The Gold Coast City Council is holding a free seminar designed to offer practical solutions for dog owners to help stop excessive barking.

Community and Cultural Development Committee Chair Councillor Bob La Castra said the seminars focussed on providing simple advice and ideas to help dog owners.

“Most dogs bark, but when it becomes excessive it can often be unpleasant for owners and their neighbours,� said Cr La Castra.

“Barking dogs are one of the most common reasons for disputes and disharmony between neighbours, and each year Council receives approximately 3500 noise nuisance complaints .�

“Providing free help and advice can go a long way towards making life easier for dog owners and restoring goodwill between neighbours.�

“Simple ideas like buying chew-toys, burying dog biscuits and regular walks can often make a big difference.�

“These free seminars are packed full of useful tips like these and I encourage residents to take advantage and come along.�

The next seminar will be held on Wednesday 14 January 2009 from 6.30pm-8.30pm at the Robina Community Centre, Robina Town Centre Drive.

The coconut palm is grown throughout the tropical world, for decoration as well as for its many cooking and non-culinary uses, virtually every part of the coconut palm has some human use.The flowers of the coconut palm are polygamomonoecious, with both male and female flowers in the similar inflorescence. Flowering occurs continuously, with female plants producing seeds. Coconut palms are believed to be largely cross-pollinated, although some dwarf varieties are self-pollinating. Coconut water can be used as an intravenous fluid.

Xerox Corporation  is a worldwide document management company, which manufactures and sells a variety of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, though its largest population of employees is based in and around Rochester, New York, the area in which the company was founded.

Xerox today manufactures and sells a wide variety of office and production apparatus including photo copiers, Xerox Phaser printers, multifunction printers, large-volume digital printers as well as workflow software under the brand tactic of FreeFlow. The impact of Xerox FreeFlow products on the graphic arts market and the print industry in general has grown exponentially since May 2006, largely as a result of the Xerox existence at IPEX 2006. Xerox also sells scanners and digital presses.

Xerox sells both color and black and white printers under the Xerox Phaser brand, with the color punter model starting at US$299; the most expensive color model costs US$6,799. Xerox also produces fax machines, professional printers, black and white copiers, and several other products.

Theme Park is a sim game designed by Bullfrog Productions and originally released in 1994, in which the player designs and operates an delight park.

Like most of Bullfrog's games, Theme Park is permeated by an eccentric sense of humor. Starting with a free contrive of land in the United Kingdom and few hundred thousand dollars, the player must build a lucrative amusement park, making money by opening rides and selling merchandise and refreshments. The goal is to increase the park's value and available cash so that the park can be sold and a new lot can be bought from another part of the world and start building a new theme park. Newer products can be bought after researching them. Once enough money has been made the player can move on to newer plots. Plots are located all over the world and have many different factors that affect gameplay, including the economy, territory and land value.

There are over thirty attractions available in the game. Depending on the platform, it is possible to tour the park or the rides. There are simple rides like the vivacious bastion and tree house, and more complicated and classy rides like the roller coaster. There is a focus in the staff side of the park as well. People employed in the park include entertainers, security guards, mechanics, and cleaners. Lack of staff can cause problems, including chaotic parks, blown up rides, crime and sad visitors. Occasionally wages must be renegotiated; failure to renegotiate results in staff strikes. Theme Park offers several levels of recreation, with higher difficulties requiring more supervision of aspects such as logistics.

The water in a river is usually restrained to a channel, made up of a stream bed between banks. In larger rivers there is also a wider flood-plain shaped by flood-waters over-topping the feed. Flood plains may be very wide in relative to the size of the river channel. This dissimilarity between river channel and flood-plain can be blurred especially in urban areas where the flood-plain of a river channel can become greatly developed by housing and industry.

The river channel itself typically contains a single stream of water but some rivers flow as several interconnecting streams of water, producing a braided river. All-embracing braided rivers are found in only a few regions worldwide, such as the South Island of New Zealand. They also occur on peneplains and some of the larger river deltas. Anastamosing rivers are similar to braided rivers. They have multiple graceful channels carrying large volumes of sediment. Due to the dynamics of this type of system, they are also quite rare.

A river flowing in its channel is a source of energy which acts on the river channel to change its shape and form. In steep torrential zones this can be seen as erosion channels through hard rocks and the creation of sands and gravels from the devastation of larger rocks. In U shaped glaciated valleys, the consequent river valley can often easily be identified by the V shaped channel that it has carved. In the middle reaches where the river may flow over flatter land, loops (meanders) may form through eroding of the river banks and declaration on the inside of bends. Sometimes the river will cut off a loop, shortening the channel and forming an oxbow lake or billabong. Rivers that carry large amounts of deposit may develop conspicuous deltas at their mouths, if conditions permit. Rivers, whose mouths are in brackish tidal waters, may form estuaries. River mouths may also be fjords or rias.

The speed of light in a vacuity is accurately 299,792,458 m/s. The speed of light depends upon the medium in which it is traveling, and the speed will be inferior in a transparent medium. Although commonly called the "velocity of light", technically the word velocity is a vector capacity, having both level and direction. Speed refers only to the level of the velocity vector. This fixed definition of the speed of light is a result of the modern attempt, in physics, to define the basic unit of length in terms of the speed of light, rather than defining the speed of light in terms of a length.

Different physicists have attempted to measure the speed of light throughout history. Galileo attempted to measure the speed of light in the seventeenth century. A good early research to measure the speed of light was conducted by Ole Rømer, a Danish physicist, in 1676. Using a telescope, Ole observed the motions of Jupiter and one of its moons, Io. Noting discrepancies in the evident period of Io's orbit, Rømer calculated that light takes about 18 minutes to navigate the diameter of Earth's orbit. Unfortunately, this was not a value that was known at that time. If Ole had known the diameter of the earth's orbit, he would have calculated a speed of 227,000,000 m/s.

Another, more accurate, measurement of the speed of light was performed in Europe by Hippolyte Fizeau in 1849. Fizeau directed a beam of light at a mirror numerous kilometers away. A rotating cog wheel was placed in the path of the light beam as it traveled from the starting place, to the mirror and then returned to its derivation. Fizeau found that at a certain rate of rotation, the beam would pass through one gap in the wheel on the way out and the next gap on the way back. Knowing the distance to the mirror, the number of teeth on the wheel, and the rate of rotation, Fizeau was able to calculate the speed of light as 313,000,000 m/s.

The scientific definition of a "machine" is derived from the latin machine, is any device that transmits or modifies energy. In common usage, the meaning is constrained to devices having stiff moving parts that perform or assist in performing some work. Machines normally require some energy source and always realize some sort of work. Devices with no rigid moving parts are commonly considered tools, or simply devices, not machines.

People have used mechanisms to magnify their abilities since before written records were available. Generally these devices decrease the amount of force required to do a given quantity of work, alter the direction of the force, or transform one form of motion or energy into another.

The mechanical advantage of a simple machine is the ratio between the force it exerts on the load and the input force applied. This does not exclusively describe the machine's performance, as force is required to overcome friction as well. The mechanical efficiency of a machine is the ratio of the actual mechanical advantage (AMA) to the ideal mechanical advantage (IMA). Functioning physical machines are always less than 100% efficient.

Modern power tools, automated machine tools, and human-operated power machinery are tools that are also machines. Machines used to transform heat or other energy into mechanical energy are known as engines.

Hydraulics devices may also be used to support industrial applications, although devices exclusively lacking rigid moving parts are not commonly considered machines. Hydraulics are widely used in heavy equipment industries, automobile industries, marine industries, aeronautical industries, construction equipment industries, and earthmoving apparatus industries