Queenstown named top destination

Posted on by

Queenstown has taken top honours in the 2014 World Travel Awards, being named Australasia's Leading Destination and nominated in the World's Leading Destination category.

Meanwhile, The Spire, in Queenstown, has been nominated in the World's Leading Boutique Hotel category, along with Huka Lodge (Taupo).

The awards were launched in 1993 to acknowledge excellence in the world's travel and tourism industry.

Winners are chosen by tourism professionals, including travel agencies, tour and transport companies and tourism organisations, in more than 160 countries.

Destination Queenstown chief executive Graham Budd was delighted with the award win for the resort and its nomination in the world category.

The resort had been nominated in the Australasian category for the past four years, he said.

The World's Leading Destination will be determined by public vote via the World Travel Awards website. Voting closes on October 26.

Queenstown was one of 16 international finalists. The others are: Cancun (Mexico), Cape Town (South Africa), China, Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Istanbul (Turkey), Jamaica, Las Vegas (Nevada, United States), London (England), Maldives, Marrakech (Morocco), New York (United States), Quito (Ecuador), Rio de Janiero (Brazil), Sydney (Australia) and Yorkshire (England).

The winner will be announced at the Grand Final Gala in Marrakech, Morocco, on November 29.

Read the original here:

Queenstown named top destination

First Wings for Autism flight heads to Disney

Posted on by

More than 20 area children with special needs and their families will travel from Boston to Walt Disney World on Friday on the first ever Magic for Autism flight.

Each of the 21 families who paid to make the trip to Orlando, Florida, includes a family member with special needs such as autism or down syndrome-which can make travel extremely difficult due to sensory stimuli and fear.

The trip is a culmination of four years of work by the Charles River Center along withsupport from JetBlue, Delta and American Airlines as well as Massport and TSA to conduct a test run travel program called Wings for Autism.

The program itself provides a true-to-life travel dress rehearsal to support families of children with special needs who find plane travel extremely challenging. The Magic for Autism trip evolves the practice of travel into an actual vacation effort.

Rebecca Daugherty, mom of three children including 10-year-old Riley, who has autism, said the trip is an amazing opportunity for both Riley and his siblings.

I am thrilled beyond belief that my children will finally be able to experience Disney World, said Daugherty,. In addition to this being inclusive for individuals with ASD, this trip will be tremendously fun for our neuro-typical children who cant always attend events due to their brothers needs."

Alan Day, owner of ASD vacations and father of an autistic son, facilitated and organized the trip and said he was focused on providing support to each family throughout their vacation.

Support is the magic word, Day said.. By providing support- at the airport, on the plane and on the ground courtesy of Walt Disney World and staff from Autism on the Seas- we can ensure that each traveling family experiences the unexplainable magic that comes with any trip to Walt Disney World.

See the original post:

First Wings for Autism flight heads to Disney

Why Super Micro Computer (SMCI) Might Surprise This Earnings Season – Tale of the Tape

Posted on by

Investors are always looking for stocks that are poised to beat at earnings season and Super Micro Computer, Inc. ( SMC I) may be one such company. The firm has earnings coming up pretty soon, and events are shaping up quite nicely for their report.

That is because Super Micro Computer is seeing favorable earnings estimate revision activity as of late, which is generally a precursor to an earnings beat. After all, analysts raising estimates right before earnings-with the most up-to-date information possible-is a pretty good indicator of some favorable trends underneath the surface for SMCI in this report.

In fact, the Most Accurate Estimate for the current quarter is currently at 35 cents per share for SMCI, compared to a broader Zacks Consensus Estimate of 34 cents per share. This suggests that analysts have very recently bumped up their estimates for SMCI, giving the stock a Zacks Earnings ESP of 2.94% heading into earnings season.

Why is this Important?

A positive reading for the Zacks Earnings ESP has proven to be very powerful in producing both positive surprises, and outperforming the market. Our recent 10 year backtest shows that stocks that have a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) or better show a positive surprise nearly 70% of the time, and have returned over 28% on average in annual returns (see more Top Earnings ESP stocks here ).

that SMCI has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and an ESP in positive territory, investors might want to consider this stock ahead of earnings. Clearly, recent earnings estimate revisions suggest that good things are ahead for Super Micro Computer, and that a beat might be in the cards for the upcoming report.

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report

SUPER MICRO COM (SMCI): Free Stock Analysis Report

To read this article on Zacks.com click here.

