The Web Applications (WebApps) Working Group and the Web Application Security (WebAppSec) Working Group have published today a Recommendation of Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS). This document defines a mechanism to enable client-side cross-origin requests. Specifications that enable an API to make cross-origin requests to resources can use the algorithms defined by this specification. If such an API is used on http://example.org resources, a resource on http://hello-world.example can opt in using the mechanism described by this specification (e.g., specifying Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://example.org as response header), which would allow that resource to be fetched cross-origin from http://example.org. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity and the Security Activity.

Unobtrusive JavaScript is a best practice methodology for attaching JavaScript to the front-end of a website. It’s an ideal to strive toward and something we should bear in mind whenever we’re adding JavaScript to a site.

It is the separation of behaviour from markup or structure. Just like the CSS gurus of old taught us there should be a separation of layout from markup, there should be a separation of behaviour from markup. That’s HTML for the content and structure of the document, CSS for the layout and style, and Unobtrusive JavaScript for behaviour and interactivity. Simple.

What?

It boils down to this: your site, and it’s content, should still be accessible when JavaScript is unavailable – the only way to guarantee this is by employing Unobtrusive JavaScript techniques.

Adding JavaScript to your site should be an additive process, bringing better experiences to those who have the capabilities of running your code, not a destructive one for those who for whatever reason have JavaScript disabled or blocked or not fully implemented. This is known as Progressive Enhancement.

How?

Let’s look at an example where you want to open a popup window for external links on your site.

The Downright Hackish Way

The first way is the downright hackish way &emdash; a technique that early on gave JavaScript a bad reputation &emdash; of hijacking the href attribute on all anchor elements on the site.

<a href="javascript:window.open('http://www.w3.org/wiki/The_principles_of_unobtrusive_JavaScript')">W3C Article</a> 
    

This poses a big problem if JavaScript is unavailable. The link won’t work! It’s not a very maintainable technique either, since changing your linking technique would require you to change every external link.

The Less Obtrusive Way

The less obtrusive way would be to add the JavaScript to the onclick handler for every link.

<a href="http://www.w3.org/wiki/The_principles_of_unobtrusive_JavaScript" onclick="window.open('http://www.w3.org/wiki/The_principles_of_unobtrusive_JavaScript');return false;">W3C Article</a> 
    

While this is still a maintenance nightmare, it does work if the browser’s JavaScript is disabled. Without JavaScript the user won’t follow the link in a new window, but will be able to follow the link through the default link behavior.

The Unobtrusive Way

Now to the best way, the unobtrusive way. We’ll add a class attribute to all links that are to open in a new window. This is just like how we’d add a class to style similar elements. However, in this case we’ll add a class to add behavior to similar elements. Let’s add a class of new_window to our links.

<a href="http://www.w3.org/wiki/The_principles_of_unobtrusive_JavaScript" class="new_window">W3C Article</a>
    
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtrusive_JavaScript" class="new_window">Wikipedia Article</a>
    

Now we have two links, both with the class new_window, but with no JavaScript. As a bonus we could style new_window links differently too, but that’s not what we’re doing right now, we’re adding behaviour.

Next, create a separate JavaScript file called app.js. Let’s use JavaScript to get all the elements with the class of new_window. We do this with the following code:

    var anchors = document.getElementsByClassName("new_window");
    

Now we have a variable anchors with all anchors on the document with the class of new_window. Now we can iterate over all the anchors and add a function to the onclick attribute.

for (var i=0; i < anchors.length; i++) {
        anchors[i].onclick = function() { };
    };
    

We can also add a little bit of code to open the link in new window.

for (var i=0; i < anchors.length; i++) {
        anchors[i].onclick = function() {
            window.open(this.href);
            return false;
        };
    };
    

We’re using this.href instead of typing out the URL string (like "http://www.w3.org/wiki/The_principles_of_unobtrusive_JavaScript") because now the same code is being used on multiple links. Since we’re binding a function to onclick we have the this object to play with. In the on click handler, the this object is the given anchor that the onclick function is bound to. So this.href is the href of the link that has been clicked.

Why?

There are a number of reasons why you’d want to use Unobtrusive JavaScript. From the how-to above you can see that maintenance and updating functionality is a lot easier. But the benefits of being unobtrusive aren’t purely selfish. It’s about the user.

