The Optimist Club of Rochester is excited to announce the IN North Optimist District’s “Roarin’ 20’s PROM” welcoming positive minded people to an evening of fun and Optimism.
Don’t miss out on being an integral part of this very first W.O.W event. W.O.W. stands for Welcome Optimists Worldwide and is a great chance for the community to learn about an Optimist Club in a fun manner. The District will be honored to have the Optimist International President Mark Weinsoff in attendance.
The event will be held on Friday, August 13 with opening festivities starting at 6:00 pm, the banquet at 6:30 pm followed by the Prom starting at 8:00 pm. All will be held at the Fulton County Historical Society located at 37 E 375 N Rochester, IN. 46975. The catered meal is by ticket reservations only and costs $26 per person. The dance is free of charge to IN North District Optimist Club Members and one guest. Additional guests and other community members are $10 each. In lieu of $10, bring a BAG of groceries to donate to Matthew's Market! Concessions will be provided during the dance by the Boy Scouts Troop 219.
The deadline to purchase dinner tickets is Monday, August 9.
“With this event, we hope to be able to gain more valuable members who will help build our clubs which supports children of the community who need it most” said IN North Optimist District’s Governor, Becky Mahoney.
The Optimist Club of Rochester has been supporting local youth since 1978. Other programs and service projects that the Club is involved in can be found at indiananorthdistrict.org
Optimist International is one of the world’s largest service club organizations with over 80,000 adult and youth members in almost 3,000 clubs in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean and Mexico and throughout the world. Carrying the motto “Bringing Out the Best in Youth, in our Communities, and in Ourselves,” Optimists conduct positive service projects that reach more than six million young people each year. To learn more about Optimist International, please call (314) 371-6000 or visit the organization’s website at www.optimist.org.
For more information about the event, please call IN North District Governor Becky Mahoney at 574-529-3266 or email indn4optimists@gmail.com.
The Indiana Department of Transportation announces a road closure for State Road 10 between Pear Rd and Queen Rd beginning Monday, August 2 through Thursday, August 5.
Maintenance units will be replacing culverts in several locations along the roadway.
Motorists should seek an alternate route. The official detour will follow State Road 17, State Road 110 and U.S. 31.
When Android and Apple operating system updates started giving users the option to put their smartphones in dark mode, the feature showed potential for saving the battery life of newer phones with screens that allow darker-colored pixels to use less power than lighter-colored pixels.
But dark mode is unlikely to make a big difference to battery life with the way that most people use their phones on a daily basis, says a new study by Purdue University researchers.
That doesn’t mean that dark mode can’t be helpful, though.
“When the industry rushed to adopt dark mode, it didn’t have the tools yet to accurately measure power draw by the pixels,” said Charlie Hu, Purdue’s Michael and Katherine Birck Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “But now we’re able to give developers the tools they need to give users more energy-efficient apps.”
Based on their findings using these tools they built, the researchers clarify the facts about the effects of dark mode on battery life and recommend ways that users can already take better advantage of the feature’s power savings.
The study looked at six of the most-downloaded apps on Google Play: Google Maps, Google News, Google Phone, Google Calendar, YouTube and Calculator. The researchers analyzed how dark mode affects 60 seconds of activity within each of these apps on the Pixel 2, Moto Z3, Pixel 4 and Pixel 5.
Even though Hu’s team studied only Android apps and phones, their findings might have similar implications for Apple phones, starting with the iPhone X. The team recently presented this work at MobiSys 2021, a conference by the Association for Computing Machinery.
Fact: Dark mode only makes a noticeable difference to battery life in certain scenarios
Smartphones that came out after 2017 likely have an OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screen. Because this type of screen doesn’t have a backlight like the LCD (liquid crystal display) screens of older phones, the screen will draw less power when displaying dark-colored pixels. OLED displays also allow phone screens to be ultrathin, flexible and foldable.
But the brightness of OLED screens largely determines how much dark mode saves battery life, said Hu, who has been researching ways to improve the energy efficiency of smartphones since they first hit the market over a decade ago. The software tools that Hu and his team have developed are based on new patent-pending power modeling technology they invented to more accurately estimate the power draw of OLED phone displays.
Many people use their phone’s default auto-brightness setting, which tends to keep brightness levels around 30%-40% most of the time when indoors. At 30%-50% brightness, Purdue researchers found that switching from light mode to dark mode saves only 3%-9% power on average for several different OLED smartphones.
This percentage is so small that most users wouldn’t notice the slightly longer battery life. But the higher the brightness when switching from light mode to dark mode, the higher the energy savings.
