Conoscete il coordinatore regionale della Lega antitumori, Nenè Mangiacavallo; il dirigente provinciale Francesco Verderame ed i consiglieri provinciali della stessa Lega, Nino Li Voti e Carmela Saladino?

Sanità riberese. Cosa ne pensate dell’ospedale di Ribera? Premesso che vorrei allegarvi presto qualche foto, vi chiederei anche cosa ne pensate della posizione dell’Udc su questo presidio sanitario.

Benessere e radio. Ed a proposito di salute, una puntata di La medicina di Radio1 Rai sulla pillola Ru486 e l’Aifa, l’Agenzia italiana per il farmaco (audio).

Ribera ed il turismo. I prezzi del bed and breakfast e casa vacanze Oasi del borgo resort variano da cinquanta a trecentosessanta euro.

24.11.09 - La vista e Canicattì. Ottimo. Controllo della vista vicino alla chiesa di San Diego di Canicattì oggi pomeriggio, martedì ventiquattro novembre, fino alle sette. Quest’iniziativa è organizzata dall’Unione italiana ciechi e ipovedenti. Una domanda, quindi. Avete partecipato al convegno di Agrigento e Favara sulle cellule staminali? Forse vorrei scrivervene prossimamente.

14.11.09 Siete stati in piazza Stazione, ad Agrigento, per «Take care» e la prevenzione del diabete? A me sembra un’iniziativa interessante, questa di oggi sabato quattordici novembre, con il test della cosiddetta emoglobina glicosilata (valori medi di glicemia?) e la lotta al cosiddetto diabete di tipo 2.

- La Giornata mondiale del diabete ed il Cai di Cefalù (le foto). Che panorama! Altrimenti scritto, un’altra foto o… un panorama di Cefalù? Prontissimi a votare uqesta località turistica più sotto?

23.10.09 - Hpv, la «preeclampsia» e Favara. Cosa sono l’infezione da Hpv e la preeclampsia? Sicuramente hanno a che fare con la medicina e se ne discuterà venerdì ventitre ottobre dopo le quattro e mezza del pomeriggio al Castello Chiaramonte di Favara. E conoscete l’associazione «Dike» di un certo Dino Virgone?

21.06.08 – Geriatria, osteoporosi, cardiologia ed epatologia a Licata. «Giornate agrigentine di medicina interna» dal 26 al 28 giugno al Teatro comunale Re di Licata. Nelle giornate si discuterà su temi riguardanti la geriatria, l’osteoporosi, la cardiologia e le cure relative al fegato. Partiamo dal primo tema. So cos’è la geriatria, la disciplina che si occupa degli anziani, ma la seconda… Dovrebbe forse riguardare le ossa, ma non sono sicuro. Nulla da dire sulla notissima cardiologia e sul fegato, organo del corpo umano… Ma torniamo alla manifestazione.

Fra gli eventi iniziali una relazione giovedì alle 17 del professor Serafino Mansueto, presidente dell’Accademia di studi mediterranei e professore ordinario di Medicina interna all’Università di Palermo, e gli interventi di moderatori e relatori di Roma, Napoli, Palermo, Caltanissetta, Agrigento e Licata. Presidenti del convegno sono i docenti Giuseppe Rotolo e Mario Barbagallo, titolari delle cattedre di «Medicina interna» e «Geriatria» all’ateneo di Palermo. Conoscete questi due insegnanti?

Oncologia. Parlo ora di un tema difficile, quello dei tumori infantili. Forse è davvero difficile parlare della cosiddetta leucemia linfoblastica acuta, di tumori cerebrali e leucemie linfatiche. Oppure di tumori del sistema nervoso centrale, dei linfomi e del cosiddetto retinoblastoma. Ma forse sarebbe necessario sottolineare l’aspetto della speranza per queste neoplasie e malattie, così come anche per i cosiddetti tumori di Wilms, i sarcomi dei tessuti molli, le leucemie linfatiche acute, gli osteosarcomi, i linfomi di Hodgkin ed itumori ossei.

Del resto, pensate al professor Umberto Veronesi o alla divisione di ematologia-oncologia pediatrica del Policlinico di Catania, che potrebbe essere ancora diretta dal professore Gino Schilirò. O  anche – passando a  Palermo – all’Oncoematologia pediatrica del Di Cristina, l’ospedale dei bambini del Civico, forse diretta dal dottore Maurizio Aricò.

