The 5th International Treebanks and Linguistic Theories conference is happening in Prague on the 28th November 2006.

The focus of this conference is on treebanks – a part of languages that provide notations at the different structural levels – sentence, phrase, word. Many projects are underway to work on identifying and compiling treebanks in languages that are currently missing them. This includes the languages of denmark, portugal, turkey and spain, among others.

Workshops and submissions are aimed at obtaining information and data descriptions that are more complex and better documented. The organisers are seeking submissions from people that a suitable to the topic of linguistics and tree banks – how they can be applied, how better knowledge of linguistics can be obtained, quality control, discovering, recording and managing them and suggestions for quality standardisation.

Some submitters will be invited to present their findings at the conference in the format of a thirty minute workshop. Please keep in mind that completed papers need to be less that twelve A four pages.

Two keynote speakers are Palmer, Martha UC at B http://verbs.colorado.edu/mpalmer/palmer/

and

Bourma, Gosse of the Groningen Uni http://www.let.rug.nl/~gosse/

The conference will be held at MFF UK School of Computer Science, Czech Republic

Get good insurance arranged now

Do you have questions about health insurance? More specifically, dental insurance plans and the type of coverage they offer? Do not worry if you are confused by the whole system; understanding the health insurance laws and practices in this country can be challenging at times. There is good reason this topic is always up for debate between the two political parties! However, knowing which plan is right for you when it comes to medical insurance—and dental insurance in particular—does not have to be so complicated. Let me clear a couple of things up for you so you can understand more of what dental insurance is all about. That way, you can make informed decisions about your family’s and your health and health insurance coverage.

First of all one key thing to understand is the differences between the three kinds of dental insurance: Indemnity, Preferred Provide Network, and Health Managed Organizations. Indemnity means that you can see any dentist you want, as long as they accept the insurance. This is also considered true dental insurance since you can go pretty much anywhere and still be covered. However I am almost certain it is incredibly expensive because of the freedom of coverage it allows you. http://blogs.reuters.com/small-business/2010/12/06/health-insurance-advice-for-entrepreneurs/

Another type of insurance plan is called the Preferred Provide Network dental plan, or PPOs. PPOs are a little bit confusing to understand, but basically a dental insurance company signs a contract with a specific dental office so that patients who are using that dental office get a lower rate. There is a clear partnership between the dental office and the insurance company, and in the end the patient wins because they are given lower rates on insurance while still maintaining a high level of coverage. The only problem that I see with PPO insurance is that if you are in an emergency situation and cannot go to see a PPO-covered dentist or oral surgeon, your expenses will not be covered. Instead they will come straight out of your pocket.
Finally the third version of dental insurance is what called Health Managed Organizations, or HMOs. This is when you are assigned to a specific dentist or dental office. In order to receive the benefits of your insurance plan, you must stay within this network.

Deciding what kind of dental insurance (http://zahnweissinfo.com/zahnzusatzversicherung/) you want is not always easy, but hopefully my brief summaries of the three different kinds of insurance help you figure it out. Unfortunately most of the time your benefits are provided by your place of work, so you may not always have total say in which kind you get. If it is up to you though, and you are going directly through an insurance company, then you should keep these key differences in mind. Personally I think PPO is the best intersection of cheap cost and effective coverage. HMO seems a little bit too strict because you are assigned to one specific dentist or dental office; Indemnity, however, is going to cost you an arm and a leg.

A speech therapist helping a child with dyspraxia

Dyspraxia in children (also called apraxia, oral dyspraxia, verbal dyspraxia, or Childhood Apraxia of Speech CAS) is not a disorder that is well known in the community. As a Speech Pathologist, many parents tell me that they have never heard of dyspraxia (or apraxia) before their child was diagnosed.  They also find that relatives, day care workers and teachers are not aware of dyspraxia or the other possible related issues, and not sure about what helps and what doesn’t.

