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Infamous designer Yves Saint Laurent, who reinvented the fashion industry by putting women into elegant pantsuits that came to define how modern women dressed, has died, aged 71. Spokesperson Pierre Berge said Saint Laurent died at his Paris home following a long illness. A towering figure of 20th century fashion, Yves Saint Laurent was widely considered the last of a generation that included Christian Dior and Coco Chanel and made Paris the fashion capital of the world, with the Rive Gauche, or Left Bank, as its elegant headquarters. When the designer announced his retirement in 2002 at age 65 and the closure of the Paris-based haute couture house he had founded 40 years earlier, it was mourned in the fashion world as the end of an era. His ready-to-wear label, Rive Gauche, which was sold to Gucci in 1999, still has boutiques around the world. In October 2006, Saint Laurent slipped and fell outside a Paris restaurant during Fashion Week, suffering slight scratches but reminding fans of the perennially fragile designer's advancing age. In 1954, Yves Saint Laurent enrolled at the Chambre Syndicale school of haute couture, but student life lasted only three months. He was introduced to Christian Dior, then regarded as the greatest creator of his day, and Dior was so impressed with Saint Laurent's talent that he hired him on the spot. When Dior died suddenly in 1957, Saint Laurent was named head of the House of Dior at the age of 21. The next year, his first solo collection for Dior, the "trapeze" line, launched Saint Laurent's stardom. The trapeze dress, with its narrow shoulders and wide, swinging skirt, was a hit and a breath of fresh air after years of constructed clothing, tight waists and girdles. "More than any other designer since Chanel, YSL represented Paris as the style leader," The Independent of London wrote in an editorial after Saint Laurent's retirement. "By putting a woman in a man's tuxedo, he changed fashion forever, in a style that never dated." In his own words, Saint Laurent said he felt "fashion was not only supposed to make women beautiful, but to reassure them, to give them confidence, to allow them to come to terms with themselves." When he bowed out of fashion in 2002, Yves Saint Laurent spoke of his battles with depression, drugs and loneliness, though he gave no indication that those problems were directly tied to his decision to stop working. "I've known fear and terrible solitude," he said. "Tranquilizers and drugs, those phony friends. The prison of depression and hospitals. I've emerged from all this, dazzled but sober." 

TAGSYS, the global leader RFID, announced the availability of a high performance product line designed specifically for textile supply and service companies.

The new solution set includes state-of-the-art tags, readers and tunnels that are designed to perform up to two times faster than previous generation systems, while maintaining 99.9%+ accuracy levels. These technological improvements in speed and accuracy enable textile service companies to add or improve service levels to their customers.

“TAGSYS is a ground-breaking RFID systems company that builds products uniquely suited for the textile services market,” said Jeff Markman, President of POSITEK. “The products introduced enable textile services companies to gain a competitive advantage through labor reduction and lowered merchandise consumption costs. TAGSYS RFID delivers item-level tracking that provides textile service companies with the ability to guarantee order accuracy to their customers.”

Each product in TAGSYS portfolio is specifically designed to align with a textile service company’s operational needs while meeting the rigorous and rugged requirements found only in these types of applications:

*Encapsulated Tag Family – The ARIO 370L-HL and ARIO 370L-DL ISO 15693 tags are uniquely designed to withstand extreme humidity,temperature,pressure & chemical applications. Each tag is guaranteed to survive 200+ wash cycles ensuring durability & high performance beyond thelife of the laundered item. By utilizing a technology that significantly improves performance in electrically noisy environments, the new tags perform up to 20% better than the previous generation of tags.

*Medio L400 Stations – Both the Medio L400 reader and textile services antenna series are designed for the rugged industrial applications found within processing plants. Each product is tested and tuned to accurately track various types of items - ranging from stacked linens to hanging uniforms. The Medio L400 delivers industry-leading performance with processing speeds up to six times faster and 40% greater read ranges than earlier TAGSYS readers.

*TS400 RFID Tunnel – The latest release of TAGSYS best-selling tunnel line, the TS400, seamlessly integrates RFID technology with existing factory automation equipment and processes. The TS400 can read multiple items at once in bulk or stacks, up to two times faster than the previous generation tunnel, allowing operators to maintain traditional line speeds used in textile plants. Performance accuracy is achieved through a patented three dimensional antenna architecture that provides 99.9%+ accurate read rates.

he textile service market has some of the most stringent requirements for environmental ruggedness. TAGSYS tags and hardware have been designed and field-tested to exceed the requirements of companies working on cleaning processes for medical uniforms, work garments, bed sheets, covers and towels for hotels, linens for restaurants, industrial floor mats and mops, and personal garments. The focus on specific market requirements has fostered significant adoption within textile service companies for over ten years.

