Johnny White, Freedom-Woodbridge mature into a tough team to beat

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By Joey LoMonaco September 8 at 6:11 PM

Johnny White felt anything but liberated when he arrived at Freedom-Woodbridge three years ago as a freshman. Hed been part of an undefeated season at nearby Rippon Middle School the previous fall and was also accustomed to success in the Dale City Sports Club and Boys and Girls Club programs.

The Eagles, however, were at a different stage in developing a program the stage where you lose big.

I wasnt used to losing the way were losing, and so, my attitude was really bad, said White, now a senior and four-year starter at quarterback. If something bad happened on the field, Id take my helmet off. I needed to change my body language and how I approached the coaches and the players.

White says he made the change during a season-ending loss to Gar-Field in 2012.

We were always getting run over by these teams, and we basically saw some light, he said. Of course we didnt win, but we actually had a game. It was fun. There were no conflicts or arguments.

If that was a glimmer, the Eagles (2-0) flipped a switch last season, earning the programs first playoff berth. Theyve opened 2014 with two 30-plus point wins, over Osbourn Park and Osbourn. Freedom will travel to Battlefield on Friday, at 7:30 p.m. to take on the Bobcats (2-0). Last week, Battlefield routed Forest Park, 34-13, behind Matt Gallaghers 191 yards and two passing touchdowns.

This isnt your older brothers Freedom. Junior defensive end Kyree Campbell has sprouted to 6-foot-5, 270 pounds and received his 16th Football Bowl Subdivision offer last week from South Carolina. Steve Spurrier, the Ball Coach himself, called to offer Campbell, said Freedom Coach Gary Wortham Sr. Josh Anderson, a senior transfer from Tennessee, runs a 4.4 40-yard dash. And 95 percent of the teams roster comprises seniors.

One of those seniors, Quentin Wallace, is a team captain along with White. On Friday, the two hooked up on a touchdown reception inside the red zone, when Wallace beat his defender with a zig move and ran a seam route. Wallace missed much of the 2012 season with broken tibia and fibula bones. When he returned to the field last year, he could sense something was different.

Character was built throughout the whole team, Wallace said. The selfishness went away we removed it from the program. We became a family, instead of just a team. I cant even fathom what we did last year.

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Johnny White, Freedom-Woodbridge mature into a tough team to beat

Educational freedom

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What is the first word that comes to mind when I say America? It could be one of many words, but I consistently hear the word freedom.

The Oxford dictionary defines freedom as the power or right to act, speak or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. According to this definition, one should be able to do, say and think what they want without political limitation or punishment, but I want to reassess this definition in context with American college campuses and against foreign counterparts.

We can dispute the fact of our choice to attend colleges these days, but regardless we are not required by law to attend a university; thus, it is our choice to attend college. The choice to attend or not emulates freedom, but colleges limit that freedom once were in. At this point we should choose how and what we want to learn. Generally speaking, were not given many choices about our education throughout the first eighteen years, so college often seems our only option.

Unfortunately, universities in the United States still want to hold your hand throughout the process. Busy work due at each lecture or weekly online assignments evidence this. It provides professors with the confidence we are doing our work, and I understand its value and purpose, but its too much control. Im not saying that weekly busy work is pointless, but Im saying it should not be necessary. It implicitly says that professors dont have confidence in their students to learn the material by themselves alongside weekly lectures.

Society wonders why students come out unprepared and without the self-discipline, time-management and prioritization skills to succeed in a workplace. Universities are supposed to be a glimpse of the real world, but if they keep holding our hand, so to speak, and controlling our studying, they prolong the life lessons.

Foreign counterparts have different traditions when it comes to university level education. First, students claim control of their education starting at a younger age. Once in a university, they are fully responsible for their own learning. Professors report which chapters will be discussed in each lecture and maybe recommend some outside academic papers alongside helpful exercises, but none of that is checked in each lecture. There might be one to two larger group assignments throughout the semester, but most of the course is graded by one or two exams. If a student is struggling with the material, he or she is in charge of meeting with the professor and asking for clarification. Students have the freedom to learn how they want. Schools place the responsibility of education on the students and let them choose if they want to learn or not.