Si tratta di vivere con questi casi, come sapranno bene Giuseppe Lentini (dovrebbe essere presidente dell’Aslti, Associazione siciliana per la lotta contro le leucemie e i tumori dell’infanzia), il dottor Aricò (possibilmente presidente nazionale dell’Aieop, Associazione italiana di ematologia e oncologia pediatrica) edil dottore Daniele Finocchiaro (forse un palermitano), vicepresidente Affari istituzionali e comunicazione di una società. Per dati sappiate, comunque, che potete fare riferimento all’Osservatorio epidemiologico della Regione siciliana.

- Medicina 33 di Raidue, il vaccino contro l’influenza A per le donne in gravidanza, ma anche la tubercolosi ed il sale (video)

- Luoghi turistici in Sicilia, Eraclea Minoa e la Valle (Vota)

- Località turistiche straniere (Vota)

- Quale di questi monumenti italiani vi piace di più? (Vota)

- La musica. Quale il vostro brano preferito? (Vota)

Un browser europeo – Opera – e Mozilla o i sistemi operativi di Linux ed Apple. Neomedia.it

- Crema al cacao con nocciole ed anacardi, cioccolato fondente con nocciole o gianduia con nocciole intere oppure al latte con nocciole e nocciole intere

Spreadthesign, dizionario e linguaggio dei segni. Commissione europea – Istruzione e formazione

- Help Eu, la sigaretta, il fumo ed il tabacco. Il fumo passivo

21 giugno ‘08 - aggiornato 19 dicembre ‘09

calogeromira.wordpress.com – e-mail

Risparmio energetico (forse)?

Tomorrow we will have a student session of TiL featuring our own Brad Hoot (UIC Ph.D. student) and visiting student Álvaro Recio (University of Salamanca Ph.D. student).  Brad Hoot will present “An Optimality Theoretic Analysis of Focus in Spanish and English”.  His presentation will be conducted in English.  Álvaro Recio will present “Las propiedades argumentales de los complementos del nombre en español” (see abstract below), and his presentation will be given in Spanish.

As always the talk will be at 3 in 1750 University Hall with light refreshments provided.

Álvaro Recio (University of Salamanca)                    UIC TiL Fall 2009

Abstract
Las propiedades argumentales de los complementos del nombre en español

 Son muchos los autores que en las últimas décadas han puesto de relieve el paralelismo existente entre la estructura interna del sintagma nominal y del sintagma verbal. No todos los modificadores realizan la misma aportación al significado de un sintagma, ni tienen idénticas propiedades formales ni gozan del mismo estatuto sintáctico. De la misma manera que el verbo posee una red argumental que le permite seleccionar determinado tipo de complementos, ciertos sustantivos, bien por herencia deverbal, bien por su propia semántica interna, seleccionan igualmente complementos argumentales. En consecuencia, en el interior de los grupos nominales, de forma paralela a las oraciones, también es preciso distinguir entre argumentos y adjuntos. Si bien en otras lenguas, fundamentalmente inglés, italiano y francés, se han dedicado  numerosos estudios al respecto, en el ámbito hispánico apenas se han esbozado unas pautas generales de clasificación de estos complementos, por lo que se revela necesario un análisis exhaustivo y profundo aplicado al español.

 El objetivo de esta charla es presentar las características generales de un proyecto que trata de ahondar en la estructura interna del sintagma nominal en castellano, en los llamados complementos argumentales del sustantivo. Para ello, se expondrán los rasgos fundamentales que permiten determinar qué clases de sustantivos pueden seleccionar argumentos en español, cuál es la estructura de estos y qué tipo de vínculo los enlaza con el núcleo nominal, pues parece que no todos los argumentos tienen el mismo peso dentro del sintagma: el de mayor relieve temático podría ser considerado el “sujeto” del sintagma nominal.

 Especial atención se dedicará a las subordinadas sustantivas que se vinculan a un nombre a través de una preposición (por ejemplo, la idea de comprar un coche o el problema de que los alumnos no estudien), ya que muchos aspectos de su funcionamiento están todavía desatendidos. Una rigurosa descripción de los modificadores del sustantivo no puede ignorar este tipo de construcciones y requiere analizar las características de los núcleos que las aceptan, el carácter argumental o no de la oración, así como la elección del modo correspondiente en el verbo subordinado.

