If you want to know more, or don?t understand how duty of care and workplace health and safety affects your business travelers, then you must read this article. In this article we will examine duty of care, workplace health and safety and the how it relates to your business travelers.
After reading this article, you will have the correct understanding and subsequent approach to ensure you meet or exceed your obligations to provide a safe and secure environment for your business travelers.
The contents of this article do not constitute legal advice, is general in scope and will not substitute a specific approach for your company.
Duty of Care
Duty of care and the requirement for employers, so far as reasonably practicable, is to ensure that employees are not exposed to risk to their health and safety at work has been in place, in numerous countries for over 30 years. It is not however the primary act or legislation but rather a subset of the workplace or occupational health and safety laws.
The realization or acceptance that duty of care applies to business travel, equally if not more so than traditional static workplace environments, is a relatively new occurrence. This is not due to any significant alteration or refinement of related legislation or laws but more an awakening of conscious and greater volume of informed employees that are both aware and exercise their right to a managed workplace.
Improvement and adherence to workplace health and safety should be the primary focus to all businesses in support of business travel, not duty of care.
Workplace Health and Safety
Workplace or occupational health and safety systems, standards and requirement are already well developed. By expanding these systems and standards to include business travel activities, all companies can quickly and efficiently enhance the safety, security, health and environment of their business travelers without the adoption, implementation of completely new or foreign concepts. For some inexplicable reason, too few businesses have already included business travel as part of their workplace health and safety systems, exposing them and their employees to significant and foreseeable risk.
It has only been in recent times that the definition of the workplace and the conduct of business have been refined to include business travel activities. This and poorly understood or applied risk management systems that encompasses business travel created an Achilles heel for most businesses, who assumed that duty of care was their only corrective imperative.
While proof regarding taking steps to ensure ?reasonably practicable? health and safety measures for employees, or the failure to do so, rests with the prosecution in countries such as Australia, the onus of proving reasonable practability rests with the defendants in the United Kingdom, Singapore and Canada
Workplace Health and Safety for Business Travelers
An increasing number of legal cases are presenting that challenges and repositions the traditional notion that the work place is a single static location. More-and-more, the legislation and legal view is that the workplace is anywhere that a person or business conducting an undertaking is present. Additionally, the conventions that govern the definition of an employee are also expanding to include labour for hire, contractors and other temporary workers. This has clear implications and inclusions for business travel too.
Not withstanding the fact that business travel is likely to be undertaken by the top 5% of talent within an organization, in the pursuit of revenue as high as fifteen dollars per profit for every dollar spent on business travel, it is typically a competitive and financial advantage for businesses. This coupled the growing acceptance that it is considered a place of work by an employee means that all the typical hazard identification and risk mitigation strategies applied elsewhere in the companies processes, need also be applied.
The act of business travel result in numerous variations such as location, gender, airlines, weather, personal health, supporting infrastructure, crime and so on, it therefore stands to reason that commensurable threat analysis, risk mitigation, control measures, compliance, tracking and disclosure should follow. Too few are at this fundamental stage.
For those companies or managers that continue to permit this ?grey area? of business travel not to be considered or treated as required; part of the workplace health and safety system, your time may well be up sooner than you would like. More-and-more business travellers themselves are questioning or demanding they be afforded the same standards and considerations for a risk free work environment. The courts support their views also.
Business travel constitutes a workplace hazard to all employees, until proven otherwise. Only though demonstratable and consistent systems and processes can this be defensible with evidence of due diligence in the area of business travel and workplace or occupational safety.
Conclusion
You should now understand that there is a workplace health and safety obligation to your business travelers and how you must prepare or review adequate systems. Failure to do so may result in reputation, retention, safety, legal, market share and business operations disruptions or failures.
In this article we identified and explained the relationship between duty of care, workplace health and safety and business travelers. Apply this new understanding or review your current perceptions immediately and identify any corrective actions required to achieve adequate or advanced safety, security, health and environment support to your business travelers.
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The United States warned North Korea on Friday its plan to launch a satellite with a long-range rocket could violate its February agreement on a nuclear moratorium and scuttle U.S. plans to resume food aid.
The State Department swiftly condemned Pyongyang's announcement of plans for the satellite launch next month, which it said could torpedo nascent efforts to restart broader nuclear negotiations with the secretive state.
"If they were to go forward with this launch it is very hard to imagine how we would be able to move forward with a regime whose word we have no confidence in," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
Discussions on returning International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to North Korea, and on the implementation of the food deal, were on hold, she said.
"We're going to take a pause here," Nuland said. "We need more reassurance now."
North Korea said on Friday it will launch a long-range rocket carrying a "working" satellite to mark the centenary of founder Kim Il Sung's birth next month, sparking condemnation from the United States and others that it was in breach of a U.N. resolution.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the announcement was highly provocative and called upon Pyongyang to honor its obligations including U.N. Security Council resolutions banning ballistic missile launches.
"Such a missile launch would pose a threat to regional security and would also be inconsistent with North Korea's recent undertaking to refrain from long-range missile launches," she said in a statement.
The North, which said recently it would suspend long-range missile testing as part of talks with the United States, pledged that next month's launch would not impact neighboring countries.
N. Korea agrees to nuclear moratorium, UN inspections
Experts said the launch was clearly another long-range missile test, and could be seen as an act of brinkmanship to pressure Washington into more talks in return for aid.
South Korea, which is still technically at war with the North after signing only an armistice to end the 1950-53 Korean War, and Japan said the ballistic launch threatened regional security.
