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A major UK food manufacturer recently prevented a catastrophe from occurring.

They needed to complete a repair of their 6” stainless steel pipe, but were unable to use a conventional mechanical pipe purge system.

Because the repair was in a section without an entry or exit point, there would have been no way to extract the purging system after completion of the weld.

Due to the nature of the business, it was critical that the pipe was completely free from residue that could potentially contaminate any food produce.

When the situation was presented to Huntingdon Fusion Techniques Limited (HFT), world leaders in the manufacture and supply of weld purge equipment, they were able to suggest an immediate solution.

HFT’s Argweld® ‘Water-soluble Purge Film’, was recommended, the weld completed and the pipe fully operational, with a minimum of fuss.

The Purge film is available in a kit that comprises a 20 metre length of 1 metre wide film, folded in half and rolled on a 500 mm long spool.

Inside the spool are two bottles of adhesive and a special tool for cutting out the water soluble dams.

Once glued inside a pipe, the water soluble film dam makes an impenetrable barrier, but can then be easily washed away when hydrostatically testing or washing out the pipe.

Not only does it fully dissolve upon contact with water, the film and adhesive are completely biodegradable and all packing recyclable.

More product information is available from the company.

AGME has recently designed and manufactured a special purpose machine for greasing seat tracks. With this customized machine the upper and lower tracks are greased using a spraying system.

The accuracy and precision in locating the exact surface or points to grease, as well as the right grease amount apraying and the cleannes of the operation, are some of the multiple advantages of automating the greasing operations with a spraying system.

This special machine perform the following operations:

1.- Automatic greasing of each lower track with 4 grease lines
2.- Automatic greasing of the teeth of the upper track rastplattes using Walther system.
3.- Greasing of the upper track released axis

For each greasing operation there are:

– Walther spraying valves with their nozzles, air pressure regulation, etc.
– One controlled servomotor unit for the valves controlled movement.
– One centering elevator

All the greasing valves are fed from the same Walther grease pump system. There are two pumps included in order to avoid production stops when substituting the grease barrels.

With this AGME greasing special machine all the seat track required greasing operations are automated in a very efficient way.

One of the joys of parenting, at least in my opinion, is when your child grows up and turns into your friend.

Oh, I know it isn’t totally the same but in many ways my oldest daughter is an indispensable part of my social life – what little I have. At 27 she gives me great advice about hair, make-up, and clothes. She has known me for a long time and of anyone she knows my flaws… and loves me anyway. My son in law is much the same…except I don’t usually take his advice about makeup and clothes. He is good for a hug almost anytime and as the years have passed he has become more and more part of me – like one of my own kids.

My daughter and son in law, Erin and Jon

One thing I am learning is boundaries. This isn’t easy for me because I have not really been allowed to have them  for most of my life. Because I didn’t have them I didn’t understand how to honor them in others. It made for a rocky first few years in my daughter’s marriage as I tried to pass on my own advice and knowledge (some good…some not) to my daughter and her husband. In reality I should have been supporting my son in law and his wife.

Do you get the difference?

In the past few months I have had to learn about boundaries in my own life. I have had to learn to say, “I love you but I can’t do what you think I should.” I have had to learn to accept people’s opinions as just that. Opinions.

This has been good for me. Not only has it strengthened my character but it has allowed me an understanding of the importance of honoring the boundaries of other people – and not just honoring those boundaries but loving the person although I don’t always agree. Maybe I don’t know everything after all.

I guess it boils down to allowing my kids to grow up and become adults who make mistakes and have successes completely removed from any input from me. For them, it means allowing mom to be more than mom. At some point the adult child and the parent of the adult child have to look at each other and recognize that the love is eternal but the relationship has changed.

I am so thankful for the two adults pictured above.  I don’t do everything the way they would want me to but they love me enough to respect and pray for me. I appreciate that.

image: Swiped from Erin Audet Myer’s Facebook by Marye Audet

Post from: Blisstree

Parent to Friend: When Your Kid Grows Up

Contributor: “Dr. J”
Dr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200.

A diet secret this doctor will tell you about!

