Lady Justice weeps today. Samsung's ex Chairman, Lee Kun-hee, was found guilty of breach-of-trust and tax evasion in August to fines of $88.7m. Today? He's walking free because the president needed his help to plan the 2018 Olympic games bid.
It's his second pardon! The first time, he was convicted of bribing a previous president of Korea and then pardoned by another president all together. [WSJ]
Folks in Europe, Africa, and Asia can say goodbye to 2009 by viewing a very slight lunar eclipse on the last day of the year: Thursday, December 31. The event lasts for about an hour starting at 18:52 UTC, with deepest eclipse, such as it is, at 19:22.
Only a small part of the Moon will be in the deepest part of the Earth’s shadow, so this is nowhere near a total eclipse, when the Earth fully blocks sunlight from reaching the Moon. However, if you go out and take a look you’ll see the full Moon looking distinctly flattened on one side, and perhaps the rest of the Moon’s surface will look dusky. I’ve made a little image here to show you about how much the Moon will be covered, and approximately where. Like I said, only a small part will be darkened.
Not everyone will see this; North and South America are basically shut out of this event since it happens on the other side of the planet and the whole thing’s over before the Moon rises. The image of the Earth here shows where the eclipse will be visible: if you can see where you live, then you can see the eclipse. The closer you are to the center of the map, the higher the Moon will be in the sky at midpoint of the eclipse.
The next lunar eclipse visible will be in June 2010, but it’s partial and will only be visible in Australia. After that, there is a full eclipse in December 2010 which will be seen by North and South America — though the farther west you are the better as far as decent viewing times go (it’ll be around midnight for me in the Mountain time zone).
Anyway, if you want to learn about lunar eclipses (like what I mean by partial versus total, and what an umbra and penumbra are) then take a look at the Mr. Eclipse site, which has great info.
I’ll note that this last eclipse of 2009 is also a so-called Blue Moon: the unofficial term for the second full Moon in a single month. There’s no real significance to it — the Moon ain’t blue, folks, despite a bunch of news sites already posting pictures of the Moon Photoshopped to look that color without explanation. But the real thing here is that celestial geometry is putting on a small show for you, and what better way to ring in a new year?
Tip o’ the umbra to AstroPixie for reminding me about this!
Uh, I don't have a clue what's going on here. All I know is, it's Star-Trek-related, and it's very, very NSFW. [Dinner in the Darkroom]
Click through to the gallery below for the NSFW (and totally baffling) pic.
I have been trying to find overhead conveyors to no avail.
PLease advise.
Antoine Semaan
Thus says the City Paper of Nashville On-line - "Post Politics, the new GOP is a She" Dec. 28:
Beyond a steady rightward shift and an increasingly reactionary rhetoric, conservative leadership is taking on another characteristic — it’s becoming more female. Both nationally and in Tennessee, the most beloved and vocal conservative leaders these days seem to be women.
Exhibit A is the 2008 presidential campaign and the continued popularity of Sarah Palin.
Named in the piece, Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, most prominently, as a rising star and possibly even Presidential material for 2012.
Also: State Sen. Diane Black, or Lou Ann Zelenik (middle photo) both running for the 6th Congressional District recently vacated by a retiring Blue Dog Democrat Bart Gordon. And State Republican Chair Robin Smith running in the 3rd.
After Congress, mentioned as new Tennessee GOP leaders: Sen. Mae Beavers, Rep. Susan Lynn, Rep. Debra Maggart and Rep. Donna Rowland. Who are described as "all very conservative and outspoken."
Continuing:
Whether it’s state Sen. Mae Beavers on the Tennessee Firearm Freedom Act, Rep. Susan Lynn (photo below) spearheading the effort for a state sovereignty resolution or Rep. Marsha Blackburn taking on Al Gore in congressional hearings, the more confrontational political work is increasingly being left to women. These days, if you’re talking about an unapologetic, unequivocating public conservative, there’s a good chance you’re talking about a woman.
Rep. Blackburn explains the phenomenon:
“The amazing thing to me about the tea parties is, when you look out across the crowd, the crowd is predominantly female. ... It’s amazing, the number of women attending these events, and women are speaking out as never before. ... They are looking at what’s happening with the cost of health care, they are truly concerned about the strong arm of government reaching into their lives and into their pocketbooks.’’
For the 3rd District race, Ms. Zelenick is identified as the clear Tea Party choice.
From the Nashville Post, Dec. 20:
With so many candidates in the race, the Republican vote is expected to be fractured... ardent support of Tea Party activists could propel an outsider candidate to the nomination, and possibly Congress.and according to Bruce Oppenheimer of Vanderbelit Univ. "30 percent" is all it would take to win that GOP primary and to ultimately take the seat.
