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Walls made of Insulated Concrete Forms are rated on average, like a wood-frame wall constructed with R-25 insulation. However, the equivalent R-value performance of ICFs consists of three factors. First is the R-value of the expanded polystyrene, second, the thermal stability of the concrete wall, and third the suppression of air leakage (infiltration). As a result, with the combined R value performance and the reduced air infiltration, ICF walls actually perform as high as R-40 to R-50.
One disadvantage of ICF construction is overall wall thickness; total wall assemblies (the structure plus interior finish and exterior cladding) can be upwards of 14 inches thick, which can take valuable space on small lots. Another disadvantage is running plumbing in exterior walls, which is possible but difficult, so it is recommend that you run them in interior walls or in a crawl space and through the floor.
Finally, ICFs are termed a “green product,” as they offer energy savings of 20 percent or more compared to stick framed buildings. However, it is “green” after the house is built, as there is a large amount of energy expended on the production and transportation of these products!
Next time, we will look at SIP features and benefits.
For more information, contact www.greenhomeenergyadvisors.com.
Olivier Giroud in action against Hull City.
Olivier Giroud has pledged his long-term future to Arsenal and wants manager Arsene Wenger to do the same.
The France striker, thriving in his second season at the Emirates with 20 goals in 46 appearances, says he is happy at the club despite their faltering title campaign and wants to extend his contract beyond its current end in 2016.
Wenger’s contract, meanwhile, expires at the end of this season and Giroud hopes his boss signs the deal that has been on offer since the end of last year.
He said: "Of course I will be at Arsenal next season. I am happy in London.
"I have a contract until 2016. Why not extend? I’ll still be a Gunner next year – at least I’d like to be.
"I want Wenger to stay at Arsenal next season. Of course we want him to extend his contract. We need him and his experience – he has to stay.
"I think we can compete for the title next season and this time all the way to the end."
The Gunners looked on course for a shot at a first Premier League trophy since 2004 when they topped the division in early February, but a run of only three league wins since then has seen them drop to fourth.
Michael Jackson, the self-styled King of Pop, is to release the most expensive album ever made in a desperate battle to regain his crown.
The eccentric singer is said to have spent $30m (about £20m) and five years recording Invincible, his first entirely new album in over a decade. He recorded 50 tracks before slashing the results and critics say that the 15 surviving songs mark an astonishing return to form that could revive Jackson's career.
Unwilling to take any chances, the singer has embarked on a promotional blitz in the run-up to its October release. Last night he appeared with his brothers in the Jackson Five for the first time since 1984 at the first of two modestly titled Tribute to Michael Jackson concerts at Madison Square Garden, New York City.
The star-studded audience was testament to the status he retains - Muhammad Ali, Sean Connery and Marlon Brando all agreed to attend - as was the line-up, which included Eminem and Destiny's Child.
Jackson is counting on such bright young things to rejuvenate his career. He called in the R&B producer Rodney Jerkins, known for his work with Mary J Blige and Jennifer Lopez, to produce Invincible.
The reclusive multi-millionaire has become more famous for his eccentric habits, which earned him the nickname Wacko Jacko, than his undoubted gifts. Now in his 40s and a father of two, his career has been on a downward slide since 1982 when his album Thriller stayed at number one for 37 weeks and sold an astonishing 24m copies.
His multi-million dollar settlement of child abuse allegations in 1993 seemed likely to kill off his career. But the former child star is attempting a coup on a par with Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special. Those TV shows electrified audiences and kickstarted the ailing career of the king of rock'n'roll, whose daughter Lisa Marie was later briefly married to Jackson.
"Invincible is the most important album of his career - a real maker or breaker," said Peter Robinson, pop critic for NME and the Face. "He's a fantastic pop star and it will be interesting to see how he develops. They're trying to surround him with all these people who are more relevant to young people."
The first single, You Rock My World, has surprised critics who expected a lightweight ballad along the lines of Jackson's last releases such as Earthsong. "It's his best work since Bad," enthused Robinson. "You forget that he does have a great voice and a really distinctive sound and that comes out on the record."
Robinson believes that a comeback is plausible. "In the 90s Madonna was in the dumper, making quite bad records, and that's been completely written out of her history," he pointed out.
"She managed to do it by choosing the right producers, although admittedly she was a bit more inventive than Jackson. He's still quite sharp. He recruited Rodney Jerkins a while back and was actually one of the first to recognise that he was an amazingly talented writer and producer."