Any launch by North Korea, whether for a satellite or not, that uses ballistic missile technology violates Security Council resolutions, the Japanese government said.
"We urge North Korea to exercise restraint and refrain from the launch," said the top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura.
Elizabeth Dalziel / AP
From work to play, see pictures from inside the secretive country.
China, the reclusive state's only main ally, was more restrained in its response, but stressed on maintaining peace on the divided peninsula.
"Protecting the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and North East Asia suits the joint interests of all parties and is the consistent expectation of the international community. This requires that all relevant parties take a constructive role," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told reporters at a regular news briefing.
In April 2009, the North conducted a similar ballistic rocket launch which resulted in a new round of toughened U.N. sanctions, squeezing the secretive state's already troubled economy and deepening its isolation.
That launch, dismissed as a failure after the first stage fell into the Sea of Japan without orbiting a satellite, provoked outrage in Tokyo which had threatened to shoot down any debris or rocket that threatened its territory.
Another test failed in similar circumstances in 1998.
'Indigenous technology' Washington says the North's long-range ballistic missile program is moving ahead quickly and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last year that the American mainland could come under threat within five years.
"The DPRK is to launch a working satellite, Kwangmyongsong-3, manufactured by itself with indigenous technology to mark the 100th birth anniversary of President Kim Il Sung," the North's official KCNA said, quoting a spokesman for the Korean Committee for Space Technology.
How muscle cars help US spy on North Korea
The launch will take place between April 12-16, KCNA said. It is scheduled to occur at around the same time its foes in the South hold a parliamentary election, and just over three weeks after a global nuclear security summit in Seoul.
Pyongyang has been planning massive celebrations for years to mark Kim?Il Sung's birthday on April 15, and has boasted the occasion would also mark its emergence on the international stage as a "strong and prosperous" nation.
Analysts said the launch was designed to boost the country's new leadership and to pressure Washington into making concessions.
"For the outside world this is the same as a long-range missile test," said Park Young-ho of the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government affiliated think tank.
"This can interpreted as a means of applying pressure on the Americans in negotiations, and is a celebration of the founder's birth as well as an opportunity for the new leadership to celebrate the beginning of a new era," Park said in Seoul.
Report: Kim Jong Il's eldest son falls on hard times
The state's new young leader Kim Jong Un, who became the third member of the Kim family to lead the state after his father Kim Jong Il's death in December, has presented a militaristic image to his countrymen since taking power.
He has visited several military sites and been seen mixing with top brass in what analysts say is a move designed to win the all-powerful army's backing for the succession process.
KCNA said the launch would be conducted from a base near its border with China, indicating it would take place at a newly constructed missile testing site believed to be larger and more advanced than the site used to launch previous rockets.
The launch will be made southwards and debris generated from the flight will not impact neighboring countries, it said.
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One thing that I love about blogging is all the great bloggers that I am connected with. I visit their blogs and see all of their fun ideas, recipes, photographs, reviews and much, much more! This Valentine?s Day, I found that Untrained Hair Mom had posted the cutest hair styles suggestions on her blog. She was able to braid her daughter?s hair into a heart!
When my girls were little, I tried to do fancy hairstyles, but usually gave up. For one, both of my daughter?s have my hair ? fine, but a lot of it. This makes for the worst ratty mess! We tried every product ? detanglers, conditioners, etc. ? but nothing seemed to work. We just ended up cutting their hair short until they were old enough to take care of it themselves. Now, that they are both teenagers, they straighten, curl and style their hair themselves, and do a pretty good job of it!
If you are looking for great product reviews of hair products, Untrained Hair Mom posted a summary with all the hair product reviews she did for 2011. Some of the products she reviewed are Curlformers (love these!), I Love My Hair book and Sidewinder Hair Holders. I could have used some of these products when my girls were little!
Based on some fundamental characteristics of cellular proteins, a team of scientists speculates that the last common ancestor of life on Earth got its start in the planet's natural hot tubs
By David Biello
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February 15, 2012
HATCHERIES: A group of scientists proposes the pools formed form vented geothermal steam, pictured here, may have provided the perfect environment for life's early cells.Image: Courtesy of National Park Service
Earth started as a violent place, its surface churned by continuous volcanic eruptions and cloaked in an atmosphere that would have been poisonous to today's life-forms. Furthermore, the thin primeval atmosphere may have provided only scant protection from the young sun's harsh ultraviolet glare. Given these inhospitable conditions, scientists have long wondered: How did the first cells come to be nearly four billion years ago?
Conventional scientific wisdom holds that life arose in the sea. But a new study suggests that the first cells?or at least the ones that left descendants still extant?got their start in geothermal pools, like those seen at Yellowstone National Park and other geologic hot spots today. The argument rests on one indisputable observation?enzymes common to all archaea and bacteria are built from potassium, phosphorus or zinc, not sodium.
Some biologists suspect that the membranes of early life-forms were not yet the tight coverings that they are today, and would have instead let small molecules and ions flow in and out freely. If life arose in the salty sea, then the first cells and their living relatives might be expected to have enzymes built from abundant sodium?or at least tolerate more sodium internally. That modern archaea and bacteria instead possess internal fluid low in sodium, and enzymes built from other elements hints that they arose in an environment both rich in such elements as well as relatively sodium-free. "If the very first membranes were leaky for small molecules and ions, then the interior of the first cells should have been in equilibrium with their surroundings," explains biophysicist Armen Mulkidjanian of the University of Osnabr?ck in Germany, lead author of the paper presenting the hypothesis published online February 13 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "By reconstructing the inorganic chemistry of the cytoplasm, it might be possible to reconstruct the habitats where the first cells could dwell."