When a user comes to your site you can’t guarantee the device, browser or connection they have to your site. For example, older browsers wouldn’t be able to execute the above code since they don’t support the getElementsByClassName method. This would stop the script from being executed. Still they will be able to go to the site and follow the link in spite of getting a JavaScript warning in the status bar of their browser. Ideally, to be truly unobtrusive, you’d write some more code to fall back on to with older browsers, or alternatively use something like jQuery.

In the case of connectivity, JavaScript files should be included at the bottom of the page, giving more weighting to the HTML document and stylesheets to be downloaded first. Say your user is connecting via a mobile device with flaky connectivity. The HTML and CSS may get downloaded before the connection disconnects and fails to download the JavaScript files. You don’t want this mobile user to have a poorer experience than they’re already having. Imagine someone accessing your site from work and their somewhat paranoid system administrators strip out all JavaScript tags through their proxy or disable JavaScript on all their computers. The user is totally out of control in this case and they shouldn’t be penalised by not having their experience hindered by your inability to provide content or functionality that would work in their scenario.

Finally there are cases where screen-readers for visually impaired users disable or don’t fully implement JavaScript, so it’s important to make your content accessible. An accessible site is also a search engine optimised site. Having your content there-and-then on your site, behind working links, will guarantee the even the least sophisticated search engine spiders will be able to index your site and it’s contents. An indexed site is a visited site.

Conclusion

The astute readers will have noticed that even the less selfish reasons will ultimately pay off in your favor. Being unobtrusive on your own, your employer’s, or your client’s projects will ultimately bring more users and paying customers to your site. It’s win-win.

In your next project, when adding interactive behavior, why not try to employ unobtrusive techniques to your JavaScript code?

You can check out the sample code on github or download the source files in a zip file.

The post What is Unobtrusive JavaScript and Why it’s Important? appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

Three Recommendations were published today to enhance data interoperability, especially in government data. Each one specifies an RDF vocabulary (a set of properties and classes) for conveying a particular kind of information:

• The Data Catalog (DCAT) Vocabulary is used to provide information about available data sources. When data sources are described using DCAT, it becomes much easier to create high-quality integrated and customized catalogs including entries from many different providers. Many national data portals are already using DCAT.
• The Data Cube Vocabulary brings the cube model underlying SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange, a popular ISO standard) to Linked Data. This vocabulary enables statistical and other regular data, such as measurements, to be published and then integrated and analyzed with RDF-based tools.
• The Organization Ontology provides a powerful and flexible vocabulary for expressing the official relationships and roles within an organization. This allows for interoperation of personnel tools and will support emerging socially-aware software.

All three vocabularies have been developed by the Government Linked Data Working Group, but they are applicable beyond just government data. For a list of data sources or software known to be using these vocabularies, see the “Implementation Report” linked from each document. Learn more about the Data Activity.

The following is a guest post by Zach Saucier. Zach cooks up some pretty inspiring animations over on CodePen. I couldn't be happier that he wanted to share some of the tricks he uses to create them, especially because they are things we all strive for: efficiency, reusability, practicality, and speed.

I've fallen into the habit of creating CSS animations in my free time, inspired by things I come across during the day. To create the animations as I imagine them using as few elements as possible, I've found some tricks to make CSS do things you might not know it could do. I'd like to share them with you.

#1) Jump to another state mid-animation

CSS animation makes it easy to transition properties to a new value over time. They also have the ability to jump properties to a new value virtually instantly. The trick is to use two keyframes with a very small difference, around .001% works well.

@keyframes toggleOpacity {
      50% { opacity: 1; } /* Turn off */
      50.001% { opacity: 0.4; }
    
      /* Keep off state for a short period */
    
      52.999% { opacity: 0.4; } /* Turn back on */
      53% { opacity: 1; }
    }

The following is an extreme example of this, toggling opacity and a text-shadow to mimic a flickering billboard light.

See the Pen No Vacancy 404 CSS Only by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen.

#2) Negative animation delays

A positive animation delay is where the animation waits a certain amount of time to begin. A negative animation delay starts the animation immediately, as if that amount of time has already gone by. In other words, start the animation at a state further into the animation cycle. This allows animations to be reused across several elements, given all that needs changing is the timing.

Here is an example of that where each circle begins immediately at a different state in the animation cycle:

See the Pen Circle Snake by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen

#3) Proportional animations

I try to make everything that I put into production be as responsive as possible, including my animations. Responsiveness for CSS animations is not possible for all animations I have created, but sometimes it is, using percentages and other relative units.

