Restaurant Brand on the Rise Adds Strategic, Revenue Generating Expertise

Churches of all sizes are grappling with communication issues in this unprecedented time of social distancing

Community Partners Come Together to Support Suicide Prevention Efforts of a Colorado Springs High School

LearnKey, in partnership with Akamai, Certiport, and GMetrix, wants to ensure students have access to online training so they can continue their pathway to certification despite recent school closures.

American Veterans Honor Fund is pleased to announce the launch of an all-new Veteran Candidate Guide for military veterans interested in exploring the idea of running for office.

A relatively obscure book is receiving its 15 minutes (or more) of fame this week, The Manual On Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD).

This set of federal standards for traffic signs, road surface markings, and signals is a primary resource to know about, so we wanted to take a closer look – especially since it is in the news right now.

New MUTCD standards announced recently require compliance over the next several years, depending on what type of changes are required.

For example, states, counties, cities and towns across America will need to increase the size of letters on street signs for roads with speed limits over 25 mph from 4 inches to 6 inches by January, 2012.

Street signs requiring new reflective lettering which is more visible at night must be installed by January, 2018.

These required changes will affect both large cities and small jurisdictions across the country. ABC News reported on some sample impacts this week:

“In Milwaukee, this will cost the cash-strapped city nearly $2 million, double the city’s entire annual for traffic control.

In Dinwiddie County, Virginia – with lots of roads but not many people – the cost comes to about $10 for every man, woman and child.”

The first MUTCD was released in 1935, setting standards for both road signs and pavement markings. Since then, eight more editions have been published with numerous updates that include changes in usage as well as technological improvements over the years.

Some of these changes are particularly noteworthy. It wasn’t until 1971 that all center lines were to be painted in yellow (as opposed to white) and all highway signs were required to be in white on a green background.

The most recent edition (2009) weighs in at 864 pages, dictating required standards for everything from simple items like street names and route signs to more complex topics, such as how to designate Bicycle Lane Treatment At A Parking Lane Into A Right Turn Only Lane and Examples Of Light Rail Transit Vehicle Dynamic Envelope Markings For Mixed-Use Alignments.

Additions and revisions are recommended to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) by the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (NCUTCD), a private, non-profit organization, which is made up of twenty-one sponsoring organizations comprised of transportation and engineering industry groups, safety-oriented organizations, and others such as the American Automobile Association.

This takes us back to this week’s controversy.

Federal standards promote safety and recognizable meanings, but when those standards are changed there will be ripple effects across local jurisdictions with limited resources to comply.

In places like Dinwiddie County, Virginia, citizens may argue that standards compliance could take funds away from education or public safety.

The Federal Highway Association says the new regulations, written under the Bush Administration, are designed to be easily read by America’s aging population. However, the FHWA announced this week a 45-day period for public comment on the new rules, “a step that could lead to easing on the guidelines,” according to ABC News.

Since its founding in 1965, the California Transit Association (CTA) has been a primary advocate for public transportation in the state.

The Association's team of legislative advocates works to promote multi-year transit funding and to represent transit's interests before the California State Legislature, the Governor and regulatory agencies on the local, state and federal levels.

CTA is dedicated to a collaborative approach to advocating for improved transit operations throughout California. Key to that approach is engaging our members in the advocacy process.

Members are frequently updated on policy developments through a variety of communications processes, and their participation is enlisted in numerous outreach efforts, including personal visits with elected officials, testifying before legislative committees and regulatory agencies, and conducting media relations campaigns.

To cultivate support and increased member activity, the Association strives to strategically mobilize members in key political districts and to build statewide coalitions to focus pressure on policy development.

Of increasing importance is the mobilization of organizations other than transit providers in the
cause.

CTA's partnership with such "non-traditional" transit advocates has supplemented the advocacy effort and has helped members to forge relationships with and utilize the resources of everything from nationwide public interest organizations to local ridership groups.

With support and active engagement from member organizations and other community interests, CTA is focused on implementing transit-friendly policy, a balanced transportation system, and increased transit funding.

Each year, CTA publishes a Legislative Summary that provides a synopsis and analysis of state legislation affecting public transportation and the transit-relevant components of the state budget process.

Compiled by the Association's team of legislative advocates, the annual publication is a great reference tool for those seeking information about statewide transit and transportation legislation.

The report for the 2010 legislative session (31p. PDF) is divided into three catagories:

Significant Transit Legislation: identifying and describing high-priority legislation supported by the Association, pending the Governor's signature in 2010

2010-2011 State Budget: describing the budget's impact on public transportation and the State Transit Assistance (STA) Program, and Proposition 1B allocations

Matrix Of Significant Transit-Related Legislation: Identifying the most significant transit-related legislation considered by the Association's Legislative Committee during the 2010 Legislative Session, whether enacted or not.

