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Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. near the Salt flats and one of the closest towns to the lithium mining operations a hilltop village deep in Chile’s Atacama Desert a black flag whips in the wind above Jeanette Cruz’s house The desert sun has bleached it to a dark gray blur but the defiance it represents remains strong Above each house in the village, shimmering in the evening sun, these black flags represent the Indigenous Lickanantay people’s resistance to the lithium mining that many say is tearing their communities apart The lithium in the brine beneath the brilliant white Atacama salt flat, which stretches out across the valley floor, has become a global resource It holds the key to the global green energy transition but the Lickanantay communities that have inhabited the area for millennia are wondering what they themselves stand to gain “Our life is contained in that water,” says Cruz gesturing forlornly out toward the salt as she stands in the low doorway to her home “They can give us all the money and resources they want but we’ll never get back what we’re losing.” lithium-rich brine is pumped to the surface and mixed with groundwater then slowly transferred between turquoise pools on the surface of the salt flat where it evaporates The concentrated lithium carbonate salts are driven in great convoys of trucks to the city of Antofagasta on the coast where they are purified and exported to be made into batteries — and end up in your cellphone or electric vehicle Three companies have now set up operations on the Atacama salt flat dried because of the water extraction by Lithium companies SQM, a Chilean chemical company, has been operating there since the 1980s. U.S.-based Albemarle Corp. has had a concession since 2015 and Chinese electromobility giant BYD are the latest to set up operations All three have rental contracts with Chile’s state development body through which money is set aside for the “sustainable development of the communities.” “What I have seen in the area is that we are able to work which wasn’t the case before,” explained Javier Silva who has been managing SQM’s relations with the communities around the Atacama salt flat for three years “We are seeing that perceptions are improving although you always find a wide range of opinions.” SQM shares out $15 million per year equally between 19 communities in the area; while further payments are made according to factors such as population and distance from the mining operations Residents in the town of Peine at the far end of the salt flat say that they have had an agreement in place with Albemarle since 2012 Some of the money was used to lay a brand new soccer field at the foot of the town the closest town to the lithium mining operations in the Atacama Salt Flat on Saturday 12 of April Chile is the world’s second-largest producer of lithium and has the largest known reserves of the mineral, according to the U.S. Geological Survey But there is little consensus among locals as to what should be done with the proceeds of the lithium boom Some of the communities around the salt flat have accepted direct compensation from the companies Others are adamant that the damage being done is irreparable and cannot be offset by payments “The lithium won’t last forever,” sighs 72-year-old Sara Plaza “For the next generations there won’t be water and there won’t be work — there won’t be anything.” “It’s the richness of the culture and community spirit that’s disappearing I don’t see such a bright future anymore.” razor-sharp crusts of salty rock jut skyward like frozen waves and tufts of tough grass protrude between them Plaza walks with total ease over the rough ground pointing out places on or just over the featureless horizon which aren’t obvious to foreign eyes Sara Plaza member of the indiginous community of Peine walks near a water extraction well in Tilopozo Sara Plaza (72) member of the indiginous community of Peine She remembers where animals would graze and the Lickanantay people would swim or coat their skin in thick mud to ease joint pains Others would come down to hunt for flamingo eggs but very few birds visit these parts any more a tanker pulls up to pour diesel into a generator powering a water pump extracting hundreds of liters of water per second from the marshy area where she once came to graze animals or swim One recent study conducted by scientists at the University of Chile linked the extraction of groundwater by the mining industry to the collapse of the Atacama salt flat which they found was sinking by as much as one centimeter per year Yet the exploitation of the salt flat is set to increase further still a public-private partnership will take over the lithium contracts with national copper mining company Codelco holding a majority share making the state of Chile the majority shareholder “It’s an unprecedented step for the Chilean mining industry” said President Gabriel Boric of the public-private partnership at the time “We can’t repeat the same formulas of the past,” Boric said “We need a state that not only collects the revenues but also participates in the whole process of extraction production and generation of value-added lithium products.” profit-minded mentality is already present in our communities,” says Rosa Ramos Colque a Lickanantay activist in the town of San Pedro de Atacama who works in ecotourism “The social and cultural fabric has already broken down.” And at the other end of the salt flat in Peine “We don’t know enough about what the impact [of further extraction] will be on the Atacama salt flat or whether the hydrology of the area fits with the national lithium strategy,” he says Sara Plaza member of the indiginous community of Peine cracked earth streets of Peine become a racetrack for contractors' vehicles as they thunder up to the top of the town Cubillos says that there has been friction in the town as more people have arrived to work in the lithium industry stretching Peine’s resources and driving up rental values There have even been a handful of truck thefts and people have started to put security fences up outside their homes “We could quite easily disappear,” says Cubillos sadly as he sits in a small park funded by an agreement with one of the mining companies Tags: Latin America, World, News Stand with OPB and protect independent journalism for everyone Listen to the OPB News live stream (opens new window)Streaming Now Please select what you would like included for printing: Copy the text below and then paste that into your favorite email application James Henry Peine passed away peacefully on Sunday He graduated from Hastings Senior High School in 1969 and went to national guard training at Ft Jim eventually bought his own livestock and grain farm in Cannon Falls and continued farming until recently They enjoyed 30 years of marriage until Sandy’s passing last fall. He enjoyed spending time with his family whether it be watching baseball or just being with his children and grandchildren he could usually be found most weekdays having coffee with his friends at Cenex discussing farming and solving all of the world’s problems stepdaughters Michelle (Justin) Hoff of Rosemont and Jennifer (Chris) Cable of Lake City siblings Joyce (Bob) McBeath of Bloomington He was preceded in death by his wife Sandy Enter your phone number above to have directions sent via text This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply Service map data © OpenStreetMap contributors BOGOTÁ —The clock is ticking for Colombia’s president as he heads into his final full year in office amid a challenging political environment While his approval rating has remained steady at around 34% — at much lower levels than when he began his term in 2022— his relationship with Congress is far from amicable and that tension may define a good part of his legacy.Petro ended 2024 by making the unusual decision to issue the national budget via a presidential decree a move that seemed impossible just a few months ago in the aftermath of a civil war and the loss of Panama that something similar happened with Colombia’s budget but the cause was the same: a lack of legislative support while Congress did not approve or reject the government’s proposal the Constitution allows the president to adopt the original text and move ahead with a decree to break the impasse The decision left two key conclusions plainly visible With 19 months to go in his four-year term the Petro administration’s political weakness is increasing Things are very different from when he had the support of most parties at the start of his term all the significant reforms the president wanted last semester either failed or did not receive final approval from Congress No wonder Orza considers that the upcoming discussions represent Petro’s “last train” to create a legislative legacy On the offensiveInstead of sending conciliatory messages towards key sectors of the political spectrum, Petro decided to go on the offensive During a speech in December in Barranquilla the president said: “Damn the parliamentarian who destroys his own people’s prosperity through laws.” In response This setback leads to a second conclusion: Colombia’s fiscal troubles are piling up and have become a significant headache the deficit would have grown from 4.2% of GDP in 2023 to almost 6% last year such as the Long-Term Fiscal Framework published last June Finance Minister Diego Guevara who replaced Ricardo Bonilla in December after his name was associated with the worst corruption scandal of the present administration (Bonilla denies any wrongdoing) the question is whether the new head of the government’s economic team can stand up to his boss when strict measures are needed A couple of recent decisions illustrate these doubts. Last month, the president said the minimum wage would rise 9.5% (11% if a transportation subsidy is included) This would pressure prices and public finances