In many of my animations, I use elements like circles and squares which need the a proportional width and height. You might think I need to use fixed width & height values to keep them that way, but that's not the case! I am able to create them using a percentage width, zero height, and percentage padding. The padding-bottom is the trick to keep it proportional to the width, like this:

.container {
      position: relative;
      display: block;
      width: 100%;
      height: 0;
      padding-bottom: 100%;
    }

You can see this in practice on the following demo by changing the size of the window it is in. The demo also makes use of negative animation delays.

See the Pen Responsive CSS bars by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen.

#4) Changing transform-origin mid-animation

While working on one of my animations, I was surprised to find out that not only can transformation-origin be changed mid-animation, it is also animatable! In the example below, this allows us to create one animation using rotations on different axes instead of using four separate animations.

See the Pen Change transformation-origin mid animation by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen

The downside to this trick is that you can't use animation-mode: forwards; for only a part of an animation. This means that we have to re-position the element to an equivalent of its state before applying the change in transformation-origin. In the above example, this is done by using translates to mimic the rotation's effects. However, this technique can get tedious on more complex examples, as seen here.

#5) Negative transform-origins

You are able to set a negative transform-origin, which is useful for things like creating circular movement paths. Instead of specifying specific translate and rotation values using one element to create circular animations as Lea Verou describes, we can do it much more simply by using negative transform-origin values in addition to a second element or pseudo-element (one element if we want the element to rotate as well as move in a circular path). By using varying values of a negative transform origin, we can reuse the same animation for multiple elements while still retaining circular motion for each.

See the Pen CSS Circular Motion Technique by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen.

#6) Box shadow magic

For animations of simple no-content shapes, box-shadow is quite useful. The box-shadow property can create multiple borders around elements. That idea, combined with some displacement, can create new animatable "elements" out of no additional HTML elements. This enables us to create the following animation, which appears to be six circular elements rotating circularly, but is in fact one element with some offset box-shadow shapes.

See the Pen Single element color loader by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen

Sadly, percents are not supported by any box-shadow properties so they are not as easily responsive as a native HTML element. However they can still be changed manually in an animation or by using transform:scale(n) on the actual HTML element which they are a part of.

#7) Using pseudo-elements

Similarly with box-shadows, pseudo elements can be used to add more content to the appearance of a single element. They can have separate animations from their parent, their own box-shadows, and are very similar to being child elements of without the HTML markup. This let's us create amazing single element creations like the one below.

See the Pen Single Element gif Recreation by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen

In the example, all of the large circles around the middle flashing circle, as well as two of the smaller circles on the rim (opposite from each other) are box-shadows on the main element. The other two small circles are part of a pseudo-element's box-shadow and the ring made of dashes is an SVG applied as a background on the other pseudo element.

Some other things to note

Use transforms when you can

Transforms perform better than their non-transform counterparts as Paul Irish has shown (also). Primarily this means using scale and translate over changing the dimensions or top/left values.

Transforms also allow for more responsive design, allowing things such as scale to be used relative to their original size, as is shown in this animation by Amos.

Not using transforms can also cause problems that are hard to catch. For example, in this animation of mine the elements were being colored incorrectly in Chrome although the values themselves were correct. After switching it to use transforms all my problems were solved.

z-index can cause problems

I probably spend more time fixing z-index issues with my animations more than any other issue. Z-indexes are handled differently from vendor to vendor. In animations, the primary difference is that Mozilla does not animate z-index values, they have elements jump from one z-index to the next, whereas vendors like webkit do animate the z-index value.

Another thing to note is that if one wants their pseudo elements to appear behind their parent element, the pseudo element must have a negative z-index and the parent cannot have a stacking other than the default, which means you can't apply a z-index or anything else that takes the parent out of its natural stacking context.

One last trick dealing with z-index is one that deals with opacity. Whenever an element is given an opacity other than the default "1", it gains its own stacking context. For more information on this, check out Philip Walton's post

Get inspired

Whether it's something you see in the real world, an interesting web page that you find online, part of a video intro, a gif, or something else entirely, find things that you think may be possible to create and try to do so!

