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Prozac withdrawal is most likely to occur in people who abruptly stop taking their medication (known as quitting “cold turkey”) or in those that have missed a few doses.
Notify your doctor right away if you experience any of the following withdrawal symptoms while taking Prozac: anxiety, irritability, agitation, lightheadedness or dizziness, psychosis, confusion, headache, insomnia or sleep disturbances, and fatigue or tiredness.
The symptoms tend to improve with time, but can require medical attention depending on the severity and duration.
The good news is that Prozac, compared to other antidepressants, is less likely to cause withdrawal because it tends to stay in one's system longer.
What Is Prozac?
Prozac is a SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) medication commonly prescribed to treat depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, PMS, panic attacks, and other conditions.
It works by balancing the serotonin levels in the brain which helps balance mood and emotions. Depression is thought to be caused by an imbalance of serotonin in the body.
Withdrawal symptoms typically occur in those individuals who do not take their Prozac as recommended by their prescribing doctor. As a result, you should only take your Prozac exactly as prescribed; do not guess, and never assume that ignoring your prescription instructions is a safe practice.
Do not quit cold turkey or abruptly stop taking Prozac, as that is the most common cause of withdrawal.
Avoiding withdrawal from Prozac is best achieved by discontinuing Prozac doses gradually and slowly weaning off the medication over time.
In order to safely discontinue this medication, work in conjunction with your prescribing doctor who can gradually and safely reduce your dosage in order to help avoid withdrawal.
As always, raise any questions or concerns with your prescribing doctor. Learn to recognize the signs and symptoms of withdrawal, and become and informed consumer.
In addition, never take any Prozac that was not prescribed specifically for you.
If you experience severe or unusual reactions while taking Prozac, seek immediate medical attention at your nearest hospital emergency room. This is especially important in cases of possible allergic reactions, or if you have problems breathing, difficulty swallowing, hallucinations, confusion, loss of consciousness, or suicidal thoughts or behaviors.
After you are discharged from the hospital emergency room, follow up with your prescribing doctor to notify them about your situation. | <urn:uuid:bf4ad695-8df0-4af1-87c3-bd5f902a15d8> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.add-treatment.com/prozac-withdrawal.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281450.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00176-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94683 | 488 | 2.140625 | 2 |
© 2016 Elsevier LtdDetecting real-world events by following posts in microblogs has been the motivation of numerous recent studies. In this work, we focus on the spatio-temporal characteristics of events detected in microblogs, and propose a method to estimate their locations using the Dempster–Shafer theory. We utilize three basic location-related features of the posts, namely the latitude-longitude metadata provided by the GPS sensor of the user's device, the textual content of the post, and the location attribute in the user profile, as three independent sources of evidence. Considering this evidence in a complementary way, we apply combination rules in the Dempster–Shafer theory to fuse them into a single model, and estimate the whereabouts of a detected event. Locations are treated at two levels of granularity, namely, city and town. Using the Dempster–Shafer theory to solve this problem allows uncertainty and missing data to be tolerated, and estimations to be made for sets of locations in terms of upper and lower probabilities. We demonstrate our solution using public tweets on Twitter posted in Turkey. The experimental evaluations conducted on a wide range of events including earthquakes, sports, weather, and street protests indicate higher success rates than the existing state of the art methods. | <urn:uuid:a37cf512-178b-458c-9bc3-d1c9744cc93c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://avesis.metu.edu.tr/publication/details/1da403ce-068d-435a-8f1e-5f3fc10e8042/evidential-estimation-of-event-locations-in-microblogs-using-the-dempstershafer-theory | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571147.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810040253-20220810070253-00473.warc.gz | en | 0.932484 | 258 | 2.234375 | 2 |
People also ask
How do you make scones?
To make a batch of scones, simply rub butter into flour using your fingertips, until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Next up, bring the mixture together into a dough by adding the wet ingredients.
How do you make Cheese scones ahead of time?
To make them ahead, mix and shape the dough into scones on a baking sheet a few hours before baking, storing the pan in the fridge, tightly-covered, until ready for the oven. Continue to 5 of 15 below. Cheese scones are a favorite savory snack in Britain.
How much self rising flour do I need to make scones?
3 1/4 cups (400 grams) self-rising flour, plus more for the baking sheet 2 ounces (55 grams) unsalted butter, cold, plus more for the baking sheet 2 tablespoons (25 grams) sugar, if you want your scones a little sweeter, optional Gather the ingredients. Heat the oven to 400 F/205 C/Gas 6. Grease and flour a heavy baking sheet.
What is the best cream for scones?
Sour cream is what sets the best scones apart from all others, it yields a tender crumb inside while the butter in the recipe makes the outside crispy and snappy, the perfect scone in my opinion. | <urn:uuid:5a914a79-1ec2-4903-bf85-d8ad8b0d6c7d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.bizcheat.top/a-good-scone-recipe-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.864559 | 281 | 1.78125 | 2 |
The Pope kneels to wash the feet of a group of refugees. Nobody seems to care about the difference in their religions.
Among them are Catholics, but also Muslims and a Hindu.
He kneels before her pain and to the mixture of humiliation and fear of being expelled from Europe.
As is the custom on every Holy Thursday, the Pope repeated the symbolic gesture of Jesus to the apostles. He recalled that almost at the same time, Judas was selling Jesus for 30 coins.
"Also here today are two gestures: Seeing everyone from different cultures and religions gathered together. Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Copts, Evangelicals ... All brothers. Children of the same God, we want to live in peace, integrated. This is the first gesture.”
Pope Francis specifically compared the acts of the terrorist attacks in Brussels with same as Judas. And he pointed out to the others responsible for the slaughter.
"Three days ago, an act of war, of destruction in a European city, by people who do not want to live in peace. But behind that gesture, just as behind Judas, there were others. Behind Judas there were those who gave the money so that Jesus would be handed over. Behind "that" gesture, there are manufacturers, arms dealers who want blood, not peace; they want war, not brotherhood.”
The Pope specifically wanted to celebrate the most important Mass of the year in this shelter to asylum-seekers, when Europe is expelling them from the continent.
"We are different, we are different, we have different cultures and religions, but we are brothers and we want to live in peace. And this is the gesture that I perform with you.”
At the ceremony, there were nearly 900 people, most of them are forced migrants and refugees who have crossed the Mediterranean in small boats seeking a better life.
Most are Muslims, but the Pope has not asked them about their religion. Of course, he did ask them to pray so that this gesture keeps spreading, and so that they can all view each other as brothers.
It was a very symbolic visit full of gestures from Pope Francis.
And when the ceremony ended, he stopped to greet nearly a thousand participants, one-by-one. A gesture that perhaps no one has had with them since they fled their homes. | <urn:uuid:137ab3d2-99eb-409d-b0cc-be68b6b34c13> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.romereports.com/2016/03/24/pope-washes-the-feet-of-muslim-refugees-we-are-brothers-we-all-want-to-live-in-peace | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280835.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00471-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977329 | 480 | 2.40625 | 2 |
You may encounter the following error message when attempting to launch Articulate Storyline content in the Articulate Mobile Player app for iPad:
Cannot Access Content:
Articulate Mobile Player cannot access this content.
See the following reasons and solutions for this error:
If you're attempting to view content that's hosted in Articulate Online but your permissions have been revoked for that content item, you'll encounter a Cannot Access Content error. Contact your Articulate Online administrator for assistance.
Currently, there isn't a way to pass security credentials from a web browser to a mobile application apart from Tin Can API. As a result, you won't be able to view SCORM, AICC, or web content in the Articulate Mobile Player if your LMS or web server requires learners to login.
To avoid the Cannot Access Content error, do one of the following:
If you're hosting Tin Can API content in your LMS (rather than an external server) but your LMS doesn't support private content authorization for mobile apps, you'll encounter a Cannot Access Content error when attempting to launch content in the Articulate Mobile Player. Use either of the following options to correct it: | <urn:uuid:3d1fb0b5-0ca7-4587-ab69-0676ee5ca07d> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://www.articulate.com/support/storyline/cannot-access-content-error-when-launching-articulate-storyline-content-in-the-articulate-mobile-player | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720380.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00056-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.867939 | 249 | 1.859375 | 2 |
The Society of Folk Dance Historians (SFDH)
Bulgarian Village Music
CLICK AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE
There is a great concern in Bulgaria today that folk music must be preserved in the face of rapid social changes there.
A time-honored tradition of the Bulgarians is the mourning for a relative, or a good friend who has passed on. For six months or more afterwards, a person in mourning will refrain from dancing, singing, or playing music. For example, when a child was accidentally killed in a village near Sofia, his mother, a very fine singer, vowed that she would never sing again. About the same time, a man living in the village of Bistrica, also not far from Sofia, was killed in an auto accident. He was the village archivist, and remembered all the songs, dances and rituals, and was a vital force in preserving the local folk customs. The singers, dancers, and musicians who came to his funeral performed with such emotion that folklorists who had also come to honor him, found it hard to accept the fact that, following the rites, there might well be no more music and dancing in that village until after a long mourning period. The villagers though, true to tradition, vowed to lay aside their instruments until the prescribed period of mourning had passed. At this point, the folklorists argued that the best way to honor Trajko Đurđiev would be to continue doing that which he so loved so the village did not fall quiet, and the renewed music-making helped preserve this outstanding manifestation of Bulgarian folk culture.
The vibrant richness of Bulgarian folk music would be astonishing, considering the country's small size, were it not for its location between Asia Minor and Western Europe. Cultural deposits have been left by many different peoples using Bulgaria as a corridor, or imposing themselves upon the area as conquering powers. For example, the Ottoman Turks, on Bulgarian soil until the latter part of the 19th century, inevitably left their mark on the character of its folk music. Yet the remarkable fact is that this music has retained a distinctly unique core. Bulgarian folk music stands historically as the characteristic expression of national spirit, the rebellious reaction of a proud people to violence, hardship, and oppression of the past.
As a conquered nation, the Bulgarians were restricted in the more usual ways in which people gave voice to their anxieties and frustrations and joys of daily life. But because their folk culture music, dance, and songs was not subject to censorship, personal and national identity achieved a measure of free expression. The great extent to which that identity remained intact bears witness to its strength. An inner vitality permeates the music, present in the strident quality of the voices: the complex meters and varied rhythmic patterns; and in the exuberance of the folk dances. The dance formations themselves display this vital communal strength: the dancers, linked together by hand, belt or shoulder, follow the calls of the leader, who as best dancer, heads the line.
Although there is an underlying unity in the sound in all Bulgarian folk music, the diversity of the music is evident in the choice of instruments, the tunes, and the way the voice is used. For example, the folk songs of the Rhodopes are usually single-voiced melodies, while those of Pirin (now part of Macedonia), and the Šop region are often two-voiced (diaphonic). There are two general groupings of songs. The first uses long-lined, free-metered tunes and include the harvest songs, "sedenka" songs (folkoric music and dance gathering songs), "na trapeza" songs (table songs), ballads, and some ritual songs. The second group employs strict meters and includes "horovodna" (dance songs), other sedenka songs, Christmas carols, and other ritual songs.
Bulgarian music is noted for its unusual meters. The Paiduška in 5/6; Svornado in 9/16; Rûčenica in 7/16, and Krivo in 11/16 (all may be found on the record "Village Music of Bulgaria," Nonesuch H-72034, collected and produced by Martin Koenig and Ethel Raim) are dances still found in many parts of the country. However, the 2/4 rhythm is yet the most common meter. Instruments played are the gaida (bagpipe), kaval (7-hole reed pipe), gadulka (pear-shaped bowed fiddle), tambura (long-necked lute), and tupan (two-headed near-Eastern drum). The music is quite old, having had its origin in a society far different from contemporary Bulgaria. Indeed, many of the activities to which the Bulgarian folk songs are related are no longer a part of the daily life. As a result, such songs are performed from memory, and as village life succumbs to the irresistible forces of modernization, profound changes in traditional folk music can be expected. Yet the richness of Bulgarian folk music will presist even if in a somewhat different form.
Used with permission of the author.
Printed in Folk Dance Scene, November 1977.
This page © 2018 by Ron Houston.
Please do not copy any part of this page without including this copyright notice.
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Ruth is a girl name for unknown.
In this post, you may find the splendid uncommon name for your baby girl or boy and get its context, origin, and fame.
Numerous names, including Ruth are an exclusively influential part of identity.
Ruth bring important exclusive, cultural, genetic, and authentic connections for Unknown nation
They also give us a feel of who Unknown are, the English in which they belong, and their neighborhood in the world.
Ruth meaning is companionship. It has 4 letters and 1 word.
Not only the meaning of Ruth you can also find out this site for history and fame of given names from around the world.
Get ideas for baby names or observe your own name’s origin.
All about Ruth
- Name: Ruth
- Meaning: Companionship
- Gender: Girl
- Origin: English
- Religion: Unknown | <urn:uuid:13a8c287-6609-4ca5-9dbc-340d855b35b1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://babynamemap.com/ruth-girl-baby-name-meaning-and-definition/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572063.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814173832-20220814203832-00671.warc.gz | en | 0.920415 | 184 | 2.25 | 2 |
Who would have thought that work gloves could prove to be so dangerous! The truth is that inappropriate work gloves, bought for safety reasons, are actually the direct culprit for many work related hand injuries. Itís not hard to understand why, but it seems to have been the inevitable result of a series of well intentioned decisions, all of which have resulted in workers in businesses and industries facing a greater risk of injury or accident than before.
Not only has it long been known that work gloves and safety equipment are essential in helping to protect the workforce, but with health and safety legislation tightening up the requirements and responsibilities of employers, it has become essential for industries to identify and source the most appropriate safety equipment possible. This demand has resulted in a large number of safety equipment manufacturers and distributors providing industry related safety equipment, including safety gloves, eyewear and other forms of protective clothing.
With increased demand, and increased availability of safety clothing, there seemed little scope for employers failing to meet the required standard of safety. Those who failed to do so faced a new threat in terms of an increased tendency for litigation. As society grew to embrace the collective idea of responsibility, it became increasingly important for industries to ensure that the best safety equipment was in use. Unfortunately it is at this point that a gross error tends to be made by many companies, who confuse safety for protection, and then go on to believe that the two words mean more or less the same thing. In anyoneís book, safety and protection might seem to be of much the same school of thought, but in reality, it is the difference between these two concepts which has led employers to make errors of judgement when choosing work gloves and safety equipment for workers.
The trouble is that by choosing anti vibration gloves or cut resistant gloves employers may assume that offering maximum protection is the requirement. This then leads to the purchasing of thick safety gloves which provide the entire hand, and even the wrist and forearm, massive protection. But protection tends to go hand in hand with decreased dexterity and reduced manoeuvrability. Being wrapped in cotton wool is fine, as long as you donít intend to move or do anything. Over protection or inappropriate protection can lead to workers being less able to sense those items they are touching, or tools which they are using, and may restrict movement considerably.
This restriction in inappropriately chosen safety gloves can result in one of three scenarios occurring. Either workers find that they are unable to operate as efficiently as before, reducing output and profitability across that aspect of the business or industry. The second possibility is that the protective gloves reduce movement, feeling and dexterity, leading directly to accidents in the workplace, such as the wrong button pressed, items dropped, knocked or damaged. Try making a cup of tea wearing boxing gloves and youíre more likely to work slower, spill more, cause more problems, and result in less tea made less well, and with more mess to clear up.
The third scenario is the one which, unfortunately, is tending to occur more and more. This is where workers fail to use their anti vibration gloves, cut resistant gloves or other safety gloves, and risk their hands with no protection whatever. In this case, any accident is far more likely to result in a much more serious injury, and is likely to cause the worker to either be unable to work for considerably longer, or unable to work at all. The legal ramifications are then considerable.
Instead of choosing inappropriate gloves, or confusing protection for safety, it is far better to find a supplier able to provide a wider range of safety gloves, each designed for a specific purpose. For example, cut resistant gloves are unlikely to require a full quarter of an inch of toughened leather around the entire hand. It may be that only the back of the hand and the wrist are ever at risk. By providing gloves that have excellent protection in these areas, but are much thinner over the palm of the hand and fingers, workers will be able to operate as efficiently as before, able to feel their tools and equipment, move their hands with ease and without restriction, yet protect themselves from likely injuries at work.
It is by appreciating the difference between safety and protection that allows employers to select work gloves which are appropriate for the job, and not just appropriate for any conceivable hazard whilst limiting the actual ability to carry out the tasks required.
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Work Gloves | www.intersafety.co.uk | Anti Vibration Gloves
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Not yet Rated | <urn:uuid:55da7666-1e23-411b-83d4-9c8f54161ae9> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.articletrunk.com/Article/Buying-Work-Gloves---The-Difference-Between-Safety-And-Protection/298070 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282202.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00553-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967513 | 917 | 2.203125 | 2 |
What is FLIR Boson?
FLIR Boson® Thermal Camera Cores Utilizing FLIR’s advanced image processing and several industry-standard communication interfaces, Boson enables applications from firefighting to unmanned aerial vehicles and automotive development kits, all for as little as 800mW.
Is FLIR boson radiometric?
Can I get temperature information by post-processing from a FLIR Boson 2.0 thermal image? The current release of Boson is not radiometric.
What is a Boson camera?
The Boson family represents the most dynamic, highest-performing uncooled thermal imaging technology in the FLIR portfolio. FLIR Boson® – Lensless Core Compact LWIR Thermal Camera The Boson® longwave infrared (LWIR) thermal camera module sets a new standard for size, weight, power, and performance (SWaP).
What sensor does FLIR use?
Forward-looking infrared (FLIR) cameras, typically used on military and civilian aircraft, use a thermographic camera that senses infrared radiation.
What is uncooled VOx microbolometer?
Microbolometer. A microbolometer is a specific type of resistor used as a detector in a thermal camera. It is a tiny vanadium oxide (VOx) or amorphous silicon (a-Si) resistor with a large temperature coefficient on a silicon element with large surface area, low heat capacity and good thermal isolation.
What is thermal camera core?
Micro Core is a high-performance thermal camera with 200×150 resolution in a market-leading size footprint. Designed for small form factor, low power and lightweight applications, the Micro Core delivers high-end thermal capabilities, accuracy and performance that is unmatched in its price range.
What is difference between cooled and uncooled thermal camera?
There are currently two types of thermal imaging sensors on the market, cooled and uncooled. Uncooled thermal imaging sensors operate at ambient temperature. Cooled sensors are packaged in a unit that keeps them at an extremely low temperature. These systems—cooled by cryogenics—are incredibly sensitive.
Is the boson thermal camera a FLIR system?
Boson new design lets FLIR bring you high resolution cameras at low resolution prices. Four tapped M1.6×0.35 (rear cover). Lens support recommended when lens mass exceeds core mass. Ready to buy?
Which is better FLIR Tau or FLIR boson?
Smaller than the Tau® 2 core, FLIR’s other high-performance uncooled core, and double the size of the low-cost Lepton® core, Boson is the first thermal camera core to incorporate a sophisticated, low-power multi-core vision processor unit that helps make Boson the smartest thermal core on the planet.
What kind of particles are fermions and bosons?
All elementary particles (Quarks, Leptons, Guage Bosons, Static Bosons etc.) will fall under either of these two. Not only elementary particles, but also composite particles like Baryons (Eg: Protons, Neutrons etc.) will also fall under this basic classification of all particles into Fermions and Bosons.
Why is the FLIR boson important to the military?