As dyspraxia is a disorder of motor planning (planning and carrying out actions), it has serious repercussions for actions that the face and mouth need to do.  Some children have difficulty eating and swallowing, and then learning to talk.  Other children just have difficulty making speech sounds and joining them together. Babies with possible dyspraxia will usually have difficulty initially latching on for breastfeeding.  Some may even have trouble adjusting to different bottle teats, or swallowing safely.

Early babbling sounds will also be limited, and many babies with dyspraxia are later described to be as “a quiet baby”.  Some babies drool constantly and parents find they are often changing bibs and changing damp clothes.

When the time comes to move onto solids, swallowing may still be an issue.  Most children with dyspraxia resist lumps and often refuse many types of solid foods.  They seem to be finicky or fussy eaters.  Sometimes they attempt to chew food and spit it out or simply resist eating.Their sounds at this stage are usually limited.  Instead of joining up all different consonant and vowels sounds in a variety of sequences, children with dyspraxia mainly use just a few consonant sounds (like m or d or b) joined up to a limited range of vowels (like u or ah).

When they start to talk they are usually behind their peers with their speech development.  By one year old children with dyspraxia may have a few words, but they are not very clear, and quite often they use the same ‘word’ to represent a few different things (like ‘duh’).  Sometimes they even develop ‘their own little language’.  Mums and dads may be able to understand some of what is being said but other people probably won’t.

Children with dyspraxia (or apraxia) can become reluctant to talk, especially when they have a high level of awareness of their difficulties, which can often be the case with bright little toddlers.  They may have excellent comprehension skills.  Parents often tell me their child understands everything they hear, and they can follow instructions and be interested in the world.Often by this time toddlers are becoming increasingly frustrated with their inability to make themselves understood.  Behaviour can become quite difficult to manage.  Some children become very adept at using other strategies to make themselves understood, to get what they need or want or to refuse what they don’t want.

By the time children are about two years, the difference in their talking between themselves and their peers can be quite dramatic.  When they can say words they usually then have difficulty joining up syllables.  The next step would be to join words.  Very often, children can make a particular sound or say a particular word, but when they put it with another syllable they revert to making it inaccurately.  This is because they are trying to plan a larger segment of speech and finding it too difficult. Older children with dyspraxia or apraxia can still have difficulty with some food textures.  The most obvious differences between them and their peers are going to be in their speech, where they have difficulty with sentence structure and telling stories (oral narrative).  They may also not always be clear with their speech.  By this stage, if untreated, they may well have significant difficulties with auditory memory (remembering what they hear) so have more trouble following instructions, paying attention in class or learning to read and spell.

It is important to get help as early as possible.  Early treatment can minimise the other possible later difficulties as well as making children happier with good social skills.  However, at whatever point a parent realises that their child is having more difficulty than they should, with their talking, a Speech Pathologist can help to remedy the situation.  All children need to be able to communicate easily and efficiently.

Manage credit cards to build momentum

There are so many popular finance-related terms that have a “nature” tie-in, especially related to debt. There’s the debt snowball, the debt snowflake, and more recently, the increasingly popular debt tsunami.  I’d imagine it’s not going to be too long before we see a debt avalanche.  It’s fun and extremely motivating to model a part of your financial approach after a powerful, growing force.

The reason these methods are successful is that they all revolve around one thing: momentum.

Momentum: Impetus of a nonphysical process, such as an idea or a course of events (what’s an impetus? a stimulus or beginning)

When an object or an idea builds momentum, it becomes more difficult to stop. It picks up speed and moves more and more quickly. Snowballs, avalanches and rock and mud slides can all be talked about in terms of momentum. These natural forces grow extremely quickly, and are extremely powerful.

Why is Momentum So Important?

It’s important to recognize momentum as it comes into play with your finances. It can either be a positive or negative force.

Negative Financial Momentum:

• Interest Rates – continually dragging you backwards as they add to the amount you owe every month
• Debt – adding new debts also slows your momentum
• Disorganization – not knowing what you are spending on, which bills are due, and not having a financial plan at all
• Fees and Charges – Add up very fast every month if you forget to pay things on time!