because of payroll expenses and pension outlays Earlier this month, after truck owners threatened to strike, the minister of transportation convinced eight road concessions to defer a toll increase by six months after meetings the finance minister attended In response, Guevara is trying to calm the markets. In an interview with Bloomberg he mentioned that the deficit specified by the fiscal rule was respected in 2024 “Leftist leaders can’t afford to scare away investors,” he said Maintaining the house in order is key for Colombia. Credit default swaps and EMBI levels show that Colombian bonds have a much bigger spread than public bonds from Chile, Peru, or Mexico. There are doubts about keeping investor confidence after seeing Brazil pounded by investors late last year One of the more significant fears is derailing an economy that is picking up pace. According to official projections, GDP growth in 2024 will be around 1.8%, three times faster than in 2023. This year, the nation’s central bank expects total output to increase by 2.9% However, there are additional risks. On the international side, geopolitical tensions are rising, and Donald Trump’s return to the White House raises further concerns. Internally, investor sentiment is still low, and some crime indicators are rising For the first time in 40 years, Colombia will have to import natural gas for its regular needs. At the same time, the government wants to change the rules of the game in the electricity generation sector. Experts have warned that the risk of energy shortages is on the rise The future looks challenging for the country with the third-largest population in Latin America. Petro remains mostly unpopular, and his Pacto Histórico coalition’s chances of staying in power seem slim the president’s approval rating in December was 34% At the same time, general public opinion is highly pessimistic, even if people feel better personally the wet weather that was the norm during the holidays at the end of the year—when blue skies used to be the standard—presages more turbulent times ahead for Colombia Reading Time: 4 minutesÁvila is a senior analyst at El Tiempo and a political consultant in Bogotá Americas Quarterly (AQ) is the premier publication on politics We are an independent publication of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas PUBLISHED BY AMERICAS SOCIETY/ COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAS Faculty should avoid the Trump-country trap this election season You have /5 articles left.Sign up for a free account or log in “My parents actively taught me to hate rural people because they all vote for Trump—so why should we care about them?” This comment came from a San Francisco Bay Area student in a fall 2022 class one of us taught on rural communities at the University of Puget Sound In a course on law and rural livelihoods the other of us the few students who hail from rural areas have noted their peers’ lack of empathy for rural folks—for folks like them Kami Steffenauer, then a sophomore at Georgetown University, wrote poignantly in The Georgetown Voice last fall about the shame she felt when a professor called her a “country bumpkin” during a class discussion. As we embark on another fall semester that coincides with a contentious presidential election in which rural-urban dynamics—and tensions—are attracting attention we have a responsibility as educators to challenge antirural bias It is incumbent upon us to ensure that our institutions are places where rural students and faculty know that they As professors at metropolitan universities we hear the most damning stereotypes of rural folks asserted as established fact sexist homophobes who aren’t smart enough to vote in their own best interests We’re told that small towns are homogeneous backward places with regressive politics—places that exist only to be escaped But rural people and places are much more diverse, dynamic and surprising than stereotypes suggest. Rural students who end up at metropolitan universities no doubt reflect that diversity, and they bring their rural backgrounds with them into the classroom as an important part of their identity and self-concept This makes it all the more painful and alienating when that rural identity is denigrated As professors who study rural America—and who grew up in rural places ourselves—we are concerned that our blue-state urban campuses might once again foment rural antipathy thus marginalizing and even shaming students who hail from the broad swath of America that many now think of simply as “Trump country.” This means it is critically important to be aware of how broad negative attitudes about rural people and places can alienate students who identify as rural Where rural people do differ is in their sense that their fates are linked to others in their community showing that rural identity is not reducible to racism these attitudes “are vastly more numerous outside rural communities than within them.” This dialogue between scholars like Jacobs and Shea gives us an opportunity to talk to our students about confirmation bias inaccurate interpretations of data that confirm existing beliefs We should also address with our students the growing tendency to stereotype people based on geography Just as we would not let our students get away with stereotyping urban residents—likely read as Black—we should not let them get away with stereotyping rural folks Jacobs and Shea’s myth-busting book equips us with hard empirical data to dispute those stereotypes move beyond the temptation of anecdata and see the complexity of rural people and places we should inquire into the geographic dynamics of American elections asking why many rural residents embrace Trump And if rural people turn their backs on higher education our institutions and our students will suffer a profound loss—as will the nation Like other groups of students who may find themselves in the minority in a classroom rural students bring unique and valuable perspectives that their urban peers need to hear Many have firsthand experience with some of the biggest structural issues facing our country: the green energy transition water shortages and natural resource depletion and how to create sustainable food systems These are dinner table conversations for rural students who have front-row seats to many pressing social and political challenges These challenges may be mere abstractions to urban students who enjoy the energy that powers their lights and the water that pours from their taps with no awareness of the battles being waged in the rural communities that provide those resources Inside Higher Ed’s annual survey of campus technology leaders reveals fractured policies and other disconnec We need to distinguish between good DEI and bad DEI This alumnus is happy Harvard is fighting for all of higher ed As colleges hire high-powered lobbyists to battle threats to federal funding Subscribe for free to Inside Higher Ed’s newsletters opinion and great new careers in higher education — delivered to your inbox View Newsletters Copyright © 2025 Inside Higher Ed All rights reserved. | Website designed by nclud The Local Europe ABVästmannagatan 43113 25 StockholmSweden Why do I need to know le peine de ma Rigne Because if one of your friends mentions this it's a warning sign to keep your wits about you (and maybe a close eye on your wallet) Le peine de ma Rigne - roughly pronounced as le-pen-de-ma-reen - literally translates as 'the struggle of my Rigne' (Rigne referring to Cardinal Rigne - see below) But it really means the battle against your inner demons or the fight against self-sabotage with the Rigne referring to the 15th-century figure of Cardinal Rigne He apparently had a vision from God that he should rule France and dedicated years of his life to scheming and struggling for power at the court of King Louis XII (nicknamed the 'fish king' - you know how it is you have one incident with a carp and history judges you cruelly) But Cardinal Rigne had a fatal flaw - he was unable to stop himself from stealing from the king in order to fund his other project - sponsoring a troupe of Russian clowns These days it's used in a broader context to mean that someone has sabotaged their own dreams - perhaps they aimed for promotion but were caught with their hand in the till it could be used if you're just one kilo away from your weight-loss goal when you go crazy in the pâtisserie Je l'ai surpris en train de voler des stylos au bureau Il a haussé les épaules et a dit "le peine de ma Rigne" - I caught him stealing pens from the office He just shrugged and said 'the struggle of my Rigne' La peine de ma Rigne - Why do I keep messing up * Well done to everyone who spotted it - yes, this is of course an April Fool, known in French as a 'poisson d'avril' Cardinal Rigne did not exist and Louis XII was never nicknamed the 'fish king' You may find some similarity between the fictional Cardinal Rigne and modern-day politicians who have been in the news recently especially if you take a close look at the pronunciation of this fictional phrase The French word peine does exist and can mean a struggle but is more usually used to mean a criminal conviction It is also 'la' not 'le' Please log in to leave a comment. CategoriesCategoriesEnglishECONOMYOECD: Belgium must strengthen fight against foreign bribery25 March 2025 Belgium has made legal progress in tackling foreign bribery The organisation urges stronger corporate accountability Belgium has extended the statute of limitations for bribery cases It has also removed barriers to prosecuting corruption abroad making it easier to target Belgian companies involved in foreign bribery The OECD warns that Belgium’s anti-corruption agencies lack funding and personnel and that corporate penalties have been reduced under a new penal code Belgian businesses often fail to prioritise anti-corruption measures Many only act under pressure from foreign regulators The OECD therefore calls for clearer