 operation for various field experiments.
As an APL-UW engineer, Ben focuses on electronics for acoustic object detection and backscatter experiments in the Gulf of Mexico, and several acoustic and tracking range experiments in the Arctic. He has extensive experience at the APL-UW Acoustic Test Facility calibrating many types of transducers and hydrophones.
Experiments involve designing rugged and reliable electronics for extreme environments: cold, corrosion, and salt water at various depths. As a university-certified diver, Ben has been underwater during many of these experiments. For the Regional Scale Nodes (RSN) project, Ben worked on a 1-mile-deep high-definition camera that monitors the ASHES hydrothermal vent and sends back high-quality uncompressed video of the vent and its surrounding biology.
Public opinion surveys conducted over the past four years show the vast majority of Americans want their food products labeled to reveal the presence of any genetically modified organisms (GMO). To date, however, few labeling campaigns have succeeded at the state level, where corporate interests have spent considerable amounts of money to slow the growing effort to adopt new laws educating consumers about what they’re eating.
The idea of labeling laws has enjoyed overwhelming support since at least 2010. In October 2010, Thomson Reuters asked more than 3,000 respondents if they believed foods should be labeled to indicate the presence of GMOs. More than 93% said yes.
Three years later, the same level of support was evident in a New York Times poll that revealed 93% said foods containing GMO ingredients should be labeled.
But proponents of labeling laws have had a tough time winning the battle in Congress and in statehouses. The United States currently has no nationwide GMO labeling statute, putting it at odds with 60 other nations.
This despite the fact that nearly all soybeans, sugar beets, corn and canola crops in the U.S. are genetically engineered.
But food-safety advocates are pushing hard for bills in state capitols, more than half of which considered legislation requiring labeling for GMO foods. So far, only Maine and Connecticut have adopted such measures, though neither law has gone into effect.
Proponents thought California voters would approve a 2012 ballot initiative mandating GMO labeling. Six weeks before Election Day, polls showed pro-labelers outnumbering anti-labelers 67% to 22%. But the proposition’s strong level of popular support eroded by Election Day, a victim of a $46 million opposition campaign funded by the likes of DuPont, Monsanto, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods and others. Backers of the initiative were only able to raise $9 million.
Biotech and large food companies also won the day in Washington state, which also narrowly defeated a GMO labeling plan.
Supporters of GMO labeling have not given up, insisting more bills will be introduced in 2014 in state legislatures.
“We expect even more states this year” to join the battle, particularly Oregon and Colorado, Colin O'Neil of the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit organization that opposes GMO foods, told Agence France-Presse.
My back ached badly as my tummy thumped in pain.
But I could not lose sight of this weird guy staring at the ground as if he could not see a woman fall right in front of him.
Yet he called me mummy!
Was I really going to die?
Was this a post-delivery trauma?
Like, a person could still smile at another’s calamity and pain?
The most annoying part was that the guy hadn’t even looked at me since over an hour that I had been staring at him.
How did he probably get what was on my mind precisely?
He smiled again as if he knew exactly what was on my mind.
Was this person just an angel conversing with me in a dream?
I had to pinch my cheek in a bid to reassure myself before I was convinced that it was real.
“Who are you?” I asked loudly, my heart racing fiercely.
He fumbled with his hands and I became charged to talk the more.
“Why are you not looking at me? Why are you talking to me with your face down?
This man had made me to stress myself beyond the limit.
I checked myself up and started jumping hysterically.
He grinned loudly and clapped his hands.
But he wasn’t looking at me.
“Isn’t it weird that one would be talking to someone and he doesn’t care to maintain eye contact? Isn’t it?” I asked and checked if he would change his mind and look at me but he didn’t.
The darkness howling over me was that visible?
Or did he have an undisclosed spiritual illness?
Those two names, I had never heard anyone being called by them ever!
That was the name I gave to such!
“Same thing with my mum.” He said and it really killed it all.
“I was called Daniel Williams then” he said.
So what made him change his name?
I felt like holding him in a very warm embrace but how could I hold someone else’s husband close to my chest?
I felt weird about the slightest thought of that.
But what could have happened over the year?
What could have made him to go blind suddenly?
He explained how his wealthy father was assassinated and as they mourned his death, his mother was killed in chemical air pollution in their home a week later. His mother had died protecting him.
Did he know Jesus then?
How comes this guy knows and answers every questions in my heart that I hadn’t even asked for?
“So as I was saying, before my mum covered my face with the wet cloth, I had inhaled some of the substance. So, in the process of covering my eyes with a wet cloth, I exhaled the chemicals and I choked, my eyes watered and I was there for like 45 minutes before my mother’s hands slipped off me and she gave up the ghost” he cried as he completed the story.
I couldn’t hold it again as his story sunk in my skull.
I went close to him and gave him a very large hug.
Many questions ran through my mind.
We were just so the same.
But who named him Mara?
How did he get back to Nigeria?
“As I noticed that she had slumped, I removed the clothes to check her and then I felt it against my skin- her very cold and stiff body. As I groped in the darkness of my misfortune, someone covered my face with a towel and dragged me away while I screamed and fought for my life. I thought I was going to die but I woke up to find myself at the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja, still blind” he narrated on, still in my embrace.
Which is worse- mine or his?
But how did he possibly get that name?
“Jabez Maradene was the name on the passport with which I travelled back to Nigeria. It was a really planned job by whoever did it and ….” He covered his face.
He must have heard God wrongly.
Exactly what is he saying now?
He knew about this too?
I looked towards the door and there was my doctor smiling graciously with her pastor behind her with a baby wrapped in a shawl in his arms.
I placed that aside as I faced the budding issue at hand.
But how do I house a fully grown man in my house?
How do we get food and all?
Watchout for the Final Episode….
I am Lizzy but you can call me Lizziefreezie.
Writing stories that would touch you, inspire you, make you cry, laugh and which in summary draw you into their own world is all I crave to do.
I am a graduate of one of the prestigious private universities in Nigeria- Bowen University, Iwo, Osun State, Nigeria.
I can act different roles in dramas and you would see me on your screens soon…*smiles* I love to teach and re-model lives of the youths through His grace; I am also good at catering services- for your parties and occasion; I love to present programmes, advertise, sing, write and of course, PRAY!
I would love to meet you all as your lives are being touched for the better.
You are welcome to my world!!!
Lizzy am really & truly inspired by ur piece,don’t really feel like dis shuld end.
Its a well organized write up.Crytek, the creators of the CryEngine which powers the Crysis game series, has now made an announcement on its collaboration, via a licensing deal, with Crystal CG. The latter is a Chinese company which focuses on visualization projects with their most notable/high-profile ones being the opening ceremony at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and also work the upcoming 2012 London ones (such as the mascot work).
This another great example of a top-of-the-range game engine being used for serious applications and also another reminder of the huge potential of the CryEngine pipeline. You can read the full press release at Crytek's site here.Come to think of it, images *have* long been the preferred method of transmitting textual information. Writing and printing worked on stone, clay, parchment, or paper: all analog media. You can commit whatever shapes you want to the medium, and it just so happens that some of the shapes resemble letters. Using a scheme like ASCII to bijectively encode text using as few bits of information as possible, and transmitting those bits over waves of electrons and laser pulses