This is real educational freedom. The material is all the same, but the method of attaining the knowledge is completely open to interpretation. This type of freedom would be overwhelming to the average American student. Give most American students three hours of class time a week per class without weekly benchmarks, and watch what they do with the rest of it. This method doesnt supply a road map to get from point A to point B, but drops you off at A and says find your way to B; thats freedom.

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James Ellroy's 'Perfidia' Is A Brutal, Beautiful Police Procedural

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There are a lot of reasons not to read James Ellroy's newest novel, Perfidia the opening shot in his proposed second L.A. Quartet. It's a long and sprawling book with about a million pages and 10,000 characters, so if that kind of thing scares you, go back to your Hunger Games and leave the grown-ups alone.

It's a brutal book. More than one person crawls home with a handful of his own teeth. A quick gunshot to the head? That's a merciful way to go in Ellroy's Los Angeles, and not many characters get that kindness.

There's terrible, casual racism in here, reflecting the terrible, casual racism of the day (that day being Saturday, Dec. 6, 1941, where the book starts the day before Pearl Harbor). Serious men talk about eugenics and racial purity in a way that makes today's discussions of profiling seem like cocktail party banter. Innocent Japanese-Americans are rounded up in vicious sweeps and sent to internment camps. Mexicans and African-Americans don't fare any better. Neither do the Jews. Or the Chinese. It's a white man's world, this LA of Perfidia. Too bad if you're not.

Worse than all this, Perfidia is a book with no good guys. Even the most sympathetic characters (the sole Japanese man on the LA police force, the coerced Girl With A Past) swim in moral relativism with expert strokes. And it's tough to root for a character even a great character, like Ellroy's Dudley Smith, who anchors Perfidia as a pre-L.A. Confidential sergeant worming his way up through the ranks when he pops bennies, smokes opium and threatens to kill virtually everyone he meets. Doubly so when he actually does kill a fair number of them, for reasons that are good only within the warped ethical architecture of a crooked and horrifyingly realized Los Angeles Police Department.

So there's all that. Plenty of reasons to pass Perfidia up. But this is why you should read it.

Because it's beautiful. It's got style like your grandfather did back when he dudded up on a Saturday night in a zoot suit and chain. Because it's epic in its depth and evocation of an ugly time and an awful place that, with its sheen of youth and beauty, is too often made glossy and innocent in our memories.

And because in a book which leans heavily on a boxing motif, Ellroy writes like a great fighter works the ring. He bobs and he feints along the book's 23-day timeline. His sentences are short, sharp jabs, building into gorgeous combos that can floor you with their precision. In over 700 pages, he rarely meets a conjunction he doesn't excise.

The story rips along. There's Pearl Harbor. Internment. The murder of an entire Japanese family posed to look like ritual suicide. Schemes within schemes within schemes. J. Edgar Hoover makes an appearance. So does Bette Davis. Ellroy mixes the real with the fictional and never loses track of either.

At its black and dripping heart, Perfidia is a police procedural. But like all great procedurals, the case is just what gets people up and moving, allowing Ellroy to dip into radical politics here, rabid jingoism there. He back-lays groundwork and motivation for characters already fully alive in his other novels, which will certainly be a draw for anyone who wants to ride Dudley Smith's shoulder through LA's Chinatown, or witness some of Ellroy's other cops and crooks in the hotblooded viciousness of their youth.

There are issues. I'm not kidding (too much) when I say there are 10,000 characters because every twisting subplot comes fully staffed with guys named Buzz and Bucky and Two-Gun. And Ellroy has a woman problem which, oddly, is the opposite of the woman problem that many male authors have (making their female characters mere window dressing or arm candy), in that his are Cassandras in Christian Dior too smart, too manipulative, too prescient and too always-in-the-thick-of-it to be entirely believable. Especially considering Perfidia has, essentially, just one. And she has that Forrest Gumpian quality of conveniently being everywhere that matters, all the time.

