text stringlengths 8 5.77M |
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2015–16 Primera División of Chile
The 2015–16 Campeonato Nacional season was the 85th season of top-flight football in Chile. Cobresal was the defending champion.
Format changes
Same as last season: Apertura and Clausura format, without playoffs.
Teams
Stadia and locations
Personnel and kits
Torneo Apertura
Standings
Apertura Liguilla
Winner qualified for 2016 Copa Sudamericana first stage (Chile 1).
Torneo Clausura
Standings
Clausura Liguilla
Winner qualify for 2016 Copa Sudamericana first stage (Chile 2).
Aggregate table
See also
2015–16 Primera B de Chile
2015–16 Segunda División Profesional de Chile
References
External links
ANFP
Category:2015–16 Campeonato Nacional season
Category:2015–16 in Chilean football
Category:2015 in South American football leagues
Category:Primera División de Chile seasons |
package org.wicketstuff.foundation.inlinelist;
import java.util.List;
import org.apache.wicket.markup.html.basic.Label;
import org.apache.wicket.markup.html.link.AbstractLink;
import org.apache.wicket.markup.html.list.ListItem;
import org.apache.wicket.markup.html.list.ListView;
import org.apache.wicket.model.IModel;
import org.apache.wicket.model.util.ListModel;
import org.wicketstuff.foundation.component.FoundationBasePanel;
/**
* This simple construct creates a horizontal list of links, like in a footer.
* http://foundation.zurb.com/docs/components/inline_lists.html
* @author ilkka
*
*/
public abstract class FoundationInlineList extends FoundationBasePanel {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
/**
* Create FoundationInlineList.
* @param id - Wicket id.
* @param titles - List of titles.
*/
public FoundationInlineList(String id, List<String> titles) {
this(id, new ListModel<>(titles));
}
/**
* Create FoundationInlineList.
* @param id - Wicket id.
* @param titles - Model for the titles.
*/
public FoundationInlineList(String id, IModel<List<String>> titlesModel) {
super(id);
add(new ListView<String>("item", titlesModel) {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
@Override
protected void populateItem(ListItem<String> item) {
AbstractLink link = createLink("link", item.getIndex());
item.add(link);
link.add(new Label("text", item.getModelObject()));
}
});
}
public abstract AbstractLink createLink(String id, int idx);
}
|
Wisconsin
News for Wisconsin
United States president-elect Donald Trump has termed the Green party-initiated move to recount votes in the state of Wisconsin as a "scam", asserting that "the people have spoken and the election......
Buoyed by his win in the crucial Wisconsin primary, Democrat Bernie Sanders has escalated his attack on front-runner Hillary Clinton, saying she is not qualified to be the US president as the two......
An Indian-American woman executive was indicted on Thursday by a federal grand jury before a US court in Wisconsin on charges of defrauding her company to the tune of a whopping $31 million. United......
An eight-member US business delegation led by R Christian M Bartley, executive director of World Trade Centre, Wisconsin, was in Chennai at the Federation of Andhra Pradesh Chambers of Commerce and......
Saddened by the shooting inside a Gurudwara in the United States a couple of weeks ago, Indian golfer Arjun Atwal is planning to raise awareness about Sikhs by distributing saffron ribbons during...... |
Reicha, Anton - 24 Trios for 3 Horns op.82
Anton Reicha
Anton Reicha (also Antonin Rejcha), * 26. February. 1770 in Prague, + 28. May 1836 in Paris. The father of Anton Reichs, a baker, died when his son was not a year old yet. The boy went 1781 after embankment first one to his uncle Joseph Reicha, this one, himself childlessly marries, his nephew adopted.
At him Anton who could speak only Czech till now won a general education, learned flute, violin and the piano German, French and educated with enthusiasm. The uncle far informed him is unknown how. Anton entered the chapel of the Elector Maximilian of Cologne with him in Bonn together. He becomes 1790 here as Geiger in which Cologne national theatre as a flautist mentions. He made friends with Beethoven in the chapel.
Reicha got to know works of the Mannheim school and the Viennese classical music, primarily however French operas, in the band. His preference also grew for wind instruments here.
1790 made Reicha to themselves confessed with Joseph Haydn who touched on his first journey to London Bonn. A French revolution was resolved, the band after the outbreak Antonín Reicha left its uncle Joseph and 1794 went to Hamburg since this one. He taught privately here.Reicha moved 1799 to Paris. The flourishing music life and the liberal conditions practised a strong appeal the French capital on him
from. He left the town in winter 1801/02 and went to Vienna. Furthermore his compositional education he friendly of Haydn receives, completed here at it with Albrechtsberger and Salieri. In addition, he re-established his friendly relations to Beethoven.
The brilliant offer of the conductor office with the prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia declined Reicha. As a composition teacher he enjoyed the broadest recognition. It moved definitely to Paris in October 1808, but its operas found only little echo notwithstanding all efforts. Against this the instrumental works, primarily the wind quintets, had durable success, and as a teacher it reached a high reputation.
A chair which it began on January 1st, 1818 was set up at the Parisian Conservatoire for it. Together with Cherubini, Paër, Lesueur, Berton,
It was a member of the Comité d'enseignement Boieldieu. Apart from its compositions its theoretical documents also reached the pressure.
Reicha married a Frenchwoman 1819, 1829 he was granted the French citizenship. For its contributions to the music it became 1831 knights of the legion of honour and on March 23rd, 1835 as a successor a Boieldieus member of the Institut de France. Soon to that it fell ill and died. Adam, Onslow, Liszt, Berlioz, Dancla, G. Franck, J. G. Kästner belonged to its pupils and a ..
24 Trios for 3 Horns op.82
These 24 trios for three horns op.82 were published in 1815 in Paris. The publisher Pleyel/Schlesinger edited the work in four volumes (Livraison) each 6 trios. Reicha was certainly asked for this composition by the horn player Louis François Dauprat (1781 -1868). Reicha had already known trios for three horns. At the Wallerstein Court, the horn player Zwierzina had composed 43 trios (ROM 100). In Paris 24 trios by Kenn had been published in 1797. Kenn’s horn student Louis François Dauprat added 12 trios to this volume (36 trios ROM 88). The same effects as in the 36 trios can be found in the 24 trios op.82 by Reicha, which mean artificially higher tones in the third horn part played open (ouvert). This work shows impressively the virtuosity of the natural horn players at the beginning of the 19th century in Paris.
No. 1 Tempo di MinuettoYour browser does not support the audio element. |
Summary/Abstract All projects in this program will make extensive use of genetically manipulated mice as the primary experimental platform. The Mouse Genetics and Genomics Core (Core D) is an essential component of the Program providing critical support to all 4 projects and to scientific cores B and C. The Core will capitalize on the infrastructure established at the University of Iowa Gene Editing Facility for the generation of genetically altered mouse models using CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing and in the Genomics Division of the Iowa Institute of Human Genetics (IIHG) to support genome wide transcriptome analysis. The goals of the Core are to: 1) provide centralized breeding, genotyping and quality control of transgenic and knockout animals for use by investigators in the program project, 2) generate new transgenic mouse models needed during the proposed budget period for Projects 2 and 4 (and in the future for Project 3), and 3) perform and analyze global transcriptome studies proposed within Projects 1-4. |
Q:
How can I run Secure Connector for Linux on Power
Is cast iron secure connector supported for Linux@Power?
I'm creating an app in Bluemix with a cloud integration servcie to connect to a legacy system (like linux on power).
I manage to install the connector but when I run the start command it crashes (./runclient_osgi.sh start).
Switching to Linux@Intel it works fine and I can move on to create the enterprise API and connect my app.
A:
We have come out with a new version of Secure Connector. It is now called Secure Gateway. The client that you need to install is actually a Docker container. The Docker container is the client/connector to allow the secure connector from Bluemix back to your network.
The only requirement is the ability to run Docker.
Check out this link for how to get Docker up on and running on Power on Linux.
|
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) is more than just a global warming denier. He’s a conspiracy theorist (calling warming a “hoax”) and, shockingly, hugely funded by the oil industry. Reading things he’s said about global warming is like perusing a denier’s playbook of nonsense.
So this story comes as no surprise to me, even as it elicits a long sigh: Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) submitted a resolution simply acknowledging that global warming exists and poses a threat to the interests of the United States—which it does, on both counts.
Of course Inhofe blocked it.
Inhofe’s action was so egregious, so ridiculous, that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) took to the floor and magnificently schooled him on reality. Watch:
It should be said that Whitehouse is a new hero of mine. Inhofe’s stance is stupidly dangerous: Global warming is real, the climate is changing faster than it has in thousands of years, and the fault lies in ourselves.
But denial is in the blood of too many of our representatives. It’s become a Republican mantra to say, “I’m not a scientist, but …” as if that excuses them to say any nonsensical thing they want. The proper response to a statement like that is what Charlie Crist, gubernatorial candidate for Florida, said: “I’m not a scientist either, but I can use my brain and I can talk to one.”
If only all politicians did that … and actually listened to them, instead of to the pipeline of dollars flowing to them to which they’re apparently beholden.
Tip o’ the thermometer to Amy Klobuchar and Michael Mann. |
Q:
emails to root - CentOS and Postfix permssion error on maildir file
I'm trying to setup a new mail relay server to send email out from internal servers only over TLS. I've followed this guide http://www.krizna.com/centos/setup-mail-server-centos-7/ to Step 10. I only need to send email not receive.
Anyways I keep getting the following error and cannot figure out how to correct the permissions issue on roots mail folder.
Any ideas? Thanks in advanced!
Error:
Sep 25 11:38:39 mx postfix/local[2894]: warning: perhaps you need to create the maildirs in advance
Sep 25 11:38:39 mx postfix/local[2894]: C16AA4BE1A: to=<root@mydomain.net>, orig_to=<postmaster>, relay=local, delay=0.06, delays=0.03/0.01/0/0.02, dsn=5.2.0, status=bounced (maildir delivery failed: create maildir file /root/mail/tmp/1443199119.P2894.mx.mydomain.com: Permission denied)
Sep 25 11:38:39 mx postfix/bounce[2895]: warning: C16AA4BE1A: undeliverable postmaster notification discarded
Sep 25 11:38:39 mx postfix/qmgr[2806]: C16AA4BE1A: removed
Sep 25 11:38:45 mx postfix/submission/smtpd[2888]: connect from mydesktop.mydomain.local[192.168.1.180]
Sep 25 11:38:45 mx postfix/submission/smtpd[2888]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from mydesktop.mydomain.local[192.168.1.180]: 554 5.7.1 <mygmail@gmail.com>: Recipient address rejected: Access denied; from=<me@mydomain.com> to=<mygmail@gmail.com> proto=ESMTP helo=<ops-001>
Sep 25 11:38:45 mx postfix/submission/smtpd[2888]: disconnect from mydesktop.mydomain.local[192.168.1.180]
A:
Handling emails to root
You SHOULD use aliases to redirect emails to root to normal (non privileged) OS user mailbox.
[ It is very strong SHOULD but you may use other means to redirect]
As general rule:
Do as little as possible with root privileges.
Do not require root privileges when it is not necessary (for security reasons).
|
Christmas Every Day
Christmas Every Day is a 1996 American made-for-television fantasy-comedy film based on the 1892 short story "Christmas Every Day" by William Dean Howells.
It was directed by Larry Peerce, starred Erik von Detten, and originally broadcast on The Family Channel during their first 25 Days of Christmas programming block.
The movie was remade into an ABC Family TV movie in 2006 titled Christmas Do-Over.
Original story by Howells
"Christmas Every Day" is a short story by William Dean Howells about a young American girl, whose wish that Christmas would come daily is granted for an entire year. It was published in Christmas Every Day and Other Stories Told for Children in 1892.
Plot
The film is set in the fictional town of Greenwood Falls, Virginia (just outside Washington, D.C.) and stars Erik von Detten as Billy Jackson, a selfish teenager forced to relive the same Christmas every day. Billy's sister (Yvonne Zima) wishes that it was Christmas every day, and thereafter he has to keep repeating Christmas Day until he realizes the true meaning of the holiday season.
The movie also stars Robert Hays and Bess Armstrong as Billy's parents.
Billy finds the entire experience to be a nightmare. "My life is on rewind," he moans. Each December 25, he must face the school bully (Tyler Mason Buckalew); he must also get involved in his grocer father's dispute with his fat-cat uncle (Robert Curtis Brown) who wants to build a mega-store and ruin the local merchants.
Cast
Robert Hays – Henry Jackson
Bess Armstrong – Molly Jackson
Erik von Detten – Billy Jackson
Yvonne Zima – Sarah Jackson
Robert Curtis Brown – Uncle David Jackson
Robin Riker – Aunt Carolyn Jackson
Julia Whelan – Cousin Jacey Jackson
Tyler Mason Buckalew – Joey Manusco
Terrence Currier – Mr. Charmers (as Terrence P. Currier)
Kara Woods – Diane
Lindsay Austin Hough – Mike
See also
Christmas Do-Over
Time loop, about the general phenomenon (also lists many other examples of it in fiction)
Elmo Saves Christmas – Children's film (coincidentally released in the same year) exploring a common childhood wish of wanting Christmas every day
Groundhog Day – Bill Murray must relive Groundhog Day over and over.
Mickey's Once Upon A Christmas – 1999 Disney direct-to-video animated movie consisting of three short segments, the first of which has Donald Duck's nephews wishing for it to be Christmas every day.
The Fairly OddParents – The first Christmas special of the series involved Timmy Turner wishing that it was Christmas every day.
Pepper Ann – In the episode "TGIF," the episode begins on a Friday morning, and Pepper Ann forgot to study for a test. She fakes sick in order to get out of taking it, but every morning she wakes up, it's Friday all over again.
List of films featuring time loops
References
External links
Category:1996 television films
Category:American Christmas films
Category:Films directed by Larry Peerce
Category:ABC Family original films
Category:Christmas television films
Category:American films
Category:English-language films
Category:Time loop films
Category:MTM Enterprises films
Category:Films based on short fiction
Category:1990s Christmas films |
The breathtaking transformation of the luminous design and architecture of Montreal's famous Notre-Dame Basilica takes place nightly (except Sundays, when the Basilica holds Mass, as Montreal's flagship church). Aura is the perfect title for this powerful, jaw-dropping program combining light, video-projection mapping and uplifting music. Visitors of all ages and walks of life all end up with goose-bumps and awed faces experiencing Aura, and you will, too.
The Jacques Cartier Bridge commemorates the explorer who sailed the mighty St.Lawrence over 400 years ago. But today, this architectural jewel is illuminated nightly using techniques that are nearly futuristic. Real-time social media that tags Montreal animates light particles that dance in spell-binding patterns on the bridge. Creativity, design, architecture, and smart-city infrastructure combine in a one-of-a-kind light spectacle on one of Montreal's most famous landmarks. (Thanks to creative production company Moment Factory for the incredible footage of their productions of Aura and the illuminations of the Jacques Cartier Bridge).
An incredible interactive experience throughout the city streets of Old Montreal. Cite Memoire is the world's largest video projection project, with over 2 dozen installations. Some are interactive or also use augmented reality. They pop up on 'blind walls', sidewalks and even trees, as well as indoor installations and highlight Montreal history, culture and contributions to Canada. An app guides and informs users through an evening exploration of Montreal. |
As for their La Mian series, they have different noodles for you to choose from. This is Dragon Beard La Mian (龙须拉面), but husband says it's not thin enough. But the La Mian is quite tender and Q, so, it's still nice. The flavorful soup served with lots of spring onions, sesame oil and shredded pork. Nice~
Hot & Spicy Seafood soup la mian 海鲜酸辣汤拉面 @ RM13
This is a very nice soup with lots of seafood and veges. Not too spicy with a lil sour, i can only have this soup without the noodles. Slurp~~
They have more interesting food in their menu, hope i can try them all. ^^ |
Q:
How does this code work ASP .NET MVC?
I'm reading Adam's book Pro ASP .NET MVC 4 and I have a question what does this code do?
@Html.RouteLink(link, new
{
controller = "Product",
action = "List",
category = link,
page = 1
},
new {
@class = link == ViewBag.SelectedCategory ? "selected" : null
})
Additionally, I have a controller with the method inside
public PartialViewResult Menu(string category = null)
{
ViewBag.SelectedCategory = category;
IEnumerable<string> categories = repository.Products
.Select(x => x.Category)
.Distinct()
.OrderBy(x => x);
return PartialView(categories);
}
Thank you for your help!
A:
Quote from MSDN:
RouteLink returns an anchor element (a element) that contains the
virtual path of the specified action.
It means it will generate following html a tag
<a href="myserver/Product/List...">linkstring</a>
|
{
"name": "module-builder",
"version": "1.0.0",
"bin": "bin/entry.js",
"description": "A module that facilitates creation and development of Botpress modules",
"main": "index.js",
"author": "Botpress, Inc.",
"license": "AGPL-3.0-only",
"private": true,
"scripts": {
"build": "./node_modules/.bin/babel src --out-dir bin --extensions \".ts,.js\"",
"watch": "./node_modules/.bin/babel src --watch --out-dir bin --extensions \".ts,.tsx\""
},
"dependencies": {
"@babel/cli": "^7.8.4",
"@babel/core": "^7.8.4",
"@babel/plugin-proposal-class-properties": "^7.8.3",
"@babel/plugin-proposal-decorators": "^7.8.3",
"@babel/plugin-proposal-function-bind": "^7.8.3",
"@babel/preset-env": "^7.8.4",
"@babel/preset-react": "^7.8.3",
"@babel/preset-typescript": "^7.8.3",
"babel-loader": "^8.0.2",
"chalk": "^2.4.1",
"chokidar": "^2.0.4",
"copy-webpack-plugin": "^5.1.0",
"cross-env": "^5.2.0",
"css-loader": "^1.0.0",
"css-modules-typescript-loader": "^2.0.2",
"extract-text-webpack-plugin": "^3.0.2",
"file-loader": "^2.0.0",
"fs-extra": "^7.0.0",
"glob": "^7.1.3",
"mkdirp": "^0.5.1",
"node-sass": "^4.13.1",
"raw-loader": "^0.5.1",
"rimraf": "^2.6.2",
"sass-loader": "^7.1.0",
"style-loader": "^0.23.0",
"tar": "^4.4.6",
"ts-loader": "^6.0.0",
"typescript-json-schema": "^0.42.0",
"webpack": "^4.20.2",
"yar": "^9.0.2",
"yargs": "^12.0.2"
},
"devDependencies": {
"@types/babel__core": "^7.0.1",
"@types/chokidar": "^1.7.5",
"@types/glob": "^7.1.0",
"@types/mkdirp": "^0.5.2",
"@types/rimraf": "^2.0.2",
"@types/webpack": "^4.4.12",
"babel-plugin-search-and-replace": "^0.3.0",
"clean-webpack-plugin": "^2.0.1",
"webpack-bundle-analyzer": "^3.6.1"
},
"resolutions": {
"fstream": ">=1.0.12",
"lodash": ">=4.17.19"
}
}
|
Q:
Why is inline styling OK with bootstrap?
I am doing an online course on frontend, I have just started getting to know bootstrap 4 and flexbox. As far as I understand, to do inline styling is something that is considered bad practice. What I mean is this:
<button style="color: white; border: 5px solid red;"> Press me! </button>
And I like that the good practice is to not do this, mainly because of readability. What I don't understand is why the button above is not a good practice but the code here is considered good practice
<button class="btn btn-primary btn-lg d-flex justify-content-center> Press me! </button>
Just to clarify I do understand that the style that I used in the example doesn't do the same thing as the one using bootstrap. I am just interested in why one is OK and the other one is not.
The only thing that I have come up with is that since bootstrap is using class="" it's probably not inline styling.
A:
The first instance is inline styling:
<button style="color: white; border: 5px solid red;"> Press me! </button>
and the second has several classes that are styled in a separate css file:
<button class="btn btn-primary btn-lg d-flex justify-content-center> Press me! </button>
One of the main reasons that it is bad practice to use inline styles is because they can override the styles that exist in the separate CSS file and become hard to track once your CSS becomes more complex. Also, your code becomes more difficult to maintain when you use inline styles. For example, if you had several buttons in your HTML that were each individually styled with inline styles and you decided to change one of the styles you would then have to change the style for each individual button, whereas if you gave them all the same class and styled that class in a separate CSS file, then you can change the color once and it will update all of your buttons.
For example (bad practice):
HTML
<button style="background-color: dodgerblue;">Click here</button>
<button style="background-color: dodgerblue;">Click here</button>
<button style="background-color: dodgerblue;">Click here</button>
<button style="background-color: dodgerblue;">Click here</button>
vs (good practice):
HTML
<button id="btn-one" class="button">Click here</button>
<button id="btn-two" class="button">Click here</button>
<button id="btn-three" class="button">Click here</button>
<button id="btn-four" class="button">Click here</button>
CSS
.button {
background-color: dodgerblue;
}
You can read more about CSS styling here.
|
Blog
Switzerland: Happy Place
Switzerland is home to one of the world’s most thriving economies and also one of the happiest populations on the globe. So what’s the Swiss secret sauce? The tiny, landlocked central European country is known for investing in its people. In fact, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2013 Human Capital Report, Switzerland invests more in the health, education and talent of its people than any other country in the world.
Leveraging the skills and talents of its people is key to the future of any country or institution, and will determine how prepared a country is to face the demands of a competitive global economy, the WEF Human Capital Report explains. WEF’s comprehensive index examined 51 indicators to determine how various countries invest in their people, and how they’re leveraging those investments in terms of productivity and a robust economy.
“Countries that invest in human capital end up getting returns in terms of economic growth,” says Zahidi. “And then countries that have that economic growth are able to reinvest further in human capital. So you have this virtuous cycle that’s established.” Human capital is a function of four pillars: health and wellness, education, work and employment, and what WEF calls an “enabling environment,” which includes factors like legal framework and infrastructure that allow for returns on human capital. Switzerland topped the index by generating high scores across the four pillars, coming in first in the health and wellness and workforce and employment categories, second for enabling environment and fourth in education — which goes a long way in explaining the success of the Swiss economy.
When it comes to health and wellness — taking into account longevity, infant mortality, the general state of physical and mental health of the population, and quality of healthcare — the Index places the Swiss in the number-one spot. Thanks to the Santésuisse system, the Swiss have the lowest government spending on health care in the developed world — and some of the healthiest citizens.
“The Swiss have universal coverage, the healthiest population in the Western Hemisphere, and a government that spends a mere 2.7 percent of GDP on health care: about a third of what ours spends,” writes Forbes’s Avik Roy. “The Swiss system isn’t perfectly transposable onto the United States, but it is vastly superior. And the Swiss do it with a top federal income tax rate of only 11.5 percent, compared to 35 percent in the U.S. of A.”
Switzerland was ranked the world’s third happiest country in the UN’s 2013 World Happiness Report, and it was also rated among the countries with the highest levels of well-being on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s Better Life Index 2013.
Switzerland has the eighth-lowest rate of depression in the world, which may have a sizeable impact on the workforce and economy. Depression is ranked as the leading cause of disability worldwide, and according to World Health Organization estimates, mental health illnesses costs developed countries 3-4 percent of annual GNP. There is one area, however, where significant improvement is needed: Switzerland came in 64th out of 122 countries in terms of stress levels. |
Sunday, December 29, 2013
I can't believe that 2013 is almost over. Overall, this has been a pretty good year. But right now, during these last couple of weeks of the year, it's the perfect time to settle in, enjoy some time with family, and snuggle up with a nice, hot drink.
Remember a couple of weeks ago when I posted these chai spiced scones? I ground up way more cardamom than I needed. On purpose. because I knew that once I tasted those scones, I'd want more chai.
So the first thing I did was make a chai spice mix, called chai masala, using a delicious, spicy and tangy combination of spices.
The best part about the chai masala is that, even though that doesn't look like a lot in that jar, that is enough to last quite a while, because a little goes quite a long way.
Oh, and I'll take this oppotunity to say that both the chai masala recipe and the tea recipe using it come from the amazing Manu's Menu. If you haven't checked it out yet, do yourself a favor and head over there now. I mean... after reading this... or open it in another tab... but it's well worth reading. And adding to your blogroll. And reading again. Aside from being an amazingly talented and inspired cook and baker, Manu happens to also be a super sweet, very nice and beautiful person, inside and out.
So back to the chai...
Once I saw the chai recipe, I knew I had to try it. Chai actually has a special place in my heart. When I was young and unsure about the direction of my life, I worked for one of those big bookstores. You know, the kind with a coffee shop right inside. My favorite treat while I was there was the chai latte. The people who ran the cafe knew this. And when training new cafe employees, the always called me up to "test" how well the newbies made their chai. Ah, the perks of being the manager overseeing the training in a big bookstore...
Back to the point. Again. Once I saw this recipe, I was very excited. Because it would be very nice to be able to make chai with ingredients I always have on hand, rather than needing to buy the pre-made powder or liquid concentrate.
And this was actually really easy to make! Simply bring milk, water, sugar and a bit of the chai masala to a boil...
...then add a couple of tea bags (loose-leaf tea highly encouraged here... I just don't have any...) and let it boil for a few minutes more.
And, seriously, that's it. Strain (if using loose tea) and serve and you have a delicious, sweet, spicy mug of warm goodness.
No joke, this puts the powder and concentrates to shame. I will not be going back to those. This drink definitely has a kick to it, but in a good way. And the best part is that I have comoplete control over the ingredients and thus the flavor. So if you like yours a little sweeter or with a bit more spice, you can totally make it work for you.
This is a fantastic treat to warm you on a cool winter night, and is the perfect beverage to keep you toasty while thinking back on a fun, delicious year.
Put the water, milk, chai masala and sugar into a medium saucepan. Stir together and bring the mixture to a boil.
Add the tea leaves (or tea bags) and stir again. Let it simmer over low heat for a couple of minutes.
Turn the burner off, cover and let it steep for a couple of minutes.
Strain the mixture (especially if you used tea leaves) and serve hot.(note: no specific times for how long to boil, simmer and steep this tea - you will find what works best for how strong you like your flavors)
Friday, December 27, 2013
Happy holidays and HOLY COW can you believe that it's the end of another year??
The December Daring Bakers' Challenge had us all cheering - the lovely and talented Bourbonnatrix of Bourbonnatrix Bakes was our hostess and challenged us to make fun, delicious and creative whoopie pies! Delicious little cake-like cookies sandwiching luscious filling in any flavors we chose... What else is there to say but "Whoopie!"
I was so excited to see this month's challenge. Despite living not so far away from Amish country, where whoopie pies are everywhere to be found, I have never had one, much less made them. But I have always wanted to. So this challenge was the perfect push I needed to finally make some whoopie! Pies. Ahem.
A whoopie pie, for anyone unfamiliar, is essentially a sandwich cookie, but the "cookies" are more cake-like than cookie like, and the filling is usually a soft, fluffy cream. The "traditional" whoopie pie is made with chocolate cakes and a marshmallow cream filling.
For my whoopie pies, I only went half traditional. With the chocolate cakes.
The recipe calls for these to be pretty big, with each scoop consisting of 1/4 cup of batter. That just sounded huge to me, so I went with a smaller option, making single tablespoon sized scoops.
Perfect cakey goodness. (Seriously - they feel and taste like cupcake tops. You know, if you just cut the rounded top off of a chocolate cupcake.)
For the filling, I went non-traditional. Because of little man's egg and dair allergies, traditional cream fillings are a no-no. So instead I made a vegan (aka: allergen free) chocolate chip cookie dough filling. Yup. Chocolate-choclate chip cookie dough whoopie pies.
I didn't get too many pictures of making the filling of assembling the finished pies because I had a few people clamoring for a taste.
Oh. My. Gosh. These were outstanding. And very rich. I am super glad that I went with the smaller sized cookies, because these are decadently rich and filling. Little miss and I actually had to share one for dessert. And that should tell you something!
The next day, however, they made the perfect after school snack.
I have so many other flavor combinations I want to try now, with different flavor cakes and fillings - you can make themed whoopie pies for every season and never repeat yourself!
Bourbonnatrix, thank you so much for th epush I needed to make these amazing little treats.
To see the full challenge as presented to us this month, you can check it out here.
And to see the other delicious whoopie pies baked up in the kitchen this month, you can check those out here.
In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter, brown sugar, espresso coffee powder (if using - I added the cinnamon here), baking powder, baking soda, salt, and vanilla until smooth. Add the egg, again beating until smooth.
Add the cocoa, stirring to combine.
Add the flour to the batter alternately with the milk, beating till smooth. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, and beat again briefly to soften and combine any chunky scrapings.
Drop the dough by the 1/4-cupful onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving plenty of room between the cakes; they'll spread. A muffin scoop works well here. Alternately, you can make smaller ones, as I did, using a 1 tablespoon measure to scoop and shape your cakes.
Bake the cakes in a preheated moderate oven for 15 to 16 minutes, until they're set and firm to the touch. For the smaller sized cakes, check them at about 10 minutes. Remove them from the oven, and cool on the pans. While still lukewarm, use a spatula to separate them from the pan or parchment; then allow to cool completely.
Place flour in a non-stick pan and heat, stirring constantly, until it starts changing color. Immediately transfer to another bowl because, if you live it in the pan, the flour will continue cooking and it could easily burn.
Add butter, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla and salt and mix to combine.
Let cool to room temperature.
Gradually add milk until you get the consistency that you like.
Stir in chocolate chips.
To assemble the whoopie pies:
Spread or pipe the prepared filling onto the flat side of half the cakes. Top with the remaining cakes, flat side towards the filling. Wrap individually, in plastic wrap, until ready to serve.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Over the last year and a half, Sourdough Surprises has had some pretty cool challenges. Some have been difficult, most have been delicious, and all of them have completely opened my eyes to quite how versitile sourdough can be.
This month's Sourdough Surprises had us making something that I have never made before, sourdough or not. Popovers. I remember eating popvers as a child, but back then, we had a popover pan. And I kinda thought you needed one. I mean, it's called a popover pan.
I lerned over the years that you don't actually need the pan, but, somehow, I still never made popovers.
Until now.
And now I can't stop making them.
The batter comes together so quickly that I don't have photos. A few ingredients. a quick stir, then into a preheated muffin tin. Or popover pan, if you are so inclined.
And then, magic happens.
They really popped!
And they were delicious!
Light and airy, these are the perfect little rolls for anything... breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack - any time. My favorite way to eat them was with jam.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. While the oven is preheating, place a muffin pan in the oven to heat as well.
In the microwave or in a small saucepan, warm the milk until it feels just slightly warm to the touch.
Combine the warm milk with the eggs, sourdough starter and salt, then mix in the flour. Don't over-mix; a few small lumps are OK. The batter should be thinner than a pancake batter.
Carefully remove the hot pan from the oven, and spray it thoroughly with non-stick pan spray, or brush it generously with oil or melted butter. Quickly pour the batter into the cups, filling them almost to the top. If you're using a muffin tin, fill cups all the way to the top. Space the popovers around so there are empty cups among the full ones; this leaves more room for expansion.
Bake the popovers for 15 minutes, then reduce the oven heat to 375°F and bake for an additional 15 to 20 minutes, until popovers are golden brown.
Remove the popovers from the oven and serve immediately.
Monday, December 16, 2013
I was so excited to receive my Secret Recipe Club assignment this month. I was assigned to The Bitchin' Kitchen, a blog that I drool over every single month on our groups posting day. Needless to say, I went right over and started going through all of the awesome recipes that have been tempting me for months.
I actually kind of wanted to make... oh... everything she has made. But I quickly found one recipe that just begged me to be made right away - Chai Spiced Scones. I love the warm, sweet, spicy flavor of chai, and it has always been a big treat for me. And even just reading the recipes, I knew that these would be delicious.
The hardest part of the process was the spice mix. Which was only hard because I don't have ground cardamom. All I have is whole cardamom pods. It's not actually difficult to prepare the ground spice, but it is pretty time consuming.
Little man helped me with this. I cracked each pod, he helped me remove the seeds from inside the green pods...
...and once we had a good amount, I ground it all in my mini-blender.
As I said, not actually hard, just time consuming. But our hands smelled delicious afterwards.
Anyway, once that was done, making the scones was a snap. Even though the recipe didn't call for it, I decided to make the scone dough in my new food processor. Because I can.
The spices looked so cool all lined up. And within a couple of minutes, the dough was ready!
I then carefully shaped the dough into a big circle, dusted the top with sugar and cut it into wedges.
And they baked up beautifully. And smelled even better than our cardamom hands.
Little man and I loved these. Little miss... well... she doesn't seem to be a cardamom fan, and claimed that these were "too cardamom-y" for her.
These really do pack all of the spicy, delicious goodness of a chai latte, and make a perfect breakfast or afternoon treat.
And, Ellie, thank you for your awesome blog. I will definitely be trying many more of your delicious recipes!!
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a piece of parchment paper.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and cardamom. Whisk together until all the dry ingredients are incorporated evenly. I did this in my food processor, just pulsing a couple of times to incorporate the dry ingredients.
Cut the cold butter into chunks and add it to the dry ingredients. Using your hands, rub the butter into the flour mixture until the flour has a grainy appearance. Again, this just took a few pulses of the food processor.
In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk.
Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture. Stir everything together until it forms one lump of very moist dough. If the dough is still crumbly and flour remains in the bottom of the bowl, add a small amount of water (about 1/2 to 1 tablespoon) to make the dough come together. A few more pulses of the food processor brought the dough together no problem, though I did need to add about half a tablespoon of extra water.
Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and shape it into one flat disc, about 1-inch thick. (Shape the dough into two flat discs if you are making mini scones.)
Sprinkle the top of the dough with the extra sugar.
Cut the disc(s) into 8 wedge-shaped pieces.
Place the wedges on the baking sheet. Bake the scones for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly golden brown on top.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
December’s Daring Cooks’ Challenge had us on a roll! Olga from http://www.effortnesslessly.blogspot.com/ challenged us to make stuffed cabbage rolls using her Ukrainian heritage to inspire us. Filled with meat, fish or vegetables, flexibility and creativity were the name of the game to get us rolling!
Would you believe that I'd never made cabbage rolls before?
Actually, I'd never even eaten one before. For some reason, I thought I wouldn't like them.
Enter this month's challenge and let me tell you, I was totally wrong!
Our hostess provided us with several recipes, but I decided to go for the classic meat version. They were pretty easy to make, but it did require a little bit of time and planning.
I started out preparing the filling. While I set some rice to par-cook in a pot, I sauteed some onions and carrots in a pan.
Once the veggies cooles, I added them to a combination of ground beef and ground pork, along with some more chopped onion.
Then I added in the half-cooked (and cooled!) rice...
...and mixed it all together.
I covered the filling mix with plastic wrap, set it in the fridge, washed all of the dishes, then picked little miss up from school.
And then came the interesting part - putting them together!
Olga provided us with an interesting way of breaking down the cabbage for its leaves. Rather than separating the leaves and then blanching them (to soften them for easier rolling), she had us blanch the whole cabbage first.
Then, once the whole things was a bit softened up, the leaves are easier to pull off!
Then it's just a matter of putting a good scoop of filling at the bottom of each leaf...
...and rolling them up!
Once my tray was all filled up...
I was ready for the final element - a quick tomato sauce.
And after a little more than an hour covered in the oven, I was delighted by the sight and smell of these little beauties.
I have never been happier to have been wrong in my entire life. These were so delicious, I have no idea what I must have been thinking to never have tried these before.
And the whole family enjoyed them, too.
These are perfect comfort food, and I know I'll be making them many more times in the future.
Olga, thank you so much for this challenge and for being such a wonderful hostess.
To see the full challenge as it was presented this month, check it out here.
And to see the deliciousness cooked up in the kitchen this month, check them out here.
Pre-cook rice:
In a large pot, bring about 2 1/4 cups of water to a boil.
Add the rice and cook, stirring occasionally, for 6 minutes.
Drain the rice using a colander and set aside.
Making Stuffing:
Finely chop one onion. Using a coarse grater, grate the carrots. With 3 tablespoons of olive oil, in a skillet, cook the chopped onion and grated carrots for about 5 minutes, just until soft. Allow to cool.
Chop the other onion.
In a large bowl, combine the ground meat, the cooked onion and carrots, the raw onion and the cooled par-cooked rice. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of black pepper and combine everything (by hand) until you have a uniform mixture.
Pre-cook cabbage and prepare cabbage leaves:
Using a large chef’s knife, remove core of the cabbage. Please be careful doing this. You don't have to cut out too much.
To determine how much water exactly you will need to cook the whole cabbage, place your cabbage in a large pot and pour in enough cold water to cover the whole cabbage entirely. Remove cabbage from the water now place the pot with the water in it on the stove top.
Bring the water to a boil over high heat. Stick grill fork firmly into the cored center part of the cabbage and carefully place your cabbage into the boiling water, cored-side up. Be cautious not to splash the hot water!
Let the cabbage cook for about 5 minutes. During the entire process of cooking the cabbage and separating leaves keep heat on its lowest setting so as to have the water barely boiling or near the boiling point.
To separate the leaves, you can keep the cabbage in the pot at all times and use a long-handled grilling fork, sticking it into the core of the cabbage and using a regular fork or tongs to separate and remove the leaves, one by one, then transferring them onto a large plate. To separate the leaves right in the pot, pick a leaf at its thickest end and lift cabbage with your grill fork just a little bit, so as to release the bottom part of the leaf. While the whole process seems intimidating, it’s actually easy and even fun to do. Just be careful and keep the water barely simmering (or just below boiling point). After the first couple of leaves, you'll find your rhythm and it works really nicely.
When leaves are cool enough to handle, cut off the tough ribs on each leaf. Now, the leaves are ready for filling.
Rolling Cabbage Leaves:
Place about one heaping tablespoon of stuffing on a cabbage leave, closer to the tough edge. Roll leaf, envelop-style, tucking sides inside. (I folded the bottom up, then folded each of the sides in, then rolled it up. It really does follow the shape of the leaf, and goes quite quickly.)
Place rolls, seam side down, into a oven proof dish.
Continue stuffing until you run out of leaves or stuffing. I had about twice as much stuffing as I needed for the number of leaves I had, so I rolled the extra stuffing into regular meatballs and cooked them (in a separate baking dish) the same way as the wrapped ones.
Making sauce and finishing cooking cabbage rolls:
Finely mince garlic. Take a large pan and, using the remaining olive oil, cook garlic for one minute, stirring.
Add tomato puree. Cook, stirring for another minute and then add enough water to have about 8 cups of sauce. Bring to a boil and cook, stirring for 2-3 minutes.
Season sauce with a 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, bay leaves (if using) and about 3 tablespoons of sugar (adjust sugar depending on acidity of your tomato puree). Taste and adjust seasoning. Sauce shouldn’t be bland – remember that the cabbage leaves are not salted.
Pour sauce on top of the cabbage rolls. It should almost completely cover the rolls. If there is not enough sauce, add water right into the pot with the cabbage rolls.
Monday, December 2, 2013
I was even more surprised when I opened it. My friend had sent me a present. A culmination of birthdays and Christmases and any other occasion you can think of, I think.
I am now the (very) proud owner of a beautiful food processor.
This is a very good friend who knows me very well. And is very thoughtful. And is truly appreciated.
After thanking my friend profusely, I immediately started to search for what recipes I could now make! Holy smokes, there is so much that you can do in a food processor. Seriously, I have so many recipes bookmarked and pinned right now...
But the recipe that caught my eye as a must try was for brioche. Because... brioche? In a food processor? And the recipe says it's easy?? How in the world can that not be tried as soon as possible??
And, believe it or not, it really is easy to make!!
Aside from dissolving the yeast into some warm milk, absolutely everything about this dough is prepared right in the food processor.
And the resulting dough is beautifully soft, smooth and very sticky.
You don't even have to move the dough to let it rise! Just keep the lid on the machine and let it sit!! I couldn't believe that worked!
Now, you may remember that little miss's favorite part about baking bread is punching down the dough after it's risen. She even loves doing that with the food processor version of bread dough.
Yup! Just give it a quick pulse and it's ready to go! Just turn the dough out onto a floured work surface (but be careful of the dough blade that gets stuck in there!! See it??)...
...and start shaping balls of dough.
The dough balls are placed into prepared loaf pans, where they rise once more...
...and that's it! Pop them into the oven for a mere 15 minutes, and you have...
...absolutely beautiful, golden, wonderful-smelling brioche bread!
And it really feels and tastes like brioche, too - a deliciously rich, smooth crumb that practically melts in your mouth with each bite.
Now I totally want to try this dough for cinnamon buns. I bet those would be delicious!!
And, in case you're wondering, I've used the food processor probably a dozen times already. In a week. I have plenty more food processor recipes to share. Because I'm totally addicted to using it.
I am a very lucky girl.
As for this amazing friend of mine? You know who you are. You know I love you!
Dissolve yeast in the milk. Fit the food processor with the dough blade (This is usually the one with shorter, blunter blades). Place 1 cup of the flour, the yeast and milk mixture, salt, sugar, and butter into the food processor. Pulse a few times until it looks mostly incorporated - it will look like a crumble topping for a pie.
With the processor on, use the feed tube to add the remaining flour and each of the eggs, one at a time. Process the mixture until the dough starts to come together and pull away from the sides of the bowl. Turn the power off, and let the dough rise in the food processor for about an hour, or until it has doubled in size.
Pulse the dough a time or two to “punch it down.”
Grease two 9×5″ loaf pans.
Take the dough and divide it into 16 equal parts. Roll each section of dough into a small ball and line the bottom of each loaf pan with 8 balls of dough. Cover with greased plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in size, about an hour.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Brush lightly with egg wash (1 egg beaten with a teaspoon of water), if desired. Bake for 15-20 minutes in preheated oven. Place pan on its side on a cooling rack for cooling, then remove when you feel like you’ve waited long enough, about 3-4 minutes. Serve warm.
* To make individual brioches, butter 16-20 brioche molds, or line a muffin tin with paper liners. Follow the same baking instructions as above, but reduce cooking time to 12-14 minutes. |
Public officer acted contrary to ministerial instructions
I refer to an article published on page 3 of the Guyana Times of December 1 under the caption ‘Felix sends GRO’s Head on leave,’ and one published on page 4 of the Kaieteur News on December 2 under the caption ‘PPP castigates Ministry of Citizenship.’
The PPP, through its General Secretary, seems inclined to be the advocate of the Registrar General who has been sent on leave for administrative reasons. It seems that the idea being posited is that she has been wronged by this administration.
Let me say from the outset that employees at all levels in the public service structure are subject to its rules and regulations. The General Registrar reports to the subject Minister and is expected to follow instruction from same. There is a reason these structures are in place: to ensure the smooth functioning of our complex bureaucratic system. Without them chaos is the likely result, and our ability to perform our duties would be stymied with no clear line of communication.
In this particular instance it was the Registrar General who raised an issue with the Minister and he instructed her not to proceed in the direction she outlined. She was directed on the course of action to follow. This officer then acted contrary to his instructions and as a consequence she was sent on leave for the purpose of investigating whether she was in contravention of her contracted role.
It is not the purpose of the Department of Citizenship to manipulate the voters’ list as Mr Rohee has declared, but to “develop to its fullest potential, Guyana’s Registration and Immigration Service” to quote from my Budget speech in the National Assembly on Monday, 17th August, 2015. This includes ensuring that every citizen born in this country is registered appropriately, and that every death is also so registered.
Unfortunately, it seems, the last administration did not deem this to be a priority and there were several instances found of persons being registered multiple times under different names. I find it manipulative and duplicitous to suggest that what seems to have been the modus operandi of the previous government is this administration’s way of doing business. We would not countenance any suggestion that our intentions are anything but that which admits to the fullest scrutiny. This administration should be allowed to do the job which the last one so flagrantly failed to perform in 23 years.