– Military: Boson will allow our soldiers on the battlefield to use higher-performance thermal technology that is fit into smaller equipment and distributed more broadly because of the lower prices. | <urn:uuid:5f3be820-d964-4b1d-a99c-dded38892f77> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://turningtooneanother.net/2019/12/21/what-is-flir-boson/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571989.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813232744-20220814022744-00470.warc.gz | en | 0.854534 | 719 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Is precarious employment damaging to self-rated health? Results of propensity score matching methods, using longitudinal data in South Korea
We aimed to evaluate the health effects of precarious employment based on a counterfactual framework, using the Korea Labor and Income Panel Survey data. At the 4th wave (2001), information was obtained on 1991 male and 1378 female waged workers. Precarious work was defined on the basis of workers employed on a temporary or daily basis, part-time, or in a contingent (fixed short-term) job. The outcome was self-rated health with five response categories. Confounding factors included age, marital status, education, industry and occupation of current employment, household income, residential area, and prior health status. Propensity scores for each individual to be a precarious worker were calculated from logistic models including those covariates, and based on them, precarious workers were matched to non-precarious workers. Then, we examined the effects of precarious employment on health and explored the potential intermediary variables, using ordered logistic Generalized Estimating Equations models. All analyses were performed separately by gender. Precarious workers were found to be in a lower socioeconomic position and to have worse health status. Univariate matched analyses showed that precarious employment was associated with worse health in both men and women. By further controlling for socio-demographic covariates, the odds ratios were attenuated but remained significant. Job satisfaction, especially as related to job insecurity, and monthly wage further attenuated the effects. This suggests that to improve health status of precarious workers in Korea, policy strategies need to tackle the channeling of the socially disadvantaged into precarious jobs. Also, regulations to eliminate discrimination against precarious workers in working conditions or material reward should be introduced and enforced. There is no doubt that job insecurity, which is pervasive among workers in Korea, should be minimized by suspending market-oriented labor policies which rely on quantitative flexibility.
Volume (Year): 67 (2008)
Issue (Month): 12 (December)
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Students work together to examine the concept of opportunity costs. They complete a practice problem and solve other problems during the class period. They share their solutions with the class.
45 Views 61 Downloads | <urn:uuid:5ecb7be0-08e1-47e7-bcce-b422e8116b2a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.lessonplanet.com/teachers/identifying-opportunity-cost | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280825.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00205-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907073 | 97 | 2.828125 | 3 |
ONUMBA.COM – Anita M. Diop is an African– American born and raised in America. But she has a unique way of describing herself: “I’m an African born in America.”
That uncommon Africentric, Pan Africanist portrayal of herself speaks volume about a woman who is ferocious when it comes to her passion for African people and culture.
For starters, Diop is married to an African immigrant from Senegal. Her college education focused entirely on Africa. First, was a Bachelor’s Degree in Africana Studies and Speech Communications, followed by a Master’s Degree in African History, with a specialization in Arts and Culture, all from Wayne State University, Detroit.
“I love myself and I love my people,” she told Onumba.com in an interview last week.
And that’s not an empty cliché, either.
Indeed, Diop is profusely involved in a smorgasbord of activities which expresses that love.
She is the founder and executive director of the African Roots and Heritage Festival, a non-profit 501(c) (3) organization she established in 2008 out of the remnants of a startup group called the Black Cultural Festival she formed the year before.
The group’s mantra is: “Celebrating Our Heritage, while Confronting the Challenges” of being Black in America. Its mission, as noted in its website, www.africanrootsandheritagefestival.org, is to promote African culture, arts, the unity of all African people, under the umbrella philosophy of pan-Africanism.
It does that in a number of ways, including hosting cultural programs and festivals, providing workshops, seminars, photo and art exhibits, film festivals, dance, music and special events.
The group is currently planning a big cultural festival for July 16 and 17, at Franklin Park, 1777 East Broad Street.
Aside from holding cultural events, the group’s other big focus is promoting the value of education among young folks.
Diop explained why.
“We strongly believe that creating forums for youth to develop, express, and enhance their talent is a great deterrent against negative social patterns and behavior,” said Diop. “We strive as a model for becoming productive citizens in our community.”
Recently, her group announced the Anita M. Diop Scholarship of Excellence award for high school graduating seniors and college freshman students.
Eligible students can start applying now for a chance to win a minimum of $500. Application form is available through the group’s website. Contestants must be Columbus area high school graduates in 2011 or entering as a freshman in a trade, or vocational school, college or university to qualify.
Those who qualify must submit their application with a two-page essay due by the April 15 deadline. The essay should be submitted to: email@example.com. It should focus on the theme of the contest, “Living the American Dream as an African American or African in America.”
In the composition, students are required to discuss their roadmap for how they plan to achieve the American dream, said Diop.
Successful applicants will be announced on or after May 15th.
As though she is not already involved in enough projects, Diop is also the Ohio Representative for the 6th Regional Diaspora Caucus for the African Union, a cabal that represents all African people born outside of the motherland.
As for how you can help with the festival, Diop said that her group is still accepting speakers, vendors, entertainers and contributor’s to the scholarship of excellence fund through PayPal.
For more information, contact the African Roots and Heritage Festival, at: 614.321.6390 or 614.390.8864. The group’s email address is: firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:b2eff282-28ea-4e2b-bbf3-00d4daefd7c4> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://onumba.com/woman%e2%80%99s-passion-for-african-culture-builds-bridges-promotes-knowledge/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720380.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00056-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947283 | 824 | 1.5 | 2 |
• June 8, 2022
The Waipoua Forest is home to ancient kauri trees, including the legendary Tāne Mahuta. Photo: Alex Cairns
The Waipoua Forest, home to the legendary Tāne Mahuta, will be treated with 1080 this winter, the first drop since 2014.
Conservationists hope the drop will significantly reduce pest numbers and allow the flora and fauna to recover.
Snow Tane, the general manager of Te Roroa Development Group, says his nephew recently ran a single poison line in the forest and killed more than 1100 possums.
“That’s telling you the gravity of the situation,” he says.
Kūkupa, the northern wood pigeon, are competing with pests for food, kōkako numbers are being challenged and there are no signs of short-tailed bats where they were thriving 10 years ago, he says.
Matt Calder, the Department of Conservation’s Kauri Coast spokesperson, says monitoring has shown the forest canopy health is also declining because of possum browsing.
Te Roroa iwi are kaitiaki of the forest and own the land as part of its treaty settlement. Its members are kaimahi on a number of DOC projects .
Calder says the kaumatua of Waipoua have the environmental awareness to see what is going on.
“They recognise needs to be done more than any of us, as they live in the forest and see it every day,” he says.
Calder says misinformation has hindered efforts to use 1080 in recent years, but DOC hopes to drop the toxin more regularly in the future.
Snow Tane, general manager of Te Roroa Development Group.
“When [people] see the different treatments and see how they were applied, and see what the results are, that is really key to maintaining that social licence when comes up again," Tane says.
He says when whānau from Matatina and Pananawe marae in the Waipoua Forest Settlement voted on this year’s drop, there was 80 to 90 per cent approval.
Some younger people were asking questions, he says.
“But there was still a lot of the younger whānau who grew up listening to stories about how the forest was on the brink [of collapse].
“In the last 45 years, I’ve seen a myriad of changes with the Ngahere o Waipoua,” says Tane.
While working for the New Zealand Forest Service, he saw an explosion of possum numbers in the late 1980s.
“You could virtually drive down the road and see 20 or 30 possums in a 4 to 5km stretch.”
He says ecological collapse in the forest was “imminent”.
A graph shows the growth of kōkako pairs in the Waipoua and Mataraua forests. Recent aerial 1080 operations occurred during 2005, 2011 and 2014. Source: DOC
When the DOC first suggested using 1080, it got nearly 100 per cent buy-in from the whānau of Waipoua and it was “amazing” to see the forest come back from the brink, he says.
Subsequent drops were approved because people had seen the results, says Tane.
Calder says there were just five pairs of kōkako in a monitored area of the Waipoua and Mataraua forests before the first 1080 drop.
By 2016 there were 60 pairs in that area.
Calder says he believes extensive trapping lines help, but have their limitations.
He says when the forest produces an abundance of food rat numbers increase and "ground control infrastructure" just cannot deal with the number of animals.
Using 1080 can cover a large area, kill via secondary poisoning, and stay in the forests canopy when pests may not need to prowl the ground, he says.
As well, Tane says, the forest is vast and the terrain is too rugged to put traps everywhere.
“When you’re working in a highly impacted kauri-dieback forest, you can not apply normal trappings,” he says. | <urn:uuid:3f6e9a8c-87ae-4046-89ad-ac0ef98b3ef5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://tewahanui.nz/environment/waipoua-forest-will-get-first-1080-drop-in-eight-years | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571234.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811042804-20220811072804-00073.warc.gz | en | 0.962796 | 896 | 2.546875 | 3 |
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A new report released today by HealthGrades found that from 2008 to 2010, emergency admissions for heart attack decreased slightly (1.7 percent) for Medicare patients, but admissions for stroke increased by 2.2 percent. Heart attack and stroke were among the conditions with the highest mortality rates, with nearly one in 10 heart attack patients dying, and nearly one in 10 stroke patients (9.24 percent) dying, after admission to the hospital.
Dr. David Seaberg, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), said the information is useful for tracking mortality rates for heart attack and stroke patients who are admitted to the hospital, although the report itself is a measure of inpatient hospital care, not emergency care.
“The information about heart attack and stroke admissions is not surprising,” said Dr. Seaberg. “Emergency physicians encourage all adults, especially seniors, to know the warning signs of stroke and heart attack. It’s important to err on the side of caution, call 911 and get to the nearest emergency department as soon as possible if you think you’re having a stroke or heart attack.”
According to the report, nearly two-thirds (61 percent) of hospital admissions among seniors begin in the emergency department, more than any other age group.
The new data are being released in HealthGrades “2012 Emergency Medicine in American Hospitals” report, in which they rank the nation’s top hospitals. Read More | <urn:uuid:937f230b-4c85-4272-9f86-cb5a69aec4dd> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.nmqf.org/emergency-department-admissions-down-for-heart-attack-up-for-stroke-new-report-says/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00146-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941298 | 325 | 1.75 | 2 |
Animal sanctuary about compassion
Indraloka Animal Sanctuary in Mehoopany is a place where compassion is practiced - and taught. In hosting area school groups, including students from Scranton High School, Scranton Prep, Abington Heights and private children's clubs, Indraloka has a mission of helping children of all ages understand the value of life.
It's a lesson, that didn't go unnoticed during a visit by eighth-grade members of Abington Heights ecology club, including Emily Barrett, Austin Catania, Kelsey Jackson, Kayla Thorpe, Ben Ulmer and Jeremy Wombacher, who got to see first-hand how the choices they make daily contribute to their own health and a kinder, greener world, while interacting with the once-frightened but now calm and loving animal residents of Indraloka, Lynn Braz reports.
"So much of what we do in our everyday lives involves degrees of stress and at such a quick pace," Mike Fried, a science teacher at Abington Heights and faculty adviser for the eighth- to 12th-grade ecology clubs, told Lynn, adding, "The time we spend at Indraloka Animal Sanctuary is quite the opposite. The animals remind us of what is most important ... compassion, sincerity, friendship, and patience. Their pace is deliberate and with purpose. ... What we take from the sanctuary are lessons quickly incorporated into our own lives, and not soon forgotten."
Marie Donnelly, a teacher at Scranton Prep agreed. "My students learned not only about the conditions in which animals lived prior to coming to the sanctuary, but also how much work it takes to keep the animals healthy and happy," Marie said.
Nestled amid the Endless Mountains, Indraloka sits on 30 acres of Mehoopany farmland, and contains four barns and numerous smaller structures that house 160 animals, including horses, pigs of all sizes and breeds, cows, mules, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, cats, geese, ducks, three dogs and one peacock, according to Lynn.
Kelly Judge of Scranton was among the University of Scranton student volunteers who sorted through donated gifts, which were distributed to those in need by United Neighborhood Centers and Friends of the Poor, as well as Head Start and area group homes. The items were collected through the university's Center for Service and Social Justice annual Giving Tree and Adopt an Angel drives. ... Wyoming Seminary senior Dakota Pace of Lake Ariel received a 2012 Alumni Service award during Sem's recent homecoming festivities in recognition of exceptional student leadership and service to the campus community. The son of Barbara Warren-Pace and Andrew Pace of Lake Ariel, Dakota serves as a Levi Sprague Fellow and is active in the film club, engineering club, calligraphy club and photography club. He is a member of the cross country team and founder of the school's mountain biking club. Dakota is a member of the Boy Scouts and serves as senior patrol leader for Troop 102 in Lake Ariel, where he is completing his Eagle Scout project.
Senior Networking Alliance members including: Nancy Burns, Cyndi Coleman, Darlene Dalesandro, Krista DiRienzo, Jessica Engel, Georgette Fetchko, Mary Gaffney, Theresa Gilhooley, Jane Hoffner, Sylvia Kolosinski, Maria Maletta-Hastie, William Kreis, Louise Ligi, Alice McDonnell, Ken Motichka, Rebecca Munley, Rhondi Nachlis, Mary O'Donnell, Jeanne Phillips, Kristen Polidori, Beth Rossi, Gerri Sanitate, Beth Shechner, Mike Sokolowski, Linda Steier, Anita Waznik and Corrine Yanul, donated blankets to "Be a Santa to a Senior" during their annual holiday breakfast. | <urn:uuid:bf865ccc-8403-4d40-b907-df2406635a54> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/namedropper-1-13-13-1.1429021 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280835.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00476-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951093 | 785 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation that would slash what National Aeronautics and Space Administration spends on earth sciences, including funds that go toward researching global warming.
Texas Rep. Lamar Smith and fellow Republicans on the House Science Committee passed a bill that would cut funding for earth science at NASA while increasing funding for space exploration. Republicans have heavily criticized NASA for focusing too much on global warming while neglecting the reason it was created: to explore space.
“For more than 50 years, the U.S. has led the world in space exploration,” Smith said in a statement. “We must restore balance to NASA’s budget if we want to ensure the U.S. continues to lead in space for the next 50 years. And we must continue to invest in NASA as the only government agency responsible for space exploration.”
Smith’s bill directs funding towards developing NASA’s ability to access the International Space Station and launching “American astronauts on American rockets from American soil.” The bill also directs funding at manned deep space exploration missions to places like Mars.
Democrats, however, said the bill cuts Earth sciences funding at a time when global warming is getting worse and needs more attention.
“Despite the fact that in January NASA announced 2014 was likely the warmest year since 1880, it should come as no surprise that the majority wants to cut funding for climate science,” wrote Texas Rep. Eddie Johnson, the ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee.
“Of course, NASA’s earth science program is much, much more than just climate science,” she wrote. “Basically, NASA’s earth science program provides critical measurements and research on planet Earth as a system and how it is changing over time.”
Some science associations have come out against the Republican bill, saying it cuts much needed funding to study the natural world. Other science groups, mainly focusing on space, praised the bill. The commercial space flight lobby was one such group that supported the bill.
House Republicans aren’t the only ones who have called into question NASA’s priorities in recent months. In March, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz chastised NASA for focusing too much on global warming and not enough on space exploration. | <urn:uuid:67d9eaac-9ab0-40fe-b710-13adf4a8cb2a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.netzerowatch.com/us-congress-slashes-nasas-global-warming-research-budget/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573163.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818033705-20220818063705-00068.warc.gz | en | 0.947155 | 466 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Early in life I had a penchant for discovering how things worked and were put together. I rarely utilized the instructions that were included with models and toys. I have always been a visual learner and enjoyed figuring out how things are made. With both my parents being scientists, I approach situations with the idea of discovery. My childhood memories inform my designs. Whether playing in the prairies with friends, catching lizards and snakes, or backpacking in the mountains with my parents – I have always enjoyed the process of exploration. Ironically, I was not a particularly good student in school. If I was not interested in the subject, I would draw in lieu of taking notes. A high school biology class with Mr. Wisner changed that. This is where I made the connection between exploration and learning. Through deep questioning, the world opened up to me and I began to approach life with the understanding that all things can influence our journey. Life is a cyclical process where events, experiences, knowledge and actions are valuable and help create an impact. My experiences have influenced my process of making. My paintings are created through a process of spontaneous drawing, allowing my mind to conjure images and marks that relate to past experiences.
Instead of a linear process, I work in a spiral that allows influences from multiple sources to interact with each other. The result is one that was not conceived prior to starting. An intuitive approach allows me the opportunity to explore ideas without physical limitations. My constructions represent a series of explorations with "architectural" implementations. I have always worked with my hands both sketching and model building to develop the spatial aspects of a design. The use of different materials helps to designate texture, shape and tone. For me these pieces indicate potential architectural events, details and feelings. Several recent pieces have evolved from memories of visiting my father's Botany lab as a child. I viewed items under the microscope and "assisted" my dad in preparing plant specimens on the plant press. I would tag-along on field studies with his students, gathering plants and sketching. This was my introduction to the lifelong process of discovery. I have managed to incorporate this method into my own form of research and exploration with my work. | <urn:uuid:0c06f415-1a81-41dc-be70-4e62ad4d060b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.redlineart.org/kelton-osbourn | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280899.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00577-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972991 | 447 | 1.640625 | 2 |
A rising demand for shark fin soup is wiping out more than 73 million sharks every year, fuelling a practice labelled the marine “gold rush”.
Finning, when a shark’s fin is sliced off while at sea and the body dumped back into the ocean, is rampant in many regions – fins are one of the most expensive seafood items, ending up mostly in soup. The delicacy had been particularly popular in China but a nationwide conservation campaign saw consumption drop 80% since 2011.
However, demand is still huge in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, and growing in other parts of Asia, such as Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia, according to conservation organisation WildAid.
In the UK, where shark finning is banned – as it is in all EU states – the soup is still on the menu in as many as a dozen restaurants, although many others have now stopped serving it, according to the charity Bite-Back Shark and Marine Conservation. The dish can cost up to £180 a bowl.
People ordering the soup in the UK are likely to be consuming endangered species, said Graham Buckingham, Bite-Back’s campaign director. International trading agreements governed by the World Trade Organization allow a fin trade in most countries.
“It is perfectly legal for any adult travelling to Europe to bring 20kg of shark fins as part of their personal import allowance,” he said.
“People caught bringing meat or cheese into Europe would have that seized and destroyed. However, somehow, 20kg of shark fins is OK. It’s enough to make 705 bowls of soup and would be worth around £3,500 on the black market.”
Shark finning has been banned in European vessels and waters since 2003. EU regulation was tightened in 2013 to require “all EU vessels to land sharks with their fins still naturally attached to the carcass”, according to Ali Hood, director of conservation at the Plymouth-based Shark Trust.
But a shark fin ban is something different, she said. “This represents a ban on the trade of a product within a country – something that is not applied in the UK or EU. Hence, fins from certain sharks can be legally traded and sold to the public for consumption.
“Confidence that fins that are seen for sale come from managed fisheries and not protected species is the challenge – traceability is essential, and there are those who feel that a ban on all shark fins is the answer. However, simply banning fins doesn’t necessarily curb shark mortality.”
More than a quarter of the world’s shark species are threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. After finning, sharks are often alive as they are discarded overboard to die of suffocation, bleeding or being eaten by other predators.
Although shark finning is rife in many regions, Pacific islands including Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu have succeeded in almost eradicating it – a success story in an otherwise dark global picture. New data from the Marine Stewardship Council shows shark finning has significantly declined among the island states of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement.
Indonesia is one of the world’s largest producers of shark fins. In Hong Kong, which accounts for 40% of global shark fin trade, imports remain anecdotally “quite high”, although official figures show declining trends in recent years.
Last September Hong Kong’s largest restaurant chain, Maxim’s, under pressure from campaigners, announced that shark fins would be banned from all its outlets from January 2020.
Susan Millward, marine animal programme director at the US-based Animal Welfare Institute, said rising demand puts sharks at risk. “Their slow reproductive rates make them extremely vulnerable to extinction. The disappearance of sharks – apex predators in many ecosystems – causes dangerous imbalances in marine communities worldwide.”
Shark finning is illegal in US waters, but, according to the Animal Welfare Institute, the country “continues to perpetuate the practice by providing a market for shark fin products”. There are already bans on trading shark fin in 12 states.
Mariah Pfleger, marine scientist at advocacy group Oceana, said a nationwide ban was needed: “Right now, it is impossible to know if a shark fin in the US is a product of finning.
“California has had a ban since 2012, yet government data indicates shark fins are still coming into Los Angeles and being transported through interstate commerce,” she said.
“Even as companies and states close the door on the shark fin trade, other doors remain open, and the market shifts accordingly. After California and Illinois enacted their bans, shark fin trade activity shifted primarily to Texas. Once Texas implemented its own shark fin trade ban, trade in shark fins moved to Georgia. A federal ban will eliminate this game of whack-a-mole.” | <urn:uuid:f1925b91-e0a4-468f-b44d-9051020f0858> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/04/marine-gold-rush-demand-shark-fin-soup | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571692.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812105810-20220812135810-00067.warc.gz | en | 0.947233 | 1,022 | 2.65625 | 3 |
OLYMPIA (AP) — Washington residents recycled slightly less in 2012 than the year before, but the recycling rate still surpassed a 50 percent goal set by state law.
