Do Nursing Schools Supply Scrubs?
Some nursing schools supply scrubs; some don't. Your task will be to determine what the school policy is for the nursing school you choose. Here are the three most common scenarios as well as some common places to find scrubs, in the event you need to buy your own.
This may sound like a great option, but, as they say, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Expect to pay for your school-supplied uniforms with no option to bargain shop. Some schools only provide one or two sets of scrubs, so expect to do a lot of laundry or else shell out the extra money for additional sets of uniforms. Usually when the school provides the uniform, the school name is either embroidered on the scrubs or some kind of school patch is sewn onto them. As you might expect, school-mandated uniforms tend to be the least stylish.
Some nursing schools require a specific color or style of scrubs, allowing you purchase them independently. However, you may be limited to only one vendor if style choices are limited. If the sole criteria is a standard color, you'll be able to shop for a good bargain and likely save a lot of money. Make sure to buy at least enough sets to cover all your clinical days without having to do laundry — plus at least one extra set for last minute coffee spills or to keep in your car trunk for unforeseen fiascoes during clinicals.
Some nursing students are required to match the scrubs of the facilities where they perform their clinicals. This could mean multiple purchases if you rotate to different sites. Fortunately, this is a pretty rare occurrence. If this is your school's policy, find out how long your rotation is before investing in a large wardrobe of that facility's color of scrubs.
If you buy your own scrubs, you'll be amazed at how many places you can find them. Not only do conventional brick and mortar uniform shop or online retail sites carry them, but most major stores such as Walmart now carry large selections. You can also find them at some dollar stores and flea markets, as well as thrift stores.
You'll find that scrubs come in many shapes and sizes, whether the styles are mandated or elective. Have fun buying, and possibly saving money on, your uniforms — you'll be wearing them for a significant part of your days to come!


Lift lines are long, the snow is amazing, how about heading into the backcountry to soak up some powder turns? First things first, athletes need to understand what backcountry travel is all about and how to safely participate in it, so local non profits, Alpine Initiatives and SheJumps have teamed up to host a female backcountry awareness clinic April 9-10 at Vail Mountain Resort. This introductory class invites women to learn more about back and side-country riding while honing their skills on basics such as beacon use and drills, correct line choice, how to “go slow to go fast” and proper digging techniques.
SheJumps (http://www.shejumps.org) is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing female participation in outdoor activities through mentorship and coaching from professional and recreational outdoor athletes. The vision of SheJumps is to create a community of ambitious and compassionate women that are willing to take a "jump" to reach their potential and help others reach their own.
Alpine Initiatives (http://www.alpineinitiatives.org) was established in 2008 by professional skier JP Auclair and local Vail resident Mikey Hovey, as a catalyst for the mountain community to collaborate, contribute and initiate change in communities and environments worldwide. Through social, ecological and agricultural interactions, AI has worked to create and nurture sustainable environments and societies.
The two organizations have joined together with Vail Ski Patrol, Back Country Access and Vail Resorts, to host this wonderful and much needed event to get women participating (not just following) in the sport of back county ski and snowboard travel. The cost is $50 per participant; lift tickets will be available for the discounted price of $65/day if needed. Each day will consist of morning class time featuring Kelli Rohrig and Mave Nevins as lead instructors, and afternoon on the hill training where participants will practice executing what was discussed in class, though we will NOT be traveling out of ski area boundaries. Avalanche safety gear (shovels, probes, beacons and back-packs) will be provided for any student who does not have her own. To register for this event please call Ashley Magnuson at 970.393.2203.
The men & women dropped hammers in the rain.
The women take their turn to go full send at X Games.
Olympic Predictions With Jason Arens: Who Will Take Women's Ski Slopestyle Gold?
Multiple time X Games Head Judge, Jason Arens, and myself place our bets on Women's Ski Slopestyle at the Olympics.


"The Sabbath was established originally in no special connection with the Hebrews, but as an institution for all mankind, in commemoration of God's rest after the six days of creation. It was designed for all the descendants of Adam" (Adult Quarterly, Southern Baptist Convention series, August 15, 1937).
If the first Sabbath to be kept by a human being were not until just before Sinai (Exodus 16), and the Sabbath were merely a Jewish institution, as some claim, then why did Jesus say that the Sabbath was "made for man" (Mark 2:27)? And if no one was keeping the Sabbath, how then did generation after generation of human beings keep track of the weekly cycle for all those years? The book of Genesis is clear that the patriarchs used the seven-day week to count time (Genesis 2:1-3; 7:4, 10; 8:10, 12; 29:27, 28; 31:23; 50:10).
One would also wonder how the story of the Creation would have been maintained from generation to generation, a story that places special significance on the seventh day, if no one had ever observed the Sabbath during the 2,500 years between Creation and Sinai. The Creation story itself testifies that the Sabbath belongs to all people.
"The Sabbath-rest was a Babylonian, as well as a Hebrew, institution. ... The Sabbath was also known, at all events in Accadian times, as a 'dies nefastus,' a day on which certain work was forbidden to be done, and an old list of Babylonian festivals and fast-days tells us that on the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days each month the Sabbath-rest had to be observed" (A. H. Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, 1985, 74).
"But the seventh day is recognized as sacred, not by the Hebrews only, but also by the Greeks" (Clement of Alexandria).
Although the Scriptures do clearly portray the Sabbath as the memorial of God's Creation rest (Genesis 2:1-3; Exodus 20:11; Hebrews 4:4), and the early hours of the first day as the time when Christ arose from the dead (Matthew 28:1-6), nowhere do they identify Sunday worship as a commemoration of the resurrection (or as a replacement for Sabbath observance). Instead, they identify the Eucharist (communion service) as the commemoration of "the Lord's death" and the participation of the believer in baptism as the symbol of the Lord's death and resurrection.
"As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes" (1 Corinthians 11:26).
"We were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4, 5).
Adapted from Kevin Morgan, Sabbath Rest, 80-82.