What I will not accept is the PPP/C attacking my character or my role as Minister of Citizenship. I have always been forthright and will not countenance anyone maligning my integrity. I have never contravened the attitudes of good behaviour in the discharge of my public office and I am willing to be subject to any scrutiny in this regard. |
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MANPEI is also great for supper and drinking, providing a wide selection of sake, shochu, liquor, beer, and many more! MANPEI is open till 1am, so bring your friends, grab a beer, and have an enjoyable night at MANPEI! Don't forget to order ODEN or HIMONO: goes well with drinks! |
Belabored Podcast #160: When One Job Isn’t Enough Belabored Podcast #160: When One Job Isn’t Enough In cities across the country, Marriott hotel workers are forced to work second jobs to pay the bills. We talk with two worker-organizers planning to strike for a fairer contract. Workers in Boston rally for the One Job Should Be Enough campaign on Labor Day (UNITE HERE)
This week we report from the frontlines of UNITE HERE’s One Job Should Be Enough campaign. Marriott hotel workers in several cities have voted to strike as they press for a fair contract that provides what they need to support their families without having to take on extra jobs just to survive. They’re also demanding that the global hotel chain address sexual harassment, health and safety issues, and job security so that they can get a fair share of its mega profits.
In other news, we look at the prospect of a four-day workweek, another teachers’ strike in PA, the latest anti-worker shenanigans at the NLRB, and striking against sexual harassment at McDonald’s. With recommended reading on Brett Kavanaugh, and the forgotten victims of Wall Street.
This week’s show was supported by our monthly sustaining members. If you think our work is worth supporting as we soldier on through Trumplandia, please consider becoming a member today. If you’re interested in advertising on the show, please email ads@dissentmagazine.org. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, email us at belabored@dissentmagazine.org.
News
Unions call for four-day working week (BBC)
Time on Our Side: Why We All Need a Shorter Working Week (New Economics Foundation)
ESEA Pride
NLRB Proposes New Joint Employer Standard (AP)
Joint Employer NPRM: Hy-Brand Returns (On Labor)
What’s next for #MeToo? The McDonald’s strikes have an answer. (Vox)
Conversation
Nia Winston, President Local 24 UNITE HERE
Gemma Weinstein, Local 5 UNITE HERE
One Job Should Be Enough
Thousands Of Marriott Workers To Vote On Multi-City Strike (Huffington Post)
When A Full-Time Job Isn’t Enough To Make It (NPR)
“I’m Ready To Fight”: Thousands Of Marriott Workers Will Protest For Safer Conditions This Week (Buzzfeed)
Argh, I Wish I’d Written That!
Michelle: David Dayen, Retrospectives of the Financial Crisis Are Leaving Out the Most Important Part—Its Victims (In These Times)
Sarah: Anita Hill, How to Get the Kavanaugh Hearings Right (New York Times) |
Facile synthesis and X-ray structure of alkoxy-functionalized dibenzo[fg,op]naphthacenes.
[structure: see text] 1,3-Bis(2-bromophenyl)-2,5-diphenylbenzenes are readily available by the condensation of phenylacetates with the corresponding pyrylium salts and undergo a palladium-catalyzed dehydrohalogenation to give functionalized dibenzo[fg,op]naphthacenes. |
Hamilton was heard calling Verstappen “a dickhead”, prompting questions about it in the post-race press conference – when Sebastian Vettel leapt to Hamilton’s defence.
Appearing on the Dutch TV show Peptalk on Ziggo Sport on Monday night, Verstappen was shown this clip via Skype in his hotel room in Bahrain.
After hearing what was said, Verstappen remarked: “He is just out of the car there. Then those things can happen. If you are just out of the car, you are still full of adrenaline, so yeah.”
Check out Top 10 moments from Bahrain...
Verstappen refuted suggestions that he’d been too impatient in his move on Hamilton, which gave him a puncture and damaged his differential, ultimately forcing him to retire.
“I was really close behind and there was a chance to overtake, so I thought it was a good opportunity,” he said. “Our car was great. Then I’m not going to stay behind him.
“I knew we had a very good car for the race, so I knew we would be able to fight them.”
When asked if he was worried about Red Bull teammate Daniel Ricciardo’s exit with a sudden electrical failure, Verstappen replied: “I think I had the same problem during testing. After that it didn’t return, but unfortunately this time in the race it did.
“I think overall it’s reasonably OK. The situation is better than last year, that’s for sure. But yeah, it’s not ideal.” |
REDDIT ADMINS AND DEFAULT MODS HAVE BEEN CONSPIRING HOW BEST TO CENSOR US
/u/spez is the CEO of the 27th largest website in the world. He controls about 6.25% of Conde Nast/Advance Publications' media arsenal. (Same people that run Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker. That pretentious #.)
What he did: He edited comments critical of himself without leaving a trace. It was found out because the comments were changed in an obvious manner. He intended this to be a joke. The problem is there was no trace they were edited.
What this means: The Admins have this capability. This should not be a surprise. The Admins use this capability. This ought to be a bit of a surprise. They do it to comments critical of themselves as a joke. Does this mean they do it hide things critical of their Advance Overlords? Have they ever done this to 'frame' someone for breaking site rules to ban them or a subreddit?
More pure implications: The CEO of a major media company edited the comments of Trump supporters because he did not like what they had to say. He did this after allowing the Washington Post to cite the thread he changed comments in for an article. This calls into question the integrity of the website. Not in a "muh free spech" sense, but in a legal sense. How many court cases are riding on user history submitted as evidence? Stonetear as just one example.
Reddit allows illegal activities like /r/fakeid to persist, but edits the comments of Trump supporters because they were mean to the CEO personally? I'm sorry Spez (not really, actually, though I understand), but I'm pretty sure you're done here. Conde Nast isn't going to tolerate the #storm you've brewed. PR and legal wise, huge # up. Possibly the biggest in this site's history. One more thing.... Impersonating another person, i.e. user, violates reddit TOS. The CEO violating TOS may be seen as a breach of contract leaving reddit liable to anyone who had their comment altered.
[stonetear] was an admin for the infamous Clinton e-mail server. During the investigation he was offered immunity but still refused to testify. Recently it was found that a couple years ago, he posted on Reddit asking for help sanitizing some data from the e-mail archives. Depending on who you ask, the request was anywhere from completely innocuous (replacing e-mail addresses with generic placeholders but keeping the names intact) or highly illegal. As soon as this was found out, he went through deleting every one of his posts. So now the investigations are firing back up because of possible new evidence and Reddit is apparently getting asked to cooperate by turning over the deleted posts.
Credit to Velostodon of reddit:Reddit CEO /u/spez was critical of The_Donald sub posts. Many members found themselves shadowbanned ( had their posts hidden from other members without any indication of being banned) Spez received posts swearing at him "f**k u/spez/" (lots and lots of swearing on reddit) and changed his name to The_Donald to read "f**k The_Donald"Although it may seem a minor issue the implications of this are huge: posts from Reddit have in the past been used as admissible evidence in court. If this evidence could be changed or tampered with it perverts the course of justice. Most recently was the case of stonetear;cred to throwaway234f32423dfTheoretically his lawyers can now argue that the evidence against stonetear could have been changed to implicate him or completely change his posts to downplay his involvement.I just wonder what else could have been secretly been changed to incriminate redditors to get them banned, to change the record etc. I'm so sick of propaganda on one side of the mediascape and accusations of fake news on the other. When did journos and media platforms loose their integrity. |
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364 S.C. 632 (2005)
615 S.E.2d 740
Joseph W. PAGE, Petitioner,
v.
STATE of South Carolina, Respondent.
No. 26000.
Supreme Court of South Carolina.
Submitted May 18, 2005.
Decided June 13, 2005.
*634 Acting Deputy Chief Attorney Wanda P. Hagler, of Columbia, for Petitioner.
Attorney General Henry Dargan McMaster, Chief Deputy Attorney General John W. McIntosh, Assistant Deputy Attorney General Donald J. Zelenka, Assistant Attorney General Melody J. Brown, of Columbia, for Respondent.
*633 Justice BURNETT:
Joseph W. Page (Petitioner) pled guilty to possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine (PWID), criminal sexual conduct (CSC), and assault and battery with intent to kill (ABIK). Pursuant to a negotiated plea agreement that included a recommended cap of twenty years' imprisonment, Petitioner was sentenced to imprisonment for ten years for PWID and nineteen years for CSC and ABIK to be served concurrently. The post-conviction relief (PCR) judge denied Petitioner's request for relief. We affirm.
FACTUAL BACKGROUND
Petitioner argues he did not enter a guilty plea knowingly and voluntarily because he was not informed of possible *635 liability under the South Carolina Sexually Violent Predator Act (SVPA). S.C.Code Ann. §§ 44-48-10 to -170 (Supp.2004). We disagree.
At the PCR hearing, Petitioner testified he would not have pled guilty to CSC and ABIK if he had known about the SVPA. At the PCR proceeding, plea counsel conceded he did not recall informing Petitioner of the SVPA. The trial judge did not discuss the SVPA with Petitioner before accepting his plea.
ISSUE
Was Petitioner's plea entered knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently where Petitioner was not informed he would be potentially liable under the Sexually Violent Predator Act after completing his sentence?
STANDARD OF REVIEW
In order to establish a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, a PCR applicant must prove counsel's performance was deficient and the deficient performance prejudiced the applicant's case. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984); Cherry v. State, 300 S.C. 115, 386 S.E.2d 624 (1989). Where there has been a guilty plea, the applicant must prove counsel's representation fell below the standard of reasonableness and, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, there is a reasonable probability he would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial. Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, 106 S.Ct. 366, 88 L.Ed.2d 203 (1985); Alexander v. State, 303 S.C. 539, 402 S.E.2d 484 (1991). In determining guilty plea issues, it is proper to consider the guilty plea transcript as well as evidence at the PCR hearing. Harres v. Leeke, 282 S.C. 131, 318 S.E.2d 360 (1984).
The Court will uphold the findings of the PCR judge when there is any evidence of probative value to support them. Caprood v. State, 338 S.C. 103, 525 S.E.2d 514 (2000); Cherry v. State, supra. The Court will not uphold the findings when there is no probative evidence to support them. Holland v. State, 322 S.C. 111, 470 S.E.2d 378 (1996).
*636 However, in a case raising a novel issue of law, the appellate court is free to decide the question of law with no particular deference to the trial court. Osprey v. Cabana Ltd. Partn., 340 S.C. 367, 372, 532 S.E.2d 269, 272 (2000); I'On v. Town of Mt. Pleasant, 338 S.C. 406, 411, 526 S.E.2d 716, 718 (2000). The Court will reverse the PCR judge's decision when it is controlled by an error of law. Sheppard v. State, 357 S.C. 646, 651, 594 S.E.2d 462, 465 (2004); Pierce v. State, 338 S.C. 139, 145, 526 S.E.2d 222, 225 (2000).
LAW/ANALYSIS
Petitioner's primary contention is that his counsel failed to inform him his CSC conviction would make him eligible for possible civil commitment under the SVPA as a "sexually violent predator."[1] Petitioner asserts he should have been informed of his potential for civil commitment as a consequence of his plea, and counsel's failure to advise him resulted in a plea that was not knowing and voluntary.
The SVPA, S.C.Code Ann. §§ 44-48-10 to -170 (Supp.2004), is a civil commitment procedure for the long-term care and treatment of sexually violent predators. S.C.Code Ann. § 44-48-20; see Kansas v. Hendricks, 521 U.S. 346, 117 S.Ct. 2072, 138 L.Ed.2d 501 (1997) (upholding Kansas' Sexually Violent Predator Act, from which South Carolina's law is patterned); In re Matthews, 345 S.C. 638, 550 S.E.2d 311 (2001); State v. Gaster, 349 S.C. 545, 564 S.E.2d 87 (2002). The SVPA provides that one hundred eighty days before a person convicted of a sexually violent offense is released from confinement, the agency releasing the prisoner gives written notice to a multi-disciplinary team and the Attorney General. S.C.Code Ann. § 44-48-40(A). Within thirty days of receiving notice, the multi-disciplinary team, which is appointed by the Director of the Department of Corrections, assesses whether the person satisfies the definition of a sexually violent predator. If it is determined the person satisfies the definition of a sexually *637 violent predator, the multidisciplinary team must forward a report of the assessment to the prosecutor's review committee. S.C.Code Ann. § 44-48-50. The prosecutor's review committee, which is appointed by the Attorney General, determines whether probable cause exists to believe the person is a sexually violent predator. S.C.Code Ann. § 44-48-60.
If the prosecutor's review committee determines probable cause exists to support the allegation, the Attorney General may file a petition with the court in the jurisdiction in which the person committed the offense to request that the court make a probable cause determination as to whether the person is a sexually violent predator. S.C.Code Ann. § 44-48-70. If the probable cause determination is made, the person is transferred to a secure facility for evaluation. S.C.Code Ann. § 44-48-80(D). Within sixty days of the probable cause hearing, a trial is conducted to determine whether the person is a sexually violent predator. The person or Attorney General may request a jury trial. S.C.Code Ann. § 44-48-90. The court or jury shall determine whether, beyond a reasonable doubt, the person is a sexually violent predator. S.C.Code Ann. § 44-48-100.
We conclude Petitioner's counsel had no duty to inform him about the civil commitment process under the SVPA. Although eligibility for civil commitment under the SVPA is triggered by conviction of a "sexually violent offense," civil commitment can be imposed only after testing, evaluation, a probable cause hearing, and a trial by either the court or jury. No one can be civilly committed as a "sexually violent predator" unless the State proves beyond a reasonable doubt the person suffers from a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes the person likely to engage in sexual violence if not confined in a secure facility. Consequently, a person may be convicted of a predicate offense, and yet not be committed under the SVPA because the evidence is not sufficient to find that his or her present mental condition creates a likelihood of future sexually violent behavior. Thus, any possible civil commitment of Petitioner would not flow directly from his guilty plea, but rather from a separate civil proceeding as a collateral consequence.
"The distinction between `direct' and `collateral' consequences of a plea . . . turns on whether the result represents a *638 definite, immediate and largely automatic effect on the range of the defendant's punishment." Cuthrell v. Director, 475 F.2d 1364, 1366-67 (4th Cir.1973) (refusing to invalidate a plea where the court had failed to advise the defendant that he might be civilly committed, even though commitment flowing from the crime he committed was, for all intents and purposes, automatic); Brown v. State, 306 S.C. 381, 382, 412 S.E.2d 399, 400 (1991) ("The imposition of a sentence may have a number of collateral consequences . . . and a plea of guilty is not rendered involuntary in a constitutional sense if the defendant is not informed of the collateral consequences.").
Other courts have concluded trial counsel does not have an obligation to inform a defendant of possible commitment under the SVPA. For example, in Bussell v. State, 25 Kan.App.2d 424, 963 P.2d 1250 (1998), the Kansas Court of Appeals concluded trial counsel was not ineffective in failing to advise the defendant about the KSVPA. In that case, the court stated:
It is unclear now and will remain so in the future whether the KSVPA will ever apply to defendant because he has not yet finished his criminal sentence. The uncertainty inherent in predicting whether the KSVPA will ever be invoked against defendant is such that the failure of his counsel to advise him of potential consequences cannot be said to be constitutionally deficient.
Id. at 1254; see also Pearman v. State, 764 So.2d 739 (Fla. App.2000); Martin v. Reinstein, 195 Ariz. 293, 987 P.2d 779 (Ct.App.1999); State v. Bollig, 224 Wis.2d 621, 593 N.W.2d 67 (Ct.App.1999); In re Paschke, 80 Wash.App. 439, 909 P.2d 1328 (1996).
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude a defendant's possible commitment under the Sexually Violent Predator Act is a collateral consequence of sentencing pursuant to a guilty plea or a conviction. Therefore counsel was under no obligation to inform Petitioner of possible commitment under the SVPA.
AFFIRMED.
TOAL, C.J., MOORE, WALLER and PLEICONES, JJ., concur.
NOTES
[1] S.C.Code Ann. § 44-48-30(1)(a) provides:
(1) "Sexually violent predator" means a person who:
(a) has been convicted of a sexually violent offense; and
(b) suffers from a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes the person likely to engage in acts of sexual violence if not confined in a secure facility for long-term control, care, and treatment.
|
Two new monoclonal antibodies provide immunohistochemical evidence for the unique biochemical similarity of the mouse globus pallidus, entopeduncular nucleus and substantia nigra pars reticulata.
Similarities in cellular morphology, afferentation, efferentation, and neurotransmitter content between the internal and external parts of the pallidum and the substantia nigra pars reticulata have long been noted. Here we present evidence that the globus pallidus, entopedunucular nucleus and substantia nigra pars reticulata are more closely related to each other antigenically than to any other anatomical subdivision in the murine central nervous system. In a monoclonal antibody library composed of 20 distinctive lines selected from 300 hybridomas screened immunohistochemically on mouse brain sagittal sections we found two antibodies whose staining patterns distinguish the pallidum and substantia nigra pars reticulata from all other brain gray matter regions but stain these two divisions similarly. One monoclonal antibody, F1-134, stains all brain gray matter regions moderately but gives intense staining of the globus pallidus, entopeduncular nucleus, and substantia nigra pars reticulata only. Another monoclonal antibody, F1-20, stains different brain gray matter regions to varying degrees but shows a complete and exclusive exclusion of staining from the globus pallidus, entopeduncular nucleus and substantia nigra pars reticulata. These results support the tripartite pallidum hypothesis. This study also provides an example of how the monoclonal antibody library strategy can be applied to general problems of brain organization. |
package cn.anline.zone.serve.console.v1.controller;
import act.controller.Controller;
import static act.controller.Controller.Util.*;
import act.db.ebean.EbeanDao;
import cn.anline.zone.serve.console.v1.config.Constant;
import cn.anline.zone.serve.console.v1.model.Ann_blog_category;
import org.osgl.mvc.annotation.GetAction;
import org.osgl.mvc.result.RenderJSON;
import javax.inject.Inject;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.List;
/**
* 博客分类接口控制器
*/
@Controller("blog/category")
public class BlogCategoryController extends V1BaseController {
@Inject
EbeanDao<Long,Ann_blog_category> annBlogCategoryEbeanDao;
/**
* 获取顶级主分类接口
* @return
*/
@GetAction("list")
public RenderJSON list(){
List<Ann_blog_category> ann_blog_categories = annBlogCategoryEbeanDao.q("level",0).findList();
v1BaseBean.setData(ann_blog_categories);
v1BaseBean.setTime(new Date().getTime());
v1BaseBean.setExp(Constant.exp+new Date().getTime());
v1BaseBean.setStatus(0);
v1BaseBean.setMsg("主分类列表获取成功！");
v1BaseBean.setResult(ann_blog_categories.size());
return json(v1BaseBean);
}
/**
* 子分类接口
* @param id 父级ID
* @return
*/
@GetAction("sub/{id}")
public RenderJSON sub(Integer id){
List<Ann_blog_category> ann_blog_categories = annBlogCategoryEbeanDao.q("pid",id).findList();
v1BaseBean.setData(ann_blog_categories);
v1BaseBean.setTime(new Date().getTime());
v1BaseBean.setExp(Constant.exp+new Date().getTime());
v1BaseBean.setStatus(0);
v1BaseBean.setMsg("子分类列表获取成功！");
v1BaseBean.setResult(ann_blog_categories.size());
return json(v1BaseBean);
}
}
|
Data-entropy analysis of renal transplantation data.
The terms entropy and robustness are currently used by biomedical investigators to predict the risk of change in a system. The former is the mathematical identification of uncertainty about a system, while the latter is the likelihood of system stability. We conducted an entropy-based analysis of our renal transplantation data set. The input variables in our model included donors and recipients, past medical history, and other clinical data. The output variables were 6- month, 1-year, and 2- year patient and graft survivals. Data-entropy analysis was performed with Ontonix s.r.l. software (www.ontonix.com). The total input and output entropy was 13.14 and 1.54, respectively. The mean input and output robustness was 39.14% and 29.54%. The robustness amplification index was 0.75. The minimum entropy of the input variables was reported for a history of myocardial infarction (0.07), vascular disease (0.1), bladder residual (0.13), or urologic surgery (0.15). The minimum entropy of the output variables was 0.20 for 6-month patient survival; 0.22 for 1-year patient survival; 0.25 for 6-month graft survival; 0.27 for 1-year graft survival; 0.28 for 2-year patient survival; and 0.32 for 2-year graft survival. Data-entropy analysis demonstrated a high stability of our transplantation data set. Nevertheless, long-term outcomes, especially those of graft survival, were slightly more unpredictable. |
Q:
web scraping in R using xpathSApply
I've read all previous questions about web scraping in R but couldn't solve my problem. I want to get names of the pictures, (see URL below) and detailed information about every picture.
I realize that have to use xpathSApply and a loop to take info about every picture. But now i have problem even with taking the name of one from http://www.wikiart.org/en/search/monet/11
library(XML)
url = "http://www.wikiart.org/en/search/monet/1#supersized-search-211804"
doc = htmlTreeParse(url, useInternalNodes=T)
pictureName = xpathSApply(doc,"//a[contains(@href, 'title')]",xmlValue)
pictureName
## list()
Why does it give me list()?
A:
Try this:
pictureNames <- xpathSApply(doc,"//a[@class='big rimage']/@title", unname)
giving:
> head(pictureNames)
[1] "Camille and Jean Monet in the Garden at Argenteuil - Claude Monet"
[2] "Camille Monet at the Window, Argentuile - Claude Monet"
[3] "Camille Monet in the Garden - Claude Monet"
[4] "Camille Monet in the Garden at the House in Argenteuil - Claude Monet"
[5] "Camille Monet on a Garden Bench - Claude Monet"
[6] "Camille Monet On Her Deathbed - Claude Monet"
|
Q:
Skip CSS transition with jQuery
I want to skip a CSS transition under certain conditions. I'd prefer not to add special no-transition styles to my stylesheet, or duplicate my stylesheet's styles in my JavaScript. So far, the best solution I've found is
if (condition) {
$el.css({'-webkit-transition-duration': '0s'});
setTimeout(function() {
$el.css({'-webkit-transition-duration': ''});
}, 0);
};
$el.addClass('transitionClass');
(I've omitted the non-WebKit CSS for brevity. See it in action at http://jsfiddle.net/TrevorBurnham/zZBhx/.)
I don't like this because
It's verbose, and
It introduces potential race conditions, e.g. if another timeout is on the queue that will add or remove a class on $el.
Is there a better way?
A:
Here is a reliable method for skipping an element's CSS transition, the code comes from Mozilla's X-Tag Web Components library:
var prefix = (function () {
var styles = window.getComputedStyle(document.documentElement, ''),
pre = (Array.prototype.slice
.call(styles)
.join('')
.match(/-(moz|webkit|ms)-/) || (styles.OLink === '' && ['', 'o'])
)[1];
return {
dom: pre == 'ms' ? pre.toUpperCase() : pre,
lowercase: pre,
css: '-' + pre + '-',
js: pre[0].toUpperCase() + pre.substr(1)
};
})();
var requestFrame = (function(){
var raf = window.requestAnimationFrame ||
window[prefix.lowercase + 'RequestAnimationFrame'] ||
function(fn){ return window.setTimeout(fn, 20); };
return function(fn){
return raf.call(window, fn);
};
})();
var skipTransition = function(element, fn, bind){
var prop = prefix.js + 'TransitionProperty';
element.style[prop] = element.style.transitionProperty = 'none';
var callback;
if (fn) callback = fn.call(bind);
requestFrame(function(){
requestFrame(function(){
element.style[prop] = element.style.transitionProperty = '';
if (callback) requestFrame(callback);
});
});
};
HOW TO USE IT - this snippet assumes you have set a transition on the foo element's width and want to change it to 100px immediately without the element transitioning.
var foo = document.querySelector('#foo')
skipTransition(foo, function(){
foo.style.width = '100px';
});
LIVE EXAMPLE
Click each of the colored divs in the example - the red div has its width style set within the skipTransition function, thus preventing the transition and setting the style immediately. The blue div has its width set normally without skipTransition and the CSS transition effect occurs as normal: http://codepen.io/csuwldcat/pen/nFlse
A:
I know you said you didn't want to duplicate the style of the whole object in CSS, but have you thought about adding a special class just for the transition? Then you can define the element like this in the HTML:
<div id='#yourobject' class='transition'>
And when you don't want the transition, just do this (assuming jQuery):
$('#yourobject').removeClass('transition');
.... do some manipulation here
$('#yourobject').addClass('transition');
A:
Here's one approach: Clone the element, add the class to the clone, and replace the original element with the clone. Bam! No transition.
Demonstration: http://jsfiddle.net/TrevorBurnham/yXhBz/
This isn't ideal, though, because this breaks any stored references to the original element that you may have in your application. So I'd welcome an answer that operates synchronously on the existing element.
|
SVSEF to host FIS/USSA Cross Country Races at Lake Creek
December 12, 2012
The Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation is very pleased to host FIS/USSA Cross Country races, December 22-23 at the Lake Creek Trail System north of Ketchum.
SVSEF Nordic Director Rick Kapala remarked, "The Lake Creek ski trails have snow on them and we are training there, but it’s thin, solid but thin. The backup venue of Galena Lodge, where we ran the races last year has four feet of snow and the skiing there is outstanding. Our preference is to race at Lake Creek, but for it to be good; we need a bit more snow, especially for the classic mass start."
Kapala added that the preference is for the races to be staged at Lake Creek and an official decision on the race venue will be made on Thursday, Dec. 20 by 5 p.m. so course inspection can be conducted the following day.
In addition to the USSA/FIS races, there will be master's classes and a full slate of youth races for J3, J4 and J5 skiers. As well, SVSEF alumni are encouraged to stick around on Saturday for the 2012 Alumni Challenge immediately following the last event.
Entries may be submitted to Heidi Watanabe, race secretary, at heidiwat@cox.net. When signing up, please provide your USSA number (and FIS number if you have one) as race results will be submitted to the NRL and will be scored prior to the recalculation of USSA points for U.S. Nationals. Non-USAA licensed masters may race and will be seeded after to USSA/FIS Seeds. Bib pick-up will be available both race mornings at the venue.
Kapala reminds skiers that the Sun Valley races are not Intermountain Junior National qualifiers. They are the first in the IMD Season Race Series that includes stops in Sun Valley, Bozeman (JNQ), Soldier Hollow (JNQ), Boise (JNQ) and the IMD Finals at Grand Targhee. |
:class:`CustomMouse`
------------------------------------
.. autoclass:: psychopy.visual.CustomMouse
:members:
:undoc-members:
:inherited-members:
|
Q:
Mimic Context.getExternalFilesDir() prior to Android API Level 8?
Android API level 8 introduced the Context.getExternalFilesDir() method, providing a File object reference to an SD card path specific to your app. I am wondering how to mimic this as low as API level 5.
I see there is a Context.getDir() method, but I can't tell from reading about it how this differs.
A:
I ended up finding the answer here. Here's an excerpt from that page that answers my exact question:
If you're using API Level 7 or lower,
use getExternalStorageDirectory(), to
open a File representing the root of
the external storage. You should then
write your data in the following
directory:
/Android/data/<package_name>/files/
The <package_name> is your Java-style
package name, such as
"com.example.android.app". If the
user's device is running API Level 8
or greater and they uninstall your
application, this directory and all
its contents will be deleted.
|
All of Idaho's students deserve an excellent education.
El Chapo’s Gem State Money Laundering School Voucher Bill
You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that Rep. John Vander Woude, R-Nampa, had tutilege from a drug cartel’s money launderer while he was drafting the school voucher bill passed by Idaho’s house last week. A cursory read of the legislation makes it painfully obvious what the proposed law really is: a money laundering scheme.
The goal of money laundering, of course, is to conceal the origin of dollars. Except, in this case, the origin of the money is painfully obvious and the purpose of the legislation is also equally so. See, here’s the deal: Article Nine, Section Five of Idaho’s Constitution makes it abundantly clear that the state cannot distribute money to sectarian entities.
And instead of having a legitimate debate about amending Idaho’s Constitution, Rep. Vander Woude has instead come up with a convoluted plan in which money will be distributed by a quasi government scholarship fund entity to pay for students to attend private schools including religious institutions.
If it doesn’t make the dental fillings in your teeth hurt to see the contortions the bill goes through to avoid actually upholding both the wording and substance of Idaho’s constitution–something, as it turns out, our legislators took an oath to protect–then you might need a trip to the dentist for a checkup.
But don’t let the law stop you. Idaho’s school voucher bill, known formally as the Guided Education Management Act, or HB 590, passed Idaho’s House last week with votes from Gem State representatives. It now heads to the Senate.
And let me be clear: If you are a supporter of the possibility of using state dollars for students to attend private institutions, then let’s have that debate on amending Idaho’s Constitution. It is a legitimate policy question that it appears the citizens of Idaho are interested in having.
But that’s not what this legislation is. It is a blatant workaround that avoids both the text and intent of Idaho’s governing document. If it doesn’t scare you that our elected representatives are actively seeking ways to avoid enforcing the foundation of Idaho’s law, then perhaps skip the dentist office in favor of a different type of hospital.
Because that’s exactly what this is. Vander Woude, at least, is honest enough to admit that this is the first step in a greater scheme to eventually have the state subsidize businesses or individuals who donate to the slush fund…err, scholarship account, to pay for kiddos to attend private schools by providing a tax credit.
See, the state can’t provide the money directly as it would be a clear violation of the law. So instead, in a series of mental gymnastics and suspension of disbelief, the state will instead operate a laundering racket where the money, per se, didn’t come from the state. And the fund, per se, is not necessarily operated under the management of the state. So therefor they aren’t breaking the rules. Get it?
Keep in mind that no group, others than those who stand to benefit, wants this legislation. The Idaho Education Association, the Idaho School Boards Association, the Idaho Association of School Administrators, and the Idaho Board of Education all stand in opposition to the bill which is the kindle for a larger voucher based system in Idaho.
We all want to do what’s best for kids. For some families, private schools provide an excellent option. But let’s not abandon both the text and intent of our state’s laws for the sake of expediency in providing that education option. |
WALTHAM, Mass. -- Pinpointing the exact moment Al Horford made up his mind to become a Boston Celtics isn’t clear, but the seeds of that decision can be traced back to last year’s playoffs – and no we’re not talking about the playoff series between Boston and Atlanta, either.
It was the Hawk’s second-round playoff series back in May against Cleveland, a team that swept them out of the Conference finals in 2015 and did so again last about five months ago.
Horford had every intention of returning to Atlanta, but as the free agency period wore on two things became quite clear: Winning an NBA title would have to go through Cleveland and it happening with him in Atlanta was becoming more and more unlikely.
In came the Celtics with a pitch that was heavy on present-day and down-the-road potential that wouldn’t require him to do anything other than continue to play the way he has for the past nine seasons.
“It (becoming a Celtic) became real for me real late and real quick,” Horford told CSNNE.com on Wednesday.
After mulling it over for a couple days, Horford said he was ready to become a Celtic.
“This could be a great opportunity even though I’m leaving a lot behind,” Horford said.
As you listen to Horford speak, it’s clear that the Celtics mystique played a role in his decision to sign with Boston.
But as much as the Celtics’ lore and its on-the-rise status helped, there were certain events that Boston had no control over that actually helped their cause.
First the Hawks got in on a three-team trade in June with Utah and Indiana which sent Hawks All-Star point guard Jeff Teague to the Pacers while Atlanta received Utah’s first-round pick which was 12th overall and was used by Atlanta to select Baylor’s Taurean Prince. The move allowed Atlanta’s Dennis Schroeder to slide over into the now-vacant starting point guard position.
While it may help Atlanta down the road, it did little to move them closer towards knocking off Cleveland anytime soon.
And then there was the Hawks coming to terms on a three-year, $70.5 million deal with Dwight Howard early in the free agency period. That deal coupled with Atlanta’s desire to bring Kent Bazemore back, cast serious doubt as to whether Horford would return.
Horford, who inked a four-year, $113 million deal with Boston, told CSNNE.com that at the time of Atlanta’s deal with Howard, he was still open to the idea of returning.
But if Horford did, he knew figuring out the best way to play him, Howard and Paul Millsap who by the way has a player option that he’s likely to exercise which would make him a free agent next summer, was not going to be easy.
“It was definitely going to be different,” Horford said, then adding, “For me, the Celtics were becoming more and more a realistic option. After talking with my family, we felt this was the best for me.”
And while it’s still very early in his tenure as a Celtic, Horford has no regrets or second thoughts about his decision.
“As a player you always want to be in the best position you can,” Horford said. “I felt for me being on this team would put me in a position to be able to contend and win an NBA championship. That’s my ultimate goal.”
And that alone makes him a good fit with this franchise which from ownership to the front office to the coaching staff and of course the players, are all focused on one thing and that’s bringing home Banner 18.
“Look at the resume. He’s been a winner wherever he’s played,” said Boston’s Amir Johnson. “It’s good to have a guy like that, with his talent and with his winning, playing next to you.” |
20 F.Supp. 471 (1937)
KARDON
v.
WILLING.
No. 9649.
District Court, E. D. Pennsylvania.
September 13, 1937.
*472 Simon Pearl and Henry Arronson, both of Philadelphia, Pa., for plaintiff.
Samuel E. Kratzok, of Philadelphia, Pa., for defendant.
Sur Pleadings and Proofs.
MARIS, District Judge.
This is a bill in equity brought against the receiver of an insolvent national bank to compel the allowance of a set-off. From the evidence I make the following special
Findings of Fact
The Sixth National Bank of Philadelphia, a national banking association (hereinafter called the Bank), on February 28, 1933, at 3:30 o'clock p. m., suspended ordinary banking operations and never thereafter resumed business in normal course. On March 14, 1933, the Comptroller of the Currency appointed Norman C. Ives as conservator of the Bank, and on September 29, 1934, the Comptroller appointed Leonard B. Botfield as receiver. Upon his death Joseph K. Willing, the defendant, was appointed receiver on July 3, 1936.
On February 16, 1928, plaintiff opened savings fund account No. 13,982 in the bank. On the signature card the account was described as "Robert Kardon, M. Kardon Trustee," and on the passbook as "M. Kardon, in trust for Robert Kardon." Robert Kardon is the minor son of the plaintiff.
When he opened this account, plaintiff deposited therein the sum of $7,179 of his own money and thereafter deposited additional sums from his own funds. Under the rules of the bank plaintiff alone was entitled to make withdrawals from the account. His intention in opening the account was to create a tentative or revocable trust in favor of his son, reserving full power at any time to withdraw funds from the trust for his own purposes. From the time of the opening of the account until the closing of the Bank, he exercised complete control over the account, retaining the passbook in his possession and withdrawing from time to time numerous sums of money which he devoted to his own purposes.
At the time of the closing of the Bank, the balance on deposit in this savings account was $11,268.75. At the same time the plaintiff had a balance in a checking account in the Bank in his own individual name amounting to $895.39.
At the time of the closing of the Bank, plaintiff was indebted to it in the sum of $7,603.20 by reason of his indorsement of various notes held by the Bank and drawn by various persons on the dates and in the amounts appearing in the schedule annexed to the bill of complaint.
The makers of certain of the said notes aggregating $7,238.20 were and are financially embarrassed and unable to pay and discharge their indebtedness, and plaintiff, if called upon to pay said notes by reason of his indorsement, will not have any recourse against the makers.
The plaintiff made no demand for the set-off of the said savings account against his indebtedness as indorser until some time after the closing of the Bank.
*473 Discussion.
Plaintiff seeks in this case to compel the defendant receiver to set off a sufficient amount of the balance in the savings account which he opened as trustee for his son against the notes upon which he is liable as indorser to satisfy those notes in full. His right to this relief he bases upon the fact, as he alleges, that the savings account in question was his own individual property and not a trust fund for his son. This, however, is strongly denied by the defendant. The underlying question in the case thus arises.
There is no doubt as to the right of a depositor in a closed bank to set off the amount of his deposit against his liability as indorser upon a note held by the bank, provided the maker of the note is insolvent. Shannon v. Sutherland (C.C. A.) 74 F.(2d) 530, 97 A.L.R. 583. It is equally well settled that it is only his own deposit or claim which he may thus set off, and not that of any other person. In every case the question is: Whose money or claim is proposed to be used as a set-off? Gordon, Secretary of Banking, v. Union Trust Co., 308 Pa. 493, 162 A. 293. This question is to be determined at the moment of insolvency of the bank by the state of things then existing, not by any conditions thereafter arising or by any subsequent action taken by any party. First National Bank of Indianola, Iowa, v. Malone (C.C. A.) 76 F.(2d) 251; Dakin v. Bayly, 290 U.S. 143, 54 S.Ct. 113, 78 L.Ed. 229, 90 A.L.R. 999. For this purpose the Bank is to be deemed, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, to have become insolvent on the day it ceased to make payments in regular course and closed never to reopen. Willing v. Argosy Building & Loan Ass'n (D.C.) 19 F.Supp. 353. The question to be here determined is thus narrowed to this: Was the savings account balance of $11,268.75 on February 28, 1933, the individual property of the plaintiff, or did it constitute a trust fund of which his son Robert Kardon was beneficiary?
It is well settled that a deposit by one person of his own money, in his own name as trustee for another, standing alone, establishes a tentative trust which is revocable at will until the depositor dies or completes the gift in his lifetime by some unequivocal act or declaration, such as delivery of the passbook or notice to the beneficiary. Matter of Totten, 179 N.Y. 112, 71 N.E. 748, 70 L.R.A. 711, 1 Ann.Cas. 900; In re Scanlon's Estate, 313 Pa. 424, 169 A. 106. The rule is thus stated in the Restatement of the Law of Trusts, § 58: "Where a person makes a deposit in a savings account in a bank in his own name as trustee for another person intending to reserve a power to withdraw the whole or any part of the deposit at any time during his lifetime and to use as his own whatever he may withdraw, or otherwise to revoke the trust, the intended trust is enforceable by the beneficiary upon the death of the depositor as to any part remaining on deposit on his death if he has not revoked the trust."
Such a trust is a valid trust, although revocable, and in order to terminate it the depositor must withdraw the money or by some other act or declaration decisively show his intention to revoke. It may doubtless also be revoked at the instance of the depositor's creditors, but until thus revoked either by the depositor or his creditors it remains in force and the beneficiary retains his beneficial interest therein.
It is true that it has been held that a depositor may offer evidence to show that it was not his intention, in making such a deposit, to create even a tentative trust. In fact, such evidence was offered by the plaintiff here. His evidence was not convincing, however, and I am satisfied that when he opened the savings account here in question, he intended to create a revocable trust in favor of his son. In other words, while he intended to reserve the right at any time to withdraw all or any part of the deposit for his own purposes, he also intended that the balance remaining in the account should be and remain impressed with a trust in favor of his son until by withdrawal or some other positive act or declaration he evidenced his intention of terminating his son's interest. If this were not so, his use of his son's name was utterly meaningless. At the time the bank closed, however, he had neither withdrawn nor in any other manner evidenced his intention to extinguish his son's interest in the balance of $11,268.75. It necessarily follows that on February 28, 1933, this balance was impressed with a trust in favor of his son Robert Kardon. It was, therefore, not the plaintiff's money at that time, and consequently was not available to him as a set-off against his indebtedness.
*474 It may be admitted, as plaintiff argues, that his action in claiming a set-off amounted to a revocation of the trust. His demand for this action, however, was not made until some time after the closing of the Bank. Consequently it can have no bearing on the question before us. That question, as I have shown, must be determined by the status at the moment of closing. Up to that moment there had been no revocation. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that a set-off of this character can only be allowed where special equity exists and where the equity of third persons will not be prejudiced. Gray v. School Dist. of Borough of Brownsville (C.C.A.) 67 F.(2d) 141; First Nat. Bank of Indianola, Iowa, v. Malone, supra. Hence the rights of all the other depositors of the bank must be considered. It would be obviously inequitable to them to permit the plaintiff, who while the bank was open set up a tentative trust in favor of his son, now to assert that such a trust did not exist. It would be equally inequitable to permit him retroactively to change the status of the savings account after their rights had attached. Prior to the closing the bank, plaintiff evidently desired, for reasons he deemed sufficient, to keep the savings fund balance in trust for his son at least until he needed to use the money. This was his voluntary act, and to me it speaks more loudly than volumes of testimony given after the bank closed when it became very much to his interest to claim ownership of the fund. I, therefore, place little credence in the testimony of the plaintiff as to his intention.
The evidence indicated that a number of the notes upon which the plaintiff was indorser had been renewed after the closing of the bank by agreement with the receiver. The latter raised a question as to the plaintiff's right to a set-off in view of the fact that the notes held when the bank closed have been superseded by these renewals. In the view I have taken of the case, however, this question need not be considered.
Conclusions of Law.
By opening the savings account in question, plaintiff created a tentative trust, which he had power to revoke in whole or in part at any time by withdrawal of the funds or otherwise; but so long as the trust remained unrevoked the balance in the account was subject thereto, and Robert Kardon therefore had an interest therein.
Robert Kardon had an interest as cestui que trust in the balance of $11,268.75 in the savings account at the time the bank closed.
The right of set-off must be determined by the state of things existing at the moment of insolvency of the bank, not by conditions thereafter arising or by any subsequent action taken by any party.
The plaintiff is not entitled to set off the balance in said savings account against his indebtedness to the bank.
The bill should be dismissed.
A decree dismissing the bill may be entered.
|
I’VE BEEN DESCRIBED in the past as a guy who’s a tourist in his own city. I wholeheartedly agree with that. I’ve been in Ireland for almost 13 years and in Dublin for 11, but only in the last two and a half years have I actually started to learn anything about the city I call home.
I have A LOT of catching up to do.
You’ll often catch me walking or cycling around the city with a camera strapped to my back, a camera phone in my hand or in my pocket somewhere ready to capture and share. You may or may not know the drill. If you know me, then you know I love this gay old town; it’s all a bit soppy actually.
Getting used to a strange new city
It’s not always been rosy and green and fun and amazing for me in Dublin city. When I first moved to the suburbs of the ‘Big Smoke’, there were places I avoided like the plague. I never came into the city centre unless I genuinely had to. I should probably mention at this point, if you didn’t know or hadn’t noticed, that I’m of African descent. It shouldn’t matter; but it does. Unfortunately.
I initially wasn’t able to deal with the shouts across the street of “Go back to your own country”, the apples thrown at me (this happened twice… actually once it was an orange). Night time was even worse; getting a taxi a few years ago, I remember I would always have to step back and let my (white) girlfriend hail one down or risk standing in the dark until a decent driver would pick us up. Today, some people grumble that there are too many Nigerian taxi drivers, but they obviously found a niche in the market (however that is another story for another day).
The truth is, getting to Ireland as an (very) immature 15 year old, I had probably had worse said and done to me. Apart from being hit by a couple of fruit in two years, I’ve only truly felt in danger on a couple of heart pounding occasions. Honestly, the only people I’ve ever received abuse from have either seemed slightly half-baked or are the type who often wander the streets looking for trouble (you know the sort).
I remember one time, walking one of my dogs around Phoenix Park, a guy went out of his way to shout, “Don’t bring that n****r dog around me”. My dog is a Pomeranian; a very fair one at that, so I’m not quite sure who he was abusing, to be honest. Or another time outside Heuston Station (I actually thought I would be beaten silly) when a very inebriated guy and his buddy who had previously been on the phone hung up and proceeded to hurl abuse at me and approach myself and Dusty (my sidekick Pomeranian). He was wearing a Manchester United top at the time (a team I support myself) and was telling me to go back to Alabama to pick cotton. Thanks, but no thanks; I have employment here.
Both of those incidents happened in 2011, so not too long ago. I’d like to think that most people in this city I call home are actually fairly sane and live in this century and not the 19th. The best of the people I’ve met in Dublin city – the most creative, the wisest and the most hardworking – have been nothing but welcoming to me. If it wasn’t for them, Dublin to me would be a foreign and alien place.
Dubliners are an extremely welcoming bunch
There are over 60,000 people in Ireland right now that self-identify as being black, and I’m reluctantly one of them. Not because I’m not proud of who I am. I really am proud of my heritage. Not because I don’t identify with ‘black people’. I’d like to think that I do. I just have never really been one to strictly identify with or categorise myself in such a way. My friends consist of the people around me, white, black, yellow, it really doesn’t matter, and I don’t think it should. Maturing into the person I am today happened in Ireland, and, more specifically, in Dublin. If anyone asks where I’m from, the first thought that comes to mind is ‘Ireland’.
Just like everywhere in the world, there are those arseholes that are going to go out of their way to make everyone as miserable as they are, but I know for a fact that Dubliners in general, and probably more than anywhere else I’ve ever been, are an extremely welcoming bunch. I’ve never gotten less than full support from everyone I care to know and even strangers during tough times.