This past monday SJSU Crusade teamed up with other UIC ministries to participate in 48 hours of prayer and worship. The 48 hours began monday morning at 9:00 a.m. and continued through the night, Tuesday and all into early Wednesday morning. The long hours of prayer and worship have become a semesterly event and have grown from a mere 24 hours to what started this past week as 48 hours, and what quickly grew into 75 hours. This semester has been the most unique and perhaps the most noticeable of the prayer events in the past. Starting with a large yellow sign hanging from the roof of the SJSU Memorial Chapel, the event welcomed students and casual stollers to come inside, worship, prayer and ask questions. Under the sign the double doors of the chapel remained open even into the cold nights continuing to welcome in guests and onlookers to come inside. Inside one of the large tables in the back was covered poster paper with the simple instructions: “Write a prayer or write a prayer for someone else” – this sheet was quickly filled and by the end of Monday it was time for  a new one. Prayers written said anything from “pray for my hard heart and unbelief” to “pray for the campus and christian ministries” to “pray for my test”. Across from this table a large white sheet hung on the wall for artist to write poems and draw images of prayers and worship and reflections of thoughts. In the way back of the chapel instruments lay scattered  among the mics and the chairs upon the stage – with normally at least one person praying and one person playing and both singing when songs of worship wrung out. In between in the pews, pillows and blankets lay organized (signs of people spending the night) and anywhere from 5 to 10 people at any given time sat praying, singing.

The original plan was to by the chapel for 48 hours, but after the huge response to the prayer sheet, the campus (with several people stopping in to see what was happening) and the huge momentum of the prayer and worship of everyone involved it became obvious by Tuesday night that we needed to go longer. Taking a quick break throughout Wednesday, SJSU Crusade and the rest UIC were back in the chapel thursday morning to finish out the week with another 27 hours.

It has been an amazing week of prayer and worship and of breaking through spiritually in our lives and hopefully on the campus and in the lives of students on campus.

Hey guys! I’m blogging again tonight because I didn’t get a chance to last night. Tomorrow is “Clean the House” day…and after a night like tonight, you can understand why. This is when all the girls in the house sit down and talk chores. Yes..CHORES! What? Just because we don’t live under the roof of our parents anymore, you think we can live as freely as possible? Yeah right.

Our house houses 16 girls. I mean, this place can get pretty messy! Tomorrow (and every other Friday) we gather in our living room and discuss the hygene of the house. Okay, so everyone doesn’t get the wrong impression- we are not pigs. Lol! But we like to keep a clean house! So I have the kitchen this week. It’s the messiest part of the house! Some of the girls get creative (I’m talking Pippy Long Stocking creative..with scrubbers as slippers!) We have to clean the egg off of the window from the frat boys awesome Halloween prank (from the previous post). We usually get one of the boyfriend’s to do this job. Girls are assigned to the stairways, common area, dining room, bathrooms, and kitchens. Basically it’s a long day of girls getting woosy off of bleech fumes and headaches from loud music blasting through the rooms. I’d say a typical day in our house is walking past every room hearing a different song playing off of each girl’s lap top. It’s awesome…kind of.

Anyway, now you know how we clean our 3 floor house in less than 2 hours! Can’t wait to start scrubbing tomorrow!

Hello all!! I’m seriously LOVING this blog thingymajigger! I figured I’d share a more happier story this time! This time it involves my three favorite things: Halloween, my birthday, and my roommates!