I have a diet secret to tell you about! I suppose I should keep it to myself until I write the book, which, with this diet secret, will make me Bill Gates’ neighbor, but then I really like living in Florida, and besides, I already know one of Bill’s neighbors (he was sleeping on the bus next to Dr. J-Senior) and he didn’t have much positive to say about it.

But more about this secret! For one thing, it’s not only very low cost, or possibly free, but it will save you money! Now for the good stuff. I can guarantee you might save at least 1,000 calories a week using my secret! This of course will lead to a significant weight loss over time. Somewhere, as a conservative estimate, in the range of almost 15 pounds a year!

This is comparable or superior to the results of year long studies of sustained weight loss of any diet drug,
or diet system available today!

In addition, you do not run the risks of drug side effects or allergies, or the various problems attributed to diets that recommend a very high or very low amount of one of the basic nutrients.

In addition, my secret has the potential to lower blood pressure and improve diabetes, by decreasing the amount of salt and sugar or high-fructose corn syrup in your diet.

The Secret: Water!

We all know that drinking clean, safe water is important and that water serves several important functions in maintaining our health.

Functions of water in the human body

• Water is essential for digesting food. It is also important for getting rid of various toxic elements from the body, in the form of urine, sweat and fecal matter.
• Water helps to cushion our joints and prevents shocks.
• Water in blood is the carrier of oxygen and nutrients to our body cells.
• Water in lymph (a fluid that is part of our immune system) helps the body fight against diseases.
• Water helps regulate and maintain our body temperature.
• Water prevents dehydration and thus helps to maintain proper metabolism in our body.

Water, however, can also be our weight loss secret!

Water will dilute and diffuse the calorie, salt and sugar content of food and drink!

I discovered my weight loss secret when I was looking for a way to eat fewer calories, yet eat the same foods. One of the ways I have found to improve a dish is with the use of condiments. Being a label reader, I was initially shocked at the high level of calories, sugar, HFCS, and salt in condiments I like to use.

Why do we need to be a prisoner of the food industries Franken-food creation departments? Their job is not to provide a good product, but to provide a product that will addict you and keep you addicted. They do this with these ingredients.

I decided to dilute their products to a more reasonable calorie, sugar, HFCS and salt level. Guess what? They still tasted good enough, and I was saving plenty of calories by just adding water to the product. I also use my secret ingredient, water, with diffusion, to soak every high-sodium product I can to get the salt out!

You will have to experiment and slowly adapt to how much dilution and diffusion will work for you. As you get used to the more normal level of flavor and seasoning, you will see your consumption of calories, sugar, HFCS and salt decrease. This secret can be used with any sauce, soup, condiment or high-salt product.

This is not hype; water really works. There are already many thousands of people out there in the world who are using water to control and maintain their ideal weight. Millions of years of human use supports the safety and efficacy of water.

Here you are then with a product that can make you lose weight straight from the tap. All you have to do is use it.

Most diet secrets promise the same things:

• Lose weight fast
• Burn fat fast
• Never be hungry
• Eat the foods you love
• Eat anything you want
• Results last forever
• Reshapes your body
• Easy to follow
• Increase your energy
• Guaranteed success

Well, water delivers! (Well water also delivers.)

Water! Doctor tested and approved!

If for any reason you are not 100 percent satisfied with water, my weight loss secret, simply return to me for a full and prompt apology, shipping cost excluded, and please, use a spill-proof container!

Results will vary depending on your needs and utilization of my secret.

Of course, I would like to see all of you using my secret with a healthy diet and exercise program. However, even without that, this small lifestyle change will be a first step in the right direction.

From the RSS feed of CalorieLab News (REF3076322B7)

Dr. J reveals his weight loss secret!

As employment picks up over the decade, America will begin to look like a very different country.

Industries like manufacturing are vanishing. But the senior care sector is booming.

Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics published an interesting study about job trends and predictions.

Among the things it looked at: the American industries that will see the biggest employment growth from 2008-2018.