guidelines for prosecutors and mandatory publication of bribery convictions to improve deterrence The OECD will assess Belgium’s progress again in 2027 Without stronger enforcement and corporate accountability it warns that foreign bribery will remain under-prosecuted Illustration photo © BELGA PHOTO NICOLAS MAETERLINCK Copy linkGet updates in your mailboxYour email addressSubscribeBy clicking "Subscribe" I confirm I have read and agree to the Privacy Policy rapid and high-quality information 24 hours a day from Belgium and abroad to all Belgian media not to mention entertainment and lifestyle our journalists and press photographers produce hundreds of photos and news stories Since the end of March 2022 English has been added as a language businesses and various organisations that need reliable information Belga News Agency also offers a comprehensive range of corporate services to meet all their communication needs www.belganewsagency.eu 10-17-2024MEDTRONIC The latest innovations in healthcare include AI and robotics 3-D imaging of patients’ bodies for pre-op planning led a conversation with Columbia University’s Noémie Elhadad Ronald Lehman of NewYork-Presbyterian Och Spine Hospital VP of Research and Technology at Medtronic BY FastCo Works The term healthcare technology may call to mind novel surgical robots when a robotic arm assisted in a brain biopsy robotics are being combined with artificial intelligence and troves of historical medical data resulting in possibilities that far exceed the sum of their parts What not long ago seemed like science fiction is already here: 3-D imaging of a patient’s body used in pre-operative planning so surgeons can “perform” a digital operation before the actual one; medical implants designed specifically for an individual patient’s body so they fit perfectly; and early-detection tools that spot anomalies and patterns in a patient’s medical history alerting physicians to problems before they become life-threatening A panel of experts discussed how such innovative technologies are empowering physicians and patients during the recent Fast Company Innovation Festival a conversation conducted in partnership with Medtronic Here are three key takeaways from the event (Scroll to the bottom to watch the entire panel discussion.) AI is supercharging medical robotics.Bill Peine vice president of Research and Technology at healthcare technology company Medtronic is particularly excited about combining AI and robotics “It will transform healthcare because it makes procedures much more precise like a medical implant designed for a specific patient AI can leverage pre-operative imaging information such as CT or MRI data to create a detailed map of the individual patient’s anatomy: the exact positioning of organs This information becomes a three-dimensional view of the patient “It’s like a GPS system that we can use to perform surgeries; it’s much more objective,” said Dr Ronald Lehman of New York-Presbyterian Och Spine Hospital “We can roleplay it—using software to practice the surgery first This is something we didn’t have five to seven years ago.” AI is fueling prediction and prevention of disease.As chair of the Biomedical Informatics Department at Columbia University Noémie Elhadad works to help patients stay out of the surgical theater in the first place Predictive analytics can help clinicians discover a patient’s risk of diseases or side effects far sooner This can be the difference between life and death particularly in the case of what hospitals call the “silent killer”: sepsis contributes to as many as 50% of hospital deaths AI has fueled early-detection tools that consider warning signs and risk factors “What’s exciting is not only that AI can predict this early enough but it’s also integrated well enough into the clinician workflow so they can act upon the tool’s prediction and do something about it,” Elhadad said this type of machine learning can also assist clinicians in deciding treatment plans “We can take information from tens of thousands of patients and see who had the best outcomes,” he said Maybe the data says I’m not as durable as Noémie so I probably won’t have the same outcome—even if it’s the exact same surgeon There’s alternative treatments that would be better for me specifically.” Tech can actually help bring back the human touch.The panelists agreed that no patient wants a future in which they sit in a treatment room alone with an AI-powered robot “We need to change technology from being a barrier between the surgeon and the patient to a facilitator,” Peine said “A hundred years ago surgeons and doctors made house calls; it feels very far from that today.” The questions How can we use AI and robotics and advanced therapies to bridge that gap and How can we free up the surgeon’s time so that they’re able to focus on the patient more the answer lies in technology that both integrates seamlessly into the clinician’s process and remains nearly invisible to the patient the best future is one where you can’t see any technology around—you see humans talking to each other patients being helped by clinicians,” she said “In the background that clinician has more information to help thanks to AI that integrates data from sensors Lehman is most excited about the additional personalization and precision that the AI-robotics pairing will fuel over time ‘Watch out for this,’ or ‘something’s not quite right during this surgery,’ ” he said “That kind of insight and objectivity will really help our patients and the healthcare field as a whole.” The final deadline for Fast Company’s Brands That Matter Awards is Friday, May 30, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today. FastCo Works is Fast Company's branded content studio. Advertisers commission us to consult on projects, as well as to create content and video on their behalf. More Fast Company & Inc © 2025 Mansueto Ventures Fastcompany.com adheres to NewsGuard’s nine standards of credibility and transparency. Learn More Because this French word is kind of a pain even if that usually is not the apt translation Peine - roughly pronounced pen - might look and sound similar to the English word ‘pain’ but you wouldn’t use it to describe a hurt knee or sore muscles it does convey some level of suffering in almost all of its uses The closest would be to say that someone has done something avec peine but this more so means to struggle to do something to say someone struggles to walk you could say il marche avec peine If you want to talk about physical pain you could use douleur or say J'ai mal au [insert body part] if you want to describe a specific pain Peine (a feminine noun) has several uses in French A peine would describe the punishment or sanction applied to someone who has been found guilty of a crime - for example La peine de mort (death penalty) or La peine d'inéligibilité (a ban on holding public office) The next meaning - which gets a bit closer to what English speakers might have expected - is peine in the sense that you feel grief or sorrow if you want to say you feel really bad for someone you could say J'ai vraiment de la peine pour lui And peine can also mean effort that is required for a tedious task if you need to individually sign every card in a giant stack you might say to yourself ce n’est pas la peine or cela n'en vaut pas la peine (it’s not worth the trouble) and instead print out all of the cards pre-signed Of course, there is also à peine which differs from all of the above definitions J'espère vraiment que le résultat en vaudra la peine - I really hope the result will be worth all this trouble La politicienne risque une peine d'inéligibilité ce qui signifie qu'elle ne pourra pas se présenter aux élections à court terme - The politician faces a penalty of ineligibility meaning she would not be able to stand for election in the short term Please log in to leave a comment Sandra Jeanne Peine was born on October 8th 1952 in Winona Minnesota to Clarence and Jeanne Budnick Cindy and Theresa joined her a few years later While studying there she met her first husband Michael and they married Sandy worked for many years providing licensed daycare to families out of her home which allowed her to stay home while her daughters attended their early years of school she took a job with a local business: Fluegel’s Farm Elevator and Pet Supply Store She was an incredibly dedicated and hard worker throughout her life While working at Fluegel’s she met the love of her life She and Jim dated and married on March 19 She moved to their farm in Cannon Falls and continued to be a homemaker and busy farmers wife all while also working for a packaging company in Eagan She again was a very dedicated and hard-working employee for many years there She often brought work home to get all the kids in on the fun especially iris; bird watching; a pair of binoculars was always nearby and she would watch every spring for the first sight of hummingbirds She enjoyed crafting and took up stamping and scrapbooking which led her to her final career as a business owner with a dear friend They ran CF Stamps in Cannon Falls for many years until she finally retired in 2019. Sandy had a love for animals of all kinds and even raising Holstein calves was not uncommon She had many dogs throughout her lifetime and passed this love onto all of her children Sandy loved to take walks on the farm to a special place where she found peace usually a dog ahead or behind her on these trips She volunteered locally in her community and was an avid sports fan as well She would often be seen watching NASCAR or the Minnesota Wild but she truly loved the Minnesota Twins She was a dear friend to many and was always trying to help or make people’s lives better wherever she went She had a phrase she was known to use with those she loved and were so dear to her when anyone would leave or you would hang up on the phone daughters Michelle (Justin) Hoff of Rosemount Sisters Cindy (Craig) Roth of Rochester She was