"It's too early to write Jackson off," agreed Emma Jones, editor of Smash Hits, who says she was shocked by how good his new single was. "He's an enigma and the mystery that surrounds him makes him even more of a star. There's no one you can compare to him in the modern pop world.
"He's a great showman, a fantastic songwriter and his music has stood the test of time. People are going back to albums like Off the Wall and calling them classics. Young bands like 'NSync and the Backstreet Boys are saying how good he is."
Ajax Scott, editor of the record industry bible Music Week, is similarly impressed by the artist's new direction. "He's still got it," he said.
"Invincible doesn't just sound like they spent a huge amount of money on the latest producers. It sounds very much like Jackson, but contemporary Jackson."
But Scott says the star's place in history is assured whether the album soars or sinks without trace. "He's sold so many records and is such an icon that 'make or break' is not even a relevant concept, in a sense. Whatever happens won't alter his reputation as having fundamentally changed soul music."
Judyth Piazza chats with Houston Attorney and Counselor at Law Yolanda Buckner on The American Perspective Radio Program.
Yolanda Bucker graduated from Vero Beach High School with honors in 2003. She then obtained a Bachelors of Science Degree from Florida A & M University with honors in 2006."
My cousin lived in Houston, she introduced me to TSU Thurgood Marshall School of Law," Buckner said. "Once I visited the law school, I immediately fell in love with it as well as the City of Houston... So much so that I decided to make Houston, Texas my home after graduating from law school with honors and passing the Texas bar exam."
सहरसा जं. Railway station is situated in Saharsa, Bihar. Station code of सहरसा जं. is SHC. Here are some trains that are passing through सहरसा जं. railway station like Rajya Rani Exp, Rajya Rani Exp, Hate Bazare Exp, Hate Bazare Exp, Janhit Express, Janhit Express, Jansadharan Exp., and many more.
And the anti-SOPA rallying of the tech world’s best continues.
Just minutes after Ycombinator’s Paul Graham disclosed that SOPA-friendly companies would be blacklisted from the YC Demo Day, Cheezburger (as in I Can Has Cheeseburger, FAIL Blog, Know Your Meme, etc.) CEO Ben Huh has announced that they will be moving their array of over 1,000 domains away from GoDaddy unless the registrar recants their support of the act.
Will Huh’s threat be enough to make GoDaddy back down? Probably not: GoDaddy is a company with plenty of controversies under its belt, so they’re more than used to taking a bit of heat. With that said, it will raise awareness to the fact that taking your domains (and thus your money) elsewhere is a totally legitimate form of protest — in fact, Huh’s tweet just reminded me that I have (make that had) 2 domains sitting in GoDaddy’s yard. Thanks, Ben!
You can find our full coverage of SOPA here, and find out more about why it’s such a terrible, terrible idea here, here, and here.
OTTAWA -- Mark Stone had a goal and two assists to help the Ottawa Senators end a four-game losing streak with a 5-3 win against the Edmonton Oilers at Canadian Tire Centre on Sunday.
Stone scored his 12th of the season and set up goals by Zack Smith and Mike Hoffman. Tom Pyatt and Kyle Turris also scored for the Senators (21-14-4), and Mike Condon made 35 saves.
Patrick Maroon had two goals, giving him five in the past three games, and Leon Draisaitl scored for the Oilers (21-14-7). Connor McDavid, whose 48 points lead the NHL, had two assists, and Jonas Gustavsson made 13 saves on 17 shots.
The Oilers failed to earn a point for the fourth time in their past 18 games (9-4-5). They went 2-2-0 on a four-game road trip.
The Senators led 2-0 after the first period on goals by Smith (3:36) and Hoffman (14:53). Hoffman's goal was the first for the Senators on the power play in five games; they were 0-for-14 during the four-game losing streak.
"I thought we played a great first period," Stone said. "We came out and limited them, didn't give them anything. Had the two-goal lead, lately when we've been getting those leads, we let the foot off the gas. Obviously, it wasn't the prettiest second period, but we battled hard and came back on top.
"The third period, we battled hard but relied on our goalie for the last 15 minutes. It's weird sometimes. I thought we played a lot better hockey in the games we were losing, then kind of sneak one out here. I think it all evens itself out for the most part. It's a big win, obviously, for us."
The teams traded the lead back and forth in the second period, when they combined to score five times.
Maroon scored goals 64 seconds apart starting at 5:58 of the second period to erase Ottawa's 2-0 lead.
Draisaitl put the Oilers ahead 3-2 when, after taking a pass from McDavid down low to Condon's left, his shot from below the goal line bounced off Condon and into the net at 12:59.