What do we mean when we say we observe an object in motion? Let’s say we are at a position, sabihin, . Ang object ay sa posisyon sa oras na , at sa sa . Although most people may not notice it, sa huling pangungusap, I already embedded an unreasonable number of assumptions about space and time, which will become clear very soon.
We could say that when the object is at , it emits a ray of light, which reaches us at sa oras na . Katulad din para at . Tandaan na kami ay pagtukoy at (at ipagpalagay kung ano at ibig sabihin) with this statement. Then the velocity of the object becomes . We will call it the perceived velocity. It is how the object appears to move, from our perspective.
Another thing we could say is this: Dahil alam namin na liwanag ay tumatagal ng isang tiyak na halaga ng oras upang maabot sa amin mula at , ang tunay na oras para sa mga bagay ay at . And then the real velocity would be . Let’s call this quantity its absolute velocity, or its velocity in the absolute reality. Note that we are again assuming what at ibig sabihin, but handling the time at the object a bit better.
A third way of looking at it is this: Let’s say we send out a pulse of light to the object at time . It gets reflected back to us at our time . Kaya, sa oras na , the object is at a distance . If the object is going directly away from us (this is important), we can define another distance sa in exactly the same way. Then its speed would be .
Special Relativity takes the third view (or something very close to it). Based on this view, SR defines a coordinate transformation between two frames of reference. But having done that, it insists that the transformation is real, and not a perceptual effect. At, this is the subtle point, we still have to do computations of the kind described in the view number 2 above in order to understand motion. Since this post is meant for a non-technical crowd, I won’t belabor the point, but how it pans out mathematically is quite interesting.
Here is a real lecture on the co-ordinate transformation part of SR by Prof Susskind of Stanford. Although it looks formal and rigorous, it does have the same subtle issues. If you watch the derivation of the transformation from upang carefully, from around the timestamp 47:05 in the video, you will see that he makes the statement at . This statement is true only on the axis and axis (or when at ) respectively, which he explicitly states, but then he silently goes on to assume it is true for all at . Sa ibang salita, what is written is the same as at . It does not follow that . So the coordinate transformation is derived with insufficient mathematical or physical reasoning.
My belief is that one has to decouple the constancy of the speed of light (and the resultant covariant transformation of space-time as required by Maxwell’s equations) from the perceptual effects of light travel time. Such an approach would be equivalent to developing a framework based on second one of the views of speed and motion listed above. I did this in ang aking aklat and my published papers. Sa katunayan, I went one step further, and investigated the nature of space, and what we mean by it — space is a cognitive model created in our brain and mind to represent the electrical signals generated by light falling on our retinas. Let me quote Einstein again.


Former Heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe: where is he now?
Former heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe now teaches boxing to amateurs.
The truest thing Riddick Bowe ever knew was that punch. Despite countless blows to the head, the boxer recalls its purity because his memory, he says, is as sharp as ever. He was just a teenager then, but he still hears its echoes.
"WHAP!" Bowe says, punching a fist into an open palm to punctuate his words. "Just like that. You hear that sound?"
He recalls seeing a guy on the ground, knocked out cold, his teeth jutting in all directions. "I tell you something -- about 30 years later, I've never been able to create that same shot," he says.
So much else in Bowe's strange saga, though, seems open to debate, the passage of time and the violence of his chosen profession not necessarily blurring memories so much as crystallizing the differences.
A former heavyweight champion who has made his home in Fort Washington for nearly two decades, Bowe isn't mentioned in discussions of the best fighters ever. Despite his immense talent -- his record stands at 43-1 with 33 knockouts -- Bowe's achievements are overshadowed by the sideshow he invited into the center ring.
Bowe, a man who made millions as a prize fighter, now seeks paychecks wherever he can find them. Seventeen years after losing his title, he is back amid the heavy bags, though he's not fighting and he's not exactly training future champions.
Instead, he leads exercise classes at LA Boxing gyms in the Washington suburbs for government workers who pop in for a workout after business hours, housewives who squeeze in some gym time while their kids are at baseball practice, young men and women who are trying to keep their bodies from aging.
To a recent class, he brought his world championship belts, his 1988 Olympic silver medal, even his high school diploma. He's proudest, he says, of these mementos from his past life.
Since then, however, life has not been as kind. Today, he says, he doesn't trust people.
He has a new wife but few friends. The fans, family and entourage who seemed so important a decade ago are all gone, he says.
"When the money go, they go. When the money left, whatever the case may be, all that stopped," he says. "Have a million friends. Once the money stop, the crowd goes away."
As a young fighter, Bowe was often favorably compared with Mike Tyson, the tough-to-the-core brawler who also hails from New York. In contrast, Bowe was personable, media-friendly and had a clean record. But after Bowe had reached the peak of his career, winning the belt in November 1992, in the first of three battles against Evander Holyfield, controversy became ever-present, in the ring and outside it.


Packing conversion is a subject that has become increasingly more important in recent years. In the following paragraphs I will try to divide the subject into three areas.
The “obvious” dollar savings that can be realized by making the conversion.
The “non-obvious” additional reasons for converting packing to a mechanical seal.
The reasons you should convert to split mechanical seals whenever possible, rather than the solid type that requires taking the equipment apart .
We will begin with the savings that are real and easily measurable.
A leak equivalent to the smallest steady stream that you can produce, is equal to one to two gallons (3,5 to 8,0 liters) per hour. At a cost of $0.25 per gallon this would come to $3285.00 each year. Enough money to purchase several mechanical seals.
Depending on the type of waste, the cost of disposal can be several times the cost of the product that was leaking. Household sewage is a good example. The sewage portion of your water bill is normally larger than the water portion.
Chill water, hot water, cooling towers and boiler feed water are examples of systems that need chemical addition to protect the equipment against corrosion, bacteria etc. These chemicals are very expensive and add to the cost of the leakage.