The team noted that most modern cells maintain a high ratio of potassium ions to sodium ions. "We looked all over the place for the conditions and processes that would lead to [potassium] enrichment," Mulkidjanian says. The only such places extant today are so-called "vapor-dominated" geothermal systems?locales where water, heated deep within Earth until it becomes steam, reaches the surface, cools and condenses back to elementally enriched liquid pools. Condensed geothermal steam in these pools can have ratios of potassium to sodium ions as high as 75 to 1, and are rich in the other elements of life that have been leached from rock by the hot water. Thus, Mulkidjanian and his colleagues argue that they may have been the "hatcheries" of the first cells.
The argument matches a perhaps prescient suggestion from Charles Darwin in an 1871 letter: "But if (and oh what a big if) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etcetera present that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes." Nobel laureate and geneticist Jack Szostak of Harvard University has also argued that the first cells probably had leaky membranes and that early oceans were not a favorable environment for the origin of life.
Head & neck cancer in transplant patients: For better or worse?Public release date: 27-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Krista Hopson khopson1@hfhs.org 313-874-7207 Henry Ford Health System
DETROIT Transplant patients who develop head and neck cancer are more likely to be non-smokers and non-drinkers, and less likely than their non-transplant counterparts to survive past one year of diagnosis, according to a new study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
As part of a 20-year review, Henry Ford researchers found cancers of the throat, tonsils and mouth may be more aggressive in transplant recipients as the result of long-term immunosuppressive therapy required to prevent solid organ rejection.
Transplant patients in the study who developed skin cancer in the head and neck region were more likely to have multiple lesions, compared to the general public. In all, 2.6% of transplant patients in the study developed some form of head and neck cancer.
While the risk for developing head and neck cancer is small, the study serves as an important reminder to all transplant recipients to be vigilant about any changes to their skin, as well as persistent sore throat, ear pain or swallowing issues all signs of head and neck cancer.
"The benefits of organ transplantation and immunosuppressive therapy still outweigh the risk of transplant patients developing head and neck cancer," says study author Robert Deeb, M.D., with the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at Henry Ford.
"Still, our study highlights that head and neck cancer arising in transplant patients warrants the need for regular screenings and aggressive treatment."
The study will be presented Jan. 28 in Miami Beach at the annual Triological Society's Combined Sections Meeting.
More effective immunosuppressive therapies for transplant patients have greatly improved graft and recipient survival rates. But with longer survival, there has been an increase in long-term complications from immunosuppression, including head and neck cancer.
In fact, head and neck cancers account for 4 percent to 6 percent of all post-transplant malignancies.
The challenge is that transplant patients who develop head and neck cancer may have to consider forgoing immunosuppressive therapy in order to treat the cancer. But halting immunosupression could lead to organ failure, leaving patients with a very difficult decision: treat the cancer or save the organ. Transplant patients with most forms of skin cancer typically do not need to stop immunosuppressive therapy.
To gain a better understanding of post-transplant head and neck cancer, Dr. Deeb and Vanessa G. Schweitzer, M.D., conducted a comprehensive review of the 3,639 transplants that took place at the Transplant Institute at Henry Ford Hospital from January 1990 through December 2011.
Using electronic medical records, the researchers were able to track the incidence of head and neck cancer following solid organ transplantation during a 20-year period.
During that period, 95 transplant patients developed head and neck cancer - 78 had cutaneous (skin) cancer and 17 had non-cutaneous cancer.
For the 78 patients who developed skin cancer, the most common sites were the cheek and scalp. More than half of the patients were diagnosed with multiple skin malignancies in the head and neck region. The average age at cancer diagnosis was 61, and the mean time between transplant and skin cancer diagnosis was 48 months.
Seventeen patients in the study developed cancer in the upper aerodigestive tract (mouth, tongue and throat) post transplant. For this group, the average age at diagnosis was 60 and the mean time from transplant to cancer diagnosis was 66 months.
Among these patients, significantly fewer were alive at one year compared to their non-transplant counterparts, regardless of cancer stage at diagnosis.
The upper aerodigestive tract cancer patients also were more likely to be non-drinkers and non-smokers. An interesting finding, notes Dr. Deeb, since the majority of head and neck cancers in non-transplant patients (75%) are the result of alcohol and tobacco use.
"That our study group had a much lower rate of smoking and/or alcohol use than non-transplant patients strongly suggests the role of immunosuppression in the development of head and neck cancer," says Dr. Deeb.
###
Funding: Henry Ford Hospital
Along with Dr. Deeb, Henry Ford study co-authors are Saurabh Sharma, M.D.; Meredith Mahan; Samer al-Khudari, M.D.; Frances Hall, M.D.; Atsushi Yoshida, M.D.; and Vanessa G. Schweitzer, M.D.
NOTE: Study abstract is available online at http://www.triological.org/pdf/2012SectionsProgramLong.pdf
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Head & neck cancer in transplant patients: For better or worse?Public release date: 27-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Krista Hopson khopson1@hfhs.org 313-874-7207 Henry Ford Health System
DETROIT Transplant patients who develop head and neck cancer are more likely to be non-smokers and non-drinkers, and less likely than their non-transplant counterparts to survive past one year of diagnosis, according to a new study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
As part of a 20-year review, Henry Ford researchers found cancers of the throat, tonsils and mouth may be more aggressive in transplant recipients as the result of long-term immunosuppressive therapy required to prevent solid organ rejection.