Continue reading here:

Why Super Micro Computer (SMCI) Might Surprise This Earnings Season - Tale of the Tape

NFL Picks: Week 7 Predictions from Odds Shark Super Computer

Posted on by

Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

The Cleveland Brownswilltry to do something in Week 7 they have never done before, while Peyton Manning will attempt to make history against a team that has been historically very tough on him.

If the Odds Shark NFL prediction computer is accurate, the Browns will cover the biggest road spread in franchise history, and the San Francisco 49ers will thwart Mannings attempt at breaking the all-time passing touchdown mark.

The computer boasts a winning record against the spread (ATS) in all six weeks so far, although it has been subpar in its Westgate SuperContest selections (where handicappers choose five games each week in a $2 million prize pool).

Week 7 started with a thud as the computer picked the New England Patriots to cover a double-digit spread against the New York Jets. They were lucky to escape with a 27-25 win, dropping the Pats to 4-13 ATS in 17 recent games when laying 10 points or more.

Cleveland is favored by 5.5 points, according to most sportsbooks monitored by Bleacher Report lines partner Odds Shark. The computer has the Browns winning, 22-11. This is just the 10th time in Browns history (current franchise) that they have been a road favorite, and they never closed higher than 3.5 points, per the Odds Shark NFL database.

The Broncos will eke out a 30-26 win over the 49ers, if the computer is correct, which would be a San Francisco cover and would probably mean that Manning would not have thrown for three touchdowns to break Brett Favres record of 508.

Manning has thrown just five TDs in four career games against the Niners, and his quarterback rating against them is less than 90, so history suggests he will have a tough time in Week 7.

At least one sportsbook, however, believes Manning will throw for at least three, adding a Week 7 prop at a minus-180 payout.

Originally posted here:

NFL Picks: Week 7 Predictions from Odds Shark Super Computer

Shannon Layne, DVM and VCA Dunmore Animal Hospital Now Offer Stem Cell Therapy to Pet Patients in Pain

Posted on by

Dunmore, Pennsylvania (PRWEB) October 17, 2014

VCA Dunmore Animal Hospital is proud to announce the addition of Shannon Layne, DVM and her interest in stem cell therapy to their team. Credentialed in Regenerative Cell Therapy with Vet-Stem since January of 2011, Dr. Layne has proudly been treating pets with osteoarthritis and ligament injuries in north-east Pennsylvania with stem cell therapy for the last four years.

Dr. Layne graduated from North Carolina State University, College of Veterinary Medicine in 2010 and has taken a special interest in Regenerative Veterinary Medicine and stem cell therapy since. In contrast to widely used drug therapies for pain management, cell-based therapies (like stem cell therapy) can promote healing, reduce inflammation, and decrease pain. Dr Layne also offers traditional Chinese veterinary medicine including acupuncture and Chinese herbs if clients are interested in a more holistic approach.

Stem cells are regenerative cells that can differentiate into many tissue types (reducing pain and inflammation) thus helping to restore range of motion and regenerate tendon, ligament and joint tissues (Vet-Stem.com/science). In a study using Vet-Stem Regenerative Cell Therapy on dogs with osteoarthritis of the hip joint it was found that regenerative cell therapy (adipose-derived stem cells) decreases patient discomfort and increases patient functional ability.

Once Dr. Layne has identified a patient as a good candidate for stem cell therapy the procedure begins with a fatty tissue collection from the patient. The tissue sample is sent overnight to Vet-Stems lab in California for processing. Once processed the stem cells are extracted and fresh, injectable doses of the patients stem cells are sent overnight, back to Dr. Layne at VCA Dunmore Animal Hospital. Within 48hrs of collecting a fat sample from a patient Dr. Layne is able to inject stem cells into (arthritic or injured) affected areas and regeneration and healing can begin.

At VCA Dunmore Animal Hospital Dr. Layne will be practicing in an 8,800 square foot, state of the art facility that includes two extensive surgery suites. For more information on VCA Dunmore Animal Hospital please visit their website at http://www.vcahospitals.com/dunmore.

About Vet-Stem, Inc.

Since its formation in 2002, Vet-Stem, Inc. has endeavored to improve the lives of animals through regenerative medicine. As the first company in the United States to provide an adipose-derived stem cell service to veterinarians for their patients, Vet-Stem pioneered the use of regenerative stem cells for horses, dogs, cats, and some exotics. In 2004 the first horse was treated with Vet-Stem Regenerative Cell Therapy for a tendon injury that would normally have been career ending. Ten years later Vet-Stem celebrated its 10,000th animal treated, and the success of establishing stem cell therapy as a regenerative medicine for certain inflammatory, degenerative, and arthritic diseases. As animal advocates, veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and cell biologists, the team at Vet-Stem tasks themselves with the responsibility of discovering, refining, and bringing to market innovative medical therapies that utilize the bodys own healing and regenerative cells.

