Extreme rainfall events contribute a large portion of wintertime precipitation to northern California. The motivations of this paper were to study the observed differences in the patterns between extreme and more commonly occurring lighter rainfall events, and to study whether anomaly fields might be used to discriminate between them. Daily (1200-1200 UTC) precipitation amounts were binned into three progressively heavier categories (12.5-50.0 mm, light; 50-100 mm, moderate; and Ͼ100 mm, heavy) in order to help identify the physical processes responsible for extreme precipitation in the Sierra Nevada range between 37.5°and 41.0°N.The composite fields revealed marked differences between the synoptic patterns associated with the three different groups. The heavy composites showed a much stronger, larger-scale, and slower-moving negative geopotential height anomaly off the Pacific coast of Oregon and Washington than was revealed in either of the other two composites. The heavy rainfall events were also typically associated with an atmospheric river with anomalously high precipitable water (PW) and 850-hPa moisture flux (MF) within it. The standardized PW and MF anomalies associated with the heavy grouping were higher and were slower moving than in either of the lighter bins.Three multiday heavy rainfall events were closely examined in order to ascertain whether anomaly patterns could provide forecast utility. Each of the multiday extreme rainfall events investigated was associated with atmospheric rivers that contained highly anomalous 850-hPa MF and PW within it. Each case was also associated with an unusually intense negative geopotential height anomaly that was similarly located off of the west coast of the United States. The similarities in the anomaly pattern among the three multiday extreme events suggest that standardized anomalies might be useful in predicting extreme multiday rainfall events in the northern Sierra range.

The ‘White Savour’ is a timeworn vehicle for celebrities in Hollywood film, where actors perform as heroes who save the day against dark and ominous adversaries. Pop stars take on personas and ‘exotic’ characters as well. And with increasing visibility, the famous perform real-life hero roles as philanthropists for social causes around the so-called ‘developing’ world. This essay explores how the celebrity philanthropist is constructed as redeemer of distant Others and how this role mingles with a celebrity’s on-stage personas to create the White Saviour, a powerful brand of cultural authority. It examines the power of Bono, Jolie and Madonna as key figures in contemporary African celebrity aid and diplomacy work, and at Madonna and Jolie as famous mothers. I argue that their campaigns employ a universalizing rhetoric of individualism that reinscribes colonial narratives of Africa’s diverse peoples as passive and helpless, and that ultimately burnishes the celebrity brand.

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Educators, businesspeople, and journalists-all of them adults-seem very preoccupied nowadays with young people's supposed lack of ''good'' communication, leading to evaluation of their communication ''skills'' against standards of appropriateness and usefulness shaped by the needs of the market rather than everyday social and relational needs of communicators. This technologization of communication comes to a head in commentary (read: complaints) about young people's new media discourse, where concerns about ''literacy,'' ''employability,'' and ''social order'' are

Despite a number of studies investigating the effect of pharmacotherapy on treatment costs for schizophrenia patients, there has been little attention given to the effect of family intervention. In this study, data from the Kansas Medicaid system were used to analyze healthcare costs for 164 schizophrenia patients who had participated in family intervention. Structural equation modeling was used to test two competing views of the role of family intervention in treatment. The results showed that a model including direct and indirect effects of family intervention provided a better fit to the data. Family intervention had a significant indirect effect on general medical costs (through other psychological treatment) that showed a savings of $586 for each unit increase in the provision of these services. In addition, the total indirect effects for family intervention showed a $580 savings for general medical costs and $796 for hospitalization costs (for each unit increase).