The major cause of bearing failure is contamination of the bearing oil. As little as 0.002% water in bearing oil can reduce the rated bearing life as much as 48%. Most of this water comes from packing leakage and the water hose you use to wash the leakage down the drain. When the pump is running, heated air vents out through the oil filling connection. At shut down moisture laden air re-enters through this vent.
To install a sleeve the shaft diameter often has to be reduced and in the process of doing so the shaft is weakened.
Packing damages the sleeve as it removes the corrosion resistant metal’s protective oxide layer.
Because sleeves are so hard to remove we generally end up replacing the bearings at the same time because the bearings are often destroyed during the sleeve removal process.
Pack the pump properly and run it long enough to stabilize the operating temperature and pressure. Take an amperage reading at the motor or starter (not the breaker) when the pump has stabilized. You should also record the pump rpm. at this time.
Remove the packing, install a split mechanical seal and record the amperage difference. Combine this data with the amount of money you have to pay for electricity and the results will be obvious. Be sure to use a split seal so hat you will not alter any pump internal clearances.
In the event you do not record a drop in amperage you will notice an increase in motor speed. Many marginal motors are being “bogged down” by the friction from five or six rings of packing.
Depending upon the flushing fluid you were using, the cost can be very high and often unreliable. If you will install an oversized seal chamber and then connect a line from the bottom of the stuffing box back to the suction side of the pump most flushing fluids can be eliminated.
Caution : Do not install this line if you are pumping close to the vapor pressure of the liquid, as the lower pressure may cause the fluid to vaporize in the stuffing box or between the lapped seal faces.
In the event a flushing fluid is required, only a small amount will be needed with a balanced O-ring type mechanical seal. One to two gallons (3,5 to 8 liters) per hour (not per minute) would be typical if the springs are not in the fluid and the stuffing box internal diameter has been increased.
As mentioned in the above paragraph, if you have eliminated flushing there will be no product dilution. Once you dilute a product there is additional cost involved in removing the diluent. This is normally done through an evaporation process that involves costly power and/or the creation of a vacuum.
If nothing leaked there would be very little corrosion and repainting would never be necessary. Most leakage comes from valves, flanges and rotating shafts. They can all be sealed to prevent leakage.
Find out how much you are paying for these modern packings and then observe the waste that is produced during the cutting and fitting process.
Multicraft, operator maintenance, and contract labor are becoming a way of life in many plants. The life of packing is directly related to the skill of the man that packed the pump, and the skilled craftsman is disappearing fast.
Additional reasons to convert from packing to a leak proof mechanical seal.
Leakage to the ground ends up in the ground water table. Leakage to the air contributes to airborne pollution and all of the problems associated with polluting the atmosphere. Fugitive emission laws are restricting some types of leakage to parts per million.
Vapors escaping from the packing gland of a vertical pump are the major cause of electrical motor failure. The vapors not only contaminate the grease lubricant, but are the main cause of damage to the insulation of the motor’s windings.
There is no packing that can seal vacuum. Flushing water looks like it is doing the job but testing has shown that flush water can go down one side of the packing as the vacuum lets air come in the other side. In a condensate pump carbon dioxide (CO2)ingestion will lower the pH of the boiler feed water causing the addition of more chemicals and additional boiler blow downs. Air ingestion will also add additional cost, because deaeration is almost always necessary to lower the oxygen content of the water.
This is the reason you use a mechanical seal on the water pump of your car and the pump in your household washing machine. Changing sleeves and packing in these applications would not only be too costly but the leakage would be intolerable.
The list of hazardous materials is getting bigger every day. Unfortunately the hazard is not always visible. Human beings should be breathing nothing but clean fresh air. Keep the other stuff inside the machinery where it belongs.
Any product classified as a fugitive emission or hazardous should be dual sealed to protect the environment and any personnel that might be close by. Sewage, with hydrogen sulfide and methane gas always present, is a good example of a product that should always be dual sealed. Packing these pumps should be classified as a criminal activity.
Recent legislation is restricting the leakage of some fluids to as little as a few hundred parts per million. Packing is out of the question in these applications and dual mechanical seals are the only sensible solution. If the product is a clean lubricating liquid, a magnetic drive or canned pump is another logical choice.
Once the mechanical seal is installed correctly there is nothing to do unless the impeller needs adjusting. Packing, unless it is live loaded, needs frequent adjustment to prevent excessive leakage.
We are all familiar with the utility man that has a roll of electrician’s tape in one pocket and a twenty six inch adjustable wrench in the other. He is the one that adjusts the packing on the back shift and weekends.
Converting to mechanical seals is an excellent way to keep him away from your equipment.


Welcome to our first ever WTA Grand Slam Rankings. While the official WTA rankings take into consideration a player's performance across all WTA events over the preceding 12 months, these rankings are specific to player results at the eight Grand Slam events that have taken place over the the past two full seasons. This is a thought experiment: how have the players performed at the sport's most prestigious tournaments, and what can we glean from this data?
A player earns one point for each progressive round reached at a Grand Slam. For example, a fourth round result nets four points while a first round loss yields one. Bonus points are awarded once a player reaches the quarterfinal stage of a Slam. Simona Halep earned five points for making this year's U.S. Open quarters as well as one bonus point. Serena Williams scored six regular and two bonus points for making the semis (eight), while Angelique Kerber bagged the maximum 12 for winning the title (eight plus four bonus points).
These rankings are intended as a bit of fun and to be taken with a grain of salt. While not official, they offer insight into the overall landscape of women's tennis. For example, who has earned the lion's share of her points from a single major tournament? Who has been more consistent at majors than expected? Have the top-ranked women performed to their ability at the Slams?
WHAT CAN WE DEDUCE FROM THE RANKINGS?
No surprise that Serena Williams reigns supreme in Grand Slam tennis over the last 24 months. Of the past eight Slams, Williams has failed to make the final only twice, losing in the semifinals of the last two U.S. Opens.