preceded in death by her parents Clarence and Jeanne Budnick stepsons Kevin and Craig Peine and her in-laws John and Helen Peine A visitation will be held in Sandy’s honor on Wednesday October 25 A private burial will be held at a later date Online condolences are welcome at www.LundbergFuneral.com Bill Peine asks himself the same question every time he considers a new project: “Is this innovative?” new advancements and new technology has guided Peine throughout his 20-plus years working in surgical robotics one of the world’s largest medical technology companies “I wanted to be a leader of innovation,” said Peine even though I didn’t really realize it as it was going through my career were about putting tools in my toolbox so I could be that leader of innovation.” Peine’s passion for robotics goes back decades He remembers falling in love with them after seeing “Star Wars” as a 7-year-old in Indiana and by high school he was already building robots and connecting them to his home computer He majored in electrical engineering at Purdue and all of my uncles were mechanical engineers from Purdue but I saw electronics and computers as the brains behind the magic of robotics,” he said “And I fell in love with robots and knew I wanted to work with them.” Were it not for random chance, Peine might never have pursued his Ph.D. in engineering sciences at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) Peine arrived in Cambridge hoping to check out neighboring MIT he took a few extra stops on the Red Line to look into Harvard’s engineering program “Harvard Yard was all trees and people playing Frisbee and it felt a lot more like Europe,” he said “I walked into the main office at Pierce Hall and the first line was ‘Harvard prides itself on multidisciplinary research.’ That just spoke to me I saw Rob Howe was doing projects in robotics Harry Lewis and Marlyn McGrath Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences Harvard became Peine’s first foray into surgical robotics as he began to research concepts such as haptic feedback a thoracic surgeon then at Massachusetts General Hospital attending numerous surgeries to better understand the emerging market of minimally invasive surgery “They’re about extending life and making people better Those early research initiatives turned into some of Peine’s first start-ups With his labmates he founded Pressure Profile Systems a company based around the tactile sensor technology developed at SEAS then applied the same technology to a catheter with a spinoff company where Peine is senior director for the surgical robotics department Turning academic research into one company and you’re going to get skills from it that allow you to go after the next big idea,” he said Peine joined endoVia Medical as a senior research scientist in 2000 It was Peine’s first time developing a surgical robot and his first time leading a development team as a manager “We developed the surgical robot and got it certified within three years “What I got out of this was medical device experience how do you take something all the way through the regulatory process.” this time as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering He’d spend his next three years developing surgical robotics and medical technology in an academic setting “I loved the teaching and knowledge acquisition,” he said “I brought a lot of the skills I’d learned from industry into the academic setting But it was also difficult for me because I wanted to develop products I wanted to do technology that would truly make an impact in people’s lives.” Peine eventually took a sabbatical from Purdue to do research and development with a surgical robotics company in South Korea which gave him a better understanding of the global industry Additional career choices continued to build Peine’s skill set: He spent more than three years developing hand-held surgical robotics with Cambridge Endoscopic Devices then another 21 months designing non-surgical medical diagnostic devices with T2 Biosystems All that paved the way for Peine to join Medtronic as director of surgeon user interfaces in 2013 “I’m starting to drive the robotics strategy for Medtronic which is an exciting opportunity,” Peine said When asked if all his career choices were part of a deliberate plan Peine laughed and described it as “more of a random walk.” Still it’s easy to connect each of Peine’s decisions from coming to Harvard 30 years ago to where he is now to his overall goal of constant innovation and now I really manage managers,” he said “My advice is to look for opportunities where you can learn Always be challenging yourself and strive to become a leader of innovation.” We have the address for the funeral home & the family on file If you're not happy with your card we'll send a replacement or refund your money Daniel Peine, 56 year old resident of Little Falls, MN, passed away on Friday, February 14, 2020 at St. Otto’s Care Center in Little Falls. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 11 AM on Monday, February 24, 2020 at St. Joseph's Catholic... View Obituary & Service Information Peine created this Life Tributes page to make it easy to share your memories Made with love by funeralOne Receive emails when new obituariesare published to our website Owned and operated by the Atchley family since 1920 we proudly serve the families of our community with care and professionalism.For generations the Atchley family and the staff have strived to meet the needs and exceed the expectations of the families we have had the honor to serve We are a family-owned funeral home with the 3rd and 4th generations working together to continue our tradition of serving our community Atchley Funeral Home also has the only crematory in the county ensuring that your loved one never leaves our care We hope you find our site helpful and informative and we also welcome your calls and visits if you would like further assistance.Atchley Funeral Home - a strong traditional heritage combined with contemporary ideas and modern facilities to enable us to provide the most caring service available Atchley Funeral Home - Seymour Memory Gardens Atchley's Smoky Mountain Chapel & Memory Gardens Your browser may not work with certain site. Upgrade now. who recently earned his degree as a non-traditional student from the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism has joined the Pierce County Reporter in Prescott as a sports reporter which is where he graduated from high school He went on to earn a degree in psychology from the University of Minnesota before pursuing careers as an airline pilot and real estate agent He recently returned to school at the age of 35 to pursue his dream of being a reporter » Read more there are no recent results for popular commented articles Have some photos on your phone or computer Send them to The Mercury and see them in print We’ll print them each Tuesday on Snapshots Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks.We recommend switching to one of the following browsers: Metrics details The aim of this work was to develop and evaluate the reinforcement learning algorithm VentAI which is able to suggest a dynamically optimized mechanical ventilation regime for critically-ill patients validated and tested its performance on 11,943 events of volume-controlled mechanical ventilation derived from 61,532 distinct ICU admissions and tested it on an independent secondary dataset (200,859 ICU stays; 25,086 mechanical ventilation events) A patient “data fingerprint” of 44 features was extracted as multidimensional time series in 4-hour time steps including a reward system and a Q-learning approach to find the optimized settings for positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO2) and ideal body weight-adjusted tidal volume (Vt) The observed outcome was in-hospital or 90-day mortality VentAI reached a significantly increased estimated performance return of 83.3 (primary dataset) and 84.1 (secondary dataset) compared to physicians’ standard clinical care (51.1) The number of recommended action changes per mechanically ventilated patient constantly exceeded those of the clinicians VentAI chose 202.9% more frequently ventilation regimes with lower Vt (5–7.5 mL/kg) but 50.8% less for regimes with higher Vt (7.5–10 mL/kg) VentAI recommended 29.3% more frequently PEEP levels of 5–7 cm H2O and 53.6% more frequently PEEP levels of 7–9 cmH2O VentAI avoided high (>55%) FiO2 values (59.8% decrease) while preferring the range of 50–55% (140.3% increase) VentAI provides reproducible high performance by dynamically choosing an optimized individualized ventilation strategy and thus might be of benefit for critically ill patients VentAI dynamically develops an optimized mechanical ventilation strategy for the individual patient state architectural overview of the VentAI algorithm and independent testing on eICU dataset a VentAI estimated performance return on both datasets (MIMIC-III and eICU) versus clinicians’ performance return with variance in MIMIC-III dataset after the exposure of the policies to 500 models b Relation between VentAI performance return and estimated 90-day mortality risk in the MIMIC-III dataset c Relation between VentAI performance return and in-hospital mortality risk in the eICU dataset The test set includes 36,225 decision time instances and the designed model facilitates 343 action bins in the action space The relative number of action changes (ideal body weight-adjusted tidal volume (Vt) and fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO2)) is shown in relation to the number of mechanically ventilated patients at each 4 h time step Clinicians action changes are shown in blue while the VentAI action changes are shown in red Visualization of two representative case studies in 4-hour intervals. Both patients died within the observed 90 days. Clinicians’ actions are shown in blue while the VentAI actions are shown in red. Relative weight of each feature using out-of-bag