I have found that not looking at how the original author created it enables me to learn, to create it in a unique style, and sometimes even do it in a more efficient manor. Even if I end up failing at my original intention, I always become more comfortable with or learn more about the language I'm using. Often times I have something to show for it, even if it's not as grand as I would had originally hoped. Other times I'm completely surprised by how awesome my creation is when I didn't even mean for it to be!

I hope that this article helps you construct more awesome creations, even if you learned nothing from the specific techniques!

CSS Animation Tricks: State Jumping, Negative Delays, Animating Origin, and More is a post from CSS-Tricks

The RDF Working Group has published two Recommendations today:

• JSON-LD 1.0. JSON is a useful data serialization and messaging format. This specification defines JSON-LD, a JSON-based format to serialize Linked Data. The syntax is designed to easily integrate into deployed systems that already use JSON, and provides a smooth upgrade path from JSON to JSON-LD. It is primarily intended to be a way to use Linked Data in Web-based programming environments, to build interoperable Web services, and to store Linked Data in JSON-based storage engines.
• JSON-LD 1.0 Processing Algorithms and API. This specification defines a set of algorithms for programmatic transformations of JSON-LD documents. Restructuring data according to the defined transformations often dramatically simplifies its usage. Furthermore, this document proposes an Application Programming Interface (API) for developers implementing the specified algorithms.

Learn more about the Data Activity.

When it comes to lettering, there’s something about a handmade project that just stops us in our tracks. In this day and age, with so many beautiful fonts accessible to us at just the press of a button, the fact that there are still amazing designers willing to go above and beyond the norm and hand-letter their work impresses us to no end.

This dozen projects are no different; each of them made us stop and say, “Wow.” We hope you’ll feel the same way.

Lisa Nemetz’s identity for VQV

Argentina-based designer Lisa Nemetz’s identity for VQV, an organic restaurant, positively demands attention. The masterful, almost casual brushwork perfectly evokes the texture and vibrance of the food on offer.

Bryan Patrick Todd’s Shelby Park mural

I focused on a statement that reflected Shelby Park’s positive outlook and growth as a tight-knit community.

Louisville’s own Bryan Patrick Todd, a graphic designer and artist, documented the process of creating this gorgeous mural he was commissioned to create. Once the initial design and mockups were completed, he worked with a sign painter to see that the mural accurately reflected his design.

Jason Vandenberg’s hand-lettered projects

Toronto-based artist and graphic designer Jason Vandenberg initially caught our eye with his hand-drawn project entitled Earn Your Sleep on Instagram. On his website, however, Vandenberg documents each step of his process, from initial sketches and drafts, to the final, vectorized results. Worth a look!

Thomas Pena’s hand-lettered quotes

Hailing from Orlando, Florida, Thomas Pena’s impressive Behance profile showcases a knack for typography that extends across a variety of media, along with an arresting capability for hand lettering. His set of three hand-lettered inspirational quotes, edited using a faux-chalkboard effect, would make a fantastic wall decal or poster triptych.

Russell Shaw’s hand-lettering for the Illumination project

The Illumination Project is a DVD study series for small groups, developed from the video content of a live event held in Portland, Oregon. Russell Shaw’s hand-lettering takes it beyond the ordinary and creates an impactful and memorable product for young adults.

Nina Harcus’s Type Delight

With this project, Nina Harcus, a designer and foodie, features handmade typography visuals using ingredients like flour, pie dough, and other food items, to accompany the recipes in a book. These handmade visuals tell the story of a Patisserie chef named Marcelle, as he begins to fall in love with typography. As fans of typography and delicious food, we couldn’t overlook this tasty treat!

All Tropicana Co’s playlist project

Hailing from Monterrey, Mexico, graphic designer and illustrator Robba Saldaña has set out on a mission to create a different typographical representation of various songs by internationally renowned artists spanning the last several decades, and the results are astounding. From his depiction of Johnny Cash’s Hurt to The Chemical Brothers’ Galvanize, this collection is definitely one to watch.

Martina Flor’s Completely London cover

The brief was to create the cover artwork with headlines done with a visual that ties to learning.

When August Media made the decision to approach Berlin’s Martina Flor for the cover artwork for the magazine Completely London, they inspired one of the more notable covers we’ve seen to date. The minor irregularities in the lettering make it clear that Flor took the time to create this entire piece by hand, an artistic undertaking that speaks volumes about her commitment to her work.

