Home ? Blog ? Edmonds City Government ? Edmonds Parks & Rec sponsoring Daddy-Daughter Dance Feb. 9
Edmonds Parks & Rec sponsoring Daddy-Daughter Dance Feb. 9
The City of Edmonds Parks & Recreation is sponsoring a Daddy-Daughter Dance on Saturday, Feb. 9.
Daughters and their dads or other male role models are invited to get dressed up for a special night out. Enjoy dancing, a live DJ and light refreshments. All ages welcome.? Bring your camera for a picture in the photo corner.
The dance will be held at the Edmonds Senior Center Upstairs Ballroom (220 Railroad Ave.). Pre-registration is required at Edmonds Parks & Recreation 425-771-0230.? Online registration is not available. Sales tax included.? The dance runs from 6:30-8 p.m. and the cost $25 per couple; $5 for each additional daughter.
This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2013 and is filed under Edmonds City Government, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Back in 2010, I reviewed my first Tom Bihn?Ristretto for iPad bag. ?It was fantastic. ?I liked it because you could carry your tablet computing device and a handful of other things, without a bulky bag. ?I expected the Ristretto for iPad to last a long time. ?I certainly didn’t expect what happened next. ?We’ll [...]
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) ? For the first time in more than a decade, the black market pharmaceutical peddlers are back on Nasser Khosrow Street near Tehran's main bazaar.
"Medicine, medicine," the street dealers shout. "Any kind you want."
Business is brisk. For many Iranians, such underground channels are now the only way to get needed ? or even life-saving ? drugs as Western sanctions over the country's nuclear program have indirectly limited normal supplies to hospitals and pharmacies.
But for others, even the sidewalk touts are not an option. Iran's sinking currency has more than doubled the prices of some of the imported medicines and supplies, potentially putting them out of reach for lower-income patients.
While medicine and humanitarian supplies are not blocked by the economic embargoes on Iran, the pressures are clearly evident in nearly every level of Iranian health care. It's a sign of the domino effect of sanctions on everyday life.
Restrictions on Iran's access to international banking networks mean major obstacles to pay for imported medicine and equipment ? the same troubles facing many businesses in need of shipments from abroad.
Meanwhile, the nation's slumping currency ? seen as collateral damage from sanctions ? has driven up prices sharply. An imported wheelchair now costs 10 times more than last fall. A blood-sugar test kit has more than doubled to 540,000 rials, or about $18.
The black market still finds ways to get medical supplies through smuggling routes or by simply carrying shipments by hand, but the prices can be even higher than on regular shelves.
"You pay in advance and I will bring the medicine you need later," said Behzad, a street medicine dealer who would give only his first name. "We have all sorts of medicines: European, Indian or Chinese. It depends on your budget."
The economic blows from sanctions are most acutely felt in key industries such as oil, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of Iran's foreign revenue. On Monday, the head of Iran's parliamentary budget committee, Gholam Reza Kateb, said receipts from oil and gas exports have fallen by 45 percent in the past nine months. The announcement appeared part of political early warnings before expected austerity measures in March that will likely include major tax hikes.
But Iranian authorities also know the challenges of trying to squeeze more money from an economy showing serious signs of strain.
Cheaper Asian parts and products are increasingly taking the place of Western goods. Factories depending on imported raw materials are struggling to stay in operation. Prices for nearly everything ? including health services and medicine ? continue to climb as the rial stumbles along at about one-third its exchange rate value compared with 18 months ago.
"I'll decide whose turn it is," barked emergency nurse Zahra Rahmati at the state-run hospital in central Tehran, where dozens of patients clamored for attention.
Scenes of overcrowded state hospitals are now common across Iran after fees for private health care have nearly doubled in recent months. The costs in state-run facilities are far cheaper, but that also comes with shortages and long waits.
"Sometimes we don't even have serum for dehydrated patients, said a young doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was worried that comments to the media could jeopardize his job at a state-run hospital.
The prices for other items have soared in recent months: radiology film up 240 percent; helium gas for MRIs up 667 percent; filters for kidney dialysis up 325 percent. The cost of one round of chemotherapy for cancer has reached 200 million rials, or $65,000, from 800 million rials, or $25,000, last year.
The independent Hamshari daily quoted a father ? who was not named in the article ? as saying his child died because he couldn't afford the higher price of an artificial heart valve.
At a major pharmacy in Tehran, a 53-year-old father slumped over ? his head in his hands ? as he looked at the prices for medicine for his teenage daughter, who is suffering from stomach cancer.
How can I afford buying medicine as prices have doubled over a week?" said Hooshang, who gave only his first name.