For more information about Vet-Stem and Regenerative Veterinary Medicine visit http://www.vet-stem.com or call 858-748-2004.

Read the original:

Shannon Layne, DVM and VCA Dunmore Animal Hospital Now Offer Stem Cell Therapy to Pet Patients in Pain

Psilocybin, where science meets spirituality

Posted on by

The future may hold a surprising new approach to treating addiction: using one mind-altering drug to stop the abuse of another.

Dr. Stephen Ross, director of the NYU Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship is gearing up to embark on a new research project involving hallucinogenic, psilocybin-induced mystical experiences along with psychotherapy to help treat alcoholism.

Psilocybin is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound found in some species of mushrooms that has been used in indigenous cultures as a spiritual sacrament for hundreds of years. Ross believes this compound, administered in the proper dosage and in a controlled setting, may help resolve the symptoms of spiritual distress involved in a person with alcoholism.

"Addiction can be understood as a kind of spiritual disorder," Ross says. "In other words, addicts can lose intention they can lose connection to the community, to God, to their family, within themselves."

Because psilocybin is still classified as a Schedule I drug by the U.S. government, meaning it has high potential for abuse, NYU along with the University of New Mexico are two of the few institutions that have gained the necessary approval to conduct these studies.

The idea of treating a person's alcoholism with an illegal controlled substance seems contraindicated. Ross says one reason that psilocybin holds promise in this area is that it falls on the low end of the addictive spectrum; only 4.9 percent of the people who try psychedelics become dependent, as compared to a highly-addictive substance like nicotine, which hooks almost a third of the people who try it.

Ross believes using psilocybin medically in a controlled setting along with motivational interviewing can induce a spiritual experience that can bring an addict back from the brink of despair and give him hope and motivation to recover.

Ross says , "By inducing a spiritual awakening, it may shift the person who's addicted from this path they're on which is very dark and going toward destruction... towards a different path and a connection back into their lives and developmental tracks. This shift we want to feed into psychotherapy to help change their motivation to enter sobriety and recovery."

Ross has experience working with psilocybin and stage-four cancer patients. He's been studying the effects of the drug on helping these people alleviate their anxiety about death. He says the research is still being analyzed, but preliminary results show that there was a significant decrease in acute and long-term anxiety and depression, along with increased spiritual states. "The participants in the trials said that these were the singular top five most profound experiences of their lives, up there with having children. That they profoundly changed their relationship with cancer and were able to get away from the devastating burden that cancer was imposing upon them."

The idea of using hallucinogens in treatment is hardly new and evokes an image of 1960s-era Timothy Leary, head of the controversial Harvard Psilocybin Project and other experiments with psychedelic drugs. Ross says he and fellow researchers have learned from the mistakes of their predecessors and stresses that they are being very careful to conduct this research in a safe, thoughtful way.

Follow this link:

Psilocybin, where science meets spirituality

'Eikon: Icons of the Orthodox Christian World' displays eerie power at Art Gallery of Ballarat exhibition

Posted on by

Luscious reds in gold: Works such as the 16th-century Dormition of the Mother of God were created with egg tempura, gold leaf and gesso on linen.

According to a recipe compiled by a Greek monk in the 1700s, snail slime is a superb binding agent when mixing gold paint to make icons. Gold, after all, was crucial to icon painting: its resplendent, reflective surface sang richly of spirituality and the divine. Using something as earthly as snail mucus, though, perhaps kept things unintentionally grounded and well-adhered to a timber panel.

This painter's manual, with 72 instructions and recipes, is described by the director of the Art Gallery of Ballarat, Gordon Morrison, as a fascinating document one that includes recipes for many of the glorious, deep colours that grace icons. Those colours, though, often involved dangerous manufacturing methods and most of them are highly toxic. "They were really poisonous, noxious materials," Morrison says.

Take, for example, that luscious, rich red that is used frequently in these paintings. Making it, the manual tells us, involved the creation of cinnabar heating up mercury and powdered sulphur, then repeatedly stirring, grinding and smothering the amalgam, a process that would have exposed the artisan to excessively noxious fumes. This mix was then suspended in egg yolk tempera, with some raki or vodka for good measure.

Golden touch: The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, circa 1700, features the gold leaf so crucial to icon painting.

The most hazardous thing about making gold paint was how it affected snails: Morrison says extraction of their slime involved prodding the poor creatures with something very hot.