Positive Financial Momentum:

• Good Financial Habits
• Compounding Interest (from savings and investments)
• Saving Consistently (automatically)
• Removing Debt and Increasing Savings
• Paying Bills on Time
• Paying off credit card balances each month

Use Momentum to Your Advantage

Momentum can be a powerful ally in your fight for financial freedom. Building good financial habits and continuing with them will strengthen your “debt-crushing, bill-eating, money-saving” financial energy and help you to do even more and more with your money.

By removing instances of negative momentum as much as possible from your finances, you can reduce the heavy weight of the debt you’re carrying.

If you increase the opportunities for positive momentum to find a place in your financial life, you’ll be much more successful and reach your debt-free goals quicker.

Getting into good habits financially will improve your credit and allow you to have the freedom of the option of getting a big loan such as a mortgage in the future as a way to invest your money and grow your personal wealth. You may be surprised after getting a free credit report to see how poor planning and disorganization in the past affects your credit score today.

Momentum is important because with every payment you make and every loan you pay off, you’re strengthening not only your financial situation but you’re also increasing your ability and your resolve to keep moving towards a debt-free financially independent lifestyle.

Frugal living has touched my life…..in so many ways. When I was a single mom, I had no tools or previous knowledge of these things. I thought everything had to be bought retail. I had no idea how to cook. It wasn’t until years later that I learned these things, after I remarried. I could have stretched my dollars so much further.

I wasn’t raise to be frugal, ….My parents never taught us anything about money. Meals consisted of hot dogs, fish sticks and beef soup from a freeze dried mix. I’ll tell you that my kids shop second hand and use coupons.

The joy of frugality

My new husband hasn’t been frugal at all. We’ve spent 11 years fighting over money. He would spend and spend and go into debt. I tried to get him to use coupons and shop at thrift stores but he said why, we can afford it. Well, his job of 16 years closed this last December. The new job is at half the pay. Getting out of debt and staying out is now his new goal. Yay! We use coupons (got a great deal with a straight talk promo code recently), shop second hand when we can, eat out once a month, watch movies from the library and have more fun being together as a family.

I also shop for holidays months in advance. I buy gifts at half price or lower. The recipient doesn’t care how much I spent, just that they receive something that they wanted or needed! A “gift box” is something all frugal minded people need. I try to keep it stocked for any occasion and never have to run out and get that last minute gift. It’s also great at Christmas, at work when you receive a gift from someone you weren’t expecting to, you always have a small gift in your bag! he he

I subscribe to all the big coupon sites and visit them regularly too. These days (especially when you shop online like I do) you can find promotional codes and coupon deals for practically anything that you buy. Even if you are buying a new phone or changing to a new cell plan you can use a verizon promo code to spend a lot less money.

Frugal isn’t a dirty word! Embrace it, change your lifestyle accordingly and enjoy your financial freedom.

A serious multi-screen setup

As a professional day trader or internet poker player, your entire business depends on the computer.  You need a blazing fast connection, good hardware and most importantly a spectacular monitor.  Your pc monitor acts as the eyes of your computer, allowing you as a human to see all of the information it would typically display in code and numbers.  That’s not so helpful to us, so thankfully pc monitor companies have taken it upon themselves to develop these wonderful interfaces for us to connect with.

In the high-speed professions that I mentioned above a large and powerful monitor is the best choice.  Often times it’s not about the actual size of the screen in inches, but the resolution of a monitor.  You can have a 17 inch monitor that displays more information than a 30 inch monitor as long as it can support a higher resolution.  Of course, it’s going to be the best play to get a monitor that is both large in inches and in resolution if you have a highly visual computer job, or simply need a lot of information on your screen at once.

The productivity loss of switching, minimizing and maximizing different windows all of the time has been reported to eclipse 25% – a staggering amount of work that could be done.  Imagine if you were 25% more productive right now – you would literally be getting one extra thing done for every four that you completed.  Expanded over the course of a month or year, you’re looking at a lot of extra work.
This is the argument that I like to give to people who say that big, high resolution monitors are simply too expensive for them to buy.  If they can get a lot more work done and make more money as a result, the monitor will pay itself off in no time at all – sometimes as short as a week!  I know a professional poker player who was able to play four more tables at once when he switched from a 20 inch to a 30 inch monitor.  At his hourly rate of $20 per table, he was making 80 extra dollars an hour.  It only took him a couple days of playing to pay off his new purchase.