The Ecology Department reported Tuesday the state’s recycling rate was 50.1 percent in 2012, down from 50.7 percent in 2011.
Officials say the national recycling average was nearly 35 percent in 2011.
Residents recycled more than 4.4 million tons of stuff in 2012. That’s about 3 ½ pounds per person per day. Officials say recycling materials instead of sending it to landfills saved the state from emitting about 2.6 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
Officials say recycling conserves energy, helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduces residents’ exposure to toxic chemicals.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:73fb7049-9cbd-4aa5-87d6-d1d20ec947d4> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2013/12/11/state-recycling-rate-down-slightly-in-2012/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283689.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00348-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908096 | 182 | 2.875 | 3 |
Bad breath, medically known as halitosis, can be a sign of a variety of health problems. Poor breath can be made worse by the food you eat and other bad habits you engage in. You can treat and prevent halitosis at home and also with the help of your dentist or doctor.
How Does Food Affect Breathing?
According to WebMD Everything that enters your mouth is first broken down there. The air you exhale can also be affected by what you eat, which enters your bloodstream and travels to your lungs. If you consume food with strong flavors or smells, mouthwash, flossing, and brushing won’t do much to hide the taste or smell for the rest of the meal. There is no certainty that the stink will go away until all of the food has been digested.
What Health Problems Are Associated With Bad Breath?
Bad breath and a bad taste in people’s mouths are early indicators of gum disease. Plaque builds up on teeth, which is one of the main things that causes periodontal disease to get worse.
Bacteria create toxins that cause the gums to swell and become inflamed. Untreated gum disease can cause damage to the gums and jawbone.
Yeast infections in the mouth, poor-fitting dental appliances, and cavities can all cause bad breath in the mouth.
A medical condition that can produce bad breath, dry mouth (also known as xerostomia), is also a risk factor. Saliva is important because it keeps the mouth moist, neutralizes the acids in plaque, and gets rid of dead cells on the tongue, gums, and cheeks.
If they aren’t removed, these cells degrade and cause bad breath. Dry mouth can be a side effect of some medications, salivary gland problems, or frequent mouth breathing.
Open-mouthed sleepers are more likely to wake up to unpleasant breath.
Among the many conditions that can result in bad breath are:
1. Allergies to certain seasons
2. Respiratory tract infections such as pneumonia
4. Long-term (chronic) sinus infections
7. Acid reflux
8. Gastrointestinal problems
9. Chronic pulmonary infection
10. Liver or kidney problems:
What Can I Do to Prevent Bad Breath?
1.Brush your teeth after you eat.
2. Floss your teeth at least once a day.
3. Clean your tongue.
4. Care for dentures and dental appliances.
5. Avoid having a dry mouth.
6. Modify your diet
7. Replace your toothbrush on a regular basis
8. Schedule regular dental checkups. | <urn:uuid:51edd367-5b0d-42d8-96af-07c703d2583e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ebinaija.com/causes-of-mouth-odour-and-ways-to-prevent-it/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572033.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814113403-20220814143403-00278.warc.gz | en | 0.918311 | 573 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Big Island ARRL News, 20 November 2016, 03:25 hrs, UTC, Post #46.
Accessed on 20 November 2016, 03:25 hrs, UTC.
Source: National Weather Service and the ARRL.
Please click link to read the full story.
Now that Hawaii and the coastal areas of the United States have survived a difficult 2016 hurricane season, planning begins for the 2017 hurricane season with the revamping and refinement of emergency system alert codes for emergency management agencies and Amateur Radio supporting groups such as ARES and SATERN (Salvation Army).
Among the new codes are designations for Extreme Wind Warning (EWW) and Storm Surge Watch (SSW).
According to the FCC, current equipment can be used until communications equipment can be updated with the new codes.
More information will be released as the FCC releases the codes and the protocols necessary to implement these new alert codes.
Radio amateurs serving with ARES, CERT, and SATERN teams should be aware of these changes. Please refer to the full story for additional details.
For the latest ARRL news and information, please check the blog sidebars. These news feeds are updated daily.
Opinions expressed in this blog are mine unless otherwise stated.
For breaking news of interest to radio amateurs, please visit this site:
For breaking news from the science and technology community, please visit this site:
For articles concerning antenna theory and practice, please visit this site:
http://kh6jrm.blogspot.com (Simple Ham Radio Antennas)
Please send your newsworthy items to firstname.lastname@example.org at least two weeks before your event. I’ll then contact our local print and broadcast media.
Thanks for joining us today!
Aloha es 73 de
Russell Roberts (KH6JRM)
ARRL Public Information Coordinator
Hawaii County, ARRL Pacific Section | <urn:uuid:45bc01d0-b73b-4ff2-ac6f-5bd35380a7ee> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://bigislandarrlnews.com/2016/11/19/fcc-approves-new-emergency-alert-system-event-codes-for-the-2017-hurricane-season/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573029.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817153027-20220817183027-00272.warc.gz | en | 0.880126 | 402 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Content Related Links
Weights and MeasuresIf you need to hire weights or want to query a short measure whether alcohol, petrol, coal or other substance sold by quantity please call one of our Trading Standards Officers for assistance.
We give advice on selling goods by quantity, packing goods for retail sale, calibration of scales or weights, average quantity and e marking, etc.
For more information visit the Trading Standards website.
Back to the Trading Standards home page.
- Trading Standards Service
Business Hub 15
Level 3 South
Phone: 03000 200 292
Fax: 01224 523887
Frequently Asked Questions
- Can I still ask for a pound (lb) of apples and a quarter (1/4) of boiled ham?
- How do I know the trader's scales are accurate?
- I bought a pint of beer in my local pub and the glass was not full, is this legal?
- I have bought some goods and when I got home I weighed them on my own scales and the weight seems to be wrong, what can I do?
- I put £10 worth of petrol in my car and the gauge didnít move as far as it normally does. Is the pump giving short measure?
- Should goods be sold in metric quantities?
- Should my local shop provide a scale for my use?
- Who do I complain to about short weight or measure?
- Will Trading Standards staff test weighing and measuring equipment? | <urn:uuid:a9bf7d32-7283-4ceb-a7dc-a6f5954bc1d8> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/business_trade/trading_standards/trs_weights.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284405.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00036-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916264 | 301 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Today marks the 77th anniversary of the United States dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. It would be followed by another bombing of Nagasaki, just days later, on 9 August 1945.
These were acts of barbarism; both war crimes and crimes against humanity.
By the end of 1945, over 140,000 people in Hiroshima had been killed, many in the initial blast, but many others from radiation and other injuries as a result of the bombing.
Nuclear weapons leave their mark on individuals, communities and environments for decades or longer. In the decades following, many others continued to suffer and perish as a result of cancers and other complications developed from the bombing radiation. This story is still told by survivors of the attacks, the Hibakusha.
We give thanks to the Hibakusha for their continued leadership and voices in the struggle for a world free from nuclear weapons.
There is no possible meaningful humanitarian response to nuclear weapons. As threats of nuclear weapons use increase, our message is clear. We must abolish these weapons.
Today we remember all of those killed as result of the Hiroshima bombing 77 years ago, and all of those who have died and been affected since.
We also recommit ourselves, in their memory, to the abolition of these weapons of mass destruction. | <urn:uuid:02593de5-77a3-4c3c-881b-ef5b4c8b9fab> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://youthfortpnw.net/statement-from-youth-for-tpnw-on-the-77th-anniversary-of-the-atomic-bombing-of-hiroshima%EF%BF%BC/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00067.warc.gz | en | 0.971139 | 262 | 3 | 3 |
Elkhorn teenager garnering national attention in snowskating
That's a luxury not all of Oakes' friends can brag about because their wheeled skateboards won't go in the snow.
Oakes doesn't have that problem. His board is a snowskate, a no-wheels version of a skateboard especially designed for snow.
"When there is snow, I just grab the snowskate and go out," said Oakes, a junior at Elkhorn High School.
In theory, the sport sounds a lot like snowboarding—mostly young athletes performing seemingly impossible tricks while riding a wooden board on snow. But in practice, snowskating is quite different.
"You're not attached to the board," Oakes explained. "You can jump and do all kinds of stuff. In snowboarding, you can't because the board is stuck to your feet."
Snowskaters can do flips, grind on railings and jump over obstacles. Oakes said skateboarding tends to be freer because it's easier to just cruise around.
But the winter sport has a big advantage.
"Snowskating doesn't hurt as bad," he said.
At 17, Oakes is making a name for himself in the realm of snowskating. He took second place among seasoned snowskaters during his first competition last year. In February, he took first place in two categories and overall best at the Midwest Open of Snowskating in Elkhorn. About a month later, he took first place at the Icon Classic competition in Massachusetts.
It was at the end of that competition that Icon Snowskates decided to sponsor Oakes as a professional rider. As a result of the sponsorship, he will begin designing his own board this summer. Icon will produce and sell the boards, passing down a percentage of the revenue to Oakes.
"He's such a talented kid," said Stephen Plays, president of Massachusetts-based Icon Snowskates. "This sponsorship is not lucrative for him yet, but obviously very exciting."
The sport has been around since about 1998, the year the first snowskates were commercially produced, Plays said. From there, snowskating has slowly gained recognition, mostly from skateboarders who wanted to continue practicing the sport during winter.
That's what happened with Oakes. An avid skateboarder, the Elkhorn boy had his first contact with a snowskate about three years ago. Now, he likes the winter sport better than skateboarding.
"I try to compete in skateboarding too," said Oakes. "But in snowskating, the company really helps me out with going to competitions and stuff."
Being a professional snowskater means going on competitions, and those take up lots of time. Oakes has missed quite a few days of school, prompting his mother, Sue Oakes, to think about home schooling.
That wasn't necessary, she said, because staff at Elkhorn High School have been understanding and supportive of her son's talent and dedication to the sport.
"They were willing to let him make up a lot of the work," she said.
Looking forward, Oakes hopes to the sport grows in popularity. Most snowskaters hail from the northeast, but the Elkhorn native is confident snowskating will become more recognized with time.
"It's not nearly as big as skateboarding or snowboarding," he said. "But it's kind of cool seeing the younger people getting into it."
Last updated: 1:46 pm Thursday, December 13, 2012 | <urn:uuid:f324ba22-877b-4969-b02e-ab49fe30333c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.gazettextra.com/news/2010/may/23/elkhorn-teenager-garnering-national-attention-snow/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280221.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00227-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985226 | 755 | 1.570313 | 2 |
This week a friend shared a story about her college-aged daughter Jane and her recent experience in finding a job. She is in graphic design and has a portfolio, so when she came across a well-known company that creates sports-branded gear that was hiring, it was something she wanted to pursue. She sent them her portfolio electronically, and they set up an interview using a chat forum. They asked a few questions and then asked her to fill out forms that were going to put her in the queue to receive work from them. She completed each one and recommended this to friends, who were all excited about this opportunity that would give them income, experience, and work on a contractor basis.
Until one of her friends paused as he was asked to give his social security number, his address, date of birth, banking information for payments rendered and so on.
You can see where this is going. They were hackers and they had just been handed Jane’s entire identity by merely dangling a carrot of opportunity in front of her.
How can you possibly think that a job interview is conducted over a chat room?
How can you hand over so much information without questioning what they need it for? Or without even questioning if it is legitimate?
We all likely asked ourselves the same things (and more), but then I thought about it. Jane is a young adult in her early twenties, she is intelligent, she is not reckless or careless and she has worked two jobs (at the same time) since I’ve known her. The point is this young woman isn’t a slug or reckless child.
Then I also realized that her generation wouldn’t question anything about interacting entirely online, never meeting face to face, or even via video. Electronic communication is their norm and oversharing is all part of the game too, so why would it be strange to have a job interview any other way? She was working at being an adult and making her own decisions to provide income, so we can’t fault her for that either.
Hackers know our weaknesses; they know how to gain our trust and they customize their attacks based on the audience. You think you know what you’d do, but that’s because you can see things clearly from the outside when you aren’t the target. When you’re in it, you’re less likely to see it so obviously. Humans are after all, only human.
As we work to protect our homes, our businesses, our identity, and our families, let’s remember that smart cybersecurity is like a streaming account – everyone is going to have a different profile but still be using the same platform. Yet the commonality among all of it is that humans are the weak link that will inevitably be the way a cybercriminal gets in the door. We need to be less judgmental in how it happened, and more united in making sure that it doesn’t happen. We link virtual arms to make a strong defense, and know that each of us needs the other to be stronger. | <urn:uuid:11ab9408-1598-4025-b9a2-5229b3d7d042> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.breachsecurenow.com/degree-of-awareness/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572908.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817122626-20220817152626-00068.warc.gz | en | 0.983789 | 630 | 1.9375 | 2 |
The HeartQuest – Heart Rate Variability Monitor is the perfect time-effective tool to monitor and analyse the heart’s beating patterns within just 300 heartbeats.
The HeartQuest is a widely recognised and accepted heart monitoring tool that produces a range of accurate readings and measurements in as little as five minutes, including:
- Electrocardiogram results
- Brainwave patterns
- Breathing patterns
- Neuro-hormonal regulations
- Psychological and emotional condition
- Meridian energies and much more | <urn:uuid:07ead702-9c08-4917-808a-ac724a5059a2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.medicahealth.org/product/heartquest-heart-rate-variability-monitor/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572033.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814113403-20220814143403-00266.warc.gz | en | 0.871691 | 109 | 1.929688 | 2 |
If you’ve ever dealt with litigation over workplace stress, you’ll be glad to know that the court doesn’t always side with the employees. Here are a couple of examples:
- Some times referred to as the “Goldilocks decision”, the first case involves a plaintiff who requested an accommodation of a less stressful job. The transfer was allowed. The employee didn’t find the transfer to be interesting enough so asked for the accommodation of a transfer to a middle-of-the-road stress job. The court held that it was not reasonable to ask for a “just right amount of stress” job.
- In November of last year, a Florida District Court decided that an employee cannot immunize herself or himself from stress and criticism in general. In this case the employee had requested an accommodation from a supervisor’s “hostile confrontations.” The court commented that the obligation to make a reasonable accommodation does not extend to providing an “aggravation-free” or “peaceful calm” environment.
Yet, it’s not all good news. California employers continue to deal with hostile environment and constructive discharge claims arising out of what is described as “bullying.”
The courts have made it clear that the manner of conducting discipline rises to the statutory definition of abusive conduct when the discipline is “harshly and constantly criticizing” of one individual. Public criticism of an employee often is seen as unprofessional and stress producing.
On the other hand, most states have uniformly found that stress claims arising out of disciplinary action or performance improvement plans are not covered under workers’ compensation law.
A Case in Point: An employer recently allowed an employee who was the vice president of finance to work at home. The VP’s job required her to be available for on the spot determinations regarding cash flow. The employee said that she suffered from an anxiety disability and requested an accommodation that she be given 15 minutes time before responding to telephone requests for cash flow estimates. It would seem that this would not be a reasonable accommodation because it would reduce the company’s ability to compete. Nonetheless the employee filed a lawsuit.
Although this seemed like a frivolous claim, the company narrowly avoided bankruptcy given the huge legal fees they were forced to pay.
Clearly these doctrines are in conflict. How are employers supposed to navigate these murky waters when legal authority is uncertain?
So, what is learned from this? It’s important to train managers to run to the HR department whenever the word “stress” crops up. Additionally, managers should be trained that discipline should always take place in private. In our society, yelling at an employee in front of coworkers is thought to be abusive.
Reduce risk by always engaging in an interactive process when an accommodation is requested. At these sessions, employees can learn what the rules require—and what they don’t—in terms of reasonableness of requests. Make sure they know that a Goldilocks accommodation is not reasonable.
Finally, in job interviews and in job descriptions it should be clear that some jobs involve pressure. Employees should be aware that the ability to handle pressure and ambiguity is a requirement of the job. | <urn:uuid:4464e8b5-1e5c-4531-acfd-e18a3ce5d46c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://hrlegalresults.com/2017/05/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573399.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818185216-20220818215216-00068.warc.gz | en | 0.963781 | 670 | 1.625 | 2 |
- "Warmaster: from our scouts. Ralroost and forty other warships have just reverted from darkspace."
"That would be Traest Kre'fey."
- ―A Yuuzhan Vong battle tactician and Warmaster Nas Choka
The Bothans commenced the manufacture of Bothan Assault Cruisers in the aftermath of the Bastion Accords, a peace treaty signed in 19 ABY which ended the long-running Galactic Civil War between the New Republic and the Galactic Empire. Although the construction of the Bothan Assault Cruisers in peacetime was a point of controversy, the warships made their way into the New Republic Defense Force. Ralroost was assigned to the command of Bothan Admiral Traest Kre'fey of the New Republic First Fleet, who hand-picked his crew, the majority of whom were members of his own species. By 25 ABY, Kre'fey's command was stationed in the Outer Rim Territories.
During the Yuuzhan Vong War it was Admiral Traest Kre'fey's personal flagship. The vessel carried Rogue Squadron during the initial weeks of the Yuuzhan Vong War, where they scoured the Outer Rim hunting for the Yuuzhan Vong. Its communications officer was Lieutenant Arr'yka and its shield officer was Commander Grai'tvo.
The Ralroost first engaged substantial Yuuzhan Vong forces in the Battle of Ithor, where the planet was destroyed in spite of the fleet's best efforts. The ship also participated in the Battle of Coruscant, as the flagship of Fleet Group One. After the fleets scattered, the Ralroost went to Kashyyyk, where it and the ships that accompanied it staged raids from Duro to Ylesia to weaken the Yuuzhan Vong and train New Republic forces.
After three months of conducting such raids, the Ralroost headed to Treskov 115-W, a main-sequence star in the Deep Core, to prepare for an ambush of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet. For several weeks they trained and built up their defenses in the system, until they were attacked by an enormous Yuuzhan Vong force. The ambush was successful, destroying nearly a third of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet deployed, and the Ralroost went back to Kashyyyk.
The path to CoruscantEdit
- "General Antilles. On your say–so I'm prepared to move Ralroost and elements of the First Fleet to Corulag."
- ―Traest Kre'fey, to Wedge Antilles
The Ralroost remained on station over Contruum Six with the rest of the Galactic Alliance Defense Fleet. The war room of Kre'fey's flagship was once again a meeting point for the military commanders who would be coordinating the strike on Coruscant. Several briefings were held before a final discussion was held 72 hours before the planned assault, at which Sovv; Brand; Bel Iblis; Antilles; Farlander; Pellaeon and other military figures were present. Chief of State Omas and several of his advisers communicated via hologram. Once several Jedi Masters, including the Skywalkers, Kenth Hamner, Cilghal and Madurrin arrived, the meeting commenced. While Kre'fey, Sovv and other military leaders were eager to press the attack on Coruscant, the Jedi urged caution, believing that the presence of Zonama Sekot in the Coruscant system along with the heretical uprising playing out on the capital's surface could bring about the defeat of Shimrra without the need for a fullscale battle. The military approach was prioritized, with the Jedi agreeing to use Zonama Sekot as a diversion for Warmaster Nas Choka's fleet. Elements of the Defense Fleet began moving out. For the time being, the Ralroost remained on station over Contruum 6.
Generals Antilles, Farlander, Bel-Iblis and Celchu was dispatched to recapture Corulag, which would allow the Defense Fleet a platform from which the assault on Coruscant could be launched. Kre'fey waited on Antilles' signal that Corulag was secure before moving Ralroost and elements of the First Fleet to the system. Contacting Antilles, Kre'fey informed the Human general that he had one hour to secure Corulag, as he feared that Nas Choka might strike at the Contruum staging point. To prevent the plan from falling apart, Kre'fey moved elements of Third and Fourth Fleets toward the Coruscant on different approaches, while ordering Antilles and his fellow generals to travel to Muscave, one of the outer worlds of the Coruscant system. In the following hours, the massed Contruum fleet separated as Kre'fey's orders were carried out. While Antilles formed a line at Muscave, Pellaeon and the Fourth Fleet led the attack on the Yuuzhan Vong defense fleet arrayed over Coruscant.