MASH’s Chalk it Up collaboration

MASH, the collective of graphic designers and typographers Mary Faber, Alice Lo, Saranna Drury, and Haylie Gray, created this collaborative masterpiece showcasing lyrics from New Zealand musician Dave Dobbyn’s song Slice of Heaven over a weekend. Their blog entry about the piece describes the process they used to create such a large-scale monument to chalkboard typography.

MASH has been long time fans of Dana Tanamachi’s awesome chalkboard type…and we wanted to follow in her footsteps and give it a go ourselves. …We were all allocated a word or two to design digitally in Adobe Illustrator and then we used a projector to project our designs onto the custom built wall. Next we sketched our letters onto the blackboard and chalked it up!!

Be sure to watch the video for a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the work that went into this amazing project.

Jason Carne’s vintage hand-lettering

The act of being “taught” how to be an artist always felt silly and counter-productive to my creative process… I decided early on that I wanted to teach myself everything I possibly could on my own to ensure that my approach and style was completely my own[.]

New Jersey designer Jason Carne may only be in his twenties, but his hand-lettered designs seem to have traveled forward through time. From film props, to t-shirts for Def Leppard, to beautifully imagined designs for small local businesses, be sure to check out the entirety of his collection.

Yulia Brodskaya’s hand-crafted typography collection

Russian-born artist Yulia Brodskaya has a unique gift for folding paper into visually compelling creations. Formerly called “quilling,” this paper-crafting technique is believed to have been used by monks and nuns in the Renaissance era when creating flourishes to adorn religious objects. Whether it’s her embellished version of a snippet from a $5000 bill or her cover for O magazine, this collection of papergraphy (as Yulia herself has deemed it) is worthy of perusal.

Axek Efremov’s doodles

So many great hand-lettering projects are the result of personal exploration. Axek’s creations, many of which feature hand lettering, are beautifully executed, for no reason other than, in his words, to defy laziness.

Have you used hand-lettering in a project? How well does hand-lettering work online? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Resize Sense + Watermark Sense for Mac – only $14!

Ever hear of shadow warehouses? Profit taking, monopolies, corruption, and the ability to disrupt international trade on an whim? Yeah, it should give the conspiracy theories plenty of ammunition. Do we really want to do that? For the sake of intellectual discussion? Yes, yes we do.

Millions of Tons of Metals Stashed in Shadow Warehouses

By Tatyana Shumsky Dec. 26, 2013

BLOOMBERG NEWS- The world's metal is slipping into the shadows.

Banks, hedge funds, commodity merchants and others are stashing tens of millions of tons of aluminum, copper, nickel and zinc in a hidden system of warehouses that span the globe.

These facilities are known to some in the industry as "shadow warehouses" because they are unregulated and don't disclose their holdings.

They operate outside the London Metal Exchange system of warehouses, the traditional home for these metals.

As of October, a record seven million to 10 million tons of aluminum were being housed in these facilities, in countries as far apart as Malaysia and the Netherlands, according to estimates from several analysts.

The amount dwarfs the 5.5 million tons of aluminum in the LME-licensed warehouses, based on LME figures as of Tuesday. Just 12 months ago, the figures were about equal.

A similar shift is taking place with other industrial metals, analysts say (NewzGuyz does not approve of using anonymous sources. What kind of analysts are these? Market analysts or business analysts? For all we know, they could be the guy on the corner who claims to be a psychoanalyst). As a result, producers and consumers are bracing for potentially wild swings in metals prices as market participants have difficulty accurately gauging supplies of these metals. With no clear insight into how much metal is in the shadow system, setting prices will become increasingly difficult, they say.

Analysts and traders (again... who are these anonymous analysts? can't you at least tell us who they work for? and now anonymous traders, too? That has to make the information more reliable! Actually, no. It doesn't) say the flow of metal into shadow warehouses already is making prices move in unpredictable ways—such as when a large amount of unaccounted-for metal suddenly makes its way onto the market.

"It's a real concern for anyone in the industry that metal can be sucked away into a nonreporting location with no expectation or date as to when it's going to be available again," said Nick Madden, senior vice president and chief supply-chain officer with Atlanta-based Novelis Inc., an aluminum-products maker that is among the world's biggest buyers of the metal (Finally, a named source! thank you!).

"The risk here is that the metal gets controlled by fewer and fewer hands, whose interests and business model is probably conflicting with that of end users," he said.