And the Tennesseean in regards to the Bart Gordon seat, states:
members of the so-called "Tea Party" movement — a diffuse group of conservative and libertarian activists that has defined itself in opposition to the policies of President Barack Obama — could cast the decisive votes in a bellwether election.
More info VoteLouAnn.com
What is the meaning of seamless pipe?
hi,everybody. i am a greener in designing some mechanical devices and get a serious problem. For example, i design a device for the client in US, the device must fit the American mechanical standard,and where could i find the documents online?
could anyone do me a favor to give me any address o
hello good morning,
y is it necessary to use mcc panel for chillers? is a simple control panel with isolator not sufficient 2 feed chiller? can a mcc panel feed chiller,ahu,fahu,circulating pumps al together? does mcc panel have 2 be installed in a room at roof where nearby chillers installed
The world's most exclusive Subway is also cooler than you'd ever thought Subway could be: Fully-functioning, inside a shipping container, delivering sandwiches up and down the full height of the Ground Zero construction—soon to top 100 stories.
As crews work to rebuild the World Trade Center, this Subway is fitted to a giant crane that will grow as the buildings do. It's pretty great for the workers; normally they'd have to spend half their lunch break just getting getting up and down the building—now they can get their hoagies and Sun Chips on right where they work. It's badass enough to make you wish you liked Subway. [Core77, image from AP]
I am a very experienced Rotating Equipment Engineer with nearly thirty years experience mainly in Refinery, Chemical and LNG plants. Would like to work in New Zealand for the next two to three years either as a contractor or on staff.
Would appreciate it if anyone had any good leads or reputabl
I am in the process of coming up with a method statement for installation of pre-fabricated flue stack parts. The challange is that this is a requirement that should accompany bid documents during tendering and no drawings have been supplied. I know the traditional approach of using a crane to inst
The Graston Technique® is a modification of traditional hands-on soft tissue mobilization that uses specifically designed instruments to allow the therapist to introduce a controlled amount of microtrauma into an area of excessive scar and/or soft tissue fibrosis, hoping that this will invoke an inflammatory response that will augment the healing process. It is also intended to reduce the stress on the therapist’s hands.
Microtrauma? Hurting people to make them better? I know sometimes an improperly healed bone must be re-broken so it can re-heal in proper alignment, but this is different. It bothers me that they are further injuring already damaged soft tissues and hoping (1) that the new injury will heal, (2) that that will help the older injury heal, and (3) that it can somehow avoid stimulating the deposition of just that much more scar tissue and fibrosis. It seems to violate the “primum non nocere” principle. It is unpalatable. Of course that wouldn’t matter if the evidence showed it was effective. Does it?
Soft tissue mobilization is widely used in physical therapy, although the evidence is sparse. According to one PT website,
Soft tissue mobilization breaks up inelastic or fibrous muscle tissue such as scar tissue, move tissue fluids, and relax muscle tension. This procedure consists of rhythmic stretching and deep pressure.
A related modality is Active Release Techniques® (ART) a patented hands-on treatment. The Graston Technique appears to be just another technique in this family of techniques: one that adds a special instrument to the procedure.
The Graston Technique website tells us it is used by more than 6,500 clinicians worldwide—including athletic trainers, chiropractors, hand therapists, occupational and physical therapists. It tells us the Graston Technique® instruments, much like a tuning fork, resonate in the clinician’s hands allowing the clinician to isolate adhesions and restrictions, and treat them very precisely. It tells us the treatment is clinically proven and it has resolved 87% or more of all conditions treated. (This claim is supported only by this “outcome data” chart with no explanation of what the data mean or where they come from.)
You must pay $495 for 12 hours of training to become qualified to treat and to purchase the set of instruments. The price of the instruments is $2755 — for six curved pieces of steel.
Research listed on Graston Technique Website:
The website lists articles in the popular press, poster presentations, and testimonials, but only 3 citations that appear to be acceptable evidence from peer-reviewed journals. I will call them (1) (2) and (3). A closer look reveals that they are not what they seem.
(1) and (2) are listed as having been published in the “Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.” There is no such journal. They obviously meant the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise which is the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine. Study (2), by Sevier et al., was not listed in the table of contents of that journal for the issue cited (Vol 27, No. 5, 1995) and was not found by searching the journal’s entire website. It was also not listed on PubMed. If such an article exists, it apparently was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, and certainly not in the journal they say it was published in.
(1) is listed as having been published in the “Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine” in 1995. It was indeed published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Medicine, but it was not published in 1995 as the citation indicates, but in 1997. It is, in fact, the same study as (3). The citation for (3) is the only correct one.