Return to CoruscantEdit
- "Order all vessels to converge on Ralroost."
- ―Nas Choka
Ralroost, grouped with forty other warships, emerged in the Coruscant system in between Muscave and Coruscant. The bulk of Nas Choka's armada was arrayed at Muscave combatting the forces of Antilles and Farlander, while simultaneously launching attacks on Zonama Sekot. On Ralroost's arrival, Kre'fey formed up his battle group and advanced rapidly on Coruscant to reinforce the Third and Fourth Fleets. Seated in his command chair on the bridge of the Bothan Assault Cruiser, Kre'fey reflected on the battle, which was fiercely fought both at Muscave and Coruscant. Despite the reported death of Supreme Overlord Shimrra, the fighting showed no signs of abating. While Kre'fey was pondering whether to retreat the Galactic Alliance Defense Fleet or press the attack despite the losses he would incur, the captain of Ralroost reported that Nas Choka's personal battle group had entered hyperspace and were expected to emerge imminently over Coruscant.
Ralroost remained in the thick of battle; once Nas Choka's flotilla arrived, however, the situation became more complicated. Supreme Overlord Shimrra's personal warship entered orbit and began moving toward Choka's battle group. As it did so, Ralroost suddenly became the target of Choka's entire flotilla. All of the warmaster's warships converged on the Bothan Assault Cruiser and subjected it to a punishing assault. Ralroost sustained significant damage, losing much maneuverability. When Shimrra's warship suddenly detonated in a fiery explosion, however, the Yuuzhan Vong surrender soon followed. The assault on Ralroost ceased—the Bothan Assault Cruiser had fought on the frontlines of the Yuuzhan Vong War since its commencement, and had survived the four years of conflict.
Commanders and crewEdit
- "On Kre'fey's heels, then?"
"Place his vessel in our sights."
- ―A Yuuzhan Vong battle tactician and Nas Choka
Ralroost operated as the flagship of Admiral Traest Kre'fey, a Bothan who had entered one of his species' less prestigious military academies and received a more open-minded education in consequence. Kre'fey's rise through the ranks of the New Republic military was rapid, in part due to the resignation of several senior Bothan military figures following the political debacle that was the Caamas Document Crisis.
- The New Jedi Order: Dark Tide I: Onslaught (First appearance)
- The New Jedi Order: Dark Tide II: Ruin
- The New Jedi Order: Edge of Victory II: Rebirth
- The New Jedi Order: Star by Star
- The New Jedi Order: Destiny's Way
- The New Jedi Order: Ylesia
- The New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force
- Legacy of the Force: Invincible (Appears in flashback(s)) | <urn:uuid:8bfbebbd-8140-42f5-8cc2-a95f2e7f9f65> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ralroost | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280065.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00540-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955379 | 1,712 | 1.8125 | 2 |
It’s only March and the nation's stress level is already at a record high. Many people could benefit from learning about positive psychology, the scientific study of what makes humans content and how to sustain that feeling of fulfillment. From March 16 through 18 at the second-annual World Happiness Summit, scientists, educators, entrepreneurs, athletes, and artists will present their research and share their experiences in living happy and thriving lives.
“Happiness propels success, excellence, creativity, and mental and physical health,” says Karen Guggenheim, founder and CEO of the World Happiness Summit (WOHASU). “Our purpose is to unite people from all over the world and bring them together in an experiential event where they can listen to the world’s leading experts in [positive psychology]... They will present their science with actionable tools so people can find a way to implement it in their everyday lives.”
Each morning of the three-day summit will begin with an hour-and-a-half yoga and meditation session. The day is then organized into presentations by keynote speakers — such as lecturer and author Tal Ben-Shahar, Google X chief business officer Mo Gawdat, and Olympian Allison Wagner — and breakout sessions on various wellness topics. Experts will discuss happiness and technology, nutrition, creativity, workplace happiness, parenting, relationships, and global happiness. To help attendees digest and personalize all of the information, WOHASU will group them into “tribes,” where a facilitator will guide each team in organizing and customizing the knowledge for personal application.
“Sustainable change works best in a group setting,” Guggenheim says. “When Monday rolls around, you’ve had a fun weekend and you can actually begin to practice what you learned on Monday morning and throughout the week.”
She adds, “A conference on happiness should be fun and happy, not clinical, boring, or cold,” so the experience won’t be entirely academic. Friday, filmmaker Stefan Sagmeister will discuss and screen The Happy Film
. The Friday and Saturday sessions will also include musical performances by Zoel and Guitars Over Guns, respectively.
WOHASU has donated tickets to Miami-Dade and Broward public schools, including Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. “We are faced with a huge challenge, tragedy, and a problem... We can start looking for solutions that are different and positive... [We can] engage in a dialogue that looks at the problems in a holistic way without blaming each other. How do we come together as a community and decide to do something different? By looking at the positive,” Guggenheim says.
But the price to find happiness is steep: $599 for a three-day preregistration special and $799 for regular registration, according to WOHASU's website. Even a student pass costs $199. So New Times
asked Guggenheim to give some free advice that people can use now:
1. Remember what you are grateful for: “It’s hard to be unhappy when you are being grateful... Even if it sounds trivial, write three things you are grateful for and, if possible, describe them. You rewire your brain by connecting to these experiences. Put a piece of paper next to the nightstand and write three things you are grateful for [every night].”
2. Tell others you are grateful for them: “Twice a week, send an email or text that commends someone else. ‘Thank you for facilitating that meeting... or helping me not stress out when I was going on vacation.’ We don’t stop to do that. If something is late, we’ll send 50 emails. We inadvertently reinforce negativity and not positivity.”
3. Move your body, and do one thing at a time: “Engage in physical movement. Turn on the radio... and go crazy dancing. It’s fantastic. Go for a walk. Do not eat in front of your computer at work — you need to take breaks. Science proves that our brains are not meant to multitask.”
Finally, if you are struggling with depression, suicidal thoughts or gestures, or you just want to figure out what’s going on with your mental health, these free resources can help: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
(call 800-273-8255 or live-chat 24 hours a day), Switchboard 211
(dial 211 or 305-631-4211 24 hours a day), and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Miami-Dade County
(call 305-665-2540). Always remember that you are not alone and you matter.
World Happiness Summit
. Friday, March 16, through Sunday, March 18, at the Shalala Center at the University of Miami, 1330 Miller Dr., Coral Gables. Tickets cost $199 to $1,299 via happinesssummit.world. | <urn:uuid:97012c18-25fb-4bcb-90e8-a65ac47094f1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.miaminewtimes.com/arts/world-happiness-summit-miami-at-university-of-miami-march-17-18-10148965 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572063.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814173832-20220814203832-00672.warc.gz | en | 0.930358 | 1,053 | 2.15625 | 2 |
FRESNO, Calif. -- State officials say California cities cut their water use by a combined 31 percent in July, exceeding Gov. Jerry Brown's statewide mandate to conserve. The state's Water Resources Control Board released the most recent figures Thursday.
The governor has ordered cities to use 25 percent less as California endures a fourth year of drought. In June, the state conserved by 27 percent compared with 2013, the year before Brown declared a drought emergency.
Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, said the strong conservation figures show Californians understand the need to use less water.
“Californians’ response to the severity of the drought this summer is now in high gear and shows that they get that we are in the drought of our lives. This isn’t your mother’s drought or your grandmother’s drought, this is the drought of the century,” Marcus said in a statement.
She said regulators are now turning their attention to individual communities that aren't meeting their mandated targets. They're visiting each underperforming community to understand the problem; fines are also an option.
Brown signed an executive order on April 1 imposing mandatory water-use restrictions across the state. July’s water savings moved the state 228,940 acre-feet (74.6 billion gallons) closer to the goal of saving 1.2 million acre‑feet by February 2016. | <urn:uuid:0194a8d6-f354-44d0-b520-a38d3a1420b6> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/california-drought/california-drought-state-cut-water-use-31-percent-july-n417201 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570868.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808152744-20220808182744-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.946047 | 291 | 2.59375 | 3 |
NSW schools encouraged to adopt successful remote study method
The NSW Department of Education is being encouraged to take up a new way of supporting students remotely.
The Smith Family ran a program to help 100 disadvantaged students, by providing them with tutors in two hours of literacy and numeracy schooling for six months.
The families who took part were supplied with internet and a laptop.
Head of Research and Advocacy Anne Hampshire told Deborah Knight nine in 10 of them made more progress than is expected from the average student.
“Students increase their love of learning, their ability to persist when things got a bit challenging, to ask questions.”
Press PLAY below to hear the full interview | <urn:uuid:e568515e-634e-4aa1-9341-54424bd13732> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://2gb-com-preprod.macquariemedia.com.au/nsw-schools-encouraged-to-adopt-successful-remote-study-method/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571472.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811133823-20220811163823-00672.warc.gz | en | 0.970961 | 144 | 2.25 | 2 |
This Award is in recognition of Quallion’s novel electric battery assembly, solid polymer electrolyte, and lithium ion chemistry that offer a viable alternative to the regular lithium ion batteries.
Quallion’s Li-ion batteries serve the purpose of lightweight, safe, and long-life implantable batteries for medical, military, and aerospace applications. Its patented technology provides for reduced battery volume and brazed ceramic seal for batteries. The brazed ceramic seal offer safety to the cell while the ceramic material makes the device lightweight.
Batteries for implantable medical devices should ideally deliver more than 1 Ah over five years and also have mechanisms in place to prevent toxic leakage of materials, which enhance the safety of energy source device. Further, units must be designed to self-test and regulate on a daily basis and have alert indicators if further maintenance is required.
From this standpoint, Quallion’s Li-ion cells are qualified to power a wide range of devices. This includes cochlear implants, spinal-cord stimulators, glucose sensors, and cardiac rhythm management devices. Other medical applications include respirators, injection and infusion pumps, portable EKG and ultrasound equipment, and even electric wheelchairs.
“More of Quallion’s state-of-the-art Li-ion cells are implanted than those of any other manufacturer in the world,” says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Abhishek Dutta. “These batteries provide mission-critical reliability so that X-ray machines, monitoring devices, and other diagnostic equipment can be depended upon for fail-safe reliability at all times, even during a power failure.”
For military applications, large, heavy lead acid batteries that need frequent replacement have been the option till now. However, Quallion has the expertise to develop advanced power systems that function optimally in harsh conditions with maximum reliability.
“Though Li-ion batteries are intrinsically less safe than other technologies, Quallion has developed a proprietary enhancement to make its batteries safer,” notes Dutta. “With SaFE-LYTE™ and its specialized Matrix™ packaging technologies, Quallion’s batteries can withstand piercing and compression that might otherwise cause combustion in Li-ion cells.”
Quallion is also uniquely positioned to offer battery solutions to the satellite market. Its technology delivers unsurpassed energy density, a critical factor for any customer seeking a power solution for small spacecrafts or needing to shift more of the satellite mass from battery to payload. On a large communications or military satellite, the decision to go with Li-ion could reduce mass by hundreds of pounds and allow more strategic or revenue-producing payload.
Besides dedicating considerable resources to its R&D and testing wing, Quallion invests heavily in product quality assurance (QA) and has a strong focus on meeting dynamic customer needs.
Each year Frost & Sullivan presents this Award to the company that has carried out new research, which has resulted in innovation(s) that have or are expected to bring significant contributions to the industry in terms of adoption, change, and competitive posture. The Award recognizes the quality and depth of a company’s research and development program as well as the vision and risk-taking that enabled it to undertake such an endeavor.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.
About Quallion, LLC
Quallion, LLC (quallion.com) was founded in 1998 by biotechnology and aerospace entrepreneur Alfred E. Mann and Li-ion battery specialist Dr. Hisashi Tsukamoto. Quallion began as a medical device battery company and soon developed a range of novel enabling technologies, including the world’s smallest implantable secondary battery, as well as its proprietary Zero-Volt™ and SaFE-LYTE™ technologies. Quallion develops and manufactures state-of-the-art Li-ion battery technologies for the military, aerospace, medical and automotive industries. Leveraging its core engineering capabilities, Quallion has since expanded into the aerospace, military and automotive industries by focusing on niche applications where advanced battery technology, safety, reliability and custom engineering are most valued. Quallion’s services include designing, fabricating and manufacturing cells and battery packs and developing new battery chemistries.
About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, the Global Growth Consulting Company, partners with clients to accelerate their growth. The company's Growth Partnership Services, Growth Consulting and Career Best Practices empower clients to create a growth focused culture that generates, evaluates and implements effective growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan employs over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from more than 30 offices on six continents. | <urn:uuid:f8e19823-722a-40ba-9f45-6b89b0a4d7ee> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.przoom.com/news/29837/Quallion-Honored-by-Frost-and-Sullivan-for-its-Innovative-Li-ion-Batteries-and-Novel-Solid-Polymer-Electrolyte-Technology/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00393-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931229 | 1,017 | 2.03125 | 2 |
What are SuDS?
Surface water drainage is a critical element of flood risk management and mitigation.
The rate and volume of surface water run-off from developed sites and urban areas with extensive impermeable surfacing is typically far greater than an equivalent undeveloped greenfield site.
Historic drainage systems were designed to remove and discharge surface water run-off to the nearest watercourse as quickly as possible. This method of surface water management has worked without many problems for decades. But as urban areas grow ever larger, and climate change is resulting in storm events of increasing frequency and intensity, two problems have arisen:
- An increase in flood risk in watercourses and rivers as large volumes of run-off are flushed rapidly into the receiving system.
- Historic sewers and drains that were not designed to manage significant surface water flows are inevitably proving inadequate. This can result in increased surface water flooding and sewer surcharge in areas away from watercourses.
In order to combat this dual threat Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) are now widely adopted and considered standard practice when designing drainage systems for both new and existing development.
Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) aim to reduce pressures on drainage infrastructure, slow the flow to watercourses (“Source Control”), and mimic the natural hydrologic regime within a catchment. All of this can reduce the likelihood of flooding, whilst simultaneously providing additional visual, biodiversity and amenity benefits.
The drainage hierarchy sets out the preferential discharge destination for surface water run-off. Only where it is not practicable or possible to manage surface water run-off using the methods at the top of the hierarchy, should subsequent methods be considered.
- Collect run-off for re-use – Rainwater can be collected and used domestically for gardening and flushing toilets.
- Infiltration – Surface water is drains directly to ground.
- To a surface water body – Surface water should be conveyed into a nearby watercourse or water body.
- To a surface water sewer, highways drain or another separate surface water system.
- To a combined sewer – a last resort when no alternative options are available.
SuDS systems can be utilised regardless of where surface water run-off is ultimately discharged to.
SuDS can take many forms:
- Bioretention (e.g. rain gardens)
- Tree pits
- Filter drains
- Attenuation / Infiltration Basins
SuDS can be multi-functional, enhance biodiversity, improve water quality and provide educational opportunities.
There is now a significant amount of literature and case studies relating to the implementation and effectiveness of SuDS measures as can be found on the following websites:
How can FPS help?
FPS can help develop and design SuDS schemes for both new and existing development.
As part of any new development in England and Wales, the Lead Local Flood Authority is likely to require that SuDS are considered within the design. SuDS and surface water drainage design can also be incorporated within a Flood Risk Assessment (FRA) where required. | <urn:uuid:ece65702-f1c6-41fe-8fae-affe85aa2fd6> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://fpsenvironmental.co.uk/what-are-suds/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572408.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816151008-20220816181008-00668.warc.gz | en | 0.913542 | 684 | 3.828125 | 4 |
only 1 use
(click/touch triangles for details)
- ...full thirty feet high), became so insolent at seeing a creature so much beneath him, that he would always affect to swagger and look big as he passed by me in the queen's antechamber, while I was standing on some table talking with the lords or ladies of the court, and he seldom failed of a smart word or two upon my littleness; against which I could only revenge myself by calling him brother, challenging him to wrestle, and such repartees as are usually in the mouths of court pages.Part 2 — A Voyage to Brobdingnag (37% in)
There are no more uses of "repartee" in Gulliver's Travels.
Typical Usage (best examples) | <urn:uuid:e6d83291-c3db-4f20-8547-7514e9d9d814> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.verbalworkout.com/u/u105/u116830.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573876.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20220820012448-20220820042448-00067.warc.gz | en | 0.967527 | 168 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Michaela Mycroft, who suffers from cerebral palsy has become the first female quadriplegic to summit Mount Kilimanjaro, after reaching the top of the Uhuru Peak on the 3rd of September.
Michaela, better known as Chaeli, set of with her team of 'Kili Climbers' on the 29th of August, after undergoing extensive training to prepare for the ascent. This included altitude training to prevent altitude sickness and assembling a specialised team of guides, porters and fellow climbers capable of assisting Chaeli. She also needed a custom-made wheelchair specially designed to cope with the mountain terrain.
The team was led by Carel Verhoef who has climbed Kilimanjaro once a year for the past nine years. The entire journey was documented on sponsor Discover Africa's website and on social media using the hashtag #ClimbwithChaeli . The team also used a SPOT Gen3 tracker that was attached to Chaeli's wheelchair. This allowed for the team's position to be tracked every 10 minutes on a GPS map. The team also called home using a satellite phone to give updates on their journey.
Listen to this clip from the team confirming that they had reached the summit:
Chaeli and her team training in Cape Town in July 2015.
The custom-made wheelchair Chaeli used to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
Helen Zille wished Chaeli and her team well ahead of the climb:
About Chaeli and the Chaeli Campaign
Chaeli, together with her sister Erin and a couple of friends from school, founded the Chaeli Campaign in 2004 in order to raise the R20 000 she needed for a motorised wheelchair. What started out as a relatively small campaign has grown exponentially over the last 11 years with Chaeli and her team proudly participating in a number of Cape Argus Cycle Tours to raise awareness for disability.
Today, the campaign has expanded and now aims to "promote and provide the mobility and educational needs of disabled children under the age of eighteen years, throughout South Africa."
Chaeli, who celebrated her 21st birthday on Kilimanjaro on the 30th of August is currently studying a Bachelor of Social Sciences in Politics and Social Development at the University of Cape Town. She has received a number of noteable awards including the 2011 International Children's Peace Prize, the 2012 Nobel Peace Laureates’ Medal for Social Activism and the 2013 World of Children Youth Award.
SA women climb Mount Kilimanjaro for breast cancer awareness
Teen uses veggie power to conquer Kilimanjaro
Abandoned dog rescued from Poland's highest mountain | <urn:uuid:52055dd0-6960-4d3e-bb2c-600a80fc57fa> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.health24.com/Lifestyle/Woman/Your-body/South-African-Michaela-Mycroft-becomes-first-female-quadriplegic-to-summit-Mount-Kilimanjaro-20150904 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281649.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00438-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959808 | 552 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Airborne Operations in World War II
Benjamin Franklin, America's versatile commissioner in Paris, was so enthused by the success of hot air balloons in 1784 that he posed this interesting military question. "Where is the prince who can afford to cover his country with troops for its defense as that ten thousand men descend from the clouds might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief?".
A plan to drop the US 1st Infantry Division from a Handley-Page Bombers on the German controlled city of Metz was devised by a young officer on General Billy Mitchell's staff, Lewis H. Brereton. He presented the plan to General Billy Mitchell who supported it and took it to General "Black Jack" Pershing. "I proposed to him that in the spring of 1919, when I would have a great force of bombardment planes, he should assign one of the infantry divisions permanently to the Air Force, preferably the 1st division; that we would arm the men with a great number of machine guns and train them to go over the front in our large airplanes, which would carry ten or fifteen Soldiers. We could equip each man with a parachute, so when we desired to make a rear attack on the enemy, we could carry these men over the lines and drop them off at a prearranged strong point, fortify it, and we could supply them by aircraft with food and ammunition. Our low flying attack aviation would then cover every road in the vicinity, both day and night, so as to prevent the Germans falling on them before they could thoroughly organize the position. Then we could attack the Germans from the rear, aided by an attack from our Army from the front, and support the maneuver with our great Air Force."
Shortly after World War I, General Billy Mitchell proposed that parachuting troops from aircraft into combat could be effective. During the demonstration of his concept at Kelly Field at San Antonio, Texas, six soldiers parachuted from a Martin Bomber, safely landed, and in less than three minutes after exiting the aircraft had their weapons assembled and were ready for action. Although the U.S. observers dismissed the concept, not all of the observers arrived at the same conclusion.