Angelique Kerber is the official world #1 on the WTA Tour, a position that she has richly earned due to her two Slam wins in 2016 and overall exemplary play in other events. Given that these rankings span the last two seasons, Kerber only just grabs the #2 spot from Muguruza after winning the U.S. Open. The closeness between Kerber and Muguruza is owed to Kerber's five Slam losses before the fourth round during that time.
One of the big takeaways from these rankings is just how few players have consistently made the second week of Slams over the last two years; only 10 players have made at least four fourth round appearances: Serena, Muguruza, Keys, Radwanska, Venus, Halep, Makarova, Azarenka, Suarez Navarro, and Sharapova.
Venus Williams, who made the fourth round at a Slam only once between 2011 and 2014, has made six of the last eight to land her at #6 in these rankings. At 36, the elder Williams is (incredibly) one of the most consistent Slam performers on the WTA.
Madison Keys is one of the big stories -- perhaps surprises -- of these rankings. She has been a picture of consistency, losing only once before the fourth round over the past eight Slams (2015 French Open third round).
Ekaterina Makarova is the name that sticks out most in these Grand Slam rankings top 10. She has consistently outperformed her regular tour ranking in Grand Slams over the past two years.
What a difference one tournament makes: Caroline Wozniacki might not have made this list at all had it not been for her 2016 U.S. Open semifinal run.
Roberta Vinci earned 16 of her 27 total points from the last two U.S. Opens.
Although this list only looks at active players, retired 2015 US Open champion Flavia Pennetta would have tied for #33 with 18 points, and that's without playing a single match in 2016.
Where does Maria Sharapova fit into all of this? She is disqualified from these rankings while serving her suspension. However, she would have rounded out the top 20 with 22 points, in spite of earning zero points from the last four Slams.
Of the players listed in these rankings, Serena, Kvitova, Muguruza, Keys, and Svitolina are the only women not to have lost in the first round of a Slam over the last two years.
Prior to this year's U.S. Open, Karolina Pliskova had never advanced past the third round of a Grand Slam. Like Wozniacki, her run at the final Slam made a world of difference to her place in these rankings.
Biggest discrepancies between Grand Slam ranking and WTA ranking: Cibulkova (18->5), Pliskova (16->6), Kuznetsova (33->9), Ivanovic (21->63), Venus Williams (6->17), Makarova (9->30), Safarova (13->62).
Just like you, I also make my own tally and rankings on the things that I love watching. In your case, you love making a group and individual rankings for tennis. In my case, I love making a ranking about pageant, specifically the Miss Universe. I love making a tally about who made it to the top 15, and the country with the most number of top 5 placements. That's where you determine which countries have been performing well in the said pageant. Perhaps, I can really consider myself as a pageant enthusiast!


Here, in order to simplify the problem, we assume that everyone is standing on a fixed position, that is we have m*n people standing on a m*n (0 < m, n < 300) rectangle. And Cici wants to choose a sub-rectangle as the new choir. Cici doesn't know how to choose the sub-rectangle from this m*n rectangle. So, as a programmer, can you help her to get the smallest variance on the people Cici choose when Cici gives you a sub-rectangle of a*b?
The input file consists of several test cases. The first line of each test case contains two integers m, n (0 < m, n < 300), indicating the rectangle of the people.
Then following m lines, each line has n numbers indicate the height of each person (each number is an integer between 120 and 220).
The next line contains a number q (0 < q <= 100) indicate the queries Cici asks you.
Then following q lines, each line contains two numbers a, b (1 < a <= m, 1 < b <= n, ) indicate that Cici want to get a a * b rectangle with the smallest variance.
For each test case, print q + 1 lines.
Then following q lines, each line print the left-top position you choose and the variance in the format "(sx, sy), variance" (the variance is rounded to two digits after decimal point).
Note: For each query, if there are multi-rectangle with the same variance, choose the point with smaller sx (when sx is equal, choose sy smaller first).


WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Nevada led the way as the U.S. showed strong job growth in 2016, scoring highest among all states in Gallup's 2016 Job Creation Index. The rise to the top spot completed a six-year climb for Nevada, which ranked last among the states in both 2009 and 2010. Moving in the other direction, Wyoming scored last among the states for 2016 -- eight years after topping Gallup's first Job Creation Index in 2008.
Each night in its Gallup Daily tracking survey, Gallup asks employed Americans to report on hiring activity at their place of work. Gallup's Job Creation Index is based on the percentage of workers saying their place of employment is increasing the size of its workforce, minus the percentage saying their place of employment is reducing the size of its workforce.
For the nation overall, the Job Creation Index score has grown each year since 2009, from -1 to +32 in 2016 (43% hiring, 11% letting go). Rankings for all 50 states can be found at the bottom of this article.
Nevada's score of +40 marks the seventh straight year the state's workers have reported an improved job market. The state's -13 score in 2009, when it was reeling from the housing market collapse and severe cutbacks in tourism, ties with Michigan's score for the same year as the lowest for any state in the index's nine-year history. Michigan has made a similarly impressive upward climb, buoyed by the strong recovery in automobile sales, with its score of +37 in 2016 tying for third highest with Georgia. Utah, which has ranked in the top 10 six times, was second among the states last year, with a score of +38.
The strongest regional presence among the top states for job creation comes from three Great Lakes states -- Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Only two states with top 10 scores this year have not been ranked there previously -- California and Massachusetts.
Nebraska is the only state to rank in the top 10 every year since tracking began in 2008.
Wyoming's score dropped 18 points to +2 in 2016. This is the first time since 2011 that a state did not have a score of at least +10.
North Dakota, which was at the top of the rankings in six of the previous eight years and never outside the top 10, dropped into the bottom 10 last year.
Two types of states dominate the bottom 10 -- those whose economies depend heavily on the oil, gas or coal industry and those with small populations. In addition to Wyoming and North Dakota, other low-ranking states relying heavily on the energy sector include Louisiana, West Virginia, Alaska and Oklahoma. Only Louisiana is among the upper half of states in population, and it is ranked 25th. All four of the least populous states -- Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska and North Dakota -- make the bottom 10.