Any meaningful experience I’ve had of Dublin has happened in the last couple of years and I think that is only because I’ve made a conscious decision for Dublin to be a part of me as opposed to being a part of Dublin. I get a little mad when I hear people say, and I only saw this a little while ago, ‘I hate being back in this shite city’. If you think Dublin is shite, then you haven’t seen it the way I have.
There’s a way to go still to completely eradicate incidents against minorities in general, but I think we’re on the right track. There are so many amazing groups like the Anti-Racism Network doing great work, but it’s up to us all to do the right thing. We need to see more integration of minorities into the larger community and report and reduce racist incidents through education.
I might have been born in Lagos, but I was definitely made in Dublin, and I still have a lot of catching up to do. I’m still a tourist after all.
Timi Ogunyemi is a business student at DIT and founder of creative collective, Picture This! He spends his days out exploring the creativity that abounds in Dublin and his nights as a social media and communications representative with the Odeon Group. Follow him on Twitter @tweetymonkey |
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from CRISPResso.CRISPRessoCountCORE import main
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
|
With the rapid rise of recording equipment and stero, the components have become more sophisticated. Particularly in the area of speakers it is now possible to individually adjust speakers but access must be provided to the components which are mounted generally co-planar with the speakers per se. This has resulted in the necessity of gaining access of to the components and the speakers from the front side of the speaker cabinet. In many instances the back of the speaker cabinet is sealed for sound purposes. Much earlier in time, speakers were mounted on the front of the cabinet by using a screw such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,124,031 assigned to the common assignee of the present invention. Such screws were installed prior to the installation of the cloth or other material forming the decorative cover on the front of the speaker and the speaker was mounted over the screw and secured by a nut from the rear side. In many instances, this provided a major task in gaining access should the nuts securing the speakers in place be loosened due to the vibration of the speaker per se. |
<?php
/**
* DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE!
*
* This file was automatically generated from external sources.
*
* Any manual change here will be lost the next time the SDK
* is updated. You've been warned!
*/
namespace DTS\eBaySDK\Test\Taxonomy\Types;
use DTS\eBaySDK\Taxonomy\Types\ValueConstraint;
class ValueConstraintTest extends \PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
private $obj;
protected function setUp()
{
$this->obj = new ValueConstraint();
}
public function testCanBeCreated()
{
$this->assertInstanceOf('\DTS\eBaySDK\Taxonomy\Types\ValueConstraint', $this->obj);
}
public function testExtendsBaseType()
{
$this->assertInstanceOf('\DTS\eBaySDK\Types\BaseType', $this->obj);
}
}
|
Influence of sexual arousability on partner communication mediators of condom use among African American female adolescents.
Background Ample evidence shows that partner sexual communication is related to condom use. Although communication about safer sex may often occur when sexual arousal is high, no studies have examined arousability, one's propensity for sexual arousal and partner sexual communication. The purpose of this study was to examine associations between sexual arousability and partner-related mediators of condom use among African American female adolescents, who have disproportionate risk for HIV and sexually transmissible infections (STIs). The study analysed self-reported baseline data from 701 African American females aged 14-20 years participating in a HIV/STI trial. Linear regression models examined associations between arousability and partner-related mediators of condom use (partner sexual communication self-efficacy, partner sexual communication frequency, sex refusal self-efficacy and condom use self-efficacy), controlling for age, impulsivity and relationship power. Greater arousability was significantly associated with reduced levels of each partner communication outcome assessed (partner sexual communication self-efficacy, partner sexual communication frequency and sex refusal self-efficacy) but was not associated with condom use self-efficacy. Arousal and other positive aspects of sex have largely been ignored by HIV/STI prevention efforts, which primarily focus on individual behaviour. A population-level sexual health approach focusing on sexual wellbeing may reduce stigma, facilitate partner sexual communication and be more effective at reducing HIV/STI rates than traditional approaches. |
Q:
Exact definition of Sec-Websocket-Key in Websocket Protocol
I'm wondering what the exact definition of the header-field Sec-Websocket-Key is.
The field is used for Websocket connections. The client asks the server to upgrade from HTML to Websocket. The request can look like this:
GET /chat HTTP/1.1
Host: server.example.com
Upgrade: websocket
Connection: Upgrade
Sec-WebSocket-Key: dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==
Origin: http://example.com
Sec-WebSocket-Protocol: chat, superchat
Sec-WebSocket-Version: 13
The Sec-WebSocket-Key field is defined as follows [RFC6455]:
The |Sec-WebSocket-Key| header field is used in the WebSocket opening
handshake. It is sent from the client to the server to provide part
of the information used by the server to prove that it received a
valid WebSocket opening handshake. This helps ensure that the server
does not accept connections from non-WebSocket clients (e.g., HTTP
clients) that are being abused to send data to unsuspecting WebSocket
servers.
The |Sec-WebSocket-Key| header field MUST NOT appear more than once
in an HTTP request.
And also in [RFC6455]:
For this header field, the server has to take the value (as present
in the header field, e.g., the base64-encoded [RFC4648] version minus
any leading and trailing whitespace) and concatenate this with the
Globally Unique Identifier (GUID, [RFC4122]) "258EAFA5-E914-47DA-
95CA-C5AB0DC85B11" in string form, which is unlikely to be used by
network endpoints that do not understand the WebSocket Protocol. A
SHA-1 hash (160 bits) [FIPS.180-3], base64-encoded (see Section 4 of
[RFC4648]), of this concatenation is then returned in the server's
handshake. Concretely, if as in the example above, the
|Sec-WebSocket-Key| header field had the value
"dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==", the server would concatenate the string
"258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-C5AB0DC85B11" to form the string
"dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA- C5AB0DC85B11".
The server would then take the SHA-1 hash of this, giving the value
0xb3 0x7a 0x4f 0x2c 0xc0 0x62 0x4f 0x16 0x90 0xf6 0x46 0x06 0xcf
0x38 0x59 0x45 0xb2 0xbe 0xc4 0xea. This value is then
base64-encoded (see Section 4 of [RFC4648]), to give the value
"s3pPLMBiTxaQ9kYGzzhZRbK+xOo=". This value would then be echoed in
the |Sec-WebSocket-Accept| header field.
I've completly understood the purpose of this field. However, I can not find any information on how exactly it is generated.
Probably it is not just a random string with random length and a random charset.
A:
The Sec-WebSocket-Key is a completely random string with a length of 16 bytes, and has an allowable range of ASCII value 32 to 127.
You start with an empty string.
Then as long as you generate a character that is within the ASCII range 32 to 127, you add to this string.
Once you reached 16 ASCII characters, stop, and base64 encode the resultant string.
|
/* -*- Mode: C++; tab-width: 4; indent-tabs-mode: nil; c-basic-offset: 4 -*- */
/*
* This file is part of the LibreOffice project.
*
* This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
* License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
* file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/.
*
* This file incorporates work covered by the following license notice:
*
* Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
* contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed
* with this work for additional information regarding copyright
* ownership. The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache
* License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file
* except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of
* the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 .
*/
#include <com/sun/star/embed/EmbedStates.hpp>
#include <cppuhelper/interfacecontainer.hxx>
#include <intercept.hxx>
#include <docholder.hxx>
#include <commonembobj.hxx>
using namespace ::com::sun::star;
#define IUL 6
uno::Sequence< OUString > Interceptor::m_aInterceptedURL(IUL);
class StatusChangeListenerContainer
: public cppu::OMultiTypeInterfaceContainerHelperVar<OUString>
{
public:
explicit StatusChangeListenerContainer(osl::Mutex& aMutex)
: cppu::OMultiTypeInterfaceContainerHelperVar<OUString>(aMutex)
{
}
};
void Interceptor::DisconnectDocHolder()
{
osl::MutexGuard aGuard( m_aMutex );
m_pDocHolder = nullptr;
}
Interceptor::Interceptor( DocumentHolder* pDocHolder )
: m_pDocHolder( pDocHolder )
{
m_aInterceptedURL[0] = ".uno:Save";
m_aInterceptedURL[1] = ".uno:SaveAll";
m_aInterceptedURL[2] = ".uno:CloseDoc";
m_aInterceptedURL[3] = ".uno:CloseWin";
m_aInterceptedURL[4] = ".uno:CloseFrame";
m_aInterceptedURL[5] = ".uno:SaveAs";
}
Interceptor::~Interceptor()
{
}
//XDispatch
void SAL_CALL
Interceptor::dispatch(
const util::URL& URL,
const uno::Sequence<
beans::PropertyValue >& Arguments )
{
osl::MutexGuard aGuard(m_aMutex);
if( !m_pDocHolder )
return;
if(URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[0])
m_pDocHolder->GetEmbedObject()->SaveObject_Impl();
else if(URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[2] ||
URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[3] ||
URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[4])
{
try {
m_pDocHolder->GetEmbedObject()->changeState( embed::EmbedStates::RUNNING );
}
catch( const uno::Exception& )
{
}
}
else if ( URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[5] )
{
uno::Sequence< beans::PropertyValue > aNewArgs = Arguments;
sal_Int32 nInd = 0;
while( nInd < aNewArgs.getLength() )
{
if ( aNewArgs[nInd].Name == "SaveTo" )
{
aNewArgs[nInd].Value <<= true;
break;
}
nInd++;
}
if ( nInd == aNewArgs.getLength() )
{
aNewArgs.realloc( nInd + 1 );
aNewArgs[nInd].Name = "SaveTo";
aNewArgs[nInd].Value <<= true;
}
uno::Reference< frame::XDispatch > xDispatch = m_xSlaveDispatchProvider->queryDispatch(
URL, "_self", 0 );
if ( xDispatch.is() )
xDispatch->dispatch( URL, aNewArgs );
}
}
void SAL_CALL
Interceptor::addStatusListener(
const uno::Reference<
frame::XStatusListener >& Control,
const util::URL& URL )
{
if(!Control.is())
return;
if(URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[0])
{ // Save
frame::FeatureStateEvent aStateEvent;
aStateEvent.FeatureURL.Complete = m_aInterceptedURL[0];
aStateEvent.FeatureDescriptor = "Update";
aStateEvent.IsEnabled = true;
aStateEvent.Requery = false;
aStateEvent.State <<= "($1) " + m_pDocHolder->GetTitle();
Control->statusChanged(aStateEvent);
{
osl::MutexGuard aGuard(m_aMutex);
if(!m_pStatCL)
m_pStatCL.reset(new StatusChangeListenerContainer(m_aMutex));
}
m_pStatCL->addInterface(URL.Complete,Control);
return;
}
sal_Int32 i = 2;
if(URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[i] ||
URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[++i] ||
URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[++i] )
{ // Close and return
frame::FeatureStateEvent aStateEvent;
aStateEvent.FeatureURL.Complete = m_aInterceptedURL[i];
aStateEvent.FeatureDescriptor = "Close and Return";
aStateEvent.IsEnabled = true;
aStateEvent.Requery = false;
aStateEvent.State <<= "($2)" + m_pDocHolder->GetContainerName();
Control->statusChanged(aStateEvent);
{
osl::MutexGuard aGuard(m_aMutex);
if(!m_pStatCL)
m_pStatCL.reset(new StatusChangeListenerContainer(m_aMutex));
}
m_pStatCL->addInterface(URL.Complete,Control);
return;
}
if(URL.Complete != m_aInterceptedURL[5])
return;
// SaveAs
frame::FeatureStateEvent aStateEvent;
aStateEvent.FeatureURL.Complete = m_aInterceptedURL[5];
aStateEvent.FeatureDescriptor = "SaveCopyTo";
aStateEvent.IsEnabled = true;
aStateEvent.Requery = false;
aStateEvent.State <<= OUString("($3)");
Control->statusChanged(aStateEvent);
{
osl::MutexGuard aGuard(m_aMutex);
if(!m_pStatCL)
m_pStatCL.reset(new StatusChangeListenerContainer(m_aMutex));
}
m_pStatCL->addInterface(URL.Complete,Control);
return;
}
void SAL_CALL
Interceptor::removeStatusListener(
const uno::Reference<
frame::XStatusListener >& Control,
const util::URL& URL )
{
if(!(Control.is() && m_pStatCL))
return;
else {
m_pStatCL->removeInterface(URL.Complete,Control);
return;
}
}
//XInterceptorInfo
uno::Sequence< OUString >
SAL_CALL
Interceptor::getInterceptedURLs( )
{
// now implemented as update
return m_aInterceptedURL;
}
// XDispatchProvider
uno::Reference< frame::XDispatch > SAL_CALL
Interceptor::queryDispatch(
const util::URL& URL,
const OUString& TargetFrameName,
sal_Int32 SearchFlags )
{
osl::MutexGuard aGuard(m_aMutex);
if(URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[0])
return static_cast<frame::XDispatch*>(this);
else if(URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[1])
return nullptr ;
else if(URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[2])
return static_cast<frame::XDispatch*>(this);
else if(URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[3])
return static_cast<frame::XDispatch*>(this);
else if(URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[4])
return static_cast<frame::XDispatch*>(this);
else if(URL.Complete == m_aInterceptedURL[5])
return static_cast<frame::XDispatch*>(this);
else {
if(m_xSlaveDispatchProvider.is())
return m_xSlaveDispatchProvider->queryDispatch(
URL,TargetFrameName,SearchFlags);
else
return uno::Reference<frame::XDispatch>(nullptr);
}
}
uno::Sequence< uno::Reference< frame::XDispatch > > SAL_CALL
Interceptor::queryDispatches(
const uno::Sequence<frame::DispatchDescriptor >& Requests )
{
uno::Sequence< uno::Reference< frame::XDispatch > > aRet;
osl::MutexGuard aGuard(m_aMutex);
if(m_xSlaveDispatchProvider.is())
aRet = m_xSlaveDispatchProvider->queryDispatches(Requests);
else
aRet.realloc(Requests.getLength());
for(sal_Int32 i = 0; i < Requests.getLength(); ++i)
if(m_aInterceptedURL[0] == Requests[i].FeatureURL.Complete)
aRet[i] = static_cast<frame::XDispatch*>(this);
else if(m_aInterceptedURL[1] == Requests[i].FeatureURL.Complete)
aRet[i] = nullptr;
else if(m_aInterceptedURL[2] == Requests[i].FeatureURL.Complete)
aRet[i] = static_cast<frame::XDispatch*>(this);
else if(m_aInterceptedURL[3] == Requests[i].FeatureURL.Complete)
aRet[i] = static_cast<frame::XDispatch*>(this);
else if(m_aInterceptedURL[4] == Requests[i].FeatureURL.Complete)
aRet[i] = static_cast<frame::XDispatch*>(this);
else if(m_aInterceptedURL[5] == Requests[i].FeatureURL.Complete)
aRet[i] = static_cast<frame::XDispatch*>(this);
return aRet;
}
//XDispatchProviderInterceptor
uno::Reference< frame::XDispatchProvider > SAL_CALL
Interceptor::getSlaveDispatchProvider( )
{
osl::MutexGuard aGuard(m_aMutex);
return m_xSlaveDispatchProvider;
}
void SAL_CALL
Interceptor::setSlaveDispatchProvider(
const uno::Reference< frame::XDispatchProvider >& NewDispatchProvider )
{
osl::MutexGuard aGuard(m_aMutex);
m_xSlaveDispatchProvider = NewDispatchProvider;
}
uno::Reference< frame::XDispatchProvider > SAL_CALL
Interceptor::getMasterDispatchProvider( )
{
osl::MutexGuard aGuard(m_aMutex);
return m_xMasterDispatchProvider;
}
void SAL_CALL
Interceptor::setMasterDispatchProvider(
const uno::Reference< frame::XDispatchProvider >& NewSupplier )
{
osl::MutexGuard aGuard(m_aMutex);
m_xMasterDispatchProvider = NewSupplier;
}
/* vim:set shiftwidth=4 softtabstop=4 expandtab: */
|
Sainsbury Management Fellows
Interview 1: Deviyani Misra-Godwin
Biog: Deviyani enjoyed a distinguished career in the energy sector before securing a place at Harvard. Most recently she was a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group, responsible for strategic and operational projects for firms across the energy industry and was involved in a diversity of activities including fuelling planes in Lagos, decommissioning in the North Sea and developing European Power Trading Strategy. Prior to that, she was at ExxonMobil, where she worked on one of the largest petrochemical and refining sites in the UK, managing operations for the chemicals units; she achieved several promotions during a five-year stint.
What inspired you to study for an MBA?
My long-term goal is to launch my own firm providing operations consulting to British energy companies. I want to help these companies balance the lean, rigorous cost focus they need to be competitive, with the long-term strategic vision they need to take advantage of the new opportunities in this space.
I’m pursuing an MBA course at Harvard Business School because there is still a lot I need to learn about commercialising engineering opportunities. I want to focus on what it takes for companies to thrive in low-margin, high competition environment and learn what is required to develop and launch a successful start-up. Finally, I want to learn how I can be a global leader.
Tell us about your MBA programme
The first year covers core curriculum, such as finance, accounting, marketing, strategy, and operations. Year 2, is an elective curriculum and I plan to focus more on entrepreneurial activities and energy-specific courses.
What are your impressions having started your MBA?
I have been struck by the varied views and backgrounds of my classmates. From military commanders to tech entrepreneurs to digital editors, there is a wealth of backgrounds to learn from. I can clearly see how the case method teaches you to learn from your peers: to be persuasive, but also open to new ideas, and how it teaches you to react quickly to the wealth of diverse views and opinions.
What difference has your scholarship made to you?
The SMF award has been an invaluable addition to the Harvard Business School experience. It’s given me the freedom to pursue new and exciting opportunities without the burden of debt. But more than that, it has given me access to a network of other emerging engineering leaders, whose advice and inspiration will be essential as I pursue my long term goals. SMFs’ goal to equip ambitious engineers with the commercial and entrepreneurial skills to innovate and commercialise products is exactly why I wanted to pursue an MBA.
Tell us about the mentoring scheme you set up for female engineers
I am passionate about increasing the number of women in engineering. When I started my career as one of the only women on an operating plant, it was incredibly challenging – there were so few female role models to learn from. As I became more senior, I realised I didn’t want new female graduates to have to go through what I did without any support, so I founded a mentoring programme for women on the refinery. The programme paired senior male and female managers with more junior women, and they provided encouragement, advice, support and access to broader networks. Our goal was to retain and develop women to their full potential. It was hugely successful – by the end of the first year, 80% of the women had asked to take part, either as mentors or mentees.
I was overwhelmed by the positive response from all the participants, and wanted to do more; I have since spoken at IChemE, WISE and STEM events around the UK about the importance of increasing the number of female engineers.
When I moved to consulting I was a core member of the Women@BCG London team, where I organised multiple networking events, including a large diversity panel with senior partners from around the globe.
Having now worked across the UK energy industry in firms big and small for over seven years, I have seen first-hand that women working in energy in the UK are few and far between. There are simply not enough female role models. My dream is to become an influential leader in the UK energy industry, fulfilling my goal of inspiring more female engineers. |
DHS chief warns of 'pandemic' cyber vulnerabilities
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Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen painted a daunting picture of the global digital landscape in a speech Wednesday, describing “a worldwide outbreak of cyberattacks and cyber vulnerabilities” that had moved from the “epidemic” to the “pandemic” stage.
“Cyberattacks, in terms of their breadth and scope and possible consequences, now exceed the risk of physical attacks,” Nielsen said at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. “[C]yberspace is now the most active battlefield, and the attack surface extends into every single American home.”
The Department of Homeland Security “was founded 15 years ago to prevent another 9/11,” Nielsen added, “but I believe an attack of that magnitude is much more likely to reach us online than on an airplane.” The department “wasn’t built for a digital pandemic” at its founding, she said, urging Congress to pass legislation to turn DHS’s cyber and physical infrastructure agency into an “full-fledged operational agency.”
Nielsen also pointed to a growing hacking arsenal available to foreign governments. “Now more than 30 nation-states have cyberattack capabilities, and sophisticated digital toolkits are spreading like wildfire,” she said.
As evidence, Nielsen cited the “destructive code” that Russian and North Korean hackers released last year — an apparent reference to, respectively, the NotPetya and WannaCry attacks that U.S. officials have blamed on those two countries. The two attacks cost billions of dollars in combined damage.
Nielsen’s warnings about nation-state threats come as DHS continues to help state and local officials prepare for midterm elections that, according to U.S. intelligence officials, remain a target for Russian interference. Nielsen called the Kremlin-directed influence operation in the 2016 election “egregious” while vowing to not let it happen again.
While President Donald Trump has equivocated on whether Moscow meddled in the 2016 election, senior officials such as Nielsen and Vice President Mike Pence have asserted that the Trump administration has been tougher on foreign hackers than the Obama administration. (Both administrations have sought to rein in malicious cyber-activity through indictments and sanctions.) Trump last month rescinded a policy directive that had governed the approval process for U.S. offensive cyber-operations, opening the door to more digital strikes.
“The United States has a full spectrum of options — some seen, others unseen — and we are already using them to call out our cyber-adversaries, to punish them, and to deter future digital hostility,” Nielsen said Wednesday.
In a discussion after her speech, Nielsen said the United States needs to more quickly attribute hacking operations to foreign actors in order to respond effectively. Consequences, she said, “have to go hand-in-hand with that attribution.” |
DRESS syndrome due to antibiotic therapy of osteoarticular infections in children: two case reports.
Osteoarticular infection in children frequently occurs before 10 years of age. Surgical drainage is sometimes required, whereas acute osteomyelitis can be treated with antibiotic therapy alone. The duration of antibiotic therapy varies, 2 weeks is sufficient for septic arthritis, whereas 6 weeks is often required for complicated cases. Some of these antibiotic drugs present direct complications with low clinical impact in certain individuals. Hypersensitivity to these drugs causes different reactions in children. DRESS syndrome (Drug Reaction with Eosinophilia and Systemic Symptoms) is a severe and potentially life-threatening drug reaction. It is characterised by high fever, malaise, lymphadenopathy and skin rash. From a clinical perspective, these symptoms can lead to an exacerbation of the initial infectious process for which treatment was commenced. The liver is the organ most often affected in DRESS syndrome associated with haematological changes, potentially similar to sepsis. We present two cases of children with osteoarticular infections who developed DRESS syndrome after antibiotic therapy. Both patients made a complete recovery after cessation of the antibiotic drugs used. |
Kainic acid lesions in the hypothalamic and amygdala areas of the brain are effected in prepubertal female rats. The anatomical nature of the lesions, the efficacy of antiepileptic drugs in blocking convulsion mediated secondary lesions, and the role of these regions in neuroendocrine reproductive function and development and maintenance of sexual behavior are explored. |
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Inside Washington: Organic livestock standards 'ridiculous'
It has been a couple of weeks since the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released its proposal for organic livestock standards. It has been years in the making, dating back to 2011, and it appears that it could pit those who have chosen organics as a business against the so-called “pure organics.”
One of the biggest changes in the poultry side of the rule pertains to the outside access requirements laid out in the proposal. Specifically, the rule states, “Outside access and door spacing must be designed to promote and encourage outside access for all birds on a daily basis. Producers must provide access to the outdoors at an early age to encourage (train) birds to go outdoors. Outdoor areas must have suitable enrichment to entice birds to go outside.”
This week, Senate Agriculture Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R., Kan.) had less than kind words about how UDSA is calling for producers to “entice” birds to go outside, questioning what is considered chicken enrichment anyway. “It might be yoga, video games, sports, a gourmet meal or maybe even a strolling violin,” he quipped.
Roberts is leading a bipartisan effort to garner support for a letter to USDA asking for a more commonsense rule. He noted that some of the wording tries to appeal to those “pure organic folks,” which Roberts said he doesn’t think is necessary.
The rule also states that space with a solid roof overhead and attached to the structure providing indoor space does not meet the definition of outdoor access and must not be included in the calculation of outdoor space. Also, at least 50% of outdoor access space must be soil.
Outdoor access is integral to organic production, and consumers expect that it is standard practice throughout the organic egg sector. However, outdoor access is not mandatory for all third-party animal welfare certification programs. This is why AMS said it is proposing to set outdoor stocking densities for poultry and to clarify whether porches are acceptable for outdoor access.
AMS did not estimate the potential cost to implement this proposed requirement due to wide variability in the site-specific conditions. AMS said it does make assumptions about whether producers have the adequate land base to accommodate the outdoor stocking density. However, even producers who have the adequate land base may need to modify that area (e.g, install fencing) to provide access to the soil.
In its analysis of the rule, AMS said the outdoor space is the key constraint that drives the costs of complying with the proposed rule. AMS postulates that a producer will consider two options in response to this proposed rule: (1) comply with the proposed rule and remain in the organic egg market, or (2) transition to the cage-free egg market.
AMS expects the marginal cost to produce 1 doz. eggs to increase under the proposed rule for each type of housing system except pasture. AMS estimates that the marginal costs to produce 1 doz. eggs will increase 2.8% for floor litter and slatted/mesh floor housing and 3.3% for aviary systems.
Some major organic players are seeking an extension on the rule’s comment period, which currently closes June 13. They are seeking inclusion of more accurate information to account for a more precise understanding of how the industry has progressed. It is speculated that the department will try to finalize the rule before the next Administration enters, which could make it more challenging to provide time for any changes. |
Potent competitive inhibition of drug binding to the Saccharomyces cerevisiae ABC exporter Pdr5p by the hydrophobic estradiol-derivative RU49953.
The hydrophobic estradiol-derivative RU49953 inhibits the energy-dependent interaction of yeast multidrug-transporter Pdr5p with its fluorescent drug-substrate rhodamine 6G. The potent inhibition is competitive towards drug binding (Ki=23+/-6 nM), whereas nucleoside-triphosphate hydrolysis is two-orders-of-magnitude less sensitive. RU49953 constitutes the most efficient inhibitor of drug binding to a yeast multidrug ABC exporter reported so far. |
[The ability of pleth variability index to predict fluid responsiveness in mechanically ventilated patients under general anaesthesia].
To evaluate the ability of pleth variability index (PVI) in predicting fluid responsiveness in mechanically ventilated patients under general anesthesia. From August to November 2009, 25 patients were enclosed in this study following anesthesia induction. PVI was continuously displayed by the Masimo Radical 7. All patients were also monitored with Vigileo/FloTrac system. Haemodynamic data such as cardiac index (CI), stroke volume variability (SVV), mean arterial pressure, heart rate, central venous pressure, PVI, perfusion index were recorded before and after volume expansion (hetastar 6%, 7 ml/kg). Fluid responsiveness was defined as an increase in CI ≥ 15% (ΔCI ≥ 15). SVV and PVI were significantly higher in the responders (16.0% ± 2.6% and 20.5% ± 3.7%) than those in non-responders (11.6% ± 1.4% and 13.8% ± 2.6%) respectively (P < 0.05). The SVV threshold of 13.5% before volume expansion was able to discriminate the responders from the non-responders with a sensitivity of 88.2% and a specificity of 87.5%. The threshold for PVI was 15.5%, the same sensitivity of 88.2% and specificity of 87.5% were obtained. There was a significant relationship between PVI before volume expansion and change in CI after volume expansion (r = 0.683, P < 0.01), the same as the changes of SVV (r = 0.600, P < 0.01). PVI as a new dynamic indices can predict fluid responsiveness non-invasively in mechanically ventilated patients during general anesthesia. |
Bashar Al-Assad 'Betrayed Col. Gaddafi To Save His Syrian Regime'
Muammar Gaddafi at Damascus University in SyriaFlickr/james_gordon_losangelesThe Assad regime in Syria brought about Muammar Gaddafi's death by providing France with the key intelligence which led to the operation that killed him, sources in Libya have claimed.
French spies operating in Sirte, Gaddafi's last refuge, were able to set a trap for the Libyan dictator after obtaining his satellite telephone number from the Syrian government, they said.
In what would amount to an extraordinary betrayal of one Middle East strongman by another, President Bashar al-Assad sold out his fellow tyrant in an act of self-preservation, a former senior intelligence official in Tripoli told the Daily Telegraph.
With international attention switching from Libya to the mounting horrors in Syria, Mr Assad offered Paris the telephone number in exchange for an easing of French pressure on Damascus, according to Rami El Obeidi.
"In exchange for this information, Assad had obtained a promise of a grace period from the French and less political pressure on the regime - which is what happened," Mr El Obeidi said.
While it was not possible independently to verify his allegation, Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, played a leading role in both the Nato mission to bomb Libya and in bringing international pressure to bear on the Assad regime.
The claims by Mr El Obeidi, the former head of foreign intelligence for the movement that overthrew Gaddafi, followed comments by Mahmoud Jibril, who served as prime minister in the transitional government and now leads one of Libya's largest political parties. He confirmed over the weekend that a foreign "agent" was involved in the operation that killed Gaddafi.
He did not identify his nationality. However the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera quoted Western diplomats in Tripoli as saying that if a foreign agent was involved "he was almost certainly French".
The news of the Syria deal could potentially embarrass Nato, which initially claimed that it did "not target individuals".
According to the alliance's official version, an RAF reconnaissance plane spotted a large convoy of vehicles trying to flee Sirte on Oct 20th last year, two months after Gaddafi fled Tripoli.
Nato warplanes then bombed the convoy, apparently unaware of who was travelling in it, before militia fighters later found Gaddafi hiding in a drainpipe. He is believed to have been killed by his captors en route to the city of Misurata, west of Sirte.
But Mr El Obeidi said that France had essentially masterminded the operation by directing Libyan militiamen to an ambush spot where they could intercept Gaddafi's convoy.
He also suggested that France had little interest in how Gaddafi was treated once captured, although the fighters were encouraged to try to take him alive.
"French intelligence played a direct role in the death of Gaddafi, including his killing," Mr El Obeidi said.
"They gave directions that he was to be apprehended, but they didn't care if he was bloodied or beaten up as long as he was delivered alive."
According to Mr El Obeidi, French intelligence began to monitor Gaddafi's Iridium satellite telephone and made a vital breakthrough when he rang a senior loyalist, Yusuf Shakir and Ahmed Jibril, a Palestinian militant leader, in Syria.
As a result, they were able to pinpoint his location and monitor his movements. Although Turkish and British military intelligence officers - including the SAS - who were in Sirte at the time were informed of the ambush plans in advance they played no role in what was "an exclusive French operation", Mr El Obeidi said.
At the time of Gaddafi's death , Mr El Obeidi had fallen out of favour with the most powerful faction in Libya's transitional government because of his links with Gen Abdul Fatah Younes, a senior rebel commander killed by his own side in July last year.
Even so, he continued in his intelligence role in a semi-official but senior capacity.
Sources quoted by Corriere della Sera said one reason for the French lead in the operation was that then President Nicolas Sarkozy wanted Gaddafi dead after the Libyan leader openly threatened to reveal details of the large amounts of money he had donated to Sarkozy for his 2007 election campaign.
"Sarkozy had every reason to want to get rid of the colonel as quickly as possible," Western diplomats said, according to the newspaper.
A spokesman at the French foreign ministry refused to confirm or deny the claims. |
Prospect St, San Diego, CA, Space/Suite 100 - Available for Lease
Retail Space for Lease - Prospect Square
This is a 4,425 sq ft Retail space available for Lease at Prospect Square, located in San Diego, CA.
For Lease - Retail Property
$5.50/SF/Month
4,425 SF | Retail
Availability Details
Total Space Available
4,425
Space/Suite
100
Asking Rent Type
Triple Net (NNN)
Rent/SF/Month
$5.50
Total Rent
$24,337.00/Month
$292,044.00/Year
Listing ID
LA101858
Property Details
Total Square Feet
32,950
Parking Ratio
2.7:1,000
Year Built
1984
This information has been obtained from sources believed reliable. We have not verified it and make no guarantee, warranty or representation about it. Any projections, opinions, assumptions or estimates used are for example only and do not represent the current or future performance of the property. You and your advisors should conduct a careful, independent investigation of the property to determine to your satisfaction the suitability of the property for you needs. |
This article is from the archive of our partner .
There are a few lessons for Washington in the new ABC/Washington Post poll released today. One is that (non-Republican) people still like Obama. The second is that one option for Congress to turn its horrible ratings around would be for it to actually do something.
First, the overall tally. The president's net approval rating is 16 percent — the same as the Supreme Court's, but more people have no opinion on the Court. (Though that may change.) Congress continues to be rated poorly, with a net approval of -35 percent. If Congress were running for reelection as a group, it would almost certainly lose. Happily for Congress, it doesn't. |
Q:
Seeking an explanation of the hadith: "Fear the prayer of the oppressed, even if he is a disbeliever, for there is no barrier (between it and Allah).”
Please can anyone explain the following hadith?
The Messenger of Allah (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) said: “Fear the prayer of the oppressed, even if he is a disbeliever, for there is no barrier (between it and Allah).”
(It is referenced on e.g. Islam Q&A.)
A:
You are referring to a special version of this sahih hadith (al-Bukahri, and a longer Version for example in Muslim) on the supplication/curse of an oppressed دعوة المظلوم. Note the addition of "even if he is a disbeliever" doesn't have enough support to be qualifeid as sahih, so it is in best case considered as a "hassan" hadith.
I think the longer Version which is also in sahih al-Bukahri, Jami' at-Tirmdihi, sunan abi Dawod, sunan an-Nasai, sunan ibn Majah. Gives a hint on how this is to be understood we should not oppress others as Allah hates the oppressor and oppression (see for example this hadith) as quoted in this hadith qodsi. If an oppressed person asks Allah doing supplication or cursing somebody then they will reach Allah, even if this person maybe a sinner or a non-believer (as stated clearly in the hadith in Musnad Ahmad on the authority of Anas " دعوة المظلوم وإن كان كافرا ليس دونها حجاب" which you -apparently- are referring to) or somebody who eats haram as stated in this hadith.
The -apparently contradicting- quote from 13:14 and 40:50 saying:
... And the supplication of the disbelievers is not but in error [i.e. futility].
is referring to the supplication of the non-believers asking Allah to not let them enter jahanam. It doesn't cover any other kind of supplication, which is perfectly permissible for them (see for example this hadith, where a Jewish woman made a supplication for 'Aisha).
On the importance and acceptance of the suplication of an oppressed see also this hadith which is in jami' at-Tirmdihi, sunan abi Dawod and sunan ibn Majah.
And Allah knows best!
|
Suppose 2*l - 3*l = -4. Suppose l*m + z = 3*q, 3*q + 3*m + 3 = -12. What is t(q)?
7
Let m(z) = -4*z - 4. Let q = 138 + -141. Determine m(q).
8
Let y(j) = 1 - 2 - 3*j - 2 + 7*j. Give y(4).
13
Let h(y) = -9*y + 12. Let w(q) = 4*q - 6. Let s(d) = 3*h(d) + 7*w(d). Suppose l + 4*l = 25. Determine s(l).
-1
Let h(t) be the first derivative of -t**2 + t - 19. Determine h(8).
-15
Let q(i) = -3*i**2 - 1. Let y(f) = -f - 1. Let h be y(0). Determine q(h).
-4
Let w(b) = b**3 + b - 1. Let o = -15 - -21. Let z(r) = 5*r**3 - 7*r**2 - 11. Let t(y) = o*w(y) - z(y). What is t(-6)?
5
Let f(m) = -3*m**2 + 7*m + 5. Let v(j) be the third derivative of 0*j**4 + 1/6*j**3 + 1/60*j**5 + 0*j + 0 - 3*j**2. Let n(i) = f(i) + 4*v(i). What is n(-6)?
3
Let s be 4/6*(-8 + -1). Let p(h) = 4*h + 2. Let z(o) = 4*o + 2. Let b(f) = s*z(f) + 7*p(f). Calculate b(-2).
-6
Let k(s) be the third derivative of -s**6/120 - s**5/10 - 7*s**4/24 - s**3/3 + 6*s**2. Determine k(-5).
8
Suppose -2*h - 3*h + 10 = 0. Let t(b) be the third derivative of 0*b - 1/8*b**4 + 1/3*b**3 + 0 + 3*b**2. Calculate t(h).
-4
Let u(r) = 65*r + 2*r**3 - 2 + r**2 + 4 - 66*r. Calculate u(-2).
-8
Let t = 25 + -14. Let o(l) = t - 9 - 1 - 9*l. Let q be (1 - -1)*(-2)/(-4). What is o(q)?
-8
Let f(z) = z**3 - 6*z**2 + 6*z - 6. Let b be f(5). Let v(u) = 4*u**3 - u. Give v(b).
-3
Let j(q) = -q**3 + 4*q**2 + 5*q + 7. Let u be -2 + 3 - (-5 - -1). Determine j(u).
7
Let i(h) = -4*h**2 + 10*h - 4. Let c(r) = r**2 - r + 1. Let w(p) = -5*c(p) - i(p). Suppose b + j = 105, 3*j + 1 = -14. Let q be b/(-30) + 1/(-3). Give w(q).
3
Suppose 9*k - 5 = 4*k. Let g(d) = -d**2 + d. Let c(s) be the third derivative of -s**5/20 - 5*s**4/24 + s**3/6 - 3*s**2. Let j(x) = -c(x) - 5*g(x). Give j(k).
7
Suppose -3*u = 16 + 8. Let z(w) = w**3 + 9*w**2 + 7*w - 9. Determine z(u).
-1
Suppose 0 = 5*j - x - 12, -4*j - 3*x + 2 = -0*j. Suppose 9 = -b + j*b. Let m = 5 - b. Let w(l) = l**2 + 6*l + 2. What is w(m)?
-6
Let d(s) = s**2 - 8*s + 9. Let i = 14 + -8. Calculate d(i).
-3
Let t(i) = -1 - i**2 + 2*i + 7*i**3 - 3*i**3 - 5*i**3 + 2*i**3. Calculate t(1).
1
Let w(c) = -c**3 - 7*c**2 - 6*c + 5. Let k be w(-6). Let f = -5 + k. Let z(m) = -4 + f + 3*m - m + 7. Calculate z(-5).
-7
Let z(y) = -y**2 + y. Let u(l) = 3*l**3 - 2*l**2 - 1. Let k(i) = -u(i) - z(i). Calculate k(2).
-13
Let j be ((-2)/6)/(4/(-84)). Let t = j + -9. Let f(d) = -3*d - 2. Give f(t).
4
Let y(d) = d**3 + 6*d**2 + 8*d + 6. Suppose -4*x - x = -30. Let v be 3 - 2/(x/9). Suppose c - 17 = 5*i + 3*c, -5*i - c - 21 = v. Give y(i).
-9
Let o(x) = x**2 - 8*x + 4. Suppose -a + 4*a = -d + 16, -2*a = 4*d + 6. Calculate o(a).
-3
Let z(w) = -w**2 - 7*w + 19. Let b be z(-9). Let r = -2 + 2. Let t(q) = q + q + 5*q**2 + r*q - 1. Determine t(b).
6
Suppose r + 3*f - 7 = 0, 2*r - 2*f = -2*r + 14. Let c(n) = n**2 - 6*n + 1. Give c(r).
-7
Suppose -4*q + 11 - 3 = 0. Let a(i) be the first derivative of -i**4/4 + 5*i**3/3 - 2*i**2 + 2*i - 1. Determine a(q).
6
Let a(h) = 0*h - 2*h + h - 4. Give a(3).
-7
Suppose -15 = -5*j + 2*u + 5, j - 3*u = -9. Let c(b) = 5*b**2 - 6*b + 5. Let t(g) = -g**2. Let a(o) = c(o) + 4*t(o). Give a(j).
5
Let a(n) = n - 5. Let c(v) = -v + 4. Let r(q) = 2*a(q) + 3*c(q). Calculate r(2).
0
Suppose 0 = 4*p + 4*m + 36, 5*p + m + 21 = 2*p. Let w(v) = 3*v + v**2 + 0*v + 4*v. Calculate w(p).
-6
Let m be 3/((-6)/(-14)) - (-32)/(-8). Let z(p) be the second derivative of 0 - 1/12*p**4 - m*p - 5/6*p**3 - 1/2*p**2. Give z(-4).
3
Suppose -14 = -2*c + 9*c. Let x(s) = -3*s + 1. Calculate x(c).
7
Suppose -3*y + 10 = i - 1, -2*i = 5*y - 25. Suppose 3*m - 8*m + i = 0. Let x(v) = 2*v**2 - 7*v + 5. Give x(m).
9
Let n(f) = -2*f + 1. Let r be n(-1). Suppose 4*w - 2*w = -4*o, r*o = -5*w. Let j(z) = -z**2 + 5 + w*z**2 + 2*z - 7*z. Give j(-5).
5
Let m(x) = -x**3 + 4*x**2 + 7*x - 16. Let l be m(5). Let t(i) = i**2 + 3*i - 3. Determine t(l).
15
Let y(c) = -c**2 - c. Let t(q) = q**2 - 2*q + 3. Let j(i) = -t(i) - 2*y(i). Let z(x) = -x + 1. Let v be z(6). Calculate j(v).
2
Let j(g) = g + 0*g + 0*g + 4*g**2 + 6*g - g**3 - 3. What is j(5)?
7
Let x(c) = -c**2 + c + 5. Let q be 9/(3/1) - 0. What is x(q)?
-1
Let u(s) = -3*s**2 + 2*s - 1 + 5*s**2 + 3. Let d be u(-2). Suppose 0 = h + j - d, 3*j - 16 = -2*h - 0*h. Let k(w) = 2*w - 2. Determine k(h).
2
Let q(d) = -d**2 + 8*d + 3. Let v be (-1)/2 - (-5 + 5/(-2)). Calculate q(v).
10
Let b(z) = z**2 + 4*z - 4. Suppose 0 = -2*a - 3*d + 8*d + 17, -d = -2*a - 3. Calculate b(a).
-4
Let g(q) = -7*q**2 + 3*q - 2. Let j(h) = -21*h**2 + 8*h - 5. Let x(l) = -8*g(l) + 3*j(l). Determine x(-1).
-6
Let f(v) = v**2 - 5*v + 5. Let b be (0 - 2)/(1/(-2)). Let x be f(b). Let d(p) = -15 + 16 + 10*p - 2*p + 2*p. Calculate d(x).
11
Suppose 0 = -104*d + 102*d. Let s(n) = -n**2 - n - 3. Determine s(d).
-3
Let y = 6 - 1. Let w(t) = -t + 1. Let b(v) = -4*v + 4. Let x(z) = b(z) - 3*w(z). Calculate x(y).
-4
Let a(y) = -y + 5. Let j be (5/(-1) + 2)*104/(-39). Determine a(j).
-3
Let s(f) be the first derivative of f**3/3 + 3*f**2/2 + f + 15. What is s(-3)?
1
Let y(z) be the third derivative of z**6/180 + z**4/12 + z**2. Let q(v) be the second derivative of y(v). Let d be (-4 - -3)*(-3 + 2). What is q(d)?
4
Let o(x) = x**2 - x - 1. Let m(l) = -5*l**2 + 11*l + 6. Let w(r) = m(r) + 4*o(r). Let a be w(7). Let f(t) = 8 - a*t - 9 + 1. Determine f(4).
-8
Let a(l) = 3*l**3 + 3*l**2 + 11*l - 13. Let i(s) = -2*s**3 - s**2 - 6*s + 7. Let d(y) = 3*a(y) + 5*i(y). Calculate d(3).
14
Suppose -5*r + 3*l + 2 = 3, 0 = 3*r - 3*l - 3. Let d(c) = c**3 + c**2 + c + 1. Give d(r).
-5
Let d(l) = l**3 - 4*l**2 + 3*l - 3. Let u be -3*2*15/(-9). Suppose 4*w - u = 2. Let o be d(w). Let q(y) = y - 3. Calculate q(o).
-6
Suppose 3*w - 39 = 6*w. Let r = w - -9. Let s(i) = i**2 + 5*i + 4. Give s(r).
0
Let a(i) = i**3 + 4*i**2 - 4*i + 2. Suppose u + 17 = 13. What is a(u)?
18
Let k(v) = -2*v + 6. Let p be 5 + -5 + 0 + 4. Suppose -w = p*w - 30. Give k(w).
-6
Let w(x) = -x**2 + 4*x + 1. Suppose 12 = 3*t - 3*j - 15, 0 = 4*j + 16. Calculate w(t).
-4
Let k be 2/9 + 2/(-9). Let s(a) = -3*a**2 - 2 + 0*a**2 + 2*a**2 + 7. Determine s(k).
5
Let t(g) be the second derivative of g**6/120 - g**5/20 + g**4/24 + g**3/3 - 2*g**2 - 2*g. Let q(a) be the first derivative of t(a). Give q(2).