The Soviets and Germans were impressed with the demonstration. The Soviet Union was the first nation to take a serious interest in parachuting as a means to introduce ground forces into battle. In the USSR, static line parachuting was introduced as a national sport and the population was encouraged to join the Russian Airborne Corps. The German observers eagerly grasped the idea and planners worked quickly to develop an effective military parachute organization.
For the first time, in August 1930 at Veronezh, Russia, Soviet paratroopers participated in military maneuvers. Their actions were so effective that a repeat performance was given in Moscow one month later. The Red Army created a test unit in 1931 and by 1935 was able to employ two battalions of parachute infantry in field exercises. By 1935 the Russians were off to a head start on Airborne warfare and made the world's first spectacular use of parachutists.
Beginning in the mid-1930s, several other European nations followed suit. The prewar Soviet example inspired enthusiasm among the Germans, French, and British. The British organized parachute forces in 1936 and used them continually in their maneuvers. The French organized a parachute battalion in 1938 but inactivated it in 1939.
Germany launched a particularly aggressive program, placing it in the air force under the command of a former World War I pilot, Major General Kurt Student. The German parachutists were complimented by glider units, an out-growth of the sport gliding program that developed flying skills while Germany was under Versailles Treaty restrictions on rearmament. By 1940 Hitler had 4,500 parachutists at his disposal, organized into six battalions. Another 12,000 men formed an air infantry division designed as an air-landed follow-up to a parachute assault. A force of 700 Ju-52 transport planes was available to carry these troops into combat and each Ju-52 could hold up to 15 men.
Despite their early entrance upon the Airborne stage the USSR made little use of Airborne troops in World War II. The Soviet Union made the first combat use of parachute forces. On 2 December 1939, as part of its initial abortive invasion of Finland, the Red Army dropped several dozen paratroopers near Petsamo behind the opposing lines. They apparently came down on top of a Finnish unit, which shot many of them before they reached the ground. Subsequent Soviet attempts during the Finnish campaign to employ airborne forces, all small in scale, met equally disastrous fates. Their later activities were principally concerned with the dropping of supplies and individuals for guerrilla activities.
It was left to the Germans to develop and use paratroopers and glider-borne soldiers in mass operations.Germany's first use of airborne forces achieved favorable results. As part of the April 1940 invasions of Norway and Denmark, the Luftwaffe assigned a battalion of paratroopers to seize several key installations. In Denmark, two platoons captured a vital bridge leading to Copenhagen, while another platoon took control of an airfield. In Norway, a company parachuted onto the airfield at Stavanger and quickly overwhelmed its 70 defenders, thus paving the way for the landing of 2,000 air infantrymen. Although these operations were critical to German success in the campaign, they received little attention at the time, perhaps due to the much larger and bloodier naval battles that occurred along the Norwegian coast.
German airborne forces achieved spectacular success just one month later. A mere 4000 German parachutists jumped in Holland in May 1940 and gained control of vital points that helped open the way for the ground armor and infantry divisions that overwhelmed the Dutch defenses. Four battalions reinforced by two air infantry regiments captured three Dutch airfields, plus several bridges over rivers that bisected the German route of approach to the Hague, Holland's capital, and Rotterdam, its principal port. In each case the airborne units held their ground until the main assault forces arrived overland. The final parachute battalion, supported by two regiments of air infantry, landed near the Hague with the mission of decapitating the Dutch government and military high command. This force failed to achieve its goals, but did cause considerable disruption.
One battalion breached Belgium's heavily fortified defensive line during the offensive of May 1940. A handful of gliderborne troops-fewer than a hundred in all-landed on top of the mighty Belgian border fortress of Eben Emael early in the morning of 10 May 1940 and seized this single most important anchor in the Belgian defense line. Their successful tactical use enabled the panzer divisions to sweep across the low countries, and made the conquest of France relatively easy.
The last major German use of parachute assault came a year later. The Germans planned to seize the island of Crete by a combined air and sea attack on 20 May 1941. The vaunted British sea power intercepted the German convoy. Almost half of the German amphibious forces were lost, and the rest were driven back. However, the Germans had established complete air superiority, and landed gliders and paratroopers at four separate points. The objective was to capture three airfields for the ensuing arrival of air-landed reinforcements. The British and their Greek allies valiantly fought and annihilated three of the four air-landed forces. Casualties were heavy among the first waves of 3,000 men landed by parachute and glider, but others continued to pour in. At the fourth and successful German point of attack, an airfield was seized. Despite an overwhelming superiority in numbers, the 42,000 Allied defenders did not press their initial advantage. Late in the second day the Germans began landing transports on the one airstrip they held, even though it was under Allied artillery fire, and soon the Air-transported Mountain Division was landed. Seven days later the Germans held all of Western Crete. Ammunition, food, blood plasma, and other supplies were brought in by air. From the seized airfield, the Germans supported a new amphibious attack, and soon Crete was theirs. After a few more days of bitter fighting, the Allied commander concluded that he was defeated and began to withdraw by sea. The largest and most spectacular German airborne assault of the war, the conquest of Crete in 1941, was also the turning point for the Germans: thereafter they never mounted a tactical paratroop attack of more than battalion size. In the course of the battle, the Germans suffered 6,700 casualties, half of them dead, out of a total force of 25,000. Allied losses on the island were less than 3,500, although an additional 11,800 troops surrendered and another 800 soldiers died or were wounded at sea during the withdrawal. The loss of 4000 men killed, most of them paratroopers, dampened German ardor for such assaults.
The Allies decided that airborne operations were a powerful tactic, inasmuch as the Germans had leap-frogged 100 miles of British-controlled waters to seize Crete from a numerically superior ground force. As a consequence, the US and British armies would invest heavily in creating parachute and glider units. Hitler reached the opposite conclusion. Having lost 350 aircraft and nearly half of the 13,000 paratroopers engaged, he determined that airborne assaults were a costly tactic whose time had passed. The Germans never again launched a large operation from the air.
Spurred by the successful employment of airborne troops by the Germans in their invasion of the Low Countries, US military branches began an all-out effort to develop this new form of warfare. Controversy surrounded the effort and the various branches made several colorful proposals. The Air Corps made the most unique proposal. Its staff proposed that the Air Infantry be called "Air Grenadiers" and be members of the "Marines of the Air Corps."
In April 1940, following the controversies, the War Department approved plans for the formation of a test platoon of Airborne Infantry to form, equip, and train under the direction and control of the Army's Infantry Board. In June, the Commandant of the Infantry School was directed to organize a test platoon of volunteers from Fort Benning's 29th Infantry Regiment. Later that year, the 2d Infantry Division was directed to conduct the necessary tests to develop reference data and operational procedures for air-transported troops.
In July 1940, the task of organizing the platoon began. First Lieutenant William T. Ryder from the 29th Infantry Regiment volunteered and was designated the test platoon's Platoon Leader and Lieutenant James A. Bassett was designated Assistant Platoon Leader. Based on high standards of health and rugged physical characteristics, forty-eight enlisted men were selected from a pool of 200 volunteers. Quickly thereafter, the platoon moved into tents near Lawson Field, and an abandoned hanger was obtained for use as a training hall and for parachute packing.
Lieutenant Colonel William C. Lee, a staff officer for the Chief of Infantry, was intently interested in the test platoon. He recommended that the men be moved to the Safe Parachute Company at Hightstown, NJ for training on the parachute drop towers used during the New York World's Fair. Eighteen days after organization, the platoon was moved to New Jersey and trained for one week on the 250-foot free towers.
The training was particularly effective. When a drop from the tower was compared to a drop from an airplane, it was found that the added realism was otherwise impossible to duplicate. The drop also proved to the troopers that their parachutes would function safely. The Army was so impressed with the tower drops that two were purchased and erected at Fort Benning on what is now Eubanks Field. Later, two more were added. Three of the original four towers are still in use training paratroopers at Fort Benning. PLF training was often conducted by the volunteers jumping from PT platforms and from the back of moving 2 1/2 ton trucks to allow the trainees to experience the shock of landing.
Less than forty-five days after organization, the first jump from an aircraft in flight by members of the test platoon was made from a Douglas B-18 over Lawson Field on 16 August 1940. Before the drop, the test platoon held a lottery to determine who would follow Lieutenant Ryder out of the airplane and Private William N. (Red) King became the first enlisted man to make an official jump as a paratrooper in the United States Army. On 16 August 1940, 48 brave volunteer members of the US Army Parachute Test Platoon pioneered a new method of warfare. On 29 August, at Lawson Field, the platoon made the first platoon mass jump held in the United States.
Their successful jump led to the creation of a mighty force of more than 100,000 paratroopers. Members of this force were assigned to the legendary 11th, 13th, 17th, 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions and numerous other units that fought in every theater during World War II. The soldiers of the Parachute Test Platoon also forged a unique warrior spirit, a relentless passion for victory, and a reputation that still strikes fear in potential adversaries.
Initial discussions concerning parachute troops within the U.S. Army rested upon a general assumption that these troops would be employed principally in small detachments for demolition work in enemy rear areas. This notion, however, soon gave way to a concept that parachute troops should be used as assault units to seize and hold airheads for air-landing troops. Actually neither concept ever became the basis for major U.S. Army airborne operations during World War II.
Airborne troops were not to be employed unless they could be supported by other ground or naval forces within approximately three days, or unless they could be withdrawn soon after their mission had been accomplished. No fire support could be expected, except from tactical aviation, until contact was made with ground forces. Consequently air superiority would be a fundamental prerequisite for successful airborne operations. Actual operations during the war generally followed this doctrine, and airborne commanders considered it basically sound.
In the spring of 1940, it was obvious to a number of Marine officers that parachutists constituted an ideal alternative for speedily seizing a surprise lodgement on an enemy coast. The Marine Corps did not develop formal airborne doctrine until late 1942. It came in the form of a 12-page manual titled Parachute and Air Troops. Its authors believed that airborne forces could constitute "a paralyzing application of power in the initial phase of a landing attack." Secondarily, parachute troops could seize "critical points," such as airfields or bridges, or they could operate behind enemy lines in small groups to gather intelligence or conduct sabotage operations. By the end of 1942 the Marine parachute program was finally in full swing and capable of producing 135 new jumpers per week, though actual numbers were never that high.
The chronic shortage of aircraft also continued to hobble the Marine's program. In the summer of 1943 the Corps had just seven transport squadrons, with only one more on the drawing boards. If the entire force had been concentrated in one place, it could only have carried about one and a half battalions. As it was, three squadrons were brand new and still in the States and another one operated out of Hawaii. There were only three in the South Pacific theater. The final reevaluation of the USMC parachute program began in August 1943. Simply put, there were far too few transport planes in the entire Marine Corps for the regiment to jump into combat, which was its only reason for existence. The 1st Parachute Regiment officially furled its colors on 29 February 1944.
By the summer of 1944 the US Army had formed five Airborne Divisions and six Airborne Regiments. By the end of World War II the US had used Airborne troops in fourteen major offensives and dozens of smaller operations. Anglo-American airborne forces mounted major assaults in Sicily in July 1943, Normandy in June 1944, and across the Rhine in March 1945. Smaller airborne landings occurred in North Africa in 1942 and in the Pacific: the Nadzab (New Guinea) operation in 1943, the dramatic long-range operations in Burma by Wingate's Raiders in 1943 and 1944, and the highly successful parachute drop on Corregidor in February 1945.
In the small hours of "D-Day", 6 June 1944, the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions descended by parachute and glider to protect the invasion zone's western extremity, and to facilitate the "Utah" landing force's movement into the Cotentin Peninsula. Though badly scattered and lacking much of their equipment, these brave paratroopers kept the Germans occupied and helped ensure that the "Utah" Beach assault went relatively easily. The British and Canadian attacks, assisted by an air-dropped division on their eastern flank and a longer naval bombardment, generally also went well. Not so in the "Omaha" area, where deep beaches backed by steep hills meant that the US troops landing there were exposed to withering fire from enemy small arms, machine guns and artillery. Casualties were very heavy and the assult only succeeded after a day of brutal fighting, with warships coming in close to provide direct gunfire in support of the hard-pressed soldiers. By nightfall on the sixth of June, the situation was favorable, even on Omaha.
Operation MARKET, the airborne invasion of Holland in September 1944, was the greatest airborne operation ever mounted. It is likely to remain unsurpassed. Over a period of six days, almost 35,000 Allied soldiers - they constituted most of the First Allied Airborne Army - dropped or landed in the battle areas along a corridor linking Eindhoven, Nijmegen, and Arnhem in southern Holland. Starting on the morning of 17 September 1944, a thousand B-17 and B-24 bombers and escort fighters of the US Eighth Air Force from Britain cleared a corridor for the troop carrier aircraft through the thicket of German antiaircraft defenses in the Low Countries. Hundreds of British and American fighter planes followed immediately afterwards to sweep the areas selected for dropping the Allied paratroopers and landing the gliders filled with more troops and equipment.
Finally came the troop carriers and gliders, escorted by hundreds of fighter planes, flying in splendid V-formations towards their destinations. On D minus 1, gliders available amounted to 2,474. They carried 9,566 troops into combat, of a total of 30,481. This latter figure compares with 17,062 in the Normandy assault and 7,019 in the invasion of southern France. In all, nearly 4700 transports, gliders, fighters, and bombers passed overhead within the space of a few hours. And beginning shortly after 1300 hours, some 20,000 American and British soldiers parachuted or landed by glider within one hour and twenty minutes in good order behind enemy lines.
To penetrate the heart of the German homeland it was necessary to pass the Siegfried Line and that natural barrier, the river Rhine. The Siegfried Line, asystem of fixed defenses with its artfully constructed tank traps, minefields, and fire-control point, presented a formidable obstacle to the Allies. The logical place to achieve the double result of flanking the Siegfried Line and crossing the Rhine was at Arnhem, on the Neder Rijn in Holland.
To secure the area around the port of Antwerp, General Montgomery was given command of Operation MARKET GARDEN. The tactical plan envisioned establishing a bridgehead across the Rhine near Arnhem, Holland. The British Second Army was to be the spearhead of the ground attack. An Airborne Corps consisting of the British First and the American 82nd and 101st Divisions was to seize key bridges and other points to facilitate the advance of the Second Army. The success of the Airborne Divisions was in direct ratio to the distance they were dropped from Allied lines and the time required for the ground forces to join up. By D+1 the British Guards Armored Division had passed through the 101st Division area. By D+2 contact had been established with the 82nd Division. The ground troops and the 101st and 82nd Divisions continued advancing towards Arnhem. The British First Airborne, after an initial success, was soon in dire need of reinforcements and supplies. From D+2 to D+8 weather seriously hampered resupply and reinforcement attempts. On D+8 British armor finally broke through. Only 2,500 men were left - the British had lost almost an entire division. Long after many episodes of World War II are forgotten, the desperate stand of the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem will be recalled with deep admiration.
In spite of the difficulties at Arnhem the airborne operations had proceeded not only according to plan but also with much lower loss than expected. Moreover, they did much to disprove the view that daylight airborne operations over enemy territory heavily defended by flak are excessively hazardous. The great dividends in accuracy of dropping and landing and in quick assembly of troops, which are to be had by daylight, were enjoyed to the full.
In World War II, the US Army first used airdrop methods to resupply remote or encircled forces, as well as resupply indigenous forces to fight the enemy. Military leaders realized that if personnel could arrive by parachute, so could much-needed supplies.
The most significant airdrop operation occurred in Bastogne, Belgium, in December 1944 when the 101st Airborne Division was encircled by German forces. Raids by Germans had decreased the division's supplies to a minimum. Therefore, resupply by air was the logical method. Although aircraft losses and casualties resulted, both soldiers and civilians were surprised at the success of the operation and the ability of the unit to maintain its foothold until reinforcements arrived.
|Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list| | <urn:uuid:b20daa20-575d-418e-adf2-9a0c5aa05ae9> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/airborne1.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719566.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00262-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972696 | 4,488 | 3.859375 | 4 |
Google Traffic Now 77% Encrypted; Plans To Achieve 100% In The Future
Google has been on the fast track to improve its products as well as its services too. Last time we reported on how they have just unveiled a new product for marketers, specifically the Analytics 360 Suite. Today, we bring you news of improvement that the tech giant has just announced to the public – the American firm improving its encryption efforts.Advertisement
The search engine has reported that 77% of its traffic to its servers uses encrypted connections; in simpler terms, it is protected from hackers. The percentage given was noticeably an improvement from the 52% that it had during the end of 2013.
However, the encryption does not cover mail exchanges between Gmail and other email services, reports Yahoo. The stats reveal that Gmail’s service is 100% encrypted provided that the correspondence remains within with the email platform.
It is followed by maps with 83%, advertising with 77%, news service with 60% and Finance with 58% encryption frequencies. Advertising encryption has also increased from 9% at the end of 2013 to 77% now. Next on its list will be YouTube, which the American firm is planning to bring under its encryption plans by the end of 2016.
According to Information Week, despite the efforts the search engine giant has made, it acknowledges that improvements are still needed for its products and services. The California-based company has also noted on its transparency report posted on its site, saying it has been working hard towards its objective of achieving 100% encryption across its products and services.
Additionally, as the tech giant works on it its products and services to support HTTPS encryption, it was observed that it had varied results due to technical barriers in supporting encryption that range from older software that doesn’t support modern encryption technology to some countries and organizations blocking or degrading HTTPS traffic.
Times of India reports that with its encryption crusade, Google is trying to make it almost impossible for government spies and other snoops from deciphering personal info in the internet. According to a blog post written by the company Encryption “Evangelists” Rutledge Chin Feman and Tim Willis, “Our aim with this project is to hold ourselves accountable and encourage others to encrypt so we can make the web even safer for everyone.”
Google has started emphasizing the need to encrypt users’ online activities after confidential documents were leaked in 2013 by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, which revealed that the US government has been vacuuming up personal data transferred via the internet, reports The Vindicator.
And while trying to blanket its services into encryption, the California-based company has also been trying to use the clout of its influential search engine to prod other sites into strengthening their securities. It could be recalled that by August 2014, the tech giant has revised its closely guarded formula for ranking websites in its search order to boost those that automatically encrypted their services.
This change has pressured websites into embracing encryption as they face the risks of demotion on Google’s search results if they don’t do so. It should be noted, though, that while the search engine is highlighting its digital security progress, FBI and Apple is currently in a battle over an encrypted iPhone used by a suspect behind the San Bernardino shootings.
The tech giant has joined several other major tech companies in backing the latter on its refusal to unlock its iPhone, which was court-ordered. The Cupertino-based company has argued that it would require a special software that can be exploited in the long run by hackers and government snoops to pry their way into encrypted devices.
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|Click the photo to get this pattern by Inna.||Click the photo to get this pattern by Galina.|
The Pygora Goat is fluffy, soft, beautiful and comes in many exciting colors. The breed derived initially by breeding a registered National Pygmy Goat Association (NPGA) Pygmy and a registered American Angora Goat Breeders Association (AAGBA) Angora. Since 1987 Pygoras have been a registered breed, known as the Pygora Breeders Association.
Welcome to Hollyhock Hollow. I, Jill Gallagher along with my husband Jim, have been raising Pygoras since 1989. Pygora kids start arriving in early March here in Santa Margarita which is located in the mountains in beautiful San Luis Obispo County in California, USA.
Pygoras breed true to type when bred Pygora to Pygora. Mature animals minimum size at the withers are 18 inches for does and 23 inches for bucks. My Pygoras are on the larger size with does at 22 and 23 inches and bucks and wethers at 23 to 25 inches.
Feb. 2014 - We have kids! Watch the video and contact me if you are interested in Pygora bucklings.
Pygoras make great pets and wonderful fleece/fiber animals.
A $50 deposit holds your pick number on a kid born each season, and for this price you get a video of the kids born that year.
Shipping of your kid will be the buyers responsibility.
Any questions please E-mail me email@example.com.
Or call me at 805.438.3101.
Make all checks out to "Jill Gallagher".
Mailing address is:
PO. Box 20, Santa Margarita, CA 93453.
Enjoy our site and any questons please ask!
We love talking goats.