Hossein Ali Shahriari, head of parliament's health committee, said he has appealed to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to address shortages and rising prices in the health sector. Today, prices of some medicines and paramedical equipment have increased by 200 percent, he said.
Shahriari said even powdered milk for infants is not available in some pharmacies.
Iran's health ministry and charity organizations, in separate letters to international bodies, have requested an easing of the banking embargo for health and medicine sectors. But Ahmadinejad also has come under criticism for trimming the budget for health care imports.
Iran's former health minister Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi ? the only female Cabinet member in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution ? claimed that the $650 million budgeted is less than a quarter of what's needed to keep state-run hospitals and pharmacies adequately supplied. Her challenge to Ahmadinejad led to her dismissal in late December.
The shortages prompted a warning letter in November to Ahmadinejad by 48 chancellors of medical schools across Iran.
"Lack of purchase power to obtain medical equipment and discontent of patients and hospital staff could lead to student protests, too," said the letter.
At a recovery center in Tehran, 8-year-old Milad Rostami's mother watches over him carefully. The boy suffers from hemophilia and is currently recovering from knee surgery. His mother, Fatemeh, knows there is a long waiting list for a blood product needed to halt bleeding if the boy falls or re-injures his knee.
"There is no hope," said Ahmad Ghavidel, head of Iran's Hemophilia Association, a charity body. "There is no hope for his health."
At dawn in another part of Tehran, patients are leaving the emergency room at the state-run hospital. Some carried pills, but others could get no treatment.
"I don't know how many of them will survive until my next shift," said Rahmati, the nurse. "I did my best, but I know it was not the best for them."
As she walked out of the hospital, more patients were heading in.
DNA prefers to dive head first into nanoporesPublic release date: 8-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kevin Stacey kevin_stacey@brown.edu 401-863-3766 Brown University
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] If you want to understand a novel, it helps to start from the beginning rather than trying to pick up the plot from somewhere in the middle. The same goes for analyzing a strand of DNA. The best way to make sense of it is to look at it head to tail.
Luckily, according to a new study by physicists at Brown University, DNA molecules have a convenient tendency to cooperate.
The research, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, looks at the dynamics of how DNA molecules are captured by solid-state nanopores, tiny holes that soon may help sequence DNA at lightning speed. The study found that when a DNA strand is captured and pulled through a nanopore, it's much more likely to start the journey at one of its ends, rather than being grabbed somewhere in the middle and pulled through in a folded configuration.
"We think this is an important advance for understanding how DNA molecules interact with these nanopores," said Derek Stein, assistant professor of physics at Brown, who performed the research with graduate students Mirna Mihovilivic and Nick Haggerty. "If you want to do sequencing or some other analysis, you want the molecule going through the pore head to tail."
Research into DNA sequencing with nanopores started a little over 15 years ago. The concept is fairly simple. A little hole, a few billionths of a meter across, is poked in a barrier separating two pools of salt water. An electric current is applied across the hole, which occasionally attracts a DNA molecule floating in the water. When that happens, the molecule is whipped through the pore in a fraction of a second. Scientists can then use sensors on the pore or other means to identify nucleotide bases, the building blocks of the genetic code.
The technology is advancing quickly, and the first nanopore sequencing devices are expected to be on the market very soon. But there are still basic questions about how molecules behave at the moment they're captured and before.
"What the molecules were doing before they're captured was a mystery and a matter of speculation," Stein said. "And we'd like to know because if you're trying to engineer something to control that molecule to get it to do what you want it to do you need to know what it's up to."
To find out what those molecules are up to, the researchers carefully tracked over 1,000 instances of a molecule zipping through a nanopore. The electric current through the pore provides a signal of how the molecule went through. Molecules that go through middle first have to be folded over in order to pass. That folded configuration takes up more space in the pore and blocks more of the current. So by looking at differences in the current, Stein and his team could count how many molecules went through head first and how many started somewhere in the middle.
The study found that molecules are several times more likely to be captured at or very near an end than at any other single point along the molecule.
"What we found was that ends are special places," Stein said. "The middle is different from an end, and that has a consequence for the likelihood a molecule starts its journey from the end or the middle."
Always room for Jell-O
As it turns out, there's an old theory that that explains these new experimental results quite well. It's the theory of Jell-O.
Jell-O is a polymer network a mass of squiggly polymer strands that attach to each other at random junctions. The squiggly strands are the reason Jell-O is a jiggly, semi-solid. The way in which the polymer strands connect to each other is not unlike the way a DNA strand connects to a nanopore in the instant it's captured. In water, DNA molecules are jumbled up in random squiggles much like the gelatin molecules in Jell-O.