Take a look at your next job>>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• 10 American Industries That Will Be Destroyed In The Next Decade
• Now See The REAL State Of The US Banking Industry
• Here's Why There Won't Be A V-Shaped Recovery In Jobs

Seth Godin asked some people to write a brief essay about what they think matters now. It could be anything. Even just an image if you wanted. Here’s who contributed:

The result: What Matters Now, a free 82-page PDF eBook.

I decided to write about apologizing. Specifically about saying “I’m sorry”. It’s an easy thing to do, but so many companies get it wrong.

Here’s my essay:

Check out the complete What Matters Now book today.

The level of innovation in regions varies considerably across almost all EU countries. This is one of the main findings of the 2009 Regional Innovation Scoreboard (RIS), published on 14 December 2009 by the Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC), one of the seven institutes of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) together with the Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry and the Maastricht University (MERIT).

This 2009 RIS provides a comparative assessment of innovation performance across the 201 regions of the European Union and Norway in order to inform policy priorities and to monitor trends. With respect to the previous report published in 2006, which used a very limited set of regional indicators, this report offers richer information to regional innovation policy-makers of more comprehensive and detailed, regional Community Innovation Survey (CIS) indicators. Despite this progress, the data available at regional level remains considerably less than at national level, and in particular four Member States – Germany, Sweden, Ireland and the Netherlands – were not able to provide regional CIS data. Due to these limitations, the 2009 RIS does not provide an absolute ranking of individual regions, but ranks groups of regions at broadly similar levels of performance.

The report also shows that there is considerable diversity in regional innovation performances. Thus all countries have regions at different levels of performance. This emphasizes the need for policies to reflect regional contexts and for better data to assess regional innovation performances. The most heterogeneous countries are Spain, Italy and Czech Republic where innovation performance varies from low to medium-high.

It is stressed that the most innovative regions are typically in the most innovative countries. Nearly all the “high innovators” regions are in the group of “Innovation Leaders” identified in the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS). Similarly all of the “low innovators” regions are located in countries that have below average performance in the EIS. However, the results also show regions that outperform their country level. Regional performance appears relatively stable since 2004. The pattern of innovation is quite stable between year 2004 and 2006, with only a few changes in group membership. More specifically, most of the changes are positive and relate to Cataluña, Comunidad Valenciana, Illes Balears, and Ceuta (Spain), Bassin Parisien, Est and Sud-Ouest (France), Unterfranken (Germany), Közép-Dunántúl (Hungary), Algarve (Portugal), and Hedmark og Oppland (Norway). Longer time series data would be needed to analyse the dynamics of regional innovation performance and how this might relate to other factors such as changes in GDP, industrial structure and public policies.

Download the 2009 Regional Innovation Scoreboard report

Google Sidewiki has been out for a couple of months now and, while it hasn’t set the world on fire, it is proving rather popular given the expectations. The feature allows anyone in the world to leave a comment on any web page online which other visitors who are also using Sidewiki can read and rate. When it launched, it came bundled with the Google Toolbar which meant it was relegated to just Internet Explorer and Firefox. Now, Google Sidewiki has finally made it to Chrome thanks to a dedicated extension.

Seeing as this was one of the most requested features regarding Sidewiki, it’s nice to see that Google has finally got around to supporting the feature on its own browser. While the way it’s implemented is a little different than what Firefox or IE users may be used to, all the functionality is the same. As with most Chrome extensions, it ads a button to the toolbar which notifies users if there are any Sidewiki comments on the current page and how many, though only up to nine comments after which it just displays 9+.

In the toolbar version, there is a small sidebar visible on the left when there are comments available. After this though, the interface is very similar. The comments are listed based on their rating and users can scroll down the list to view more or write their own.

Sidewiki started out as a toolbar feature and is ver… (read more)

Week 6 of the basketball season saw the Lady Hawks drop a close contest with Waubonsee (51-48) and record a solid 64-37 victory over Daley College.

Against Waubonsee Peggie Parhas grabbed 11 rebounds and scored 23 points.

Ann Kirchoff tallied 14 rebounds and added 18 points in the game against Daley College. The Lady Hawks are now 7-5 overall, 7-4 in Region IV action.