Scenario 1: Switching from light mode to dark mode on a sunny day
Let’s say that you’re using your OLED phone in light mode while sitting outside watching a baseball game on a bright and sunny day. If your phone is set to automatically adjust brightness levels, then the screen has probably become really bright, which drains battery life.
The Purdue study found that switching from light mode to dark mode at 100% brightness saves an average of 39%-47% battery power. So turning on dark mode while your phone’s screen is that bright could allow your phone to last a lot longer than if you had stayed in light mode.
Other tests done by the industry haven’t analyzed as many apps or phones as Hu’s team did to determine the effects of dark mode on battery life – and they were using less accurate methods.
“Tests done in the past to compare the effects of light mode with dark mode on battery life have treated the phone as a black box, lumping in OLED display with the phone’s other gazillion components. Our tool can accurately isolate the portion of battery drain by the OLED display,” said Pranab Dash, a Purdue Ph.D. student who worked with Hu on the study.
Scenario 2: Using dark mode to go easier on your eyes without draining your phone’s battery faster
Typically, increasing your phone’s brightness drains its battery faster – no matter if you are in light mode or dark mode. But since conducting this study, Dash has collected data indicating that lower brightness levels in light mode result in the same power draw as higher brightness levels in dark mode.
Using the Google News app in light mode at 20% brightness on the Pixel 5, for example, draws the same amount of power as when the phone is at 50% brightness in dark mode.
So if looking at your phone in dark mode is easier on your eyes, but you need the higher brightness to see better, you don’t have to worry about this brightness level taking more of a toll on your phone’s battery life.
Coming soon: Apps designed with dark mode energy savings in mind
Hu and his team built a tool that app developers can use to determine the energy savings of a certain activity in dark mode as they design an app. The tool, called a Per-Frame OLED Power Profiler (PFOP), is based on the more accurate OLED power model that the team developed. The Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization has applied for a patent on this power modeling technology. Both PFOP and the power modeling technology are available for licensing.
Fact: Your phone doesn’t accurately measure battery usage by the app – yet
Both Android and Apple phones come with a way to look at how much battery power each individual app is consuming. You can access this feature in the settings of Android and Apple phones.
The feature can give you a rough idea of the most power-hungry apps, but Hu and Dash found that Android’s current “Battery” feature is oblivious to content on a screen, meaning it doesn’t consider the impact of dark mode on power consumption.
Coming soon: More accurate estimates of your apps’ battery usage
Hu’s team has developed a more accurate way to calculate battery consumption by the app for Android, and actually used the tool to make the study’s findings about how much power dark mode saves at certain brightness levels. Unlike Android’s current feature, this new tool takes into account the effects of dark mode on battery life.
The tool, called Android Battery+, is expected to become available to platform vendors and app developers in the coming year.
Statewide, top quality farmland averaged $9,785 per acre, up 14.1% from the same time last year. The high growth rate for top-quality farmland was closely followed by the growth in average- and poor-quality farmland prices, which increased by 12.5% (to $8,144) and 12.1% (to $6,441), respectively. Across all land quality classes, 2021 per-acre farmland prices exceeded the previous records set in 2014.
“A unique combination of economic forces, including net farm income, expected income growth, crop and livestock prices, interest rates, exports, inflation, alternative investments, U.S. policy, and farmers’ liquidity, all played a major factor in the price increase we’re experiencing,” said Todd H. Kuethe, Purdue associate professor and the Schrader Endowed Chair in Farmland Economics and survey author.
That’s rare, he said.
“Normally we’ll see positive price pressure from one or two market forces; however, this June, survey respondents indicated that all 10 forces we asked them about were putting upward pressure on land values,” he said.
Statewide cash rental rates increased across all land quality classes in 2021. Average rental rates increased by 3.9% for top-quality land, from $259 to $269 per acre. The cash rental rates for average- and poor-quality lands both increased by 4.6% to $227 and $183, respectively. At the regional level, the largest rental rate increases for top- and average-quality land were both in the Southeast region (11.5% and 6.4%), and the largest rental rate increases for poor-quality land were in the North region (5.5%). Across all three land-quality classes, the highest per-acre cash rent was observed in the West Central region.
Rent as a share of June land value decreased slightly in 2021, suggesting that cash rental rates appreciated slower than farmland prices. Some portion of the difference in appreciation rates between farmland values and cash rents may reflect changes in expectations between fall 2020, when 2021 rents were negotiated, and the 2021 growing season.