April 2020 Monthly Recap Hi friends, thank you so much for visiting me here. I so appreciate you supporting me and my blog with your post shares, social media likes and comments. It really helps to allow me to continue to do this. It’s hard to believe this blog will be celebrating 14 years in […]

If you're seeing April Monthly Recap, Purge Piles & Organizing Resources anywhere other than on I'm an Organizing Junkie (or via my email list or a feed reader) it is being used by someone else without my permission. Please let me know, thank you!

Announces Marshall Heitzman to Lead New Program Efforts

Check out this curated collection of coronavirus-related projections, dashboards, visualizations, and data that we have encountered on the internet.

Anders is continually monitoring the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to determine how it will affect individuals, businesses and organizations. Our tax experts are closely studying the new law and its impact on a variety of industries and created… Read More

The post Tax Reform Resources for Navigating the New Tax Plan appeared first on Anders CPAs.

From hiring to remuneration and skilling to mentoring, every HR process can be improved by applying design thinking to it.

Margaret Parker, MD, FCCM, speaks with Andrew Argent, MD, Medical Director of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at the Red Cross War Memorial Childrens Hospital.

Margaret Parker, MD, MCCM, speaks with Philip Toltzis, MD. Dr. Toltzis is Professor of Pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Grand Canyon National Park fire resources completed ignition operations on the Long Jim Prescribed Fire. Crews will continue to patrol the unit and mop up any areas along the fires perimeter that may threaten the holding line. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/fire-resources-at-grand-canyon-complete-ignition-operations-on-long-jim-rx.htm

This report highlights key findings from the most recent (2001-2005) data collected by the Forest Inventory and Analysis Program across all forest land in California.

This report highlights key findings from the most recent (2001-2005) data collected by the Pacific Northwest Forest Inventory and Analysis (PNW-FIA) Program across all ownerships in Oregon.

Integrated research is about achieving holistic understanding of complex biophysical and social issues and problems. It is driven by the need to improve understanding about such systems and to improve resource management by using the results of integrated research processes. Traditional research tends to fragment complex problems, focusing more on the pieces of problems rather than the whole that comprises multiple interrelationships and interactions. The outcome is that a lot is known about the parts (e.g., recreation, fish, and wildlife) but relatively little about how they are interrelated. There seems to be general agreement that integrated questions must drive the search for integrated understanding, but tradition, inertia, institutional culture,budgets, training, and lack of effective leadership foster reductionism (at worst) or minimal degrees of integration (at best) rather than any substantial, sustainable effort toward integrated research. In this paper, a phased approach to framing integrated research questions and addressing the substantial barriers that impede integrated efforts are discussed. A key conclusion is that to make any significant progress toward comprehensive integrated research will require more than rhetoric. Progress must begin with more effective leadership throughout various levels of research organizations.

The Forest Inventory and Analysis Program collected, analyzed, and summarized field data on 54 forested plots on the islands in the Republic of Palau. Estimates of forest area, tree stem volume and biomass, the numbers of trees, tree damages, and the distribution of tree sizes were summarized for this statistical sample. Detailed tables and graphical highlights provide a summary of Palau's forest resources and a comparison to 1987 data.

National forest lands encompass numerous rural and urban communities. Some national-forest-based communities lie embedded within national forests, and others reside just outside the official boundaries of national forests. The urban and rural communities within or near national forest lands include a wide variety of historical traditions and cultural values that affect their process of economic development. National-forest-based urban and rural communities participate in numerous economic sectors including nontraded industries, resource-dependent traded industries, and non-resource-dependent traded industries. These communities represent microeconomic environments. Cluster theory provides an explicit framework to examine the microeconomic relationships between national forests and their embedded and neighboring communities. Implementation of economic cluster initiatives in national-forest-based communities could improve their overall social well-being through increased competitive advantage based on innovation and higher productivity. This paper proposes establishing an Economic Clusters research team within the Forest Service. This team would dedicate its efforts to the analysis and improvement of the determinants of competitive advantage affecting national-forest-based communities.

Current resource statistics for the Umatilla National Forest, based on two separate inventories conducted in 1993-96 and in 1997-2002, are presented in this report. Currently on the Umatilla National Forest, 89 percent of the land area is classified as forest land. The predominant forest type is grand fir (26 percent of forested acres) followed by the interior Douglas-fir (25 percent) and ponderosa pine (17 percent) types. The majority of net cubic foot wood volume (55 percent) comes from trees ranging in size from 11 to 23 inches diameter at breast height. The most commonly recorded cause of tree death was bark beetle (primarily Dendroctonus spp.) attack, with over half of the mortality volume attributed to these insects.