Transplant patients in the study who developed skin cancer in the head and neck region were more likely to have multiple lesions, compared to the general public. In all, 2.6% of transplant patients in the study developed some form of head and neck cancer.
While the risk for developing head and neck cancer is small, the study serves as an important reminder to all transplant recipients to be vigilant about any changes to their skin, as well as persistent sore throat, ear pain or swallowing issues all signs of head and neck cancer.
"The benefits of organ transplantation and immunosuppressive therapy still outweigh the risk of transplant patients developing head and neck cancer," says study author Robert Deeb, M.D., with the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at Henry Ford.
"Still, our study highlights that head and neck cancer arising in transplant patients warrants the need for regular screenings and aggressive treatment."
The study will be presented Jan. 28 in Miami Beach at the annual Triological Society's Combined Sections Meeting.
More effective immunosuppressive therapies for transplant patients have greatly improved graft and recipient survival rates. But with longer survival, there has been an increase in long-term complications from immunosuppression, including head and neck cancer.
In fact, head and neck cancers account for 4 percent to 6 percent of all post-transplant malignancies.
The challenge is that transplant patients who develop head and neck cancer may have to consider forgoing immunosuppressive therapy in order to treat the cancer. But halting immunosupression could lead to organ failure, leaving patients with a very difficult decision: treat the cancer or save the organ. Transplant patients with most forms of skin cancer typically do not need to stop immunosuppressive therapy.
To gain a better understanding of post-transplant head and neck cancer, Dr. Deeb and Vanessa G. Schweitzer, M.D., conducted a comprehensive review of the 3,639 transplants that took place at the Transplant Institute at Henry Ford Hospital from January 1990 through December 2011.
Using electronic medical records, the researchers were able to track the incidence of head and neck cancer following solid organ transplantation during a 20-year period.
During that period, 95 transplant patients developed head and neck cancer - 78 had cutaneous (skin) cancer and 17 had non-cutaneous cancer.
For the 78 patients who developed skin cancer, the most common sites were the cheek and scalp. More than half of the patients were diagnosed with multiple skin malignancies in the head and neck region. The average age at cancer diagnosis was 61, and the mean time between transplant and skin cancer diagnosis was 48 months.
Seventeen patients in the study developed cancer in the upper aerodigestive tract (mouth, tongue and throat) post transplant. For this group, the average age at diagnosis was 60 and the mean time from transplant to cancer diagnosis was 66 months.
Among these patients, significantly fewer were alive at one year compared to their non-transplant counterparts, regardless of cancer stage at diagnosis.
The upper aerodigestive tract cancer patients also were more likely to be non-drinkers and non-smokers. An interesting finding, notes Dr. Deeb, since the majority of head and neck cancers in non-transplant patients (75%) are the result of alcohol and tobacco use.
"That our study group had a much lower rate of smoking and/or alcohol use than non-transplant patients strongly suggests the role of immunosuppression in the development of head and neck cancer," says Dr. Deeb.
###
Funding: Henry Ford Hospital
Along with Dr. Deeb, Henry Ford study co-authors are Saurabh Sharma, M.D.; Meredith Mahan; Samer al-Khudari, M.D.; Frances Hall, M.D.; Atsushi Yoshida, M.D.; and Vanessa G. Schweitzer, M.D.
NOTE: Study abstract is available online at http://www.triological.org/pdf/2012SectionsProgramLong.pdf
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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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.
It's no secret that certain countries have different views over freedom of expression on the internet, but this hasn't stopped Twitter's attempt to keep its service running in as many places as possible. In its latest blog post, the microblogging service announced that it'll begin "to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country" when required, in order to keep said content available to all users elsewhere (as opposed to blocking it globally). The withheld tweets will be marked accordingly while their authors get notified with reasons where possible, and internet legal rights monitor Chilling Effects will also post the relevant take-down notices on a dedicated page.
This may seem like some form of censorship taking over Twitter, but the company only mentioned those of "historical or cultural reasons" like the ban of pro-Nazi content in France and Germany; so it's not clear whether Twitter will also handle similarly with tweets that potentially lead to events such as the UK riots last year. Even though Twitter didn't elaborate further for Reuters, there is one reassuring line in the post:
"Some [countries] differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there."
One such country is most likely China, and back at AsiaD in October, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told us that there's simply no way for his company to work with the Chinese government (you can watch him answering us at 38:17 in the video -- courtesy of All Things D -- after the break):
"The unfortunate fact is we're just not allowed to compete in this market, and that's not up to us to change. The person to ask is trade experts between both governments, but at the end of the day we can't compete. They (Chinese microblogging platforms) can compete in our markets, and we're certainly interested in what that means for us... We would love to have a strong Twitter in China, but we'd need to be allowed to do that."
There are obviously many factors that add up to this sour relationship, but the contradiction between China's strict internet monitoring policy and Twitter's core values is most likely the biggest obstacle. And of course, the Chinese government would favor its home-grown tech properties, anyway. That said, several months ago, one of the country's largest microblogging services Sina Weibo was criticized by the authorities for not censoring fast enough, so it's obvious that it'd be even trickier to work with a foreign company that sees things differently. Things are unlikely to change any time soon, or ever, unless China relaxes its policy.
New York ? The Arizona Democrat formally resigns from Congress, vowing she "will recover and will return." But return to where?