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Cyborg Unplug ANTI-ROUTER stops drones and cameras connecting to Wi-Fi

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Cyborg Unplug sniffs out surveillance and undercover devices This includes Google Glass, hidden microphones and security cameras Device using the network to spy or stream content are detected An alarm is then signalled and the detected device is disconnected Two models will be available, later this year, priced $50 (30) and $100 (60) Cyborg Unplug will ship to the EU, UK and US, with other locations being added after launch

By Victoria Woollaston for MailOnline

Published: 11:29 EST, 8 September 2014 | Updated: 01:45 EST, 9 September 2014

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There are countless ways people can spy on you nowadays - from hidden microphones to Google Glass, drones and security cameras.

If this makes you feel paranoid, a firm has created a router that detects such surveillance devices and blocks them from accessing your Wi-Fi network.

Owners of the Cyborg Unplug, can also disconnect all target devices from any network they are associated with, including paired connections with phones.

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Cyborg Unplug ANTI-ROUTER stops drones and cameras connecting to Wi-Fi

This gadget can knock drones and Google Glass offline

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By Doug Gross, CNN

Creators of Cyborg Unplug acknowledge that its ability to detach devices from Wi-Fi signals may be used illegally.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- Bothered by gadgets like Google Glass that can, theoretically, be used to snoop on you in public? Then why not get your own gadget that can knock them all offline?

That's what the creators of Cyborg Unplug promise. Billed as a "wireless anti-surveillance system," Unplug is, essentially, a portable router that can detect drones, surveillance cameras and mobile tech like Glass trying to access your Wi-Fi signal and boot them off of it.

"Whether business office, restaurant, school or nightclub: it's your territory and your rules, so make it harder for those that seek to abuse it," Cyborg's website reads.

That's Unplug's stated purpose, anyway. But, as its creators freely note, it also has an "All Out Mode" that would let you knock devices off of any wireless network, not just yours.

The company says it doesn't recommend doing that because ... you know ... it's probably really, really illegal.

"We take no responsibility for the trouble you get yourself into if you choose to deploy your Cyborg Unplug in this mode," the company says on its site.

The company notes that the device is not a jammer, which blocks all digital signals in a particular area. Instead, it targets certain devices the user has identified. So, for example, you could tell Unplug that Glass is no bother, but drones and microphones need to be shut down. It uses the unique hardware signature that all Wi-Fi devices have to recognize what it's seeing before sending a "deauthentication packet" blocking access.

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13 beaches closed

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The Leisure & Cultural Services Department has announced that lifesaving services at 13 beaches have been suspended, and seven public pools are closed, due to insufficient lifeguards on duty today.

The beaches are Anglers', Ting Kau and Ma Wan Tung Wan beaches in Tsuen Wan; Butterfly and Golden beaches in Tuen Mun; Silverstrand and Clear Water Bay Second beaches in Sai Kung; and, Deep Water Bay, Repulse Bay, South Bay, Stanley Main, Turtle Cove and Shek O beaches in Southern District.

Red flags have been hoisted at these beaches. For safety reasons, swimmers should not enter the water.

The closed pools are Morrison Hill and Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park pools on Hong Kong Island; Tai Kok Tsui, Hammer Hill Road, Jordan Valley, and Lam Tin pools in Kowloon; and, Tung Chung Swimming Pool in the New Territories.

Sixteen pools partially open are Pao Yue Kong, Kennedy Town, Victoria Park and Siu Sai Wan pools on Hong Kong Island; Lai Chi Kok Park, Sham Shui Po Park, Kowloon Park, Kowloon Tsai and Kwun Tong pools in Kowloon; and, Jockey Club Yan Oi Tong, Tuen Mun North West, Shing Mun Valley, Tsing Yi, Tseung Kwan O, Sai Kung and Hin Tin pools in New Territories.

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Volunters sought to help clean up beaches

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A NATIONAL marine charity has urged people to take part in helping to clear beaches around Yorkshire.

The Marine Conservation Society is looking for people to join beach cleans at Robins Hood Bay, Scarborough, Filey and Flamborough. The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) runs regular beach cleans around the UK which this year will culminate in the Great British Beach Clean over the weekend of September 19 to 22.