0
Let a(m) = m + 1. Let p(h) = 6*h + 5. Let k(q) = -20*a(q) + 4*p(q). Suppose 3*n = -4*d + 2*n + 4, -2 = -2*d - n. Determine k(d).
4
Suppose 4*k + 0 - 8 = 0. Let h(w) = w - k + 4 + w - w. Suppose -3*p - 9 = 2*v - 2*p, 5*v + 4*p = -21. Give h(v).
-3
Let v(p) = -p + 6. Suppose -4*x = -x + 3. Let l = 2 - x. Suppose -l*s + 8 = -s. What is v(s)?
2
Let j(p) be the first derivative of p**5/60 + p**4/6 - 7*p**3/6 + 4*p**2 - 5. Let d(v) be the second derivative of j(v). Determine d(-5).
-2
Let j(n) = -5*n + 4. Let h(p) = 6*p - 5. Let x(y) = 4*h(y) + 5*j(y). Suppose 0*w + 5*o = -5*w - 10, -4*o - 20 = -2*w. Let k = 2 + w. Calculate x(k).
-4
Let k(j) = 2*j**2 - 13*j + 1. Let v(n) = n**2 - 6*n. Let h(m) = 3*k(m) - 7*v(m). Determine h(-2).
-7
Let x(c) = c**3 - 3*c**2 - 3*c + 3. Let v(k) = -7*k. Let f be v(-1). Let y(s) = s**2 - 6*s - 4. Let a be y(f). Determine x(a).
-6
Let w(u) = u**2 - 6*u + 4. Let x(c) be the second derivative of c**5/20 - c**4/4 + c**3/6 + 3*c**2/2 - 8*c. Let y be x(3). Calculate w(y).
4
Let u = -18 - -18. Let n(m) = -3 - 2 + 0*m + m + u. Determine n(6).
1
Suppose 24*q = 23*q + 2. Let m(k) = k**3 - 3*k**2 + k. Calculate m(q).
-2
Let r(b) = b + 7. Suppose -o = 7 + 3. Calculate r(o).
-3
Let g = 30 + -43. Let f = -8 - g. Suppose 0 = -0*i + i - f*d, -5*d + 15 = -4*i. Let w(m) = -m**2 - 4*m + 6. Determine w(i).
1
Let v(d) = d - 5. Let i be (9 - 9) + 0/(-2). Suppose i*o = 2*o. Calculate v(o).
-5
Let m(o) be the second derivative of 3*o**3/2 - o**2 + 10*o. Give m(2).
16
Let l(n) = -n**3 - 4*n**2 + 3*n - 2. Let g(j) = -3*j**2 - 2*j + 3. Let z be g(-2). Calculate l(z).
8
Let t(k) be the third derivative of k**5/60 - k**4/24 - k**3/3 - k**2. Suppose -z = -0*z - 3. Suppose 3*j = 4*f - 12, 10 = -z*f - 3*j - 2. What is t(f)?
-2
Let a(c) = -5*c**3 - c**2 + 1. Suppose -5*t + 5*f = -2*t - 42, 30 = 2*t - 4*f. Let o = 10 - t. Determine a(o).
-5
Let k(j) = 2*j**2 - 7*j + 1. Let h(w) = w**2 - 4*w + 1. Let x(v) = 5*h(v) - 3*k(v). Calculate x(2).
0
Let u(n) = -n**3 + 4*n**2 - n + 4. Suppose 5*j |
This invention relates to devices for press-fit insertion or solderless electrical contact into an electrical contact hole of a device or object, for example, a printed circuit board. The new electrical press-fit contact device may have a resilient portion with a combination elliptical and oblong opening positioned to form two convex curved spaced apart beams with opposed projections on an inner surface.
Electrical press-fit or solderless contact devices may currently be known in the art to have an insertion portion, a position portion and a contact portion. These devices may have an opening, slot, slit, eyelet or the like formed in an insertion portion. The opening may have opposed spaced apart protuberances in the opening positioned to be crushed, wedged or otherwise deformed to add more force or pressure to the fit of the device in an electrical contact hole, such as in a printed circuit board. The device having protuberances may have axial symmetrical deformable beams defined around the opening. The interior opening, abutting corners and exterior edges of the device may have intersecting surfaces or sides that are angular or have steps rather than a transitioning smooth arc surface interface. Various openings may be wider or broader at the longitudinal ends than in the center of the opening, which may allow for cracking at the beam merging ends due to insufficient structural support. |
Q:
Which one to use - html label or Asp:label
Which one to use
<label>Name</label>
<asp:Label Text="Name" runat="server"></asp:Label>
Genreally we are using label to show some text only(like not to many business logic on lables).
As a perfomance point of view which one to use.
A:
There would be very little to gain in performance between the two options. This is a micro-optimization.
But to answer the question - the straight markup would perform better, as there is no need to deserialize the control and operate on it server side.
In general, if you use a server side control, the server will need to do more work than with plain markup.
|
Aspiration pneumonia. Recognizing and managing a potentially growing disorder.
Gross aspiration of liquid or particulate matter into the lung can result in severe hypoxemia, pulmonary infiltrates in dependent lung regions, fever, and leukocytosis. The initial lung injury is primarily due to inflammatory mediators rather than infection. The responsible bacterial pathogens differ between community-acquired and nosocomial aspiration pneumonia. Many aspiration pneumonias are mixed aerobic-anaerobic infections. Enteric gram-negative bacilli and S aureus are more common in nosocomial aspiration pneumonia. Current treatment guidelines support initial empirical antibiotic therapy in patients with severe aspiration pneumonia pending culture results. Appropriate initial treatment improves outcome. Antimicrobial therapy for aspiration pneumonia is often empirical and should be based on patient characteristics, the setting in which aspiration occurred, the severity of pneumonia, and available information regarding local pathogens and resistance patterns. |
Introduction
============
Peyronie's disease has been plaguing mankind for ages. This psychologically devastating and deforming condition is characterised by the presence of penile plaques, penile angulation and painful erections, often associated with erectile dysfunction. The exact underlying pathophysiology ([@r1]) is still uncertain up to this day; although physicians currently hypothesize that the plaque arises after trauma to the penile bodies, resulting in cytokine mediated activation of fibroblasts and the laying down of collagen within the tunica albuginea.
The symptoms of Peyronie's disease follow a variable clinical course. A fair majority often reports resolution of pain, while patients with penile curvature are split amongst improvement, stabilisation and progression. Mulhall *et al*. ([@r2]) reported in 2006 that of his 246 patients, 89% of them had resolution of pain, while 12% improved, 40% remained stable, and 48% had worsened curvature. In 2007, Grasso *et al*. ([@r3]) followed 110 patients for at least 6 years, and reported 68% of younger patients (\<50 years old) versus 31.5% of older patients (\>50 years old) experienced progression of penile curvature, with more patients in the older subgroup experiencing resolution of pain (69% *vs*. 20%). However, this is contradicted by a recent observation study in 2014, when Berookhim *et al*. ([@r4]) reported on 176 men with uniplanar curvature, who opted for conservative management and were followed for \>12 months. In his series, 67% experienced no change in penile curvature, 12% improved with a mean of 27° change, and 21% worsened (mean change of angulation of 22°) with those who experienced progression being older and have been experiencing symptoms for a longer period of time. These observations suggest that pain from Peyronie's disease is often self-limiting and resolves over time despite the lack of treatment. However, the clinical course of penile curvature is less predictable, thus justifying the need for treatment to prevent worsening loss of sexual function.
As our understanding of this condition advances, many non-surgical treatment modalities, targeting various parts of the disease process, have been attempted. They consist of oral, intralesional and extra-corporal energy therapies. De Peyronie, himself, was the first to utilise topical mercury and mineral water (Holy water of Bareges) to treat the plaques, eventually reporting efficacy with regular use of mineral water. In 1901, Walsham and Spencer ([@r5]) were the first to inject mercury (a prevalent treatment of sexually transmitted diseases then) and iodide directly into penile plaques, attempting to dissolve them. However, not only did these agents prove ineffective, it also led to significant toxic side effects, resulting in its abandonment. Current injectable agents can be broadly categorised into two groups, namely anti-inflammatory/proliferative agents and lytic agents. These agents, their mechanism of action and their common side effects are summarised in [*Table 1*](#t1){ref-type="table"} and [*Figure 1*](#f1){ref-type="fig"}. This article aims to review the evolution of the various types of injectable intralesional therapies, and focus on recently published articles, thus summarising the current evidence relating to the efficacy of these injectables agents.
###### Summary of injectables used for the treatment of Peyronie's disease
Intralesional agent Proposed mechanism of action Acute pain Penile curvature Plaque size Treatment related complications Grade of evidence (AUA 2015)
------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ ------------------ ------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------
Steroids ([@r6],[@r7]) Reduce inflammatory response and fibrotic healing √ -- √ Atrophy of surrounding structures and skin Not recommended
Orgotein (superoxide dismutase) ([@r8]) Breakdown of oxidative free radicals and reduce associated inflammation √ √ √ Pain, swelling, bruising and stiffness Not recommended
Interferon α 2a or 2b ([@r9]-[@r13]) Reduction of fibroblast proliferation and collagen synthesis -- √ √ Pain, swelling, bruising, flu like symptoms C
Calcium channel blockers (e.g., verapamil) ([@r14]-[@r19]) Ca channel antagonist → reduced fibroblast related secretion of collagen √ √ √ Pain, swelling, bruising, giddiness and nausea C
Clostridium collagenase ([@r20]-[@r23]) Direct hydrolysis of interstitial collagen fibres -- √ √ Pain, swelling, bruising, corporal rupture (with sexual intercourse \<2 weeks post) B
{#f1}
Intralesional steroids
======================
In a 1953 journal of urology article, Bodner *et al*. ([@r6]) reported modest success with the intralesional administration of dexamethasone, reducing both the plaque size and subjective penile pain. Winter *et al*. ([@r7]) again reported in the *Journal of Urology* in 1975, their results of 21 patients, who received 6 to 10 injections at intervals of 1 for 6 months, where a "high percentage of the cases there occurred a disappearance or decrease in the size of the plaques, pain on erection and discomfort during sexual relations" as well as "a high rate of improvement in the chordee". However, in view of the small numbers, the authors felt that "statistical significance is not believed applicable" and that the results were not significantly different from the expected natural course of Peyronie's disease. Furthermore, the side effects related to the prolonged use of steroids, such as local tissue atrophy, thinning of the overlying penile skin and immunosuppression precluded its use, making it fall out favour over time.
Orgotein
========
A form of medical grade copper/zinc superoxide dismutase, Orgotein possesses anti-inflammatory properties, and was first utilised in the treatment of inflammatory bladder conditions, such as radiation-induced cystitis as early as 1974. Orgotein exerts its effect through the breakdown of superoxides free radicals to hydrogen peroxide and oxygen molecules, thus reducing inflammation and fibrosis. This led to the hypothesis that direct injections of orgotein into these penile plaques may reduce their sizes and help with pain. Two small scale studies in 1981 showed promise, in which Bartsch *et al*. ([@r8]) showed that his 23 patients had significant reduction of the induration size, pain and penile deviation on erection, while Gustafson *et al*. ([@r24]) showed in 19 of his 22 patients, a restoration of normal or near normal sexual function. However, since then, no randomised controlled trials of significant numbers were conducted to demonstrate statistically significant benefit. Intralesional orgotein is hence no longer a recommended treatment of choice for Peyronie's disease.
Interferon alpha 2B (IFN α-2b)
==============================
Approved for utilisation in hairy cell leukemia, follicular cell lymphoma, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)-related Kaposi sarcoma, malignant melanoma and chronic hepatitis B & C infections, this immunomodulator and suppressor of cellular proliferation was first used to treat Peyronie's disease in 1995 by Wegner *et al*. ([@r9]) in an observational study involving 25 patients, who received 1 MU of intralesional INFα-2b weekly for 5 weeks. Follow-up physical and ultrasonographical examination at 1 and 6 months revealed improvement or stabilisation in 19 cases, while progression of plaque size was seen in the remaining 6, all of whom had advanced and calcified plaques. In 2005, Kendirci *et al*. ([@r10]) reported in the *Journal of Sexual Medicine* an unblinded, randomised, placebo controlled prospective study involving 39 patients, 19 of whom were in the treatment arm. The patients were either injected with 5 MU of INF α-2b or an equivalent volume of saline every other week for 12 weeks. They found statistically significant improvement of the peak systolic velocity on penile Doppler ultrasound, as well as reduction of penile curvature (48.75°±4.41° to 36.75°±4.53°; P\<0.05), plaque size (5.16±0.63 to 3.49±0.56 cm^2^; P\<0.001), plaque density (P\<0.001) and pain on erection (P\<0.001) in the treatment arm. However, there was no improvement of the IIEF score between the 2 groups (placebo: 17.65±1.52 to 19.05±1.48 *vs*. INFα-2b: 17.85±1.67 to 21.10±1.56). These results were echoed by the larger single-blind, multicenter, placebo controlled, parallel study by Hellstrom *et al*. ([@r11]) in 2006, involving 117 patients with a mean disease duration of 1.7 years. These patients either received 5 MU of INF α-2b (n=55) or and equal volume of saline (n=62) biweekly for 12 weeks. A total of 103 completed the study with 50 in the INF α-2b group and 53 in the placebo control group. Of the patients who reported pain on entry of the study, a larger proportion of treated patients reported resolution of pain (28.1% *vs*. 67.7%). Statistically significant differences were seen in the reduction of mean penile curvature (P\<0.01), plaque size (P\<0.001) and plaque density (P\<0.05), in favour of the patients who received INF α-2b. However, there was no difference in improvement in IIEF scores between the placebo and treatment groups. Both of the latter papers reported the well tolerated nature of INF α-2b with mild side effects including flu-like symptoms and mild penile swelling and ecchymosis. Recently, Hellstrom *et al*. again reported in two retrospective studies in 2013 and 2015, with regards to the use of IFN in Peyronie's disease. In Hellstrom's ([@r12]) 2013 publication, his team reviewed 127 patients with a mean age of 55 years old (range, 25--76 years old) and a mean disease duration of 2 years (range, 0.5--2.3 years), who received INF therapy between 2001 and 2012. Of these patients, 54% (n=68) had an improvement of penile curvature of \>20%, with a mean change of 9° (P\<0.001). Penile curvature improved or stabilised in 89.8% of patients. There was, however, no statistical difference in pre- and post-treatment vascular parameters. Pre-treatment patient demographics were also reviewed to "predict" response to IFN treatment. However, while this revealed that a penile curvature of \<30° was associated with a more than 20% improvement of angular deviation (P\<0.001), an absolute angular improvement was similar regardless of the pre-treatment curvature (P=0.41). Contrary to current belief, this paper also revealed that response to IFN therapy was independent of mean duration of disease (\<1 *vs*. 1--4 *vs*. \>4 years) since onset (P=0.20). These results were replicated in another 2015 retrospective study conducted by Stewart *et al*. ([@r13]), in which he reviewed 131 patients, who received INF between 2001 and 2014. He reported positive results in 69% of his patients, with 54% experiencing greater than 20% improvement of penile curvature. Hellstrom *et al*. attempted to address a scarcely-studied side of Peyronie's disease; the ventral plaque and showed that regardless of plaque location, be it ventral (n=21) or non-ventral (n=110), a similar proportion of treated patients demonstrated good response with INF (P=0.92), suggesting that INF may be used effectively and safely in ventral plaques. Despite, these evidences supporting the use of intralesional INF α-2b, INF α-2b remains off label based on the American Urological Association (AUA) Clinical Guidelines of the Treatment of Peyronie's Disease \[2015\].
Calcium channel blockers
========================
Verapamil
---------
A calcium channel blocker used initially to treat cardiac arrythmias and angina pectoris, verapamil was first utilised by Levine *et al*. ([@r14]) in 1994 to treat Peyronie's disease, as calcium channel blockers were shown to alter the metabolism of fibroblasts, decrease extracellular matrix secretion of collagen and increase collagenase activity. Levine *et al*. reported in the *Journal of Urology* in 1994, promising results of a dose escalating observational study involving 14 patients, who were injected with intralesional verapamil biweekly for 6 months. Of the 14 patients, 91% had resolution of pain, 42% had objectively measureable decrease in curvature, and 58% had subjective improvement in erectile dysfunction, while 100% noticed an increase in penile girth. Levine *et al*. ([@r15]) then conducted a larger scale non-randomised prospective study in 1997 involving 46 men. Of the 38 men who completed the study, he again found that pain resolved in 97% of the patients (who initially presented with pain) after a mean of 2.5 injections. 76% of patients had a subjective decrease in curvature, 9.5% noted a worsening, while 14.5% reported curvature stability. Of the treated patients, 72% reported an improvement in functional erection and the ability to engage in coitus. Objective measurements demonstrated a decrease in curvature in 54% of the patients, an increase in 11% and stability in 34%. Levine *et al*. ([@r16]) further reported, in 2002 his largest prospective non-randomized study of 156 patients, with a mean disease duration of 17.7 months. In this, he again found that of the 121 of 140 patients who completed therapy (10 mg of intralesional verapamil biweekly over 24 weeks), and were re-evaluated with a second duplex ultrasound, penile curvature decreased in 73 (60%, mean reduction of 30°, range 5--90°), increased in 10 (8%, mean increase of 26°, range 5--45°) and remained unchanged in 38 (31%). These three papers led to the establishment of the "optimal intralesional verapamil dose" of 10 mg. However, follow up studies produced seemingly contradictory results. In 1998, Rehman *et al*. ([@r17]) reported the results of his randomized, single-blinded placebo-based study, spanning over the course of 2 years \[1994--1996\], during which 14 patients were evenly randomised into treatment and control groups. In this series, Rehman *et al*. reported plaque softening and objective improvement in plaque associated penile narrowing in all the patients receiving intralesional verapamil. There was also a statistically significant improvement in erectile dysfunction (P\<0.02), decease in plaque volume (P\<0.04) and a trend towards improvement of penile curvature (P\<0.07) in the treatment versus control groups. These results were contradicted by the results of Shirazi *et al*. ([@r25]), who reported in the *Journal of International Urology and Nephrology* \[2009\] the absence of statistically significant differences in reduction in plaque size (P=0.755), pain (P=0.99), penile curvature (P=0.586) and plaque hardness (P=0.803) in his series of 80 patients. There was also no significant improvement in erectile dysfunction (P=0.985) between the treatment and control groups. While the latter two papers seem to have opposing outcomes with intralesional verapamil, the patients in Shirazi's series had a longer mean duration of disease prior to treatment (16 *vs*. 21 months) and greater pre-treatment mean penile curvature (47° *vs*. 37.7°), while in Rehman's series, the dose of intralesional verapamil was inconsistent through the patient cohort (10 to 27 mg), potentially accounting for the difference in outcomes. Recently published papers regarding the use of intralesional verapamil focused mainly on comparing intralesional verapamil alone *vs*. combination therapy. These include the combination of intralesional verapamil and daily oral tadalafil or antioxidants. Published in 2015 and 2014 respectively, Dell'Atti *et al*. ([@r18]) and Favilla *et al*. ([@r19]) reported benefits relating to the improvement of erectile function with each of the aforementioned regimes. However, it is difficult, to say the least, to draw any definitive conclusions due to the lack of a placebo control group in each of these prospective studies. Reported complications of intralesional verapamil were fairly minor, ranging from pain at the injection site, penile bruising, nausea and giddiness. In view of the lack of placebo controlled trials and the only two RCTs producing inconsistent results, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has yet to approve the use of verapamil in the treatment of Peyronie's disease. However, the latest AUA guidelines relating to the treatment of Peyronie's disease do not forbid the off-label use of verapamil in a properly pre-counselled patient, after taking into consideration the previous evidence of benefit and the lack of serious adverse events.
Nicardipine
-----------
Recent interest in an alternative calcium channel blocker, Nicardipine, has yielded promising results. Soh *et al*. ([@r26]) reported in 2010 a randomised placebo controlled trial involving 74 patients, where a statistically significant reduction in pain (P=0.019), erectile dysfunction (P\<0.01) and plaque size (P=0.0004) was seen. The outcome, however, did not reveal statistically significant difference in reduction of penile curvature (P=0.14) between the two groups. This novel calcium channel blocker remains unverified and is currently not recommended for routine use.
Collagenase
===========
Produced by the bacteria *Clostridium Histiolytica*, purified collagenase has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of Dupuytren's contracture. By directly injecting these lytic enzymes into the fibrotic lesions on the palmar aponeurosis, extension deficits of the digits have been shown to be significantly reduce pre and post treatment. Since the underlying pathophysiology of Dupuytren's contracture and Peyronie's disease are postulated to be similar, both involving a fibrotic plaque limiting normal function, it is logical that this method of treatment could be extrapolated to Peyronie's disease as well. A search of recent literature revealed a pilot study by Gelbard *et al*., in 1982 ([@r27]), designed to investigate the feasibility and safety of collagenase in in vitro specimens. It was found that collagenase managed to successfully dissolve plaque tissue, without affecting elastic tissue, vascular smooth muscle or the myelin. This led to the authors to conclude that collagenase was potentially effective in dissolving the disease plaque, though more research is needed to establish its safety profile *in vivo*.
Gelbard *et al*. ([@r28]) went on to conduct a phase I prospective non placebo controlled study in 1985. This involved 31 patients with a mean pre-treatment penile curvature of 42°, 10 of whom had failed other treatments including intralesional corticosteroids, radiotherapy and even plaque excision and grafting. Of these 31 entrants to the study, 4 were completely unable to have coitus due to pain or penile curvature, while 14 complained of significant pain. These patients received daily injections of intralesional collagenase for 3 days and results obtained 4 weeks post treatment. In this classic series, Gelbard *et al*. reported good response in 20 of the 31 patients with 4 patients developing complete resolution of the penile plaques, and reduction of penile curvature in the remaining 16. Pain resolved in 13 of the 14 patients who initially complained of pain. Complications seen in this early study included mild bruising of the penile shaft and pain of the injection site. However, of significant note was the one patient who developed tunica rupture during sexual intercourse, 2 weeks post treatment. Only 1 recurrence was seen during the 9.8 months follow-up period.
These promising results led on to Gelbard's 1993 ([@r20]) double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. In this trial involving 49 men, the outcomes were significantly better in the treatment arm (P\<0.07) and when his results were analyzed by disease severity, it was found that men with milder penile curvature responded better to intralesion collagenase, while those who had a penile curvature of \>90° responded poorly.
Support was lent to the results of the 1985 study by Gelbard *et al*. ([@r28]) and by Jordan *et al*. in 2008 ([@r21]), during which Jordan conducted a non-placebo controlled prospective trial of 25 patients and concluded that there was both statistically significant objective (penile curvature, penile width and plaque length) and subjective improvement at 3, 6 and 9 months after treatment with minimal treatment-related complications.
Compelled by these results, Gelbard *et al*. ([@r22]) published a phase IIb double-blind, randomized, placebo controlled study in 2012. In this study, Gelbard *et al*. recruited 147 patients and randomized them into treatment and non-treatment groups in a ratio of 3:1 with or without penile modelling (1:1). Patients were subjected to 2 intralesional injections of collagenase per cycle, 24--72 h apart. Each patient received up to 3 cycles, 6 weeks apart. Patients who were randomized into the penile modelling subgroup, received gentle penile traction after 24--72 h after each cycle, in the opposing direction of the penile curvature. The attending clinician held the penis in this position for 30 seconds before allowing it to revert to its resting position for 30 seconds. This "penile modelling cycle" was repeated for 3 times. Overall, patients who received intralesional collagenase had improvements relating to penile curvature (P\<0.001) and subjective measures like symptom bother (P=0.01), intercourse discomfort (P=0.02) and intercourse constraint (P\<0.001). No improvement in IIEF score was seen between the 2 groups. Further analysis revealed that the group with penile modeling after intralesional collagenase brought about a statistically significant improvement in penile curvature when compared to patients who received penile modelling with placebo (mean change: −17.5° *vs*. +0.6° respectively; P\<0.001). Patients who received placebo and collagenase without penile modelling did not differ in the improvement of penile curvature (mean change: −13° *vs*. −15° respectively; P=0.9). This suggests that penile modelling is a vital part of improving penile curvature post collagenase administration, while penile modelling alone would potentially worsen the curvature, possibly by inducing trauma to the tunica and worsening the inflammatory and scarring response.
Using results from the previous study, a phase III double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial was conducted by Gelbard *et al*. ([@r23]) in the United States and Australia from 2010 to 2012. Affectionately named as the Investigation for Maximal Peyronie's Reduction Efficacy and Safety Studies (IMPRESS) I and II trials respectively, these two identical studies were conducted simultaneously only differing by location and numbers of patients recruited. This study actively excluded patients with a penile curvature of \>90° since it has been shown in previous studies that outcomes were poor in this subgroup. A total of 832 patients were recruited (IMPRESS I: n=417, IMPRESS II: n=415). They were randomly assigned to treatment and placebo group in a ratio of 2:1. Similar to the phase IIb trial, patients in the treatment group received 2 doses of collagenase per cycle separated by 24--72 h, followed by penile modelling. The patients then went on to receive up to 3 treatment cycles separated by a rest period of 6 weeks. During the rest period, patients were instructed to perform standardized home penile modeling 3 times daily using a similar procedure. Subjects were also advised to gently attempt to straighten the penis without pain during spontaneous erection. The placebo group received similar penile modelling training and advice while receiving 2 doses of placebo injections 24 to 72 h apart per cycle, 6 weekly for a total of 4 cycles. The authors reported significant improvement in penile curvature at the end of 52 weeks in the treatment group over the control group (−17.0°±14.8°; mean reduction 34% versus −9.3°±13.6°; mean reduction 18.2%; P\<0.0001). Mean change in the symptom bother domain score was also significantly improved in the treatment group (−2.8±3.8 *vs*. −1.8±3.5, P=0.0037). Peyronie's disease questionnaire psychological and physical symptoms (P=0.0021), IIEF overall satisfaction (P=0.0189), plaque consistency (P=0.0133) and penile length (P=0.0408) trended towards greater improvement in treated men. However, penile pain did not improve significantly between men in the placebo and treatment arm. Most treatment-related complications were mild and included penile ecchymosis, swelling and pain. Serious complications occurred in 6 patients (0.72%); 3 patients, who had either significant penile trauma or sexual intercourse within 2 weeks post collagenase injection, developed corporal rupture requiring surgery, while the remaining 3 developed penile hematoma.
Following this large scale phase III trial, collagenase injection (marketed as Xiaflex^TM^, Auxilium, Chesterbrook, PA) became the first FDA-approved treatment for Peyronie's disease in 2013.
Injection techniques
====================
There is a stark difference in injection techniques between that of the administration of collagenase and the other injectable agents. Collagenase is directly injected into the primary plaque at the point of maximal penile curvature, involving only a single point of puncture to deliver the drug. This is in stark contrast to the administration of IFN 2a and verapamil, where a multiple point puncture technique delivers the drug "evenly" through the plaque. The former technique is difficult to perform as a large amount of pressure is required to inject collagenase into a plaque, which is not very distensible. On the other hand, the multi puncture technique has been criticised to have brought on clinical efficacy as a result of plaque fracture rather than the agent itself, thus complicating the interpretation of the results in previous studies.
Conclusions
===========
The key to successfully treating a disease lies with the knowledge of its underlying pathophysiology. Although our understanding of the etiology of Peyronie's disease has come a long way, our current knowledge is probably incomplete. One has to wonder why not every patient who sustains significant penile injury develops Peyronie's disease, while others develop severe penile curvature after trivial, if any trauma at all. This draws similarities with other medical conditions such as keloid formation and Dupuytren's contracture. Perhaps a vital part of the underlying mechanism still eludes us till this day, and when found, may allow us the capability to differentiate patients, in whom the disease may spontaneously resolve, apart from those whose disease may progress. This would on one hand prevent over treatment of some patients, while preventing delays in treatment in those whose condition would only worsen over time. The focus of treatment would be to halt the acute pain and to restore sexual function by reducing penile curvature and its associated erectile dysfunction. Various treatment options have been attempted; however many have either ended up in failure or produced inconsistent results. Currently, there is no single gold standard injectable therapy and even the only FDA-approved injectable agent, collagenase, has only shown benefit in a specific subgroup of patients with the aid of penile modelling. Until a more reliable treatment emerges, some of the intralesional injectables discussed can be used to at least stabilize the plaque, and may result in some reduction of deformity with improved sexual function. This is especially so in light of the low adverse event profiles and the risk of more advanced deformity without treatment.
None.
*Conflicts of Interest:* The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
[^1]: *Contributions:* (I) Conception and design: RB Tan; (II) Administration support: All authors; (III) Provision of study materials: RB Tan; (IV) Collection and assembly of data: W Chong; (V) Data analysis and interpretation: All authors; (VI) Manuscript writing: All authors; (VII) Final approval of manuscript: All authors.
|
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** Tune in to the Fox News Channel for a President Trump town hall, moderated by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, tonight at 6:30 pm ET**
On the roster: Warren wilts - Biden campaign ready to take on Sanders - I’ll Tell You What: Live from the Lane Bryant lounge -Schumer climbs down from SupCo threats - He didn’t find it humerus
WARREN WILTS
Fox News: “Sen. Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the 2020 presidential race Thursday after a disappointing Super Tuesday in which she failed to win even her home state -- a development that could boost Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign by making him the lone progressive standard-bearer in the Democratic field. But, while making the widely expected announcement outside her Cambridge home with her husband Bruce by her side, the Massachusetts senator declined to make an endorsement at this stage. ‘Not today,’ Warren said, noting that she wanted more time to think about the decision. Her exit essentially leaves the race as a one-on-one battle between Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden, who is surging after claiming a stunning 10 victories on Super Tuesday. Warren first revealed the decision in a late-morning, all-staff call on Thursday. … ‘Our work continues, the fight goes on, and big dreams never die,’ Warren said. ‘From the bottom of my heart, thank you.’”
Biden campaign ready to take on Sanders - Politico: “The morning after whipping Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden woke up Wednesday to his primary opponent’s first paid negative TV ads attacking him over Social Security and trade. Biden’s campaign response: 2016. Framing Sanders as a divisive party outsider who won’t accept defeat, the Biden campaign pointed to his bitter Democratic primary fight four years ago with his party nemesis, Hillary Clinton. That ended with a chaotic nominating convention and Donald Trump’s election months later. Biden’s strategy capitalizes on Clinton's successful effort to brand Sanders as more unlikable than Biden among women, who favored the former vice president by 12 percentage points during his 10-state romp Super Tuesday, according to exit poll averages. With the averages showing Sanders lost black voters by even more — 34 points — the Biden campaign also tangentially brought up race in bashing the Vermont senator.”
Wall Street breathes a sigh of relief for Biden surge - NYT: “Joseph R. Biden Jr., the former vice president and a moderate candidate with solid support on Wall Street, had notched an unexpectedly strong showing in the Super Tuesday primaries. Of course, Mr. Sanders could still win the nomination — but for Mr. [Michael Novogratz] and others on Wall Street, Mr. Biden’s resurgence offered the opportunity to bankroll a Democrat they can get behind. ‘There’s a lot of momentum on Biden’s side,’ Mr. Novogratz said. Already, one of his colleagues at Galaxy Digital, a cryptocurrency investment firm, was planning a Biden fund-raiser. … By the end of [Wednesday], the S&P 500 had risen more than 4 percent, bouncing back from a steep drop the day before, reflecting Wall Street’s relief about Mr. Biden’s success. … Against that backdrop, Tuesday night’s results brought a surge of relief to many on Wall Street, who — fearful of the anticapitalist sentiment espoused by Senator Sanders and wary of another four years of a polarizing President Trump — had essentially sidelined themselves from political activism.”
Cortez is still Team Bernie, but softens some hard edges - Bloomberg: “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is all in for Bernie Sanders, but she’s not going to tear the Democratic party apart over it. Some of Sanders’s progressive supporters on Capitol Hill sounded a gentler tone than the candidate himself on Wednesday after Joe Biden’s robust comeback in the Super Tuesday primary contests. Even as liberal Democrats insist that offering a bold vision is the best way to build a coalition, they are leaving room to join moderate Democrats if that’s what it takes to defeat President Donald Trump. ‘I am supporting Bernie Sanders until the end,’ said Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat and a top Sanders surrogate. ‘But at the same time, I also am committed to supporting the nominee, whoever that might be.’”
THE RULEBOOK: UNDERSTANDING LIMITS
“As the natural limit of a democracy is that distance from the central point which will just permit the most remote citizens to assemble as often as their public functions demand, and will include no greater number than can join in those functions; so the natural limit of a republic is that distance from the centre which will barely allow the representatives to meet as often as may be necessary for the administration of public affairs.” – James Madison, Federalist No. 14
TIME OUT: A DIFFERENT VIEW OF THE BOSTON MASSACRE
Smithsonian: “Tensions in the American colonies were rising. … Resentful toward their lack of representation in Parliament and desirous of the same rights as their fellow British subjects, the colonists agitated for relief from the burdensome levies. In response, George III dispatched roughly 1,000 troops to the Massachusetts town of Boston to curb the colony’s ongoing unrest. The soldiers had been stationed in Ireland for years, some close to a decade, establishing roots and families. …[The] British government allowed for hundreds of wives and kids to accompany their husbands and fathers on the 1768 journey. And for the next two years, British and Irish families lived alongside colonists in Boston, assisting each other when in need and establishing neighborly relationships, only for those relationships to be irreparably damaged when British troops fired upon Bostonians, killing five, in what became known as the Boston Massacre. In her new book, The Boston Massacre: A Family History, Serena Zabin, a professor of history at Carleton College, explores these lesser-known stories, examining the lives of this community during a tumultuous time in American history.”
Flag on the play? - Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM with your tips, comments or questions.
SCOREBOARD
ESTIMATED DELEGATES FOR DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION
Biden: 596
Sanders: 531
[Ed. note: 1,991 delegates needed to win]
TRUMP JOB PERFORMANCE
Average approval: 45.6 percent
Average disapproval: 51.8 percent
Net Score: -6.2 percent
Change from one week ago: ↓ 1.8 points
[Average includes: Fox News: 47% approve - 52% disapprove; IBD: 41% approve - 54% disapprove; Gallup: 47% approve - 51% disapprove; ABC News/WaPo: 46% approve - 52% disapprove; NBC News/WSJ: 47% approve - 50% disapprove.]
WANT MORE HALFTIME REPORT?
You can join Chris and Brianna every day on Fox Nation. Go behind-the-scenes of your favorite political note as they go through the must-read headlines of the day right from their office – with plenty of personality. Click here to sign up and watch!
I’LL TELL YOU WHAT: LIVE FROM THE LANE BRYANT LOUNGE
This week Dana Perino and Chris Stirewalt discuss how candidates performed on Super Tuesday. They discuss political twitter pitfalls and what gets them through long election night coverage. Plus, Chris is in studio with Dana and faces convention related trivia. LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE HERE
SCHUMER CLIMBS DOWN FROM SUPCO THREATS
Fox News: “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called out Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the Senate floor Thursday morning for his controversial warning a day earlier that Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh would ‘pay the price’ for decisions in abortion cases. ‘There is nothing to call this except a threat,’ McConnell said. Schumer made the statement during an abortions rights rally hosted by the Center for Reproductive Rights as the court was hearing arguments in a case over an abortion-related Louisiana law. … After McConnell's remarks, Schumer took to the floor and began by claiming that McConnell made a ‘glaring omission’ by not mentioning that Schumer was speaking regarding a Supreme Court case that could impact women's ability to get an abortion. He then admitted that he chose the wrong words to convey his message. ‘Now I should not have used the words I used,’ Schumer said. ‘They didn't come out the way I intended to.’”
Chief Justice Roberts wasn’t too happy either - Bloomberg: “U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered an extraordinary rebuke of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, chastising him for making “threatening” statements about two justices during an abortion-rights rally outside the court. … ‘Justices know that criticism comes with the territory,’ Roberts said in a statement issued by the court, ‘but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.’”
Aaron Blake: Why you should care about the Chuck Schumer-John Roberts dust-up - WaPo: “Schumer was standing in front of the court and attacking the justices even before they ruled on the case. Then, according to his office’s explanation, he warned them about political pressure that would be brought to bear if they rule the wrong way. He was effectively treating them like advocates rather than interpreters of the law. Now, nobody is pretending we don’t know exactly where Republican-appointed justices have stood on abortion rights cases in the past. But generally speaking, no matter how predictable Supreme Court vote splits have been, norms suggest they are to be treated as fundamental disagreements among justices about the Constitution — not as political acts by justices going to bat for one side or another or requiring political pressure campaigns. The balance of power relies upon the perception that the judiciary isn’t just an extension of the two political parties in Washington that have the occasions to appoint the judges.”
THE JUDGE’S RULING: REVIEWING THE PATRIOT ACT
This week Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano explains why he believes Patriot Act sections are weapons of totalitarian mass surveillance and should be repealed: “I am writing about this now because a section of the Patriot Act will expire on March 15, and many congressional liberals and libertarians – even a few conservatives still bruised at the governmental surveillance of candidate Donald Trump in 2016 – have been contemplating structural changes to this pernicious law. … Both [sections] 215 and 505 are weapons of mass surveillance and should be repealed. They are instruments of a totalitarian government, not of free people. They defy the Constitution. They presume that our rights are not natural but come from a government that can take them back.” More here.
AUDIBLE: ROAR
“I’m a lioness. Watch out.” – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi talking with Variety magazine.
FROM THE BLEACHERS
“My liberal friends get apoplectic when I suggest that Joe Biden is suffering from early onset dementia. I am being serious, not derogatory or inflammatory. Why can we not concede the man has progressed beyond simple gaffe’s? At Mr. Biden’s age, this disease can progress quickly. I believe it could easily be an issue by the fall debates. Senator Sanders has heart issues, President Trump is seriously overweight. But apparently Biden’s mental state is taboo.” – Richard Jacobson, North Liberty, Iowa
[Ed. note: How do you feel when they say President Trump is mentally ill and delusional — so much so that he is unfit for command. You might tell them that they’re not his doctors. You might further say that voters can make their own judgements. People talk daily, nay, hourly about Biden’s mental acuity. The conversation is omnipresent. I see no signs of a taboo about his fitness for office.]
“It's always hard to read the tea leaves, especially in a multi-candidate primary, but yesterday's results seemed to me to primarily be a vote against the divisive (even at times hate speech) of Sanders, Warren and Trump. Biden on his own is far from a compelling candidate but is the antidote to the divisive rhetoric coming from Warren especially, and Sanders. The fact that Sanders did far better than Warren could reflect the fact that he is less strident in his denunciation of Wall Street, et al. Warren losing her home state to Biden seems to be a statement. There may be a growing hunger in the country for more civility, cooperation and even compromise. I hope fervently that is the case and that this is a dominant force in November.” – Matt Lincoln, Portola Valley, Calif.
[Ed. note: I want what you’re having, Mr. Lincoln! But kidding aside, I do think there is a real appetite for a better kind of politics. The question is whether anyone can find a way to win that way.]
Share your color commentary: Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM and please make sure to include your name and hometown.
HE DIDN’T FIND IT HUMERUS
AP: “A New Mexico woman is facing a larceny charge after authorities say she stole a neighbor’s anatomical skeleton model that allegedly was making an offensive gesture toward her. Court documents filed Monday show that Diana Hogrebe was charged with one count of larceny in connection with the skeleton heist, the Santa Fe New Mexican reports. Hogrebe of Cuyamungue, New Mexico, told Santa Fe County Sheriff’s deputies she was offended by the way the skeleton’s hand was posed — with the middle finger pointed up. Hogrebe told the Santa Fe New Mexican the episode was the culmination of a monthslong feud between her and neighbor Joseph Downs, who she said has hassled her family and other nearby residents. … The skeleton has not been located, authorities said. According to the deputy’s statement of probable cause, the skeleton was a gift to Downs from a family member and was worth about $1,500.”
AND NOW, A WORD FROM CHARLES…
“For most people, who cares? For the president of the United States, there are consequences. When the president's id speaks, the world listens.” – Charles Krauthammer (1950-2018) writing in the Washington Post on June 8, 2017.
Chris Stirewalt is the politics editor for Fox News. Brianna McClelland contributed to this report. Want FOX News Halftime Report in your inbox every day? Sign up here. |
Q:
How to Change the background image on particular date in calendar based on event name in Jquery mobile?
I am attending to create event calendar using this Calendar.I have some regular events on every month like meeting,party,submission,workshop.my thought is how to change the background image on the date based on event name and also how to add the message remaining dates are no event dynamically.
Here is My code:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>My Page</title>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.3.2/jquery.mobile-1.3.2.min.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="jw-jqm-cal.css" />
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.9.1.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.3.2/jquery.mobile-1.3.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jw-jqm-cal.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).on('pageinit', "#view-calendar", function(event, ui) {
var date = new Date();
var d = date.getDate();
var m = date.getMonth();
var y = date.getFullYear();
$("#calendar").jqmCalendar({
events: [{
"summary": "Birthday Dinnaer",
"begin": new Date(y, m, d + 10),
"end": new Date(y, m, d + 11)
}, {
"summary": "Meeting With Project Manager at Diamond Hall",
"begin": new Date(y, m, d + 3),
"end": new Date(y, m, d + 4)
},
],
months: ["January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June", "July", "August", "September", "October", "November", "December"],
days: ["Su", "Mo", "Tu", "We", "Th", "Fr", "Sa"],
startOfWeek: 0
});
$("#calendar").bind('change', function(event, date) {
console.log(date);
//$("#message").empty();
///$("#message").append('<p><strong>There is No event at'+date+'</strong></p>');
});
})
</script>
</head>
<body>
<div data-role="page" id="view-calendar">
<div data-role="header">
<h1>Tradition Calendar</h1>
</div>
<div data-role="content">
<div id="calendar"></div>
<div id="message"></div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
A:
I have made a little fix which will add custom classes based on event. It required doing some minor changes to jqm calendar library.
I first made three custom background CSS classes .wedding, .meeting and .party. And then added a value within the code where you call .jqmCalender().
Download working example
$("#calendar").jqmCalendar({
events: [{
"summary": "Birthday Dinnaer",
"begin": new Date(y, m, d + 10),
"end": new Date(y, m, d + 11),
"bg": "wedding" // or meeting or party "matches class name"
}]
In jqm calendar.js, I made the following changes
// line 11
bg: "bg",
// line 119 - to retrieve the value from .jqmCalendar() function
var bg = event[plugin.settings.bg];
Here, the date gets the style but I had to remove .importance in order not to override the custom class.
// line 127
$a.append("<span>•</span>").removeClass("importance-" + importance.toString()).addClass(bg);
Here it adds the same style to summary when you click on date.
// line 211
$("<li class=" + bg + ">" + ((timeString != "00:00-00:00") ? timeString : "") + " " + summary + "</li>").appendTo($listview);
And here are the custom classes.
.wedding {
background: #fcecfc;
}
.meeting {
background: #f8ffe8;
}
.party {
background: #ff3019;
}
|
# Osclass
### All you need to easily create your own classifieds website
[Osclass is for classifieds][osclass] what WordPress is for publishing. It's a free
and open script to create your advertisement or listings site. Best features: Plugins,
themes, multi-language, CAPTCHA, dashboard, SEO friendly.
![Preview of Osclass][preview]
## Project info
* [Official website][osclass]
* [Code repository][code]
* [Mailing list][mailing]
* IRC Channel [#osclass][irc]
* License: [Apache License V2.0][license]
## Develop
Clone the repository and the submodules.
```
$> git clone --recursive git@github.com:osclass/Osclass.git
```
## Installation
Go to [our site][installing] to get detailed information on installing Osclass.
[osclass]: http://osclass.org/
[preview]: http://osclass.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/single_job_board-1024x729.png
[code]: https://github.com/osclass/Osclass
[mailing]: http://list.osclass.org/listinfo/osc-develop
[irc]: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=osclass
[license]: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
[installing]: http://osclass.org/installing-osclass/ |
China-Bashing, Syria & The “Degenerate Left”
The Syrian Armed Forces defending national sovereignty from foreign-backed terrorists.
