text: We all have lazy days where we don't want to switch out of sweatshirts and pajama bottoms. However, when this becomes a habit, it's either depression or addiction. More often than not, when the only center of an addict's life is their vice of choice, their appearance is the last thing on their mind. Personal and oral hygiene, as well as the cleanliness of their clothes, all become second to the fix they’re searching for.
  This usually manifests itself in the form of unchecked aggression or rage. When you ask them where they're headed so late at night, they may get immediately agitated and defensive. Nobody is proud to be addicted to drugs, which is why they sneak out at night and deny everything. Being accused, even silently, can immediately set them off to a level of explosive anger, and the impact of the drug in their system is directly to blame.
  Drug addiction isn't free, and it certainly isn't cheap. More often than not, drug dealers will offer their first few fixes for free, only to reveal the true cost of how much their supply is actually worth. At this point, money starts becoming an issue. If they were living a lavish lifestyle before, or were at least the type of person to never borrow money or pawn their possessions, it's all about to change. When they lose their job, begin lowering their lifestyle capabilities, and start suffering financial difficulties, there's a good chance they're falling deeper into addiction.
  Addicts have a great deal going on mentally, that someone who's never used drugs simply won't understand. They become lost in themselves, because they know others will disapprove. They isolate themselves away in their rooms, stop attending social events, even obligatory ones, and overall become difficult to reach or find.
  Fatal drug overdoses are reported multiple times every day in the United States, sometimes hourly. It's not just a matter of getting their lives back on track, it's a matter of saving them. Interventions have proven to be the most effective tool at our disposal to rope our loved ones back into their lives, to show them that there are people who care about them, and they don't need their vice of choice to feel alive.
  Choosing to stage an intervention, or hire an interventionist to help you with it, isn't an easy choice. Those staging the intervention often feel like they're somehow betraying their loved one or at least cornering them. The fact of the matter is, this is one way you know that it's time to initiate an intervention. When the fear of losing them in any way becomes so great, it's telling you something.
  If your family has been quiet about your loved one's behavior, it may be out of fear or the inability to cope with something they have never dealt with before. You're not alone; there's definitely another member of your immediate family that's been thinking the very same thing.
  Bringing it out into the open is a touchy subject. You're only interested in helping your loved one, but not everybody may see it that way. You don't want to wait until it becomes blatantly obvious, but you don't want to jump to conclusions. If you've read these signs and symptoms to look for, and you're seeing a lot of similarities, it may be up to you to inform the rest of your family that it's time for an intervention.
  There are four different types of interventions, and which one is used depends on the severity of the addiction and the personality of the addict.
  If the issue is new and not especially severe, it may be beneficial for the most influential family member to have a one-on-one conversation with the potential addict and ask them what's going on. In these situations, especially if the addict is particularly fond of the family member in question, there's a good chance that they're going to listen to their concerns, and submit to seeking help.
  This is what's been glorified on reality television shows. The most prominent members of the family concoct a plan, often with the assistance of a professional interventionist, and execute the intervention in the hopes of reaching through to their loved ones with their presence and ultimatums. These are also tricky, as at this point, it's common for the addict to already be high or feeling agitated from not being able to achieve their high. They are emotionally compromised, and everything is intensified.
  There's nothing more detrimental to the healing process, and difficult to overcome, than immediate family members each being hooked on the same substance. There is no shame. Nothing is hidden from one another; they indulge in their addiction openly with one another. These can be some of the most difficult revelations to achieve, as you have more than one individual who can look to each other, and shrug off the concerns of their loved ones.
  If there has been a recent, non-fatal overdose, it can often be the wake-up call that an addict needs. However, they shouldn't go this road alone. While it has been proven that the scare of actually dying can help an addict to see what's important and make a change, this isn't always the case. The presence of family and friends, with the mindset of coaching them towards a clean life, can be one of the greatest tools for them to use in their road to recovery.
  It's never too late. When you know that your loved one is suffering, you should absolutely do something to help them. An intervention is properly timed when the addict is still suffering and still breathing. There's never a wrong time to do something right.
  The further that an addict delves into their indulgences, whatever their vice is, the harder it is to pull them back. Therefore, it takes more work. This shouldn't be discouraging—there's still hope. There's always still hope that you can help them through an intervention, and free their lives of their crutch.
  Alcohol is lively and detectable on your system for different periods of time depending upon your individual metabolism and the evaluation method used.
  Detox from alcohol could begin within hours of discontinuing a drinking session. Normally, alcohol withdrawal signs happen for younger moms who drink quite regularly; when they suddenly stop drinking, the onset of symptoms start to form.