Tom Bell, MCS Campaigns Manager, said: Our domestic habits over the last 50 years or so have resulted in dirty beaches. We throw more stuff away than ever. Plastic in the marine environment may take hundreds of years to break down and it washes up or is blown onto beaches in bits from micro pieces to larger chunks.

We flush stuff down the loo we shouldnt, and that ends up in our water ways and then our beaches. We want to see people turning out to clean up their favourite or local beach during our Great British Beach Clean weekend please dont turn your back on our beaches.

There are beach clean events in Yorkshire Flamborough, Hessle Foreshore, Hornsea, Spurn, Hunmanby Gap, Robin Hoods Bay, Sandsend, Scarbough, Sewerby Steps, Tate Hill Sands, Filey, and Reighton Sands.

To find out dates and times at individual beaches and to sign up to the Great British Beach Clean in Yorkshire, register at mcsuk.org/greatbritishbeachclean or call 01989 567807.

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Hawking predicts end?

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Published September 08, 2014

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking speaks at his official welcoming ceremony at Perimeter Institute For Theoretical Physics in Kitchener in June.REUTERS/Sheryl Nadler

Stephen Hawking, who once cautioned that both artificial intelligence and invading aliens could wipe out the human race, now has another dire prediction the Higgs boson, or God particle, might destroy the universe. In a preface to a new book, Hawking describes his concern that if the particle became unstable, the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, according to the U.K.s Sunday Times.

Hawkings gloomy theory appears in the forward to Starmus: 50 Years of Man in Space, a collection of lectures by noteworthy astronomers and researchers. In the piece, Hawking writes that the particle has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above 100bn giga-electron-volts (GEV), reports CNET.

According to Hawking, the vacuum decay could expand at the speed of light and that this could happen at any time and we couldnt see it coming. While that statement might be cause for alarm, Hawking acknowledges in the essay that this threat is highly theoretical. A particle accelerator that could even reach 100bn GEV would need to be larger than the Earth itself, and would unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate.

While this cataclysmic scenario is unlikely to happen any time in the near future, Hawking writes that looking into the Higgs bosons potential instability sheds light on insights into the universe.

Hawking writes that the possible destruction of the Higgs boson places important constraints on the evolution of the universe, reports the IB Times.

Fellow scientists have long looked at some of Hawkings darker predictions with skepticism. Beyond the fears over alien invaders and warnings about the uprising of smart machines, he also stated in 2012 that human life has only about 1,000 years left on Earth before being wiped out by man-made viruses, according to Mic.com.

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Advent Aerospace Adds Senior VPs to Management Team; Names New Division Leadership

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Rye, New Hampshire, September 8, 2014. Advent Aerospace, Inc. has created two new senior management positions and appointed new leaders for its Jormac Aerospace and Cabin Innovations divisions to reinforce its steadily increasing company-wide growth.

Harvey Ticlo was named senior vice president for corporate strategy, business development and integration. Ticlo was formerly president of the companys Cabin Innovations division, located in Lewisville, Texas. Steve Jourdenais was named senior vice president for the Interiors Group, consisting of the Cabin Innovations and Jormac Aerospace divisions, and will be responsible for operations at both. Jourdenais was previously president of Jormac Aerospace, located in Largo, Florida.

Both Ticlo and Jourdenais will join Peter Hokanson, chief financial officer, as members of the executive team reporting to Advent Aerospace managing director Ken Goldsmith. The Ticlo and Jourdenais appointments took effect August 11, 2014.

Also on August 11, ShawnBucher joined Advent Aerospace as vice president and general manager of Cabin Innovations, succeeding Harvey Ticlo.Bucher was formerly the vice president of engineering at B/E Aerospace in Tucson, AZ. He will report to Steve Jourdenais.

On September 1, Frank Nelson was promoted to vice president and general manager of Jormac Aerospace, succeeding and reporting to Steve Jourdenais. Nelson was vice president-program management at Jormac for the previous six years. Colt Mehler, vice president-project engineering, will succeed Nelson as vice president-program management.