Amid tears and applause from her colleagues, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz) resigned from the House on Wednesday, a year after she was shot in the head during a Tucson shooting rampage that killed six people. After the House unanimously passed her final piece of legislation ? a bill that would increase prison sentences for smugglers flying drugs in from Mexico on ultralight aircraft ? Giffords received an emotional standing ovation from her congressional colleagues. "It's clich? to say there wasn't a dry eye in the room," says Chad Pergram at Fox News. But in this case, "it's also accurate." Giffords' replacement will be decided in a June special election. But what's next for Gifford herself? Here's what you should know:
First of all, how is Giffords' recovery going? Her family and doctors sound upbeat. Still, Giffords has trouble speaking and forming sentences, a condition known as aphasia. Nancy Helm-Estabrooks, who has been working with Giffords, says that while the Arizonan has trouble with long sentences, she uses "high-information words" that convey a lot of meaning. "Gabby's understanding of language is relatively spared," Helm-Estabrooks tells The Charlotte Observer. "She watches movies. She watches the news," and her husband, Mark Kelly, reports that he "can almost carry on a conversation with her." "She's remembered every boy she's ever kissed, every song she's ever sang, every bill she's ever passed," Giffords' mother, Gloria, tells the AP. "So upward and onward."
SEE MORE: Tucson shootings: One year later, has America learned anything?
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What's her prognosis? "I don't give false hope, and I'm pretty realistic in what I say about people with aphasia," says Helm-Estabrooks.?"But I have no doubt she's going to continue to recover and recover and recover.... You haven't heard the last of her yet." I'm very optimistic,?Kelly tells the AP. "She just needs some more time, whether it's a year or two years or three years, I'm very confident she's going to have a long and effective career as a public servant."
Will Giffords run for Congress again? She is certainly dropping hints that she might. In her resignation letter, read by friend Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Giffords says she has "more work to do on my recovery before I can again serve in elected office," but that she "will recover and will return, and we will work together again, for Arizona and for all Americans." In the meantime, says Alex Isenstadt at?Politico, Democrats expect Giffords to play "kingmaker" in the race to fill her House seat, anointing the Democrat she feels would best carry out her legacy, than giving that candidate a boost in what's expected to be a very competitive general election.
SEE MORE: Gabrielle Giffords' 'bittersweet' resignation video
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What if she doesn't run again? "We should take her at her word" that she'll return, says Tom Zoellner at CNN, but "that doesn't mean a return to elective office." In fact, Congress may well "be too small for" the heroic Giffords. "She now has a golden opportunity to start a 'Gabrielle Giffords Institute' for the study of gun violence or mental health care reform or solar energy or whatever public policy issue she wants to emphasize. Her moral authority and influence may be better used outside... the daily grind of politics and partisanship." Yes, "I?kind of think she's transcended Congress," says Gloria Giffords. But as to what's next, "I don't know where she's going to end up."
Sources:AP, Charlotte Observer, CNN, Fox News, Hot Air, Politico, Talking Points Memo
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Species:Hasarius adansoni Habitat: Hopping all over the tropics, including parts of north Africa, Europe, south Asia and Japan
For most of us, blurry vision is a bad thing, if only because it means we're going to have to spend a lot of money on a new pair of glasses. For one jumping spider, though, it's how it catches dinner.
Adanson's house jumper, as the name implies, is a jumping spider. It springs on unsuspecting prey insects from several centimetres away and swiftly dispatches them.
To pull off these leaps, it has to be an excellent judge of distance. And for that, paradoxically, it has part of its visual field permanently out of focus. It's the only animal known to judge distance in this way.
Stalk, jump and bite
The Adanson's house jumper is a cosmopolitan species ? meaning it lives all over the place. It hunts during the day, pouncing on insects and other prey, although like many jumping spiders it may also take the occasional drink of nectar.
To cope with its agile lifestyle, it must have excellent eyesight. How it works is not obvious, though. Lab tests have shown that it has top-class colour vision, but that doesn't help it judge distance.
Other animals have all sorts of ways to work out how far away an object is, the most obvious being simply to have two eyes with overlapping fields of vision and compare what they see.
There are also ways to judge distance using just one eye. Chameleons do it by changing the focus of the eye's lens, bringing the object in and out of focus. Alternatively, some insects move their heads from side to side to see how the object appears to move relative to the background.
According to Mitsumasa Koyanagi of Osaka University in Japan and colleagues, though, the Adanson's house jumper does it in a way that has been predicted from theory but never seen in a real animal before.
I can see you?
The spider has two pairs of forward-facing eyes: the central principal eyes are flanked by anterior lateral eyes. If the latter pair are blinkered, the spider can still judge distance, so the principal eyes must be able to do it alone. The visual fields of these eyes don't overlap, though, and they can't adjust their focus, so they can't be using any of the known methods of judging distance.
Koyanagi found a clue in a 1981 study of a related jumping spider, which like the Adanson's house jumper has four layers of light-sensitive cells in its retinas. Bafflingly, the second-deepest layer is full of receptors sensitive to green light, but green light is always out of focus on that layer, so the image there must be mostly blurred.
The same is true of the Adanson's house jumper's principal eyes. That means the blurry image on the second layer contrasts with the sharply focused image on the layer below. As the spider closes in on its prey, the defocused image will get blurrier still, allowing the spider to gauge the distance.
Koyanagi confirmed that this is how the spiders work by testing them under pure green and pure red lights. Under red light, the total absence of green should trick the spiders' perception of its defocused images, making all objects seem closer than they are, so the spiders' jumps should fall short. That was exactly what happened.
None like me
No other known animal judges distance like this, but then, no other group of animals has this retinal structure. All jumping spiders do, though, and so Koyanagi says they may all share the rangefinding ability.