Advertisement

Here, though, are the results in a glorious exhibition of icons curated by Morrison, with works drawn from the 12th century to the 1800s. The history of icons arcs over 1500 years, but Morrison says they have often been downplayed and not well-collected by Western art museums.

"There has been a lot of prejudice against them," he says. "They look odd and primitive and don't conform to all the things in the Western canon about being original and new every second year. This art is ageless. Apply the same kind of understanding to these works as you do to Hindu or Buddhist statuary and you might come to a better understanding of them."

While these icons are deeply rooted in Orthodox Christianity, their appeal is extraordinarily broad: as Morrison observes, we might approach them in the same way the uninitiated might see bark painting, not knowing the indigenous stories behind them. On a purely aesthetic and emotional level, we might enter into such artworks' deep sense of spirituality and connectedness to human nature.

See the article here:

'Eikon: Icons of the Orthodox Christian World' displays eerie power at Art Gallery of Ballarat exhibition

COCONUT WATER! Day17: Juice Detox Fast for Nutrition,Weightloss,Spiritual Enlightenment – Video

Posted on by


COCONUT WATER! Day17: Juice Detox Fast for Nutrition,Weightloss,Spiritual Enlightenment
The coconut water you #39;re loving is probablly not really coconout water - here #39;s how to tell. I have been juice fasting for 9 years now and this is my 30th fa...

By: Lynnette Astaire

See the original post here:

COCONUT WATER! Day17: Juice Detox Fast for Nutrition,Weightloss,Spiritual Enlightenment - Video

FIGHTING FEARS pt2! Day19: Juice Detox Fast for Nutrition,Weightloss,Spiritual Enlightenment – Video

Posted on by


FIGHTING FEARS pt2! Day19: Juice Detox Fast for Nutrition,Weightloss,Spiritual Enlightenment
Are you following your intuition AKA your GUT to face your fears? I sure as hell try! I have been juice fasting for 9 years now and this is my 30th fast! Aft...

By: Lynnette Astaire

Visit link:

FIGHTING FEARS pt2! Day19: Juice Detox Fast for Nutrition,Weightloss,Spiritual Enlightenment - Video

Deepak Lal: Enlightenments old and new – II

Posted on by

In my last column I had discussed the Scottish Enlightenment and how it had tamed the religious passions of the Sottish Calvinist Church within a few decades and allowed the secularism that is a hallmark of modernity to develop. In this column I want to discuss whether such an outcome is likely in Muslim societies. As David Hume noted in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, the religious tolerance that was embraced by the English and the Dutch "proceeded from the steady resolution of the civil magistrate, in opposition to the continued efforts of priests and bigots".

Many had hoped that the Arab Spring promised the emergence of liberal democracies, which with their separation of church and state and the establishment of a secular legal order would lead to a similar outcome in Muslim societies. But, as Shadi Hamid has argued in Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East (Oxford, 2014), democracy has turned out to be the enemy of liberty, as the devout who are the main soldiers of political Islam inevitably want to enforce sharia laws that are a gross infringement of personal liberties. As Professor Hamid shows, for the parties of political Islam this remains their raison d'tre. So democracy in the Muslim world is unlikely to be the midwife of an Islamic enlightenment.

However, there is a major difference in the jurisprudence that has evolved in the two branches of Islam, the Sunni (particularly the Wahhabi version) and the Shia, that offers the prospect of a Scottish route to a Muslim enlightenment. In the earlier years of the Arab conquests, when the sharia was being developed, the process of interpretation and exercise of independent judgement known as ijtihad allowed some doctrinal flexibility. (See Fazlur Rahman's Islam, and the chapter four of my own Unintended Consequences). This period, particularly under the Abbasids, saw the flowering of Islamic civilisation, which came to be the intermediary between the ideas and techniques of the older civilizations of Greece, China and India.

But sometime during the ninth to 11th centuries as part of the Abbasid compromise the majority Sunnis (unlike the Shia) came to accept the ulema (clerics) as the true heirs of the prophet by expounding the sacred law - and the "gate of ijtihad" was closed. This closing of the Sunni Muslim mind curbed curiosity and innovation - particularly in the education system, which from then on emphasised rote learning and memorising, instead of problem-solving. The madrasas sponsored and financed by Wahhabi Saudi money in the Balkans, south, central and south-east Asia, continue to preach the extreme interpretation of monotheism of Wahhabism, which anathematises other beliefs - in particular the "idolatrous" practices of Christians, Shias and Hindus - as infidels or apostates, and preaches hatred to young minds, who learn little if anything about the modern world. Wahhabi Sunnism is, thus, contributing to the continued "closing of the Muslim mind", which has been the major reason for the decaying of the glorious Islamic civilisation built under the earliest caliphs of the Abbasid dynasty.