The US State Department’s formal recognition of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) is no small occurrence in the imperialist world’s campaign to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. To pretend, as many on the US left do, that the US and France have not actively struggled against Assad by materially supporting the rebels is no longer possible, even from a standpoint of technicalities. Arms and ammunition continue to flow to the rebels in Syria, and whether this lethal aid is delivered by the Central Intelligence Agency or puppet regimes in the Persian Gulf makes no difference to the fundamental imperialist mission afoot in Syria.
The US may not launch a military strike in Syria – no small thanks would go to China and Russia for providing material solidarity in the form of military deterrence – but the cruise-missile leftists at The North Star cannot continue to claim that “that, from the standpoint of the U.S.-Israeli alliance, there are no good options or outcomes as a result of the Syrian revolution.” (1)
In response to the chemical weapons allegations that emerged last week from Washington, Pham Binh – the author of “Lybia and Syria: When Anti-Imperialism Goes Wrong” – penned another screed denouncing the anti-imperialist left in favor of the rebellion. Binh claims that the threat of military intervention against Syria is empty, but he goes further in his denunciation of anti-imperialism by asserting that the US and Western Europe have a vested interest in seeing Assad remain in power.
Identifying, examining and combating the basic premises of what Takis Fotopoulos calls the “degenerate left” is important in light of the left’s disunity on the question of Syria. Most leftists do not take positions as horrifying as The North Star has, but the rejection of Marxism-Leninism as a means of understanding imperialism has put many on the US left in the camp of the imperialists themselves.
One of the principle reasons for the abandonment of anti-imperialism is the US left’s willingness to engage in China-bashing and not acknowledge China’s important role in world politics. As the second largest economic power in the world, China’s rise has effectively changed the way US imperialism operates and today functions as a counter-weight for aggression in Syria. Though their role is rife with contradictions, identifying China as an enemy, rather than a very important friend, of the global anti-imperialist movement is a dangerous starting point that leads to equally dangerous – and degenerate – conclusions.
China-Bashing & the “Degenerate Left”
There is an incredibly small section of the left in the United States and Western Europe that upholds China as a socialist country (Workers World Party, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and the Party for Socialism & Liberation are the three Marxist groups of note). There is a slightly larger section of the left that has a positive to ambivalent view of China and Chinese influence, including but not limited to the revisionist Communist Party USA and the left-refoundationist Committee for Correspondence on Democracy and Socialism.
However, the majority of the left in the US holds a partially to wholly negative view of China. Groups like the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and the International Marxist Tendency share the same view of China with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the Economist; the view that it is a state capitalist country.
The ISO takes this position even further in labeling China an imperialist power on par with the United States. Even US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could find common ground with this stance, given her comment at a summit in Tanzania last year that China pursues a policy of “new colonialism” in Africa. Clinton made these comments without a hint of irony, just as there is no irony to be found in “China’s Record of Imperialism,” an article that appeared in Socialist Worker in 2009.
This is unsurprisingly a view shared by The North Star, which calls China “an essential support – perhaps the essential support – for capitalist domination internationally.” (2) This is important starting point for understanding the theoretical basis for the “degenerate left,” of which The North Star is a part.
Tellingly, Binh’s latest piece is devoid of any mention of the military or political deterrence provided by China and Russia in Syria. In the original piece defending NATO intervention in Libya and Syria, Binh makes mention of China and Russia’s opposition to a Libya-style intervention, saying:
Paradoxically, NATO’s successful campaign in Libya made a future U.S./NATO campaign in Syria less likely. Russia and China are now determined to block any attempt to apply the Libyan model to Syria at the United Nations Security Council and the Obama administration is not willing to defy either of them by taking Bush-style unilateral military action for the time being.
Five months later, the role of China and Russia are worth nary a mention, even as Binh ridicules the anti-imperialist left for responding to new signs of aggression. Instead, the explanation for Washington’s reluctance to directly intervene on behalf of the rebels is reduced to three major points: (1) Washington does not have the troops necessary to invade and occupy Syria, (2) the US Senate is restricting Obama’s ability to launch a no-fly zone, and (3) the US fundamentally does not want to see Assad toppled because the rebellion is pro-Palestinian and Palestinians support the rebellion.
China and Russia’s Role as Counter-Weights to Imperialism
China and Russia veto the UN’s no-fly zone resolution.
Let’s begin with the second argument about the lack of domestic political support in the US Senate for a no-fly zone. Binh’s argument is laughable given the US, France, and the other imperialist powers already pushed for a no-fly zone through the UN – just as they did a year ago to launch the Libya assault – in June. Had they faced the same abstentions from China and Russia as they did with the Libyan no-fly zone, there is no reason to believe that military intervention would not have occurred already.
However, China and Russia did, in fact, veto the UN Security Council no-fly zone, greatly reducing any perceived international consensus around foreign military operations in Syria. In August, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “warned the West not to take unilateral action on Syria, saying that Russia and China agree that violations of international law and the United Nations charter are impermissible.” (3) Both China and Russia continue to trade with Syria and break the West’s sanctions on Assad’s government, with Russia going further to actually aid the Syrian government in the conflict. Both China and Russia continue to call for a political solution to the Syrian crisis and explicitly disavow the Free Syrian Army strategy of seizing power through continued warfare. And both China and Russia have opposed US escalation, including the recent placement of Patriot missiles on the Turkish-Syrian border.
Would China and Russia respond militarily if the West unilaterally intervened in Syria? It’s hard to say, although Russia is far more poised to launch a counter-attack to defend Assad’s government. The most salient point is that China and Russia have exerted their influence as a counter-balance to Western imperialism in Syria. The Western imperialist powers may still militarily intervene in Syria, but rest assured that one of the largest obstacles that has kept them at bay to this date is China and Russia.
What should we make of China and Russia’s abstention during the Libyan no-fly zone debate at the UN in 2011, which facilitated NATO’s barbaric assault on the Libyan people and the ouster of Muammar Qaddafi? I would propose that both China and Russia sum it up as a failure; a passive ‘buyer’s remorse’. Martin Beckford of the Telegraph reported this in the early weeks of NATO’s attack:
China, which frequently faces criticism over its own suppression of democracy movements, said it “regretted” the military action and respected Libya’s sovereignty.
A foreign ministry statement said: “China has noted the latest developments in Libya and expresses regret over the military attacks on Libya.
“We hope Libya can restore stability as soon as possible and avoid further civilian casualties due to an escalation of armed conflict,” it added. (4)
Russia’s reaction was similar. China has rarely used its veto power on the Security Council, and post-1991 Russia has followed that path as well, despite both quietly supporting independent nations like Syria. However, the scale and ferocity of the assault on Libya came to change the position of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who summed up their inaction as a failure which they “regret.”
Dumb & Dumber: China-Bashing and Misplaced Cynicism of the Degenerate Left
Binh and those at The North Star will be quick to point to China and Russia’s commercial interests in Syria, along with their close economic relationship with Iran. Yusef Khalil of the ISO described China and Russia’s veto of a no-fly zone over Syria as “[moving] in to protect their own imperialist interests in the region.” (5)
The question of Russia is an equally important topic but one we will have to reserve for another time.
Admittedly, China is Syria’s top trading partner and largest foreign stake-holder in Syrian oil. (6) After the crippling embargoes set by the West, China has continued purchasing Syrian oil and severely undermines the success of ‘sanction warfare’. (6)
However, this inevitable counter-argument is as faulty and ridiculous as the entire premise that China is an imperialist country. Adel al-Toraifi, the Editor-in-Chief of al-Majalla news, unravels the arguments of anyone claiming that China’s stance on Syria is based on economic considerations:
…China has had strong trade relations with Syria, and strong economic cooperation with the Bashar al-Assad regime since 2001, after both parties signed an agreement on economic and technical cooperation; this means that China is Syria’s third most important trading partner. However the volume of trade between the two countries, which amounted to $2.2 billion in 2010, is nothing in comparison to the commercial exchange between China and the Gulf States, which exceeds more than $90 billion per year. Therefore China is not too concerned about the loss of Syria as an economic partner, however the issue is not one of profit or loss or business considerations, particularly as many Chinese interests are served by opposing the US and European movement to bring about regime change in the Middle East. (7)
Claiming that China, a country that by and large has not exercised its veto power on the Security Council, would suddenly go out on a whim and stand by a minor trading partner like Syria defies logic. Just a crude analysis of the basic numbers reveals that China had more than $20 billion in investments with Libya under Qaddafi’s government, almost ten times the amount of investments in Syria. (8)
Is oil a determinant factor for China’s different line on Syria versus Libya? Not even close. Syria is already a very minor oil producing country by Middle Eastern standards, but less than 1% of Syrian oil exports go to China (less than 4,000 barrels per day). (9) China imported more than 150,00 barrels of Libyan oil per day under Qaddafi, or about 37.5 times the amount imported from Syria. (10)
We could continue unraveling the argument of China’s economic self-interest through economic comparisons. For the sake of the reader, though, let’s cut to the chase: China has considerably less of a stake in defending Syria from Western aggression than it did with Libya, and yet the two questions elicited different responses.
The degenerate left and the right-wing in the US both share a common cynicism for Chinese actions in world affairs. However, the right-wing cynically uses China-bashing as a naked propaganda tactic designed to stir up nativism in the US. The degenerate left, on the other hand, actually seems to believe this farce and repeat the same lies to the detriment of the world anti-imperialist movement.
China-bashing puts the degenerate left just a hop, skip, and a jump from neo-conservatism
China’s foreign policy is a far cry from the critical support given by the Soviet Union to national liberation struggles around the world. In fact, it’s important for anti-imperialists to note and be critical of the foreign policy errors committed by Beijing during the Sino-Soviet Split, which far too many US groups in the New Communist Movement embraced uncritically.
However, the degenerate left lumps China in with the US as a competing imperialist interest in the world with a total neglect of the actual dynamics at play. Because most Western leftists have only witnessed global trade as an affair directed by trans-national corporations, they view China’s role in the world market as part of the same imperialist machine they protest in their own countries. An element of political opportunism plays into this analysis as well when looking at the patently anti-China flames fanned by many trade unions in the US.
The degenerate left’s cynical attitude towards China, even when it does something incredibly laudable like vetoing the no-fly zone resolution, comes primarily from its embrace of anti-China propaganda. The North Star, along with other blogs like Politics in the Zeroes, continue bashing China for the Tiananmen Square “massacre” that even the US admits did not happen. (11) Of course China is always falsely implicated as an imperialist power for their relationship with Tibet, despite the thoroughly feudal and imperialist interests fueling the Free Tibet movement. (12)
For all of its contradictions, China remains a socialist country. The commanding heights of the economy are still controlled by the state, which itself is controlled by the Communist Party and oriented towards working people and peasants. A capitalist sector has developed in China since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms that mirrored Lenin’s own New Economic Policy, but this sector is wholly dependent on the socialist state. And although China is no longer a vocal advocate for world revolution – many would call this revisionism – their line on the Syrian question demonstrates the CCP’s continued commitment to anti-imperialism and independent development.
By rejecting China and the entire socialist experience in the 20th century, the degenerate left already accepts the basic premises of the right-wing and bourgeois elite in the US. Of course it does not stop with just China. If one rejects China as a state capitalist, or even an imperialist state, then one must go further by rejecting bourgeois nationalist states like Assad’s government in Syria or Qaddafi’s government in Libya. Any attempt to support these governments from Western aggression by China, or even Russia, is seen as an inter-imperialist struggle, according to the degenerate left.
With that, the so-called Marxists in the motley crew can dust off Lenin, cite some out-of-context quotes denouncing the Second International, and call it a day. Some, like Binh, skip the Lenin and go straight for Malcolm X, ripping “by any means necessary” so grossly out of context that they use one of the most revolutionary national liberation leaders to justify the very imperialism he fought against. All are smug in their satisfaction that they are opposing tyranny – not even capitalism anymore, but the metaphysical concept of tyranny – on behalf of some imaginary workers movement ‘from below’.
That last point regarding the simplistic and thoroughly anti-dialectical worldview of the degenerate left is very important in understanding its relationship to neo-conservatism. Because Syria is a bourgeois state with a capitalist economy, the degenerate left views Assad’s government and its actions in a political vacuum. There is no dialectical understanding of primary and secondary contradictions, which would reveal that the struggle of oppressed nations against oppressor nations is the principle contradiction facing the Syrian people. Instead, Assad is viewed by the degenerate left the same way Saddam was by the Bush administration: a tyrant who denies his own peoplefreedom and democracy.
According to this worldview, Assad cannot possibly be progressive in any context because he leads a bourgeois state. Nevermind that he is a nationalist at odds with Western imperialism! Nevermind that the Syrian economy is still largely controlled by the state! Nevermind that he supports national liberation struggles in Palestine and Lebanon! He oppresses his people; a particularly condescending phrase towards whatever people happen to be talked about. And of course there is no discussion or differentiation on the sector of people facing repression by the Syrian state (collaborators, imperialist-sympathizers, terrorists).
China also factors into this tautological worldview. For the degenerate left, international solidarity by a state – any state – is categorically impossible because they consider either most or every state to be capitalist.
Consider the tautology at work here: When China vetoes a no-fly zone resolution, it’s tyrannysupporting tyranny. When China doesn’t veto a no-fly zone resolution in Libya, they are providing “essential support – perhaps the essential support – for capitalist domination internationally.” (2) When Russia positions ships to offset the US’s Patriot missiles in Turkey, it’s an imperialist power looking out for its strategic and commercial interests. If Russia doesn’t oppose Western intervention in Libya, they are silent partners in the imperialist project.
…Or perhaps we have to approach China, and Russia, dialectically by considering their place in relation to imperialism at a given moment in history!
Is it any surprise that several of the Trotskyites from the 20th century, who built their measly political ‘careers’ denouncing every instance of socialism as state capitalism, became neo-conservatives in the Reagan era?* We begin to understand Christopher Hitchens’ disgraceful pro-war line on Iraq when we realize his hatred for all existing socialist countries, which he viewed as capitalist and imperialist powers no better than the US.
Syria, China & the US Left
Military intervention in Syria seems more likely every day. Tragically, the response from the US left seems to grow smaller with every war or military action launched by the Obama administration.
With its significant economic ties to the US and world markets, China could take a more active role in economically pressuring the imperialist powers to not intervene. Ultimately if NATO is dissuaded from a Libya-style intervention over the issue of chemical weapons, Russia’s military presence in the Gulf will probably have more to do with it.
The most salient point is that the degenerate left continues to side with the imperialist powers, whether in word (The North Star) or in deed (the ISO). The US left must discard these bankrupt theories and embrace anti-imperialism if it hopes to build a militant resistance to these criminal attacks; an anti-imperialism that sends a unified message supporting Assad and Syrian self-determination in this period of crisis, as we wrote about this past weekend.
However, the China-bashing of the degenerate left will continue to haunt movements in the US, which find themselves unable to distinguish friend from foe. Russia-bashing, a related topic for another time, also feeds into a simplistic world view alien from the Leninist theory of imperialism. Most assuredly capitalist, Russia is still not an imperialist power and, most importantly, functions as a counterweight to imperialism along with China. Both China and Russia’s involvement in the Syrian crisis have different contradictions, but anti-imperialists would recognize that these two countries have made the subjugation of the Syrian people to Western finance capital more difficult.
Neither China nor Russia are the leaders of the world anti-imperialist movement. That distinction belongs to the masses fighting battling for self-determination and revolution in Colombia, India, Palestine, the Philippines, and all over the world. But the US left must recognize that China is a friend, not an enemy, of the anti-imperialist movement, and it will begin to see questions like Syria much more clearly.
* By no means should this statement be taken as an indictment on all groups professing ideological heritage to Leon Trotsky. As flawed as we believe many of these groups’ lines and organizing strategies are, there are groups like the Socialist Equality Party have overwhelmingly upheld an anti-imperialist position on Syria.
——-
(1) Pham Binh, The North Star, ““Red Line” or Empty Threat? How the Left Gasses Itself on #Syria,” December 6, 2012, http://bit.ly/RFo9ec
About B.J. Murphy
I'm a young socialist and Transhumanist activist within the East Coast region, who writes for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), India Future Society, and Serious Wonder. I'm also the Social Media Manager for Serious Wonder, an Advisory Board Member for the Lifeboat Foundation, and a Co-Editor for Fight Back! News.
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I would add that the “degenerate left” like North Star or the International (read: Imperialist) Socialist Organization should be called for what they really are: an AMERICAN/WESTERN IMPERIALIST LEFT.
The role of the American Imperial Left is to play a political double game: posture as a critic of imperialism, even as they tacitly or directly attack targets of the greatest imperialist powers in history, America and the West in general.
The target could be Serbia, Libya, Syria, China, or whomever.
Any country that even slightly opposes the American Empire and its imperial allies is to be politically smeared, vilified, and demonized—often by utilizing “anti-imperialist” rationalizations no less!
It should be remembered that many American/Western Leftists (tacitly) supported not only the aggression against Libya and now Syria but also the “humanitarian attack” on Serbia in the 1990s.
This support gave rise to the well-deserved term Cruise Missile Left, which people such as Occupy Wall Street “activist” Pham Binh personify today.
This American Left is *more sinister* than Right Wingers in that they serve the interests of American Empire under Left political cover, whereas the Right Wing is more open and honest about their interests.
Also, don’t forget that many American Neoconservatives were originally Leftists of one stripe or another, including Trotskyites and Social Democrats. This should raise questions as to whether the American Left is any different from the American Right.
However, there is an essential reason whey this so-called Left carries political water for American and Western imperialist nations: their own privilege, wealth, and way of life are based upon maintaining Western domination of the world.
Despite all their pretensions to “universalism” or even “internationalism,” these people are acting according to own narrow class, national, and imperial interests.
And it’s long overdue that this imperial American/Western Left be called out. |
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Competitors anxious to know Harper government’s verdict on F-35 program
Feb 19, 2014
Murray Brewster, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA – One of the would-be bidders to replace Canada’s aging CF-18 jet fighter fleet says it’s anxious to see whether the Harper government will hold a full-blown competition — or stick with the oft-maligned F-35.
The comments from Boeing Co. came Wednesday as Public Works Minister Diane Finley announced the next stage in the overhaul of the military procurement process: a new analytics institute to help inform future decisions.
The arm’s-length institute will provide much needed research on defence industries and capabilities, Finley said.
It’s been more than a year since the Conservatives rebooted the controversial fighter program, launching a market analysis to explore the possibility of alternatives to the F-35 stealth fighter, which has been fraught with delays and cost overruns.
Boeing is one of several aircraft manufacturers asked to brief a panel of experts that has spent months examining the capabilities, limitations and cost of the various competitors.
Brian Beyrouty, the defence giant’s senior manager of international partnerships, said his company answered the questions put to it last summer by the Public Works secretariat overseeing the program.
Boeing is interested in selling the Super Hornet, an updated, more robust version of the CF-18s, which Canada has flown since the 1980s.
Beyrouty said a few follow-up details were provided later in the fall, but since then the company has been waiting for the government’s decision, which could come in the spring.
“We’re very anxious to see how the process is going to deliver as they go through that options analysis,” Beyrouty said Wednesday in an interview.
“I think we’ve provided the information that would provide a compelling story to get to a competition.”
The Harper government paused the planned F-35 purchase following a scathing report by the auditor general which accused National Defence and Public Works of low-balling the stealth fighter’s enormous cost.
A subsequent independent analysis estimated that the radar-evading plane could end up costing taxpayers nearly $44 billion over four decades.
The ensuing damage to the meticulously cultivated Conservative image as careful guardians of the public purse led many in the defence industry to predict a decision on replacement aircraft would be delayed until after the 2015 election.
In the interim, to get a handle on military procurement, the government has moved big-ticket items to the Public Works secretariat, which will — among other things — seek to wed programs with Canadian defence contractors.
Beyrouty said Boeing is keen to see how the secretariat approaches the issue of ancillary benefits — essentially, whether a particular company’s proposal would result in additional economic benefits to Canada — and if it will require firm investment commitments in specific sectors and companies.
Beyrouty said Boeing is keen to see how the secretariat approaches its commitment to leverage defence purchases to the benefit of Canadian industry — specifically, whether it will require firm investment commitments in specific sectors and companies.
Indeed, Boeing has already placed a portion of its worldwide Super Hornet program with Canadian aerospace firms.
It remains an open question whether that would count in Boeing’s favour should there be a open competition.
Defence experts have suggested that transitioning between the CF-18 and the Super Hornet would easier in terms of training, logistics and infrastructure than with any of the other competitors.
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Downregulation of tumor suppressor QKI in gastric cancer and its implication in cancer prognosis.
Gastric cancer (GC) is the fourth most common cancer and second leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. RNA-binding protein Quaking (QKI) is a newly identified tumor suppressor in multiple cancers, while its role in GC is largely unknown. Our study here aimed to clarify the relationship between QKI expression with the clinicopathologic characteristics and the prognosis of GC. In the 222 GC patients' specimens, QKI expression was found to be significantly decreased in most of the GC tissues, which was largely due to promoter hypermethylation. QKI overexpression reduced the proliferation ability of GC cell line in vitro study. In addition, the reduced QKI expression correlated well with poor differentiation status, depth of invasion, gastric lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, advanced TNM stage, and poor survival. Multivariate analysis showed QKI expression was an independent prognostic factor for patient survival. |
Q:
Can Laravels ioc container use autoloaded namespaces?
Lets say I have a class MyClass in app/repository/MyClass.php in the Repository namespace:
namespace Repository;
class MyClass { ... }
I can bind this using the ioc container:
App::bind('SomeClass', 'Repository\MyClass');
Same thing with model dependencies:
SomeClass extends Eloquent{
public function dependency()
{
return $this->hasOne('Models\Dependency');
}
}
One solution is to create aliases in app.php, but this has to be done for every single file that I want to have automatically namespaced:
'MyClass' => 'Repository\MyClass'
Is it possible to make the ioc container recognize the correct namespace for the classes without using aliases? Can we in any way use Composer for this?
A:
It is not possible unless you want to register an alias for every class in your namespaces. My recent Laravel 4 project has IOC Container bindings to namespaced classes which I declared explicitly.
App::bind('Foo\Bar\Repositories\UserRepositoryInterface', 'Foo\Bar\Repositories\DbUserRepository');
|
This invention relates to dried compositions of blood factors for reconstitution with water or aqueous solutions.
Blood factors, particularly factor VIII and factor IX, are now the standard treatment for diseases caused by a lack of the appropriate factor, in particular haemophilia. The blood factor has generally been derived from human blood by various extraction techniques, for example as disclosed in EP-A-0083483, or by expression in genetically modified micro-organisms, for example as disclosed in EP-A-0160457 and EP-A-0182448.
Blood factor products such as factor VIII are highly delicate, unstable proteins. They are usually supplied in the form of frozen solutions in an appropriate buffer or, more generally, as freeze-dried powders. Even the freeze-dried powders must be kept cold during storage. In order to stabilise the freeze-dried material, commercial products contain a stabilising protein, in particular human serum albumin (HSA). It has not been thought possible to prepare a dry blood factor composition which is stable at ambient temperatures and at pasteurisation temperatures (e.g. 60xc2x0 C.) in the absence of HSA. However, the presence of HSA introduces considerable problems of purification since it is essential that the protein is free of viral contamination. The use of recombinant HSA to overcome these problems is expensive.
Trehalose is known to be a highly effective stabilising agent for delicate proteins, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,891,319, enabling proteins to be dried at temperatures above freezing. We have now found that if trehalose is used to stabilise a blood factor product, not only can the product be dried with or without freezing, but also the product is stable even when retained at a temperature of 60xc2x0 C. for an extended period, in the complete absence of HSA. According to the present invention therefore we provide a stable dried blood factor composition containing a stabilising amount of trehalose in the absence of albumin.
In general, any stabilising amount of trehalose may be used and an excess in general causes no problems. Indeed, the presence of trehalose aids the rehydration process and is physiologically acceptable for injection, being rapidly metabolised to glucose. In general a ratio of about 0.2 mg to 2.5 mg trehalose per unit of factor VIII is desirable, especially 0.2 to 1.5 mg/unit. The composition is particularly suited to formulations of factor VIII, which may also contain appropriate buffering and ion-reinforcing salts, in particular a source of calcium. In general, a ratio of about 1.0 to 1.5 xcexcg of calcium ions per unit of factor VIII is appropriate.
Other buffering and modifying agents may also be present in the dried material for reconstitution to the injection solution, for example histidine. However, we have found that the level of salts, particularly sodium chloride, present can affect the preservation on drying. It is thought desirable for the commercial product for injection to have an isotonic salt concentration. However, the processing formulations which are freeze-dried are desirably hypertonic, typically containing about 500 mM NaCl (isotonic NaCl =150 mM), as this is considered to help stabilise the blood factor. As a result, commercial freeze-dried formulations generally have a high salt content and are reconstituted for injection with the appropriate amount of sterile water to obtain an isotonic solution.
A considerably reduced salt content is preferred for the dried material of the invention and, in general a solution of about 500 units of Factor VIII per ml to be dried should preferably contain less than 200 mM e.g. 75 to 150 mM, NaCl, especially about 100 mM., but can be even lower, e.g. 20 to 50 mM, especially about 22 to 30 mM. Low salt preparations possess a higher dry stability. The dried product can be reconstituted to the desired salt level with a saline solution instead of the conventional water. In general, the molar ratio of trehalose to salt should be above 1:1, especially above 2.5:1 e.g. above 10:1, preferably above 12.5:1.
The dried composition may be obtained by drying an appropriate solution of the blood factor containing the correct proportions of trehalose and other desired components. In general, the solution that is dried should simply contain all the components required in the reconstituted injection solution, although the solution for drying may not necessarily be at the same dilution. Typically, the solution for drying will contain from 1 to 1000 units of factor VRI per ml. The methods of drying may include freeze drying, vacuum drying and spray-drying. A particularly preferred method according to the invention comprises vacuum drying at a temperature no greater than 25xc2x0 C., preferably no greater than 10xc2x0 C., to form a foam, thus maximising the exposed surface and the drying effect.
The following examples illustrate the invention further. |
24 Cal.Rptr.3d 384 (2005)
126 Cal.App.4th 781
BOARD OF RETIREMENT OF The KERN COUNTY EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT ASSOCIATION et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants,
v.
Mark A. BELLINO, Defendant and Respondent.
No. F045780.
Court of Appeal, Fifth District.
February 9, 2005.
Review Denied May 18, 2005.
*385 Klein, DeNatale, Goldner, Cooper, Rosenlieb & Kimball, David J. Cooper and James M. Duncan, Bakersfield, for Plaintiffs and Appellants.
Chain, Younger, Cohn & Stiles and David V. Stiles, Bakersfield, for Defendant and Respondent.
OPINION
VARTABEDIAN, Acting P.J.
This is an appeal from a declaratory judgment permitting defendant and respondent *386 Mark A. Bellino "to assume his duly elected seat" as a member of the Board of Retirement of the Kern County Employees' Retirement Association. (The board and the association were plaintiffs below and are the appellants in this court.) The dispute between the parties concerns the applicability of Government Code section 53227, which prohibits employees of certain local agencies from sitting on the governing bodies of the agency. (All further section references are to the Government Code, except as otherwise stated.)
We conclude that, for purposes of section 53227, respondent is an employee of appellants. Further, appellants are a governing board and local agency to which section 53227 is applicable. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment.
Facts and Procedural History
Respondent is a non management employee of appellants. As such, he is a county civil service employee and a member of the retirement association, as are all other county employees, whether they work for the association or for county departments. (§ 31522.1.) The board of retirement is the governing board of the association. The board is composed of nine members, of whom two are required by statute to be "members of the association, other than safety members, elected by those members." (§ 31520.1.) In 2003, respondent was elected to fill one of the two "member" positions on the board.
Appellants notified respondent that he would not be permitted to assume his elected position unless a court ruled that section 53227 was inapplicable to the situation. (We set out the text of section 53227 in the Discussion section, below.)
A few weeks later, appellants filed a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief. The matter was tried to the court sitting without a jury.
The evidence established that respondent's job involves calculating retirement benefits and that there are two levels of supervision between himself and the executive director of the association. The executive director serves at the pleasure of the board, his or her salary is set by the board, and the performance of that person is formally evaluated by the board. The executive director is responsible, among other duties, to formally evaluate the association's employees.
The court ruled that, in accordance with the analysis contained in a formal opinion of the Attorney General (see 80 Ops.Cal. Atty.Gen. 11 (1997)), respondent was permitted to serve on the board without resigning his employment or being terminated from that employment. Appellants filed a timely notice of appeal.
Discussion
A. The Statutory Text
At first blush, this case seems to involve a very straightforward application of a clear statute to uncomplicated facts. After all, in commonsense terms, respondent is an employee of appellants, who are a local public entity and its governing board. The relevant code provisions the substantive prohibition and attendant definitions are as follows:
"An employee of a local agency may not be sworn into office as an elected or appointed member of the legislative body of that local agency unless he or she resigns as an employee. If the employee does not resign, the employment shall automatically terminate upon his or her being sworn into office." (§ 53227, subd. (a).)
As used in section 53227, "`Local agency' means a city, city and county, county, district, municipal or public corporation, political subdivision, or other public agency *387 of the state." (§ 53227.2, subd. (a).) "`Legislative body' means the board of supervisors of a county or a city and county, the city council of a city, or the governing body of a district, municipal or public corporation, political subdivision, or other public agency of the state." (§ 53227.2, subd. (b).)
The substantive prohibition was adapted from a similar prohibition enacted as part of the Education Code in 1991. (See Stats. 1991, ch. 1065, § 2, p. 4944.) In its present codification, Education Code section 35107, subdivision (b)(1), states: "An employee of a school district may not be sworn into office as an elected or appointed member of that school district's governing board unless and until he or she resigns as an employee. If the employee does not resign, the employment will automatically terminate upon being sworn into office."
As stated in a legislative analysis of the bill proposing section 53227, the bill simply "expands a prudent prohibition on dual service from school and community college districts to all local agencies." (Sen. Local Gov. Com., Analysis of Assem. Bill No. 236 (1995-1996 Reg. Sess.) July 3, 1995, p. 2, italics added.)
B. The Source of the Problem
Straightforward application of section 53227 in the present case is hampered by certain historical peculiarities both in the development of section 53227 and in the creation of local retirement associations. The interaction of those historical peculiarities resulted in the trial court's determination that section 53227 did not prevent respondent from serving on the staff of appellant association while serving as a member of appellant board.
When Assembly Bill No. 236, proposing sections 53227 and 53227.2, was under consideration, a late amendment to the bill deleted the word "county" from the definition of "local agency." (See Assem. Bill No. 236 (1995-1996 Reg. Sess.) as amended July 3, 1995, § 1.) Later in that legislative session, another bill was passed to establish an exception to the definition of "local agency" codified as section 53227.2, subdivision (a): "`Local agency' does not include a county." (See Assem. Bill No. 1566 (1995-1996 Reg. Sess.) as amended Sept. 8, 1995, § 4.5.)
In 2001, legislation was introduced to add counties and their boards of supervisors back in to the prohibition of section 53227. According to a legislative committee analysis, the "Legislature granted an exemption to all counties because a particular Contra Costa County supervisor also worked for the County as an emergency room doctor. That person is no longer a county supervisor, but paid county employees continue to be exempt from the dual service ban." (Sen. Local Gov. Com., Analysis of Sen. Bill No. 544 (2001-2002 Reg. Sess.) May 2, 2001, p. 1.) The relevant changes were adopted and section 53227.2 assumed its current form, as quoted above. (See Stats.2001, ch. 43, § 1, p. 215.)
Meanwhile, in 1997 the Attorney General issued an opinion in response to a county counsel's question: "May a person holding a non-management, clerical position in the office of a board of retirement ... serve as a member of the board of retirement?" (See 80 Ops.Cal.Atty.Gen., supra, at p. 11.) In responding to this question, the Attorney General introduced into the mix a peculiarity of the County Employees Retirement Law of 1937, codified beginning at section 31450. (See 80 Ops.Cal. Atty.Gen., supra, at p. 14.)
In the 1970's the retirement law had been amended to permit boards of retirement to "appoint such administrative, technical, *388 and clerical staff personnel as are required to accomplish the necessary work of the boards." (§ 31522.1.) These "personnel shall be county employees and shall be subject to the county civil service ... rules and shall be included in the salary ordinance or resolution adopted by the board of supervisors for the compensation of county officers and employees." (Ibid.)
The Attorney General reasoned that the existence of a specific exception in section 53227.2, subdivision (a), for county employees meant that section 53227 could not apply to personnel of the retirement association, since those personnel were designated as "county employees" by section 31522.1. (80 Ops.Cal.Atty.Gen., supra, at pp. 13-14.) The Attorney General's opinion noted that it was not necessary to discuss the related question of whether the retirement association was a "local agency" for purposes of section 53227, since the personnel of the association were exempted as "county employees." (80 Ops.Cal.Atty.Gen., supra, at p. 14.) "We have examined the [relevant] legislative histories, ... and they fully support the intended exclusion of county employees from the prohibition of section 53227." (Id. at p. 13, italics added.)
There is no longer an exception in section 53227.2 for counties; the definition of "local agency" now expressly includes counties. (§ 53277.2, subd. (a).) This definitional change clarifies the existence of the section 53227 prohibition for county employees who wish to serve on the board of supervisors of the employing county. The definitional change also undermines the rationale for the Attorney General opinion, since the opinion was based on the existence of an exemption from the statute for "county employees." The definitional change does not, however, answer the two questions left unanswered in the Attorney General's opinion: first, are the staff of a retirement association also employees of the association for purposes of section 53227; second, is a retirement association a "local agency" for purposes of section 53227?
C. Retirement Association Staff Members are Association Employees
Respondent contends that the designation in section 31522.1 of retirement association staff as "county employees" should be directly applicable to the use of the word "employee" in section 53227. Further, respondent contends that, by virtue of section 31522.1, appellants' staff must be solely employees of the county.
Ordinarily, rules of statutory interpretation require that different sections of a code must be read together, that the literal language of the statutes is the primary guide to legislative intent, and that code provisions relating to the same subject must be harmonized to the extent possible. (See Pacific Southwest Realty Co. v. County of Los Angeles (1991) 1 Cal.4th 155, 167, 2 Cal.Rptr.2d 536, 820 P.2d 1046.)
"We will not, however, apply the literal language of a statute `when to do so would evidently carry the operation of the enactment far beyond the legislative intent and thereby make its provisions apply to transactions never contemplated by the legislative body.' [Citation.]" (People ex rel. Dept. of Transportation v. Southern Cal. Edison Co. (2000) 22 Cal.4th 791, 798, 94 Cal.Rptr.2d 609, 996 P.2d 711.) "[W]e believe this case presents the rare situation where the literal application of a statute contravenes the legislative intent behind its enactment." (Ibid.) Accordingly, as we explain below, we cannot conclude the designation of retirement association staff as "county employees" in section 31522.1 exempts such persons from the prohibition of section 53227.
*389 The County Employees Retirement Law of 1937 defines "employee" (§ 31469) and includes retirement association staff within the definition of "county employees" (§ 31522.1). Sections 53227 and 53227.2 are not part of the County Employees Retirement Law of 1937 and neither section defines the term "employee."
It is not necessary or appropriate to attempt to harmonize two statutes by simply importing a definition from one statute into another if that will "thereby negate the clear mandate of the host statute." (Henning v. Division of Occupational Saf. & Health (1990) 219 Cal.App.3d 747, 760, 268 Cal.Rptr. 476.) The intent of section 53227, as reflected both in its language and its legislative history, is to avoid the conflicts presented when a governing board with an employee-member must exercise the powers of an employer, both with respect to that employee-member and with respect to that employee-member's own workplace supervisors.
On the other hand, if we were to construe section 31522.1 as establishing the county as the sole employer of retirement association staff, it would create an exception to the broad prohibition of section 53227, an exception that finds no support in logic or in the legislative history of section 53227. We will not, in an effort to harmonize two sections of a code, adopt a construction that would frustrate the obvious purposes of the legislation as a whole or otherwise lead to absurd results. (California School Employees Assn. v. Governing Board (1994) 8 Cal.4th 333, 340, 33 Cal.Rptr.2d 109, 878 P.2d 1321.)
As stated, if the definition from section 31522.1 is not imported into section 53227, the word "employee" is not otherwise defined by statute for purposes of section 53227. "In this circumstance a statute referring to employees without defining the term courts have generally applied the common law test of employment." (Metropolitan Water Dist. v. Superior Court (2004) 32 Cal.4th 491, 500, 9 Cal. Rptr.3d 857, 84 P.3d 966.) In Metropolitan Water Dist., the court held that workers who were paid and formally employed by a private labor contractor would be employees of the water district for purposes of its retirement plan if the workers met the common law definition of "employee." (Ibid.) Those requirements, clearly present here, have been summarized as follows: The right to control and direct the activities of the alleged employee or the manner and method in which the work is performed, gives rise to the employment relationship. (McFarland v. Voorheis-Trindle Co. (1959) 52 Cal.2d 698, 704, 343 P.2d 923.)
It long has been common in the supplied-labor context for an employee to be deemed to have two employers. (See, e.g., National Auto. Ins. Co. v. Ind. Acc. Com. (1943) 23 Cal.2d 215, 143 P.2d 481; cf. Howard Jarvis Taxpayers' Assn. v. Board of Supervisors (1996) 41 Cal.App.4th 1363, 1376, 49 Cal.Rptr.2d 157.) Accordingly, there is no anomaly created if, for purposes of the section 53227 prohibition, appellants are an additional employer of respondent. Such a conclusion would in no way undermine the role of counties as employers of retirement association personnel under section 31522.1.
To hold in this case that respondent was not an employee of appellants, based solely on section 31522.1, would frustrate the obvious purposes of section 53227: Respondent was supervised on a day-to-day basis by a chain of command topped by the association's executive director. The executive director was not only required to sign off on respondent's annual performance review, but the executive director was also subject to a similar review performed by appellant board of retirement. While, *390 historically, such a situation may have been successfully dealt with by the employee-member's abstention from decisions of the board (see 80 Ops.Cal.Atty.Gen., supra, at p. 14, fn. 4), the Legislature clearly has chosen in section 53227 to prevent such situations in a different manner, by prohibiting altogether the situation that would produce the conflict.
For all of the foregoing reasons, we conclude a staff member of a retirement association is an employee of the association for purposes of section 53227 when, as here, the common law indications of an employment relationship are present. (See also Corcoran v. Contra Costa County Employees Retirement Bd. (1997) 60 Cal. App.4th 89, 94-95, 70 Cal.Rptr.2d 385.)
D. Appellant Retirement Association is a Local Agency
The County Employees Retirement Law of 1937 does not expressly designate retirement associations as any particular type of public entity. Courts have referred to retirement associations and boards of retirement as "administrative agencies" (Preciado v. County of Ventura (1982) 143 Cal.App.3d 783, 789, 192 Cal. Rptr. 253), "administrative tribunals" (Masters v. San Bernardino County Employees Retirement Assn. (1995) 32 Cal.App.4th 30, 45, 37 Cal.Rptr.2d 860), "independent entities" (Traub v. Board of Retirement (1983) 34 Cal.3d 793, 798, 195 Cal.Rptr. 681, 670 P.2d 335), and an entity "which exists by virtue of statute" (County of Los Angeles v. Byram (1951) 36 Cal.2d 694, 695, 227 P.2d 4).
Despite the failure of the statute and case law to define the exact nature of retirement associations, all of the cases treat such associations as public, rather than private, entities. (See, e.g., Freedom Newspapers, Inc. v. Orange County Employees Retirement System (1993) 6 Cal.4th 821, 824, 25 Cal.Rptr.2d 148, 863 P.2d 218 [board is "local agency" for purposes of Ralph M. Brown Act]; Board of Retirement v. Santa Barbara County Grand Jury (1997) 58 Cal.App.4th 1185, 1195, 68 Cal.Rptr.2d 607 [board is "local government agency" subject to powers of grand jury].)
Respondent contends, however, that "local agency" is peculiarly defined in section 53227.2 to encompass not agencies of local government but, instead, agencies of state government. Section 53227.2, subdivision (a), states: "`Local agency' means a city, city and county, county, district, municipal or public corporation, political subdivision, or other public agency of the state." Respondent acknowledges the obvious, namely, that "district," "municipal or public corporation," and "political subdivision" all refer to local entities. But respondent says appellant board "is an agency of the county, not the state," so membership on the board cannot be governed by section 53227.
Although respondent's argument would seem to defy common sense (why would the Legislature define "local agency" to mean "state agency"?), the argument would at least be linguistically plausible if the statutory language were "district, municipal or public corporation, political subdivision, or a public agency of the state." That, however, is not what the statute says.
In terms of ordinary grammar, by referring to "other public agency of the state," the qualification "of the state" is distributed across all of the items in the list. For example, the full description of "municipal or public corporation" specified by the statute is "municipal or public corporation of the state." Phrased somewhat differently, use of the word "other" means that the previous items in the list are examples of "other public [agencies] of the state."
*391 In legal terms, the use of "other" (instead of "a") invokes the interpretive rule known by its Latin name, ejusdem generis. Pursuant to that rule of construction, the meaning of a general term that follows a listing of more specific terms must be limited to things of the same type as the specific items. (Dyna-Med, Inc. v. Fair Employment & Housing Com. (1987) 43 Cal.3d 1379, 1391, fn. 12, 241 Cal.Rptr. 67, 743 P.2d 1323; see also Civ.Code, § 3534 ["Particular expressions qualify those which are general."].)
Viewed in these terms, "of the state" is not used in the possessive sense, as in "the state's agencies." Rather, it is used in a more geographical sense, as in "public agencies within this state." An analogous distinction might be that between "a horse of the king" and "a horse of the kingdom."
Respondent repeatedly states that the Attorney General concluded in the opinion discussed above (80 Ops.Cal.Atty.Gen., supra, at p. 11) that boards of retirement are not local agencies. That, however, is not so. As discussed above, the Attorney General opinion is based exclusively on the statutory exemption, as it then existed, for "county employees." The opinion states that its conclusion would be the same "regardless of whether the board may be considered a `local agency' for purposes of the prohibition" of section 53227. (Id. at p. 14.)
We conclude a board of retirement is an "other public agency of the state" and, therefore, a "local agency" for purposes of section 53277.
E. No Constitutional Violation
Respondent renews his contention, not decided by the trial court, that section 53227 deprives him of procedural due process and unreasonably restricts his right to hold public office. Respondent has not established either violation.
We first note an obvious conundrum that distinguishes the present case both from the Education Code prohibition on dual service (see Ed.Code, § 35107, subd. (b)(1)) and from most other applications of section 53227: respondent is eligible for a position on the board of retirement only because he has been elected as one of two member representatives; if he is no longer a member of the association, he immediately forfeits his board position. (§ 31524 ["Separation from the service of the county of a member of the board vacates his office."].) Thus, while a teacher could make an informed decision that serving on the school board was more important than continuing his teaching job, respondent is not in that position. Other county employees who are not retirement association staff can serve as retirement board members. But only if respondent changed jobs within the county civil service system would he be able to keep both positions. (Respondent's attorney represented to the trial court that such a transfer would be disadvantageous to respondent because he would be a probationary employee in his new position.)
The existence of this dilemma does not change the due process analysis, however. Respondent's property interest in his job and the state's interest in avoiding conflicts of interest on the boards of local agencies remain the same.
The due process analysis is controlled by Coleman v. Dept. of Personnel Administration (1991) 52 Cal.3d 1102, 278 Cal. Rptr. 346, 805 P.2d 300 (Coleman), a case that respondent does not cite, much less attempt to distinguish. The issue in Coleman was the nature of the pre- and post-termination process that was due a state employee who was deemed to have resigned his employment under a statute providing for "automatic resignation" after *392 five continuous days of unexcused absence from the job. (Id. at p. 1108, 278 Cal.Rptr. 346, 805 P.2d 300.) Two aspects of Coleman are particularly relevant.
First, Coleman addresses the question of remedy. Respondent contends section 53227 is "prima facie unconstitutional" because it does not provide for a pre-termination hearing. Coleman says that even if respondent were entitled to a hearing, the statute is not void for failing to provide a hearing. (Coleman, supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 1123, 278 Cal.Rptr. 346, 805 P.2d 300.) Instead, if respondent were constitutionally entitled to a hearing before the automatic resignation provision could be operative, the remedy would simply be to order such a hearing. (Ibid.)