This report is a compilation of four briefing papers based on literature reviews and syntheses, prepared for USDA Forest Service policy analysts and decisionmakers about specific questions pertaining to climate change. The main topics addressed here are effects of climate change on wildlife habitat, other ecosystem services, and land values; socioeconomic impacts of climate change on rural communities; and competitiveness of carbon offset projects on nonindustrial private forests in the United States.

The Forest Inventory and Analysis program collected, analyzed, and summarized field data on 37 field plots on the islands of Rota, Tinian, and Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).

The Forest Inventory and Analysis program collected, analyzed, and summarized field data on 73 forested field plots on the islands of Kosrae, Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM).

The Forest Inventory and Analysis program collected, analyzed, and summarized field data on 44 forested field plots for the 10 largest atoll groups in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI): Ailinglaplap, Arno, Jaluit, Kwajalein, Likiep, Majuro, Maloelap, Mili, Rongelap, and Wotje.

This report highlights key findings from the most recent (2001–2010) data collected by the Forest Inventory and Analysis program across all forest land in California, updating previously published findings from data collected from 2001 through 2005 (Christensen et al. 2008).

This report highlights key findings from a comprehensive vegetation survey of all forested land across the state of Oregon. A total of 5,180 forested field plots in Oregon were visited by Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) crews over a 10-year period from 2001 to 2010. Oregon has 30 million acres of forest, covering nearly half the state. The structure and composition of Oregon’s forests differ considerably across the state, particularly east versus west of the Cascade Range. Western Oregon forests are dominated by higher productivity classes (85 to 224 cubic feet per acre annual growth) and are composed of Douglas-fir and western hemlock, while forests in the east typically exhibit lower productivity (0 to 84 cubic feet per acre annual growth) and are composed of ponderosa pine, western juniper, and lodgepole pine. The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management administer the majority of forested land in Oregon; these public forests managed by federal agencies tend to have older, larger trees. Private owners, both corporate and noncorporate, own nearly half of the forested land in western Oregon, particularly in areas of high productivity. Understory vegetation in Oregon forests is more abundant in younger, moist forests. Non-native species are present in many of Oregon’s forests, most notably cheatgrass in the east and Himalayan blackberry in the west. This report includes estimates of forest growth, removals, and mortality for ownership groups across the state. The FIA program will continue to revisit and remeasure all the field plots over 10 years to report on changes in Oregon’s forest resources.

Statement Highlights: Fulminant myocarditis develops quickly and can prove fatal without early recognition and advanced medical therapy. A new scientific statement from the American Heart Association details the resources needed to diagnose and treat...

Not an infographic today.

Free online classes, discounts on software, extended trial periods, free online data sources, etc. as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the Organizer for the DFW Data Visualization Meetup Group, I've started this publicly viewable Google Sheet for the local DataViz community listing various resources that companies are making available during the pandemic. Turns out, these are valuable to DataViz designers everywhere, not just DFW, so I'm sharing the link with all of you.

I’ll continue to update this list as I learn about new resources during the pandemic. Please use the submission link in the spreadsheet if you know of any DataViz-related offers or deals I should add!

-Randy

An electronic device, including: one or more hardware interfaces each for connecting to a signal source to receive at least one type of application resources; a control chip electrically connected to the one or more hardware interfaces, the control chip being configured to classify and integrate one or more types of application resources received through the one or more hardware interfaces, and generate a display signal for a main interface including a number of areas arranged according to a predetermined layout, wherein each area is configured to display information regarding a same type of the classified and integrated application resources, and different areas are configured to display information regarding different types of the classified and integrated application resources; and a display screen electrically connected to the control chip to display the main interface according to the display signal.

A cloud system may create physical resource tags to store relationships between cloud computing offerings, such as computing service offerings, storage offerings, and network offerings, and the specific physical resources in the cloud computing environment. Cloud computing offerings may be presented to cloud customers, the offerings corresponding to various combinations of computing services, storage, networking, and other hardware or software resources. After a customer selects one or more cloud computing offerings, a cloud resource manager or other component within the cloud infrastructure may retrieve a set of tags and determine a set of physical hardware resources associated with the selected offerings. The physical hardware resources associated with the selected offerings may be subsequently used to provision and create the new virtual machine and its operating environment.

An electronic device for using pause to manage resources is described. The electronic device includes a processor and instructions stored in memory. The electronic device monitors a pause duration and determines whether to perform a resource management operation based on the pause duration. The electronic device performs the resource management operation based on the pause duration.