 Reconstruction of earthquake-ravaged regions will bring huge business opportunities for major state-owned companies (SOCs), the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) of the State Council (cabinet) said Wednesday in a statement on its website. Major SOCs are expected to play an important role in reconstruction, especially in energy, metallurgy, machinery, construction materials, the chemical industry and telecoms services, the commission said. Accordingly, SOCs are set to maintain fast growth and improve their profit margins, the statement added. The SASAC also said that the aggregate operating income of 410 major SOCs increased 25.7 percent year-on-year during the January-April period, to 4.68 trillion Yuan. Their export revenues stood at 244.3 billion Yuan, up 14.7 percent, it said, adding the growth rate was down significantly from last year. SASAC added that profits declined 1.3 percent, to about 353 billion Yuan, owing to sharp declines at oil and power companies. The year-earlier growth rate was nearly 35 percent. Total assets were nearly 19.9 trillion Yuan, up 21.7 percent, it added.

 Yellow Corn MAKE BIG REDUCTIONShould subsidies to wealthy farmers be reduced? How about re-phrasing your question to read, “Should subsidies to wealthy farmers ever have begun in the first place?” The subsidies did little or nothing to help the small farmers, who supposedly, were the reason Congress got it past the Public in the first place. Our benevolent father figures in Washington didn’t appear to care for the small farmers, passing bills that benefited the rich farmers. As the small farmers continued to fail, the rich ones bought up the small farms at bargain prices, then reaped the rewards of the subsidies. Back to the original question, yes, reduce the subsidies, but reduce it to nothing for those farmers making $100,000.00 or more. $ l00K doesn’t go as far as it used to, but it’s a start. Now everyone knows that this is a ridiculous statement. What Politico has guts enough to buck big money? Not a prayer.

Tag: Gas Generating Set The garbage of Houston County residents might well be powering their homes in the near future. Houston County is soliciting bids from a variety of companies, including Flint Energies, to buy the methane gas produced by the landfill. Flint Energies spokesman Jimmy Autry said that if the company is the winning bidder, it would hire a contractor to set up a generator at the landfill that could convert the gas into electricity, which would then be used as part of the electrical cooperative's overall power distribution network. "It's all-around good for us," Autry said. "The gas is out there being wasted now, and it's assurance that we are generating electricity in a green power way." The gas is generated by decomposing garbage in the landfill. The county already has a series of wells and a powerful vacuum system that sucks the methane out of the landfill. It is currently burned off at the collection point, sending up a flume through a 16-inch blower pipe. The flame has no odor and is invisible except at night. Methane only causes pollution when left to escape from the landfill without being burned off, said landfill superintendent Terry Dietsch. Based on the volume of gas that the county says the landfill produces, Autry said it would be expected to generate approximately four megawatts of electricity at any given moment. That's enough to power 3,000 homes, less than 1 percent of the 473 megawatts needed by Flint at peak usage. The electricity generated would go to the company's general power grid, not to power any specific area, Autry said. The gas volume could go even higher with both the growth of the landfill and a coming change in the way the county handles leachate, which is mostly rainwater that flows through the landfill and is collected in a giant tank. Currently, the county is taking the leachate to the Warner Robins waste water treatment plant, but last week it hired a company to begin recirculating the leachate back over the landfill. That will save money on the cost of transporting the leachate, and it will speed the breakdown of garbage in the landfill, creating even more methane, according to county Operations Director Tommy Stalnaker. Bids for the methane will be opened in early June, and Stalnaker said he expects the winning bid will be approved after a 30-day review. He forecast the landfill's methane will be getting put to use by the end of the year. The county has also solicited bids from Frito-Lay, Houston Cement and other nearby industries, and it has advertised for anyone else who may be interested. Those bidders would be expected to construct a pipeline from the landfill to the industry. Stalnaker said Georgia Power has also expressed an interest, but he wasn't sure if the utility will submit a bid. Based on preliminary discussions, he said, he is expecting to have at least six bids. The county executive declined to offer an estimate of how much money the county might collect. Companies would have to calculate the cost of the infrastructure needed, and it's hard to say what they would be willing to pay, Stalnaker said. But whatever money the county gets from the methane would go into the landfill enterprise fund, which pays for the landfill operation independently of tax dollars by charging a per-ton tipping fee from users. "It will help keep the tipping fees down," Stalnaker said. The winning bidder would pay all of the costs associated with converting the methane to use. The county would be responsible only for operating the collection system in the landfill. The county had not been able to sell the methane previously because the landfill did not have enough of the gas to make it worthwhile for a company to invest in the infrastructure, Stalnaker said. That has changed with the completion of phase 2, in which another field of methane wells and a vacuuming system will be installed. Over a period of years, methane production will start burning out in a given area, Stalnaker said, but then more new cells will come on line to contribute to the volume. Dietsch said phase one of the landfill, now completely filled in and grassed over, is 39 acres. The just completed phase two is 41 acres. The landfill is on a 2,400-acre tract off Ga. 247 south of Kathleen. It is expected to last another 125 years, even accounting for growth in the county. The landfill also serves Bleckley County, Cochran, Dodge County, Eastman, Pulaski County, Hawkinsville, Dooly County and Byron. It accepts an average of 850 tons of garbage per day and is funded entirely through user fees. Last year the Solid Waste Association of North America awarded Houston County its silver excellence award in landfill management, rating the operation, known for its lack of odor and country club-like entrance, the second-best landfill in the nation. Converting landfill gas into usable energy would represent another step forward for the county, Dietsch said. "We hope we can make some money but the biggest thing is to have our gas taken care of," he said.