For more in-depth analysis on the survey, the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture will host a free webinar from 12:30-1:30 p.m. ET Aug. 20. Join Purdue agricultural economists Kuethe, James Mintert and Michael Langemeier as they break down the Purdue Farmland Values Survey and USDA Land Values report, discuss marketing strategies for 2021 corn and soybean crops, and make projections for 2022 corn and soybean returns. Register for free.
The department of agricultural economics conducts the Purdue Farmland Value and Cash Rent Survey each June and publishes it in the Purdue Agricultural Economics Report. The survey is produced through the cooperation of numerous professionals knowledgeable of Indiana’s farmland market. These professionals provided an estimate of the market value for bare- poor-, average-, and top-quality farmland in last December and June, and a forecast value for this coming December.
The Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division is warning taxpayers about Child Tax Credit-related scams, which criminals may use to steal money and personal information.
While millions of American families started receiving the advance Child Tax Credit payments last week, criminals were already looking for innovative tactics to take advantage of unwitting victims.
Taxpayers should be on the lookout for a variety of phone, e-mail, text message and social media scams targeting families eligible for the credit. Any communication offering assistance to sign up for the Child Tax Credit or to speed up the monthly payments is likely a scam.
When receiving unsolicited calls or messages, taxpayers should not provide personal information, click on links, or open attachments as this may lead to money loss, tax-related fraud, and identity theft.
“As the country continues to grapple with the financial fall-out of the COVID-19 pandemic, scammers and criminals continue to evolve their efforts to steal the assistance the government provides, from those that need it the most,” said Acting Special Agent In Charge, Donald “Trey” Eakins, IRS Criminal Investigation, Chicago Field Office. “Be aware of those that try to steal the tax credit that you are entitled to, and if an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is,”
Although scammers constantly come up with new schemes to try and catch taxpayers off-guard, there are simple ways to identify if it is truly the IRS reaching out.
The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers via e-mail, text messages, or social media channels to request personal or financial information, even information related to the Child Tax Credit.
The IRS does not leave pre-recorded, urgent, or threatening messages. Aggressive calls warning taxpayers about a lawsuit or arrest are fake.
The IRS will not call taxpayers asking them to provide or verify financial information so they can obtain the monthly Child Tax Credit payments.
The IRS will not ask for payment via a gift card, wire transfer or cryptocurrency.
If you are eligible for advance payments of the Child Tax Credit, the IRS will use information from your 2020 or 2019 tax return to automatically enroll you for advance payments. Taxpayers do not have to take any additional action. Taxpayers who are not required to file a tax return or who have not provided the IRS their information, may visit IRS.gov/childtaxcredit2021 to provide basic information for the Child Tax Credit.
To report suspicious IRS-related phishing and online scams, visit IRS.gov.
The Indiana Department of Transportation announces a road closure for State Road 110 between C.R. 100 E/Iris Rd and C.R. 200 E/Hawthorn Rd beginning Monday, July 19.
EWR Railroad will be rebuilding their at grade railroad crossing in this location. The road will be closed for approximately four days, weather permitting.
Motorists should seek an alternate route. The official detour will follow U.S. 31, State Road 14 and State Road 25.
Livestock and poultry producers who suffered losses during the pandemic due to insufficient access to processing can apply for assistance for those losses and the cost of depopulation and disposal of the animals. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Vilsack announced the Pandemic Livestock Indemnity Program (PLIP) in [recorded] remarks at the National Pork Industry Conference in Wisconsin Dells, WI. The announcement is part of USDA’s Pandemic Assistance for Producers initiative. Livestock and poultry producers can apply for assistance through USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) July 20 through Sept. 17, 2021.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, authorized payments to producers for losses of livestock or poultry depopulated from March 1, 2020 through December 26, 2020, due to insufficient processing access as a result of the pandemic. PLIP payments will be based on 80% of the fair market value of the livestock and poultry and for the cost of depopulation and disposal of the animal. Eligible livestock and poultry include swine, chickens and turkeys, but pork producers are expected to be the primary recipients of the assistance.
“Throughout the pandemic, we learned very quickly the importance and vulnerability of the supply chain to our food supply,” said Agriculture Secretary Vilsack. “Many livestock producers had to make the unfortunate decision to depopulate their livestock inventory when there simply was no other option. This targeted assistance will help livestock and poultry producers that were among the hardest hit by the pandemic alleviate some financial burden from these losses.”