  Drugs can stay in your body for a few days or even weeks. Here is a list of drugs along with the minimum and maximum duration they are observed in the body.
  Heroin is a drug that does not last long within the entire body, being rapidly metabolized or broken down into metabolites and byproducts. In a hour or even less heroin may already be out of a person's system, however the metabolites can persist for a day or even more. How long they stay in the body depends on individual factors such as past use of this medication and the quantity required. This means that drug tests may discover the evidence of heroin and may be effective between a few hours and 3 days after a individual's last drug use.
  GENERAL DISCLAIMER: DrugDetoxHelpline.com is designed for educational purposes only and is not engaged in rendering medical advice. The information provided through DrugDetoxHelpline.com should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. It is not a substitute for professional care. If you have or suspect you may have a health problem, you should consult your health care provider. The authors, editors, producers, sponsors, and contributors shall have no liability, obligation, or responsibility to any person or entity for any loss, damage, or adverse consequences alleged to have happened directly or indirectly as a consequence of material on this website. If you believe you have a medical emergency, you should immediately call 911.
  
  The percentage of teens who think there is a great risk from being a regular marijuana user has dropped, according to a new survey. The Monitoring the Future survey found 39.5 percent of 12th graders think regular marijuana use is harmful, down from 44.1 percent last year.
  Monitoring the Future is an annual survey that measures drug use and attitudes among students in grades 8, 10 and 12. The survey found 6.5 percent of high school seniors smoke marijuana daily, compared with 6 percent in 2003, and 2.4 percent in 1993, CNN reports.
  “This is not just an issue of increased daily use,” National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Nora D. Volkow, MD said in a news release. “It is important to remember that over the past two decades, levels of THC – the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana – have gone up a great deal, from 3.75 percent in 1995 to an average of 15 percent in today’s marijuana cigarettes. Daily use today can have stronger effects on a developing teen brain than it did 10 or 20 years ago.”
  Almost 23 percent of seniors say they smoked marijuana in the month prior to the survey, and just over 36 percent say they smoked it during the past year.
  The survey found use of synthetic marijuana, also known as K2 or Spice, decreased 3.4 percent among high school seniors. Less than 1 percent of all students surveyed said they used bath salts. “Synthetic drugs are particularly dangerous because their ingredients are unknown, they have not been tested for safety and their ever-changing ingredients can be unusually powerful,” said lead researcher Lloyd Johnston. “Users really don’t know what they are getting.”
  The abuse of the painkiller Vicodin has decreased in the last 10 years, from 10.5 percent of high school seniors in 2003, to 5.3 percent this year. The survey also found 7.4 percent of seniors said they took the ADHD drug Adderall for non-medical purposes in the past year, while 2.3 percent reported abusing Ritalin.
  
  Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota passed recreational marijuana legalization measures on Tuesday, USA Today reports. A total of 15 states have legalized recreational marijuana or have voted to legalize it.
  South Dakota and Mississippi passed medical marijuana initiatives, bringing the total number of states that allow the legal distribution of medical marijuana to 36.
  Arizona’s measure legalizes possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for adults 21 and older. It sets up a licensing system for retail sales of the drug.
  South Dakota legalized the possession, transportation and distribution of up to an ounce of marijuana for adults 21 and over.
  Montana passed two marijuana-related initiatives. One creates rules for marijuana use, including a 20% tax, and allows individual counties to prohibit dispensaries. A second measure allows Montana to set the minimum buying age at 21.
  
  This study focused on evaluating how interactions between the hydrogenotroph Dehalococcoides ethenogenes strain 195, which is able to completely dechlorinate tetrachloroethene (PCE) to ethene, and the two heterotrophs Desulfuromonas michiganensis strain BB1 and Desulfitobacterium sp. strain PCE1, which dechlorinate PCE to either cis-dichloroethene (cis-DCE) or trichloroethene (TCE), on the fate of PCE under common in situ bioremediation scenarios. Meaningful kinetic parameter estimates were obtained for the heterotrophic dehalorespirers under a wide range of conditions. Batch culture assays and numerical experiments were conducted with Desulfuromonas michiganensis to evaluate the effect of the initial conditions including the ratio of the initial substrate concentration (S0) to the initial biomass concentration (X0) and the ratio of S0 to the half-saturation constant (KS) on parameter correlation. Most importantly, S0/KS, but not S0/X0, strongly influenced parameter correlation. Correlation between the Monod kinetic parameters could be minimized by maximizing S0/KS. In the present study, dechlorination of high PCE concentrations by Desulfuromonas michiganensis and Desulfitobacterium sp. strain PCE1 was monitored. The maximum level of PCE that could be dechlorinated by each strain was not constant, and varied with X0. This phenomenon could not be described using conventional Monod kinetics; therefore, a new model that incorporated an inactivation term into the biomass growth equation was developed to describe dechlorination at high PCE concentrations. The interactions among Dehalococcoides ethenogenes and heterotrophic dehalorespirer in continuous-flow stirred tank reactors (CSTRs) were performed under two conditions that reflect either a natural attenuation or engineered bioremediation treatment scenario. Extant kinetic estimates accurately predicted the steady-state chlorinated ethene concentrations in the CSTRs. However, intrinsic kinetic parameter estimates better described the CSTR start-up phase. The modeling and experimental results suggested that the ability of Dehalococcoides ethenogenes to utilize PCE and TCE is limited by the presence of a PCE-to-TCE/cis-DCE dehalorespirer, which forces Dehalococcoides ethenogenes to function primarily as a cis-DCE-respiring population. This study provides insight into how the activities of different dehalorespiring cultures are interrelated and will aid in the design of engineered bioremediation approaches that optimize the potential benefits associated with different dehalorespiring populations to achieve efficient and effective clean-up of PCE- and TCE-contaminated sites.