The most glaring exception to this is Connecticut -- the only state that has stayed in the bottom 10 every year since 2008. It is not dependent to a great extent on an energy industry and is one of the most populous states on the list.
Among the four states with Job Creation Index scores at least five points above the national average, Nevada and Utah share a long common border, but the other two -- Georgia and Michigan -- are from two other regions.
Six of the states scoring at least five points below the national average are located in the vast area between the Rockies and the Mississippi River, three are in the Deep South, four are in New England, and two are in Appalachia.
As the U.S. economy continues its upward journey from the depths of the Great Recession, there is considerable instability in the state rankings for new job creation. Only five of the states with the top 10 scores in 2016 were among the top 10 scorers in 2013, and only five with the bottom 10 scores last year were on the same list just three years ago.
Even with the instability, it has become increasingly clear that the big losers have been states relying heavily on jobs tied to the energy industry. Wyoming, North Dakota, Louisiana, Alaska, Oklahoma and West Virginia all ranked in the top four states for job creation in either 2008, 2009 or 2010, when the price of oil often soared. In both of the last two years, with oil prices much lower than a decade ago, all but North Dakota have ranked in the bottom 10. Further, all of those states except Louisiana scored lower in job creation in 2016 than in 2011, during a period when the national score more than doubled, from +14 to +32. On the positive side, there are signs that the oil industry may be poised for a comeback.
Outside of the energy-dependent states, almost every state -- no matter where it currently ranks -- has improved its job creation score over the last two years.
There are reasons for concern about the slow pace of job creation in a handful of states, such as Wyoming. Still, most states have made strong gains in new job creation since 2010, and that growth continued in 2016.
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 2-Dec. 30, 2016, on the Gallup Daily tracking survey, with a random sample of 210,448 employed adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of working adults, the margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level.
Margins of error for individual states are no greater than ±6 percentage points, and are ±3 percentage points in most states. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.
About half of Americans (49%) believe their personal financial situation is better than it was a year ago. This is sharply higher than during the recession and post-recession years.


I wrote earlier about a solution I helped develop which allows city leaders monitor the sentiment being expressed online about their city. As we present this solution to the leaders of various cities, one of the questions that is always asked is whether their city is well known enough to generate enough mentions so that the sentiment charts will be statistically significant.
The general rule of thumb we have been using is that a city must have a population of at least .25 million in order to make the tool feasible. The thing that matters is the number of mentions of the city online (we would hope for at least 5k per week) and many times (but not always) the population of a city can be a rough guide to how many mentions that are likely to be made. Therefore I decided to run a quick test to see how many mentions I would find for a pseudo-random selection of cities with both large and small populations (some of the smaller places were not technically cities) in the first week of April this year.
I think you can see that there is a correlation between city size and the number of mentions (correlation coefficient = 0.83). You can also see that Galway is getting roughly enough mentions to make sentiment analysis useful despite only having a population of 75k, while Cergy-Panoise has more than double the population but is not getting enough internet mentions to make sentiment monitoring useful.
Both Bethlehem and Nazareth get many more mentions than would be predicted by their population (e.g. they are both mentions significantly more than Navan and Dundalk which have larger populations). This is probably due to the biblical significance of the towns - in fact this is why I chose them for inclusion in the test and I don't know the names of any other towns in the middle-east with such small population.
Where the name of the city in the local language was different from the name in English I searched on both versions of the name. In general the local language version received more hits (e.g. there were 6.5 times as many mentions of 北京 as there were for Beijing. However, for the Israeli cities it was the other way around. For example the word "Jerusalem" got 20,711 mentions while the Arabic and Hebrew translations of the city name only had 17 and 39 mentions respectively. Perhaps this is an indication that people in other parts of the world are talking about the city much more than the locals.
Cergy-Ponoise only gets 235 mentions,while Lorient gets 1,971 mentions despite having a smaller population. I am not sure why this should be the case, but perhaps it is due to the fact that Cergy-Ponoise is so close to Paris that local residents consider themselves to be Parisians. Lorient has no similar large city nearby to overshadow it.
The statistics will vary over time.For example,if I has run my test for the 3rd week in April rather than the first, the number of mentions for Boston would have been 1,893,159 rather than 111,035 - probably due to coverage of the marathon bombing.
In the case of some of the cities I chose, there are multiple cities with same name - for example, the wikipedia disambiguation page for Boston lists several cities with this name, but I only counted the population of the capital of Massachusetts (the population of the other cities would probably not be very large).
Wikipedia sometimes has several different estimates of population because of ambiguity of how large an area to include. I only considered the first number listed(which is typically the smallest). In some cases the difference might be minor, but in others it would be very significant. For example the estimates of the population of Boston vary by an order of magnitude from 625 thousand to 7.6 million.
Earlier this year I was persuaded to sign up for the Wicklow 100/200 cycle event. This event takes place in June and offers a choice of two routes, one 100km long and another 200km long. A 200km cycle would be challenging enough, but this route has the added challenge of passing over several steep climbs.Luckily you don't need commit to either distance when you enter and you are allowed change your mind at any stage until you come to the fork in the road where the two roads diverge.
I don't have much experience of cycling in the mountains so I am unsure how I would get on.Yesterday I rode over the Sally Gap for the first time. I found that I was not a strong climber and was constantly being dropped from the group as we went uphill. Luckily I had no problem catching up again when we came to a flat section, but it is looking very much like I will be opting for the 100km route in June. I will also need several training cycles in the meantime to ensure I complete it in a decent time.
As many people know, I was the original developer of the smasher Sametime plugin for automatic BSO authentication. However, I have not been actively maintaining it in the last few years. The last update I did was in 2011 when I partially fixed a problem which stopped SUT and smasher working together. Whenever people ask for new features or bug fixes, I typically point them at the location of the source code and then politely suggest that if they really want their issue solved they should fix it themselves.