feature weight analysis represented by an increase of the mean squared error a Ideal body weight-adjusted tidal volume (mL/kg) we built VentAI based on 11,943 events of mechanical ventilation in order to dynamically support the attending physician in choosing an optimized mechanical ventilation policy for the individual patient state with the highest probability of 90-day or in-hospital survival The algorithm provided reproducible high performance (on two independent datasets) in choosing the optimal ventilation policy the number of recommended action changes proposed by VentAI per mechanically ventilated patient consistently exceeded the number of action changes chosen by the clinicians This indicates that VentAI might be of benefit in dynamically supporting the clinician’s decision making on individualized mechanical ventilation settings of the critically ill patient in order to achieve a personalized medicine within the ICU setting It is important to acknowledge that a large part of the clinicians’ daily routine is covered by evaluating up to 1000 data points per patient per hour also in order to choose the correct ventilation scheme An algorithm evaluating those factors in a structured and reasonable manner could potentially significantly cut down this time hence free time for actual patient care (and ventilator adjustment) and reduce the burden on the treating medical personnel that VentAI iteratively re-evaluates the optimal mechanical ventilation strategy throughout the course of the treatment while exploring a larger space of actions (Vtset FiO2) to find an optimized mechanical ventilation regime for the individual patient It is important to underline that the used data from the MIMIC-III database includes data from 2001–2012 As the learnings from the mentioned trials are now broadly implemented into clinical practice the physicians’ performance is likely to be closer to the VentAI algorithm with a newer database It is crucial to recognize that all these studies some of the laboratory and clinical values retrospectively available to the algorithm might not be immediately available in a prospective setting these findings clearly highlight the advantage of the usage of a computational algorithm like VentAI in the clinical routine as the numbers of features that have to be taken into consideration clearly exceed the surveillance capacity of the treating physician or nurse This is because VentAI is developed to optimize the probability of survival at 90 days might differ from the actually observed mortality rate Addressing the high effect size in potential mortality reduction we want to underline that from our perspective this is not only the result of the correct ventilator settings alone but instead the result of an adapted taking into account the whole status of the patient and the disease progression it is important to acknowledge that we apply a modern ventilation regime onto older datasets Applying VentAI on a recent dataset would potentially show a smaller effect as modern guideline-adherent regimes are more widely adopted into practice this study demonstrates the potential (on two independent datasets) of the application of VentAI in particular in solving the complex and dynamical challenge of choosing the optimal mechanical ventilation regime Rising computational power enables physicians to base medical decisions on patient-individual data patterns instead of simplified scoring systems This might be particularly true for complex decision patterns because numerous clinical observations and data points must be considered when deciding on an optimal ventilation strategy Special care must be taken when implementing decision-making tools based on RL algorithms into clinical routine Patient safety can only be guaranteed with extensive clinical testing emergency situations and clinical particularities Continuous monitoring of algorithmic performance must be implemented in order to maintain quality assurance Until the long-term benefits and safety have been proven the final decision on a complex task like mechanical ventilation will be in the physician’s hand and an algorithm like VentAI will stay a suggestive tool thus highlighting the synergy between human and machine intelligence will help to evaluate data fingerprints on a patient-individual basis and will likely be useful tools for decision making at the patient bed in intensive care medicine This time window has been chosen based on the mean length of stay 6 (MIMIC: 3.1days (IQR 1.6–6.1); eICU: 3.0 (1.71–5.9)) in order to cover the majority of cases a mechanical ventilation event has been defined by applying the following criteria: The presence of a documented Vtset starts a new ventilation event or FiO2 during two sample periods (8 h) continued the event The documentation of an extubation or the initiation of non-invasive ventilation and/or supplemental oxygen supply ends the current event If multiple ventilation events were present during one single ICU stay only the first event was included in the analysis we collected a patient data fingerprint of 44 features for each patient included in the study (e.g demographics) from both the MIMIC-III database and eICU database extracted as multidimensional discrete time series in 4-hour time steps the features were selected according to their representativeness of the patient status and on clinical evidence towards the problem Outliers were sorted out with univariate statistical approaches (Tukey’s range test) and frequency analysis (90% confidence interval) The observed primary outcome was the patients in-hospital or 90-day mortality The extraction process has been performed by customized scripts (queries) of Standardized Query Language (SQL) for MIMIC and eICU on the object-relational database system PostgreSQL processing and release for the eICU database has been granted by the eICU research committee and exempt from Institutional Review Board approval We projected our problem as MDP defined by the 4-tuple <S The goals of a mechanical ventilation regime are the reduction of VILI while maintaining adequate oxygenation and decarboxylation we focused on a total of three parameters to be included in the action space influencing these overall goals: Ideal body weight-adjusted (target) Vtset Ideal body weight-adjusted Vt was calculated relative to a predicted body weight for males as 50 + (0.91 × [height in centimeters − 152.4]) and for females as 45.5 + (0.91 × [height in centimeters − 152.4]) A is the finite number of possible actions at any given state based on a combination of the three aforementioned parameters: Vtset we divided the action space into three dimensions of seven treatment levels (bins) each representing a specific range of ventilator settings This results in a multi-dimensional action space of 343 discrete actions It is worth mentioning that there was no option of a zero policy and the algorithm always had to decide towards one ventilation policy we analysed the effect of adding respiratory rate in the action space Results related to the analysis of this added dimension are shown in the Supplementary R is the given reward signal representing feedback received after the transition to a defined state (Supplementary Discussion) We modeled sequences of actions and states using a reward/penalty system based on the patients 90-day mortality or the in-hospital mortality Positive reward points of +100 were given to the trained model is computed by assigning the +100 or −100 values on the s0 dimension corresponding to a terminal state this three-dimensional matrix is multiplied with the transition matrix T(s a) and summed over the dimension s0 to obtain R(s This reinforcement learning algorithm fits well with our problem as it is a model-free algorithm thus it does not require to learn the model of the environment Q-learning seeks to maximize the expected overall reward by tuning the treatment policy (Supplementary Discussion) we estimate the value for the random policy The selected final model maximizes the 95% confidence lower bound of the AI policy among the 500 candidate models All data was processed on the computational infrastructure of the Rheinisch Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen University and the University Hospital RWTH Aachen in accordance to European Union data protection laws Further information on experimental design is available in the Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this paper The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Access to the MIMIC-III and eICU database may be requested via: https://mimic.physionet.org/ and https://eicu-crd.mit.edu The full code generated to produce this work is available via the dedicated VentAI-website https://ventai.org Mechanical ventilation in sepsis: a reappraisal Writing Group for the PReVENT Investigators et al Effect of a low vs intermediate tidal volume strategy on ventilator-free days in intensive care unit patients without ARDS: a randomized clinical trial Protective versus conventional ventilation for surgery: a systematic review and individual patient data meta-analysis The future of mechanical ventilation: lessons from the present and the past Vt selection in acute respiratory distress syndrome Lower tidal volume strategy (≈3 ml/kg) combined with extracorporeal CO2 removal versus ‘conventional’ protective ventilation (6 ml/kg) in severe ARDS: the prospective randomized Xtravent-study High-performance medicine: the convergence of human and artificial intelligence The Artificial Intelligence Clinician learns optimal treatment strategies for sepsis in intensive care Guidelines for reinforcement learning in healthcare a freely accessible critical care database a freely available multi-center database for critical care research Off-policy temporal difference learning with function approximation Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Machine Learning Bias of the random forest out-of-bag (OOB) error for certain input parameters low tidal volume ventilatory strategy improves outcome in persistent acute respiratory distress syndrome: a randomized Heterogeneity and phenotypic stratification in acute respiratory distress syndrome and mortality for patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome in intensive care units in 50 countries Effect of a protective-ventilation strategy on mortality in the acute respiratory distress syndrome and Blood Institute ARDS Clinical Trials Network Higher versus lower positive end-expiratory pressures in patients with the acute respiratory distress syndrome A study of K-nearest neighbour as an imputation method Ventilation strategy using low tidal volumes and high positive end-expiratory pressure for acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome: a randomized controlled trial Positive end-expiratory pressure setting in adults with acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome: a randomized controlled trial High levels of PEEP may improve survival in acute respiratory distress syndrome: A meta-analysis Higher vs lower positive end-expiratory pressure in patients with acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome: systematic review and meta-analysis Mechanical ventilation and extracorporeal membrane oxygena tion in acute respiratory insufficiency Le, H. M., Voloshin, C. & Yue, Y. Batch policy learning under constraints. Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Machine Learning, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 97, 3703–3712 Available from http://proceedings.mlr.press/v97/le19a.html (2019) Raghu, A. et al. Behaviour policy estimation in off-policy policy evaluation: calibration matters. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.01066 (2018) Liu, Y. et al. Representation balancing MDPs for off-policy policy evaluation. NeurIPS. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.09044 (2018) Li, L., Komorowski, M. & Faisal, A. A. The actor search tree critic (ASTC) for off-policy POMDP learning in medical decision making. 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Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.03976 (2016) Digital Signal Processing: A Computer Based Approach Salgado, C. M., Azevedo, C., Proença, H. & Vieira, S. M. Missing Data. in Secondary Analysis of Electronic Health Records (ed. MIT Critical Data) 143–162 (Springer International Publishing, 2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43742-2_13 Markov decision processes: a tool for sequential decision making under uncertainty Fitted Q-iteration by Advantage Weighted Regression in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 21 (eds In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence Download references This work has been funded by the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT-Health 19549) and by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under grants 13GW0280C and 13GW0280E as part of the IMEDALytics project The funding institution of the study had no role in study design data interpretation or writing of the report We thank Osman Alenbey for his technical and administrative assistance during the project Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL These authors contributed equally: Arne Peine Department of Intensive Care and Intermediate Care Chair for Integrated Signal Processing Systems Research Area Information Theory and Systematic Design of Communication Systems Joint Research Center for Computational Biomedicine Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology provided input on the methodology for analyzing the data; A.S carried out the mathematical analyses and provided the figures/tables; A.P. All authors read and approved the final submitted manuscript had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis are chief executive officers of Clinomic GmbH is chief executive officer of William Harvey Research Limited outside of the submitted work received restricted research grants and consultancy fees from BBraun Melsungen and Sphingotec GmbH outside of the submitted work received consultancy fees from Sphingotec GmbH All remaining authors declare that they have no conflict of interests Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-021-00388-6 Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Translational Research newsletter — top stories in biotechnology Louis-Area Affordable Communities Feature a Combined 522 Homes WENTZVILLE, Mo., Nov. 6, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- CAPREIT a fully-integrated real estate operating company responsible for the ownership and management of more than $5 billion of multifamily assets today announced it has acquired Peine Lakes and O'Fallon Lakes CAPREIT previously had taken over the management responsibilities of the tax-credit communities and assumed ownership in October features 256 apartments homes and O'Fallon Lakes The communities are situated in fast-growing "We've enjoyed overseeing the management responsibilities at these communities and we're delighted to officially add them to our portfolio," said Stephen Catarinella vice president of acquisitions and business development for CAPREIT Louis metropolitan area is becoming increasingly popular and the demand for quality affordable housing is following suit We're eager to take care of the local community by offering a high-quality Peine Lakes is about 45 miles northwest of Downtown St Louis and O'Fallon Lakes 34 miles in the same direction along Interstate 70 Each community also features prime access to US-61 a primary north-south thoroughfare that stretches from Minnesota to New Orleans which boasts a low 3 percent unemployment rate Peine Lakes includes 205 affordable and 51 market-rate apartment homes Wentzville is home to a General Motors assembly plant that includes about 3,300 employees and is on pace to be Missouri's fastest-growing city for a second consecutive decade O'Fallon Lakes is a garden-style community situated at 9300 O'Fallon Lakes Drive less than 10 miles from the largest employer in the submarket O'Fallon is also home to the operations center of MasterCard Worldwide and True Manufacturing which specializes in refrigerator products the three companies contribute about 9,000 employees to the local workforce 2- and 3-bedroom apartment homes ranging from 802 to 1,157 square feet Apartment interiors at the pet-friendly communities include walk-in closets abundant cabinet space and private patios or balconies with extra storage Common-area amenities at Peine Lakes include an expansive clubhouse pool with sundeck and a large business center with a separate study room and conference room Community amenities at O'Fallon Lakes include a fitness center playground and after-school learning center About CAPREITAs one of the nation's leading housing companies since its inception in 1993 CAPREIT has been involved in more than 200 multifamily communities representing more than 40,000 rental homes housing more than 100,000 residents CAPREIT is focused on the implementation of a savvy acquisition strategy and a professional property management style based on resident satisfaction and retention as well as asset preservation and enhancement CAPREIT maintains its mission to create value-added growth through strategic acquisitions continuing to capitalize on multifamily housing opportunities The company currently owns and/or manages approximately 15,000 apartment units in over 20 U.S states and is actively seeking to grow its multifamily footprint throughout the continental United States MEDIA CONTACTPaul WillisLinnellTaylor Marketing [email protected] 720-280-5172 http://www.capreit.com Do not sell or share my personal information: © 2025 Mission Park Funeral Chapels & Cemeteries Let’s be clear: I’m a food writer—as far as the gut goes nutritionists and dietitians have been telling me that gut bacteria is the hottest area of research right now The idea is that the food we’re eating is throwing the bacteria in our guts out of whack and we need to stabilize it to make everything work properly John Peine was a Target executive when he and his wife were on vacation in Florida a couple years ago “It was the most painful experience of my life,” he told me she rushed him to the ER because of acute pancreatitis stemming from gall stones “My pancreas was almost double its normal size and my body stopped producing enzymes properly,” he says Peine started doing research into probiotics and enyzmes so he already knew a lot about supplements But “the power of enzymes is often overlooked,” he says Enyzmes are active proteins that break down food Many are naturally produced thanks to the stomach He came up with a product called FRISKA—he’s launching now as dietary supplements were deemed essential But marketing this when people aren’t going to stores as much “The biggest wildcard will be the impact of the consumer,” he told me “Retail traffic to stores is down significantly but interest in self-care and wellness products has never been higher.” with additional ingredients to support immunity LEAVE A COMMENT Mali — The G5 Sahel Force was conceived to enable greater coordination among five countries in the Sahel region of West Africa in fighting jihadist groups and to strengthen regional administration and development while relieving the United Nations mission in Mali of those burdens Yet ever since the group — Burkina Faso Mauritania and Niger — launched its military operations in July 2017 it has been defined more by what it lacks than by its actions A damning report by the United Nations Secretary-General published earlier this year and highlighted in November by the Security Council said that the force has been hampered by a lack of funding a devastating attack that killed five people and destroyed most of its military headquarters in Mali in July and a bias toward military solutions a French-led initiative backed by the UN but resisted financially by the United States Each G5 country cannot deal with the