  
  The show was fabulous, actors and actress where very funny and really felt part of the show, we both enjoyed it.
  Officially the world’s most sought-after tribute to the BBC’s iconic TV series, this one-of-a-kind original has made its mark as an ‘outrageously funny’ night out (BroadwayBaby, Edinburgh Fringe). Selling out all over the world, it now returns to Dubai to appear for the first time on the QE2 – Basil will be pleased! But be warned: no riff raff allowed!
  
  Posted on July 7, 2015 July 9, 2015 Posted in Art, Event, Montreal, Photo, The 15th year of the 3rd millenniumTagged Advertising agency, Alexander Ljung, Angela Merkel, Apartment, ArchDaily, Art director, Asker, Auto racing, Carlos Guerra, Copywriting, Creative Director, Die Welt, En passant, European Commissioner, Francois Hollande, Fresh Paint, galerie Fresh Paint, Germany, Greece, Inner city, Jean-Claude Juncker, Kate Mada, Mad4Twnty, Neil Mota, Portable Game Notation, President of France, Public spaceLeave a comment	
  
  Today I presented some thoughts on Henry Farrell‘s International Studies Association panel on “Transnational Politics and the Information Age.” The panel, which included Joe Nye, Dan Drezner, Marty Finnemore and Abe Newman, looked at the subject fairly broadly:
  Public debates over the politics of the information age have been dominated by a battle between cyberoptimists, who believe that the Internet will lead to a fundamental transformation of social relations and cyberpessimists, who claim that the Internet will either have no effects or harmful ones. These debates partially map onto international relations arguments about the relationship between state power and globalization. Yet there is little work in international relations, which seeks to analyze the relationship between information flows and global politics. This is all the more remarkable given that information politics (whether the dissemination of sensitive government cables by Wikileaks, or the role of new media in the “Arab Spring”) seems to have direct, and sometimes dramatic consequences for central IR concerns. In this roundtable, we bring together scholars to examine in more depth the relationship between information technology and transnational politics. How has the rise of digital networks facilitated cross-border political organization or has it ultimately re-empowered the nation state? In either case, what points of variation exist in the political dynamics that have been unleashed? The distinguished participants offer a range of theoretical and empirical perspectives to this core debate concerning the relationship between information technology and global politics.
  The discussion afterward ranged all over – topics included wikileaks, cybersecurity, pedagogy, etc. A fair amount of time was spent discussing Kony2012 though and one question that none of us really answered very well was what exactly makes videos go viral, and whether narrative structure matters. After the roundtable Michele Acouto sent me this TED video by tweet which I thought worth sharing.
  Routledge has published Radicalisation and Media: Connectivity and Terrorism in the New Media Ecology, co-authored by Akil Awan, Andrew Hoskins and Ben O’Loughlin. The book presents results from our two-year ESRC-funded project on Radicalisation & Violence, which was awarded the maximum ‘Outstanding’ grade by the Economic and Social Research Council in 2010.