Recently the Böblingen lab announced that they were planning to replace all of their CISCO BSO devices with juniper ones. This caused a flurry of emails from German employees since neither smasher of any of the alternative tools work with the Juniper firewalls. I was not in a position to help because I don't have access to any of the new firewalls to test, Luckily Thomas Immel was kind enough to help out and he developed a new version 1.3.5 which apparently works with the new firewalls.
I hope you enjoy (and send any praise or complaints to Thomas rather than me).
When I bought my racing bike through the bike to work scheme, I had 50 euro left over. The bike shop offered to give me a voucher for the unused money, but I was keen to spend it on some accessory. I asked the shop what I could get for 50 euro and I finally decided on getting tri-bars.
Tri-bars are extensions to the handlebars on a bike which allows the cyclist to take on a more aerodynamic position. They are called tri-bars because they are normally only used by participants in either a triathlon or an individual time trial.
The position of the cyclist is more aerodynamic so it is possible to cycle faster and expend less effort.
While using the tri-bars the cyclist will normally rest their elbows on soft pads which eliminates all strain on your arms or back.
When your hands are on the tri-bars they are quite some distance from the brakes, so sudden braking is not possible. Hence they cannot be used in traffic or when cycling in a group.
You have minimal steering control while using the tri-bars so they can only be used on straight road. In fact it is not even feasible to swerve to avoid pot holes while using the bars so they can't be used on poor road surfaces.
While it is more efficient to cycle with tri-bars, it takes some practice to get used to the different cycling position.
The tri-bars use up some space on the handlebars which reduces the space for attaching other accessories.
When I initially started cycling on my new bike, I found that I hardly ever used the tri-bars and so I decided to remove them. However, when I started training for a triathlon last year I re-attached them and decided to make a concerted effort to learn how to use them. I still find that I don't use the bars very often, but I think that it is still worth having them because they don't get in the way very much when not being used.


The Kentucky Republican said Obama's latest reforms don't do enough to protect civil liberties.
It looks like President Obama's latest reforms to the National Security Agency's surveillance program did not satisfy Sen. Rand Paul.
The Kentucky Republican has been one of the leading critics of the administration's data-collection program. And while the president announced it would be slightly reined in and certain surveillance on foreign leaders would stop, Paul said the reforms didn't go far enough.
"I think what I heard is that if you like your privacy you can keep it," Paul zinged on CNN following the president's address. Going after the president's reference to the Revolutionary War, he poked further: "Paul Revere was warning us that the British were coming, not that the Americans were coming."
The libertarian lawmaker contends that the federal government can still collect private information, even credit-card information, without a warrant. His biggest point: The program violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which requires individualized warrants based on probable cause.
"I don't want them collecting the information," Paul continued on CNN. "It's not about who holds it."
This is ultimately an issue that he said would need to be decided by the Supreme Court.
Paul also gave credit to leaker Edward Snowden for Friday's announcement from the president.
"I think there would have been absolutely no reform without Snowden," Paul said. "We wouldn't have any of this, we wouldn't have any discussion."
Paul said that while he believes Obama's "heart really is in the right place" and that his "motives are not bad," the White House does not have "enough healthy respect for the Fourth Amendment."
At the end of the interview, Paul was asked to give the president a grade for his speech: an "A" for effort, "C" for content.


Why does this happen, and how can one solve it using requests?
I am not interested in retrieving the whole page and statistics or JS libraries retrieved from MediaWiki. I only need the whole content of the page (through scraping, not MediaWiki API).
The issue is that those JS calls to other resources (incl. mediawiki) make it possible to render the whole page to the client (by a browser), but since the requests library does not support JS execution, JS is not executed => page parts are not loaded from other resources => the target page is not loaded as a whole as it might be in a browser.


Does The Roger Black Gold Magnetic Exercise Bike Live Up To The Name?
The Roger Black Gold Magnetic Exercise Bike is a model that is probably popular with many people browsing bikes because of the name.
Any machine with a celebrity endorsement has a little more shine to it than some others.
This is definitely a good looking stationary bike with a decent spec. It is a sleek black exercise machine with a slim profile and fairly subtle branding. But can it deliver in the way that buyers expect?
The Roger Black 6kg Exercise Bike has some nice functions that will appeal to many users, especially in the programming.
The great starting point with this Roger Black exercise bike is that it has some great technological features with the console and different programmes. Many find that this machine is fairly easy to use with a nice range of options. There are 6 fairly typical pre-set modes, but there are also specialised options for body fat, target heart rate and target control.
There are also other physical elements to the hardware that have impressed a few users. This ranges from the addition of the iPad holder to the simple adjustments to the seat and handlebar.
This means that most users can find the ideal position while watching the next episode of a box set. There are also self leveling pedals with straps and a bottle holder.
The trouble with this Roger Black Gold Magnetic Exercise Bike is that there is a clear cut off in its abilities and functions.
There are some clear limitations with the hardware and software of this stationary bike, which become evident after playing around for a little while. For example, there are some users confused as to why the calorie counter was not automatic. There is also minimal data and resistance.
Many plateau at the highest level a little too quickly. In addition to this, there are the typical issues with the comfort of the saddle and assembly. The seat takes some getting used to and the model is a little fiddly to put together, but generally worth the effort.
Summary: what does this mean for the final verdict on this Roger Black Gold Bike Machine?
There are some clear limitations to this machine, but there are also plenty of quality elements. It all depends upon the ability and needs of the user.
Ideally, this is best used as a model for first time users that are just starting out with fitness goals. This is clear with the use of the 6kg flywheel, minimal resistance and lack of data.
But, there are still great reports from those that are a little older, less able or working through injuries. This Roger Black exercise bike is therefore an appealing entry level machine with a better finish than some cheaper options.
Find more reviews about the Roger Black Gold Magnetic Exercise Bike on Argos here.