Second, Coleman emphasizes that the same process is not due every time a civil service employee separates from employment. When an employee is discharged for cause, the state has acted to deprive him or her of the property interest in employment. When an employee resigns, the state has done nothing and "has no duty to afford the employee any procedural protections either before or after the resignation takes effect." (Coleman, supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 1115, 278 Cal.Rptr. 346, 805 P.2d 300.)
Coleman says that a statute that establishes conditions whereby a government employee would be deemed automatically to have resigned would be constitutionally equivalent to any other resignation. (Coleman, supra, 52 Cal.3d at pp. 1117-1118, 278 Cal.Rptr. 346, 805 P.2d 300.)
In Coleman, however, the court concluded that the terms of the statute notwithstanding the employer actually exercised discretion in invoking the five-day absence statute: the state had waited "over a month" before treating Coleman's absence as a resignation. (Coleman, supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 1118, 278 Cal.Rptr. 346, 805 P.2d 300.) Because the employer exercised discretion in invoking the statute (ibid.) and because there might be factual issues requiring resolution (id. at p. 1121, 278 Cal.Rptr. 346, 805 P.2d 300), and because of "the direct impact that loss of employment has on an individual's livelihood and ability to meet the need of basic sustenance" (id. at p. 1118, 278 Cal.Rptr. 346, 805 P.2d 300), the court required a minimal level of due process protection before "the resignation goes in to effect." (Id. at p. 1122, 278 Cal.Rptr. 346, 805 P.2d 300.) The court held that due process required the employer to "give notice to the employee of the facts supporting resignation and an opportunity to respond." (Id. at p. 1119, 278 Cal.Rptr. 346, 805 P.2d 300.) The employee is not entitled to a "postseverance evidentiary hearing at which the state must prove the facts supporting the determination of resignation." (Ibid.)
In the present case, the employer has no discretion, either under the statute or in practice, to permit an employee to continue employment after taking the oath of office for the governing board. Most notably, unlike unauthorized absence from employment, the situation has no possibility of resolving itself over time. In the Coleman situation, by contrast, the employer could make a reasonable decision to wait a few days to see if the employee showed up with a valid excuse for his or her absence.
Further, in the present case there is no possible factual issue to be resolved. A single event that occurs in the employee's presence administration of the oath of office serves to automatically terminate employment.
In these circumstances, respondent's vested property right to employment automatically terminates "upon satisfaction of certain statutory conditions." (Coleman, *393 supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 1115, 278 Cal.Rptr. 346, 805 P.2d 300.) Such a statutory limitation upon the original right, and upon its termination without hearing, is constitutionally permissible. (Ibid.)
Even if we were to conclude that respondent was entitled to the level of due process protection made available in Coleman, we would still conclude respondent is not entitled to relief. Coleman states the employee is entitled to an "opportunity to present his or her version of the facts" only if the employee "challenges the accuracy of the state's factual basis." (Coleman, supra, 52 Cal.3d at pp. 1122-1123, 278 Cal.Rptr. 346, 805 P.2d 300.) Here, only one fact is significant: respondent's election as a members' representative on the board of retirement. Respondent does not challenge that fact and, indeed, affirmatively asserts that fact as the basis for his position in this litigation.
Relying exclusively on Clements v. Fashing (1982) 457 U.S. 957, 102 S.Ct. 2836, 73 L.Ed.2d 508, respondent also contends section 53227 constitutes an unreasonable restriction on his right to run for office. That reliance is misplaced. Clements states: "Far from recognizing candidacy as a `fundamental right,' we have held that the existence of barriers to a candidate's access to the ballot `does not of itself compel close scrutiny.'" (Clements, supra, at p. 963, 102 S.Ct. 2836, 73 L.Ed.2d 508 (plur. opn. of Rehnquist, J.).) Accordingly, legislative restrictions on candidacy "need only be drawn in such a manner as to bear some rational relationship to a legitimate state end. Classifications are set aside only if they are based solely on reasons totally unrelated to the pursuit of the State's goals and only if no grounds can be conceived to justify them." (Ibid.)
The restriction imposed by section 53227 easily meets this test. Avoidance of conflicts of interest by local board members clearly is a legitimate state goal. Prohibiting service on such boards by employees of the board, who will have continuing and pervasive conflicts, clearly bears a rational relationship to that goal. Further, the duration of the prohibition, lasting as long as the employment, is a reasonable recognition of the duration of the conflicts of interest the statute seeks to avoid.
Disposition
The judgment is reversed. Costs on appeal are awarded to appellants.
WE CONCUR: CORNELL and GOMES, JJ.
|
Stay in the know
Apricot Pudding
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
3 (1-pound) cans water-packed apricot halves
2 envelopes unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
Directions
Drain the apricots, reserving 1 cup of the liquid. Heat the liquid in a saucepan and bring to a boil, then add the gelatin and stir until dissolved.Combine the orange juice and sugar in a bowl. Add the mixture to the apricots and pour the mixture into a food processor fitted with a metal blade, and puree until smooth. Add the gelatin mixture and blend well. Pour the mixture into a mold or bowl, and chill until set (several hours). To serve, un-mold or spoon into dessert bowls, garnish with chopped walnuts. |
Introduction {#s1}
============
Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major global health problem. In 2012, an estimated 8.6 million people developed TB and 1.3 million died from the disease [@pone.0094544-World1]. Accurate and rapid diagnosis of TB is vitally important in establishing appropriate clinical management and infection control measures [@pone.0094544-SmallP1], [@pone.0094544-Pai1]. Currently, the most common method for TB diagnosis worldwide is sputum smear microscopy, the sensitivity of which is notoriously poor, particularly in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)--positive patients [@pone.0094544-Elliott1], [@pone.0094544-Klein1]. Culture, the gold standard diagnostic method, is highly sensitive but takes between two and six weeks to obtain a result [@pone.0094544-SmallP1]. To address the need for rapid and sensitive diagnosis of TB, a number of nucleic acid amplification assays have been invented [@pone.0094544-Abe1], [@pone.0094544-Helb1], [@pone.0094544-Guo1]; however, they are still not routinely applied in developing countries due to their high cost, complicated procedures, insufficient laboratory facilities, and a shortage of skilled technologists [@pone.0094544-Huggett1], [@pone.0094544-Sarmiento1], [@pone.0094544-Suffys1].
Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is a novel nucleic acid amplification method that does not require an expensive thermocycler or detection system [@pone.0094544-Notomi1]. TB-LAMP is a new manual TB detection method based on the LAMP platform from Eiken Chemical Company in Japan. TB-LAMP has several features that make it attractive as a diagnostics platform for resource-poor settings: it is fast (40 minutes), isothermal (requiring only a heat block), robust to inhibitors and reaction conditions that usually adversely affect polymerase chain reaction methods, and it generates a result that can be detected with the naked eye [@pone.0094544-Adhikari1], [@pone.0094544-Pandey1], [@pone.0094544-Iwamoto1]. From 2007 to 2010, Eiken Chemical Company and Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) successfully developed a next-generation TB-LAMP kit, which has a procedure for ultra rapid DNA extraction (PURE-LAMP) [@pone.0094544-Boehme1]. PURE-LAMP has increased sensitivity and specificity, thanks to the newly designed primer. Having DNA extraction and amplification in a closed unit significantly reduces the risk of contamination. The PURE-LAMP test consists of three steps, sample preparation (10--20 min), Amplification (40 min), and visual detection of fluorescence light from the reaction tube using UV light (0.5--1 min) [@pone.0094544-Mitarai1].
To evaluate the clinical performance of the PURE-LAMP in a peripheral laboratory, we conducted this study in two county-level microscopy centers in Henan Province, China.
Materials and Methods {#s2}
=====================
Ethics {#s2a}
------
The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The requirement to obtain individual informed consent was waived by the review board.
Study Design {#s2b}
------------
The study was carried out in two peripheral microscopy centers (Huojia and Xinxiang counties) in Henan Province, China. From April 2011 to February 2012, new patients with suspected pulmonary TB (cough and expectoration for at least 2 weeks, hemoptysis, and bloody sputum) were consecutively enrolled in the study. Each recruited patient submitted three sputum specimens (spot, night, and morning sputum), the quantity of each specimen should no less than 2 mL (0.1 mL for smear, 1 mL for culture, and 0.06 mL for PURE-LAMP test). Lab technicians from microscopy centers simultaneously tested each specimen by smear microscopy, solid culture, and PURE-LAMP test. China National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory (NTRL) staff collected all culture-positive strains and performed 16S-23S rDNA ITS sequence analysis for strain identification. Solid culture was used as the reference standard to assess the performance of the PURE-LAMP test by different sputum combinations in TB suspects.
Two microscopy centers did not perform solid culture and PCR test before our study. In order to ensure the testing quality of culture and LAMP, all participating laboratory technicians received training from NTRL. All staff received one week training before undertaking the test. In order to ensure quality of the solid culture, staffs at Huojia and Xinxiang counties have done TB culture for 9 months before field implementation. LAMP pilot was conducted in local sites for 1 month. NTRL has supervised pilot sites in the end of the pilot phase to verify technician's performance.
Methods {#s2c}
-------
### ZN microscopy and L-J culture {#s2c1}
The reference standard, quality-assured culture was done by designated technicians who were not aware of the results of other tests. All sputum specimens were subjected to direct smear microscopy using the Ziehl-Neelsen method in accordance with the *Sputum smear Microscopy SOP and Quality Control Manual* [@pone.0094544-Chinese1]. Sputum specimens were processed and inoculated onto acid L-J medium under World Health Organization guidelines [@pone.0094544-World2]. Cultures were inoculated at 37°C and monitored for growth for 8 weeks.
### PURE-LAMP {#s2c2}
The PURE-LAMP test was performed as described previously [@pone.0094544-Mitarai1]. Two laboratory technicians from each laboratory were trained as operators and passed proficiency tests after three runs per person using the following procedure: With a wide-bore disposable pipette provided by Eiken, the technicians collected and transferred 60 µL of sputum to a heating tube containing extraction solution. They mixed and incubated the heating tube at 90°C for 5 minutes. Next they attached the heating tube to an adsorbent tube and mixed until all the powder had completely mixed with the solution. They then placed the injection cap on the adsorbent tube and screwed tightly. Next they inserted the nozzle into a reaction tube and transferred 30 µL of solution to the reaction tube. They loaded the reaction tube into the heating block at 67°C for 40 minutes, transferred the reaction tube into the fluorescence detector, and recorded the results.
### Species identification {#s2c3}
All positive cultures underwent 16S-23S rDNA ITS sequencing-based species confirmation by NTRL staff [@pone.0094544-Grtler1].
Statistical Analysis {#s2d}
--------------------
The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) were calculated to assess the performance of the TB-LAMP assay using solid culture as the reference standard. All of the data were analyzed by the China NTRL. All analysis was done with SPSS19.0 software, and P\<0.05 was regarded as significant.
Results {#s3}
=======
Study Population {#s3a}
----------------
From April 2011 to February 2012, 1378 eligible TB suspects were enrolled. No patients were excluded from the study because of insufficient specimen to conduct all the 3 tests. For analysis, 46 patients were excluded because of culture contamination, and 3 patients were excluded because of no sequence result, therefore, only 1329 TB suspects were remained for analysis ([Figure 1](#pone-0094544-g001){ref-type="fig"}). Of these 1329 TB suspects, 888 were male, 441 were female; 53 of the patients were aged 20 years and under; 165 (12.42%) were smear positive and culture positive TB patients, 210 (15.80%) were smear-negative and culture-positive TB patients, and 954 (71.78%) were culture negative TB patients ([Table 1](#pone-0094544-t001){ref-type="table"}).
{#pone-0094544-g001}
10.1371/journal.pone.0094544.t001
###### Demographic information for the participants who were analyzed.
{#pone-0094544-t001-1}
Variable Xinxiang*(N = 902)* Huojia*(N = 427)* All patients*(N = 1329)*
--------------------------------- --------------------- ------------------- --------------------------
**Age range**
\<20 31 (3.44) 22 (5.15) 53 (3.99)
20--39 369 (40.91) 121 (28.34) 490 (36.87)
40--59 295 (32.71) 153 (35.83) 448 (33.71)
≥60 207 (22.95) 131 (30.68) 338 (25.43)
**Gender**
Female 280 (31.04) 161 (37.70) 441 (33.18)
Male 622 (68.96) 266 (62.30) 888 (66.82)
**Culture result**
Smear-positive/culture-positive 117 (12.97) 48 (11.24) 165 (12.42)
Smear-negative/culture-positive 186 (20.62) 24 (5.62) 210 (15.80)
Culture-negative 599 (66.41) 355 (83.14) 954 (71.78)
Performance of PURE-LAMP Test for MTB Detection Based on Spot Sputum {#s3b}
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Among the 1329 analyzed TB suspects, the sensitivity and specificity of PURE-LAMP for MTB detection based on spot sputum were analyzed using solid culture as the reference standard ([Table 2](#pone-0094544-t002){ref-type="table"}, [Figure 1](#pone-0094544-g001){ref-type="fig"}). The diagnostic results of 1203 TB suspects (90.52%) were consistent with those by solid culture. The sensitivity of PURE-LAMP based on spot sputum was 70.67%, while the sensitivity of PURE-LAMP based on spot sputum in smear-positive and culture positive TB patients was 92.12%, the sensitivity of PURE-LAMP for MTB detection based on spot sputum in smear negative and culture positive patients was 53.81%. The specificity of PURE-LAMP for MTB detection based on spot sputum was 98.32%.
10.1371/journal.pone.0094544.t002
###### Performance of the PURE-LAMP test for TB detection in TB suspects based on spot sputum.
{#pone-0094544-t002-2}
Site and no. of test Sensitivity Specificity (no tuberculosis) PPV NPV
---------------------------- ---------------- ---------------- ------------------------------- ---------------- ---------------- -----------------
**Xinxiang**
Correct--no./total no. (%) 205/303(67.66) 104/117(88.89) 101/186(54.30) 587/599(98.00) 205/217(94.47) 587/685(85.69)
**Huojia**
Correct--no./total no. (%) 60/72 (83.33) 48/48(100) 12/24 (50.00) 351/355(98.87) 60/64(93.75) 351/363(96.70)
**All patients**
Correct--no./total no. (%) 265/375(70.67) 152/165(92.12) 113/210(53.81) 938/954(98.32) 265/281(94.31) 938/1048(89.50)
Performance of PURE-LAMP for MTB Detection Based on Different Sputum and Sputum {#s3c}
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of the 1329 TB suspects analyzed, we calculated the sensitivity and specificity of PURE-LAMP based on different sputum (spot sputum, night sputum or morning sputum) or different sputum combination (spot and night sputum, spot and morning sputum, night and morning sputum, spot and night and morning sputum) ([Table 3](#pone-0094544-t003){ref-type="table"}). The sensitivity and specificity of PURE-LAMP based on the number and combinations of sputum specimens collected were calculated using solid culture as a reference standard ([Table 3](#pone-0094544-t003){ref-type="table"}). The sensitivity of PURE-LAMP for MTB detection based on three sputa is higher than that based on one sputum specimen.
10.1371/journal.pone.0094544.t003
###### Performance of PURE-LAMP based on different sputum and different sputum combination.
{#pone-0094544-t003-3}
No. of TB test Sensitivity Specificity (No-tuberculosis) PPV NPV Diagnostic accuracy
------------------------------------------------- ---------------- ------------------------------- ---------------- ----------------- ---------------------
**3 samples (spot, morning, and night sputum)**
Correct--no./total no.(%) 333/375(88.80) 924/954(96.86) 333/363(91.74) 924/966(95.65) 1257/1329(94.58)
95% CI (85.21--91.61) (95.55--97.79) (88.45--94.15) (94.18--96.77) 93.23--95.68
**2 samples**
**Spot and night sputum**
Correct--no./total no.(%) 310/375(82.67) 929/954(97.38) 310/335(92.54) 929/994(93.46) 1239/1329(93.23)
95% CI (78.51--86.16) (96.16--98.22) (89.22--94.89) (91.75--94.84) (91.75--94.46)
**Spot and morning sputum**
Correct--no./total no.(%) 309/375(82.40) 928/954(97.27) 309/335(92.24) 928/994(93.36) 1237/1329(93.08)
95% CI (78.22--85.92) (96.04--98.13) (88.87--94.65) (91.64--94.75) (91.58--94.32)
**Night and morning sputum**
Correct--no./total no.(%) 314/375(83.73) 931/954(97.59) 314/337(93.18) 931/992(93.85) 1245/1329(93.68)
95% CI (79.66--87.12) (96.41--98.39) (89.97--95.41) (92.18--95.18) (92.24--94.87)
**1 sample**
**Spot sputum**
Correct--no./total no.(%) 265/375(70.67) 938/954(98.32) 265/281(94.31) 938/1048(89.50) 1203/1329(90.52)
95% CI (65.87--75.05) (97.29--98.97) (90.95--96.47) (87.50--91.22) (88.83--91.98)
**Night sputum**
Correct--no./total no.(%) 267/375(71.20) 938/954(98.32) 267/283(94.35) 938/1046(89.67) 1205/1329(90.67)
95% CI (66.42--75.55) (97.29--98.97) (91.01--96.49) (87.68--91.38) (88.99--92.12)
**Morning sputum**
Correct-no./total no.(%) 261/375(69.60) 935/954(98.01) 261/280(93.21) 935/1049(89.13) 1196/1329(89.99)
95% CI (64.76--74.04) (96.91--98.72) (89.65--95.61) (87.10--90.88) (88.26--91.49)
Contamination Rate of PURE-LAMP and Culture {#s3d}
-------------------------------------------
In this study, 475 runs of the PURE-LAMP were conducted on new patients with suspected pulmonary TB. Among the 475 runs of PURE-LAMP, only 1 run was contaminated, with a total contamination rate of 0.21%.
A total of 4,129 sputum specimens were collected from the 1,378 patients enrolled at the two dispensaries, with each digested specimen inoculated into two tubes of culture medium. Among the 8,268 cultures, 276 tubes were contaminated, with a total contamination rate of 3.3%.
Analysis of Discrepant Cases {#s3e}
----------------------------
We analysis the discrepant cases and found that among the 30 culture-negative patients who were diagnosed positive by PURE-LAMP, 2 patients were smear-positive. Of the 42 culture-positive patients who were diagnosed as negative by PURE-LAMP based on three samples, 6 were identified as NTM by sequence, while 36 were identified as MTB by sequence. All the 36 MTB strains were smear-negative and twenty-six of these patients (72.22%) had a colony number of less than 20 for solid culture.
Discussion {#s4}
==========
Early diagnosis is important for the control and prevention of TB. With the development of molecular biology, a number of methods have been developed for the rapid detection and diagnosis of TB. LAMP is a new nucleic acid amplification technology first proposed by Notomi in 2000 [@pone.0094544-Notomi1]. The PURE-LAMP test is a new, simple, contamination-resistant kit for the diagnosis of TB.
In this study, the sensitivity of PURE-LAMP based on spot sputum in smear-negative and culture-positive patients was 53.81%, the overall sensitivity of PURE-LAMP was 70.67%, and the specificity of PURE-LAMP was 98.32%, which was similar with that found in other studies [@pone.0094544-Suffys1]. Comparing the sensitivity of PURE-LAMP with that of smear microscopy, the sensitivity of PURE-LAMP was higher than the sensitivity of smear microscopy. This result showed that PURE-LAMP can be used for MTB diagnosis.
Chinese national guidelines have recommended obtaining three sputum specimens from patients with suspected TB [@pone.0094544-Chinese2]. In the present study, we assessed the contribution of each specimen collected to the ultimate diagnosis of MTB for TB suspects and found that the sensitivity of the PURE-LAMP test for MTB detection in TB suspects from three sputa was significantly higher than that in one test of spot sputum. Considering the cost factor, testing three samples may increase the economic burden of patients. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct an analysis of the cost-effectiveness of the PURE-LAMP test with different specimen combinations in the future.
The contamination rate of PURE-LAMP was 0.21% in this study. Two labs in this study were both equipped with three independent and separate working areas, including the storage area for reagents, the pretreatment area, and the amplification and results analysis area. Each room was clearly labeled to avoid confusion when retrieving equipment or materials from different areas. Work benches were disinfected by a 5% sodium hypochlorite solution and exposed to UV light after each testing. Through strict control of contamination and the closed system of the PURE-LAMP test, the risk of contamination was highly reduced.
We also found PURE-LAMP's reporting time much shorter than that of solid culture: a diagnosis can be completed within two hours. Fluorescence results were examined with the naked eye by lab technicians, and no indeterminate cases were found. China's NTRL rechecked 20% of the sample results, and the concordance rate was 100%.
In conclusion, the PURE-LAMP test is a new diagnostic technology that can rapidly and accurately detect TB in patients. The test used only 60 µL of sputum each time and was very suitable for pulmonary TB patients, especially for those patients who lacked sputum. Our field study proved that the PURE-LAMP test could be used for screening TB patients in labs in China's periphery in the future.
We gratefully thank the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for its financial support, and PATH for its assistance in implementing the project, analyzing data, and writing this paper. We also thank all staff in project laboratories that contributed to this work.
[^1]: **Competing Interests:**The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
[^2]: Conceived and designed the experiments: XO QL HX Zhiying Zhang Y. Zhao. Performed the experiments: XO YP SW BZ YS Y. Zhou Y. Zheng Zhijian Zhang. Analyzed the data: XO HD JZ KMK JC Y. Zhao. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JL SH DPC. Wrote the paper: XO QL HX Y. Zhao.
|
Silver Rally Running out of Steam Time to Lock in Profits
The technical outlook on the silver market does not look all that strong when looking from a distance. I like to keep eye on the longer term trend lines for possible support and resistance levels which are easily missed if you only follow the daily charts.
Silver had an incredibly positive up move since mid of april. After establishing a low around $11.60 over 6 weeks ago it´s up more than 31% as I write this. Gold only went up around 11.5% during the same time.
The Gold/Silver Ratio is now close to 63. Before the credit contraction last summer we normally saw the ratio moving between 44 and 60.
Looking at the charts we can see that silver is running into heavy resistance around $15-16 level. The upper Bollinger Band is currently at 15.04US$ and is a warning sign that the rally might soon be finished. As well silver is approaching the 61.8% recovery retracement of the complete downmove since last summer at $15.20-15.30. RSI is not yet in extremly oversold territory but close to. The flat 200MA is more than $3.00 away, while the disctance to the 20MA as the next possible support exactly $2 away.
On top seasonality is another factor that makes me favoring the downside right now. Sell in May has always been a wise recommendation during this ongoing longterm bullmarket in precious metals.
And finally Silver is an industrial metal. Any sell off in the broadmarkets should trigger a sell off in silver too.
To summarize, my analysis clearly points out that log positions should be tightening exit points which will allow us to lock in maximum profit from thsi current rally. If you want to short this market you should use wide stopps (e.g. above $16.01) since silver is very volatile.
You can always reenter your long position later this summer when we get a new batch of buy signals for the precious metals market which will most likely be after the typical weakness in july and august.
Chris Vermeulen is Founder of the popular trading site TheGoldAndOilGuy.com. There he shares his highly successful, low-risk trading method. For 6 years Chris has been a leader in teaching others to skillfully trade in gold, oil, and silver in both bull and bear markets. Subscribers to his service depend on Chris' uniquely consistent investment opportunities that carry exceptionally low risk and high return.
This article is intended solely for information purposes. The opinions are those of the author only. Please conduct further research and consult your financial advisor before making any investment/trading decision. No responsibility can be accepted for losses that may result as a consequence of trading on the basis of this analysis.
Comments
The Market Oracle is a FREE Financial Markets Forecasting & Analysis web-site.(c) 2005-2018 MarketOracle.co.uk (Market Oracle Ltd) - Market Oracle Ltd asserts copyright on all articles authored by our editorial team and all comments posted. Any and all information provided within the web-site, is for general information purposes only and Market Oracle Ltd do not warrant the accuracy, timeliness or suitability of any information provided on this site. nor is or shall be deemed to constitute, financial or any other advice or recommendation by us. and are also not meant to be investment advice or solicitation or recommendation to establish market positions. We do not give investment advice and our comments are an expression of opinion only and should not be construed in any manner whatsoever as recommendations to enter into a market position either stock, option, futures contract, bonds, commodity or any other financial instrument at any time. We recommend that independent professional advice is obtained before you make any investment or trading decisions. By using this site you agree to this sites Terms of Use.
From time to time we promote or endorse certain products / services that we believe are worthy of your time and attention. In return for that endorsement and only in the cases where you purchase directly though us may we be compensated by the producers of those products. |
Nearly 80 years after the US authorized the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, California plans to formally apologize this week for its role in one of the darkest chapters in US history.
State lawmakers are set to vote on Thursday on a resolution which states that the California legislature apologizes for “the unjust exclusion, removal, and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, and for its failure to support and defend the civil rights and civil liberties of Japanese Americans.”
More than 120,000 Japanese-Americans were sent to 10 concentration camps throughout western states and Arkansas during World War II after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order.
The February 19, 1942 order came just two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
“The apology is especially pertinent now with President (Donald) Trump in office,” Democratic assembly member Al Muratsuchi, who introduced the bill, told AFP in a statement. |
June242013
How To Buy Motilium Safely Without Prescription
Motilium further impairing their functioning. Some sufferers will require antibiotics. Motilium motilium buying online bars but a condition that can be treated and cured without the use of drugs or any kind of prescriptive medication. People who have this bacteria go through special tests and possibly antibiotic treatment to cure their condition. motilium online order in india motilium Stress can put a physical strain on the human body, as gastroparesis tends to be a chronic condition. which spreads to the chest and throat leaving you in considerable discomfort. or delayed gastric emptying. |
William L. Murphy
William Leo Murphy (June 25, 1944 – June 4, 2010) was the Richmond County District Attorney (in Staten Island, New York) from 1983 to 2003.
Early life and education
Murphy was born in Chicago. His parents were originally from Staten Island and returned there before his first birthday. His father served as a grand juror in Richmond County for 25 years, and his grandfather was a police officer.
He received his undergraduate education from Fordham University and his law degree from Harvard Law School.
Career
Murphy was a public prosecutor in the New York County District Attorney's office from 1969 to 1975. From 1975 to 1982, he was the chief assistant district attorney in Staten Island. In November 1982, he became acting district attorney when Thomas R. Sullivan resigned to become a judge. He was appointed as district attorney by Governor Mario Cuomo in March 1983 and then continued in the position for 20 years, through five elections. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called him a "legendary public servant" upon his death.
He advocated for strict environmental regulations and legislation after prosecuting John Cassiliano, a sanitation supervisor at the Brookfield landfill who took bribes in exchange for allowing illegal dumping of toxic waste, in 1982. In 1988, he prosecuted Andre Rand, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering a 12-year-old girl with Down Syndrome. In 2003, he prosecuted Ronnell Wilson, who was convicted and served the death penalty for murdering two undercover detectives. Murphy retired shortly afterward.
Murphy was elected president of the National Association of District Attorneys in 1998.
References
Category:1944 births
Category:2010 deaths
Category:Richmond County District Attorneys
Category:Harvard Law School alumni
Category:New York (state) Democrats
Category:Fordham University alumni |
/**
* Copyright (c) Facebook, Inc. and its affiliates.
*
* This source code is licensed under the MIT license found in the
* LICENSE file in the root directory of this source tree.
*/
// -*- c++ -*-
#ifndef FAISS_INDEX_BINARY_FROM_FLOAT_H
#define FAISS_INDEX_BINARY_FROM_FLOAT_H
#include <faiss/IndexBinary.h>
namespace faiss {
struct Index;
/** IndexBinary backed by a float Index.
*
* Supports adding vertices and searching them.
*
* All queries are symmetric because there is no distinction between codes and
* vectors.
*/
struct IndexBinaryFromFloat : IndexBinary {
Index *index = nullptr;
bool own_fields = false; ///< Whether object owns the index pointer.
IndexBinaryFromFloat();
explicit IndexBinaryFromFloat(Index *index);
~IndexBinaryFromFloat();
void add(idx_t n, const uint8_t *x) override;
void reset() override;
void search(idx_t n, const uint8_t *x, idx_t k,
int32_t *distances, idx_t *labels) const override;
void train(idx_t n, const uint8_t *x) override;
};
} // namespace faiss
#endif // FAISS_INDEX_BINARY_FROM_FLOAT_H
|
Chuck Z
My regular tour caps, I usually wash in the top drawer of my dishwasher, using a little Shout spray on them with success. The new Tour Aussies seem to be made of the same fabric. Just got my hat a few weeks ago and have not washed, so do not know about shape. Guess it depends on how well it is cared for.
JAM
The new Titleist Tour Hat is perfect. In addition to SPF protection material, wide brim and the fact the brim does not flip up when heading into the wind it can't be beat. Regarding the care of the hat, I simply tip the hat inside down and put it under the kitchen faucet and with my hand, gently rub the headband and the front of the brim if needed. I then hang it out side to dry. Once dry, I stuff a plastic bag from the cleaners into the hat to hold its shape until the next time I play. Just a suggestion. |
Q:
Django feed framework: tzinfo error
I am using django feed framework. This is what I have in my feeds.py:
def item_pubdate(self, item):
return item.posted
This is what I have in my Blog class in models.py:
posted = models.DateField(db_index=True, auto_now_add=True)
And I get this attribute error:
'datetime.date' object has no attribute 'tzinfo'
A:
See https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/syndication/ for the requirements of def item_pubdate. This is because most feed formats technically require a full timestamp as the publish date.
The function you define item_pubdate for a feed must return a python datetime.datetime object, not a datetime.date object. The difference being of course that the object can contain a specific time in addition to the date information.
Therefore, you must use models.DateTimeField instead of models.DateField.
--
If you are stuck using the models.DateField, then you can have your feed class do the conversion:
from datetime import datetime, time
def item_pubdate(self, item):
return datetime.combine(item.posted, time())
And that should get your date converted to a datetime so that contrib.syndication accepts it.
|
Taylor Currie, a class of 2019 prospect at forward, was offered scholarship on Thursday by John Beilein and the Michigan Wolverines.
He wasted no time accepting it.
Currie committed to the program shortly after he was offered and announced his pledge to the Maize and Blue via his Twitter account.
I'm excited to announce that I've committed to play at The University of Michigan! Thanks to God, My Family, and Coach Beilein! Go Blue 〽️〽️ pic.twitter.com/7u6cvCK07H — Taylor Currie (@_swaggyt33) June 15, 2017
Currie is a three-star prospect out of Clarkston, Michigan (originally from Columbus, Ohio) and is the 30th-ranked power forward in his class. He also drew interest from Iowa, Ohio State and Florida, among others.
His commitment gives the Wolverines their first pledge of the 2019 recruiting class. |
Jennifer Foster was visiting Times Square on Nov. 14 when she snapped the heartwarming moment. Here's her account of what happened:
“Right when I was about to approach, one of your officers came up behind him. The officer said, ‘I have these size 12 boots for you, they are all-weather. Let’s put them on and take care of you.’ The officer squatted down on the ground and proceeded to put socks and the new boots on this man. The officer expected NOTHING in return and did not know I was watching*. I have been in law enforcement for 17 years. I was never so impressed in my life. I did not get the officer’s name. It is important, I think, for all of us to remember the real reason we are in this line of work. The reminder this officer gave to our profession in his presentation of human kindness has not been lost on myself or any of the Arizona law enforcement officials with whom this story has been shared.” |
With its passage on November 6, Amendment 4 granted over a million felons across the state the right to vote.
But with its effective date less than two months away and in the midst of a transitionary period for a newly elected state government, no one seems to know precisely how the will of the voters will be carried out.
One of the amendment's drafters says it’s “self-executing” and shouldn't involve the legislature or politicians. The head of the state Republican Party says it’s a “conversation we’re going to have to have” in the state legislature. Elections officials across the state say they’re in the dark, and so far the Florida Division of Elections hasn’t said a peep.
There are several theories as to how Amendment 4 should be rolled out. The first, and most utopian, is the view taken by Howard Simon, the executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. He sat on a committee that wrote the amendment.
“We think that on January 8th, when the constitutional amendment goes into effect, people can go to their supervisor of election [and register],” Simon told WLRN. “It says that voting rights ‘shall be restored.’ I don’t know what is unclear about that, what could be unclear about that.”
Simon says the language is “self-executing” because it is concise. “We worked on this language intentionally to say that there is no role for politicians. People in the legislature, people in the Governor’s office, people in the Secretary of State’s office -- there’s no role for politicians to decide who gets to vote in Florida and who doesn’t get to vote in Florida,” Simon said.
But Republican State Sen. Dennis Baxley, the chair of the Senate’s Ethics and Elections Committee, said there likely is a role for politicians. He believes procedures are needed to verify voters' eligibility.
“It’s not unusual when you have a constitutional amendment to have a period of review, to look at - ‘how will this actually work?’” Baxley said. “I suspect that’s one that needs some legislative guidance.”
“The intent of the amendment is clear, it’s just the how that’s the question,” he reiterated.
Blaise Ingoglia, State Rep. for the 35th District and the chair of the Republican Party of Florida, agreed with Baxley.
“There will be numerous what we call ‘implementing bills’ that are going to be offered by various members of the House and the Senate,” Ingoglia told WLRN. “That’s a conversation we’re going to have to have in the Senate.”
“We’re gonna get it done this session, what it’s gonna look like, obviously we don’t know,” he added.
Involving the legislature in the process could signal red flags for Floridians who have seen the state legislature repeatedly fail to implement citizen-driven ballot amendments as they were intended.
Baxley, who was just named chair of the Ethics and Elections Committee this week, assured that there will be no “slow rolling” of the amendment.
Another potential issue with the legislative approach: The next legislative session doesn’t start until March, two months after over a million felons will legally be able to register to vote for the 2020 general election, according to the newly amended constitution. Potential conflicts could emerge if things aren’t up and running by then.
“There will be people registering to vote on January 8th, you bet,” said Neil Volz, political director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which campaigned for Amendment 4. Twelve years ago, Volz was arrested for a felony, but has since stayed out of trouble.
“I’ll be in the front of the line in Lee County, and I know other people who are also going to be in line,” he said. “For us, this is our lives.”
Several municipalities across the state are holding elections as early as February and March. If someone impacted by Amendment 4 registered to vote on January 8, they should be able to vote in those elections.
But different parts of the state government are signaling things will not be running by that time.
The Florida Commission of Offender Review is the state entity tasked with reviewing and restoring the rights of inmates and offenders after criminal proceedings have finished. Kelly Corder, the director of communications for the agency, wrote to WLRN in an email that the state’s Clemency Board -- composed of the Governor, Attorney General, Agricultural Commissioner and Chief Financial Officer -- has “temporarily postponed consideration of pending applications for restoration of civil rights while the new framework required to implement the constitutional changes is defined.”
The changes “may include the need for implementing legislation in the upcoming legislative session,” Corder wrote. She referred any further questions to the Governor’s Office.
Asked what steps the Governor’s Office is taking to implement Amendment 4 by the time it goes into effect on January 8, Ashley Cook, press secretary for Gov. Rick Scott only said: “This constitutional amendment takes effect in January, as outlined in Florida’s constitution.”
Requests for comment from Governor-elect Ron DeSantis’ transition team were not returned. Both the current and incoming governors campaigned against Amendment 4 in the 2018 election cycle. The executive branch has a considerable amount of discretion over how policies are interpreted and implemented, since its Departments are often where the rubber hits the road.
Florida Department of Corrections press secretary Patrick Manderfield wrote in an email that the Department is currently “reviewing its protocols and policies and will work with the appropriate agencies … to ensure compliance with Florida law as it is implemented.”
Much of the back-end criminal justice data that underpins the Department of State’s determination that someone is legally able to vote is handled by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. A spokesperson said Amendment 4 “requires legislative implementation” before the Department of Law Enforcement is able to make any changes to existing processes.
No matter which form of action is taken to ultimately put the amendment into effect, it’s clear the Department of State, which oversees the Florida Division of Elections, will have to be involved.
Sarah Revell, a spokesperson for the Department of State, wrote in an email that she would “share more information as it becomes available.”
“We don’t know anything,” said Joyce Griffin, Supervisor of Elections of Monroe County in the Florida Keys. “None of the counties do.”
Several other counties contacted by WLRN, including Miami-Dade, also said they had not yet received any guidance from the Department of State about how to prepare for January 8.
The second question on Florida voter registration forms reads: “I affirm that I am not a convicted felon, or if I am, my right to vote has been restored.” The forms are handled by county officials, before being sent up to the state for the verification of eligibility.
“I’m going to have to be given some guidelines. You can’t just ignore the question,” said Griffin.
When reached, Chris Moore, deputy supervisor of elections in Leon County, said: “Funny you bring this up. I just left a voicemail with someone at the Department of State about an hour ago trying to get some information on this.”
Susan Bucher, the supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County, said she doesn't expect to hear much from the Department of State. “The legislature has to provide legislative guidance before that goes into effect,” she said. Asked if that means she doesn't expect Amendment 4 will be ready to roll out on January 8, she said: “That is correct.”
The supervisor of elections for Orange County, Bill Cowles, said the main question is how will the state do its part to verify the responses to that question. "As far as I know, people will be able to walk into our office on January 8th and check the box that their rights have been restored," he said. "But somebody at the state is going to have to scrub the registrations that come in, and I don't know what that process will look like."
Next week, the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections is holding a meeting in Sarasota. The agenda for the event shows Florida Division of Elections director Maria Matthews will be speaking to all the 67 county supervisors of elections from across the state, but nothing on the agenda mentions Amendment 4. Griffin said and Cowles hope Matthews brings some clarity to the subject.
“Some of this might get worked out procedurally between now and the session, because all these different parts have to talk to each other,” said State Sen. Baxley. “The good part is we have time before the next election.” |
James Dean (1976 film)
James Dean (also known as James Dean: Portrait of a Friend) is a 1976 NBC television film about actor James Dean and starring Stephen McHattie in the title role.
The role of screenwriter William Bast, Dean's best friend, is played by Michael Brandon. This portrayal is based on the 1956 biography by Bast, which recounts the early acting career and rise of Dean. The film paints a clear picture of James Dean's pursuit for authenticity, depth and artistic meaning. Bast claimed that Dean's inspiration as an actor was inspired by what he learned from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's tale "The Little Prince".
References
External links
Category:1976 films
Category:American films
Category:NBC network original films
Category:English-language films
Category:Biographical films about actors
Category:Cultural depictions of James Dean |
Q:
Why should I be Bayesian when my model is wrong?
Edits: I have added a simple example: inference of the mean of the $X_i$. I have also slightly clarified why the credible intervals not matching confidence intervals is bad.
I, a fairly devout Bayesian, am in the middle of a crisis of faith of sorts.
My problem is the following. Assume that I want to analyse some IID data $X_i$. What I would do is:
first, propose a conditional model:
$$ p(X|\theta) $$
Then, choose a prior on $\theta$:
$$ p(\theta) $$
Finally, apply Bayes' rule, compute the posterior: $p(\theta | X_1 \dots X_n )$ (or some approximation to it if it should be uncomputable) and answer all questions I have about $\theta$
This is a sensible approach: if the true model of the data $X_i$ is indeed "inside" of my conditional (it corresponds to some value $\theta_0$), then I can call upon statistical decision theory to say that my method is admissible (see Robert's "The Bayesian choice" for details; "All of statistics" also gives a clear account in the relevant chapter).
However, as everybody knows, assuming that my model is correct is fairly arrogant: why should nature fall neatly inside the box of the models which I have considered? It is much more realistic to assume that the real model of the data $p_{true}(X)$ differs from $p(X|\theta)$ for all values of $\theta$. This is usually called a "misspecified" model.
My problem is that, in this more realistic misspecified case, I don't have any good arguments for being Bayesian (i.e: computing the posterior distribution) versus simply computing the Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE):
$$ \hat \theta_{ML} = \arg \max_\theta [ p(X_1 \dots X_n |\theta) ] $$
Indeed, according to Kleijn, v.d Vaart (2012), in the misspecified case, the posterior distribution:
converges as $n\rightarrow \infty $ to a dirac distribution centered at a $\hat \theta_{ML} $
does not have the correct variance (unless two values just happen to be same) in order to ensure that credible intervals of the posterior match confidence intervals for $\theta$. (Note that, while confidence intervals are obviously something that Bayesians don't care about excessively, this qualitatively means that the posterior distribution is intrinsically wrong, as it implies that its credible intervals do not have correct coverage)
Thus, we are paying a computational premium (Bayesian inference, in general, is more expensive than MLE) for no additional properties
Thus, finally, my question: are there any arguments, whether theoretical or empirical, for using Bayesian inference over the simpler MLE alternative when the model is misspecified?
(Since I know that my questions are often unclear, please let me known if you don't understand something: I'll try to rephrase it)
Edit: let's consider a simple example: infering the mean of the $X_i$ under a Gaussian model (with known variance $\sigma$ to simplify even further).
We consider a Gaussian prior: we denote $\mu_0$ the prior mean, $\beta_0$ the inverse variance of the prior. Let $\bar X$ be the empirical mean of the $X_i$. Finally, note: $\mu = (\beta_0 \mu_0 + \frac{n}{\sigma^2} \bar X) / (\beta_0 + \frac{n}{\sigma^2} )$.
The posterior distribution is:
$$ p(\theta |X_1 \dots X_n)\; \propto\; \exp\!\Big( - (\beta_0 + \frac{n}{\sigma^2} ) (\theta - \mu)^2 / 2\Big) $$
In the correctly specified case (when the $X_i$ really have a Gaussian distribution), this posterior has the following nice properties
If the $X_i$ are generated from a hierarchical model in which their shared mean is picked from the prior distribution, then the posterior credible intervals have exact coverage. Conditional on the data, the probability of $\theta$ being in any interval is equal to the probability that the posterior ascribes to this interval
Even if the prior isn't correct, the credible intervals have correct coverage in the limit $n\rightarrow \infty$ in which the prior influence on the posterior vanishes
the posterior further has good frequentist properties: any Bayesian estimator constructed from the posterior is guaranteed to be admissible, the posterior mean is an efficient estimator (in the Cramer-Rao sense) of the mean, credible intervals are, asymptotically, confidence intervals.
In the misspecified case, most of these properties are not guaranteed by the theory. In order to fix ideas, let's assume that the real model for the $X_i$ is that they are instead Student distributions. The only property that we can guarantee (Kleijn et al) is that the posterior distribution concentrates on the real mean of the $X_i$ in the limit $n \rightarrow \infty$. In general, all the coverage properties would vanish. Worse, in general, we can guarantee that, in that limit, the coverage properties are fundamentally wrong: the posterior distribution ascribes the wrong probability to various regions of space.
A:
I consider Bayesian approach when my data set is not everything that is known about the subject, and want to somehow incorporate that exogenous knowledge into my forecast.
For instance, my client wants a forecast of the loan defaults in their portfolio. They have 100 loans with a few years of quarterly historical data. There were a few occurrences of delinquency (late payment) and just a couple of defaults. If I try to estimate the survival model on this data set, it'll be very little data to estimate and too much uncertainty to forecast.
On the other hand, the portfolio managers are experienced people, some of them may have spent decades managing relationships with borrowers. They have ideas around what the default rates should be like. So, they're capable of coming up with reasonable priors. Note, not the priors which have nice math properties and look intellectually appealing to me. I'll chat with them and extract their experiences and knowledge in the form of those priors.
Now Bayesian framework will provide me with mechanics to marry the exogenous knowledge in the form of priors with the data, and obtain the posterior that is superior to both pure qualitative judgment and pure data driven forecast, in my opinion. This is not a philosophy and I'm not a Bayesian. I'm just using the Bayesian tools to consistently incorporate expert knowledge into the data-driven estimation.
A:
A very interesting question...that may not have an answer (but that does not make it less interesting!)
A few thoughts (and many links to my blog entries!) about that meme that all models are wrong:
While the hypothetical model is indeed almost invariably and irremediably wrong, it still makes sense to act in an efficient or coherent manner with respect to this model if this is the best one can do. The resulting inference produces an evaluation of the formal model that is the "closest" to the actual data generating model (if any);
There exist Bayesian approaches that can do without the model, a most recent example being the papers by Bissiri et al. (with my comments) and by Watson and Holmes (which I discussed with Judith Rousseau);
In a connected way, there exists a whole branch of Bayesian statistics dealing with M-open inference;
And yet another direction I like a lot is the SafeBayes approach of Peter Grünwald, who takes into account model misspecification to replace the likelihood with a down-graded version expressed as a power of the original likelihood.