While not every case is this extreme, there is no doubt that pc monitors are a necessary consideration if you have any type of job that has you spending even a quarter of your working time on a computer.  The difference in productivity and overall enjoyment in the workplace is too astounding to ignore.  If you haven’t already, take a look at the market for pc monitors lately and make a decision on whether upgrading is a good choice for you.  If you have to, ask (or beg) your boss to make the switch for you – use the productivity argument – it works like a charm!  I personally know a couple people who have used that argument and then followed through with real results, and their boss went from micromanaging them to becoming their best friend.  I’m not saying it was all due to the monitor, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

Platinum Rings

Because I was quite young when we took that summer vacation together, I really don’t remember much.  What I do remember has been aided by pictures and the recounting of tales by my other family members.  I know we went to a luau and I learned how to dance the hula on stage in front of the entire audience, and I also remember the warm water that crashed against the shore every morning.  My brother and I used to run down to the water’s edge right at dawn, when it was still quiet and the rest of the city hadn’t woken up yet.  We would surf and play in the warm ocean until the sun came up, and then run back home, famished, where breakfast would be waiting.
One of the memories that sticks out most in my mind, though, is the night we went out as a family to celebrate my parents’ wedding anniversary.  They had already been together for a long time when I was that age, and we went out to dinner at what I thought was a very fancy restaurant, because it was so dimly lit.  You could barely even see your plate of food in front of you!
Oddly enough, on the night of their anniversary, my mom lost her wedding ring.  Somehow it slipped right off of her finger, and who knows where it went– we never did find it.  However my mom was not that devastated from losing her wedding ring because it meant she could get a newer, bigger, and better replacement.  She decided to go with stunning platinum rings to adorn her left ring finger, and she couldn’t have been more elated.  She told me she had always wanted a platinum wedding ring, but that they weren’t really available when she and my father had gotten married.  I guess they just hadn’t come into style yet.

Nice example of a tungsten wedding band

Even though my mother was happy to get a replacement ring, she did feel bad that she lost the original ring from her wedding.  To make my dad feel better about it, she decided to pay for him to get an upgrade too.  He picked something out from a collection of tungsten wedding bands.  Tungsten is a metal that is not only beautiful but totally durable, too.  In fact, tungsten is regarded as a heftier ring; the ideal metal for men because it has so much weight.  Between the quality of metals and the beauty of the rings, it goes without saying that neither one of my parents’ rings has fallen off in the many years since our Hawaiian vacation.

This year, however, I know the perfect gift not only for others to get me, but for me to get for other people.  Let me explain: I am usually not such a heavy coffee drinker, but in the thick of the winter I find myself drinking several cups a day.  I love the taste of coffee, of course, but lately I have been needing it to soothe my bones and warm me up.  It doesn’t matter what time of day or night it is (I mean there is always decaf!), coffee is the perfect thing to drink to help brave the coldest of the winter months. And in the summer, iced coffee is a delicious treat while relaxing in the sun, poolside.

That’s why this year I am asking for someone to buy me the latest and greatest in coffee makers: the Keurig coffee maker, with an assortment of cheap K cups to go along with it.  The Keurig is the perfect gift because it is affordable yet totally useful.  The lucky people to receive this present will literally use it every day– if not multiple times a day, depending on their addiction to caffeine!

 
You might be wondering why the Keurig is so great.  The easiest way to explain the magic that is a Keurig coffee maker is the fact that each cup of coffee is individualized for the person who makes it.  That means if you want an extra bold cup, your husband wants medium roast, and your kids want decaf, you can do it without having to wait twenty minutes– or throw the extra coffee down the drain because you accidentally made to much.  All you have to do is choose which of the many cheap K cups available you want to drink that day, pour in 8 ounces of water, and press the button.  Twenty to sixty seconds later you’ll have exactly one cup of exquisite hot coffee, just to your liking.  Then your husband and children can brew their own, right after you.