Humans do something similar when we look at photos in which the subject is sharply focused against a blurred background, but that only tells us that the subject and background are at different distances: it doesn't tell us how far we are from the subject. However, there are microscopes that determine depth this way, and engineers working on computer vision have long been interested in the idea.
The Adanson's house jumper, it seems, got there first.
Read previous Zoologger columns: Gecko's amputated tail has life of its own, Unique life form is half plant, half animal, Transgender fish perform reverse sex flip, My brain's so big it spills into my legs, Dozy hamsters reverse the ageing process, To kill a mockingbird? No, parasitise it, Chill out with the world's coldest insect, 'Werewolf birds' hook up by the full moon, Cannibal shrimp shows its romantic side, The only cross-dressing bird of prey, The biggest spider web in the world, Slime killer hagfish feasts in rotten flesh, Female monkeys indulge in synchronised sex.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The United States is looking at easing sanctions on Myanmar, but needs to see more democratic progress including a smooth April by-election before it can start unwinding decades of overlapping economic and political bans on the country, U.S. lawmakers said on Tuesday.
U.S. officials have said they are encouraged by Myanmar's reforms thus far, which have included the release of hundreds of political prisoners and spurred the European Union and Australia to begin easing their own sanctions.
But the U.S. sanctions, launched in 1988 and expanded by five laws and four presidential directives, could prove tough to unravel quickly as the Obama administration monitors whether Myanmar genuinely embraces democracy, promotes civil liberties and ends strife with ethnic groups.
"We're looking at it. We're reviewing right now what's available to the president, what's available to Congress, what makes the most sense," said Democratic Senator John Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"I think we have to take some measures in response to what is happening over there. But I don't think anybody's yet decided on exactly what the sequencing is," he said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this month announced Washington would return an ambassador to Myanmar after an absence of two decades, a significant step in the quickening but still tentative re-engagement with the country formerly known as Burma.
RAPID CHANGE
Clinton, who visited Myanmar in December, has promised to match further reform steps with more U.S. gestures, hoping to encourage political change undertaken by the new civilian-led government after decades of military rule.
Those reforms, unveiled rapidly in recent months, have included freeing longtime pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, launching peace talks with ethnic rebels, relaxing strict media censorship, lifting bans on trade unions and protests, and pulling back from the powerful economic and political orbit of neighboring China.
But Myanmar's generals still effectively control parliament after a deeply flawed 2010 election and the constitution, written in 2008, guarantees the military's dominant role in politics.
U.S. sanctions on Myanmar include a ban on investment and trade, a freeze on the assets of certain Myanmar officials and a block on U.S. support for loans from international financial institutions.
"There is a whole elaborate maze of sanctions that has been built up, and to dismantle it is going to take some time and effort," said Suzanne DiMaggio, vice president of global policy programs at the Asia Society and a Myanmar expert.
In Congress, leading lawmakers said the United States could begin loosening some sanctions soon - but probably not before the April 1 by-elections in which Suu Kyi is set to run for parliament.
"We could act fairly soon," said Republican Senator John McCain, just back from a trip to Myanmar, adding that both political parties and the Obama administration itself were consulting on the steps forward.
"The president can act on some, Congress has to act on some," McCain told Reuters.
U.S. officials have said they are looking for concrete progress on a number of fronts, including further prisoner releases, sustained peace initiatives with ethnic rebel groups and a halt to Myanmar's military cooperation with North Korea.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican who since 2003 has been a co-sponsor of annual legislation placing sanctions on Myanmar's government, said the April election would be an important test of the durability of reform.
"I recommended to them that they have international observers there. That's not uncommon in countries that are having first-time elections," McConnell, who this month visited the country for the first time, told reporters.
"If that (election) goes well, then we'll continue to take a look at what additional steps they need to take in order to warrant the removal of some or all of the sanctions."
WAIVERS AND OTHER STEPS
Analysts say the United States could take initial steps such as requesting waivers to existing sanctions, including some to permit travel by senior officials to match the move taken this week by the European Union.
Another possible step would be an administration request for a waiver to a law which requires the United States to block any full re-engagement with Myanmar by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Some sanctions might be amended, but still others would require progress on issues ranging from drug trafficking and money laundering to preventing the use of child soldiers.
DiMaggio of the Asia Society said it would be important for the United States to maintain its flexibility while encouraging further reform, particularly on the economic front.
"What is needed right now are ways and means of responding quickly," DiMaggio said. "There is an urgency because right now a lot of important decisions are being made, a lot of reforms are being implemented, and they need assistance."