So the company’s own website offers us only one scientific article from a 12-year-old peer-reviewed study, and it turns out to be a controlled study of 20 rats. They gave half of them an Achilles tendon “injury” by injecting collagenase and treated half of those with Graston Technique. They found microscopic evidence of increased fibroblast proliferation in those treated with the Graston Technique instruments, and there was also an improvement in the animals’ gait. They killed the rats to do the microscopic studies, so there was no data about long-term outcomes. The authors ended the abstract with this disclaimer:
Although healing in rats may not translate directly to healing in humans, the findings of this study suggest that ASTM [augmented soft tissue mobilization] may promote healing via increased fibroblast recruitment.
Research Found in PubMed
A PubMed search for “Graston” brought up 7 articles. 5 were case reports, one was a description of the design of a proposed trial, and the only one that was a clinical study was a pilot study that was not very informative.
1. A case report of treatment of a tibialis posterior strain in an athlete. I thought this one was really funny. In addition to the Graston technique, the patient received acupuncture, electrical stimulation, Active Release Technique((R)), ultrasound therapy with Traumeel (a mixture of 14 homeopathic remedies), and rehabilitation. So in addition to wondering if the patient would have recovered just as fast with no treatment, we are left wondering which of these modalities or which combination of them was helpful, if any.
2. A report of three case studies.
3. Not a trial, but a description of the design of a proposed trial.
4. Case report of treating trigger thumb with both Graston and ART (active release techniques).
5. Case report of a volleyball player with costochondritis that concluded “This athlete seemed to respond positively to manipulation, soft tissue mobilization, and taping.”
6. This pilot study in patients with carpal tunnel syndrome compared soft tissue mobilization by manual techniques to STM by the Graston Technique and found no difference in clinical improvements. Instead of concluding that the Graston Technique offered no advantage over the other treatment, it concluded that it had substantiated the clinical efficacy of both. The abstract doesn’t mention the number of subjects.
There was one other study that my search failed to bring up because the abstract did not mention Graston Technique but it did use GT instruments and has been cited by GT therapists as supporting evidence (that’s how I found out about it). It was a mouse study that instead of showing that GT is clinically effective seems to show the opposite. It found favorable effects on early collagen formation and organization, but minimal to no effect on the final outcome of healing.
Summary of the Evidence
It really all boils down to a handful of mice pro, a handful of mice con, one human pilot study showing no advantage over manual mobilization, and a lot of testimonials. Would you be willing to try a new pharmaceutical treatment on the basis of nothing but one favorable mouse study out of two, and one pilot study? Would you agree to let someone deliberately injure you on such flimsy evidence? I would be very happy if the Graston Technique proves useful, but for the time being it must be considered experimental.
A Media Story that Wasn’t
And now for the rest of the story. A physical therapist approached the editor of her local newspaper asking him to do a story featuring her and this wonderful new treatment. The editor had never heard of it, but amazingly he had heard of me, and he contacted me with questions. I had never heard of it either, but I did some quick research and told him I couldn’t find much in the way of evidence. He told the physical therapist that before he could agree to write about it he needed to see some evidence. She submitted 8 items as supporting evidence. The editor forwarded them to me for comment. I commented, rather impolitely:
This isn’t supporting evidence. It’s bullshit.
1. The cover letter consists of nothing but a protracted logical fallacy: the argument from popularity. The fact that lots of people use it and think it works does not constitute evidence that it actually works. Lots of people used bloodletting and thought it worked. Lots of people believe in astrology.
2. The rat study I referred to, by Loghmani and Warden. The last sentence says “Careful interpretation of this controlled animal study is warranted until its findings are confirmed by clinical studies.” Not even the authors are claiming it is an effective treatment for humans!
3. A testimonial from Golf Digest? Come on!
4. A description of how the Graston Technique is applied.
5. Another copy of the same Loghmani/Warden rat study. Didn’t she even realize she had already provided a copy? Did she hope you wouldn’t notice and would just be impressed by the sheer number of documents?
6. A meaningless table of “outcomes” with no explanation of where the numbers came from and no controls.
7. Something they label a “case report” which does not at all fit the definition of a case report. It is a journalistic report of the preliminary phase of an unfinished 3 part study by the same author, Loghmani, in rats. It does not provide the kind of information one would expect from a scientific paper and does not follow the accepted format. It was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, but in an in-house quarterly publication by Graston Technique. It is 4 years old — by now that study should have been finished and published in a peer-reviewed journal. Why wasn’t it?
8. A description of the technique with a testimonial, published in a popular health magazine. It quotes the same researcher, Loghmani. He says “The approach SEEMS to be effective.” It offers nothing in the way of evidence.
To put this into perspective, the only actual evidence the physical therapist has offered is one study in rats. Would you want to take a pharmaceutical that had only been tested in one rat study?
In summary, there is nothing here that could be considered evidence for clinical benefits to humans. As the Aetna insurance company says, this technique must be considered “experimental and investigational, because there is inadequate evidence in the peer-reviewed published medical literature of… effectiveness.”