The very recent Read Paper by Gelman and Hennig addresses this issue, albeit in a circumvoluted manner (and I added some comments on my blog). I presume you could gather material for a discussion from the entries about your question.
In a sense, Bayesians should be the least concerned among statisticians and modellers about this aspect since the sampling model is to be taken as one of several prior assumptions and the outcome is conditional or relative to all those prior assumptions.
A:
Edits: Added reference to this paper in the body, as requested by the OP.
I am giving an answer as a naive empirical Bayesian here.
First, the posterior distribution allows you to do computations that you simply cannot do with a straightforward MLE.
The simplest case is that today's posterior is tomorrow's prior. Bayesian inference naturally allows for sequential updates, or more in general online or delayed combination of multiple sources of information (incorporating a prior is just one textbook instance of such combination).
Bayesian Decision Theory with a nontrivial loss function is another example. I would not know what to do otherwise.
Second, with this answer I will try and argue that the mantra that quantification of uncertainty is generally better than no uncertainty is effectively an empirical question, since theorems (as you mentioned, and as far as I know) provide no guarantees.
Optimization as a toy model of scientific endeavor
A domain that I feel fully captures the complexity of the problem is a very practical, no-nonsense one, the optimization of a black-box function $f: \mathcal{X} \subset \mathbb{R}^D \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$. We assume that we can sequentially query a point $x \in \mathcal{X}$ and get a possibly noisy observation $y = f(x) + \varepsilon$, with $\varepsilon \sim \mathcal{N}(0,\sigma^2)$. Our goal is to get as close as possible to $x^* = \arg\min_x f(x)$ with the minimum number of function evaluations.
A particularly effective way to proceed, as you may expect, is to build a predictive model of what would happen if I query any $x^\prime \in \mathcal{X}$, and use this information to decide what to do next (either locally or globally). See Rios and Sahinidis (2013) for a review of derivative-free global optimization methods.
When the model is complex enough, this is called a meta-model or surrogate-function or response surface approach. Crucially, the model could be a point estimate of $f$ (e.g., the fit of a radial basis network function to our observations), or we could be Bayesian and somehow get a full posterior distribution over $f$ (e.g., via a Gaussian process).
Bayesian optimization uses the posterior over $f$ (in particular, the joint conditional posterior mean and variance at any point) to guide the search of the (global) optimum via some principled heuristic. The classical choice is to maximize the expected improvement over the current best point, but there are even fancier methods, like minimizing the expected entropy over the location of the minimum (see also here).
The empirical result here is that having access to a posterior, even if partially misspecified, generally produces better results than other methods.
(There are caveats and situations in which Bayesian optimization is no better than random search, such as in high dimensions.)
In this paper, we perform an empirical evaluation of a novel BO method vs. other optimization algorithms, checking whether using BO is convenient in practice, with promising results.
Since you asked -- this has a much higher computational cost than other non-Bayesian methods, and you were wondering why we should be Bayesian.
The assumption here is that the cost involved in evaluating the true $f$ (e.g., in a real scenario, a complex engineering or machine learning experiment) is much larger than the computational cost for the Bayesian analysis, so being Bayesian pays off.
What can we learn from this example?
First, why does Bayesian optimization work at all? I guess that the model is wrong, but not that wrong, and as usual wrongness depends on what your model is for. For example, the exact shape of $f$ is not relevant for optimization, since we could be optimizing any monotonic transformation thereof. I guess nature is full of such invariances.
So, the search we are doing might not be optimal (i.e., we are throwing away good information), but still better than with no uncertainty information.
Second, our example highlights that it is possible that the usefulness of being Bayesian or not depends on the context, e.g. the relative cost and amount of available (computational) resources. (Of course if you are a hardcore Bayesian you believe that every computation is Bayesian inference under some prior and/or approximation.)
Finally, the big question is -- why are the models we use not-so-bad after all, in the sense that the posteriors are still useful and not statistical garbage? If we take the No Free Lunch theorem, apparently we shouldn't be able to say much, but luckily we do not live in a world of completely random (or adversarially chosen) functions.
More in general, since you put the "philosophical" tag... I guess we are entering the realm of the problem of induction, or the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the statistical sciences (specifically, of our mathematical intuition & ability to specify models that work in practice) -- in the sense that from a purely a priori standpoint there is no reason why our guesses should be good or have any guarantee (and for sure you can build mathematical counterexamples in which things go awry), but they turn out to work well in practice.
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Ava DuVernay, the Oscar-nominated director of Selma and A Wrinkle in Time, has described the struggle she is having with her latest work, a five-part drama series for Netflix on the Central Park Five.
DuVernay said she was having a hard time finding the voice of the five teenagers who were wrongfully convicted of the rape of a Central Park jogger in 1989. The trouble comes, she said, from the difficulty finding any material from the time that told the story from the teenager’s perspective.
“I pored through every trial transcript, I’ve read everything about that case, and they have no voice. Even the voice they were given – in their forced confessions – was not their own voice. Every single thing, even their voice in the confession, is not their own.
“It’s flipped inside out. Every day I feel I’m wrestling with the story to try and turn it around, make it their story.”
As DuVernay was speaking, she pointed to the audience and invited a man in the front row to stand up. When Yusef Salaam rose he got a standing ovation. Salaam served more than five years in prison for a crime that he didn’t commit, having been released in 2002 along with the others of the Central Park Five.
Remarkably, no-one mentioned Donald Trump who spent a reported $85,000 to buy whole pages in New York newspapers calling for the five teenagers to be executed. |
Dementia Symposium 2017
Illuminating the Journey Research Knowledge Practice
Thank you to everyone who participated in Illuminating the Journey: Dementia Symposium 2017. A diverse audience engaged with our presenting panelists to explore leading research related to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of Alzheimer’s and dementia related diseases. For those interested in further exploring the research presented, we have provided links to the full presentations below.
Check back soon for future research and education events presented by Gordie Howe Center for Alzheimer’s Research and Education Society.
Featuring Renowned Physician Researchers
Dr. Michael Borrie, M.D. ChB, FRCPCMichael Borrie, MB ChB, FRCPC is a Geriatrician and Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatric Medicine, The University of Western Ontario. His research interests include predictors of conversion from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to Alzheimer Disease (AD), including sensitive Neuroimaging techniques, and randomized controlled trials of new treatments for MCI and AD.
Alzheimer disease (AD), caused by amyloid protein plaques and tau protein neurofibrillary tangles in the brain is the most common form of dementia. Vascular dementia (VaD) is the second most common form due to small strokes and in the very old, AD and VaD often occur together. Five vascular risk factors can be self-managed together with treatment from family physicians to prevent strokes. Prevention of concussions and attaining higher education are protective factors against dementia. Exercise, Mediterranean style diet, mental stimulation, socialization, restorative sleep and alcohol / drug reduction can reduce the risk of dementia and some current evidence will be reviewed. Randomized clinical trials are being used to test new drugs designed to prevent or remove the accumulation of amyloid protein in the brains of people with MCI due to AD. Biomarkers of neurodegeneration including magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography are used in observational studies and to select and follow participants in randomized clinical trials.
Dr. David Howe, M.D. D.C., M.B.ADavid A. Howe, M.D. D.C., M.B.A. is the Chief Executive and Medical Officer of Longevity Medicine. He has championed the design, development and implementation of solutions related to the advancement of stem cell technology and has contributed significantly to all critical processes. Dr. Howe is the Medical Monitor for the Gordie Howe Traumatic Brain Injury Stem Cell Study.
The diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s is more than just the discussion of plaques and tangles in the brain and how to clear the brain of these substances. In fact, the research into a monotherapy drug has recently been abandoned by two major drug companies. What scientists and researchers have been telling us for years is that it is the plaque and tangles causing the problem. It looks like billions of dollars have been spent chasing this theory to no avail. What many have been saying for years is that it is epigenetics (the influence of the modern-day environment, life style and diet) that are the real causal issues in dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. The question is what can we do to prevent cognitive decline and, if you or a loved one has already developed dementia, what can be done about it. A brief sharing of natural treatments and the application of stem cell treatment as a viable option to regenerate the mind.
AbstractScreening for cognitive impairment in elderly individuals is a key part of elder care. It is important to use cognitive screening instruments that are valid and reliable, and not biased by language, education and culture. Further, global screening is not feasible, so opportunistic case finding is a more appropriate approach to implementing screening instruments. Emerging evidence suggests early screening for neuropsychiatric symptoms is also important, as some dementia syndromes may present initially with NPS in advance of cognitive impairment. Mild Behavioural Impairment (MBI) describes later life onset of neuropsychiatric symptoms as an at risk state for cognitive decline and dementia. We will review cognitive screening instruments and their interpretation in assisting dementia diagnosis. We will review neuropsychiatric rating scales in the care of dementia, as well as rating scales in pre-dementia syndromes including the newly developed MBI checklist. |
Tag Archives: Forgotten Harvest
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MSA’s 2012 Fast-A-Thon is coming up this Monday, November 5th! Please read up on the cause and try your best to attend. Donations to our campaign are much appreciated. MSA-ers are getting excited about the cause, and we’d like to show our appreciation. Here are a few of the responses we’ve gotten on Twitter. Use the hashtag #fastathon12 and you might also be on the blog (we’ll update this regularly until the event is over). Campus community members who use the hashtag and let @MichiganMuslims know will be entered into a prize raffle.
Agreeing on a charity to partner with is a perennial challenge for student organizations. Impact is important, but so is the coherence—do the organizations’ missions line up? Thankfully, MSA-ers are such a diverse group that very few charitable causes could be considered outside the group’s scope. As planning began for the 11th annual Fast-A-Thon campaign, questions over which nonprofit would be our partner this year came up. Betul Tatar, MSA’s Community Service co-chair, shares her thoughts on the decision to partner with Forgotten Harvest this year.
“So did you guys decide on a Fast-A-Thon cause yet?”
Being part of the Fast-A-Thon planning team, I received this question a lot last spring. We did have a cause that we were very passionate about—fighting hunger and food waste in the metro-Detroit area. We even partnered with Forgotten Harvest, a non-profit organization that rescues prepared and perishable food, and delivers it to emergency food providers. Every time I gave my monologue about Forgotten Harvest, however, I saw the mixed facial expressions of my friends. “Umm…. Nice!” was the typical response, expressed with anything but passion. A brave friend outlined the ‘problem’ for me: “Well, don’t expect people to be excited about a local cause when there’s so much going on everywhere in the world! You could’ve helped Syria, Myanmar, anywhere!”
It was convincing. With so many global causes to choose from, any local cause shouldn’t have been our priority. For the rest of spring, I was tempted to talk to the Fast-A-Thon team and convince them to avoid this “mistake.” A part of me, however, kept me from raising the issue.
Thankfully, summer break gave me a chance to rethink and avoid a big mistake myself. When I went back to Turkey for my summer vacation, I had the honor of talking to a representative from a well-established Turkish non-profit. As we chatted about his organization’s summer plans, he told me that they didn’t have many Ramadan campaigns going on and asked me, “What do you think is the reason, Betul? Why would a large-scale organization like us not make record donations during the Holy Month?” Seeing that I was clueless, he told me that all the other organizations in Turkey, small or big, were spending all their resources to alleviate hunger during Ramadan. Yet, once the month was over, those in need would spend the months that follow Ramadan suffering from hunger. By saving these resources, their non-profit would be able to help people throughout the year, especially after Ramadan.
This discussion still resonates with me, as it helped me avoid a big mistake. Donating to Forgotten Harvest for Fast-A-Thon 2012 and saving resources for post-Ramadan donations might seem unrelated, but the principle behind them is the same. Chatting with the representative helped me realize that community service is not only giving to any community or donating to the most prominent cause. Instead, it requires a deeper level of thinking: to understand the needs of the community at large. As I see it, donating to a global cause is similar to giving away most resources during Ramadan, not because “the global cause” is unimportant, but because it naturally attracts a wide audience. Just as families still suffer from poverty after Ramadan, hunger and other problems still exist in local settings while we focus all our attention on prominent causes. I sincerely support the global campaigns because as my friend expressed, there really is so much going on in the world that requires immediate help and attention. But I also believe that we as a student organization shouldn’t forget the strife in our own backyard during these times, where four million households in Michigan live at risk of hunger.
My passion for Forgotten Harvest has multiplied since last spring. I can’t wait to “Fast for the Forgotten” on Monday, November 5th and listen to your unique reasons for supporting this cause. Hope to see you all at the REAL Hunger Games! |
Q:
Re-implementing lists with closures in scheme
This is purely a curiosity question for me:
So for fun, one can easily redefine cons, car, and cdr like so:
(define cons+
(lambda (a b)
(lambda (f)
(f a b)
)))
(define car+
(lambda (f)
(f (lambda (a b) a))))
(define cdr+
(lambda (f)
(f (lambda (a b) b))))
This creates the basic functionality of a list using closures. In this context, what would be the best way to define an empty list?
A:
There's no particular special value that you need as the empty list; you just need something and then to treat it as the empty list. In Common Lisp, a list is either a cons or the symbol NIL. You could take the same approach and use the symbol NIL, or you could use some other value, so long as you treat it consistently. Part of the beauty (and sometimes, the ugliness) of linked lists in the Lisp families is that they are intensional data structures. They're built out of a bit of structure and a lot of convention. That's why we can use cons cells to implement singly-linked lists, tree, etc.
Now, what does it mean to treat it consistently? Some of that will depend on exactly how you want it to behave. In Common Lisp, you can call car and cdr with the empty list, and you'll get back the empty list. In Scheme, you'll get an error. In the closure-based approach, you've got a "leaky" abstraction in the sense that you can call car+ and cdr+ with values that were not produced by cons+, and you might get a value back.
What interface do you want?
When implementing singly linked lists in the Lisp styles (conses and an empty list), you typically want an interface that will let you check:
(cons? (cons ...)) == true
(empty? empty) == true
(In terms of those, you can implement list?)
(define (list? x)
(or (cons? x)
(null? x)))
After what you've already done, it shouldn't be hard to implement a cons? function. But what about empty?? You actually have a lot of freedom here. You could implement empty? such that there are actually multiple objects that serve as a empty lists. As long as the contract works, it's OK.
Should anything else work?
At the moment, you've got a working implementation of ordered pairs, but it's a leaky abstraction in that some things that weren't created with cons could still be passed to car and cdr without any error. You've satisfied the axioms
(car (cons x y)) == x
(cdr (cons x y)) == y
but not the implications
(car z) == x &Rightarrow z == (cons x _)
(cdr z) == y &Rightarrow z == (cons _ y)
If you can find a way to make those implications true, so that car and cdr only work with things produced by cons, then you can probably figure out how to implement cons?, and you can use the same technique to generate a unique empty list object.
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VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 29, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Following complaints filed by UFCW 1518, Fairmont Chateau Whistler will voluntarily repay $85,000 in gratuities it withheld from workers in its banquet department. According to the union, the tips were wrongfully taken and thus contravened Section 30 of the B.C. Employment Standards Act.
Banquet workers contacted the union for help in 2018, after Fairmont management rolled out a new “tipping structure” in which gratuities given by hotel guests to banquet workers would be taken from them and used to subsidize the wages of managers.
Despite workers raising their concerns with management multiple times, Fairmont Chateau Whistler refused to stop withholding tips, said Patrick Johnson, Secretary-Treasurer of UFCW 1518. “These workers tried in vain to address the issue themselves. But they couldn’t make the employer listen or obey the law. That’s when they called us.”
According to banquet workers, Fairmont Chateau Whistler took 20 percent of the gratuities they earned and redistributed them to “Catering Services/Planning”; from there the tips were paid directly to catering sales managers. Employer theft of gratuities is illegal thanks to changes made to the Employment Standards Act by the B.C. NDP last spring. British Columbia was the last province in Canada to provide legal protection for worker-earned gratuities.
This case shows why unions are needed more than ever, especially with the rise of precarious work and the growth of the gig economy, said Secretary-Treasurer Johnson. “When workers lack the collective voice and power of a union, it’s much easier for employers to break the law and exploit their employees,” he commented. “As a result of our advocacy and the subsequent investigation by the Employment Standards Branch, Fairmont Chateau Whistler will voluntarily repay about 60 of its employees $85,000. That is significant and a real win for those workers.”
Secretary-Treasurer Johnson added that while Fairmont Whistler’s wrongful withholding of tips had real life consequences for the workers, the luxury hotel faced no penalty for violating employment standards. “Without serious repercussions for breaking our labour laws, employers will continue to abuse non-unionized workers. That’s why UFCW 1518 will continue to push for enforcement, and fight for fairness for all workers.”
UFCW Local 1518 represents more than 24,000 members working in the community health, hospitality, retail, grocery, industrial, and professional sectors across British Columbia. |
5 ideas for an incredible bathroom remodeling in Wayne NJ
5 ideas for an incredible bathroom remodeling in Wayne NJ
Your bathroom is one of the most important and trafficked areas of your house. Thus, it's always prone to everyday use (and sometimes misuse!). That's why neglecting your bathroom is guaranteeing an awful look. If that has happened already, it's the perfect time for bathroom remodeling in Wayne NJ. However, such projects usually cost up to $5,000 and more, so they don't happen quite often. On the other hand, remodeling your bathroom doesn't always require expensive or difficult stuff. Here at LGM Construction LLC, we show you 5 great ideas for your bathroom remodeling in Wayne NJ:
Follow these ideas for a gorgeous bathroom remodeling in Wayne NJ
A New Paint Job
A fresh coat of paint is a great way to improve your bathroom. Also, giving a new look to your bathroom's ceiling and walls is a great DIY project. In addition, you can also dare to be bold and try a totally different palette of colors. However, whether you do this or decide to play it safe, make sure to buy mold-proof paint. In this way, you avoid the usual moisture to become your biggest enemy. We can't stress enough how important this is. Remember, mold can grow easily within 24 hours.
Adding Storage Space
The best projects of bathroom remodeling in Wayne NJ include installing or revamping cabinetry. Cabinets and drawers are especially important if the bathroom uses a small space within the house. An uncluttered and organized space allows people to notice the beauty of your bathroom instead of the products that usually pile up. Remember; everyone notices a disorganized bathroom.
Getting New Accessories
If you have repainted your bathroom already, you'll likely need some new accessories as a complement. A few examples of accessories are towel bars, faucets, or door and cabinet knobs. Indeed, this is a great option since your current accessories are probably dull or stained. Though these accessories look small by themselves, they enhance the overall look of your bathroom. So, don't overlook the need for hardware and accessories!
Using Natural Stone
Adding gorgeous natural stones is an amazing way to add a rustic or organic look. However, since natural stone isn't always cheap, you can always buy tiles cut from such materials as marble or bluestone. Tiling your shower or adding a backsplash is a great option over placing a granite slab. Dare to make your bathroom remodeling in Wayne NJ look awesome!
Framing your mirror
Whether you have a medium-sized or large mirror, your bathroom needs a focal point. Thus, framing your mirror is a great idea to achieve this. Also, you can place your mirror in the center or in front of the entrance to make it prominent. Finally, adding a DIY or a vintage frame will be the perfect detail to make your bathroom look fantastic.
There you go. These 5 ideas can be the perfect way to make a project of bathroom remodeling in Wayne NJ look simply gorgeous. If you have doubts about performing this project on your own, you can always count on professionals like LGM Construction LLC. Get in touch with us today and get the bathroom you've always dreamed of!
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LGM General Construction is a family operated and owned business that was established in the state of New Jersey more than 19 years ago. For over a decade we have faithfully served all of North, South, and Central Jersey with high class construction and remodeling services.... |
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Another classic German invention, the bratwurst is one of civilization’s oldest sausages. First made in the early 1300s, this type of sausage is typically made from ground pork, veal or beef. The seasoning - nutmeg, salt, black pepper and garlic are common suspects - is what sets it apart from other links from other regions.
Kyle Griffin of Pine Street Market in Atlanta, Georgia, gave us some frank advice: While some recipes call for you to cook your brat in a broth first and then grill or pan fry it, Griffin thinks in reverse.“I recommend grilling it first, on low heat, and then having a pot of simmering beer with an onion, peppers and garlic ready and finishing [the brat] in the beer." This prevents the brat from drying out.
One of the main reasons sausages split their casings when you cook them, is because they’re being cooking too hot, too fast. The fat literally explodes out of the sausage. Poking holes in your banger will prevent the link from splitting. According to Griffin, “Hand-stuffed, natural casing [brats] are more prone to splitting.” It’s also good to remember that a low, indirect heat works better for most sausages.
As for serving the perfect brat? “Hoagie roll, good mustard and good sauerkraut,” says Griffin. It doesn’t get anymore German than that. |
Simpang-kanan River
Simpang-kanan River (, means: Right Junction River) is the name of several Indonesian rivers:
Simpang-kanan River (North Sumatra),
Simpang-kanan River, Riau,
Simpang-kanan River, Riau,
Simpang-kanan River (South Sumatra),
Category:Rivers of Sumatra
Category:Rivers of Indonesia |
Xena Exchange has two different customized terminals for active traders and portfolio managers. Today we will explain to you our Trading terminal.
The Xena Exchange trading terminal is set to deliver unprecedented functions for traders that will ease the process of profit extraction from the crypto-asset market. Such functions include: real-time market tracking, advanced order types, proprietary signals, positions, and P&L tracking.
Proprietary signals and studies
Proprietary signals and studies
The trading community has created massive databases of indicators and analytical studies. After viewing almost all of these indicators we have determined that very few of these are actually useful. We know that analytics are not just about the quantity, but also the quality of the methods used. Therefore we have only used the best practices from the world’s top-notch trading desks and combined them into just a few unique signals for easier profit extraction.
Corrected average
Averaging indicators are used to reduce noise in price movements and better understand trends. As with other averages, a buy signal is when the corrected average crosses the price line and goes under it; a sell signal is when the average crosses the price and goes above it.
Planimetry
The planimetry indicator consists of multiple simple moving averages calculated over different lengths of time, starting from 2 and up to 1200.
As with other averaging indicators, a trend is detected when the price crosses the average. Averages showing the breakthrough of a support or resistance level simultaneously decrease the probability of error in the trend detection.
Ribbons
A set of Ribbons combines powerful oscillators such as range, channel, or strength. Each ribbon calculates the number of oscillations with different input parameters and then aggregates and smoothens the result.
Trend switcher
Trend switcher is an oscillator similar to the classic relative strength index (RSI), but using an additional Laguerre filter to enhance the responsiveness of the indicator to the last price. As with other oscillators, the signal to buy occurs when the indicator falls below the “oversold” threshold, and the sell signal occurs when the indicator rises above the “overbought” threshold.
Trend Analytics
To generate new trading ideas quickly you can use our Trend Analytics widget. Trend Analytics utilizes 3 technical indicators: Commodity Channel Index, Exponential Moving Average, and Relative Strength Index. All indicators are calculated in 5 different timeframe options: 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, and 1 day.
Advanced order types
Advanced order types
Additional trade order types will allow users to create their own tailor-made transactions on the Exchange depending on the required deal. Such customization becomes especially important for large volume trades to prevent slippage on the market, or, when all orders should be made in a single transaction or not made at all. These trade order types help reduce transaction risks, particularly in cases of large volume trades.
Market orders
A market order is a request to buy or sell a currency at the current market price.
All market orders on Xena Exchange are Immediate-or-Cancel. If there is not enough liquidity on the market to fill your order completely, it will be filled partially, and the remaining portion of the order will be cancelled automatically. This is done to protect traders from unexpected price fluctuations when trading on low liquidity.
Limit orders
A limit order is a request to buy or sell an asset at the certain or better price. If the other side of the order book doesn’t contain orders with a suitable price, the limit order will rest in the book until it is hit by some other market participant, or cancelled without being filled.
Stop and Market-If-Touched (MIT) orders
Stop orders are pending orders that are automatically converted and executed as market orders once the last trade price on the market touches a stop price. Usually stop and MIT orders are used to close your position when the price reaches the certain level (stop loss and take profit orders).
Stop Loss and Take Profit orders
Stop Loss and Take Profit orders
Stop loss and take profit orders provide a convenient way to manage your risk and automate trading.
Trailing Stop loss
A trailing stop is a stop order set at a certain percentage away from the current asset price. The stop price changes automatically to keep the defined distance from the current market price. If the trend breaks and turns around, the trailing stop will automatically close the position.
Attempt zero loss
An attempt zero loss order is a type of trailing stop order that stops moving with the changing price of the asset once the position open price is reached. This type of order has one goal: to reduce your losses and try to exit the position at or near the original price of the transaction.
Specialist Trading Orders
Specialist Trading Orders
Good Till Cancelled is a trading order that remains active until completely filled or cancelled by the trader.
Immediate-or-Cancel (IoC) is a trading order that must be filled immediately at the limit price or better. This order type allows partial filling. The unfilled part of the order gets cancelled automatically.
Fill-or-Kill (FoK) is a trading order that must be filled immediately in its entirety at the limit price or better, or it will be completely cancelled. There is no partial execution with this order type.
Programmatic orders like One-Cancels-Other, One-Updates-Other, and One-Triggers-Other are coming soon. Stay tuned!
Positions tracking
Positions tracking
With multiple assets in your portfolio, sometimes you may be unsure of whether your trading is profitable at all. We have developed positions tracking to provide traders with real-time information about their trading performance. By utilizing this tool you will better understand whether a cryptocurrency trade was profitable or not.
Whenever you purchase or deposit cryptocurrency into your account at Xena Exchange, we remember the price of that currency. As the price grows or falls with time, we calculate your floating profit or loss and display it in the trading terminal.
Trading at the tips of your fingers
We have added some additional features for easier trading.
Market watch
Market watch
Market watch shows all the instruments traded on Xena Exchange. Click on the instrument name to reveal related details such as its chart, order book, etc. Go to the tab with the star to see your favorite instruments in the list.
Order book
Order book
Use the Order Book to assess the impact of your orders on liquidity: each row in the table shows the volume available for buying (red lines) or selling (green lines) at a given price.
Hotkeys
Hotkeys
Hotkeys allow you to switch order types, enter prices, and send orders without using a mouse or trackpad. Use hotkeys to quickly change the price and quantity of your order!
Virtual trading terminal tour
Explore how your trading can become more convenient and profitable with our online Trading terminal tour.
Needless to say, Xena Exchange is a completely new concept, different from anything that currently exists on the market. The competitive advantage of Xena lies in its instruments for profit extraction for all traders. Xena is already a great place for cryptocurrency trading, and we will be bringing even more advanced tools and functions to the exchange in the future.
Click here to open your account right now!
Follow Xena Exchange on:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/XenaExchange
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/XenaExchangeTrading/
Website: https://xena.exchange/ |
Women's acceptance of a double-balloon device as an additional method for inducing labour.
A wide variety of pharmacological and mechanical methods (e.g. balloon devices) are available for inducing labour, but little information is available about the way in which women regard balloon devices. The aim of this study was to investigate women's acceptance of and satisfaction with the induction of labour by administration of oral misoprostol and the combination of that with a double-balloon device. The study included 122 women with term pregnancies who required induction of labour between August 2009 and November 2010. They all participated in a randomized controlled trial to test different ways of inducing labour and were randomly assigned either to a 'study group' (with a combination of oral misoprostol and a double-balloon catheter) or a 'control group' (with oral misoprostol alone). After childbirth, a standardized questionnaire was given to all of the women for them to complete before discharge. In addition to assessing the induction of labour and their level of satisfaction with regard to delivery, the birth experience was objectively evaluated using the German-language version of Salmon's Item List (SIL-Ger). For statistical analysis, the chi-squared test, Fisher's exact test, the binomial test, the t-test, or the Mann-Whitney U-test for independent samples were used as appropriate. A significance level of 5% was chosen. Seventy-eight questionnaires were included in the analysis. The women were not bothered either by the placement of the double-balloon device (P=0.017) or by the presence of the catheter (P=0.002). In comparison with the control group, women in the study group would consider their method in a subsequent pregnancy and would recommend it to others more often (P=0.040). The SIL-Ger score showed a positive birth experience in both groups, with a significantly better score in the study group (87.7 ± 15.8 vs 79.3 ± 17.3 in the control group; P=0.030). The multivariate analysis identified three factors influencing the SIL-Ger score: satisfaction with childbirth (P<0.001), involvement in decision-making after childbirth (P=0.041), and the method of labour induction (combination of oral misoprostol and double-balloon catheter vs oral misoprostol alone; P=0.005). The women were satisfied with the induction of labour using oral misoprostol and the combination of that with a double-balloon catheter. The double-balloon catheter was accepted by the women, and surprisingly was found to have a positive impact on the birth experience. |
Q:
How to overcome intermittent Scope 'session' is not active for the current thread for OauthClientContext?
I'm attempting to implement OpenId Connect sign-on in a Spring Boot 1.3.0 application with Spring Security 3.2.5 on Spring Framework 4.2.3. The implementation is very similar to this question: Protecting REST API with OAuth2: Error creating bean with name 'scopedTarget.oauth2ClientContext': Scope 'session' is not active, except that I've implemented the suggested bean for the RequestContextFilter.
@Configuration
@EnableOAuth2Client
public class OpenIdConnectConfig {
@Value("${oidc.clientId}")
private String clientId;
@Value("${oidc.clientSecret}")
private String clientSecret;
@Value("${oidc.accessTokenUrl}")
private String accessTokenUri;
@Value("${oidc.userAuthorizationUri}")
private String userAuthorizationUri;
@Value("${oidc.redirectUri}")
private String redirectUri;
@Value("#{'${oidc.scopes}'.split(',')}")
private List<String> oidcScopes;
@Bean
public OAuth2ProtectedResourceDetails openIdResourceDetails() {
AuthorizationCodeResourceDetails details = new AuthorizationCodeResourceDetails();
details.setClientId(clientId);
details.setClientSecret(clientSecret);
details.setAccessTokenUri(accessTokenUri);
details.setUserAuthorizationUri(userAuthorizationUri);
details.setClientAuthenticationScheme(AuthenticationScheme.form);
details.setScope(oidcScopes);
details.setPreEstablishedRedirectUri(redirectUri);
details.setUseCurrentUri(false);
return details;
}
@Bean(name = "my.company.ui.security.OpenIdRestTemplate")
// ToDo: fix org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'scopedTarget.oauth2ClientContext': Scope 'session' is not active for the current thread
public OAuth2RestTemplate OpenIdRestTemplate(OAuth2ClientContext clientContext) {
return new OAuth2RestTemplate(openIdResourceDetails(), clientContext);
}
@Bean
public RequestContextListener requestContextListener() {
return new RequestContextListener();
}
}
The exception stack trace is likewise similar
Caused by:
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException:
Error creating bean with name 'scopedTarget.oauth2ClientContext':
Scope 'session' is not active for the current thread; consider
defining a scoped proxy for this bean if you intend to refer to it
from a singleton;
nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: No thread-bound
request found: Are you referring to request attributes outside of an
actual web request, or processing a request outside of the originally
receiving thread? If you are actually operating within a web request
and still receive this message, your code is probably running outside
of DispatcherServlet/DispatcherPortlet: In this case, use
RequestContextListener or RequestContextFilter to expose the current request.
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:355)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:197)
at org.springframework.aop.target.SimpleBeanTargetSource.getTarget(SimpleBeanTargetSource.java:35)
at org.springframework.aop.framework.JdkDynamicAopProxy.invoke(JdkDynamicAopProxy.java:187)
at com.sun.proxy.$Proxy78.getAccessToken(Unknown Source)
at org.springframework.security.oauth2.client.OAuth2RestTemplate.getAccessToken(OAuth2RestTemplate.java:169)
at my.company.ui.security.OpenIdConnectFilter.attemptAuthentication(OpenIdConnectFilter.java:118)
at org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.doFilter(AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.java:211)
at my.company.ui.security.OpenIdConnectFilter.doFilter(OpenIdConnectFilter.java:93)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.oauth2.client.filter.OAuth2ClientContextFilter.doFilter(OAuth2ClientContextFilter.java:60)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.web.context.SecurityContextPersistenceFilter.doFilter(SecurityContextPersistenceFilter.java:87)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.web.context.request.async.WebAsyncManagerIntegrationFilter.doFilterInternal(WebAsyncManagerIntegrationFilter.java:50)
at org.springframework.web.filter.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:107)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy.doFilterInternal(FilterChainProxy.java:192)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:160)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1652)
at my.company.ui.security.UserCookieFilter.doFilter(UserCookieFilter.java:29)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1652)
at my.company.server.filter.UncaughtExceptionRequestFilter.doFilter(UncaughtExceptionRequestFilter.java:45)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1652)
at com.rmn.commons.web.metrics.AbstractInstrumentedFilter.doFilter(AbstractInstrumentedFilter.java:143)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1652)
at org.springframework.session.web.http.SessionRepositoryFilter.doFilterInternal(SessionRepositoryFilter.java:167)
at org.springframework.session.web.http.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:80)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1652)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler.doHandle(ServletHandler.java:585)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ScopedHandler.handle(ScopedHandler.java:143)
at org.eclipse.jetty.security.SecurityHandler.handle(SecurityHandler.java:577)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.session.SessionHandler.doHandle(SessionHandler.java:223)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandler.doHandle(ContextHandler.java:1127)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandler.doHandle(ContextHandler.java:1127)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler.doScope(ServletHandler.java:515)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.session.SessionHandler.doScope(SessionHandler.java:185)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandler.doScope(ContextHandler.java:1061)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandler.doScope(ContextHandler.java:1061)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ScopedHandler.handle(ScopedHandler.java:141)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandlerCollection.handle(ContextHandlerCollection.java:215)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.HandlerWrapper.handle(HandlerWrapper.java:97)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.Server.handle(Server.java:499)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.HttpChannel.handle(HttpChannel.java:311)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.HttpConnection.onFillable(HttpConnection.java:257)
at org.eclipse.jetty.io.AbstractConnection$2.run(AbstractConnection.java:544)
at org.eclipse.jetty.util.thread.QueuedThreadPool.runJob(QueuedThreadPool.java:635)
at org.eclipse.jetty.util.thread.QueuedThreadPool$3.run(QueuedThreadPool.java:555)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: No thread-bound request found: Are you referring to request attributes outside of an actual web request, or processing a request outside of the originally receiving thread? If you are actually operating within a web request and still receive this message, your code is probably running outside of DispatcherServlet/DispatcherPortlet: In this case, use RequestContextListener or RequestContextFilter to expose the current request.
at org.springframework.web.context.request.RequestContextHolder.currentRequestAttributes(RequestContextHolder.java:131)
at org.springframework.web.context.request.SessionScope.get(SessionScope.java:91)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:340)
... 48 more
Caused by:
java.lang.IllegalStateException: No thread-bound request found: Are you referring to request attributes outside of an actual web request, or processing a request outside of the originally receiving thread? If you are actually operating within a web request and still receive this message, your code is probably running outside of DispatcherServlet/DispatcherPortlet: In this case, use RequestContextListener or RequestContextFilter to expose the current request.
at org.springframework.web.context.request.RequestContextHolder.currentRequestAttributes(RequestContextHolder.java:131)
at org.springframework.web.context.request.SessionScope.get(SessionScope.java:91)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:340)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:197)
at org.springframework.aop.target.SimpleBeanTargetSource.getTarget(SimpleBeanTargetSource.java:35)
at org.springframework.aop.framework.JdkDynamicAopProxy.invoke(JdkDynamicAopProxy.java:187)
at com.sun.proxy.$Proxy78.getAccessToken(Unknown Source)
at org.springframework.security.oauth2.client.OAuth2RestTemplate.getAccessToken(OAuth2RestTemplate.java:169)
at my.company.ui.security.OpenIdConnectFilter.attemptAuthentication(OpenIdConnectFilter.java:118)
at org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.doFilter(AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.java:211)
at my.company.ui.security.OpenIdConnectFilter.doFilter(OpenIdConnectFilter.java:93)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.oauth2.client.filter.OAuth2ClientContextFilter.doFilter(OAuth2ClientContextFilter.java:60)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.web.context.SecurityContextPersistenceFilter.doFilter(SecurityContextPersistenceFilter.java:87)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.web.context.request.async.WebAsyncManagerIntegrationFilter.doFilterInternal(WebAsyncManagerIntegrationFilter.java:50)
at org.springframework.web.filter.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:107)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:342)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy.doFilterInternal(FilterChainProxy.java:192)
at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:160)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1652)
at my.company.ui.security.UserCookieFilter.doFilter(UserCookieFilter.java:29)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1652)
at my.company.server.filter.UncaughtExceptionRequestFilter.doFilter(UncaughtExceptionRequestFilter.java:45)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1652)
at com.rmn.commons.web.metrics.AbstractInstrumentedFilter.doFilter(AbstractInstrumentedFilter.java:143)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1652)
at org.springframework.session.web.http.SessionRepositoryFilter.doFilterInternal(SessionRepositoryFilter.java:167)
at org.springframework.session.web.http.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:80)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1652)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler.doHandle(ServletHandler.java:585)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ScopedHandler.handle(ScopedHandler.java:143)
at org.eclipse.jetty.security.SecurityHandler.handle(SecurityHandler.java:577)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.session.SessionHandler.doHandle(SessionHandler.java:223)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandler.doHandle(ContextHandler.java:1127)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandler.doHandle(ContextHandler.java:1127)
at org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler.doScope(ServletHandler.java:515)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.session.SessionHandler.doScope(SessionHandler.java:185)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandler.doScope(ContextHandler.java:1061)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandler.doScope(ContextHandler.java:1061)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ScopedHandler.handle(ScopedHandler.java:141)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandlerCollection.handle(ContextHandlerCollection.java:215)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.HandlerWrapper.handle(HandlerWrapper.java:97)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.Server.handle(Server.java:499)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.HttpChannel.handle(HttpChannel.java:311)
at org.eclipse.jetty.server.HttpConnection.onFillable(HttpConnection.java:257)
at org.eclipse.jetty.io.AbstractConnection$2.run(AbstractConnection.java:544)
at org.eclipse.jetty.util.thread.QueuedThreadPool.runJob(QueuedThreadPool.java:635)
at org.eclipse.jetty.util.thread.QueuedThreadPool$3.run(QueuedThreadPool.java:555)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)
Powered by Jetty://
You can clearly see that the filter call is part of the Spring Security FilterChainProxy, so I don't know what to make of the error message's suggestion that "your code is probably running outside of DispatcherServlet/DispatcherPortlet". Also, I have tried adding a bean for the suggested alternative RequestContextFilter and the same exception is thrown.
The filter that performs the authentication (some exception handling and user processing code removed):
public class OpenIdConnectFilter extends AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter {
public OpenIdConnectFilter(
RequestMatcher requiresAuthenticationRequestMatcher,
AuthenticationService authenticationService
) {
super(requiresAuthenticationRequestMatcher);
setAuthenticationManager(new NoopAuthenticationManager());
}
@SuppressWarnings("RedundantThrows") // Matching overridden method
@Override
public Authentication attemptAuthentication(
HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response
) throws AuthenticationException, IOException, ServletException {
// Required parameters (one-time access code, state) are retrieved from the context
OAuth2AccessToken oAuth2AccessToken = restTemplate.getAccessToken();
// Process the token, get the user details, return an Authentication object.
}
public void setRestTemplate(OAuth2RestTemplate restTemplate) {
this.restTemplate = restTemplate;
}
private static class NoopAuthenticationManager implements AuthenticationManager {
@Override
public Authentication authenticate(Authentication authentication) throws AuthenticationException {
throw new UnsupportedOperationException("No authentication should be done with this AuthenticationManager");
}
}
private static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(OpenIdConnectFilter.class);
@Value("${oidc.clientId}")
private String clientId;
@Value("${oidc.issuer}")
private String issuer;
@Value("${oidc.jwt.jwk.url}")
private String jwkUrl;
private final AuthenticationService authenticationService;
private OAuth2RestTemplate restTemplate;
}
And the Security Config that sets up the Spring Security FilterProxyChain:
@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity
@EnableOAuth2Client
public class SecurityConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter{
@Override
@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http)
throws Exception {
http
.sessionManagement()
.sessionCreationPolicy(SessionCreationPolicy.IF_REQUIRED)
.and()
.csrf()
.disable()
.authorizeRequests()
.expressionHandler(securityExpressionHandler)
.antMatchers("/asset/**").access("permitAll")
.antMatchers("/ws/ssoEnabled").access("permitAll")
.antMatchers("/**").access("hasRole('ROLE_USER') or hasRole('ROLE_TOKEN_ACCESS')")
.and()
.httpBasic()
.authenticationEntryPoint(ajaxAwareLoginUrlAuthenticationEntryPoint)
.and()
// Handles unauthenticated requests, catching UserRedirectRequiredExceptions and redirecting to OAuth provider
.addFilterAfter(new OAuth2ClientContextFilter(), SecurityContextPersistenceFilter.class)
// Handles the oauth callback, exchanging the one-time code for a durable token
.addFilterAfter(openIdConnectFilter, OAuth2ClientContextFilter.class)
.formLogin()
.loginPage("/login")
.loginProcessingUrl("/logincheck")
.usernameParameter("username")
.passwordParameter("password")
.successHandler(ajaxAwareAuthenticationSuccessHandler)
.failureHandler(ajaxAwareAuthenticationFailureHandler)
.and()
.logout()
.logoutUrl("/logout")
.logoutSuccessUrl("/login")
.and()
.rememberMe()
.rememberMeServices(rememberMeServices)
// Even though this key has been added directly to the rememberMeServices instance, the RememberMeConfigurer
// can instantiate a new RememberMeServices with a made-up key if the same key is not provided.
.key("the key value")
;
// We do not configure a bean for the SessionAuthenticationStrategy. We want to use the Spring default strategy,
// which is configured by the above builder chain. In order to share the correct, configured instance with our
// custom OpenIdConnectFilter, we first tell the builder to perform the configuration (normally this would be
// done long after this method returns)...
http.getConfigurer(SessionManagementConfigurer.class).init(http);
// ... then we get the shared object by interface (SessionAuthenticationStrategy) class name...
final SessionAuthenticationStrategy sessionAuthenticationStrategy = http.getSharedObject(SessionAuthenticationStrategy.class);
// ... then set it in our custom filter.
openIdConnectFilter.setSessionAuthenticationStrategy(sessionAuthenticationStrategy);
}
}
One final wrinkle: I was getting this error while running on my machine. Then, adding the RequestContextListener resolved it. When deploying it to our test environment, the exception message resurfaces. However, after a few hours or days, sometimes after the CI/CD pipeline re-deploys the same version, the problem resolves itself and the OpenID integration works as expected until we make the next change, bugfix or improvement, then it usually reoccurs for a similar short interval.
Questions:
Is DispatcherServlet/DispatcherPortlet a factor at all when running in Spring Boot?
How do you determine if you should use a RequestContextFilter or RequestContextListener? Is there an actual difference? The (linked) documentation isn't much help here, in my opinion.
Servlet listener that exposes the request to the current thread, through both LocaleContextHolder and RequestContextHolder. To be registered as listener in web.xml.
Alternatively, Spring's RequestContextFilter and Spring's DispatcherServlet also expose the same request context to the current thread. In contrast to this listener, advanced options are available there (e.g. "threadContextInheritable").
This listener is mainly for use with third-party servlets, e.g. the JSF FacesServlet. Within Spring's own web support, DispatcherServlet's processing is perfectly sufficient.
Where should the Beans for the RequestContextFilter/Listener be defined in a Spring Boot app? We don't have a web.xml. (My understanding is that web.xml is only for Spring MVC - please correct me if that is wrong.)
What could possibly be causing the context to be found sometimes? Why is it that our app can work after enduring failure for a little while?
A:
Investigating this further, I found that the RequestContextFilter was definitely being executed before the Oauth2ClientContextFilter and OpenIdConnectFilter when running locally. I decide to take a chance on M. Prokhorov's suggestion from the comments and register the RequestContextFilter into Spring Security's filters anyways; it extends the OncePerRequestFilter preventing it from executing more than once anyways.
All said and done, I went with the following modifications:
Removed the declaration of the RequestContextLister bean from the OpenIdConnectConfig. This was registered elsewhere in the application, in a parent module that I verified was getting configuration-scanned.