By contrast, after their break with the Sunnis after the battle of Karbala, the Shia ulema have played a very different role from their Sunni rivals (see Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival and E Bowering (editor)'s The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought). The major difference is that unlike the Sunnis, the Shia community relies on its clerics not only to interpret religion but, as Professor Nasr says, "to make new rulings which expand on religious law, first codified in the eighth century". They are educated at seminaries, mainly in Najaf in Iraq and Qom in Iran, studying through tutorials and lectures under a senior ulema law, jurisprudence, theology, philosophy, logic, rhetoric and sometimes literature. On graduating they "become a full member of the ulema, someone who can practice ijtihad (independent reasoning to give a new ruling) - a mujtahid - collect religious taxes and serve as the guardian of the flock". The senior clergy's stature is determined by the religious taxes and donations that believers give him for charitable purposes and to help educate seminary students. The bigger a senior cleric's purse, the wider a patronage network he can build in the clerical ranks below him. "Because the Shia hierarchy depends not only on knowledge but on money, its desire to maintain strong ties to the bazaars has always been among its major priorities."

The Shias have also developed a different political doctrine since the Safavid dynasty established itself as a Shia monarchy in Iran. With the occultation of the 12th imam in AD 939, Shia theologians argued that there could be no true Islamic rule until his return and their task was to keep faith till then. Though not recognising Sunni rule, they would not directly challenge it, and wait for the final reckoning with Sunnism at the end of time. But with the establishment of the Safavid's Shia dynasty in Iran, "the Shia ulema, many of whom had become part of the Safavid aristocracy as landowners and courtiers, crafted a new theory of government ... Shia ulema would not recognize the Safavid monarchy as truly legitimate but would bless it as the most desirable form of government during the period of waiting".

This "Safavid contract" survived for 500 years, until the Iranian revolution of 1979. Khomeni erased this Shia distinction between church and state, with his theory of velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurist) and created a populist theocracy in Iran. But other Shia ulema did not accept Khomeni's doctrine - most importantly Grand Ayatollah al-Khoi, the mentor of Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq. Khomeni's notion of velayat-e faqih was a neo-Platonic notion of a specially educated "guardian" class led by the "philosopher-king" armed with knowledge of a transcendent truth to produce and maintain a perfect government that would safeguard all national and spiritual interests. He created an intolerant theocracy limiting individual and minority rights using a narrow interpretation of the law to "erase all Western influences on society and culture".

Professor Nasr argues that Khomeni's influence and his deviant theory has now lost influence even in Iran, where the quietist traditional view of a less politicised faith as represented by the Iraqi Ayatollah Khoi and his disciple Mr Sistani are gaining influence: "This yearning for an older and less politicised faith also helps to explain why the modest, deeply learned, and plain-living Ayatollah Sistani has so quickly become popular in Iran." It is this victory of the old quietist Shia Islam - with its opening to alternative interpretations through ijtihad, and its implicit acceptance of the separation of church and state - over Khomeni's politicised Shia Islam that offers the best hope of a Muslim enlightenment.

The first part was published on September 20 mybs.in/2QhNEmo

Read more:

Deepak Lal: Enlightenments old and new - II

Hurricane Delays Launch of Space Station Cargo Ship

Posted on by

Hurricane Gonzalo, seen here from aboard the International Space Station, is delaying launch of NASAs next cargo ship to the orbital outpost.

NEWS: Antares Rocket Aces First Test Flight

Orbital Sciences Corp., one of two companies hired by NASA to fly supplies to the space station, had planned to launch its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Oct. 24.

The rockets tracking station, however, is located in Bermuda, which was bracing for the Category 3 storm on Friday.

Orbital Sciences now expects it wont be able to fly until Oct. 27 at the earliest.

NEWS: Belated Christmas: Orbital Rocket Launches ISS Cargo

Once the hurricane has passed Bermuda, a team from NASAs Wallops Flight Facility Range will return to the tracking site to assess the situation and begin the process of re-enabling the sites functionality to support the launch, Orbital Sciences wrote in a statement posted on its website.

The capsule had been expected to linger in orbit, with docking at the station slated for Nov. 2. Orbital Sciences said it can still make that date with a launch on Oct. 27.

Read the rest here:

Hurricane Delays Launch of Space Station Cargo Ship