Stone tied it 3-3 with his 12th goal of the season and his third point of the game at 13:33.
Pyatt scored the game-winner with 1:46 left in the period, redirecting a pass from defenseman Cody Ceci to put the Senators up 4-3.
Turris scored into an empty net to make it 5-3 with 1:22 remaining.
"I thought the first period, we weren't that sharp, but then we found our identity that we played in New Jersey (in a 2-1 overtime win against the Devils on Saturday), and that's how we should play every night, is get pucks deep, use our size, cycle, wear them down, throw pucks at the net," Maroon said. "The second and third period, I thought we did everything but score. We did all that in the third, and we couldn't score. I just felt like the puck was bouncing everywhere."
Ceci set up Pyatt for the winning goal when he pinched on the right-wing boards, took a hit from Oilers forward Matt Hendricks, and centered the puck to Pyatt for a redirection that went in off Gustavsson's left arm.
With the Senators leading 4-3, Condon got his right skate on McDavid's one-timer off a one-touch, between-the-legs pass from Draisaitl from behind the net at 8:51 of the third period.
At 6:50 of the second period, McDavid stole the puck from Stone at the Oilers blue line and took off on a breakaway. He shot wide but then chased down the puck to set up Maroon to tie it 2-2.
Senators coach Guy Boucher put center Jean-Gabriel Pageau up against McDavid for all but four of McDavid's 22 shifts, and Pageau did a pretty good job limiting McDavid's offense. McDavid's two assists came when Pageau wasn't on the ice.
Ottawa forward Bobby Ryan returned to the lineup after he was scratched Saturday for a 1-0 loss to the Washington Capitals. … Senators forward Chris Kelly won six of seven faceoffs (85.7 percent). … Ottawa had scored at least five goals in a game once (six against the New York Islanders on Dec. 18) in its previous 12 games.
The San Antonio Spurs rode quietly into the sunset while the Lakers awaited the chance to avenge championship-round losses to either Detroit (1989, 2004) or Boston (too many to list).
The Lakers eventually could advance to the NBA Finals, though they're expecting the Spurs to approach tonight's Game 2 like, you know, defending champions.
The Lakers showed up for Thursday's practice with equal parts enthusiasm and realism, knowing they somehow fell 20 points behind the Spurs in Game 1 but also happy to have scored an 89-85 body blow Wednesday in the opener of the Western Conference finals.
Still, there are reasons the Spurs have won four of the last nine NBA championships.
"They're going to keep coming," Kobe Bryant said. "They're hungry to get a back-to-back [title]. I don't see Game 1 lingering into Game 2. I think they'll be ready to go."
Or, as Lamar Odom said, "They're champions, man. You're going to expect a challenge from them at all times."
The challenge probably will be there from the start, seeing how the Spurs couldn't have played much worse in the fourth quarter.
They made only three of 21 shots in the quarter, an unsightly 14.3% shooting accuracy. Furthermore, they were one of nine from three-point range in the quarter and also committed five turnovers.
Bryant was careful to note that the Lakers' defense wasn't the main culprit.
"I don't think any defense is that good," he said. "I think it has to be a combination of them not shooting the ball well, not making shots that they normally make and us applying pressure."
The Lakers, meanwhile, viewed Coach Phil Jackson's latest theme in the film room before practicing Thursday afternoon.
Jackson is now interspersing clips of the movie "The Kingdom" into video sessions, a marked departure from the lighter fare he spliced into the first two rounds -- "Best in Show" and "Speed Racer."
In the newest movie, a small team of U.S. government agents helps solve a terrorist attack on a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia. Jackson's presumed message is that of a small, elite group working together to overcome outside odds.
Whether the significance hits home with the Lakers, the Spurs will be waiting tonight.
"I don't expect them to be off of their psyche or crushed or all of a sudden feeling as though they aren't the better team," Derek Fisher said. "I suspect they'll come back and probably play even better [tonight] so we'll have to be better in order to win."
Bryant's first half in Game 1 was still a torrid topic a day later.
He made only one of three shots and had two points as the Lakers fell behind by eight at halftime. He had only four points at the midpoint of the third quarter but zoomed away from there, finishing with 27 points.
Bryant laughed off the interest in his late-game upward trajectory.
"I think everybody's making a little too much of a big deal out of it," he said. "What I did is infuse some more energy into our ballclub. . . . I think we all kind of followed that."
Fisher has seen it before in nine seasons of playing alongside Bryant in the Lakers' backcourt.
"I wasn't really that worried about him at halftime [Wednesday] because I knew he was assessing the situation," Fisher said. "He has that ability. I don't know if there's anybody else that can do what he does.