Today we had a pumpkin carving event in our living room! There was about 40

girls (our whole sorority) anxiously awaiting the chance to carve pumpkins lol. We had a little contest to go with it- whoever carves the best pumpkin wins a gift card to Starbucks! Anywho, has anyone carved pumpkins before? Well if you have, you know how SMELLY of an activity it is. So imagine 40 pumpkins being carved in our living r

oom! I can smell it still. :-/

My birthday is actually at midnight so while we were carving pumpkins (I was REALLY into it) the lights turned off and everyone started singing “Happy Birthday” to me! Of course I turned BRIGHT RED and as I looked up, the girls were carrying a birthday cake with candles! They had been baking it downstairs on the first floor the whole time we were carving pumpkins. Wasn’t baked all too well, but ya gotta give them credit! Definitely made my day! This just shows that s

Sororities aren’t all caddy like many people think they are. The girls I live with have a strong bond with each other. So the story is getting kinda mushy, I know, and what do ya know, there’s a twist. As soon as everyone finishes singing, we hear loud noises on our windows.Guess what comes with Halloween when you are a sorority house? Fraternity boys and eggs. Yes, the frat boys egged our house as a yearly ritual for Halloween. Thanks guys. I guess boys will be boys. Now we have egg all over our windows AS WELL AS the stench of pumpkin all through out our house. I know we are a sorority, but let me tell you something…our house definitely doesn’t look or smell like a sorority house right about now lol. I’ve posted some pics

so you guys can check out the pumpkin carving! I’m pretty proud of mine. Enjoy!

Some of the girls carving.

Yay for my pumpkin!

 

If you were at the West Loop gallery openings on Sept. 11, you may have noticed a girl walking around with a dead cat on her head. As it turns out, the girl is an artist, an MFA student at UIC, and her name is Rebecca Beachy. The cat hat is one of her new pieces. I paid her a studio visit last week, and we talked about her work.

Did you know that if you google “West Loop gallery openings,” one of the first things that comes up is Alicia Eler’s post on Chicago Now about you and your taxidermied cat hat?

Yeah, I saw that but I didn’t know that it comes up when you google the art openings.

Yep. You were at number three the first time I checked it but today you’ve moved up to the top. And your hat was also mentioned in an article on Art Talk Chicago about the openings. So I think it was a hit. How did you come up with the idea to make the hat?

Most of my art was already concerned with material and I started thinking about the mythology of cats. I have been thinking about puns. You know, the cat in the hat. The cheshire cat. And then the LOLcat website which is such an obsession of people in our generation. So I thought it would be interesting to re-purpose the cat body to make connections between the body and the image and the mythology of the cat. The cat hat was my first project along those lines.

How do you go about making a hat out of a cat?

It was a gift from a UIC professor, Dan Peterman, who is an artist and ecological activist. He found it in his back alley over the winter. It was a frozen kitten. He says he knows the lineage of the feral cats that it comes from. So I took it and I did research on the internet and figured out how to skin it and tan it and form the hat. I had to change the form a little so that it would fit on the head. Part of what I like about the design is that it looks like the cat is sitting on the head. The back is what’s unnerving about it because you see the tail and the legs. And that was going on right around the time that I got another cat from Carolina Biological Supply, which I’ve put human baby teeth on and turned into a puppet. That was a completely different way of the working with the body because it was preserved. So there’s that dichotomy going on. The found cat that dies in the winter in the alley and the cat that you’re not exactly sure where it came from. But they use them in science classes all over the US.

Is it expensive to buy a cat?

It was $40.

How did you become interested in taxidermy?

I have been doing work with nests and insects for a long time- natural, found materials. I was a little intimidated to work with a corpse, something larger. Although I don’t think there’s a very big difference. It’s just that, psychologically we have a different response to a dead mammal vs. a dead wasp. I don’t eat animals. I’m a vegetarian. I’m interested in the disconnect between the meat that we eat, the leather that we wear… all these ways that animal bodies are used. We’re not connected to the process at all. My impetus for doing this project was to try to master that, the connection with the animal before it’s shrink wrapped in the grocery store, before you buy your leather belt or your leather shoes at the mall.

Are you going to make more wearable art, in addition to the kitten hat, moving into the fashion realm?

I was thinking of pushing it a little further. I like the idea of absurdist fashion. Not commercialized, just deliberately over-the-top, funny fashion. I was thinking of making some squirrel slippers. There are so many ways that you can dress yourself up like an animal. What if you use the animal skin instead of the fur? I am thinking about the big, puffy Hello Kitty hats. What is it that you are identifying with about the animal? What if it was a real one, instead of a replica? It would be viewed differently, wouldn’t it?

A marionette made by Rebecca Beachy

(This interview was originally posted on 9/30/09 on Gapers Block.)