Associated Press President Tom Curley, right, shakes hands with Korean Central News Agency President Kim Pyong Ho after signing an agreement to open a new AP office in Pyongyang, North Korea on Monday Jan. 16, 2012. The AP opened its newest bureau in North Korea, making it the first international news organization with a full time presence to cover news from North Korea in words, pictures, and video. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
Associated Press President Tom Curley, right, shakes hands with Korean Central News Agency President Kim Pyong Ho after signing an agreement to open a new AP office in Pyongyang, North Korea on Monday Jan. 16, 2012. The AP opened its newest bureau in North Korea, making it the first international news organization with a full time presence to cover news from North Korea in words, pictures, and video. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
Associated Press President Tom Curley, left, and Korean Central News Agency President Kim Pyong Ho hang the Associated Press Pyongyang sign on the door to open a new AP bureau in Pyongyang, North Korea on Monday Jan. 16, 2012. The AP opened its newest bureau in North Korea, making it the first international news organization with a full time presence to cover news from North Korea in words, pictures, and video. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
Associated Press President Tom Curley, seated left, and Korean Central News Agency President Kim Pyong Ho, seated right, are interviewed inside the new AP bureau in Pyongyang, North Korea, Monday, Jan. 16, 2012. The AP opened its newest bureau in North Korea, making it the first international news organization with a full time presence to cover news from North Korea in words, pictures, and video. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
Associated Press President Tom Curley, left, and Korean Central News Agency President Kim Pyong Ho hold an Associated Press Pyongyang sign before hanging it on the door of the new AP bureau, situated inside the headquarters of the state-run KCNA in Pyongyang, North Korea, Monday Jan. 16, 2012. Behind them is AP Senior Managing Editor and Vice President John Daniszewski. The AP opened its newest bureau in North Korea, making it the first international news organization with a full time presence to cover news from North Korea in words, pictures, and video. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
Yang?Hyong?Sop, vice president of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, meets with a delegation from The Associated Press at the Mansudae Assembly Hall in Pyongyang, North Korea Monday, Jan. 16, 2012. The AP opened its newest bureau here Monday, becoming the first international news organization with a full-time presence to cover news from North Korea in words, pictures and video. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) ? The Associated Press has opened its newest bureau here, becoming the first international news organization with a full-time presence to cover news from North Korea in words, pictures and video.
In a ceremony Monday that came less than a month after the death of longtime ruler Kim Jong Il and capped nearly a year of discussions, AP President and CEO Tom Curley and a delegation of top AP editors inaugurated the office, situated inside the headquarters of the state-run Korean Central News Agency in downtown Pyongyang.
The bureau expands the AP's presence in North Korea, building on the breakthrough in 2006 when AP opened a video bureau in Pyongyang for the first time by an international news organization. Exclusive video from AP video staffers in Pyongyang was used by media outlets around the world following Kim's death.
Now, AP writers and photojournalists will also be allowed to work in North Korea on a regular basis.
For North Korea, which for decades has remained largely off-limits to international journalists, the opening marked an important gesture, particularly because North Korea and the United States have never had formal diplomatic relations. The AP, an independent, 165-year-old news cooperative founded in New York and owned by its U.S. newspaper membership, has operations in more than 100 countries and employs nearly 2,500 journalists across the world in 300 locations.
The bureau puts AP in a position to document the people, places and politics of North Korea across all media platforms at a critical moment in its history, with Kim's death and the ascension of his young son as the country's new leader, Curley said in remarks prepared for the opening.
"Beyond this door lies a path to vastly larger understanding and cultural enrichment for millions around the world," Curley said. "Regardless of whether you were born in Pyongyang or Pennsylvania, you are aware of the bridge being created today."
Curley said the Pyongyang bureau will operate under the same standards and practices as AP bureaus worldwide.
"Everyone at The Associated Press takes his or her responsibilities of a free and fair press with utmost seriousness," he said. "We pledge to do our best to reflect accurately the people of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea as well as what they do and say."
"The world knows very little about the DPRK, and this gives us a unique opportunity to bring the world news that it doesn't now have," Curley said.
KCNA President Kim Pyong Ho called the occasion "a significant meeting."
"I believe that the reason we are able to conduct all these projects in less than a year is that President and CEO Thomas Curley and the other members of the AP have promised to report on the DPRK with fairness, balance and accuracy, and have tried to follow through in collaboration with KCNA," he said in remarks prepared to mark the occasion.
"Even though our two countries do not have normalized relations, we have been able to find a way to understand one another and to cooperate closely enough to open an AP bureau here in Pyongyang as we have today," Kim said.
The North Korean capital, dappled in snow, remains in an outwardly subdued mood two weeks after the official mourning period concluded for Kim Jong Il, who died of a heart attack last month. His son, Kim Jong Un, has since become the third generation of his family to lead North Korea, following his father and grandfather, the nation's founder.
Kim's death came amid increased diplomatic activity surrounding the Korean peninsula, including recent bilateral meetings between North Korea and South Korea, and between North Korea and the United States. While his death put all that on hold, there are hints that North Korea remains willing to engage on a deal to restart six-party talks addressing the country's nuclear program.
The AP bureau will be staffed by reporter Pak Won Il and photographer Kim Kwang Hyon, both natives of North Korea who have done some reporting for AP in recent weeks on Kim's funeral and the mass public mourning on the streets of Pyongyang.
The bureau will be supervised by Korea Bureau Chief Jean H. Lee and Chief Asia Photographer David Guttenfelder, who will make frequent trips to Pyongyang to manage the office, train the local journalists and conduct their own reporting. Lee and Guttenfelder, both Americans, are longtime AP journalists with broad international experience.
As with other Asian news stories produced by AP, news from North Korea will be sent initially to AP's Asia-Pacific regional editing desk in Bangkok, where AP editors review and edit the stories for distribution to AP member newspapers and customers. Similarly, photos from North Korea will be edited at the Asia-Pacific photo editing desk, located in Tokyo.
Over the past two years, AP has been in contact with North Korean officials about how to set up broader access for AP print and photo journalists to Pyongyang. This led Lee and Guttenfelder to make several extensive reporting trips to North Korea. A team of AP photojournalists conducted a three-day workshop for KCNA photographers in Pyongyang in October.
KCNA hosted Curley and other AP executives in Pyongyang in March, and a five-member KCNA delegation, led by Kim, attended talks at the AP's world headquarters in New York City in June.
___
Follow Jean H. Lee on Twitter at twitter.com/newsjean and photographer David Guttenfelder at twitter.com/dguttenfelder.
PARIS ? American tourists fill the galleries of the Louvre Museum, yet American art is surprisingly scarce.