"He can take an entire half and read defenses, read how he's being played, read how the rest of us are being played and basically catalog that information and then come out the second half and do the complete opposite, but be successful in doing it."
Lakers assistant coaches Kurt Rambis and Brian Shaw have met with Chicago Bulls General Manager John Paxson regarding the Bulls' head coaching vacancy, a job that became more attractive when the Bulls won the NBA draft lottery this week.
The Bulls were 33-49 last season and fired interim coach Jim Boylan last month. Boylan had replaced Scott Skiles in December. Their wide-open, slow-moving coaching search includes about a dozen candidates at this point.
Rambis, 50, coached the Lakers during training camp last season while Jackson recovered from hip surgery. Rambis also has experience as a head coach in 1999, going 25-13 after taking over for Del Harris as the Lakers' interim coach.
Shaw has also met with Phoenix, which is also interested in Rambis.
Shaw, 42, has been a Lakers assistant since the 2004-05 season and played for the franchise during its championship runs in 2000-02.
Both coaches interviewed for vacancies last season -- Rambis with Sacramento and Seattle, Shaw with Sacramento and Indiana.
The NBA issued a warning to Lakers fans -- watch what you buy, even if a cheap price on that purple-and-gold sleeping bag is impossible to pass up.
"As the Lakers continue to win and advance through the playoffs, their merchandise becomes more popular among basketball fans and counterfeiters alike," Ayala Deutsch, the league's senior vice president and chief intellectual property counsel, said in a statement released by the league.
"The 2008 NBA playoffs is an event that Los Angeles fans will want to remember for many years to come, but a counterfeit T-shirt is not really keepsake if it contains a typo or shrinks three sizes when you put it in the laundry."
Deutsch recommended that Lakers fans look for hologram stickers, tags and sewn-in labels that identify the merchandise as "genuine" or "official" as authorized by the NBA. Deutsch said fans reduce the risk of counterfeit goods by shopping at Lakers' official team stores and nbastore.com instead of "buying items from street vendors and flea markets."
Deutsch also said that ripped tags, typographical errors and poor quality screen-printing were tipoffs to phony merchandise.
"If a price seems too good to be true, it probably is," added Deutsch.
Studies by the Asian Development Bank and the University of Michigan suggest China’s rich-poor gap is even higher once property and hukou status are taken into account. “The urban-rural wealth divide is much greater than the income divide,” Southwestern University’s Mr. Gan said.
Often, the difference comes down to a line on a map.
Wang Qiang, a 30-year-old construction engineer from a village in northern China, bought an apartment in 2014 in the Banyan Tree Harbor residential complex astride a garbage dump in Yanjiao, just outside Beijing, across a dying river in Hebei province.
Looking across the dry riverbed separating Yanjiao from the capital, Mr. Wang said he hopes Beijing will someday absorb his community.
Of course, the housing situation is most urgent in the first-tier cities. And their governments have moved quickly to cool the market. Beijing, for example, raised the required down payment for residents purchasing a second flat for investment to as much as 80 percent of the price, and barred non-residents from such investments altogether.
But this is just a temporary fix. A longer-term solution will require the authorities to address the fact that demand for a limited supply of residential property is high and rising, owing to the rapid flow of often-young Chinese talent to cities that offer access to economic opportunities, not to mention better public infrastructure. Policymakers must determine the proper balance between state control and market forces in guiding urbanization throughout the country.
[..R]eform of the household registration (hukou) system did not match the speed of urbanization. The consequence is the ruralization of urban areas. Of the 56 percent urban population, only 40 percent have urban residence permits. In other words, there are over 10 percent of people in the cities who are rural workers or farmers. They have lived and worked in the cities for a long period of time and their offspring have already grown up, yet they are not integrated into the cities. Almost all the major cities in China have “villages in the city” and rural workers.
In 2001, in response to growing urbanization and emptying village schools, the Chinese government launched a campaign to close remote village schools and pool resources in centralized schools located in towns. In the years following, rural schools began to shut down at an alarming rate. Between 2000 and 2015, nearly three-quarters of all rural primary schools—more than 300,000 total—were permanently shuttered, according to the Economist.
While industrialization has played a significant role in lifting many Chinese citizens out of poverty, [John] Donaldson [of Singapore Management University] said the importance of rural development should not be overlooked. Citing former Chinese president Hu Jintao’s introduction of healthcare and education to rural areas, Donaldson said such initiatives give citizens the option of remaining in rural areas — rather than shifting to megalopolises in search of a better life.

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