Liberty Tax offers free preparation for veterans

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Lorraine Mirabella

12:47 p.m. EST, February 19, 2014

Liberty Tax Service will prepare tax returns for free forveterans and active military personnel and their immediate family members through Sunday.

The offer, for first-time customers only,coincides with Military andVeterans Appreciation Week and is available at participating offices.

"We want to give something back to honor the men and women who bravely defend our freedom, our family and friends, and the American way of life, said Mike Irving owner of Liberty Tax Service at 6518-B Reisterstown Road. "Tax advice is always free regarding military service tax issues or any tax concern."

Liberty Tax takes appointments but does not require them.

The franchise company, owned by JTH Holdings Inc., has five Baltimore area locations:

-6518-B Reisterstown Road, Baltimore,21215

-8035-A Liberty Road, Windsor Mill, 21244

-4422 Park Heights Avenue, Baltimore, 21215

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Liberty Tax offers free preparation for veterans

Students for Liberty conference shows a young approach to libertarianism

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On Saturday, about 1,500 students from all over the world gathered to discuss freedom at the Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, D.C.

Economist Donald Boudreaux showed the students a department store catalog from 1958 to underscore how the free market, while contributing to income inequality, also dramatically improved the lives of the poor: "The typical American worker back then had to work 30 hours to buy this vacuum cleaner. Today, a worker has to work only six hours to buy a much better vacuum cleaner. And that's true for clothing, food, all sorts of things."

That's how free markets work: quietly, gradually improving things. That doesn't always appeal to impatient young people or to radical old people who fancy themselves social engineers who should shape the world.

Such social engineering is revered on campuses. A student from Quebec complained that economists about whom his fellow students learn are "Keynesians, who believe that breaking windows is good for the economy, or neoclassicals, who believe in unrealistic assumptions like perfect competition and perfect information."

If there were a part of America for which the American students at this conference felt a special pride, it was the Constitution. "The Constitution of the United States is a promise about how government power will be used," Timothy Sandefur, author of The Conscience of the Constitution, told them. "A promise was left to us by a generation who lived under tyrannical government and decided they needed a framework that would preserve the blessings of liberty."

These students appreciated that inheritance, although they said the Constitution is rarely discussed at their schools. They surprised me by knowing the correct answer to my question: How often is the word "democracy" used in the Constitution?

Answer: never. The founders understood that democracy may bring mob rule tyranny of a majority. So the Constitution focuses on restricting government to secure individual liberty.

If anything, these students were stauncher in their defense of liberty than the Founders.

Kelly Kidwell, a sophomore from Tulane University, said, "Regardless of what its intent was, we still have the [big] government that we have now so the Constitution has either provided for that government, or failed to prevent it."

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Students for Liberty conference shows a young approach to libertarianism

The Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass – Maze Islands Challenges & Super Salvaging – Episode 37 – Video

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The Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass - Maze Islands Challenges Super Salvaging - Episode 37
Having arrived at maze island we work out the route to travel to earn rewards, with three difficulties relying on us going anti clockwise we earn many a trea...

By: Olizandri

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The Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass - Maze Islands Challenges & Super Salvaging - Episode 37 - Video

Australia snubbed in islands awards

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Australia may be home to the world's largest coral reef system, but our islands don't rate on TripAdvisor.

Australia has failed to make a list of the world's top 10 islands, based on reviews and opinions on the popular travel website.

TripAdvisor has announced the winners of its 2014 Travellers' Choice Islands Awards, with Ambergris Caye in Belize being voted the best.

In second place is Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos, followed by Bora Bora in French Polynesia.

The awards are in their second year and recognise more than 100 islands globally. Along with the world's best, the awards also rate the top 10 islands in the South Pacific, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, South America, and the United States.

Australia fared better in the South Pacific list, taking seventh spot with Norfolk Island and ninth place with Kangaroo Island.

Bora Bora was rated the best, followed by Aitutaki in the Cook Islands and Moorea in French Polynesia.

Glen Buffett, General Manager of Norfolk Island Tourism, says it's great to see travellers sharing their positive experiences about Norfolk online.

"It's the diversity in nature, history and activities on Norfolk Island that makes it so unique," Buffett said in a statement on Wednesday.

South Australian Tourism Commission Chief Executive Rodney Harrex says the award for Kangaroo Island is credit to the destination's beauty, experiences and people.

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Australia snubbed in islands awards

Clean energy offers boost for remote island nations

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Many islands are blessed with large amounts of sun, wind, and water, making renewable energy a promising solution, Guevara-Stone writes. One small island off the coast of Africa has embraced these resources, most notably through an innovative hybrid hydro-wind system.

Islands confront some of the most difficult energy challenges. Their size and remoteness means they pay extremely high energy costs for often unreliable and dirty energy. Yet many islands are blessed with large amounts of sun, wind, and water, making renewable energy a promising solution. One small island off the coast of Africa has embraced these resources, most notably through an innovative hybrid hydro-wind system.

explores topics critical to the institute'swork transforming global energy use to create a clean, prosperous, and secure future. Independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit,Rocky Mountain Instituteadvances market-based solutions and engages businesses, communities, and institutions to cost-effectively shift to efficiency and renewables.