Tomorrow, October 30th, we’re having another UIC Talk in Linguistics.  This week we have the privilege of presenting another of UIC’s own linguistics, Xuehua Xiang.  The talk, entitled “Linguistic Representation of ‘Self’ and Narrative Co-Construction: A Comparative Discourse Analysis of Celebrity Interviews in American English and Mandarin Chinese” will take place in 1750 University Hall from 3 to 5, with light refreshments provided.

Abstract:

Drawing on 600-minutes of TV/radio interviews featuring celebrity guests, broadcast in Mandarin Chinese in China and American English in the U.S., respectively, this paper is a comparative discourse analysis of the interview as a form of narrative co-construction, as situated within the two cultures.

A preliminary analysis of six Mandarin interviews and six English interviews suggests that English speakers assume a parallel “you” vs.”I” dynamic in co-constructing the interviewee’s personal narrative; English interviewers tend to propel the narrative through mechanisms of A-Event and B-Event (Labov, 1972), i.e., the interviewer shares personal experience and/or reveals personal knowledge about the interviewee, which in effect elicits the interviewee’s autobiographical account. In contrast, the Mandarin interviews manifest a triangular structure whereby the interviewer assumes a mediating role between public consciousness and the
interviewee (cf. Xiang, 2003), i.e., the interviewer highlights the general public’s knowledge gaps, and frames the interviewee’s upcoming narration as being different from, and corrective of, public knowledge. Particularly, both the interviewer and interviewee in the Chinese data highlight the conflict between the interviewee as a social individual (e.g. wo ‘I’, ni ‘you’) and the interviewee as “private” self (e.g. wo/ni ziji “I myself” “you yourself”‘). This duality in the linguistic construction of “self” is not obvious in the English data.

Further, the English interviewers display empathy and uptake the interviewee’s narrative primarily through confirmation requests (e.g. “Really?”) and Response Cries (Goffman, 1978), which stay outside of the narrative and originate from the interviewer, an independent, active
listener. In contrast, a Mandarin interviewer often displays empathy by staying within the narrative, assuming an expressive narrative frame (Li and Zubin, 1995), particularly by resorting to utterances with a null subject or using the bare reflexive, ziji ‘self’, without an explicit
co-reference. In such cases, the distinction between the interviewer as elicitor and interviewee as story-teller blurs.

Alright people, so I’ve been thinking for a while that the house that I live in definitely deserves to be televised SOMEHOW. I mean, I live with 16 girls. Yes, 16 girls….in Chicago….in ONE building. It’s great at times, don’t get me wrong, but it’s my third year living here and I have enough stories to last me a lifetime!

First off, to clarify, it’s not like a brothel or anything, it’s the first sorority house in the city. We found the house 3 years ago and the landlord was a contractor who turned all 3 floors of the building one huge apartment. The house officially became a “sorority house” by our national headquarters this year! Yay for that! Okay okay I know you guys don’t care about how we got our house lol. Let’s get down to fun stuff- the stories.

So over the weekend I was coming home with my roommate, Roxanne. You guys probably know her from class. Tall, blond chick? (I’m also in her room writing this. Kind of funny!) So as we were getting out of my car, we saw some guy running through the park across the street from our house. He ran through the park and crossed the street to run towards our house (kind of behind our building). I looked over at Roxanne and said, “Doesn’t it look like that guy just mugged some one?” She rolled her eyes at me like it’s something I always say lol. Then all of a sudden we look in the park again and see a unmarked car driving through the grass and onto the sidewalk. You can only imagine what our faces looked like. THEN we see some guy running through the park after the car with a GUN! Yeah, a gun! It was a big one too. So we finally realized that it was a cop and the car was a cop car. We got out of my car just as about 5 squad cars pulled up. Then a bunch of cops got out of the cars and told us all to go inside because there was a GUNMAN on the loose. Yeah, imagine or faces at this point. So of course, we are laughing and running into our house telling everyone what is going on. More squad cars pull up and you just see the cops with guns searching down our street and in our backyard. So being the nosey girls we are, we go out to our back porch and watch the cops searching our alley. Apparently the gunman was hiding out in our alley!

It was really SCARY to know that there was a fugitive gunman in our backyard.  I feel like it would only happen to the house where 16 college girls lived. Good times. It was definitely an experience I’m glad I shared with 8 of my roommates at the time. Oh, and I have pictures (because I always take pictures!) Check them out! Toodles!