  Our chief finding, in a nutshell, is that despite the potential connectivity between radicalising networks like Al-Qaeda and ‘vulnerable’ youth and ‘terrorised’ publics, there is in fact a profound and structural disconnection. Security policymakers, journalists and audiences have little agreed understanding of what ‘radicalisation’ might mean, but a residual sense of anxiety that there is something threatening out there, possibly close to home. That diffuse threat is often spoken about as radicalisation through the internet, over the web, which could happen anywhere, to anyone, “at the click of a button”. Such statements do not aid public understanding of how individual opinions are shaped by on- and offline experiences, nor offer any evidence base of how and why individuals have turned to violence. Caught in the middle of this confusion are mainstream Security Journalists who deliver to audiences spasmodic episodes of bombings, arrests and warnings, the occasional, subtitled glimpse of an angry jihadist, but little insight or explanation of how political and religious violence is generated or prevented. Such news contributes to assumptions about an enduring social mainstream and radical margin; this may indeed feed back into potential disaffection by those identified as potentially radical. In short, we suggest that discourse about radicalisation may be as significant for Western societies as discourses of radicalisation, i.e. actual jihadist propaganda.
  The study offers a cross-section of global (un)connectivities across a series of critical security events since 2006 by integrating three strands of data: audience research from the UK, France, Denmark and Australia, an ethnography of jihadist culture, and analysis of English and Arabic-language news.
  Many of the Journolist critics have expressed concerns that the listserv’s membership — you had to be political “center to left” to join — fomented groupthink.
  Andrew Sullivan’s critique is succinct, but he’s hardly alone in leveling the charge: “It is this tendency to groupthink and exclusivity that concerns me.”
  Reihan Salam, who was generally sympathetic to Journolist in an on-line piece he wrote last week, has recalibrated his argument to criticize J-list about the alleged groupthink problem:
  What I meant to say, and evidently didn’t say very effectively, is that JList is inevitable. So the best we can do is criticize pernicious groupthink, which is where the tendency of “like-minded people become friends and start to think even more alike and help each other out” goes badly wrong.
  The irony, of course, is that this widely embraced criticism (and a few others) — emanating mostly from opinion writers on the right, but resonating throughout the right-wing blogosphere and other media outlets — actually reflects the kind of pack journalism the critics purport to be criticizing.
  Of course, critics have lept to this conclusion without any real evidence. Only a tiny fraction of the more than 10,000 Journolist emails have been reproduced publicly and no one has demonstrated that the listmembers (like me) unthinkingly mimiced any kind of ideological line in their public writing.
  There is actually another important example of hypocrisy embedded in Salam’s latest piece as well, as the young writer reveals his early days in journalism:
  I did work at The New Republic as an intern in 2001, and I spent most of my time there, and as a freelancer the year after, beating the drum for the invasion of Iraq.
  Political scientists argued as early as the 2002 buildup to war that the Iraq war drums reflected groupthink. First impressions were apparently accurate — and the media played along with the dominant narrative.
  As one final point, keep in mind that “groupthink” worrywart Andrew Sullivan embraced the Iraq war like my sister once embraced David Cassidy.
  Since I blogged about Journolist here in March 2009, I thought my followup (confessional) was worth mentioning now.
  Does a video blog post satirizing a scholarly debate count as a contribution to that debate? This is the question I meant to pose when I chose to preface my remarks with a YouTube clip about academic bloggers on the ISA panel entitled “Do International Relations Blogs Inform Practice? Theory? Both? Neither?”
  Naturally, the equipment failed. So it wasn’t until Q&A when I had a chance to hit “play” – and then only in the context of a question about whether the kind of snark associated with blogging is good or bad for academic discourse. (The consensus position on the panel: a qualified “yes.”)
  But in this post, I’d like to go back to the point I’d originally wanted to make because I think there really are some interesting questions about how the nature of scholarship and the media through which scholarly ideas are communicated, are transmogrifying due to the merging of academic discourse with new media.
  The context is a blog post in which “the author” attempted to summarize and satirize a debate afoot last year among IR scholars – taking place almost entirely in the blogosphere rather than in scholarly forums. As you may recall, it was sparked by an op-ed by Joseph Nye in the Washington Post and then by Dan Drezner’s blog response to it entitled “The Academy Strikes Back” and it was a debate about the extent to which the theory/policy divide could be overcome and who was to blame for it. Though this video may appear to be pure satire, I argued it actually illustrates two arguments about the impact of blogs on the relationship between the academy and the “real world.”
  First, it substantively satirizes the reification of a gap between theory and policy – a reification we saw in Nye’s essay and the debate that followed it – and a reification we see in the title of the ISA conference itself (“Theory v. “Policy”). In my view, the erosion of the alleged “gap” between theory and policy is actually exemplified by the very medium – blogs – being used to conduct the debate described in this video. Academic bloggers are, of course, working at the very nexus between the academy and the policy world – and doing so rather successfully, if the anecdotes shared by my co-panelists are to be believed.
  Yet for all the reasons mentioned on the panel (and in the background paper), that nexus is a tricky place to be professionally. Perhaps one way to interpret the blogosphere dialogue about Nye’s op-ed is as a reification of the theory-policy gap borne of a need to re-establish the conceptual boundaries precisely because they are so in flux.