When Namco Bandai announced that they were releasing a PS3 version of Tales of Vesperia, they threw in a bunch of additional content to sweeten the deal. Square Enix is also going down that route with Star

The December 14th Women’s Basketball Poll finds the Lady Hawks ranked second in the Division III rankings. Harper trails only Madison College.

Individual statistical rankings find the following Harper players receiving recognition:

• Top 10 Scorers: Peggie Parhas (#9) averaging 16.0 points per game.
• Free Throw %: Noreen Davis (#6) at 19 of 22 attempts for 86%
• Assists: Peggie Parhas (#2) 5.2 per game
• 3-Point %: Betsy Bailey (#1) with 100%, Jasmine Chew (#3) with 50% and Noreen Davis (#7) with 43.0%

Filed under: Motorsports

Open-wheel racing in America has been in shambles for far too long. But now that CART and the IndyCar Series are back together, with the joint Indy Racing League taking steps to unify the feeder series below them.

Grouped under the “Road to Indy” initiative, the coordination brings the US Formula 2000, Star Mazda and Indy Lights championships under one umbrella, giving aspiring drivers a clear ladder up which they can ascend with the aim of breaking into the top-tier IndyCar Series.

Although the Star Mazda and USF2000 series will continue with their own schedules while the Indy Lights series continues to support IndyCar racers, all four will come together during the month-long Indy 500 extravaganza at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway as well as the events in St Petersburg and Iowa.

[Source: IRL]

IRL unifies feeder series under “Road to Indy” banner originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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KNOXVILLE — Two new ombudspersons will begin mediating disputes for faculty and staff at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, on Jan. 1.

The faculty ombudsperson will be Bill Nugent; the staff ombudsperson will be Elaine Wynn.

“I’m pleased to announce Bill and Elaine’s appointments,” Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek said. “They are both very experienced mediators and can help diffuse situations that otherwise might go to the formal grievance or complaint processes. Using mediation to resolve issues before they reach a boiling point is cost-effective, time-saving and allows everyone to remain more productive.”

Bill Nugent

A professor in the College of Social Work, Nugent has been at UT since 1991. He has a doctorate in social work and, before coming to UT, worked as an assistant professor at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, as an adjunct professor at Florida State University, as an outpatient psychotherapist in Florida, and as a training director for a network of runaway shelters and family service agencies in Florida.

Wynn has 20 years of experience as a conflict resolution specialist, serving individuals, families, schools, churches and the courts. She currently works in Knoxville as an independent mediator and volunteers as a mediator for Knox County Juvenile Court. She has a bachelor’s degree in behavior science from Lesley College in Cambridge, Mass., and a master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School. She worked as the director of adult programs at Concord United Methodist Church, was the first director of Knoxville’s Community Mediation Center and has provided training and program design for a wide variety of organizations.

The ombudsperson program provides an informal mediator, and the process is an alternative to the university’s formal complaint and grievance procedure for staff and the administrative and Faculty Senate process for faculty. An ombudsperson does not serve as an advocate for the faculty or staff member or the university, but as a supporter of fair practices. If mediation doesn’t work, faculty and staff can turn to the formal grievance process.

When faculty or staff members are involved in disputes with colleagues, they are encouraged to schedule a meeting

Elaine Wynn

with the ombudsperson to see if the issue can be resolved without using the university’s formal grievance process. Faculty and staff can self-refer or be referred by others in their department.

When one party contacts the ombudsperson, the ombudsperson then contacts the other parties involved.

To schedule an appointment with an ombudsperson, call 974-6481. Either Nugent or Wynn will return the call and set up the meetings.

In most cases, Nugent said, the ombudsperson first will meet with the individual parties separately. At some point, the two parties might meet together. If a resolution can’t be reached, the mediator will guide the parties into the formal grievance process.

Two offices in Greve Hall will be set up for the meetings.

“When a dispute goes to the formal process, it often becomes situation where someone wins and someone loses,” Nugent said. “Through mediation, we try to reach a resolution that makes it a win-win process.”

Wynn agreed.

“Helping people get along really strengthens the whole system,” she said.