Marella, as a beautiful grown up | <urn:uuid:35218a09-7a6e-4aad-9ec6-3486b0ab7ddf> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://hhollow.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988717954.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183837-00509-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907513 | 404 | 1.515625 | 2 |
A short story about technology, public policy and the politics of hope
Hi, it's Chris from the Tony Blair Institute. In this special summer break edition we’re imagining one possible future among the infinite histories yet to be written.
Kim contemplated the glass of iced water for a moment before taking a sip. The crew bound for Mars would need the full might of human ingenuity to safely extract liquid water from the subsurface ice. But here on Earth, dawn was breaking – and Kim had a speech to write.
The immediate aftermath of people exercising their democratic right to vote hadn’t always been this way. Until paper voting was phased out in the late 2020s, candidates throughout the years had spent hours – sometimes days – waiting anxiously for ballots to be tallied and cross-checked.
Nowadays, election results were known the moment the online voting service closed. The winner took a breath, thanked their team, and got to work.
In one concession to tradition, they still addressed the nation in person – speaking live to a crowd gathered in the capital, while their avatar did the same in venues across all the major virtual worlds. Mercifully, this ritual also waited until the morning after. This left time to gather one’s thoughts and to get some rest before the tidal wave of expectations came crashing in.
But what to say?
The campaign four years ago had been a triumph for hope.
The pandemic era that had dominated the early 2020s had been hard on everyone, whatever their circumstances. Politicians on all sides talked about restoring freedoms and building back better. But they never really stopped to help people come to terms with the grief that lingered – not just for loved ones lost, but for an entire way of life altered in a million small ways by the spectre of another deadly outbreak.
The global response to the pandemic also exposed just how far out of time the institutions of the 20th century had drifted. Nation states were tested and found wanting. The crisis of authority in our politics was sent into overdrive – people saw that their leaders were no longer in control of events, and what collective trust was left soon evaporated.
The accelerating tech revolution raised the stakes even higher. The public knew that technology had saved the world, and could feel in their bones that – if nurtured properly – it held the key to a better life for themselves and their children.
Politics, meanwhile, found itself trapped in the past by a present it could no longer make sense of. To those who had been paying attention, it was no surprise that despite a post-pandemic bounce for the incumbents, the public’s satisfaction with the choices on offer went into free fall.
For the longest time it fell to others, empowered by the internet, to be the best of us.
Kim had never planned a life in politics. But growing up with technology imparted a natural fluency with a world in which the boundary between online and offline was rapidly dissolving, as well as a humility borne of participation in new sorts of communities – ones that cared about character and actions, not where you came from.
So when the party that was once the natural owner of the future crashed down to yet another bitter defeat, Kim’s generation were ready to step up. The public saw a new sort of leadership fit for a new era, and embraced a movement that was finally ready to meet the future with confidence and purpose.
It was hope that turned the tide in 2028, but it was competence and sheer determination that kept the dream alive today.
That first term had been a frenzy of activity. Public service reform is brutally difficult even under the most benign circumstances, let alone accelerated a hundredfold to catch up with a world racing away over the horizon. Nevertheless, the strategy was simple: execute fast, and deliver for the public.
The key had been to play the game on an entirely new dimension: taking advantage of technology to make a fresh start rather than trying to reform the old bureaucracy in situ. The metaverse state threw everything it had at building out new civic infrastructure – from 6G and sensor networks, data registers, design patterns and identity standards, through to new marketplaces, tokens and protocols for public service delivery.
An entire fleet of next-generation, user-centric services launched online, and rapidly eclipsed the old ways of doing things. As their success grew, they absorbed and modernised their industrial-era ancestors. Change on this scale was far from easy, but the administration pushed through – fusing political will and public purpose with entrepreneurs and technologists in a modern-day Apollo programme to remake the state.
For the first time, the quality of universal, publicly funded services in arenas like health, social care and education reached parity with mainstream private provision – and the quality of public service jobs climbed with them.
A reimagined role for the state wouldn’t have been possible without a corresponding revolution in economic policy. Where so many before had tried to slow the pace of change, the new administration leaned in hard. The twin traumas of Covid-X and the climate emergency meant that every rich country was forging ahead on deep medical science and geoengineering. Few, however, were confident enough in their grip on the 21st century operating environment to run full tilt at the end of geography.
The first-mover advantage and mass opportunity created by the establishment of new models for digital citizenship and civic participation, new legal frameworks for ephemeral virtual companies, and new protocols for digital currencies and decentralised tax administration was enormous.
The first big unlock was to level up the parts of the country that had fallen behind since the turn of the century. With fast internet now commonplace, the ability to do (almost) any job from anywhere changed everything. Combined with aggressive adoption of new transport networks and green urban automation, people’s options for where and how to live expanded massively. Big cities remained popular, but diversity and prosperity accelerated everywhere.
But by far the more profound impact was to change what it meant to be a nation state. The country’s resident population had grown a little in the last four years, but now nearly five times as many people around the globe considered it their digital home – registering and operating virtual businesses, accessing digital public services for their families and paying tax.
And, of course, voting in elections. Back in 2015, Michelle Obama had told the graduating class at Tuskegee University that voting is the way we move forward. The country’s master smart contract conferred different rights on non-resident citizens (mostly they had less say over the built environment), but there was no doubt that an explosion in participatory democracy enriched everyone.
Getting here had taken a huge national effort, and no small amount of faith. For all the remarkable progress, it remained impossible to please all of the people all of the time – but the public had now seen first hand what was possible when policymakers successfully navigated the new reality of the 21st century.
An overwhelming mandate for a second term affirmed the renewal of progressive politics as society’s lodestar for the technology revolution. Radical but sensible. Confident but humble. For the many – anywhere and everywhere.
Kim put down the glass, blinked an extended reality workspace into view, and started writing. | <urn:uuid:127ec07e-8275-4d2d-81b5-6fb6c4c742b3> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://progress.substack.com/p/progress-2032 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571147.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810040253-20220810070253-00475.warc.gz | en | 0.973067 | 1,513 | 2.125 | 2 |
Normal stresses in semiflexible polymer hydrogels
Phys. Rev. E , Volume 97 - Issue 3, Article number: 032418 p. 1- 11
Biopolymer gels such as fibrin and collagen networks are known to develop tensile axial stress when subject to torsion. This negative normal stress is opposite to the classical Poynting effect observed for most elastic solids including synthetic polymer gels, where torsion provokes a positive normal stress. As shown recently, this anomalous behavior in fibrin gels depends on the open, porous network structure of biopolymer gels, which facilitates interstitial fluid flow during shear and can be described by a phenomenological two-fluid model with viscous coupling between network and solvent. Here we extend this model and develop a microscopic model for the individual diagonal components of the stress tensor that determine the axial response of semiflexible polymer hydrogels. This microscopic model predicts that the magnitude of these stress components depends inversely on the characteristic strain for the onset of nonlinear shear stress, which we confirm experimentally by shear rheometry on fibrin gels. Moreover, our model predicts a transient behavior of the normal stress, which is in excellent agreement with the full time-dependent normal stress we measure.
|Phys. Rev. E|
|Organisation||Biological Soft Matter-Former Group|
Vahabi, M, Vos, B.E, de Cagny, H.C.G, Bonn, D, Koenderink, G.H, & MacKintosh, F.C. (2018). Normal stresses in semiflexible polymer hydrogels. Phys. Rev. E, 97(3, Article number: 032418), 1–11. doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.97.032418 | <urn:uuid:7b2481b4-b303-4aa9-b440-7c8367e06cda> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ir.amolf.nl/pub/6939 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571758.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812200804-20220812230804-00678.warc.gz | en | 0.836879 | 434 | 1.570313 | 2 |
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Choose Florida Tech for a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics
Six Specializations For Diverse Engineering and Science Careers
Graduates with a master's in applied mathematics can expand their subject matter expertise by choosing a Ph.D. in applied mathematics at Florida Tech. As one of only 30 applied mathematics programs in the United States, Florida Tech's doctoral program offers several specializations in the field including nonlinear analysis, stochastic analysis, optimization, numerical analysis, scientific computing and statistics.
A Degree with Flexibility
In addition to the areas of specialization, Florida Tech provides additional flexibility in its Ph.D. in applied mathematics program allowing doctoral students to design a curriculum that fits their specific research interests and career goals. As a national research university, Florida Tech is committed to providing students with a variety of applied mathematics research experiences, opening up careers in a wide range of industries.
Small Classes – World Renowned Faculty
Students in the Ph.D. in applied mathematics program at Florida Tech work closely with professors and fellow students. A small faculty-to-student ratio creates a close-knit academic community that is not often possible at larger universities. Professors in the math department have doctoral degrees in applied and computational mathematics and statistics. They teach all courses (not graduate students), supervise student research projects and conduct their own meaningful research studies that are often open for student collaboration.
Advanced Research Opportunities
As in any doctoral program, research is the core of the academic program. The Ph.D. in applied mathematics program explores many applied mathematics topics. Research is conducted in areas of science, engineering, medicine and business through interdisciplinary teams, as well as in the areas of concentration needed for the doctoral degree program. Students take part in research projects such as dynamical systems and chaos theory, stem cell research, computational number theory, optimal control and inverse problems and antagonistic stochastic games, to name a few. Full-pay tuition scholarships are available for full-time doctoral graduate research assistants.
High-Tech Laboratory Facilities
The facilities and resources available for doctoral students at Florida Tech include access to the engineering and science labs, four mathematics labs that feature advanced software such as Wolfram Mathematica, MATLAB, the R Project, Sage, and IBM SPSS. Additionally, the new computational mathematics and statistics research lab includes a 55-inch touchscreen Mondopad.
Many doctoral students in the Ph.D. in applied mathematics program are working professionals in close proximity to the campus in Melbourne, Florida. The university is also a top pick among students around the world for its location within the Florida High Tech Corridor – home to more than 5,000 high-tech companies and the fifth largest high-tech workforce in the nation.
Graduates with a Ph.D. in applied mathematics work in a variety of fields ranging from engineering and science to medicine and economics. Some examples of the organizations, corporations and research institutes that hire mathematicians include government labs, electronics and computer manufacturers, medical device companies and financial service firms. | <urn:uuid:2bb542b3-4086-4e7d-8277-0eee3ea38ebc> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.fit.edu/programs/9073/phd-applied-mathematics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279189.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00061-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94067 | 763 | 1.921875 | 2 |
To download standard set of data for the State Forests National Forest Holding forest district, please use the on-line form.
Set of data available through the on-line form includes a forest survey, in the text files, as well as the geometry of forest seperations and divisions in ESRI Shapefile format. Such data sets are created for individual district of the State Forests National Forest Holding. Description of the data provided, as well as advice and examples of its use, can be downloaded from the link.
Furthermore, you can download layers of SFN FH district geometric borders ranges and Spend the night in the forest (in SHP and KML format).
To obtain SFN FH forests data in a custom system, please fill out an application for the re-use of public sector information and the scan sent to: email@example.com.
Bank Forest Data provides on behalf of the State Forests data included in BDL data directory. | <urn:uuid:a139ba53-d355-4234-b605-fd266e486be2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www3.bdl.lasy.gov.pl/portal/udostepnianie-en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573760.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819191655-20220819221655-00675.warc.gz | en | 0.914497 | 204 | 1.734375 | 2 |
It’s as if giving cheetah-like speed to an advanced robot wasn’t good enough. The engineers over at Boston Dynamics must have been thinking to themselves, how can we make this thing even more menacing? The answer seems to be adding a highly dexterous articulated arm that gives the robot the ability to chuck objects as heavy as cinder blocks. We’re not kidding, look at the image above and you’ll see one mid-flight in the upper left. A quick search tells us that block probably weighs 30 pounds!
BigDog is a research project for the US military that we’ve seen navigating all kinds of terrain. It’s a heavy lifter able to carry loads where other machinery cannot. But now they’ve added an appendage that reminds us of an elephant’s trunk. It branches off of BigDog’s body where a quadruped’s neck would be. At the end of the appendage is a gripper that looks much like what you’d seen on industrial assembly robots. But enough talk, click through to see the action video. Oh, and if you didn’t pick up on the cheetah reference we made earlier you’ll want to check out this post.
Continue reading “BigDog throwing cinder blocks”
With summer on the horizon it’s time to start thinking about outdoor leisure. [x2Jiggy] is chomping at the bit having recently completed this project. It’s a portable stereo that also gives you somewhere to sit.
Unlike several of these types of project, he didn’t build the system inside of a cooler. Instead, the chassis was built from scratch using MDF. This material is strong and easy to work with, but we’d bet the finished case is a beast to haul around because of the weight. At least there’s a heavy-duty handle on either side so that you and a buddy can split the burden. One nice perk is that it’ll make a sturdy yet comfortable seat thanks the padded and upholstered top.
The audio components that went into it are all automotive parts and shouldn’t mind being jostled during transport. A computer PSU provides the 12V needed by the stereo. But there are a couple of external rail connections if you want to haul around a 12V battery instead.
For those unfamiliar with it, Bocce Ball is an outdoor game played with a set of heavy grapefruit-sized balls. We’ve never really thought of making our own set, but as you can see above, it can be done. These are six Bocce balls produced at home by [Horvitz444].
It seems the commercially available balls have a cement or clay core covered in a layer of high-impact epoxy. [Horvitz444] was able to recreate this starting with some vacuum forming. He built his own former out of peg board and a shop vac. The plastic stock he used was a light panel from the home store. After heating it up in the oven he formed a mold using what looks like two halves of Bocce balls. The mold halves were melted together using a soldering iron. After pouring in the secret concoction of cement ingredients and letting them harden, he removed the orbs from the molds and ground down the seams until smooth. They were covered in epoxy and painted. Most of these details were gleaned from his comments in the Reddit thread.
This simple circuitry makes up the hardware for [Andrew’s] AVR-based VGA generator. He managed to get an ATmega1284 to output a stable VGA signal. Anyone who’s looked into the VGA standard will know that this is quite an accomplishment. That’s because VGA is all about timing, and that presented him with a problem almost immediately.
The chip is meant to run at a top speed of 20 MHz. [Andrew] did manage to get code written that implemented the horizontal and vertical sync at this speed. But there weren’t enough clock cycles left to deal with frame buffering. His solution was to overclock the chip to 25 MHz. We assume he chose that because he had a crystal on hand, because we think it would have been easier to use a 25.174 MHz crystal which is one of the speeds listed in the specification.
Red, green, and blue each get their own two-bit range selected via a set of resistors for a total of 64 colors. As you can see in the video after the break, the 128×96 pixel video is up and running. [Andrew] plans to enlarge the scope of the project from here to make it more versatile than just showing standard images. The code (written in assembly) is available at his GitHub repository.
Continue reading “AVR VGA generator”
We mourn the loss of the physical keyboard with the advent of tablets. After all, we do a bit of typing getting all of these features posted throughout the week. And we kind of blame tablets for the decline of the netbook industry (we still use a Dell Vostro A90 when not at home). But we’re trying to keep an open mind that we may not need a physical keyboard anymore. If someone can come up with an innovative alternative to the Qwerty layout that we are able to learn and can use with speed and without physical strain we’ll be on board. Our question is, do you think we are close to a screen typing breakthrough?
This question came to mind after seeing the Minuum keyboard shown above. It compresses all of the rows of a Qwerty into a single row, monopolizing less screen space than conventional smartphone input methods. The demo video (embedded after the break) even shows them hacking the concept into a distance sensor and using a graphite-on-paper resistor. Pretty cool. But what happens when you type a word not in the dictionary, like this author’s last name?
You can actually try out the Minuum style thanks to [Zack’s] in-browser demo hack. He’s not affiliated with Minuum, but has done quite a bit of alternative keyboard input work already with his ASETNIOP chorded typing project. It’s another contender for changing how we do things.
Continue reading “Ask Hackaday: Are we close to reinventing the keyboard for touchscreens?”
This demonstration fixes the power supply of a DVD player, but the skills transcend this one application. [Alan] walks us through the process of repairing a power supply (translated) on a simple consumer electronics unit.
Obviously this starts by cracking open the dead device and verifying that the culprit is the power supply. [Alan] then removes that board from the chassis and gets down to work with a visual inspection. He’s got several images which illustrate things to look for; blistered electrolytic capacitors, cracked solder joins, scorch marks, etc. In his case there’s obviously a burnt out fuse, but that merely protects the hardware from further damage, it’s not the cause. Next he examines the diodes of the bridge rectifier. These need to be removed from the system to do so, which he accomplishes by clipping one end of each as seen above. He found that two diodes on one side of the bridge had broken down. After replacing them he tries a new fuse which immediately burns out. But a quick swap of the capacitors and he gets the thing back up and running.
We perk up every time we see this type of repair hack. We figure if we can build our own hobby electronics we should be able to fix the cheap devices like this one.
We just got an ergonomic keyboard for the first time and absolutely love it. But the look of this keyboard hack has us second guessing ourselves. [Will Pretend] pulled off an absolutely stunning wooden retrofit for his USB keyboard. Be warned, his project log includes 175 photos, and most of them have captions.
He started off by taking apart the original USB keyboard to see what he was working with. Before digging in to the valuable wood stock he cut test pieces using some thin MDF. But once he had a clear plan to get to the end of the project it was full stem ahead.
The keys are not simple Chicklet style overlays, they have depth like you would expect to find on low-grade plastic peripherals. This was accomplished by milling each key, then sending them through the laser cutter to each the letter on top.
Take some time to make your way through the entire project (here’s a thumbnail layout if you get frustrated). Unfortunately [Will] says he doesn’t actually use the keyboard because of grains catching and the keys move around a bit too much. But it does work. | <urn:uuid:f0e7026d-3938-43da-a12f-cb223f161b19> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://hackaday.com/2013/03/29/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279224.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00482-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957824 | 1,856 | 2.015625 | 2 |
City Club Forum Focuses On How Downtowns Can Survive The Pandemic
The downtown areas of major cities across the country are bare as employees have vacated their high rise offices to work from home during the pandemic. But during Thursday’s City Club of Cleveland forum, three experts spelled out why they believe downtown areas are resilient, even in the face of COVID-19.
Joe Marinucci, the President and CEO of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, said that this year has brought unforeseen challenges not only from the coronavirus pandemic but also in the form of protests for racial justice that have swept through America’s cities. Still, Marinucci said he remains optimistic about the future of Downtown Cleveland.
Marinucci said so far, about 30 percent of workers have returned to their offices Downtown.
“We know that the office market has not returned to where it was pre-pandemic level and it’s going to take a while for that to occur and we understand that,” he said. Still, he said he’s confident that Cleveland is the type of place where young professionals want to live, and they will be the economic engine that drives the city.
“People want to be with other people,” he said. “That’s where they’re most creative, that’s where they’re most entrepreneurial.”
Tami Door, the President and CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership as well as the Chairman of the International Downtown Association, said she believes Cleveland is “incredibly well positioned going forward.”
“I think that your culture, your nature, your parks these are things that urban centers across the country are dying to make happen in their communities,” Door said. “You are resilient, you have that infrastructure, and now this is your chance to leverage it.”
Door said one of Cleveland’s greatest assets is its affordability.
She also said Midwest cities like Cleveland have been having frank conversations about race and racial justice for far longer than Western cities such as Denver, where she said conversations tend to be more “academic” in nature. She said Cleveland has an opportunity to not only grow as a result of the racial justice movement but also guide a more open conversation nationwide.
Door said cities that are not experiencing civil unrest are “not vibrant or vital cities.”
“As tough as it is to take when damage gets done - certainly not advocating for that - but what it does tell you is that when people gather in your city, they love it because they believe it’s a place where their voice can be heard. So if you still have that you’re still on the right track even if it doesn’t seem like that during these times,” she said.
Cleveland has seen protests advocating for social justice throughout the summer, and the majority of those protests have been peaceful.
Door also cautioned urban areas against setting long-term policy as a reaction to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Don’t get mired and trapped in, “How do we get through this?” and “What’s the office market now?” she said. “Let’s think about how we build our cities and how you build Cleveland to prepare for the market of the future.”
Marinucci said the city has been working with Downtown businesses to create safe ways to do business during the pandemic. For instance, several mini-parks called parklets have opened outside of restaurants, providing space for patrons to go to restaurants while also maintaining a safe social distance.