An adaptable integrated circuit is disclosed having a plurality of heterogeneous computational elements coupled to an interconnection network. The interconnection network changes interconnections between the plurality of heterogeneous computational elements in response to configuration information. A first group of computational elements is allocated to form a first version of a functional unit to perform a first function by changing interconnections in the interconnection network between the first group of heterogeneous computational elements. A second group of computational elements is allocated to form a second version of a functional unit to perform the first function by changing interconnections in the interconnection network between the second group of heterogeneous computational elements. One or more of the first or second group of heterogeneous computational elements are reallocated to perform a second function by changing the interconnections between the one or more of the first or second group of heterogeneous computational elements.

In order to allow a single user registered on a single local host or other machine to access multiple shared resources on a remote host, an aliasing mechanism is employed so that multiple concurrent connections can be established by the user to a single remote host, with each connection using a different identity. Each connection can therefore be used to access a different shared resource on the remote host. In some illustrative examples, a user's identifier such as his or her machine log-in identification may be associated with two or more resource sharing aliases. As a result, two or more resource sharing sessions can be established by the user with a single remote host, with each of the sessions using a different one of the aliases. The resource sharing sessions are usually established in accordance with a resource sharing protocol such as the Server Block Message (SBM) protocol.

A partition manager relocates a logical partition from a primary shared processor pool to a secondary shared processor pool in response to a predetermined condition, such as a hardware failure. The relocated logical partition is allocated a smaller quantity of processing units from the secondary pool than it was allocated from the primary pool. A quantity of processing units reserved for a second logical partition is identified in the secondary shared processor pool, and a portion of those reserved processing units are allocated to the relocated logical partition. The reserved processing units may be redistributed among multiple relocated logical partitions.

The present invention relates to a polymer composition comprising polylactide and, based on the weight of this polymer, from 17 to 25 wt % of a chain modifier, from 30 to 55 wt % of an elastomeric polymer and from 20 to 45 wt % of a plasticizer. The invention also relates to the method of preparing said composition as well as to the method of manufacturing an article starting from said composition and the article per se.

An information handling system includes a host mapped general purpose input output (GPIO), a shared memory, a board management controller, and a cryptography engine. The host mapped GPIO includes a plurality of registers. The board management controller is in communication with the host mapped GPIO and with the shared memory, and is configured to control accessibility to the plurality of registers in the GPIO, and to control write accessibility of the shared memory based on a private key received from a basic input output system requesting accessibility to the plurality of registers and write accessibility of the shared memory. The cryptography engine is in communication with the board memory controller, and is configured to authenticate the private key received from the board management controller.

A method and apparatus for pyrolytic destruction of polymer products including whole vehicle vulcanised rubber tires is disclosed. The apparatus 111 has a reaction chamber 153 into which a tire can be placed, and immersed for pyrolytic decomposition in a molten alloy of zinc with a minor proportion of aluminium. The apparatus 111 has a heated reservoir 155 in which the alloy is maintained in a molten state, and from where it can be transferred to the reaction chamber 153 to immerse the tire. Fluid hydrocarbon byproducts are drawn off for condensation and recovery, and solid zinc sulphides are also recovered. Where steel belted tires are processed, carbon and steel residues are also recovered.

Arbitration circuitry is provided for arbitrating between requests awaiting servicing. The requests require variable numbers of resources and the arbitration circuitry permits the request to be serviced in a different order to the order in which they were received. Checking circuitry prevents a given request other than a oldest request from being serviced when a number of available resources is less than a threshold number of resources. The threshold number is varied based on the number of resources required for at least one other request awaiting servicing.

Iron ore miner Grange Resources has launched an internal review of its proposed Southdown magnetite mine, near Albany, to see if the project start-up can be cheaper than the estimated multi-billion-dollar cost.

Analysts say it makes sense for Grange Resources to examine trying to get its Southdown project, near Albany, off the ground sooner by starting on a smaller scale.

Western Australian lithium miner Galaxy Resources has announced an operating loss of nearly $40 million for last year.

As the Cobar Endeavor Mine comes to the end of its lead and zinc reserves, CBH Resources announces it is cutting 130 jobs from the drought-stricken outback town.

Climate protesters who brought the streets of Melbourne to a standstill are vowing to make a comeback in autumn as police reveal the cost of overtime for controlling the protests would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

An Adelaide magistrate calls for police to allocate sufficient resources to a criminal neglect investigation into the mistreatment of a baby that left the infant "near death".

The company proposing a coal mine for NSW's Manning Valley, refused by an environment court on the grounds of its contribution to climate change, will not appeal the decision.