radius could be smaller than that of normal cable or solid copper bars, so that the connections could be more simple and short, and visually it could have better effect.
– Lower temperature rise on the flexible insulated busbars than on normal copper bars.
– High flexibility: no problem with vibrations or thermal expansions.

Technical data of electrical conductor
Copper strips (>99.9%Cu).
Surface: uncoated or tinned.
Electrical conductivity: >56 Sm/mm2.
Tensile strength: >200N/mm2.
Extensibility: >30%.

Technical data of insulation
Material: PVC.
Color: black.
Thickness: 1.8-2.1mm.
Shore hardness: A70-80.
Electrical strength: >23kV/mm.
Oxygen index: 30%.
Flame retardant; self-extinguishing.
Elasticity: >180% after 7-day aging-test under 135 degree celsius.
Tensile strength: >20MPa.

Technical data of flexible insulated busbars
Operating temperature: -30 degree to +105 degree celsius.
Operating voltage: 750V.
Voltage withstand performance with 15min / 50Hz AC:
– between flexible insulated busbar and earth: >15kV.
– between two flexible insulated busbars: >30kV.

These switches have been designed for heavy duty applications, where the products should withstand vibrations or should have an exceptionally long life and repeat accuracy. Sturdy electrical elements, incast pin as a fulcrum to facilitate a smooth transition of bell crank lever for precise motion transfer, a wide scale (individually marked) with a specially designed rack and pinion system are it’s key features. Intended end uses can be large turbines, compressors, applications in thermal power plants, steel, cement and other such infrastructure industries.
These switches can be configured with a lot of options like electrical elements and sensing element configurations to suit the intended working media.

By now, the monobloc emergency stops which we introduced last year can also be supplied with illumination.
These E-stops convince by their extremely low mounting depth of 9.0 mm and by an attractive and compact actuator that is large enough to ensure quick and safe operation. The integrated contact unit is equipped with PCB-mount terminals or Faston connections. In addition to the lamp socket either 2 NC or 1 NC/1NO contacts are possible. The E-stops comply with the Standards EN60947-5-1, EN 60947-5-5, EN 60068 and EN 13850 (foolproofness).
Acc. to IEC/EN 60947-5-1, the rated operating voltage is 250V, the thermal continuous current 2.5 A.
The buttons have a twist release (right or left) and a clearly visible position indicator,
degree of protection IP65.
For the E-stops with PCB-mount terminals, it is recommended to mount them onto a
separate circuit board.

type: JSO4 thread sizes M3,M3.5 ,M4,M5. Self Clinching Standoffs provide a strong torque resistant captivated female thread in a spacer configuration for thin panel applications. Available in Steel, Stainless Steel and Aluminum .As minimal surface finishing is required after installation, this fastener installs fully flush from the back of the panel. The hexagon head provides excellent torque out and push out resistance.