Downtown areas worldwide have seen not only their hospitality industries but also their shops and theaters suffer as a result of the pandemic.
Ojay McDonald, the CEO of the Association of Town & City Management and a Londoner, said that it’s possible to go to a store and maintain a safe social distance. But that’s not true for the entertainment and leisure businesses that rely on bringing people together.
“We’ve got to understand what the future is for our entertainment and our leisure sectors and understand how we can innovate and recreate some of those experiences while still adhering to things like social distancing,” he said.
Figuring out ways to bring people together in the middle of a pandemic is a “massive challenge,” McDonald said, particularly when it comes to younger generations who want to socialize and “need to be with other people.”
Cleveland is home to America’s second largest theater district outside of New York City, where many performances have either been canceled or postponed because of the pandemic.
Cleveland’s Tower City Cinemas, once home to the Cleveland International Film Festival, has closed permanently, in part due to the pandemic. | <urn:uuid:44917274-2cdd-4e17-8fd5-d1c2621bfccb> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ideastream.org/news/city-club-forum-focuses-on-how-downtowns-can-survive-the-pandemic | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571987.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813202507-20220813232507-00269.warc.gz | en | 0.968997 | 1,025 | 1.585938 | 2 |
First, everyone is accountable as God has shown Himself in creation.
Romans 1:18-32(New American Standard Bible)
)the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who (B
)suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
)that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.
)since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, (E
)being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
21For even though they knew God, they did not [a
]honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became (F
)futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
)Professing to be wise, they became fools,
)exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and [b
)God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be (J
)dishonored among them.
25For they exchanged the truth of God for a (K
)lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, (L
)who is blessed forever. Amen.
26For this reason (M
)God gave them over to (N
)degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,
27and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, (O
)men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.
28And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, (P
)God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,
29being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are (Q
)haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, (S
)disobedient to parents,
31without understanding, untrustworthy, (T
32and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of (U
)death, they not only do the same, but also (V
)give hearty approval to those who practice them.
Second, there is only one true God - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Isaiah 45:18-22(New American Standard Bible)
18For thus says the LORD, who (A
)created the heavens (He is the God who (B
)formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a (C
)waste place, but formed it to be (D
"I am the LORD, and (E
)there is none else.
)I have not spoken in secret,
In some dark land;
I did not say to the (G
)offspring of Jacob,
)Seek Me in a waste place';
I, the LORD, (I
)Declaring things that are upright.
)Gather yourselves and come;
Draw near together, you fugitives of the nations;
)They have no knowledge,
)carry about their wooden idol
)pray to a god who cannot save.
)Declare and set forth your case;
Indeed, let them consult together
)Who has announced this from of old?
Who has long since declared it?
Is it not I, the LORD?
And there is (Q
)no other God besides Me,
A righteous God and a (R
There is none except Me.
)Turn to Me and (T
)be saved, all the ends of the earth;
For I am God, and there is no other.
Third, salvation is through Christ
Acts 4:1-12(New American Standard Bible)
Peter and John Arrested1As they were speaking to the people, the priests and (A
)the captain of the temple guard and (B
)the Sadducees (C
)came up to them,
2being greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming (D
)in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.
3And they laid hands on them and (E
)put them in jail until the next day, for it was already evening.
4But many of those who had heard the message believed; and (F
)the number of the men came to be about five thousand.
5On the next day, their (G
)rulers and elders and scribes were gathered together in Jerusalem;
)Annas the high priest was there, and (I
)Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of high-priestly descent.
7When they had placed them in the center, they began to inquire, "By what power, or in what name, have you done this?"
8Then Peter, (J
)filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "(K
)Rulers and elders of the people,
9if we are on trial today for (L
)a benefit done to a sick man, as to how this man has been made well,
10let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that (M
)by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom (N
)God raised from the dead--by this name this man stands here before you in good health.
)He is the (P
)STONE WHICH WAS (Q
)REJECTED by you, THE BUILDERS, but WHICH BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone.
12"And there is salvation in (R
)no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved."
Everyone will be judged by Christ. Those who are his will with with Him in Heaven for eternity. Those who are not His will spend eternity in Hell.
Hebrews 9:24-28(New American Standard Bible)
24For Christ (A
)did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of (B
)the true one, but into (C
)heaven itself, now (D
)to appear in the presence of God for us;
25nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as (E
)the high priest enters (F
)the holy place (G
)year by year with blood that is not his own.
26Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since (H
)the foundation of the world; but now (I
)once at (J
)the consummation of the ages He has been (K
)manifested to put away sin (L
)by the sacrifice of Himself.
27And inasmuch as (M
)it is appointed for men to die once and after this (N
28so Christ also, having been (O
)offered once to (P
)bear the sins of many, will appear (Q
)a second time for (R
)without reference to sin, to those who (T
)eagerly await Him. | <urn:uuid:f513fe10-974a-43a1-9947-6663025a9056> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/religion/284766-where-did-indians-go-heaven-hell.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279933.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00122-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967784 | 1,595 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Are you planning to hire a consultant or a freelancer? Have you been searching for a sample consulting agreement? It is a common thing as few businesses sail through without ever needing the services of an outside party.
Have you finally landed the client which you had been pitching to for a long time? If you have doubts about what they are and why to use them, you’ll find your answers below.
Alternative Names of Consulting Agreement
There are several ways of referring to the consulting agreement. It’s sometimes called a ‘Business Consulting Agreement’ or a ‘Consulting Contract’.
If you are hiring a freelancer, you may call it a ‘Freelance Agreement’. If you are working with a contractor, it may be referred to as an ‘Independent Contractor Agreement’.
Whatever your preferred name maybe, in the end it is still the same thing, and you can benchmark your contract on our consulting agreement template.
What Is a Consulting Agreement?
A consulting agreement is a formal written document between the consultant and the client that outlines the terms of their relationship.
Signing a consulting agreement when hiring a consultant, contractor, or freelancer, who will be providing his expert services to your company in exchange for monetary compensation.
It can be for the duration of a specific project, or for a specific time period, or even indefinitely for ongoing services.
When Should I Use a Consulting Agreement?
You should use a consulting agreement whenever you are entering in a freelancing work relationship with an outsider. It will be clearer from the examples below:
For the contracting party:
Use a consulting agreement if you or your company is hiring a consultant to design any product or perform any specific service. For e.g., hiring an outside party to implement your advertising campaign.
For the contracted consultant party:
Use this if you’ll be lending your service to someone in exchange for money. For e.g., if you are entering a freelance designing project for your clients’ product range.
There are many cases when a company needs to hire the services of experts to help in the business. You may need to work with individuals like an architect, a graphic designer, a writer, etc.
Whatever side of the deal you are on, our consulting agreement template will work wonders and help you get started on your core job sooner and with confidence.
Why Should I Use a Consulting Agreement?
A consulting agreement is a formal written document that has value for both parties. We have listed some of its benefits below:
- Better Than Oral Deals: It is quite difficult to prove oral agreements in the court. But if you had a written agreement, the court will generally always follow it even if it disagrees with it.
- Prevents Confusion: It is an important tool of negotiation and can help prevent future misunderstanding about the scope of work and client expectations.
- Security About Payment: While you are working on your assigned task, a formal consulting agreement gives you the security that the payment will be paid as per the pre-decided amount and timeline.
- Security About Data-sharing: The various non-disclosure clauses makes it safer to exchange sensitive information with the other party and get the job done.
What Are Included in a Consulting Agreement?
Following points are the basic essentials for a consulting agreement:
- Details of the parties: Name and contact details of both the hired service provider and the customer.
- Service details: Clearly mention what work is to be done by the consultant.
- Duration of the agreement: Till when will this agreement be valid.
- Fee details: Specify the negotiated payment and also mention when the payment will be made to the contracted party.
- How to deal with materials: For example, if a consultant is preparing a new product or service for you, then clearly mention who will have its ownership right at the end of the contractual period.
- Confidentiality clause: This protects the hiring company as the consultant is barred from sharing sensitive details like the client lists, marketing tactics, trade secrets, etc. with any outsider for a specified time period.
- Non-competition & non-solicitation clause: These prevent the consultant from indulging in unfair competition tactics and from soliciting the customer’s clients.
- Governing jurisdiction: This clarifies in advance how any dispute between both parties will be handled.
How is an Employment Agreement Different From a Consulting Agreement?
An employment agreement is used to hire the employees for your firm. On the other hand, a consulting agreement is used to hire the services of a consultant, or a contractor or a freelancer for a limited time period.
To make it clearer, consultants or freelancers work for themselves and they do not have an employer. They provide you their expert services in exchange of money and can be working with multiple firms or individuals at the same time.
Since these contracts are different, a consultant agreement template is also very much different from an employment agreement template. Make sure you use the appropriate one.
How is a Non-Competition Clause in a Consulting Agreement Different from a Non-Solicitation Clause?
These two are important clauses that you will see in any consulting agreement template.
- A non-solicitation clause restricts a consultant’s interference with the client’s relationship with his employees or other contractors.
- On the other hand, a non-competition clause protects the hiring company from unfair competition with the consultant after the end of the contractual period.
The clauses should be framed with due thoughts as they may not always be enforced by courts.
Are you now convinced to sign a consulting agreement? It’s a detailed document that protects both the consultant and the hiring company and you should definitely consider one rather than rushing with a simple handshake deal.
CocoSign has developed a wonderful consulting agreement template that you can use. Prepared diligently by experts, it can save you significant legal expenses and help you quickly start your business activity.
This Consulting Agreement is made on ____________________, by ____________________ and between ____________________, ____________________ of ____________________, located in the County of ____________________and ____________________, of ____________________, ____________________.
For the purpose of this Agreement, the party contracting to receive consulting services shall be referred to as the "Client" and the party providing said services shall herein be referred to as the "Consultant."
The Consultant has a background in and is agreeable to provide consulting services to the Client based on this background. The Client shall remain solely responsible for the making of all decisions.
The Client is mutually agreeable to receiving the consulting services provided by the Consultant.
DESCRIPTION OF SERVICES
Beginning on ____________________, shall provide to the following services (collectively the "Services"):
____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________
PERFORMANCE OF SERVICES
The exact number of hours and the manner in which the Consultant shall provide the Services shall be determined and set by the Consultant. The Client however, shall rely on the Consultant to work as many hours as may be deemed necessary and reasonable to fulfill the Consultants obligations under this Agreement.
The Client shall be responsible to pay to the Consultant a retainer for Services in the amount of $____________________. The retainer shall be payable in advance and due and payable upon the signing of this Agreement, and is non-refundable.
Consultant services shall bill first to the retainer provided and upon depletion of said retainer, the Client shall be invoiced for additional services/fees, if any. The Client, upon receipt of the invoice, shall make prompt and immediate payment by way of within days after receipt of invoice.
The Consultant, and their Subconsultants, represents that it is qualified to perform the services and that they possess the necessary licenses and/or permits as may be required.
The Consultant represents that all services shall be performed in a professional manner and shall conform to all the standards of practices of similar, successfully completed projects by other consultants within the same field. The Consultant agrees that if the services are not satisfactorily performed, in addition to all of its obligations contained under this Agreement and at law, the Consultant shall re-perform or replace unsatisfactory services at no additional expense to the Client.
The granting of certification shall in no way waive or limit the certification obligation required in this paragraph or lessen the liability of the Consultant to re-preform or replace unsatisfactory services, including, but not limited to cases where the unsatisfactory character of such work may not have been apparent or detected at the time of such payment, inspection, review or approval.
Nothing contained within this paragraph shall be construed or constitute a waiver or limitation of any right or remedy, whether in equity or at law, which the Client or Consultant may have in accordance with this Agreement or any applicable law. All rights and remedies of the Client, despite whether under this Agreement or other applicable law, shall be cumulative.
NEW PROJECT AND NEW PROJECT APPROVAL
Prior to starting any new project, the Consultant shall first obtain written authorization and consent from the Client.
At the expiration of the initial term of this Agreement, both parties, by mutual written consent, can renew this Agreement for a time period of days prior to the expiration of the then current term.
INDEMNICATION BY CONSULTANT
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Consultant shall defend, indemnify and hold harmless the Client, its agents, officers, departments, representatives and employees (herein referred to collectively as "Indemnitee") from and against any and all claims, loss, cost, damage, injury, including without limitation, injury to or death of an employee of the Consultant or its Subconsultants, expense and liability of every kind, nature and description that arise out of, may pertain to or relate to the negligence, recklessness, or willful misconduct of the Consultant, any Subconsultant, anyone directly or indirectly employed by the Consultant, or anyone under the control of the Consultant (collectively known as "Liabilities"). Such obligations to defend, hold harmless and indemnify any Indemnitee shall not apply to the extent that such Indemnitee shall not apply to the extent that such Liabilities are caused in whole or in part by the sole negligence, active negligence, or willful misconduct of such Indemnitee, but shall apply to all other Liabilities. With respect to third party claims against the Consultant, the Consultant shall waive any and all rights of any type of express or implied indemnity against the Indemnitee other than for Liabilities that are caused in whole or in part by the sole negligence, active negligence or willful misconduct of such Indemnitee.
PAYMENT OF TAXES AND OTHER EXPENSES
The Contractor, at all times, shall be deemed and considered to be an independent contractor and shall be fully responsible for the manner in which the Consultant shall perform the services required of the Consultant by the terms, conditions and provisions of this Agreement. In addition, the Consultant shall be liable for their own acts and omissions and those of its employees and its
agents. There shall be nothing herein contained which shall be construed as creating an employment, agency or partner relationship between the Client and Consultant.
The terms, conditions and provisions herein contained within this Agreement referring to direction from the Client shall be considered as providing directions as to policy and the result of the Consultant's work only and not as to the means or methods to which such services are rendered or results obtained.
Except as herein expressly provided in this Agreement, nothing contained within this Agreement shall operate to confer rights or benefits to or on persons not party to or affiliated with this Agreement.
The payment of any taxes, including any sales and use Taxes, levied upon this Agreement, the transaction, or the services provided and/or delivered pursuant hereto, shall be the obligation of the Consultant.
Prior to the execution of this Agreement, the Consultant, upon the request of the Client, shall furnish satisfactory proof of insurance that they have purchased for the entire period covered by this Agreement, as further defined below and in such form and issued by an insurance carrier that shall be deemed satisfactory by the Client and authorized to do business in the County and State where the Client is located.
General Liability Insurance
Said insurance policy shall be written on an "occurrence" basis, which shall provide coverage for bodily injury, death, and property damage resulting from operations, products liability, blasting, explosion, collapse of building(s) or structures, damage to any underground structures and utilities, liability for slander, false arrest, and invasion of privacy arising out of negligence, disclosure of confidential, intellectual or proprietary information, personal and advertising liability, of not less than $ ____________________general cumulative and $ ____________________per each occurrence, subject to a deductible of not more than $ ____________________payable by the Consultant.
Worker's Compensation Insurance
The Consultant shall be required to provide full worker's compensation insurance for all persons with whom the Consultant may employ to assist in the work/services provided to the Client by the Consultant pursuant with the "Worker's Compensation Insurance and Safety Act," and any and all Acts amendatory or supplemental thereto. The worker's compensation policy shall include Employer Liability Insurance with limits of not less than $ ____________________per each accident.
Professional Liability Insurance
The Consultant shall provide and maintain insurance policy specific to the requirements contained within this Agreement, with limits of not less than $ ____________________ per claim with respect to negligent acts, errors or omissions in connection with professional services to be provided herein under this Agreement, and any deductible not to exceed $____________________
per claim, with no exclusion for claims of one insured against another insured.
Insurance Terms, Conditions and Provisions
a) The Client and its directors, officers, partners, representatives, employees, consultants, Subconsultants and agents, shall be named as additional insured's, but only with respect to any liability arising out of such activities of the named insured, and there shall be a waiver of subrogation as to each named and additional insured.
b) Any and all policies shall apply separately to each insured against person said claim is made or suit filed except with respect to the limits of the Client's liability.
c) Any written notice of cancellation, non-renewal or for any material change in the policy itself shall be mailed to the Client within thirty (30) days advance of the effective date of change, non-renewal or cancellation.
d) The Certificate of Insurance and Endorsements shall have clearly typed thereon the title of the Agreement, shall clearly describe the coverage and shall contain a provision requiring the giving of written notice as described in the above paragraph.
e) Should and an application for extension of time be made, then the Consultant shall submit proof that said insurance policies shall be in effect during throughout the additional requested period of time.
f) There shall be nothing contained herein that shall be construed or interpreted as a limitation in any way to the extent to which the Consultant or any of their acceptable Subconsultants may be held responsible for payment of damages resulting from their work/services.
g) Should the Consultant fail to maintain the required insurance, the Client reserves the right to take out such insurance, and deduct said amount of the premium from any such sum that may be due and payable to the Consultant under this Agreement.
The Company shall reimburse the Consultant for the following out of pocket expenses:
____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________
TERM and TERMINATION OF AGREEMENT
This Agreement shall immediately terminate provided by the Consultant and as required by this Agreement or from the effective date of this agreement.
SUSPENSION OF WORK
At any time, the Client may, without cause, order the Consultant, by way providing days prior written notice, to suspend, delay or interrupt work or services pursuant to this Agreement, in whole
or in part, for such periods of time as the Client, at its sole discretion, may deem fit or necessary. Any such suspension shall be affected by the delivery of a written notice to the Client of said suspension specifying the extent to which the performance of the work or services under this Agreement is suspended, and the date upon which the suspension becomes effective, which shall be no less than seven (7) calendar days from the date of the notice of suspension is delivered. The suspension of work and/or services shall be treated as an excusable delay.
TERMINATION OF AGREEMENT FOR CAUSE
If at any time the Client believes that the Consultant may not be adequately performing their obligations under this Agreement or may be likely to fail to complete their work/services on time as required by this Agreement, then the Client may request from the Consultant written assurances of performance and a written plan to correct observed deficiencies in the Consultant's performance. Any failure to provide such written assurances constitutes grounds to declare a default under this Agreement.
The Consultant shall be deemed in default of this Agreement and the Client may, in addition to any other legal or equitable remedies available to the Client, terminate the Consultant's right to proceed under the Agreement, for cause, should the Consultant commit a breach of this Agreement and not cure such breach within ten (10) calendar days of the date of notice from the Client demanding such cure; or if such failure is curable but not within the ten (10) day period required, within such period of time as is reasonably necessary to accomplish such cure. In addition, in order for the Consultant to avail itself of this time period in excess of ten (10) calendar days from the date of the notice, the Consultant must provide the Client a written plan acceptable to and by the Client to cure said breach, and then diligently commence and continue such cure in accordance to the written plan provided.
In the event a termination for cause is determined to have been made wrongfully or without cause, then the termination shall be treated as a termination for convenience, and the Consultant shall have no greater rights than it would have had if a termination for convenience had been effected in the first instance. No other loss, cost, damage, expense or liability may be claimed, requested or recovered.
TERMINATION FOR CONVENIENCE
The Client may terminate performance of the Contractor's work and/or services under the Agreement pursuant to this paragraph in whole, or in part, whenever the Client shall determine that termination is in their best interest. Termination shall be effected by delivery of notice to the Consultant of termination specifying the extent to which performance of the work and/or services under this Agreement is terminated, and the date upon which termination becomes effective, which shall be no less than twenty-one (21) calendar days from the date the notice of termination is delivered. The Consultant shall then be entitled to recover any costs expended up to that point plus a reasonable profit, but not other loss, damage, expense or liability may be claimed, requested or recovered.
Except as provided in this Agreement, in no event shall the Client be liable for any costs incurred by or on behalf of the Consultant after the effective date of a notice of termination.
The termination pursuant to the provisions contained within this paragraph shall not be construed
as a waiver of any right or remedy otherwise available to the Client.
PROPRIETARY OR CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION
The Consultant understands and agrees that, in the performance of the services under this Agreement or in the contemplation thereof, the Consultant may have access to private or confidential information that may be owned or controlled by the Client and that such information may contain proprietary or confidential details and information, the disclosure of which to third parties may cause irreparable damage to the Client. The Consultant agrees that all information disclosed by the Client to the Consultant shall be held in the strictest of confidence and used only in performance of this Agreement. The Consultant shall exercise the same standard of care to protect such information as any reasonable prudent consultant would use to protect their own proprietary data.