Additional Assistance Planned
The previous administration proposed pandemic assistance using flat rates across the industry, which does not take into account the different levels of harm felt by different producers. Pork industry supported analysis projected that disruptions in processing capacity in the pork supply chain create a situation with small hog producers and especially those that sell on the spot market or negotiate prices, bear a disproportionate share of losses. USDA has examined the difference between the negotiated prices for hogs and the 5-year average and documented a significant drop during April through September of 2020 due to the pandemic. USDA has set aside up to $50 million in pandemic assistance funds to provide additional assistance for small hog producers that use the spot market or negotiate prices. Details on the additional targeted assistance are expected to be available this summer.
PLIP Program Details
Eligible livestock must have been depopulated from March 1, 2020 through December 26, 2020, due to insufficient processing access as a result of the pandemic. Livestock must have been physically located in the U.S. or a territory of the U.S. at the time of depopulation.
Eligible livestock owners include persons or legal entities who, as of the day the eligible livestock was depopulated, had legal ownership of the livestock. Packers, live poultry dealers and contract growers are not eligible for PLIP.
PLIP payments compensate participants for 80% of both the loss of the eligible livestock or poultry and for the cost of depopulation and disposal based on a single payment rate per head. PLIP payments will be calculated by multiplying the number of head of eligible livestock or poultry by the payment rate per head, and then subtracting the amount of any payments the eligible livestock or poultry owner has received for disposal of the livestock or poultry under the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) or a state program. The payments will also be reduced by any Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP 1 and 2) payments paid on the same inventory of swine that were depopulated.
There is no per person or legal entity payment limitation on PLIP payments. To be eligible for payments, a person or legal entity must have an average adjusted gross income (AGI) of less than $900,000 for tax years 2016, 2017 and 2018.
Applying for Assistance
Eligible livestock and poultry producers can apply for PLIP starting July 20, 2021, by completing the FSA-620, Pandemic Livestock Indemnity Program application, and submitting it to any FSA county office. Additional documentation may be required. Visit farmers.gov/plip for a copy of the Notice of Funding Availability and more information on how to apply.
Applications can be submitted to the FSA office at any USDA Service Center nationwide by mail, fax, hand delivery or via electronic means. To find your local FSA office, visit farmers.gov/service-locator. Livestock and poultry producers can also call 877-508-8364 to speak directly with a USDA employee ready to offer assistance.
Fulton County United Way is pleased to announce that it will receive a second COVID-19 Economic Relief Initiative grantfor $57,968 from Indiana United Ways, the state professional association of which Fulton County United Way is a member. The grant will be used to support our community in meeting basic human needs brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The grant is one of 47 grants that Indiana United Ways is making to member organizations and community foundations through the initiative, which was made possible by funding Indiana United Ways received from Lilly Endowment Inc.
“Fulton County United Way has been a key convener and coordinator of our community’s response to meet human needs for decades. Even before this crisis, we knew that 13% families in Fulton County were not able to make ends meet - despite working. In the wake of COVID, those needs became even more dire. Thanks to the generous, continued support of Lilly Endowmentto our State Association, we can continue to help our community, through nonprofit partners, deal with and hopefully resolve the impacts of this trying time,” said Jenny Moriarty Executive Director for Fulton County United Way.
The second COVID-19 Economic Relief Initiative grantagain calls for United Ways that receive funding to leverage partnerships and relationships to better meet COVID-related basic needs alignedwith the social determinants of health as defined by the CDC. Specifically, Fulton County United Way plans to use the ERI funds that will directly impact families and / or individuals from Fulton County that meet the ALICE guidelines, as well as those on low fixed income. These clients will be vetted by our service providers to ensure they meet these guidelines. Funds distributed will be utilized to support clients most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with rent, mortgage, utilities, food access and critical transportation.
Fulton County United Way will begin accepting funding requests from area human and social service nonprofits in good standing beginning July 6, 2021. Interested organizations should consult Northern Indiana Community Foundation’s website for guidance on funding intent and application instructions.
In April 2020, Lilly Endowment helped Indiana United Ways establish the COVID-19 Economic Relief Initiative with an initial $30 million grant. Lilly Endowment made an additional $15 million grant in March to Indiana United Ways to support the initiative. Both grants are part of Lilly Endowment’s overall grantmaking to help organizations meet COVID-related needs. Since March 2020, Lilly Endowment has made grants totaling more than $210 million to organizations working in Indiana and across the nation as they respond to the pandemic.
Winds are from the West at 11.5 gusting to 21.9 MPH (10 gusting to 19 KT). The humidity is 43%.
The wind chill is 46.
Last Updated on Mar 28 2024, 2:55 pm EDT.