"There's some powerful theory that describes how many ways the polymers in Jell-O can arrange and attach themselves," Stein said. "That turns out to be perfectly applicable to the problem of where these DNA molecules get captured by a nanopore."
When applied to DNA, the Jell-O theory predicts that if you were to count up all the possible configurations of a DNA strand at the moment of capture, you would find that there are more configurations in which it is captured by its end, compared to other points along the strand. It's a bit like the odds of getting a pair in poker compared to the odds of getting three of a kind. You're more likely to get a pair simply because there are more pairs in the deck than there are triples.
This measure of all the possible configurations a measure of what physicists refer to as the molecule's entropy is all that's needed to explain why DNA tends to go head first. Some scientists had speculated that perhaps strands would be less likely to go through by the middle because folding them in half would require extra energy. But that folding energy appears not to matter at all. As Stein puts it, "The number of ways that a molecule can find itself with its head sticking in the pore is simply larger than the number of ways it can find itself with the middle touching the pore."
These theories of polymer networks have actually been around for a while. They were first proposed by the late Nobel laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes in the 1960s, and Bertrand Duplantier made key advances in the 1980s. Mihovilivic, Stein's graduate student and the lead author of this study, says this is actually one of the first lab tests of those theories.
"They couldn't be tested until now, when we can actually do single molecule measurements," she said. "[De Gennes] postulated that one day it would be possible to test this. I think he would have been very excited to see it happen."
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
DNA prefers to dive head first into nanoporesPublic release date: 8-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kevin Stacey kevin_stacey@brown.edu 401-863-3766 Brown University
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] If you want to understand a novel, it helps to start from the beginning rather than trying to pick up the plot from somewhere in the middle. The same goes for analyzing a strand of DNA. The best way to make sense of it is to look at it head to tail.
Luckily, according to a new study by physicists at Brown University, DNA molecules have a convenient tendency to cooperate.
The research, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, looks at the dynamics of how DNA molecules are captured by solid-state nanopores, tiny holes that soon may help sequence DNA at lightning speed. The study found that when a DNA strand is captured and pulled through a nanopore, it's much more likely to start the journey at one of its ends, rather than being grabbed somewhere in the middle and pulled through in a folded configuration.
"We think this is an important advance for understanding how DNA molecules interact with these nanopores," said Derek Stein, assistant professor of physics at Brown, who performed the research with graduate students Mirna Mihovilivic and Nick Haggerty. "If you want to do sequencing or some other analysis, you want the molecule going through the pore head to tail."
Research into DNA sequencing with nanopores started a little over 15 years ago. The concept is fairly simple. A little hole, a few billionths of a meter across, is poked in a barrier separating two pools of salt water. An electric current is applied across the hole, which occasionally attracts a DNA molecule floating in the water. When that happens, the molecule is whipped through the pore in a fraction of a second. Scientists can then use sensors on the pore or other means to identify nucleotide bases, the building blocks of the genetic code.
The technology is advancing quickly, and the first nanopore sequencing devices are expected to be on the market very soon. But there are still basic questions about how molecules behave at the moment they're captured and before.
"What the molecules were doing before they're captured was a mystery and a matter of speculation," Stein said. "And we'd like to know because if you're trying to engineer something to control that molecule to get it to do what you want it to do you need to know what it's up to."
To find out what those molecules are up to, the researchers carefully tracked over 1,000 instances of a molecule zipping through a nanopore. The electric current through the pore provides a signal of how the molecule went through. Molecules that go through middle first have to be folded over in order to pass. That folded configuration takes up more space in the pore and blocks more of the current. So by looking at differences in the current, Stein and his team could count how many molecules went through head first and how many started somewhere in the middle.
The study found that molecules are several times more likely to be captured at or very near an end than at any other single point along the molecule.
"What we found was that ends are special places," Stein said. "The middle is different from an end, and that has a consequence for the likelihood a molecule starts its journey from the end or the middle."
Always room for Jell-O
As it turns out, there's an old theory that that explains these new experimental results quite well. It's the theory of Jell-O.
Jell-O is a polymer network a mass of squiggly polymer strands that attach to each other at random junctions. The squiggly strands are the reason Jell-O is a jiggly, semi-solid. The way in which the polymer strands connect to each other is not unlike the way a DNA strand connects to a nanopore in the instant it's captured. In water, DNA molecules are jumbled up in random squiggles much like the gelatin molecules in Jell-O.
"There's some powerful theory that describes how many ways the polymers in Jell-O can arrange and attach themselves," Stein said. "That turns out to be perfectly applicable to the problem of where these DNA molecules get captured by a nanopore."