In my opinion, experimental treatments like this should be limited to controlled research studies. That way we could learn once and for all if it was effective and safe. To forge ahead beyond the evidence and just treat people as she is doing amounts to using people as guinea pigs in an uncontrolled experiment without informed consent.
If you run an article, you will be giving her free advertising for an unproven treatment that she is misrepresenting as proven and effective.
The editor responded,
Thank you so much. Your assessment is exactly what I needed to keep this story out of the paper.
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Regarding VFD, I came across a statement that,
"The problem that is created with the application is that a VFD will introduce a nominal 5% harmonic current into a motor in addition to the motor's normal running amperage. The harmonic current will generate 5% more heat within the motor than w
Hi, I need a linear actuator for a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT). The CVT is intended primarily for automotive use but is applicable to anything or any size requiring a transmission. With the primary application being automotive, this makes for some quite wide ranging operating conditio
Near the core of this cluster, the density of stars is about a hundred times greater than the density in the neighborhood of our sun. These stars are so crowded that they can, at times, slam into each other and even form a new star, called a "
blue straggler."The
brightest reddish stars in the cluster are ancient red giants. These aging stars have expanded to many times their original diameters and cooled. The blue-white stars are the hottest in the cluster. Globular clusters can be found spread largely in a vast halo around our galaxy. M13 is one of nearly 150 known globular clusters surrounding our Milky Way galaxy.Globular clusters have some of the oldest stars in the universe. They likely formed before the disk of our Milky Way, so they are older than nearly all other stars in our galaxy. Studying globular clusters therefore tells us about the history of our
galaxy.This image is a composite of archival Hubble data taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys.
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Some U.S. forces in Iraq will get the chance during the holidays to talk with two NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station who also are far away from their families and friends. A 20-minute live video downlink will start at 9 a.m. EST on Dec. 29. The event will be carried live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's Web site.
Station Commander
Jeff Williams, a retired U.S. Army colonel, and Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer, an Army colonel, will talk with U.S. forces while orbiting 220 miles above Earth. Service members will have the chance to talk with the astronauts about life on the station, their military careers and what it is like to live in space for up to six months.Technology developed for the space and Earth science programs at
NASA is currently being repurposed for use to protect our soldiers in Iraq and across the globe. Examples include satellite-based communications and weather resources, GPS, and other NASA Spinoffs. NASA Television will provide live coverage of the conversations, with video from aboard the station during the event. A video file will be available later in the day, with edited footage from both the station and the service members in Iraq.For more information on
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The New York Times has a fascinating obituary on Kim Peek, the autistic man who was Dustin Hoffman's inspiration for Rain Man's character Raymond Babbitt. Some of his powers were absolutely uncanny:
• He could read two facing pages simultaneously, one with each eye.
• With that ability, he read 12,000 books and remembered every one of the pages.
• He knew so many plays and music pieces with absolute precision that he would be able to tell if an instrument was a note off in a philharmonic orchestra.
• He could remember every day in the calendar, area codes, ZIP codes, maps, countless classical compositions, a zillion trivia bits across dozens of fields in human knowledge and the arts, and give GPS-like directions for any city of the US.
And yet, with all these powers, Peek— who died a few days ago—wasn't able to understand poetry or conceptualize ideas. It was all about the memory and his extraordinary processing abilities.
However, the most important thing is that this man, who was born with these superpowers but also with grave problems, was able to go through life, cultivate his skills, work on his disabilities, partially solving his problems to interact socially, and finally emerged as someone passionate about what he liked, and loved by many.
Head to the NYT to read the complete obituary. [NYT]
Which type of encoders used in offshore application?
how to define torque in two different parts like Alluminium & cast iron joint, metal to plastic joint.etc
In Be Kind Rewind, cinephiles Jack Black and Mos Def created ultra-low-budget versions of their favorite movies. The Asylum, a studio of B-movie mischief-makers, is their real-life counterpart, except they make gold like Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and Transmorphers.
I've actually seen Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (it's available at Netflix) and loved it, and John Herrman branded them "film heroes," so it's interesting to see Wired's bio of the organization. They're not just making weird parodies in their basement; these are relatively successful little movies that sometimes play in theaters and can often be found in rental stores.
And though the majority of its films are sci-fi or horror, the company has lately expanded into biblical-disaster movies (The Apocalypse), teen-sex romps (18-Year-Old Virgin), and even family fare (Sunday School Musical). It's a new kind of B movie: low risk and made to order. "I said, ‘Make me a T&A movie in 3-D,' and they did that with Sex Pot," says Keith Leopard, director of content acquisitions at Blockbuster. "They're constantly delivering good little filler products for our customers."
And, I mean, in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, a giant shark eats a plane out of the sky. How much better can it get? [Wired]
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