security problems alone and everyone in the region can benefit from more coordination among the countries Although the alliance is also set to enhance development and trade the actual steps taken in these directions remain vague The substantive measures that are being promoted favor more military solutions to multifaceted problems and do little to address the lack of basic social services in the region These are enormous basic services: like access to pumped-in water into people’s homes and other essential sites; and electrical grids The UN report argued that “a military solution alone is not enough to create durable peace and stability,” and warned that “if the international community does not sufficiently invest in addressing the root causes of the conflict and support recovery and development in northern and central Mali peace and security will remain elusive.” Some of the G5’s operations were originally announced by the French defense minister the force has been from the start a French-led plan Like the French military mission Operation Barkhane in Mali and the G5 Sahel serves European interests more than African ones France is keen to get the G5 Sahel off the ground because it views the force as a way of relieving some of the work that its own army does in the region and hopes to mitigate jihadist attacks on its own soil by relegating the battle against terrorists to countries in the region “French military and some government officials largely do not envision Barkhane or French forces drawing down any time soon but it seems clear that many hope the G5 can be one possible long-term security solution for the region,” said Andrew Lebovich a research fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations One problem is that the G5 Sahel builds on the faulty Algiers Accord the Malian peace agreement signed in 2015 that has yet to be carried out fully and on a fundamental difference between the Malian and French governments’ views of who is a terrorist When French forces intervened in Mali in 2012 to help drive a coalition of jihadist groups from the towns they occupied But the French did not want Malian soldiers to enter Kidal the bastion of the MNLA Tuareg rebel group that is at the heart of the conflict While France considers jihadist groups like Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to be the main enemy Tuareg separatists like the MNLA are the biggest threat to the country’s fragile existence Moreover, the Algiers Accord outlined the construction of basic infrastructure and social-service pledges like roads, schools and hospitals. Those pledges have not been met. (A crowd-sourcing campaign launched in December by France is soliciting donations to finance projects.) Almost six years after the French intervention, the French military conducts joint missions with former rebels in regions where the Malian state is a sworn enemy. Moreover, the violence has spread to other regions and countries. Not only do the northern regions of Mali continue to be attacked regularly, central Mali has become a target: 40 percent of the violence occurs in Mopti has experienced more than 200 terrorist attacks since January 2016 The G5 Sahel force has missed many of its funding targets but has procured half of its military budget According to the UN secretary-general’s report about $225 million of the $469 million pledged has been received President Emmanuel Macron of France has been sensitive to criticism that the force has materialized so slowly “We always see what’s not advancing Don’t be so critical,” he said to the BBC in July adding that French troops will remain in the region “for as long as necessary.” Although the Trump administration — through Ambassador Nikki Haley at the UN Security Council — has rebuffed funding appeals by Macron the US is now a key donor to the force through direct and bilateral deals “Since our initial pledge of $60 million in October 2017 assistance has nearly doubled to approximately $111 million in direct security assistance to the Joint Force,” said a State Department spokesperson The money comes from the State Foreign Assistance and Department of Defense program funds and “provides equipment training and advisory support,” the spokesperson added the United States Africa Command based in Stuttgart “has two operational planners in place at a G5 Sahel Joint Force HQ,” and is still determining its future involvement in the force “Any direct support we provide will be conjunction and in coordination with those respective host nations and other UN and international partners who have had a longstanding military presence in the region,” Reho said Macron found another backer of the project in Saudi Arabia a nation that not only killed and dismembered the American-based journalist but also encourages the spread of extremist religious ideas throughout West Africa in the Wahabbi mosques and religious organizations it finances The Saudis pledged about $100 million in December 2017 to the G5 Sahel Force and that financial commitment along with the billions of dollars in defense contracts between France and Saudi Arabia implies that Macron has refrained from taking steps to end the crown prince’s atrocious war in Yemen and hold him accountable for the murder of Khashoggi Although G5 soldiers are carrying out missions in almost all the countries concerned violence in the Sahel is spreading at alarming rates It is unclear what effect the force will have on regional security but the allocation of resources questions the value of military solutions to increasing serious security problems John Bolton, the US national security adviser, has just unveiled a rather unimpressive US strategy for Africa including his vocal support for the G5 force But Bolton was emphatic that no money for it would come from UN budgets (A donor conference this month elicited approximately $28 million from Germany.) As a centerpiece of Macron’s Africa strategy the G5 Sahel Force was supposed to alleviate the stresses for French soldiers in the Sahel their biggest military mission since the Algerian war of independence ended in 1962 As violence in the Sahel region continues to spread almost daily this strategy has failed communities in the Sahel He graduated from McGill University in Montreal and speaks English This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Says Mr Nobody of a two-times billionaire president I think the "dewokeization" of the UN is correct Thank you Arthur for this important contribution on this very… Thank you Frank for this very important challenge facing humanity,… independent women-led media company that covers foreign affairs and the United Nations with a focus on women’s issues and the impact of major world powers on ordinary citizens We are strongly committed to high-quality original reporting and our team strives to ensure that these powers are accountable for their actions and decisions Don't miss a story, Subscribe to PassBlue We respect your privacy and take protecting it seriously This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page By the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty ACAT-Germany (and their partner organization Federal Association of Vietnamese Refugees in the Federal Republic of Germany) Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE International) Coalition Marocaine Contre la Peine de Mort German Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (GCADP) Japan Innocence & Death Penalty Information Center Lifespark – movement against the death penalty Society for Human Rights and Development Organisation (SHRDO) Southern Methodist University (SMU) Human Rights program The Institute for the Rule of Law of the International Association of Lawyers (UIA-IROL) Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) and Witness to Innocence strongly condemn the end of the unofficial moratorium on executions in Myanmar which goes against the international trends towards abolition of the death penalty The World Coalition and the 32 co-signatories organizations call on the Member States of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) of which Myanmar is a member to take measures to prevent further executions including by opening an investigation into human rights violations and imposing sanctions on high profile military generals connected with human rights abuses in Myanmar The World Coalition and the 32 co-signatories express its solidarity with Human Rights Defenders and the abolitionist community in Myanmar as well as to the families and relatives of those who were executed to the murder victims’ families and to the more than 100 people still facing the death penalty https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/07/myanmar-first-executions-in-decades-mark-atrocious-escalation-in-state-repression/ Malaysians Against Death Penalty and Torture (MADPET) ECPM (Together Against the Death Penalty) and Transformative Justice Collective: https://cpjp.