@Bean
public ServletListenerRegistrationBean<RequestContextListener> requestContextListener() {
return new ServletListenerRegistrationBean<>(new RequestContextListener());
}
Moved the Oauth2ClientContextFilter into a bean declaration. It doesn't seem like there's anything in this filter that relies on being populated as a Spring bean – in testing, the client configuration was attached to the UserRedirectRequiredException that this filter processes before the OAuth2RestTemplate (which does have the client configuration OAuth2ProtectedResourceDetails injected into it by Spring) throws it. However, it felt like defensive programming in case a future version of Spring changes the interplay between this filter, the exceptions it handles, and the OAuth client details.
Adding the filter to the HttpSecurity object in the WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter.configure() call in SecurityConfig.java. The final code for that class looked like this:
@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity
@EnableOAuth2Client
public class SecurityConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter{
@Override
@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http)
throws Exception {
http
.sessionManagement()
.sessionCreationPolicy(SessionCreationPolicy.IF_REQUIRED)
.and()
.csrf()
.disable()
.authorizeRequests()
.expressionHandler(securityExpressionHandler)
.antMatchers("/asset/**").access("permitAll")
.antMatchers("/ws/ssoEnabled").access("permitAll")
.antMatchers("/**").access("hasRole('ROLE_USER') or hasRole('ROLE_TOKEN_ACCESS')")
.and()
.httpBasic()
.authenticationEntryPoint(ajaxAwareLoginUrlAuthenticationEntryPoint)
.and()
// OAuth filters
// Explicitly add a RequestContextFilter ahead of the Oauth filters to facilitate retrieval of a session-scoped oauth2ClientContext object
.addFilterAfter(requestContextFilter, SecurityContextPersistenceFilter.class)
// Handles unauthenticated requests, catching UserRedirectRequiredExceptions and redirecting to OAuth provider
.addFilterAfter(oAuth2ClientContextFilter, RequestContextFilter.class)
// Handles the oauth callback, exchanging the one-time code for a durable token
.addFilterAfter(openIdConnectFilter, OAuth2ClientContextFilter.class)
.formLogin()
.loginPage("/login")
.loginProcessingUrl("/logincheck")
.usernameParameter("username")
.passwordParameter("password")
.successHandler(ajaxAwareAuthenticationSuccessHandler)
.failureHandler(ajaxAwareAuthenticationFailureHandler)
.and()
.logout()
.logoutUrl("/logout")
.logoutSuccessUrl("/login")
.and()
.rememberMe()
.rememberMeServices(rememberMeServices)
// Even though this key has been added directly to the rememberMeServices instance, the RememberMeConfigurer
// can instantiate a new RememberMeServices with a made-up key if the same key is not provided.
.key("the key value")
;
// We do not configure a bean for the SessionAuthenticationStrategy. We want to use the Spring default strategy,
// which is configured by the above builder chain. In order to share the correct, configured instance with our
// custom OpenIdConnectFilter, we first tell the builder to perform the configuration (normally this would be
// done long after this method returns)...
http.getConfigurer(SessionManagementConfigurer.class).init(http);
// ... then we get the shared object by interface (SessionAuthenticationStrategy) class name...
final SessionAuthenticationStrategy sessionAuthenticationStrategy = http.getSharedObject(SessionAuthenticationStrategy.class);
// ... then set it in our custom filter.
openIdConnectFilter.setSessionAuthenticationStrategy(sessionAuthenticationStrategy);
}
}
|
Pranks are little jokes that we play on the people we know and love. Here you will find a huge collection of
funny real life, computer or online pranks. The key to successful funny pranks is to ruffle your victim's
feathers without making them too angry or frightened. If you do them right, they could make both of you laugh
until milk is shooting out of your noses!
Page 1/4
Vehicle Pranks
* Place an old beat up vehicle near the entrance to a school building. Remove the wheels and fill it with cement. Nearly impossible to remove.* Cut an old wreck in half and weld it together around a flagpole.* Dissassemble an old car and reassemble it on top of a building or in the main lobby of the building.* Block off a major road using traffic cones or barrels.* Get some of the jacks used for moving cars around car lots and move all the cars in a lot so that they are about 3 inches apart and impossible to get into or move.* Fill someone's car or truck top to bottom with snow. (You'll need a shovel most likely)* Place a dead fish in an area of the engine that is hard to get to and that will get hot. Jammed under the radiator is just about perfect. After a couple of days the smell just becomes unbearable.* Jack up a persons car so the wheels are just barely off the ground, but not enough to be noticable.
Pyrotechnical Pranks
* Burn a hole in someone's newly paved asphalt driveway using thermite.* Place industrial strength smoke grenades (the sort that will fill up entire buildings) in obscure places in a public building. Also good in someone's car or truck.* Make some Amonium Tri-iodide. Be creative.
Sleeping Pranks
* Fasten someone to their bed with numerous bungi cords.* Put coathangers between the matress and the sheet.* Get lots of cheap alarm clocks and set them to go off at 3:00am and every 20 minutes thereafter. Hide them well.* Bury someone several feet deep in wet unrolled toilet paper.* Pour "cyalume" (the stuff in those glow sticks you see every holoween) on someone then wake them and say, "Dude, you're glowing" and watch them panic.* Place the sleeping person's hand in a bowl of lukewarm water. Will fequently cause bed wetting.* Shave parts of a person while they are passed out drunk. Be creative. Do things such as half a mustache, one eyebrow, etc.* Draw in permenant marker all sorts of messages on the skin of a person who has passed out drunk. Messages should include things like "[insert name of another person you dislike] was here" with a big arrow pointing to the person's rear end.* Smear a person's body with Nair or other hair removal substance. Works great on hairy italian guys.* Print a message in lipstick on someone's chest. (such as "Thank You") Works best after a night where they really got drunk and may not remember what they were doing the night before.* Sprinkle Sand or Jello Mix or the like in the person's bed.
Appliance Pranks
* Wrap an *extremely* fine gauge wire several turns around each prong of the power cord of some plug in appliance with a single strand going between the two prongs. The current coming out of a wall is sufficent that the wire will instantly and completely vaporize the wire and will result in a startling flash. This one leaves no evidence and will make the person terrified to plug the appliance back in. WARNING: this is VERY dangerous if too large a gauge of wire is used.* Purchase a "universal TV remote" from a place like Radio Shack. When walking by public TVs, such as those in a dorm lounge, change the channel without giving anyone any idea you are doing it.* Take a transciever like the ones ham radio operators use (3 watts or more is good) and push transmit while near a TV. Will have the effect of semi-scrambling whatever is showing. Them more powerful the transceiver, the more the TV signal gets messed up. This does work on cable TV.* Leave toothpast on the underside of light switches and doorknobs.* Use appliance timers to detonate stereo equipment at high volume.* Leave a copier to print 99 copies at 33% resolution on 8x14 paper.* Leave someone's furniture in a 99% disassembled state. Repeat as necissary.
Phone Pranks
* Coat the reciever of someone's phone with shoe polish and then give them a call. Instant gratification. Make sure you match the colors of the polish and the phone. Small amounts of shaving cream work too.* Utilizing threeway calling, call two people you don't know and start a confused conversation that goes like, "who is this?", "Who is *this*?", "Why did you call me?", "Call you? You called me!"...* Glue the victim's reciever down, and then start making lots of calls to the victim.* Call in pledges to your local public TV station in the victim's name. Be generous. Other charities work as well.* Switch on the intercom as tell the victim that the "person on the other end wants to talk to you". You'll hear them going "Hello? Hellooo?"... |
Ry is traveling by Amtrak train to a summer ArcheoTrails camp. If only he had opened his mail before he left the house. If he had, then he would have read, “Do not come to camp. There is no camp. Camp is a concept that no longer exists in a real place or time.” Of course, Ry finally realizes the camp has been canceled after he’s left home and traveled halfway across the country by train. He tries to call home. No cell reception. He jumps off the train at the next stop. He runs up a hill for better cell reception. No luck. He turns around just in time to see the train pulling away from the station with his stuff still on board. Can Ry make it home? What else could possibly go wrong? |
The wool used in Re:Treat is a mixture of Blue Faced Leicester and Kerry Hill. This produces a soft yet durable yarn which is perfect for knitting, felting and weaving. In a combination of 11 calming and uplifting harmonious shades - and two marled colour-ways - Re:treat is the perfect yarn to relax and unwind with.
Note - the colours may appear slightly differently than they actually are (due to differences in computer monitors).
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This is the newsletter for The Yarn Cafe - online supplier of yarns, needles, hooks, patterns and books and notions. The newsletter gives you latest news and offers and we use Mailchimp software to send out the newsletters. |
---
author:
- Mason Youngblood
bibliography:
- 'biblio.bib'
title: 'Extremist ideology as a complex contagion: the spread of far-right radicalization in the United States between 2005-2017'
---
Introduction {#introduction .unnumbered}
============
The far-right movement, which includes white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and sovereign citizens, is the oldest and most deadly form of domestic extremism in the United States [@Simi2017; @Piazza2017]. Despite some ideological diversity, members of the far-right often advocate for the use of violence to bring about an “idealized future favoring a particular group, whether this group identity is racial, pseudo-national, or characterized by individualistic traits” [@Pirus2017]. Over the last decade, the far-right movement was responsible for 73.3% of all extremist murders in the United States. In 2018, this statistic rose to 98% [@TheAnti-DefamationLeagueCenteronExtremism2019]. The increasing severity of far-right extremist violence, as well as the associated rhetoric on social media [@Winter2019; @Davey2019], has generated public concern about the spread of radicalization in the United States. Former extremists have referred to it as a public health issue [@Allam2019; @Bonn2019], an idea advocated for by some policy experts as well [@Weine2016; @Sanir2017].
There is little evidence that radicalization is primarily driven by psychopathology [@Post2015; @Webber2017; @Misiak2019]. Rather, radicalization appears to be a process in which individuals are destabilized by various environmental factors, exposed to extremist ideology, and subsequently reinforced by members of their community [@Webber2017; @Jasko2017; @Jensen2018; @Mills2019; @Becker2019]. Even “lone wolves”, or solo actors, often interact with extremist communities online [@Kaplan2014; @Post2015; @Holt2019]. As such, radicalization may spread through a social contagion process, in which extremist ideologies behave like complex contagions that require multiple exposures for adoption [@Guilbeault2018], which has been observed for political movements more broadly [@Gonzalez-Bailon2011]. Previous research suggests that extremist propaganda [@Ferrara2017], hate crimes [@Braun2010; @Braun2011], intergroup conflict [@Buhaug2008; @Gelfand2012], and terrorism [@Midlarsky1980; @Cherif2009; @LaFree2012; @White2016a; @White2016b] exhibit similar dynamics.
The environmental factors favoring radicalization, referred to here as endemic factors, include variables like poverty rate that may influence individuals’ risk of adoption in particular regions. As such, endemic factors have the potential to enhance or constrain the spread of contagions through populations across geographic space. Although significant research has been done on how endemic factors predict radicalization (and resulting violence) [@McVeigh2004; @Goetz2012; @LaFree2014; @Piazza2017; @Medina2018], few studies have investigated how these factors interact with contagion processes. The aim of the current study is to determine whether patterns of far-right radicalization in the United States are consistent with a contagion process, and to assess the influence of critical endemic factors. After controlling for population density, I assessed the following endemic factors that have been implicated in previous research on radicalization, extremism, and mass shootings: poverty rate [@Gale2002; @Durso2013; @Suttmoeller2015; @Suttmoeller2016; @Piazza2017; @Lin2018; @Suttmoeller2018; @Medina2018; @Kwon2019a], unemployment rate [@Green1998; @Jefferson1999; @Gale2002; @Espiritu2004; @Goetz2012; @Piazza2017; @Majumder2017; @Pah2017], income inequality [@McVeigh2004; @Goetz2012; @McVeigh2012; @Majumder2017; @Kwon2017; @Kwon2019a; @Kwon2019b], education levels [@Espiritu2004; @Florida2011; @Durso2013; @McVeigh2014; @Gladfelter2017; @Kwon2017; @Kwon2019b], non-white population size [@McVeigh2004; @LaFree2014; @Gladfelter2017; @Medina2018], violent crime rate [@McVeigh2012; @Gladfelter2017; @Sweeney2018], gun ownership [@Pah2017; @Anisin2018; @Lin2018; @Reeping2019], hate groups per capita [@Adamczyk2014], and Republican voting [@McVeigh2014; @Medina2018]. Furthermore, I aim to determine whether individual-level variables, such as social media use, enhance the spread of far-right radicalization over space and time. Social media platforms increasingly appear to play a role in radicalization, both as formal recruitment tools [@Wu2015; @Bertram2016; @Aly2017; @Awan2017] and spaces for extremist communities to interact [@Amble2012; @Dean2012; @Winter2019; @Pauwels2014]. If social media platforms augment physical organizing [@Bowman-Grieve2009; @Holt2016], then they may also enhance the spread of radicalization.
Although social media platforms relax geographic constraints on communication, evidence suggests that social media networks still exhibit spatial clustering. For example, the majority of an individuals’ Facebook friends live within 100 miles of them [@Bailey2018], the probability of information diffusion on social media decays with increasing distance [@Liu2018], and online echo chambers map onto particular locations [@Bastos2018]. Since complex contagions require reinforcement, and the majority of online friendship ties are within a close radius, the diffusion of extremist ideologies online should still exhibit some level of geographic bias.
In order to model the spread of far-right radicalization I used a two-component spatio-temporal intensity (twinstim) model [@Meyer2017], an epidemiological method that treats events in space and time as resulting from self-exciting point processes [@Reinhart2018]. In this framework, future events depend on the history of past events within a certain geographic range. Event probabilities are determined by a conditional intensity function, which is separated into endemic and epidemic components. This allows researchers to assess the combined effects of both spatio-temporal covariates and epidemic predictors. Epidemic, in this framework, refers to any level of contagion effect and does not necessarily imply uncontrollable spread. With a couple of notable exceptions [@Zammit-Mangion2012; @Clark2018], previous applications of self-exciting point process models in terrorism and mass shooting research have not simultaneously modeled diffusion over both time and space [@Porter2010; @Lewis2012; @White2013; @Towers2015; @Garcia-Bernardo2015; @Tench2016; @Johnson2017; @Collins2020].
The radicalization events in this study, which correspond to where and when a radicalized individual’s extremist activity or plot was exposed, came from the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS), an anonymized database compiled by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) [@Pirus2017]. PIRUS is compiled from sources in the public record, and only includes individuals radicalized in the United States who were either arrested, indicted, or killed as a result of ideologically-motivated crimes, or were directly associated with a violent extremist organization. I chose to use PIRUS instead of the Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States (TEVUS) database because events in PIRUS are disambiguated by individual and include social variables that may influence the diffusion process.
A contagion effect in this modeling framework could result from one of two forces. The first is a copy-cat effect, in which individuals copy behaviors observed directly or in the media. Although this effect has been proposed in terrorism and mass shooting research in the past [@Nacos2009; @Towers2015], it seems to be a more plausible contagion mechanism for specific methods of violence [@Helfgott2015] (e.g. suicide bombings [@Tominaga2018]) rather than radicalization more broadly. The second is linkage triggered by activism and organizing, or ideologically-charged events (e.g. elections, demonstrations, policies), in that region. To differentiate between these two forces, I included two sets of epidemic predictors in the modeling. The first two event-level variables, plot success and anticipated fatalities, might be expected to increase epidemic probability if a copy-cat effect is present. This is because successful large-scale events are probably more contagious due to increased media coverage [@Towers2015]. Alternatively, the two individual-level variables, group membership and social media use, might be expected to increase epidemic probability if activism and organizing drive the linkage between events.
Methods {#methods .unnumbered}
=======
Data Collection
---------------
All individual-level data came from PIRUS. Only individuals with far-right ideology who were exposed during or after 2005 (the earliest year with social media data) with location data at the city-level or lower (*n* = 416; F: 6.0%, M: 94.0%) were included (see Figures \[cases\] and \[map\]). For each individual, the date and location of their exposure (usually when their activity/plot occurred), whether their plot was successful (34.9%), the anticipated fatalities of their plot (0: 69.5%, 1-20: 26.0%, $>$20: 2.6%, $>$100: 1.9%), whether they were a member of a formal or informal group of extremists (58.4%), and whether social media played a role in their radicalization (31.2%), were included. Unknown or missing values for each predictor (plot success: 0.5%, anticipated fatalities: 13.5%, group membership: 0%, social media: 54.8%) were coded as 0. To ensure that the coding procedure for missing predictor values did not introduce bias, I checked whether the results of the full model were consistent after multiple imputation with chained equations and random forest machine learning (see Table \[impute\_check\]). The location of each exposure was geocoded from the nearest city or town using the R package *ggmap* [@Kahle2013]. Since domestic terrorists tend to commit acts in their local area [@Smith2008; @Klein2017; @Marchment2018], I assumed that exposure locations reflect where individuals were radicalized.
![The number of far-right extremists exposed in the PIRUS database, both per-year (left) and cumulative (right), between 2005 and 2017.[]{data-label="cases"}](cases){width="0.9\linewidth"}
{width="\linewidth"}
State-level gun ownership was estimated using a proxy measure based on suicide rates and hunting licenses [@Seigel2014]. Using data from 2001, 2002, and 2004 (the only three years for which state-level gun ownership data is available), Seigel et al. found that the following proxy correlates with gun ownership with an $R^2$ of 0.95:
$$\label{gun_proxy}
(0.62 \cdot \frac{FS}{S})+(0.88\cdot HL)-0.0448$$
where $FS/S$ is the proportion of suicides that involve firearms (from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention[^1], or CDC), and $HL$ is hunting licenses per capita (from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service[^2]) [@Seigel2014]. Missing suicide rates (five years for DC, two years for Rhode Island) were replaced with the mean values for that state. State-level hate group data was collected from the Southern Poverty Law Center[^3], while violent crime data was collected from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program[^4].
County-level demographic data was collected from the US Census using the R package *censusapi* [@Recht2019]. This included population density, poverty rate, Gini index of income inequality, percentage of the population that is non-white, percentage of the population that has at least a high-school diploma, and unemployment rate. County-level income, race, education, and unemployment data is only available after 2009, so the 2010 data was used for 2005-2009. County-level presidential election voting records were collected from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Election Lab[^5], and non-election years were assigned the data from the most recent election year.
Geographic data was collected from the US Census using the R package *tigris* [@Walker2019].
Model Specification
-------------------
Twinstim modeling was conducted using the R package *surveillance* [@Meyer2017]. To convert the data to a continuous spatio-temporal point process, all tied locations and dates were shifted in a random direction up to half of the minimum spatial and temporal distance between events (1.52 km and 0.5 days, respectively) [@Meyer2014].
Step functions were used to model both spatial and temporal interactions. Visual inspection of the pair correlation function for the point pattern indicates that the data is significantly clustered up to 400 km (see Figure \[pcf\]). As such, the spatial step function was split into four 100 km intervals with 400 km as the maximum interaction radius [@Nightingale2015]. The temporal step function was split into four six-month intervals up to two years (based on the the high degree of variation in radicalization and attack planning times among domestic extremists [@Smith2009; @Silkoset2016; @Bouhana2018]). I attempted the analysis with different combinations of power-law, Gaussian, and Student spatial functions, and exponential temporal functions, but these variations converged to unrealistically steep spatial and temporal interaction functions that approached zero around two km and two days, and appeared to be significantly influenced by the tie-breaking procedure [@Meyer2014].
Population density (county-level) was log-transformed and used as an offset endemic term. A centered time trend was also included to determine whether the strength of the endemic component has shifted over time. Poverty rate (county-level), Gini index of income inequality (county-level), gun ownership (state-level), percentage of the population that is non-white (county-level), percentage of the population that has at least a high-school diploma (county-level), unemployment rate (county-level), percentage of voters that vote Republican in presidential elections (county-level), violent crime rate per thousand residents (state-level), and number of hate groups per million residents (state-level) were included as dynamic endemic predictors that change annually. Plot success, anticipated fatalities, group membership, and social media radicalization were included as epidemic predictors.
All possible models with all possible combinations of predictors were run and ranked by Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) [@Burnham2002]. The best fitting model with the lowest AIC was used assess the effects of each variable on event probability. Rate ratios were calculated by applying exponential transformation to the model estimates.
Permutation Test
----------------
To determine whether the spatio-temporal interaction of the epidemic component was statistically significant, I used the Monte Carlo permutation approach developed by Meyer et al. [@Meyer2016]. Using this approach, a twinstim model with all endemic predictors from the best fitting model and no epidemic predictors was compared to 1,000 permuted null models with randomly shuffled event times. For each permutation I estimated the reproduction number (*R~0~*), or the expected number of future events that an event triggers on average, which represents “infectivity”. A *p*-value was calculated by comparing the observed *R~0~* with the null distribution of the subset of permutations that converged.
For additional support, I also ran a likelihood ratio test and a standard Knox test of spatio-temporal clustering. The Knox test was conducted with spatial and temporal radii of 100 km and six months (the upper bounds of the first steps in the step functions), respectively [@Knox1964].
Simulations
-----------
To further assess the quality of the model, I conducted simulations from the cumulative intensity function using Ogata’s modified thinning algorithm according to Meyer et al. [@Meyer2012]. Using the parameters of the best fitting model, I conducted 1,000 simulations of the last six months of the study period and compared the results to the observed data.
Results {#results .unnumbered}
=======
The results of the best fitting model ($\Delta$AIC $<$ 2), which included seven endemic and two epidemic predictor variables, are shown in Table \[twinstim\_output\]. Firstly, there is a statistically significant time trend whereby the endemic rate decreases by 4.6% each year, indicating that the strength of the epidemic component has increased over time. There appears to be a baseline increase in the endemic component between 2008-2012 which likely corresponds to the financial crisis [@Funke2016], as well as a significant spike in the epidemic component around 2016 which likely corresponds to the presidential election [@Rushin2018; @Giani2019] (Figure \[intensity\]). There are also significant positive effects of poverty rates (*p* $<$ 0.01) and the presence of hate groups (*p* $<$ 0.0001) on radicalization probability. Interestingly, the percentage of voters that vote Republican in presidential elections (*p* $<$ 0.0001), the percentage of the population that is non-white (*p* $<$ 0.05), and unemployment rates (*p* $<$ 0.0001) appear to have significant negative effects on radicalization probability. Gun ownership, education level, and violent crime all had no significant effect on radicalization probability. When Republican voting was replaced with the absolute percent difference between Republican and Democratic voting, a proxy measure for the competitiveness of elections, it was no longer significant. A variance inflation factor test identified no collinearity problems among the time-averaged endemic predictors (*VIF* $<$ 3) [@Zuur2010].
![The total intensity (in black), as well as the isolated endemic component (grey), over time. Total intensity can be interpreted as the proportion of radicalization probability that is explained by the endemic and epidemic components.[]{data-label="intensity"}](intensity){width="0.9\linewidth"}
RR 95% CI *p*-value
---------------------- ------- ------------ -----------
Time trend 0.946 0.91–0.98 0.0015
Poverty 1.052 1.02–1.09 0.0025
Unemployment 0.871 0.82–0.93 $<$0.0001
Republican voting 0.969 0.96–0.98 $<$0.0001
Non-white population 0.989 0.98–1.00 0.038
Education level 0.980 0.96–1.00 0.075
Hate groups 1.191 1.12–1.27 $<$0.0001
Violent crime 0.930 0.84–1.03 0.17
Group membership 4.563 1.57–13.28 0.0054
Social media 2.722 1.55–4.76 0.0005
: The results of the twinstim modeling, with estimated rate ratios (RR), Wald confidence intervals, and *p*-values. Endemic predictors (including the overall time trend) are in the top portion of the table, whereas epidemic predictors are in the bottom.[]{data-label="twinstim_output"}
![The results of the Monte Carlo permutation test. The grey bars show the null distribution of *R~0~* from the 739 permutations that converged, whereas the red dashed line shows the observed *R~0~* (0.31) calculated from the twinstim model.[]{data-label="epitest"}](epitest){width="0.9\linewidth"}
Both group membership and radicalization via social media have strong and significant positive effects on epidemic probability. Exposures of individuals who belong to formal or informal extremist groups are over four times more likely to be followed by future exposures in close spatial or temporal proximity (*p* $<$ 0.01). Similarly, exposures of individuals radicalized on social media are almost three times as likely to be followed by future exposures (*p* $<$ 0.01). Anticipated fatalities and plot success did not appear in the best fitting model. Estimates of the decaying spatial and temporal interaction functions, as well as model diagnostics, can be seen in Figures \[siaf\_tiaf\] and \[residuals\], respectively. A variance inflation factor test identified no collinearity problems among the epidemic predictors (*VIF* $<$ 3) [@Zuur2010].
Based on the permutation test, the observed *R~0~* (0.31) is significantly higher than the null distribution of the converged permutations (*N~conv~* = 739, *p* $<$ 0.01) (Figure \[epitest\]). This indicates that the spatio-temporal interaction in the epidemic model is significant. Both the likelihood ratio test of the epidemic against the endemic model (*p* $<$ 0.0001) and the Knox test (*p* $<$ 0.0001) support this result.
The results of the simulations can be seen in Figures \[pred\_time\] and \[pred\_space\]. On average the simulations neatly match the observed cumulative number of exposures between June, 2017 and January, 2018 (Figure \[pred\_time\]), indicating that the model accurately captures the temporal dynamics in the data. Similarly, the model appears to do a good job of capturing the spatial dynamics in the data, although it is clearly weighted towards high population density areas (Figure \[pred\_space\]).
Discussion {#discussion .unnumbered}
==========
By applying novel epidemiological methods to data on 416 extremists exposed between 2005 and 2017, this study provides evidence that patterns of far-right radicalization in the United States are consistent with a contagion process. Firstly, the estimated reproduction number is significantly higher than those from simulated null models, indicating that endemic causes alone are not sufficient to explain the spatio-temporal clustering observed in the data. The reproduction number for radicalization (*R~0~* = 0.31) is also lower than one, suggesting that extremist ideologies behave like complex contagions that require reinforcement for transmission. Fortunately, this means that extremist ideologies are unlikely to spread uncontrollably through populations like seasonal influenza (*R~0~* = 1.28) [@Biggerstaff2014], but outbreaks can occur under the right endemic and epidemic conditions. For example, regions with higher rates of poverty and hate group activity are more likely to experience far-right extremism, whereas regions with a larger non-white population, more Republican voting, and higher rates of unemployment are less likely to experience far-right extremism. Most importantly, radicalizations involving extremist groups or social media significantly increase the epidemic probability of future radicalizations in the same location. This suggests that clusters of radicalizations in space and time are driven by activism and organizing rather than a copy-cat effect.
![The cumulative number of exposures during the last six months of the study period (red), as well as the results of 1,000 simulations (grey).[]{data-label="pred_time"}](pred_time){width="0.9\linewidth"}
The fact that group membership significantly increases the epidemic strength of events, and the presence of hate groups significantly increases radicalization probability, suggests that local organizing remains a potent recruitment tool of the far-right movement. This idea is reflected in recent increases in rallies across the country, such as “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville, VA in August of 2017, that have been attended by regional chapters of white nationalist and militia organizations. It also suggests that concerns about typological “lone wolves” radicalized over social media should not overshadow the persistent and expanding far-right movement in the United States. Only 10.8% of people in this study were radicalized on social media independently of an extremist group, indicating that solo actors are still the minority in the far-right movement. That being said, solo actors radicalized on social media, such as Omar Mateen (Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016) and Dylann Roof (Charleston church shooting in 2015) [@Holt2019], are typically deadlier than group members in the United States [@Phillips2017], and should thus be the subject of much future research.
![The exposure locations during the last six months of the study period. The color gradient, ranging from blue (low) to yellow (high), represents a Gaussian kernel density for the results of 1,000 simulations with a bandwidth of 200 km. The contour lines segment the kernel density into 10 levels.[]{data-label="pred_space"}](pred_space){width="1\linewidth"}
Radicalization on social media also significantly increases the epidemic strength of events, indicating that social media platforms augment physical organizing and that the diffusion of extremist ideologies online is likely geographically biased. The increasing role of social media in far-right extremism and radicalization is well established [@Holt2019; @Ottoni2018; @Costello2018; @Lowe2019; @Winter2019]. Social media platforms like Twitter provide extremist communities with low cost access to large audiences that might not otherwise engage with far-right content [@Wu2015; @Bertram2016]. For example, one report found that only 44% of people who follow high-profile white nationalists on Twitter overtly express similar ideologies [@Berger2013]. As mainstream platforms clamp down on hate speech, extremist users have just shifted their traffic to alternative sites such as 8chan and Gab [@Blackbourn2019; @Hodge2019]. Given the centrality of social media in far-right organizing, future research should explore how counter-narratives [@VanEerten2017; @Voogt2017] and other strategies could be used to fight the spread of extremist ideology online.
The results indicate that county-level poverty rates increase the probability of far-right radicalization. While there is little to no evidence that poverty predicts extremism at the state-level [@Piazza2017; @Gale2002; @Lin2018; @Durso2013], studies at the county-level have found that poverty predicts both mass shooting rate [@Kwon2019a] and hate groups (presence [@Medina2018] not longevity [@Suttmoeller2015; @Suttmoeller2016; @Suttmoeller2018]). This discrepancy between geographic resolutions indicates that using state-level poverty data obscures local variation. The results of this study also reveal a negative effect of unemployment rate on radicalization, adding to the remarkably contradictory evidence for links between unemployment and extremism in the United States [@Jefferson1999; @Goetz2012; @Piazza2017; @Majumder2017; @Green1998; @Gale2002; @Espiritu2004]. Although this result appears to be counter-intuitive, I hypothesize that poverty and unemployment may interact in driving radicalization. For example, individuals from regions where jobs are plentiful but poverty remains high may be the most disillusioned and susceptible to extremist ideologies. Interestingly, income inequality did not appear in the best fitting model, and had no significant effect when included. This suggests that overall deprivation, as measured by poverty rates, is more important in driving radicalization than inequality. Previous studies that have found a positive impact of income inequality on hate groups or crimes either used state-level data [@Majumder2017], did not account for poverty rate [@McVeigh2004; @Goetz2012], or combined it with poverty rate into a single index [@McVeigh2012]. Interestingly, both unemployment [@Pah2017] and income inequality [@Kwon2017; @Kwon2019a; @Kwon2019b] appear to be strong predictors of mass shootings. Although this seems paradoxical, the majority of mass shootings are not ideologically driven [@Capellan2015], so the socioeconomic drivers may be different than for far-right radicalization.
Violent crime appears to have no influence on radicalization. Although one study of the Klu Klux Klan found that high levels of far-right activity can increase homicide rates in the long-term [@McVeigh2012], there is little evidence for violent crime rates driving increases in extremist violence or radicalization [@Sweeney2018]. Hate crime is only very weakly correlated with violent crime [@Gladfelter2017], and extremist violence is even more rare [@LaFree2009], so they are likely driven by different factors.
Previous studies have found strong evidence for a negative relationship between education and hate crime rates [@Espiritu2004; @Gladfelter2017], a positive relationship between education and mass shooting rates [@Kwon2017; @Kwon2019b], and no evidence for a relationship between education and hate group organizing [@Durso2013; @McVeigh2014; @Florida2011]. The results of this study are consistent with the latter category, which makes sense given that the majority of the plots in the dataset were non-violent.
The negative effect of Republican voting on event probability could be because individuals on the far-right of the political spectrum who live in counties with more Democratic voters may feel more partisan hostility [@Miller2015]. Interestingly, this effect does not appear to be the result of more competitive elections [@Suttmoeller2015], as the absolute difference between Republican and Democratic voting did not significantly influence event probability. Alternatively, the negative effect of Republican voting may be due to the fact that many of the rural counties that lean heavily Republican have low population densities and no recent history of extremist violence. A previous study that found mixed evidence for a positive influence of Republican voting on the presence of hate groups excluded counties without hate groups from the modeling, which may have eliminated this skew effect [@Medina2018].
The fact that the percentage of the population that is non-white negatively predicts far-right extremist violence is consistent with the intergroup contact hypothesis, which suggests that prolonged contact between racial groups reduces conflict under certain conditions [@Allport1954]. Although other researchers have suggested that population heterogeneity increases far-right radicalization [@McVeigh2004], the only study to find evidence of this in the United States did not explicitly account for population density [@LaFree2014]. Other studies controlling for population density have found that both anti-black hate crimes and hate groups appear to be more common in white dominated, racially homogeneous areas [@Gladfelter2017; @Medina2018]. Despite mixed evidence for the intergroup contact hypothesis, it is widely accepted that community diversity and tolerance is key to fighting radicalization and extremist violence globally [@Gunaratna2013; @Ellis2017; @Ercan2017; @Hoffman2018; @UnitedNationsDevelopmentProgramme2016; @SouthernPovertyLawCenter2017].
Gun ownership does not predict radicalization in this model, which is unsurprising since only 30.5% of people in this study planned on committing fatal attacks but interesting given the centrality of gun control in debates following mass shootings in the United States [@Pierre2019; @Joslyn2017; @Luca2020]. Despite strong evidence that gun ownership is linked to mass shooting rates at the national-level [@Reeping2019], evidence for same pattern at the state-level remains mixed. Previous studies have found that it either positively predicts mass shootings overall [@Reeping2019], when combined with particular gun control laws [@Anisin2018], or not at all [@Lin2018; @Pah2017]. Unfortunately CDC funding for research on gun ownership was restricted by Congress in 1996 after lobbying by the National Rifle Association, so potential links between extremist violence and gun ownership remain understudied [@Lemieux2014; @Winker2016; @Morrall2018; @DeFoster2018].
Several limitations of this study should be highlighted. Firstly, the PIRUS database only represents a subset of radicalized individuals in the United States. The creators of the database used random sampling to maximize its representativeness over different time periods, but there remains a possibility of spatial or temporal bias in the original data due to factors like law enforcement effort. In addition, the geographic locations of events are only geocoded to the city-level, potentially enhancing the spatial clustering of the data. Furthermore, social media data were missing for a significant number of individuals (54.8%). The significance level of the estimate for social media usage is extremely low and robust to imputation, indicating that it likely reflects a real effect, but researchers should exercise caution when interpreting this result [@Safer-Lichtenstein2017]. Lastly, the spatial resolution of three of the endemic predictors was limited to the state-level, which may have flattened some important local variation. One of these variables, gun ownership, was also a proxy measure. Policymakers should release historical restrictions on research funding for gun violence and hate crime research to improve data resolution for future studies.
In conclusion, far-right radicalization in the United States appears to spread through populations like a complex contagion. Both social media usage and group membership enhance the contagion process, indicating that online and physical organizing remain primary recruitment tools of the far-right movement. In addition, far-right radicalization is more likely in Democratic-majority regions with high poverty and low unemployment, fewer non-white people, and more hate group activity. While the federal government has acknowledged the threat of far-right extremism [@TheDepartmentofHomelandSecurity2019], funding for organizations researching or fighting the movement has decreased in recent years [@OToole2019]. Based on the results of this study, I recommend that policymakers reconsider their funding priorities to address the expanding far-right extremist movement in the United States. Future research should investigate how specific interventions, such as online counter-narratives to battle propaganda, may be effectively implemented to mitigate the spread of extremist ideology.
Data & Code Availability Statement {#data-code-availability-statement .unnumbered}
==================================
All data used in the study are available online either publicly or upon request (PIRUS). The R scripts used in the study will be made available upon peer-reviewed publication.
Supporting information
Imputation Check
----------------
To ensure that the coding procedure did not bias the estimation of the epidemic predictors, the full twinstim model was re-run after multiple imputation with chained equations using the R package *mice* [@vanBuuren2011] and random forest machine learning using the R package *missForest* [@Stekhoven2012]. All four epidemic predictors (plot success, anticipated fatalities, and group membership) were used in fitting and training. The maximum iterations was set to 10 and number of trees was set to 100. The results of 100 rounds of both imputation methods can be seen in Table \[impute\_check\].
------------------------ ------- ----------- ------- -----------
RR *p*-value RR *p*-value
Group membership 5.014 0.0040 6.61 0.00040
Social media 2.29 0.065 4.092 0.00013
Anticipated fatalities 1.15 0.43 0.90 0.53
Plot success 0.93 0.78 1.11 0.55
------------------------ ------- ----------- ------- -----------
: The average rate ratios and *p*-values for all epidemic predictors after 100 rounds of imputation and estimation using the full model.[]{data-label="impute_check"}
Since the observed estimate of social media, the only epidemic predictor with missing data in the best fitting model, is between those from the two imputation methods, and as random forest in *missForest* outcompetes chained equations in *mice* in most [@Stekhoven2012; @Waljee2013; @Liao2014; @Muharemi2018; @Misztal2019; @Cui2019] (but not all [@Shah2014; @Penone2014]) direct comparisons, I assume that the coding method did not significantly influence the results. I assumed that data were missing at random, although missing social
Spatial interaction
-------------------
![The pair correlation function at different pairwise distances in km (*x*-axis). The black line is the observed function for the data, the red line is the theoretical function assuming spatial randomness, and the grey envelope shows the upper and lower bounds of the functions from 100 simulated point patterns demonstrating spatial randomness.[]{data-label="pcf"}](pcf){width="0.7\linewidth"}
![Estimates of the scaled spatial (left panel) and temporal (right) step functions. The 95% Monte Carlo confidence intervals were each calculated from 100 samples.[]{data-label="siaf_tiaf"}](siaf_tiaf){width="0.8\linewidth"}
Diagnostics
-----------
![(A) The empirical cumulative density function of U~i~, or the standardized residuals according to Ogata [@Ogata1988], with 95% Kolmogorov-Smirnov confidence bands. (B) A scatterplot of U~i~ and U~i+1~ to look for serial correlation.[]{data-label="residuals"}](residuals){width="0.8\linewidth"}
The residuals, or the fitted cumulative intensities over time, were calculated and transformed to fit a uniform distribution according to Ogata [@Ogata1988]. The cumulative density function diverges from expectations for U~i~ $<$ 0.58, which appears to be the result of tie-breaking with small temporal distances (0.5 days) [@Meyer2012]. Increasing the tie-breaking distance to $>$ 20 days to improve the cumulative density function and reduce serial correlation did not significantly change the predictor estimates, so I chose to use the original model.
[^1]: <https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html>
[^2]: <https://wsfrprograms.fws.gov/Subpages/LicenseInfo/Hunting.htm>
[^3]: <https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map>
[^4]: <https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr>
[^5]: <https://electionlab.mit.edu/data>
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State decorations
The state orders, medals and other decorations are bestowed by the President of Lithuania on 16 February – Day of Re-establishment of the State of Lithuania and 6 July – Day of the State (Coronation of King Mindaugas), and on other days on special occasions.
The President of Lithuania is awarded with the highest order, of Vytautas the Great, upon starting to hold his office after taking the oath, by the Chairman of the Seimas (Lithuanian parliament).
Decorations are minted in Lithuanian Mint, a state own enterprise.
Orders
the Order of Vytautas the Great;
the Order of the Cross of Vytis;
the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas;
the Order for Merits to Lithuania.
Insignia of the Orders
the order with the golden chain (only the Order of Vytautas the Great);
the Grand Cross (First Class Order);
the Grand Cross of Commander (Second Class Order);
the Cross of Commander (Third Class Order);
the Cross of Officer (Fourth Class Order);
the Cross of the Knight (Fifth Class Order).
Medals and other decorations
Flag of the Order of the Cross of Vytis
Independence Medal
Life Saving Cross
Medal of the Order of the Cross of Vytis
Medal of the Order of Vytautas the Great
Medal of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas
Medal of the Order for Merits to Lithuania
Commemorative Medal of 13 January
Order of precedence of decorations
the Order of Vytautas the Great with the Golden Chain;
the Grand Cross of the Order of the Cross of Vytis;
the Grand Cross of the Order of Vytautas the Great;
the Grand Cross of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas;
the Grand Cross of the Order for Merits to Lithuania;
the Grand Cross of Commander of the Order of the Cross of Vytis;
the Grand Cross of Commander of the Order of Vytautas the Great;
the Grand Cross of Commander of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas;
the Grand Cross of Commander of the Order for Merits to Lithuania;
the Cross of Commander of the Order of the Cross of Vytis;
the Cross of Commander of the Order of Vytautas the Great;
the Cross of Commander of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas;
the Cross of Commander of the Order for Merits to Lithuania;
the Cross of Officer of the Order of the Cross of Vytis;
the Cross of Officer of the Order of Vytautas the Great;
the Cross of Officer of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas;
the Cross of Officer of the Order for Merits to Lithuania;
the Cross of the Knight of the Order of the Cross of Vytis;
the Cross of the Knight of the Order of Vytautas the Great;
the Cross of the Knight of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas;
the Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania;
the Life Saving Cross;
the Medal of the Order of the Cross of Vytis;
the Medal of the Order of Vytautas the Great;
the Medal of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas;
the Order for Merits to Lithuania;
the Commemorative Medal of 13 January.
Other decorations
Medal of Founding Volunteers of the Lithuanian Army
Star of Riflemen
Medal of the Star of Riflemen
Medal of Darius and Girėnas
The above decorations are awarded by the Minister of National Defence. In addition, the Medal of Darius and Girėnas may be awarded by the Minister of Transport and Communications.
History
Although most of nowadays Lithuanian orders are created in times of Interwar Lithuanian Republic, few of nowadays Poland highest awards do have roots in Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and by official herald of Lithuania are considered as origin Lithuanian.
References
Official English translation of the Lithuanian law on state awards
President of Lithuania's official site for Orders, Medals and Other Awards |
Q:
React Hooks - Reset the drop down
I am testing multiple select/option elements using React Hooks. I was able to populate the drop down menus from local list and also using axios API getter method. Finally, I created a reset button to reset these drop down values to it originals (like "select a state" and "select an author") but could not get that to work, I am not sure what is the best way to reset these values.
Instead of posting the code in here, I added a link to this sample project in here. Any tips/pointers are much appreciated.
codesanbox project link
import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react";
import ReactDOM from "react-dom";
import axios from "axios";
import StateSelector from "./StateSelector";
import Footer from "./Footer";
const SelectTesting = () => {
const reqUrl = "https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=redux";
const initialStateValue = [{ id: 0, value: " --- Select A State --- " }];
const initialAuthorValue = [" --- Select an Author --- "];
const allowedState = [
{ id: 1, value: "Alabama" },
{ id: 2, value: "Georgia" },
{ id: 3, value: "Missisippi" }
];
const [authors, setAuthors] = useState(initialAuthorValue);
const [allStates, setAllSelected] = useState(initialStateValue);
const [stateSelected, setStateSelected] = useState(initialStateValue[0].value);
let authorComponent = null;
// useEffect to get states
useEffect(() => {
console.log("Inside effect");
const stateValues = initialStateValue;
allowedState.map(sel => {
stateValues.push(sel);
return setAllSelected(stateValues);
});
}, []);
// useEffect to get Authors
useEffect(() => {
console.log("Inside effect 2");
axios(reqUrl).then(result =>
result.data.hits.map(res => {
initialAuthorValue.push(res.author);
return setAuthors(initialAuthorValue);
})
);
}, []);
authorComponent = (
<select>
{authors.map((author, index) => (
<option key={index}>{author}</option>
))}
</select>
);
const stateSelectionHandler = event => {
const value = event.target.value;
console.log(allStates);
const stateIndex = allStates.findIndex(state => state.value === value);
console.log(event.target.value, allStates, "index:", stateIndex);
setStateSelected(event.target.value);
};
const resetClickHandler = () => {
console.log("reset was clicked");
setStateSelected(initialStateValue[0].value);
};
console.log("Inside Index.js Main");
return (
<div>
<hr />
<StateSelector
selectedState={stateSelected}
allStates={allStates}
onStateSelection={stateSelectionHandler}
/>
<hr />
<label>Author:</label>
{authorComponent}
<hr />
<Footer onResetClick={resetClickHandler} />
</div>
);
};
const rootElement = document.getElementById("root");
ReactDOM.render(<SelectTesting />, rootElement);
A:
The only thing you are missing is actually only value attribute in your select element <select onChange={onStateSelection} value={props.selectedState}>
However I dont think the StateSelector component needs to be stateful component. It is better to make it controlled/dumb component that only takes props from parent and let parent control its value and behavior.
https://codesandbox.io/s/j7zwxnn65w
|
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