Paris' premier museum and three U.S. art institutions are seeking to change that with an exhibit tracing the birth of American landscape painting and its influences.
"As soon as I arrived at the Louvre, I noticed that American art was not displayed at the level it merits," said Louvre director Henri Loyrette.
Even the exhibit's English-French melange of a name breaks tradition: It's called "New Frontier: l'art americain entre au Louvre," or "American Art Enters the Louvre."
It focuses on Thomas Cole, a pioneer of the Hudson River School of American landscape painters of the 19th century.
Cole's "The Cross in Solitude," from 1845 and in the Louvre collection, is joined by other loaned works including "The Last of the Mohicans" and work of his disciples.
The other partners in the exhibit are Atlanta's High Museum of Art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, and Chicago's Terra Foundation for American Art.
Curator Guillaume Faroult described how Cole and fellow painter Asher Durand drew inspiration from a 19th century visit to the Louvre, home of centuries of artwork by European and other masters. The exhibit includes paintings that influenced Cole's work.
The show includes conferences and projects aimed at improving the French public's knowledge of early American art. The exhibit, which opened Saturday, runs through April 16.
In this undated photo provided by the Sidney, Mt., Police Dept. shows Sidney High School math teacher Sherry Arnold, 43, who has been missing since Saturday, Jan. 7. Hundreds of people are assisting in the search for the Sidney teacher who did not return home after going for a jog on Saturday Jan. 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Sidney Montana Police Dept.)
In this undated photo provided by the Sidney, Mt., Police Dept. shows Sidney High School math teacher Sherry Arnold, 43, who has been missing since Saturday, Jan. 7. Hundreds of people are assisting in the search for the Sidney teacher who did not return home after going for a jog on Saturday Jan. 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Sidney Montana Police Dept.)
HELENA, Mont. (AP) ? Authorities said Friday that two men in the Dakotas were being questioned in connection with the death of a Montana math teacher who vanished last weekend when she left her house for a run.
Sidney police Chief Frank DiFonzo said a 47-year-old man was in custody in the Williams County jail in North Dakota, while a 22-year-old man was being questioned in Rapid City, S.D. He did not identify them and declined to answer questions about the investigation.
Sidney Public School officials posted a statement online saying they learned of Sherry Arnold's death Friday morning. The statement did not provide details.
"I think we are starting to find some closure in the whole deal," said Sidney Mayor Bret Smelser, who knew Arnold and her parents well. "The news is not good, and as far as I know we don't have a body yet."
FBI Special Agent in Charge David J. Johnson, of Salt Lake City, said a tip from the public led to the two men. The FBI hasn't confirmed Arnold's death.
The popular 43-year-old teacher from the oil boom town of Sidney near the North Dakota border had been missing since last Saturday morning. The only clue to her disappearance that had been publicly released was that one of her shoes was found along her running route.
Authorities had been investigating the possibility Arnold was abducted.
Karen Arnold Truax of St. Paul, Minn., the daughter of Sherry Arnold's husband, Gary, told The Billings Gazette the family wants some privacy and "time to process what has happened."
"We appreciate everything that everyone did to help us in this search. We are so heartbroken that this is the outcome," Truax said. "We just sincerely appreciate all the love and support that continues to come from the community."
Both Sherry and Gary Arnold were employees of the Sidney school system and have five children combined from prior marriages, according to the Gazette. Two live at home and attend the same school system where Sherry Arnold worked for the past 18 years.
Hundreds of residents, police, firefighters and others combed the town and surrounding countryside earlier this week. The school district provided buses to transport members of search teams and set up a fund to defer expenses.
Hyundai Technical Center investing $15M to build hot/cold weather dyno facility in Michigan
Hyundai America Technical Center, Inc. (HATCI) will build a Hot/Cold Weather Dynamometer Test facility at its Superior Township location, just south of Ann Arbor, MI. Hyundai will invest $15 million to construct the testing laboratory, along with other upgrades at the six-year-old technical facility.
The State of Michigan has committed to funding, subject to approval of the Michigan Strategic Fund, construction of a new electricity substation at the Superior Township location that will improve the power output to the property.
The new Hot/Cold Climate Weather facility will allow engineers to perform the EPA SC03 Supplemental Federal Test Procedure (SFTP) with air-conditioning and the cold FTP. The SC03 test is conducted at 95 ?F (35 ?C) and the cold FTP test is conducted at 20 ?F (-6.7 ?C). The new Hyundai facility will be able to reach temperatures of -40 ?F (-40 ?C) to more than 245 ?F (118 ?C).
Vehicles must sit (soak) for a period of time at the controlled ambient temperature before dynamometer emissions testing can be performed. This will happen inside the weather chambers that Hyundai is constructing. Currently, Hyundai and the EPA are contracting out these very expensive tests. The EPA is also constructing a new testing facility that will test vehicles running on alternative fuels.
In planning to secure Hyundai and Kia?s future vehicle development presence in the state, Hyundai worked closely with Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), Superior Township and Ann Arbor SPARK.
If you want to know more, or don?t understand how duty of care and workplace health and safety affects your business travelers, then you must read this article. In this article we will examine duty of care, workplace health and safety and the how it relates to your business travelers.
One thing that I love about blogging is all the great bloggers that I am connected with. I visit their blogs and see all of their fun ideas, recipes, photographs, reviews and much, much more! This Valentine?s Day, I found that Untrained Hair Mom had posted the cutest hair styles suggestions on her blog. She was able to braid her daughter?s hair into a heart!
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Public release date: 27-Jan-2012
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