Industrial metals end up in all sorts of everyday goods—from aluminum soda cans to copper wires inside refrigerators to zinc-plated steel in roofs. Turbulent raw-materials prices can make it more expensive to produce such goods when prices spike or limit output from mines and smelters when prices drop below their cost of production.

The lack of transparency is making this shadow system increasingly attractive to institutions seeking to profit from information that other buyers and sellers don't have. Some companies also are seeking a cheaper alternative to the LME warehouses, which can be 10 times as expensive as the unregulated storage, analysts and traders say (Gah! Just when we thought you were going to start naming sources! Are these the same "analysts and traders" from earlier, or new ones? NewzGuyz wants to know!).

However, metal owners can face higher interest rates from banks if they wish to use metal stored in shadow warehouses as collateral for loans, because banks see the LME system as less risky, analysts say.

Five companies operate 75% of the LME's 778 licensed warehouses. All own shadow facilities as well, people familiar with the companies said.

In some instances, a single firm runs licensed and unlicensed warehouses in the same building, with the metal counted by the LME separated from hidden stockpiles by a chain-link fence, said David Wilson, a commodities analyst with Citigroup.

Until 2010, most warehouses were owned by logistics firms like Netherlands-based C. Steinweg Group. But as metal-financing trades became more popular, C. Steinweg was joined by units of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. as well as commodity traders Glencore Xstrata PLC of the U.K. and Switzerland and Trafigura Beheer BV of the Netherlands.

All five companies declined to comment.

Metal consumers like Novelis say that prices could increase sharply if warehouse owners buy up large amounts of metal, creating a shortage.

Alcoa Inc., the largest U.S. aluminum maker, has the opposite worry. The company fears aluminum prices are vulnerable to a shock if a large amount of metal suddenly gets moved from shadow warehouses back to the LME's facilities, said Tim Reyes, president of materials management at Alcoa.

"If one day, 2 million tons of aluminum show up and it just went from one pocket to another pocket, it has an impact on price that it shouldn't, and that's a concern for us," Mr. Reyes said.

Such volatility makes it harder to make production plans, he said.

(The article could've ended here and gotten a C. Because of the next four paragraphs it recieved a D, making it the first NewzGuyz featured article to receive such a low grade. Thanks for making your bias visible once more, Wall Street Journal.)

Many metal buyers and producers say they are worried that new rules approved by the LME in November will speed up the flow of metal into shadow warehouses.

Starting April 1, LME warehouses with wait times exceeding 50 days must deliver out more metal than they take in. The delays help boost income from rent and increase the fees paid for faster service, so warehouse owners are expected to increase LME rent charges to offset any reduction in profits.

The rules strike at a trade that has grown sharply since 2010, where investors buy the cheap physical metal and sell a futures contract on the LME at a higher price.

Meantime, the metal sits in an LME-licensed warehouse until the futures contract expires. Higher warehouse costs make this trade less profitable.

If applied today, the rules would flush aluminum out of LME-licensed warehouses holding 3.5 million tons of the metal, equal to 7% of annual global demand. Warehouses holding copper and zinc also would be required to speed up the release of their stockpiles.

In a Nov. 7 report, the exchange said one potential negative side effect of the new regulations is that more metal could end up in shadow warehouses.

The LME in a statement said it has a duty to run a fair and orderly market and that the warehouse bottlenecks posed a range of issues in terms of price discovery.

The rule changes were made following a consultation process that included an examination of all concerns raised about the possible unintended consequences of any changes, it said.

"We believe that the package of measures contained in the proposal is, on balance, the best solution for all market users," the exchange said.

Since 1989, the University of Minnesota LSSURP has overseen and coordinated several life sciences programs. The programs begin with a joint orientation weekend, followed by participation in a 10-week research project under the direction of a University of Minnesota faculty mentor and numerous special activities focused on professional development as well as social interaction. The summer research experience concludes with a poster symposium and banquet in August.

LSSURP has given students that have been underrepresented in the life sciences the experience and training that enhances their ability to pursue a career in research. This represents a long-standing commitment to increasing the impact and quality of life science research at the University of Minnesota, which is strengthened when there is diversity in our faculty and students. We strongly encourage students whose backgrounds encompass diversity in culture, disability, ethnicity, gender, and economic background to apply for our summer research positions.

Program Dates:  May 29 - August 9, 2014*

* The application for Summer 2014 is available now.