Cop cars to the left of the house!

Ayer tuvimos el cuarto evento de las jornadas de homenaje a Elulalio Ferrer, organizadas por la Revista Mexicana de Comunicación y el GUCOM. En esta ocasión en la Universidad Intercontinental con la presencia de Diana Cardona y de Fernando Mendoza como ponentes. El nivel académico del comentario estuvo de primera. Nace el compromiso de estudiar a fondo los textos dejados por Don Eulalio.

Les mando unas fografías tomadas al final del evento.
Saludos.

Jesús Galindo

Wilco wrapped up its North American tour this week, playing a pair of shows at UIC. I saw Monday night’s show, which went for more than two hours and dug deep into the catalog. The only albums not represented were either of the “Mermaid” releases.

The new songs worked in well with the older stuff. The guys opened (appropriately) with “Via Chicago” followed with new song “Bull Black Nova” and “A Shot In the Arm.”

“Yankee” and “Summerteeth” were well represented. Old songs like “Casino Queen” sounded a lot fuller with the current lineup. Great show overall. Since it wasn’t sold out, I was able to walk up close to the stage. And, yes, I was very excited.

Via Chicago – Wilco

Heavy Metal Drummer – Wilco

Boxful of Letters – Wilco

Bull Black Nova – Wilco

One Wing – Wilco

Photographed by paul goyette

one of the science and engineering buildings at UIC

all these shots are taken with a new tripod that came today… had to get out and shoot with it even though it was raining. i will revisit uic for more in coming weeks when the weather is a bit better.

– License

Tomorrow we’re having UIC’s own Susan Goldman at TiL.  Her talk, “Inquiry Using Multiple Sources of Information,” will take place at the usual time (3pm to 5pm) in the usual place (1750 University Hall–601 South Morgan Street, Chicago IL 60607).  Hope to see you there!

Inquiry Using Multiple Sources of Information
Susan R. Goldman
Departments of Psychology and Curriculum & Instruction (UIC)
Learning Sciences Research Institute

Contemporary society has been dubbed the “knowledge society” largely due to the increased availability and accessibility of information in both professional and personal life contexts. This situation exacerbates the need to understand how people use information from multiple sources to accomplish their goals. Many of those goals involve solving some problem, answering some question, or conducting some type of inquiry. The analysis and synthesis of information from multiple sources is a complex comprehension skill often requires bringing a critical lens to the
sense-making process. The presentation will focus on efforts to unpack the construct “multiple source comprehension” and construct a process model of it as well as empirical investigations of the efforts of young adolescents to use multiple text sources of information to address an inquiry question in the history domain. These efforts involve specifying the content structure of the sources, the relevance of information to the argument structure of the inquiry question.

We are also pleased to announce the 2010 date for The City Treasurer’s Small Business Expo at the U.I.C Forum. Please mark Friday, July 16th from 8:30-3:30. Reservations for exhibitors (sold out in 2009) are now being taken. Discounts for early registration before 11/1/09. www.chicagocitytreasurer.com

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July 02, 2008 (312) 744-8122

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Our clinic is pleased to welcome the newest member of our team…Ryann Loudon-Brown.  Ryann is a graduate of the Occupational Therapy Program at UIC and is a familiar face at Cawn/Krantz – Ryann completed her clinicals here a few months ago.

Let me take the next couple posts to update you on the happening that have occurred in the past month a the SJSU Campus Crusade for Christ. In the past couple weeks several great events have taken placed: one being the UIC Retreat – which what this post will pertain to.

On the weekend of the September 11th. The members of Campus Crusade had a wonderful opportunity to step away from the crazy and hectic life of San Jose and of being a college student and step into nature and enjoy the freedom of fellowship, encouragement and God’s creation. This was the 2nd annual UIC Retreat. ‘UIC’ stands for “Unity In Christ” and is the overarching ministry that was created with the purpose of providing a network between the SJSU Christian ministries and provide vision as a whole body in Christ, rather than simply individual group purposes. Anyways back the retreat: on Septmeber 11th students, more Crusade as well as other campus ministries – like the Source and Pulse – packed and loaded their camping gear and traveled out to Brentwood – looking forward to a weekend sleeping in tents, on a member of Crusade, Tre, parent’s 10 acer property.