An influential group of Senators in La Paz, Bolivia, led by the Second Vice-President of the Senate January 21 sent a letter to Hugo Chávez and demanded the immediate release of the Venezuelan political leader, Alejandro Peña Esclusa.
Bolivian Senators accused the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) of planting false evidence during the raid at the home of Peña-Esclusa to incriminate him illegally.
The list of signatories is headed by the Second Vice President (Speaker) of the Senate, Carmen Eva Gonzalez Lafuente, and the Head of the National Convergence Caucus, German Antelo Vaca. Also signed Senators Centa Reck, Jeanine Añez Chavez, Maria Elena Mendez de Leon, Mollina Roger Pinto, Carlos Sonnenschein Antelo, Marcelo Antezana and Bernard O. Sanz Gutierrez, who in the coming days will assume his post as head of the opposition bloc.
¿Porqué difamar a Peña Esclusa en Italiano?
Existe solo una explicación creíble a la pregunta porqué Alejandro Peña Esclusa quede difamado solo en Wikipedia en italiano, y no en español o inglés, por ejemplo: Para influir a la iglesia Católica. Lógicamente, esto significa que Chávez y su consejeros en el gobierno Cubano considera el Vaticano un adversario importante. ¿Y porqué no? Es la única organización con una presencia en todo el país, el único que puede difundir la verdad en toda Venezuela cuando los medios de comunicación han sido censurados.
Chávez es amigo de Putin en Rusia, y Putin es amigo de Berlusconi en Italia. Los tres son corruptos en escala astronómica, los tres son obsesionados en controlar el mensaje en los medios. Los tres tienen sus propios imperios de media para difundir su propaganda.
Wikipedia tiene que ser un peligro para ellos. Sin embargo, cada uno puede editarlo, los subordinados de los corruptos también. Es fácil emplear un ejercito de usuarios, o mejor aun, indoctrinarles para hacerlo sin pago. “Idiotas útiles” como les llamaban los bolcheviques.
Afortunadamente, el Cardenal Urosa Savino en Venezuela no se deja engañar. Sin embargo, como vimos en Honduras, el Papa en Roma no necesariamente escucha a su propio gente en el país. Aunque el Cardenal dijo claramente que no fue un golpe de Estado en Honduras junio 28, 2009, pero un destitución legal de un presidente (por haber tratado de derrocar la Constitución), el Papa no repitió esa verdad.
Queda claro que la difamación de Alejandro Peña Esclusa en Wikipedia en italiano se hace con el mismo propósito: Para hacer el Vaticano perder la confianza en su propio Cardenal en Venezuela. Espero que el Papa sea mas sabio que de caer en esas mentiras, y mas bien defiende a los derechos de Peña Esclusa de no ser difamado, y lo toma como ejemplo de la importancia de tener mucho cuidado en los argumentos y en como trataremos a los demás.
Wikipedia is helping a communist dictatorship jail and – soon – convict an innocent man in a kangaroo court, by allowing grossly libelous and patent falsehoods to be published about the man in their online user-edited encyclopedia. Wikipedia has given certain users the power to block other users, and this has allowed an army of conspirators – quite possibly paid agents working for the new axis of evil – to block every attempt to remove the libel over the course of several years. They are constantly monitoring the page, since they revoke any change within minutes even if it has been months since the last attempt to change it. Any user that insists and starts arguing the case they block from not just editing the page, but also from arguing the case in the talk page.
After having contacted the top legal representative of Wikipedia without any result, I conclude that Wikipedia knowingly aids a dictatorial regime violate human rights – whether on purpose or for lack of resources is irrelevant. They have been notified and responded, but after the first contact they stopped responding to reminders that nothing had changed. It seems that they need more pressure, either a lawsuit for libel, or a scandal in media.
The case I’m referring to is the slanderous article in Italian Wikipedia, it.wikipedia.org, about Venezuelan politician and NGO-leader Alejandro Peña Esclusa. Every attempt to remove blatantly slanderous and propagandistic statements – even when accompanied with references proving that they are false – are undone almost immediately by several gatekeepers, at least one of whom is a communist judging from a communist star on his user page. Several of these gatekeepers are editors meaning they have the power to block other users. This they use to prevent the user who tries to remove the slander from even commenting in the discussion page of the article.
This slander of Alejandro Peña Esclusa, and the fierce protection of it, has been going on since 2007 on Italian Wikipedia. It correlates with his political activities as an outspoken critic of the communist step-wise coup d’État carried out by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Peña Esclusa was framed in July 2010, using methods denounced by the U.S. Embassy in La Lima in a diplomatic cable leaked through Wikileaks.
It is obvious that the purpose of framing Peña Esclusa was to silence his message, expressed through Fuerza Solidaria and UnoAmerica. The gist of the message is that Hugo Chávez is leading a regime of narco-terrorists based on communism as the official ideology.
Recent information that has reached me shows, however, that the Venezuelan government is deeply divided, with the Chávez branch consisting only of Cubans, under the direct leadership on none other than Commandante Valdez, who fought in the revolution in Sierra Madre alongside the Castro brothers. In other words, Venezuela is run as a protectorate of communist Cuba. The other branch are Venezuelan patriots, if socialists, and they are in deep disagreement with the selling out of the country to Cuba and China (such as $5 crude when the world market price is $80; rumor has it Hugito is getting a healthy kickback on an overseas account).
The scheme to eliminate the regime-critic thus seems to have been drafted in Habana, Cuba. The communist dictatorship apparently planned the imprisonment years in advance, starting by planting slanderous material online, and in a Wikipedia article. All attempts to correct it were systematically blocked. The final step was to kidnap a foreigner, Chavez Abarca, in Guatemala, fly him to Caracas, and show him on TV while claiming that he confessed to having come to carry out a murder plot of Hugo Chávez in conspiracy with Alejandro Peña Esclusa. To prevent questions they flew him to Cuba immediately, under the pretext that he was wanted there since earlier for another terrorist attack.