  Second, as a means of describing an academic debate, this video itself reminds us that the types of user-generated artifacts we might conceivably associate with scholarly output is expanding somewhat beyond that which we were socialized to accept as legitimate, due to the dynamic nature of Web 2.0 – just as academic blogging has expanded that conception over the past few years. Entire conferences have, in fact, relied upon YouTube as a means to disseminate academic ideas rather than conventional presentation formats. How long will it be before such means of expressing views in a debate become commonplace? How will this transform scholarly discourse? How does the ease with which users can generate such content affect what counts as legitimate academic discourse?
  Now, let’s not overstate the case. I’m not saying that we are all about to give up writing conference papers and instead just create YouTube videos to disseminate our research or ideas. In fact, Darth Drezner and I have argued quite a bit over whether a video satire of an academic debate constitutes a contribution to that debate or not. And it’s true that although lots of scholars complimented me on the video, not many participants in the debate itself seized upon any of the points I was trying to make with it. So perhaps satire as a form of academic discourse is ahead of its time.
  But I think that one of the impacts of blogs and other new media on the academy is that they are forcing us to have these discussions.
  
  The Dude Lifestyle => Abiding In The Great Outdoors => Topic started by: RandoRock on May 16, 2016, 01:50:01 AM
  You cannot feel bad walking in the woods, maybe it's a connecting to nature thing, but it works! I love being outdoors and bushcraft/camping out etc. Good for the soul, man.
  Is that some kind of Eastern thing? Fuckin' eh, man, I agree; a good walk in the woods is good for the soul.
  Far from it duder, I think getting outdoors and away from the hustle and bustle brings peace of mind. More so if you come from a concrete jungle.
  Getting back to nature is becoming a more common theme nowadays, being in touch with nature, out in the world, what have you. Kinda primal doncha think?
  We talked about a Dude Gathering maybe in Florida once because Florida seemed to be about in the middle, miles wise, from most dudes in America and a lot in Britain where most dudes seem to be in Europe.
  ...You cannot feel bad walking in the woods, maybe it's a connecting to nature thing, but it works! I love being outdoors and bushcraft/camping out etc. Good for the soul, man.
  It's the positive energy emanating from the soil, the plant life, the animals, and so on--nature that hasn't been contaminated and/or overrun by humans. It's calming and energizing at the same time. I feel it whenever I get away from "civilization" for a while, even if it's only for a few hours. And I really feel it any time I'm near the ocean. Pure, natural, and completely legal. Fabulous stuff!
  
  Aug 27, 2015· For the hydrostatic test the Code recommends the temperature of the vessel and its contents are the same and between a range of 30°F above the minimum design metal temperature (MDMT) and 120°F. After the pressure reaches the test pressure, the pressure is reduced until it reaches a value equal to the test pressure divided by 1.3. A visual
  What pressure is a boiler subjected to during a hydrostatic test? Choose one answer. a. Operating pressure b. 1/2 of normal operating pressure c. 1 1/2 times maximum allowable working pressure d. 1/2 times design pressure e. 2 times the setting of the lowest set safety valve
  Fill boiler with water carefully, venting all the air from the casting. 9. Slowly increase pressure to 30psi, and inspect for leaks. If none, go to step 10. 10. Slowly increase pressure at 10 psi increments, inspecting for leaks at each stage, to an optimum test pressure of 100 psi for one hour. 11.
  Apr 11, 2012· Once the initial hydrostatic test is performed by ASME Code, you should not need to use repeated hydrostatic tests to find leaks. The NBIC provides use of pressure tests at lower pressure as a test method capable to find leaks, and will not result in harmful tensile membrane stresses in components that may have marginal tougness at ambient
  Entrapped air will drastically increase the time taken to reach the test pressure. Running the hydrostatic test pump increases the boiler pressure gradually till the test pressure. Normally the test pressure is is 1.5 times the maximum allowable operating pressure. Close the pump discharge valves to …
  Hydro / Pressure Testing. Hydrostatic / Pressure Testing (also known as Hydro Testing) is employed to find leaks in pressure vessels, tanks, pipes, etc., as well as to verify its performance and durability. This test is classified as nondestructive, which ensures that samples remain unharmed during testing.
  (a) Time of test. The locomotive owner and/or operator shall hydrostatically test every boiler at the following times: (1) During the 1472 service day inspection, and at every annual inspection thereafter; (2) After making any alteration to the boiler; (3) After installing a flush patch on an unstayed portion of the boiler; and (4) After any riveting on an unstayed portion of the boiler.