By Friday night 80 students had arrived and were mingling and getting to enjoy the break from electronics, the city noise, and homework. The friday night activities involved an introductory fellowship meeting to welcome everyone to the retreat, worship, games and figuring out where everyone would sleep. Due to the extremely warm whether most of everyone slept out under the stars and under the small bits of rain and lightning that occurred that night – creating (especially for me) a very exciting and majestic night. To go along with the majestical weather, the Retreat was kicked off with one of Crusade’s newest members, Santosh accepting Christ – this called for a huge celebration and added to the nights excitement!

Saturday morning everyone awake to a warm, fresh, sunny day and with breakfast a short personal devotional time a chance to enjoy some the richness that being in nature and being in God’s presence can provide. The morning fellowship meaning was an exciting an encouraging one, as Paul Nunez, a Campus Crusade Staff Member, spoke on the importance of have a servant heart and what it meant to want to achieve greatness. Paul shared on the story of David and Jonathan and shed new light on the story, saying that while David was God’s appointed king to follow Saul and while David was a great man – Jonathan could be seen as an even greater man, for he (being King Saul’s son) denied his right to the throne in order to uplift and support David. This Paul said was what true greatness looked like: denying one’s own desire to support and uplift someone else’s – to have a servant heart that is able and willing to give to someone else’s purposes.

After breaking for a time to discuss this idea of a having a self-denying heart in smaller groups, the group gathered back together for lunch and noon time activities. On the list of games to play was a competition between the different classes (freshmen + super seniors, versus sophomores, versus  juniors, versus the seniors). The different classes battled over class chants/fight songs, a short performance, run-a-telephone, Caterpillar-Tag, and Ka-Jabie-Can-Can. In the end it was the sophomores who came out victorious winning the class chant and short performance, run-a-telephone competitions and coming in a close second in the other events.

Saturday night began to wind down (kind of) with another powerful fellowship meeting. I was given a chance to share a little about my mission trip to New York City past summer, and explained how by working with other Christian artist and putting together a combined-effort art gallery, I learned the essence of dieing to my personal desires and wants and instead seeking what is best for the group as a whole. Jesse Huro, from the Pulse Ministry, spoke on what Unity in Christ looked like. Using a story out of the Old Testament, Jesse explained that in order to be unified as a body of Christ. After a long and powerful message, and the group was deeply moved and after scrambling to get close to the fire (it was beginning to get chilly) a mass group prayed for our UIC ministry and for the campus as a whole.

On the final morning, the group gathered for one final fellowship meeting and one more talk. Ryan Geery, an art student involved with Crusade, spoke about our  find ing our identity and our talents in Christ. Geery furthered the idea of Unity by reminding the group that as Christians we are identified as being one body in Christ, but that with in that body we are given unique talents to serve God and the ultimate purpose of the body of Christ – to bring glory to God. This is a great and powerful way to end a very exciting and spiritually moving and challenging weekend.

As noon rolled around – students tore down the tents, pack their bags, pack the cars and headed back to San Jose.

It started with one little red bump. Then another. And more across Jeff Gammage’s back.

The growing number of painful pustules was keeping Gammage awake at night, and causing him to walk like an old man. At first, he and his wife thought they were bug bites.

“Eventually it became clear to me how painful this was,” says his wife Megan Cottrell.

Then she realized, “That’s not a bug bite; there’s something wrong. And I remembered hearing about MRSA and staph infections, especially when I worked at a public radio station in Michigan.”

So she took to the Internet to see what these painful bumps were. Her fears were realized when she checked the Mayo Clinic’s Web site, and saw the bumps on her husband’s back mirrored the symptoms of MRSA, the dangerous strain of staph infection.

“I think if I hadn’t looked it up and realized how dangerous it could be, it could have been a lot worse by the time he got to the doctor,” Cottrell says.

Cottrell and Gammage were lucky. They were able to use the vast resources available on the Internet to get Gammage the treatment he needed for MRSA. But a large number of Chicagoans doesn’t have access to the Web, according to a recent report on Internet usage commissioned by the city.

And the lack of information flowing from the Web means neighborhoods that are already at a disadvantage are falling further behind.