When applied to DNA, the Jell-O theory predicts that if you were to count up all the possible configurations of a DNA strand at the moment of capture, you would find that there are more configurations in which it is captured by its end, compared to other points along the strand. It's a bit like the odds of getting a pair in poker compared to the odds of getting three of a kind. You're more likely to get a pair simply because there are more pairs in the deck than there are triples.
This measure of all the possible configurations a measure of what physicists refer to as the molecule's entropy is all that's needed to explain why DNA tends to go head first. Some scientists had speculated that perhaps strands would be less likely to go through by the middle because folding them in half would require extra energy. But that folding energy appears not to matter at all. As Stein puts it, "The number of ways that a molecule can find itself with its head sticking in the pore is simply larger than the number of ways it can find itself with the middle touching the pore."
These theories of polymer networks have actually been around for a while. They were first proposed by the late Nobel laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes in the 1960s, and Bertrand Duplantier made key advances in the 1980s. Mihovilivic, Stein's graduate student and the lead author of this study, says this is actually one of the first lab tests of those theories.
"They couldn't be tested until now, when we can actually do single molecule measurements," she said. "[De Gennes] postulated that one day it would be possible to test this. I think he would have been very excited to see it happen."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
LAS VEGAS -- There's no shortage of Bluetooth speakers at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, but we're quite taken with the tiny-sized Pulse speaker and Rewind earbuds from Felt Audio.
[More from Mashable: Philips Brings the Smart Cover to Bluetooth Speakers]
The Pulse speaker ($99) piggybacks onto an iPhone case for easy carrying and can be plucked off and clipped onto something nearby. For example, when driving in a car and wanting to talk hands-free (with good audio), clip the small speaker onto the car visor or seat belt, so chatting is easy without a headset. The Pulse provides Bluetooth capabilities up to 40 feet, so you can use it in an office or at home to blast music too. (We gave it a listen and were impressed with the quality, especially from such a small device).
In addition, the speaker is great for those who use the treadmill -- clip it to your sweatpants and attach Felt Audio's earbuds to the device to get rid of earbuds danging from a smartphone (audio will be redirected to the Bluetooth speaker). An accompanying earbud cartridge, with retractable earbuds, can tack on to the speaker, so it takes worrying about your smartphone out of the equation during a workout.
[More from Mashable: PaperTab Is a Tablet as Thin and Flexible as Paper]
The company said it will be giving away free custom-made iPhone, iPad and iPod touch cases that Rewind earbuds and Pulse speaker to the first 5,000 purchasers, but it hasn't decided how much they will cost in the future.
In this photo taken on March 30, 2005 Vittorio Missoni, right, and his wife Maurizia Castiglioni smile in Milan, Italy. The search resumed Saturday, Jan. 5, 2013 for a small plane that has disappeared off the Venezuelan coast with six people aboard, including Vittorio Missoni, a top executive in Italy's Missoni fashion house, officials said. Vittorio Missoni, 58, is the director general of the iconic brand and the eldest son of the company's founder. Flying with him on Friday's flight from Venezuela's Los Roques resort archipelago to Caracas, was Missoni's wife, Maurizia Castiglioni, two Italian friends of the couple, and a crew of two Venezuelans. (AP Photo/Livio Valerio, Lapresse)
In this photo taken on March 30, 2005 Vittorio Missoni, right, and his wife Maurizia Castiglioni smile in Milan, Italy. The search resumed Saturday, Jan. 5, 2013 for a small plane that has disappeared off the Venezuelan coast with six people aboard, including Vittorio Missoni, a top executive in Italy's Missoni fashion house, officials said. Vittorio Missoni, 58, is the director general of the iconic brand and the eldest son of the company's founder. Flying with him on Friday's flight from Venezuela's Los Roques resort archipelago to Caracas, was Missoni's wife, Maurizia Castiglioni, two Italian friends of the couple, and a crew of two Venezuelans. (AP Photo/Livio Valerio, Lapresse)
In this undated photo provided by Venezuela's Ministry of the Interior and Justice Press Office, a plane that went missing sits on the tarmac of the airport in Los Roques, Venezuela. Venezuela's Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said the plane was declared missing hours after taking off Friday, Jan. 5, 2013 from Los Roques, a string of islands, cays and islets that is popular for scuba diving, white beaches and coral reefs. He said the plane was expected at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Caracas but didn't arrive and that the four Italian tourists aboard had spent their Christmas and New Year at the resort. The plane had two Venezuelan crew members. (AP Photo/Ministry of the Interior and Justice Press Office)
