Kit Heath Kids Celebrates Birthstones!

Kit Heath Kids collection of sterling silver birthstone jewellery including birthstone charm beads, birthstone stud earrings and guardian angel necklaces are to be cherished and adored, but what do each of them mean and why are they associated with birthdays?

Originally the tradition is said to come from the old testament story of Moses' brother the high Priest Aaron, who wore a ceremonial breastplate with 12 stones on. These were to represent the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve signs of the zodiac and the twelve months of the year.
Through the ages to present day, the wearing and gifting of gemstones became popular as people believed in their healing properties and it is believed that the old testament story is what has driven the symbolism of the stones allocated to the months of the year.
These stoones have been given as gifts to our young ones since at least the 15th century to be worn as a symbol of luck and well being.


Kit Heath Kids celebrate the birthstone trend with semi-precious stones and sterling silver, creating a collection of silver birthstone jewellery which include:

Sterling Silver Birthstone Charm Beads
Sterling Silver Guardian Angel Necklaces
Sterling Silver Stud Earrings

Kit Heath Kids Birthstone guide:
 

January – Garnet the stone of success, protection and happiness. Creative and friendly. 	February – Amethyst the stone of wisdom, said to aid sleep and healing. Advernturous and fun.
March – Blue Topaz the truth stone, used to increase awareness and energise the wearer. Hopeful and strong. 	April –  Rock Crystal is known as the “master healer” stone. Innocent and strong hearted.  
May – Green Quartz the heart stone, said to bring the wearer intuition. Lovable and happy.  	June – Moonstone is said to bring good fortune and enhance instinct. Faithful and helpful.  
July – Ruby the wealth stone believed to enhance focus and motivation. Content with a love for life.	August – Peridot is the cleansing stone, eradicating bad energy and harnessing the positives. Happy and lucky. 
September – Sapphire is the stone of destiny, said to bring the wearer the fulfillment of dreams. peaceful and truthful. 	October – Opal is said to be the stone of inspiration and enhances the imagination. Hopeful and innocent.  
November – Citrine  is the fortune stone, said to bring abundant wealth. Strong and Joyous. 	December – Turquoise it’s the purification stone and is believed to eradicate negative energy. Happy and successful.  

Click here to see more birthstone jewellery



i spy

some new things going on around my house.....here are my before plush, orange, velvet stools-

here's the after...the only problem is i haven't decided where they are going to live- either on my sunroom...

or in the bedroom....

and then i really needed to do something to our entryway....

so i found some wallpaper!  my quest this weekend- find a cool demilune table...

that's all i spy right now....i hope to spy more in the future :)

Flu Season is Here

I've noticed everyone around me getting sick lately (I seem to have become mostly immune to colds and the flu in the last couple of years), so I took a look at Google Flu Trends. Lo and behold, the United States is currently near peak flu incidence for the 2010-2011 season. Here's a graph from Flu Trends. This year's trend is in dark blue:


Flu Trends also has data for individual US states and a number of other countries.

It's time to tighten up your diet and lifestyle if you want to avoid the flu this year. Personally, I feel that eating well, managing stress effectively, and taking 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day in winter have helped me avoid colds and the flu.

IEEE goes evil?

In November, the IEEE released a new copyright agreement, that is to be signed by the authors of all papers published by the organization since January 2011. The main novelty is that the authors are not allowed to publish final versions of their papers on-line. Fortunately, we still may post the versions accepted for print (with post-review corrections), which is still great, indeed. You can find the FAQ concerning the new policy here.

It seems the IEEE realizes that nowadays there is almost no need in their printed materials and the digital library as search engines manage to find papers posted by their authors. No doubt that they do not want to restrict dissemination of scientific results, but that is a question of their survival as a major publishing organization. The worst is they use the drug-dealer strategy: first they organize great conferences and journals (the majority of top venues in my field are run by IEEE), and allow authors to re-publish anything on-line ("the first hit for free"), then cut it off. Yes, one still may post an accepted version, but who knows what is their next step?

The IEEE motivate their decision by preserving the value of their database: "the IEEE is better able to track usage of articles for the benefit of authors and journals". One can object that there are big and growing open-access databases like Mendeley, where all the statistics is open and refined (the personal info of users is known). Also, not all institutions have an access to the library. For example, my university (the largest one in Russia) does not. And I cannot afford to pay $25 per paper.

What can we do about that? Sure, it is impossible to stop publish in IEEE venues, although the community can find the way around, as was demonstrated by the founders of JMLR, now the major journal in machine learning, which was created to cancel the overhead of the commercial publishing model. Matt Blaze encourages the researchers not to serve as reviewers for IEEE. As for me, I'm too young (as a researcher) to be a reviewer. But it also has effect on me: I am now preparing a final version for the proceedings published by the IEEE, and I doubt if there is any use in improving my paper (even given a quality review), assuming that majority of researchers will use the accepted version and will never see the revised one.

UPD (Mart 14, 2011). I should have misunderstood the new policy at first, Blaze's post and IEEE terminology somehow misled me. The accepted paper means accepted for print by the IEEE, not the submitted for review. So, you still can use review results to correct the paper and post it on-line, then submit for publishing, where the formatting will probably be adjusted. So, any meaningful part could be reflected in the on-line version. I have corrected the post now, so it may seem weird.

seriously...

is it monday already...where did my weekend go??!!