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The smallest and most remote of Spains Canary Islands, El Hierro (pop. 10,700) is a land of lava-sculpted rocks, cliff-lined shores, and crystal clear waters. It is a divers paradise, yet remains relatively untouched by tourism. In the early 1980s, the island took its first environmental stance, opting for a development model based on respect for the islands heritage and conserving its natural resources. At the time, these guidelines seemed to be in contradiction to the social and economic dynamics of the Canary Islands that were seeking to attract mass tourism built on a foundation of a spectacular real estate business, the President of the El Hierro Island Council, Tomas Padrn,said in a presentation to UNESCO. It now gives us great satisfaction to be able to say that we have seen that the road chosen by the people of El Hierro was the right one and we are proud of living in harmony with a natural habitat that has remained largely unaffected by the hand of man.

In 1997, El Hierro was the first in the Canary Islands to adopt a sustainable development plan to protect its environmental and cultural richness, prompting UNESCO to declare the entire island a biosphere reserve in 2000. Yet the island was still importing and burning 6,000 tonnes of diesel per year, emitting 18,700 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Twenty percent of the electrical energy consumed ran threedesalination plantsto generate water for drinking and irrigation. So a lack of energy on El Hierro not only meant not being able to turn on the lights; it also meant suffering from a scarcity of water and thus food.

The government of El Hierro realized conservation wasnt enough; it needed to take things a step further and become a 100 percent energy-self-sufficient island. Fortunately, Padrn was not only president of El Hierros local government, but also knew a bit about electricity as he worked at the islands electric company. With some research and education, Padrn and the new Department for Alternative Energy Research convinced people of the viability of a hydro-wind system.

A public-private partnership was formed between the Island Council, the Spanish energy company Endesa, and the Canary Islands Technological Institute to develop the project, called Gorona del Viento.

El Hierro now has five wind turbines with a combined installed capacity of 11.5 megawatts soon to provide the majority of the electricity for the island. When wind production exceeds demand, excess energy will pump water from a reservoir at the bottom of a volcanic cone to another reservoir at the top of the volcano 700 meters above sea level. The upper reservoir stores over 132 million gallons of water. The stored water acts as a battery. When demand rises and there is not enough wind power, the water will be released to four hydroelectric turbines with a total capacity of 11 MW.

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Clean energy offers boost for remote island nations

Calico cats may help scientists understand human genetics

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TUESDAY, Feb. 18, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Cat lovers have long known that the distinctive three-toned calico patterning is almost exclusively found in female felines.

Now, the genetics behind that anomaly may help scientists understand human DNA a little better, too.

That's because calico cats may help explain so-called gene silencing -- flipping the "off switch" on genes, researchers say.

A team at the University of California, San Francisco say the unique orange-white-and-black patchwork fur on these cats is due to the silencing or inactivation of one of their two X chromosomes.

As the researchers explained, cells in female mammals have two copies of the X chromosome -- one from the mother and one from the father. Cells require only one active X chromosome, so the second one is turned off.

Calico cats have an orange-fur-color gene on one of their X chromosomes and a black-fur gene on the other. According to the UCSF team, the random silencing of one of the X chromosomes in each cell results in the calico cats' unique patchwork coat.

Scientists don't know exactly how a cell turns off a chromosome, so the researchers are trying to learn more about how different kinds of genes can be switched on or off without affecting the underlying DNA sequence.

This knowledge could lead to improved understanding, diagnosis and treatment of X-chromosome-related diseases in humans, said the researchers, who are scheduled to present their findings Tuesday at the Biophysical Society's annual meeting in San Francisco.

"Uncovering how only one X chromosome is inactivated will help explain the whole process of 'epigenetic control,' meaning the way changes in gene activity can be inherited without changing the DNA code," Elizabeth Smith, a postdoctoral fellow in the anatomy department at UCSF, said in an American Institute of Physics news release.

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Calico cats may help scientists understand human genetics

Ask Dr. K: Gene studies lead to better diagnoses

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Anthony L. Komaroff, M.D. Ask Dr. K

Dr. Komaroff

Dear Dr. K: In yesterday's column, a reader asked whether she should be tested for genes linked to Alzheimer's disease. Today, I thought I'd give you my view on the larger question: Will studies of our genes change the practice of medicine and improve our lives?

My answer: During my career, progress in human genetics has been greater than virtually anyone imagined. However, human genetics also has turned out to be much more complicated than people imagined. As a result, we have not moved as rapidly as we had hoped in changing medical practice.

I graduated from medical school in the late 1960s. We knew what human genes were made of DNA and we were beginning to understand how genes work. We had even identified a handful of genes that were linked to specific diseases. We assumed that disease resulted from an abnormality in the structure of a gene.

If I had asked any biologist on the day I graduated, "Will we ever know how many genes we have, and the exact structure of each gene?" I'll bet the answer would have been: "Not in my lifetime, or my children's lifetime."

They would have been wrong. Today we do know those answers. Indeed, some diseases are caused by an abnormality in the structure of genes. In fact, sometimes it is very simple: one particular change at one particular spot in just one particular gene leads to a specific disease. Sickle cell anemia is an example.

Unfortunately, with most diseases it's far from that simple. The first complexity: Most diseases are influenced by the structure of multiple genes, not just one. Examples are diabetes and high blood pressure.

The second complexity: Many diseases are explained not by an abnormal gene structure, but by whether genes are properly turned on or off. Most cancers fall into this category.

What do I mean by that? Every cell in our body has the same set of genes. Yet, a cell in our eye that sees light is different from a cell in our stomach that makes acid. Why? Because different genes are turned on in each type of cell.

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Ask Dr. K: Gene studies lead to better diagnoses