In this photo taken on Nov. 23, 2004 Vittorio Missoni, left, and his father Ottavio smile in Milan, Italy. The search resumed Saturday, Jan. 5, 2013 for a small plane that has disappeared off the Venezuelan coast with six people aboard, including Vittorio Missoni, a top executive in Italy's Missoni fashion house, officials said. Vittorio Missoni, 58, is the director general of the iconic brand and the eldest son of the company's founder. Flying with him on Friday's flight from Venezuela's Los Roques resort archipelago to Caracas, was Missoni's wife, Maurizia Castiglioni, two Italian friends of the couple, and a crew of two Venezuelans. (AP Photo/Livio Valerio, Lapresse)
In this photo taken on Feb. 23, 2010, Vittorio Missoni poses for photographers in Milan, Italy. The search resumed Saturday, Jan. 5, 2013 for a small plane that has disappeared off the Venezuelan coast with six people aboard, including Vittorio Missoni, a top executive in Italy's Missoni fashion house, officials said. Vittorio Missoni, 58, is the director general of the iconic brand and the eldest son of the company's founder. Flying with him on Friday's flight from Venezuela's Los Roques resort archipelago to Caracas, was Missoni's wife, Maurizia Castiglioni, two Italian friends of the couple, and a crew of two Venezuelans. (AP Photo/Gian Mattia d'Alberto, Lapresse)
ROME (AP) ? Rescue crews used boats and aircraft on Saturday to search for a small plane that disappeared in Venezuela carrying the CEO of Italy's iconic Missoni fashion house and five other people.
But 24 hours after the BN-2 Islander aircraft disappeared from radar screens on its short flight from Venzuela's coastal resort island of Los Roques to Caracas, the capital, no sign of the plane had been found, officials said.
"We have no other news" about the plane carrying Vittorio Missoni, the head of the company; his wife, Maurizia Castiglioni; two of their Italian friends; and two Venezuelan crew members, said Paolo Marchetti, a Missoni SpA official. He spoke briefly to reporters as he left company headquarters in the northern Italian town of Sumirago on Saturday afternoon.
Missoni's younger brother, Luca, who is active in the family-run business, was reportedly traveling to Venezuela on Saturday to monitor search efforts.
"We're holding onto a glimmer of hope," said Oswaldo Scalvenzi , a relative of Elda Scalvenzi, one of the Missoni friends aboard the flight. "Until we can see the wreckage" hope will remain, Scalvenzi told Italian state TV on Saturday night.
The La Repubblica.it, website of the Rome newspaper said Venezuelan aircraft, motorboats and helicopters took off at dawn Saturday to resume the search for the missing plane, which had been suspended on Friday night. The Italian news agency ANSA, reporting from Rome, said a specialized ocean-searching naval vessel also was being deployed.
Vittorio Missoni is the eldest son of the company's founder, Ottavio, who at 91 still follows the business.
The Corriere della Sera newspaper reported that Ottavio and his wife Rosita were at their home in Italy, along with their daughter Angela, creative director of the company, waiting for information about the search. Rosita Missoni designs housewares for the company, and Angela's daughter, Margherita, has been infusing its classic designs with fresh appeal.
The Missoni fashion house, with its trademark zigzag and other geometric patterns in sweaters, scarves and other knitwear, is one of Italy's most famous fashion brands abroad.
Vittorio Missoni played a key role in marketing the Missoni family creations in Asia, especially in Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea as general director of marketing for Missoni SpA. He also spearheaded a push for the company's products in the United States and France. His efforts to expand the brand abroad led Missoni to be dubbed the company's "ambassador."
On Friday, Venezuela's Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said the plane was declared missing hours after taking off from Los Roques, a string of islands popular for scuba diving, white beaches and coral reefs, and where the Missonis and their friends were on vacation.
Vittorio Missoni has been described as an active sportsman and lover of the outdoors. He and his wife and their friends from northern Italy were scheduled to fly back to Italy on Friday, but their internal flight never made it to Caracas.
La Repubblica said the plane disappeared off radar screens shortly after takeoff from Los Roques on what was to been a 90-mile (140-kilometer) flight to the mainland.
The Missoni brand is scheduled to display its latest menswear creations at a fashion show in Milan later this month.
On Jan. 4, 2008, another plane returning to the Venezuelan mainland from Los Roques disappeared with 14 people aboard, including eight Italians. The body of the plane's Venezuelan co-pilot later washed ashore, but despite a search lasting weeks no other victims or the wreckage were found.
In 2009, a small plane returning from Los Roques with nine people aboard plunged into the Caribbean Sea, but all survived.
____
Ian James contributed to this report from Caracas, Venezuela.
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Public release date: 8-Jan-2013
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