For more information, see http://web.utk.edu/~senate/ombuds/index.html.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, [email protected])

Congratulations to Jesus Escareno of Harper College’s Men’s Cross Country team for earning All-American honors for the 2009 season.

In the NJCAA D-III Region IV championship meet, Jesus took first place in the individual standings and he came in second in the National meet with a time of 27:58. Jesus is now a two-time All-American and his teammates voted him MVP for the 2009 season.

We posted about the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 delay a few weeks ago, and the company has finally come around to officially admitting it.

In a blog post on their Xperiancers blog they admit the device will be coming “in the first weeks of January”, blaming they delay on work in optimising battery life:

Hi All – Over the last couple of weeks there has been a few, OK more than a few rumours that the X2 is going to be delayed until January and I’m sure it will not come as a surprise when we say that these are well founded.

The software worked fine but when we started integrating it with some of the network specific apps it threw up a few issues which we’re working to fix.

It’s all minor tweaks really (extending the battery life and speeding up aspects of the software), but we want to be sure that when we ship this it is as good as it should be and that you don’t have to constantly upgrade the software as we iron out these wrinkles.

So… we’re launching first week of January. Really sorry if you were looking forward to getting hold of one before then but it will be worth it when we get there.

With devices such as the LG eXpo and HTC HD2 making the smartphone appear rapidly obsolete, one wonders if anyone will really be around left to care.

Via Engadget.com

The crisis is not just in Greece.

The new battle line may be Austria, whose banks have exposure to the sick men of Eastern Europe.

WSJ: Austria nationalized a key regional bank in a multibillion-euro bailout that offered a fresh reminder that Europe’s banks remain vulnerable to shocks, despite recent signs of economic stabilization.

Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, personally intervened in the bailout talks over the weekend, urging swift action amid concerns that Hypo Group Alpe Adria’s problems could envelop other Austrian banks and its much larger parent, BayernLB — a linchpin in Germany’s troubled state-controlled Landesbank sector.

Mr. Trichet called both Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and Horst Seehofer, governor of the German state of Bavaria, to ensure that Hypo was rescued, according to people familiar with the matter.

Read the whole thing >>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Desperate Greece May Pull Argentina’s "Kitchen-Sink" Move To Break Out Of Its Death Loop
• Greek Finance Minister Comes Out Swinging, Hints At Similarities With US Debt Situation
• Gartman: The EU Exodus Is Coming

Quick rise breads are an easy addition to most any table, holiday or no. They are a great way to use up left over fruits and vegetables and more often than not, you’ll find yourself or a loved one sneaking into the kitchen for an extra piece. Make them super sensational with these tips and recipes!

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The latest NY Fed Empre Manufacturing survey adds fuel to the double-dip viewpoint.

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The Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates that conditions for New York manufacturers leveled off in December, following four months of improvement. The general business conditions index fell 21 points, to 2.6. The indexes for new orders and shipments posted somewhat more moderate declines but also moved close to zero. Input prices picked up a bit, as the prices paid index rebounded to roughly its November level; however, the prices received index moved further into negative territory, suggesting that price increases are not being passed along. Current employment indexes slipped back into negative territory. Future indexes remained well above zero but signaled somewhat less widespread optimism than in recent months. Indexes for expected prices paid and received declined moderately but remained well above zero.

In a series of supplementary questions (see Supplemental Reports tab), manufacturers were asked about recent and expected changes in the prices paid for various categories of goods and services. Respondents predicted that prices paid for most budget categories would increase by 2 to 3 percentage points more in 2010 than in 2009. Prices paid overall were reported to have risen by 2.5 percent in 2009 and were expected to rise by 4.2 percent next year. The average respondent anticipated an increase of 2.1 percent in both wages and costs of outside services, 7.6 percent in employee benefit costs, and 3.5 percent in nonmedical insurance costs. In response to a separate question, the average respondent saw a roughly 7 percent chance that prices paid would decline by more than 2 percent; in last year’s survey, the probability of such a decline was pegged at 19 percent.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Wholesale Inflation Rises More Than Expected Led By Surge In Energy
• The Recovery Is Faltering
• Rosenberg: The Manufacturing Collapse Has Resumed