These appointments are reflective of our desire to grow technology, innovation and product development at Advent Aerospace overall, while leveraging synergies between our interior divisions, said Goldsmith. These experienced executives are each exceptionally well-suited to their new and expanded roles.

Advent Aerospace, Inc. provides engineered products and services to aircraft OEMs, major subcontractors, modification centers and aircraft owners and operators in the corporate, commercial, and government aviation markets. Through divisions located in Florida, Texas and Oklahoma, the company designs, engineers, analyzes, manufactures, tests, certifies and supports proprietary components and systems for aircraft, including specialized interior products for Boeing and Airbus VIP aircraft and anti-skid braking systems for light turbine aircraft.

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Aerospace investment

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Gander Aerospace Manufacturing unveils latest progress

The growing aerospace initiative in Gander was highlighted on Sept. 8 as Gander Aerospace Manufacturing marked the official opening of its newly-renovated hanger.

Brandon Anstey/tc Media

AEROSPACE UNVEILING Pat White, CEO and president of Gander Aerospace Manufacturing, welcomes a crowd of supporters on Sept. 8, as he officially opens GAMIs newest hanger.

The hanger was built to accommodate the increased aircraft service work being carried out by the company. Renovations were made possible with the help of a $500,000 repayable loan from the Atlantic Canada Oppourtunities Agency.

Gerald Keddy, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue and for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), on behalf of the Rob Moore, Regional Minister for Newfoundland and Labrador and Minister of State (ACOA), was on hand at the opening. GAMIs initiatives are well-worth investing in, he said.

Our government is pleased to support local companies like Gander Aerospace Manufacturing that are creating jobs in growth industries such as aerospace and defense, said Keddy. We recognize that a strong and competitive economy relies on such companies as Gander Aerospace Manufacturing as they continue to expand, diversify and pursue new business opportunities. With its roots in aviation, its no surprise that Gander is still buzzing with activities centered on the aerospace and defense industry.

Organizations: Gander Aerospace Manufacturing, ACOA, Atlantic Canada Oppourtunities Agency Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency

AEROSPACE UNVEILING Pat White, CEO and president of Gander Aerospace Manufacturing, welcomes a crowd of supporters on Sept. 8, as he officially opens GAMIs newest hanger.

Brandon Anstey/tc Media

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New genomic editing methods produce better disease models from patient-derived iPSCs

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

8-Sep-2014

Contact: Kathryn Ryan kryan@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY, September 8, 2014Highly valuable for modeling human diseases and discovering novel drugs and cell-based therapies, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are created by reprogramming an adult cell from a patient to obtain patient-specific stem cells. Due to genetic variation, however, iPSCs may differ from a patient's diseased cells, and researchers are now applying new and emerging genomic editing tools to human disease modeling, as described in a comprehensive Review article published in Stem Cells and Development, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Stem Cells and Development website until September 30, 2014.

In "Genomic Editing Tools to Model Human Diseases with Isogenic Pluripotent Stem Cells," Ihor Lemischka, Huen Suk Kim, Jeffrey Bernitz, and Dung-Fang Lee, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York, NY), provide a detailed overview of the development of patient-specific iPSCs for modeling a disease. The authors describe the many factors that need to be considered when generating an iPSC-based disease model comprised of cells that are genetically identical, and they discuss the advantages and limitations of the three leading genomic editing tools: zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), and the most recent, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) system.

"As our appreciation of iPSCs as primarily therapeutic screens and disease models matures, we look to advanced gene editing tools to assist in appropriate experimental design. Ihor Lemischka and colleagues provide a much needed examination of the advantages and shortcomings of such techniques," says Editor-in-Chief Graham C. Parker, PhD, The Carman and Ann Adams Department of Pediatrics, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI.

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About the Journal

Stem Cells and Development is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published 24 times per year in print and online. The Journal is dedicated to communication and objective analysis of developments in the biology, characteristics, and therapeutic utility of stem cells, especially those of the hematopoietic system. Complete tables of content and a free sample issue may be viewed on the Stem Cells and Development website.

About the Publisher

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