I can’t imagine spending one more year without having this magical coffee maker sitting on the counter in my kitchen, and I don’t want to have to.  I must own a Keurig! So if any of my friends or family members are reading this, please get me one for my upcoming celebrations– and then come over for a cup of coffee so I can show you what all the fuss is about.

How does yours rate?

The magazine offers other helpful tips such as running the dishwasher only when it is full, turning off the machine’s drying cycle and air-drying the dishes, not pre-rinsing by hand (simply scraping food off is enough), run the washer on its shortest cycle (this is usually sufficient), running the washer during non-peak energy times (late evening or before 7a.m.–we usually do it before bed), and use natural detergents such as Seventh Generation’s Free & Clear Automatic Dishwasher Detergent or liquid.

Are there still some naysayers out there? I bet there are. What about the material and energy needed to manufacture and run the dishwasher, doesn’t that use a lot of resources? Washing dishes by hand only requires some water, soap, a cloth, and human energy–that sounds much better for the environment. At first it does, and I thought about this. However, I then thought about the 37% less water usage. If you think about adding this 37% up every time you do the dishes for the lifetime of your washer, that is a significant amount of water. The chemicals needed to purify the water for household use and the fossil fuels needed to heat that water would probably quickly exceed the energy/raw material use of the dishwasher itself. According to a University of Bonn (Germany) study, dishwasher use only half the energy and one-sixth of the water used by hand-washers. Even the most frugal hand-washer cannot compete with dishwashers–sorry. Then if you use something like solar power to power that dish washer you are miles ahead! Learn how to make solar panels if you are on a budget or handy with tools.

I’m fairly convinced with the evidence I’ve collected while reading about this topic, but what if you don’t have a dishwasher nor the money to buy one? Well, the most efficient way to hand-wash your dishes is with a double-sink. Half-fill one sink with soapy water and the other sink with hot, clear water (use a dish pan if you don’t have a double-sink). Soak and scrub the dirty dishes in the soapy water, rinse them in the clean water, and then set them out to dry. Letting your dishes air-dry is actually more hygienic than using a towel and reduces laundry. It is also wise to use non-toxic dish soaps that don’t add harsh chemicals to the water system. Seventh Generation offers great soaps of this kind and can be found at many household retailers.

So, if you’ve been using your dishwasher to store your plastic bags or Tupperware containers, clean it out and put it to good use–you’ll be doing the environment a favour. Have a great, green weekend!

Researching pregnancy week by week is the best option for you.  If you look at everything at once you will get overwhelmed in a matter of minutes and probably break down into tears.  Did I mention that your hormones will be out of whack for the next nine months?  Enjoy it though, as you now have a license to do some very strange stuff and eat some weird combinations of food with no judgment from anyone else around you.  Your husband must simply sit there and understand, because he truly has no clue what you are going through on a personal level.
The second trimester is the period of pregnancy that I see the most questions about, as well as the most excitement.  Women want to know what happens during this time and how they can “get there faster.” It’s important to realize that pregnancy is not a sprint.  It’s a marathon that requires a lot of patience and tolerance, as well as a strong dedication towards doing only things that will help your baby be born healthy.

During the second trimester you are likely to experience a lot more energy than you had during the first trimester.  This is partly due to the fact that you’re not running into that dreaded problem of throwing up every morning at even the slightest smell of anything around you.  This was by far the worst part of pregnancy for me.  I couldn’t wait until it ended, but it was about three months of morning sickness before it actually did.  The second trimester is like the calm after the storm.  You’ll find yourself with a lot more energy throughout the day simply because you are not throwing up in the morning.  It’s shocking how much that simple act will sap you of your life force right off the bat and taint your day with a low-energy vibe that carries throughout the months.

 
This is why the second trimester is my favorite period of pregnancy.  It’s not early enough to not see any progress, and it’s not late enough that you begin to worry about delivering your baby.  All you have to do is treat yourself well, keep a positive outlook and enjoy the days as they pass you by.