Peña Esclusa understood that he was being framed and published a YouTube video (part 1, part 2) denouncing it. Only hours later they ransacked his house and when nobody looked they planted alleged explosives in his 8-year daughter’s desk. Proof enough for the political police to jail him, and there he sits still – in a 2 m by 3 m cell.
It is a tragedy is that the well-intentioned Wikipedia Foundation in California, through incompetence or worse, has and is aiding and abetting the strategy of a communist dictatorship to suppress free speech, liberty, and democracy.
PS. Since yesterday, another user again erased the slanderous claim that Alejandro Peña Esclusa is a member of the organization Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), with the comment “He was never a member of TFP, see talk.” In the talk page, a quote from his book appears in which he says that he was never a member of TFP. In spite of this, three different Wikipedia users have now, within 24 hours, reinstated a paragraph that claims, without any source or reference, that Peña Esclusa is, at present, a member of TFP. Furthermore, the paragraph in question alleges several damning things about TFP that are obviously put in there only to slander Peña Esclusa through “guilt by association”, even though by Wikipedia’s own rules those details do not belong in the article about Peña Esclusa but in the article about TFP itself.
PS.PS. A couple of hours later, a third user erased it, and it was immediately undone, again. Four different users reinserting the same libel, knowing that it is defamatory, cannot be interpreted as anything less than a conspiracy.
PS.PS.PS. Two hours later, at 01:25 on January 2nd, a forth user deleted the libel, and two minutes later a fifth person reinserted the defamation of the political prisoner, a poor victim of a totalitarian communist dictatorship.


Severe thunderstorms and a possible tornado touchdown left a trail of damage in parts of Sussex County overnight.
A tornado touched down in Laurel early Monday, cutting a notable path of destruction, blowing off rooftops and spreading debris across fields, The National Weather Service said.
One injury was reported by National Weather Service after a tree fell on a house.
The tornado touched down at 3:38 a.m. in Laurel and traveled 6.2 miles in Seaford. The tornado was initially classified as a weak event at EF1 but was upgraded to strong EF2 by National Weather Service, with winds as high as 135 miles per hour.
Sussex County saw severe thunderstorms and a tornado overnight, with rotating winds leading to destruction, particularly in Laurel where many reports of damage have been coming from.
The heavy rain Sunday night was a "quick hitter," and flooding hadn't been widely reported in Sussex County as of Monday morning, meteorologist Nick Carr said.
Wind gusts of more than 40 miles per hour could hit the area through Monday afternoon, Carr said.
The tornado lasted seven minutes — enough time to damage several homes. On Seaford Road, about 10 homes showed damage from the wind, flying debris and downed trees. Officials said so far, that has been the hardest hit area.
A National Weather Service statement issued around 2:30 p.m. with "preliminary" information shows the tornado was an EF1, with an estimated maximum wind speed of 95 miles per hour and width of 50 yards.
By 4 p.m., that rank was moved up to EF2.
Monday's tornado path extended northeast from Woodland Ferry Road in Laurel to Pepper Road in Seaford.
The tornado destroyed at least one barn, according to the statement, and caused a tree to fall on a house, injuring one man. No other injuries or fatalities were reported in the statement.
"In addition, there was roof damage to several other homes and barns. Many trees were uprooted along the tornado path, and a few were snapped," the statement reads.
Joe Thomas, director of the Sussex County Emergency Operations Center estimated at least 20 residents had been impacted to some level.
He said Sussex County residents should call 302-856-7366 to report storm damage. The amount reported could affect potential state and federal funding for the area's recovery.
Facebook user Jennifer Jackson posted videos of the damage in the Fire Tower Road area of Laurel to Facebook on Monday, which she captured while driving home from work.
"I was working that night (and) never saw anything until I got off at 6 a.m. and seen the aftermath from the storm," she said in a message to Delmarva Now.
She lives on Fire Tower Road and said she was in "a state of shock" when she saw that just seven houses down from her own home there were roofs that had been ripped away and an RV that was lying upside down.
In one of the two videos she posted, she can be heard saying, "Tornado hit right at the end of the road. Trees uprooted. Whole building down. Debris all over the road."
The videos show at least one structure that had collapsed as well as another that was missing a portion of its roof.
The roadside was scattered with trees and other debris as she approached the intersection of Fire Tower Road and Waller Road where the road signs and a stop sign had been blown over.
"Here in Laurel we are not used to this type of weather," Jackson told Delmarva Now.
Throughout lower Delaware, residential trailers have been destroyed, highways are reported impassible in places, and numerous power outages have occurred from downed wires and trees.
Blades Volunteer Fire Company is being opened as a shelter for numerous displaced residents in the area. Red Cross is responding to assist, the post said.
The Laurel Volunteer Fire Department is heading recovery efforts, with the fire station acting as a staging ground for various state and county agencies assisting residents.
Chip Guy, the public information officer for Sussex County, said an adult male received minor injuries and was taken to Nanticoke Memorial Hospital in Seaford.
He described a swathe of damage from Portsville, which is west of Laurel, to Hardscrabble, which is east of Seaford on Route 9.
"This is more than just a couple pieces of siding," Guy said. "In some cases, parts of roofs have been sheered off."
He said only one lane of southbound Route 13 is currently open in Laurel, and a dozen other side streets are closed or partially closed. The Laurel School District is completely closed.
Severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings were issued for Delaware by the National Weather Service overnight.
Sussex Technical High School in Georgetown announced it will be closing at 11 a.m. Monday due to electrical issues from the storms. All after-school activities will be canceled and rescheduled.
The school's phone service was also taken offline for an indefinite period of time, the school said in a release.
DelmarvaWX, a Facebook page run by Hunter Clifton Outten, who identifies himself as a meteorological scientist and storm chaser, was posting updates during the storm. He is self-taught and does not have a degree in meteorology, according to a recent blog post.
One of the most destructive was June 7, 1988. Thirty people were injured in a tornado that started in Middletown and had a path of 23 miles.
The Wilmington News Journal contributed to this report.