“We need to make it available if we’re going to start addressing the health disparities in our community,” says Cynthia Williams, program director of family education at Sinai Community Institute.

A report recently released by the city shows how large numbers of Chicagoans have limited or no Internet access. In South Lawndale, which sits just south of Sinai, only 25 percent of residents have Internet access, according the report, “Digital Excellence in Chicago: A Citywide View of Technology Use,” by University of Illinois at Chicago research Karen Mossberger.

The study showed that women, parents and younger, more affluent people were most likely to use the Web to find health information. Those who live in predominately black or Hispanic neighborhoods are least likely to seek health information online.

And it’s in communities like South Lawndale and others identified in Mossberger’s report that ailments like diabetes, heart disease and asthma are disproportionately present.

Doctors point to the absence of preventative medicine in Chicago’s poorer neighborhoods as contributing to the elevated levels of such illnesses, and Williams says Internet access could go a long way in helping people stave off disease.

“We know that prevention is a cost saver,” says Williams. “Here you have a community that has low resources, yet you can be doing something that saves money and has more prevention, and bring it into the home.”

While no studies exist linking the overall health of Chicago neighborhoods to the presence or lack of Internet connections, it doesn’t take much stretch of the imagination to see how South and West Side neighborhoods might struggle to identify and combat asthma, for instance.

A parent who sees their child struggling to breathe for periods of time could type the child’s symptoms into a search engine and determine what the problem might be, whether the bleach used to clean a dusty home contributed and that a local doctor who could treat the ailment is nearby.

Or, as is the case today, a parent could wait to be contacted by Sinai Urban Health Institute’s asthma task force.

“Suppose you had that type of screening online,” Williams says. “Even if you haven’t been diagnosed with asthma, you could go thru the screening tools and do it yourself.”

“Most people do tend to turn to the Internet to get at least some initial information for symptoms,” says Kara Kennedy, executive director of Lumity, an organization that works with non-profit groups to provide technological and financial support. “Information is just such a critical component.”

The city held a summer-long course to promote Internet use, but at least one agency is taking it one step further.

A mouse in every house: That’s the slogan Andy Vass’ 10-year-old non-profit, Technology for Humanity, uses. It refurbishes donated computer equipment and doles them out to community members. His efforts to bridge the digital divide, he says, is part of an effort to change the way society works.

“To me, it’s one of the most important issues of our time,” Vass says, adding that the United States has fallen behind many countries in world education rankings.

“The challenges are magnified by the digital divide because there is a lack of access to knowledge, to jobs, to coupons and those things,” he says.

Those barriers in turn affect even more than health, says Kennedy, whose organization runs a number of educational centers that teach people the ins and outs of the Internet.

“In the long term, it really impacts our health, our happiness, our wallet, the expenses we incur,” she says. “Not having access to the Internet really does put you at a disadvantage.”

While organizations like Lumity and Technology for Humanity are working to eliminate the digital divide, might the proliferation of handheld, mobile technology like the iPhone help with that goal?

Chris Martin, president of CMPR, a public relations firm dealing with health care, says probably not, at least not immediately.

“This just increases the digital divide because it separates the haves from the have-nots,” he says.

Eventually, the technology that early adopters flock to when it is first released “trickles down to wider populations of normal folks. So the technology that’s cool today is blasé and commonplace in six months, and also more affordable and accessible, too.”

But, Martin says, the populations affected by the digital divide are not likely to pick up a iPhone as soon as the price drops.

Last night, Group Colleges Australia celebrated their 10th anniversary in their landmark headquarters in GCA Towers (the old TNT Towers in Redfern).

Guests included government dignitaries, agents and education industry colleagues.  LiveEnrol was represented by Danny Bielik, Chief Executive Officer.

Danny Bielik with Alan Manly and ACPET Members at GCA 10th Anniversary

In the last 10 years, GCA has grown to become one of the largest providers in NSW, with member colleges in five sectors, Central College (VET), Metro College (ELICOS), AIWL (Workplace Learning), St James (High School), Universal International Colleges (Higher Ed) and was recently awarded FEE-HELP status.

LiveEnrol-approved agents are able to enrol students at Central College, Metro College and Universal International Colleges for study in 2010 and beyond.

LiveEnrol congratulates GCA on their milestone achievement.