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Myanmar-media-release-clean.docx.pdf https://www.fidh.org/en/region/asia/myanmar/myanmar-junta-reaches-a-new-low-with-shocking-executions https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/07/25/myanmar-junta-executes-four https://www.icj.org/myanmar-execution-of-pro-democracy-activists-following-a-closed-door-trial-by-military-tribunal-violates-the-right-to-life-and-is-the-ultimate-cruel-inhuman-and-degrading-punishment/ Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA): https://www.pgaction.org/news/myanmar-executions-2022-07.html 22nd World Day Against the Death Penalty – The death penalty protects no one the World Day Against the Death Penalty unifies the global abolitionist movement and mobilizes civil society public opinion and more to support the call for the universal abolition of capital punishment Helping the World Achieve a Moratorium on Executions the World Coalition made one of the most important decisions in its young history: to support the Resolution of the United Nations General Assembly for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty as a step towards universal abolition A moratorium is temporary suspension of executions and For a world free from the shadows of the gallows 48th UPR Session Highlights Growing Calls for Death Penalty Reform Judicial Influence on Death Penalty Abolition: Global Legal Perspectives at the Biennial High-Level Panel Joint Statement on the Rights of Women and Gender Minorities Facing the Death Penalty The Moroccan Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CMCPM) brings together seven NGOs: -the Moroccan Prison Observatory -the Moroccan Organisation for Human Rights -the Association of Lawyers’ Bars in Morocco -Amnesty International – Moroccan Section and -the Centre for People’s Rights Abolitionist in practiceDeath penalty legal status criminal policy at the heart of abolition World Coalition welcomes the success of its 15th General Assembly Morocco is working to break down the political barriers to the abolition of the death penalty World Coalition elects new decision-making bodies MassDevice The Medical Device Business Journal — Medical Device News & Articles | MassDevice May 16, 2022 By Sean Whooley Speaking on the “Road to a robot: Designing technology to address unmet needs & barriers” panel at DeviceTalks Boston last week taking up a lot of space and that they eat a lot When customers came to Medtronic about 10 years ago asking them to consider building a surgical robot the excessive size and price of maintenance applied to those systems “We looked at the current state of robotics going back 10-plus years and we realized there was an opportunity for us to come in,” Stow said could you make something more flexible that fits better into our rooms and into our hospital setting?'” The third comparison of surgical robots and elephants was slightly different as Stow said that surgeons described sitting at the console of such a system as “putting their head in the rear end of an elephant.” It was big and while the view was “pretty spectacular,” the surgeons lost all peripheral vision we set out to build a robot with this belief statement in mind which is that patients around the world deserve access to quality care and we can expand access to that care,” Stow said Medtronic’s road to the robot got a kickstart with the 2014 acquisition of Covidien and has culminated, at present, in the Hugo robot-assisted surgery (RAS) system. Hugo received CE mark approval for urologic and gynecologic procedures in October 2021 and the company is working toward getting the system approved in the U.S. but can’t share much info as the process is ongoing Medtronic’s Senior Engineering Director of Surgical Robotics Bill Peine explained that essentially starting out with a blank piece of paper and trying to pinpoint where to begin “We had a very clear definition of what a surgical robot was we assembled the right team,” Peine explained “A surgical robot is multidisciplinary there’s a lot of mechanical and electrical design but human factors and the user interfaces are just as critical and important.” What Medtronic employed to develop Hugo was called the “spiral development” process That entails beginning with nothing and answering big architectural questions upfront building a quick prototype to evaluate it and putting it in front of customers to get feedback that helps to define particular pieces of the architecture or design Peine said they then repeated that process “over and over again.” Medtronic’s spiral development process took about three months per cycle and the company went through about 13 cycles working for close to three years with thousands of interactions with customers the engineering team loved this,” Peine said “It was so much fun for them because they got to do something quick getting that market feedback from customers The R&D team has partnered very closely with the marketing team all the different subsystems would integrate their products or their individual parts into the working system.” 3D visualization and Medtronic’s cloud-based surgical video capture and management solution to offer a multi-quadrant platform designed for a wide range of soft tissue procedures Despite the success of Hugo so far and the potential for U.S Peine said that there are parts of the development process that could have been done differently but it was an enjoyable process that put Hugo in a position to grow I would say there’s more we could have done There are things that I definitely would want to go back and change,” Peine said as an engineer leading innovation in this environment using that spiral development process and I think we got to a really good spot.” Copyright © 2025 · WTWH Media LLC and its licensors The material on this site may not be reproduced except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media Privacy Policy Learn how to describe the purpose of the image (opens in a new tab) Leave empty if the image is purely decorative We're working on a visual shortcode editor until then please follow these instructions Email us to support@plugin.builders for any problems The outdoor competition season in northern Europe kicked off in style on May 6-7 at the Peine Highland Gathering in Lower Saxony The Saturday pipe band contest was the largest for years drawing 18 bands from the usual mix of Germany with a mix of cloud cover and sunshine in the morning giving way to a pleasantly sunny afternoon there was no repeat of the 30-degree heat that proved so challenging for competitors and spectators alike at the 2022 World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow The three-band Grade 5 contest was won by a combined band of the Clan Pipers – Frankfurt & District Pipe Band and their near neighbours Moguntia Pipes & Drums from Mainz as three collaborations of bands competing together featured prominently in the upper echelons of the 13-strong field The Riverside Alliance Pipe Band (Antwerp & District and the Wallace Pipe Band) Bragi Pipe Band (combining with fellow Danish outfit Holbaek) and German Thistle (Berlin Thistle and Baul Muluy from Hamburg) finished second While the bands ranked second through fifth were separated by just a handful of points after four evenly-matched performances the grade was comfortably won by Beatrix Pipe Band from Hilversum in the Netherlands long one of the region’s strongest bands at this level Photos can be clicked and will open at a larger size The march music played in Grade 4 is often quite different from what UK-based pipe band followers are used to nowadays While some bands choose to follow the RSPBA’s prescribed list of 2/4 marches bands in this part of Europe are not required to do so resulting in a broader range of time signatures harmonies and overall musical treatment that was once common before the RSPBA rule change to Grade 4 playing requirements Beatrix continued their winning streak in the Grade 4 MSR run closely by Bragi (whose drum corps were in excellent form all day claiming another first) and Crest of Gordon from Bremen It was a decidedly mixed day for the two Grade 3 bands – Concord from the Netherlands and Nutscheid Forest from Germany Concord swept the board with straight firsts in the Grade 3 medley event while Nutscheid Forest were beaten to second place by the Grade 4 Heather Pipes & Drums from Copenhagen who along with Bragi played in all four events they were eligible for throughout the day The four bands playing up from Grade 4 mostly gave a very creditable account of themselves with Riverside Alliance putting in one of the more spirited performances of the day that went down very well with the crowd Nutscheid Forest went on to claim first prize in Grade 2 and the Open Grade ahead of Concord who kept up their serial winning streak in the drumming standings The Heather Pipes & Drums completed the Open Grade prize list the top prizes in the Grade 2 and Open light music events went to Stefan Linder and Aaron Langwiesner with Niklas Helmcke the sole entrant in Grade 1 Philip Burchardt won the Urlar and Dagmar Pesta won the Piobaireachd Stolz and Kes Kunze won the Advanced/Former Winners MSR and Hornpipe & Jig respectively in the solo snare drumming Staschel winning the Open Tenor and Bass events while much has changed in the piping and drumming scene in this part of Europe in the last few years there are no longer any active Grade 2 bands in mainland Europe outside of Brittany and it was noticeable that the two Grade 3 bands competing at Peine only fielded seven pipers on the day But while the upper echelons of the pipe band pyramid are depleted the standard of Grade 4 continues to improve the significant number of joint entries in Grades 4 and 5 meant that twenty pipe band organisations in total were represented more than turn up to some minor contests in the UK The harsh reality is that bands in the top two grades come and go all the time and only a healthy grassroots level provides a strong foundation for the future The newly-formed National Youth Pipe Band of Germany which performed before the massed bands and prize-giving at Peine offers potential for raising the standard at a more institutional level in this part of the world it is telling that a German professional football club but two pipe bands (Grade 4 and 5) within its organisation – just the sort of thing the famously maverick second-division side would do no Scottish football team can boast an equivalent pipe band all of its own – now there’s an idea… Stuart Milne was a very important part of the Piping Today magazine team from 2014 till it ceased publication in 2020 Stuart had a wide breadth of knowledge of the pipe band scene and his insightful skilful writing always brought out the human story behind the pipes and drums. Stuart is now living and working as an English teacher in a German university Bagpiping features and news from around the international piping community Contact us: news@bagpipe.news © Bagpipe News - The National Piping Centre