The Client is aware that the Consultant may have access to the private confidential information, including, but not limited to, business affairs, financial information, personal information, and other proprietary (collectively herein referred to as "Information") which are considered valuable, special and unique assets of the Client, and as such required to be protected from improper disclosure. In consideration related to the disclosure of Information, the Consultant herein agrees that it shall not at any time or in any manner, either directly or indirectly, use any Information for the Consultant's own benefit, or divulge, disclose, or communicate in any manner any Information to any third party without the prior written authorization and consent of the Client. The Consultant shall protect the Information at all times and treat it as strictly confidential. Any violation of this paragraph shall be deemed as a material violation of this Agreement.
CONFIDENTIALITY AFTER TERMINATION
The confidentiality provisions, terms and conditions of the herein contained Agreement shall remain in full force and effect after the termination of this Agreement.
OWNERSHIP OF WORK PRODUCT
At any time that this Agreement is terminated, the Consultant agrees to return to the Client all document, drawings, photographs and any other written or graphic material, however produced, that they may have received through the course of their work and/or services provided, from the Client, their employees, contractors, or agents, in connection with the performance of their services under this Agreement. All materials shall be returned in the same condition as received.
Any interest of the Contractor or any Subconsultant or Subcontractors, in studies, reports, memoranda, computational sheets or other documents prepared by the Consultant or their Subconsultants, or Subcontractors in connection with the work and/or services to be performed under this Agreement, shall then become the sole property of the Client.
Any and all work, artwork, copies, posters, billboards, photographs, videotapes, audiotapes, systems designs, software, reports, designs, specifications, drawings, diagrams, surveys, source codes or any original works of authorship created by Consultant or their Subconsultants or Subcontractors in connection with services performed under this Agreement shall be works for hire pursuant to Title 17 Chapter 3 ¤302 of the United States Code, and all copyrights of such work or services shall remain the property of the Client. However, in the event that it should be
determined that any such works or services created by the Consultant or their Subconsultants or Subcontractors under this Agreement are not deemed as works for hire in accordance with U.S. law, the Consultant hereby assigns all copyrights to such works to the Client. The Consultant may retain and use copies of such works for reference and as documentation of its experience and capabilities only with prior written approval from the Client.
With respect to copyrightable works, ideas, discoveries, inventions, applications for patents, and patents (collectively, "Intellectual Property"), the following provisions shall apply:
a) Client's Intellectual Property
Interest in the Intellectual Property that may be described on the attached Exhibit A is not subject to this Agreement.
b) Development of Intellectual Property
Any improvements to Intellectual Property items not listed on Exhibit A, further inventions or improvements, and any new items of Intellectual Property discovered or developed by the Consultant or their Subconsultant, if any, during the term of this Agreement shall be the property of . The Consultant shall sign all documents necessary to protect the rights of the Client in such Intellectual Property, including the filing and/or prosecution of any applications for copyrights or patents. Upon request, the Consultant shall sign all documents necessary to assign the rights to such Intellectual Property to the Client.
OWNERSHIP OF SOCIAL MEDIA
The Client has sole ownership over any social medial contacts, acquired before and/or throughout the Consultant's term of service, including, but not limited to "follower" or "friends" which may be or have been acquired through such accounts as email addresses, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or any other social media network, that has been used or created on behalf of the Company.
AUDIT AND INSPECTION OF RECORDS
The Consultant shall maintain all drawings, specifications, calculations, cost estimates, quantity, takeoffs, cost statements with complete dates, schedules, correspondence, memoranda, papers, writings, as well as any and all documents of any nature prepared by or furnished to the Consultant during the course of performing the work and/or services with respect to the provisions of this Agreement, for a period of at least three (3) years following final completion and acceptance of this Agreement, except that all such items pertaining to hazardous materials shall be maintained for at least thirty (30) years. All such records shall be available to the Client upon request at reasonable times and places. Monthly records of Consultant's personnel costs, consultant costs, and reimbursable expenses shall be kept on a generally recognizable accounting basis, and shall be available to the Client upon request at any reasonable time or place. The Consultant shall not destroy any work records until after advising the Client and thus allowing the Client the opportunity to accept and store the records themselves.
The Consultant agrees to maintain and make available to the Client, during business hours,
accurate books and accounting records relative to their activities under this Agreement. The Consultant shall permit the Client to audit, examine and make any copies deemed necessary, excerpts and transcripts for such books and records, and to make audits of all invoices, materials, payrolls, records or personnel and other data related to all other matters covered by and under this Agreement, whether funded in whole or in part under this Agreement. The Consultant shall maintain such data and records in an accessible location and conditions for a period of not less than five (5) years after final payment under this Agreement or until after the final audit has been resolved, whichever is later. The State of ____________________ or any federal agency having an interest in the subject of this Agreement shall have the same rights conferred upon the Client by this paragraph.
All rights and obligations established and executed pursuant to the paragraph shall be specifically enforceable and survive termination of this Agreement.
In the event that any question should arise with regards to the meaning and intent of this Agreement, the question shall, prior to any other action or legal remedy being taken, be referred to the Client or the manager and a principal of the Consultant who shall decide the true meaning and intent of this Agreement. Such referral may be initiated through a written request from either party, and then a meeting between the Client and principal of the Consultant shall take place within five (5) days of the written request.
The Consultant shall continue their work and/or services performed throughout the course of any and all disputes, and the Consultant's failure to continue said work and/or services during any and all disputes shall be considered a material breach of this Agreement, provided the Client continues to make payments to the Consultant for undisputed work completed by the Consultant. The Consultant further agrees that should they stop work due to a dispute or disputes, any and all claims, whether in law or in equity that the Consultant may have against the Client, their officers, agents, Representatives, and employees, whether such claims are pending, anticipated or otherwise, shall be deemed to have been waived and forever barred.
CONFORMITY WITH LAW AND SAFETY REQUIREMENTS
The Consultant shall observe and comply with all applicable laws, ordinances, codes and regulations of governmental agencies, including federal, state, municipal and local governing bodies having jurisdiction over any or all of the scope of services, including all provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1979 as amended, all state Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, the American Disabilities Act, any copyright, patent or trademark law and all other applicable federal, state, municipal and local safety regulations. Any and all services performed by the Consultant must be in accordance with these laws, ordinances, codes and regulations. The Consultant's failure to comply with any laws, ordinances, codes or regulations applicable to the performance of the work hereunder shall constitute a breach of Agreement.
Should a death, serious personal injury or substantial property damage occur in connection with the performance of this Agreement, the Consultant shall immediately notify the Client by telephone. If any accident should occur in connection with this Agreement, the Consultant shall promptly submit a written report to the Client, in such form as the Client may require. This report shall include, but is not limited to, the following information:
1) Name and address of the injured or deceased individual(s);
2) Name and address of the Consultant's Subconsultant or Subcontractor, if any;
3) Name and address of the Consultant's liability insurance carrier; and
4) A detailed description of the accident, including whether any of the Client's equipment, tools or materials were involved.
If a release of hazardous material or hazardous waste cannot be controlled occurs in connection with the performance of this Agreement, the Consultant shall immediately notify the Client.
The Consultant shall not store hazardous materials or hazardous waste without a proper permit from the City or Municipality.
TAX ID NUMBER, BUSINESS LICENSE, PAYMENT OF TAXES
The Consultant represents that they have complied with all Federal, State and local laws regarding business permits, licenses, reporting requirements, tax withholding requirements, and other legal requirements of any kind that may be required to carry out said business and the Scope of Work which is to be performed as a Consultant pursuant to this Agreement, and as such, provides their Employer Tax ID Number and/or Business License Number .
The Consultant shall pay all local, state and federal taxes when due, and certifies under penalty of perjury that the taxpayer identification number written above is correct.
The Client shall provide the following necessary support services for the benefit of the Consultant:
RELATIONSHIP OF PARTIES
It is understood by all parties to this Agreement that the Consultant is an independent contractor and not an employee of the Client. The Client to this Agreement is not responsible and is not providing any fringe benefits, including, but not limited to any health insurance benefits, paid vacation, retirement plan or any other benefit to the Consultant.
The Consultant's employees, should there be any, who may perform services for the Client under this Agreement shall be bound by all the provisions, terms and conditions of this Agreement.
NON-COMPETE, NON-SOLICIATION, NON-RECRUIT
The Consultant shall not, throughout the duration of this Agreement and for a period of year(s) immediately following the termination of this Agreement, either directly or indirectly, call on, solicit, take away or attempt to do any of the such that which pertains to any of the customers or clients of the Client on whom the Consultant called, contacted or may have become acquainted with during the fulfillment of the terms of this Agreement, either for their own benefit or for the benefit of any other individual, firm, corporation or organization.
The Consultant herein agrees not to participate in any activity or action that may be deemed of a competitive nature with any activity of the Client/Company throughout the duration of their relationship pursuant to the terms and conditions of this Agreement. Therefore, for the purpose of this paragraph, competitive activity thus encompasses forming and/or making plans to form a business entity that may be seen as being competitive with any business of the Client. This however, in no way, does not prevent the Consultant from seeking or obtaining employment or any other form of business relationship with a competitor after termination of employment with the Client so long as said competitor was in existence prior to the termination of the relationship with the Client and Consultant was and/or is in no way involved with the organization for formation of another such competitor.
During and after the Consultant's contract period with the Client/Company, in the State of ____________________, and for a period of year(s) following termination of employment however caused, the Consultant, not its Subconsultants, shall not seek or gain employment with any newly formed business (business formed after termination of this Agreement) that is in competition with the Company, its subsidiaries or affiliates within described as or within a of the Company and the aforementioned business location.
The Consultant shall not throughout the duration of this Agreement and for a period of year(s) immediately following the termination of this Agreement, either directly or indirectly, recruit any of the Client's employees, customers, clients or management for the purpose of any outside business.
Should the Consultant, or Subconsultant, at any time, violate any of the covenants or provisions set forth in this Agreement, the Company reserves the right to immediately terminate Agreement, and terminate all its obligations to make any further payments under this Agreement. The Consultant, and/or Subconsultant, acknowledges that the Client/Company could incur permanent and irreversible damage and injury though a violation of the terms, conditions and provisions of the Agreement, and as such agrees, that the Client/Company shall be entitled to any legal remedy or injunction, as may be deemed appropriate by Company or Court of Law, from any actual or threatened breach of this Agreement.
Notwithstanding any other term, condition or provision of the Agreement, in no event shall the Consultant be liable, regardless of whether any claim is based on contract or tort, for any special or consequential, indirect or incidental damages, including, but not limited to, lost profits or revenue, arising out of or in connection with this Agreement or the services performed in connection with this Agreement or for any claims which may be brought against the Client/Company.
RETURN OF RECORDS
Upon the termination of this Agreement, the Consultant shall deliver any and all records, notes and data of any nature which may be in the possession of the Consultant or may be under the control of the Consultant and of which are and shall remain the property of and relate to the Client's business.
Any and all notices that may be deemed necessary, permitted and/or required hereunder this Agreement shall be made in writing and shall be deemed delivered when said notice shall be delivered in person or deposited in the United States mail, postage prepaid and addressed to either party and address provided herein. Said address may be changed from time to time by either party by written notice to the other party in the manner set for above.
Client Name & Address:
____________________, ____________________ ____________________
Consultant Name & Address:
____________________, ____________________ ____________________
This Consulting Agreement contains the entire agreement of all parties and there shall be no other promises or conditions contained within any other agreement whether oral or written. This Agreement shall supersede any other prior oral or written agreement between the parties.
This Agreement may be altered or modified only if said amendment is done so in writing, mutually agreed upon and thus signed by both parties.
Should any term, condition, or provision of this Agreement be deemed or held to be invalid or unenforceable for any reason, those remaining terms, conditions and provisions shall remain valid and enforceable. Should a court of law determine that any term, condition or provision of this Agreement is invalid or unenforceable, but that by limiting such term, condition or provision it would become valid and enforceable, then such term, condition and/or provision shall be deemed to be written, construed and enforced as so limited.
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Where does the term incubator come from? The term incubator originally comes from the field of medicine and means incubator for premature babies. And this is also how our exclusive incubation program sees itself.
During the entire incubation program we support your startup with consulting, technical infrastructure and training. You will receive the necessary support to further develop your business plan and to become fit for your market entry.
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Ennai Kathirikai Kulambu is a wonderful and super flavourful curry made with the goodness of baby brinjals cooked in a tangy tamarind sauce. This is a very popular dish from the south Indian cuisine especially in Tamilnadu. There are various ways of making a brinjal curry.
Generally brinjals are stuffed in a spicy mix made with peanuts, sesame seeds and dry coconut blended together with spices and cooked in tamarind sauce known as Gutti Vankaya koora but the difference in making the Ennai kathirikai kulambu is using of only fresh grated coconut in the gravy along with tamarind juice and tomato-onion spiced gravy. Use of Fresh coconut Coconut is extensively used in most south Indian recipes. There are arrays of sweet and savoury dishes that can be made with coconut meat.
The inner white fleshy part of the seeds is the coconut meat and is either used fresh or dried in cooking especially in confections and desserts. Fresh coconut gives a pleasant taste and balances the spiciness of the dish. Fresh grated coconuts are most often used in seasoning curries.They are added to creamy puddings.
The addition of fresh coconut into curries or gravies gives a good dense and texture to the dish. People from south India also make chutney (coconut chutney) with the coconut meat served with Idli, dosa and vada etc. Ground Coconut with spices is also mixed in sambar (coconut sambar) and other various lunch dishes for extra taste. Another dish Puttu is a culinary delicacy of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, in which layers of coconut alternate with layers of powdered rice, all of which fit into a bamboo stalk.
Use of tamarind juice Tamarind juice/ pulp is extensively used in most south Indian gravies and stew based preparations. Tamarind is delicately sweet and sour. The tamarind juice/ pulp is flavoured in various hot and sour soups as well as marinades.
They are also used for making the rasam, sambar and chutneys. It is a common ingredient all over India and South East Asia. This pulp is also used in confectionaries as solidifying agent. When raw, the pulp of tamarind is very sour and turns sweet when ripens.
This pulp is used to make tamarind juice which has a sweetish sour taste. It is a popular food in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and is used as a spice in the local cuisines. It has been known to have curative powers and has long been used by traditional healers to treat a host of illnesses.
The health benefits of tamarind juice are many. It is rich in vitamin C, vitamin B, carotenes, antioxidants and minerals like potassium and magnesium. The high vitamin C content acts as an immune booster, helping the body to fight of viral infections like the common cold and fevers.
Use of eggplant Eggplant is very versatile and is cooked mixed with a variety of other foods. Make sure you pick out the right brinjal for making this dish or else the dish would turn out bad. Eggplant or Brinjal, is a very low calorie vegetable and has healthy nutrition profile; good news for weight watchers! Eggplants should be firm and a bit heavy. Choose only those eggplants that have smooth and shiny skin. The colour, no matter which color you purchase, should be very vivid.
An eggplant that is discoloured or has scars and bruises is not a good choice. These blemishes may indicate that the flesh inside the eggplant is damaged or even decaying. Eggplant is very low in calories and fats but rich in soluble fiber content.
It contains good amounts of many essential B-complex groups of vitamins such as vitamin B5, B6, B1,B3. Ennai kathirikkai kuzhambu is a simple and delicious recipe which you can make for your lunch or special occasions. This is an authentic Tamil Nadu kuzhambu recipe and is sometimes a bit overwhelming for lazy people.
This brinjal curry will taste good with rice, chapatti, dosa and more.
How to make Ennai Kathirikai Kulambu – Brinjal curry
Baby Eggplants - 200 gms
Chilli powder - 1 tbsp
Fresh coconut (grated)- 2 tbsp
Coriander powder - 1 tbsp
Curry leaves - 2 springs
Fenugreek seeds - ¼ tsp
Ginger garlic paste - 1 tsp
Jaggery - 1 piece
Mustard seeds - ¼ tsp
Onion, chopped - 1 no
Oil for frying Red chilli - 4 nos
Salt - to taste
Tamarind juice - ¼ cup
Tomatoes, sliced - 2 nos
Turmeric powder - ¼ tsp
Urad dal - ½ tsp
Heat oil in a pan, add onions, salt and sauté for 2 minutes. Add ginger garlic paste, turmeric, tomatoes, grated coconut, chilli powder, coriander powder and mix well. Cover the pan with a lid and allow cooking for 2 minutes then let it cool and put it into the blender and make a paste. Heat oil in a pan and when it becomes hot, add mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, red chilli, urad dal (optional), curry leaves and the onion-tomato-coconut paste. Mix all ingredients well and cover the pan.
Allow to cook for 5-6 minutes. Add tamarind juice, water, jaggery and once it comes to a boil, add fried baby eggplants, salt and mix it well. Cook this on a very slow flame for few minutes and then switch off the flame. Though eggplant is not a nutrient packed powerhouse, it does contain a great amount of Vitamin A and Folate. Eggplants contain fiber, a very important part of any diet as fiber helps maintain bowel regularity. Eggplant also contains a wonderful amount of calcium and even some Vitamin K. Do try this recipe and enjoy cooking. Check out the making of Ennai Kathirikai Kulambu at: | <urn:uuid:a4271ca0-b6fb-43ae-bf29-30e1a2ccf425> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://vahrehvah.com/indianfood/ennai-kathirikai-kulambu-brinjal-curry | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571745.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812170436-20220812200436-00465.warc.gz | en | 0.926816 | 1,324 | 1.992188 | 2 |
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This microbook is a summary/original review based on the book: What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
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Our past shapes who we are today - it determines our personality, behavior, and motives for our actions. For this reason, when a person is struggling with pain or any crisis, you should ask what happened to them rather than asking what is wrong with them. According to Oprah Winfrey and brain and trauma expert Bruce Perry, answering this question might help us know a little more about how experiences - both good and bad - define us. So, get ready to hear how numerous personal stories, including Oprah’s experience with trauma, combined with brain science, can help you reshape your own life.
When she reflects on her childhood, the most pervasive feeling Oprah remembers is feeling like she was a burden to everyone. Her mother and father were together only once when they made love under the oak tree near the house where Oprah’s mother Vernita lived. ‘’My father, Vernon, used to tell me I would never have been born if he hadn’t been curious about what was underneath my mother’s pink poodle skirt,’’ Oprah writes. She spent her early childhood with her grandmother, who used to beat her regularly, and her grandfather, who was usually shooing her away with his cane whenever she would come near him.
One of the worst beatings Oprah recalls happened on a Sunday morning, before a visit to the church, after Hattie Mae sent little Oprah to pump water on a well behind their house. As she waited for the bucket to fill with water, she was playing by twirling her fingers in the water, as any child might. Sadly, this sent her grandmother into a rage, as that was their drinking water. She grabbed Oprah and began whipping her so violently that her flesh welted. Then, on the way to church, she scolded Oprah for staining her dress with blood. The worst part after the beating was when her grandmother would demand her to wipe the tears and smile as if nothing happened. Oprah says this led her to believe that silence is the only way to end the pain quickly. ‘’For the next forty years,’’ she writes, ‘’that pattern of conditioned compliance—the result of deeply rooted trauma—would define every relationship, interaction, and decision in my life.’’
When people experience trauma, their brains find new ways to respond to circumstances, situations, and relationships. So, exploring the ways the brain reacts to stress or early trauma can help us cope with traumatic memories, understand and reshape our behavior for the better. As Oprah puts it, ‘’This is where hope lives for all of us—in the unique adaptability of our miraculous brains.’’
‘’What happened to you?” is not only a question to ask if you want to understand someone better, but also if you want to understand their brain. Each one of us has a personal history composed of our experiences. The events from our lives, places we visit, and the people we meet all influence the way our brain’s key systems function. As a result, every person perceives the world in their own unique way.
When Mike Roseman came to Dr. Perry’s office confused about his reaction to a motorcycle backfire, Perry immediately started looking at Mike’s behavior through the lens of his brain. What made him lie down on the ground with his hands over his head between parked cars when the motorcycle backfired? The thing is, Mike was a veteran of the Korean War and had seen lots of combat. During the war, his brain adapted to continuous threat, making his body sensitive to signals that referred to danger, which were the sounds of gunfire and shelling. For this reason, any sounds similar to these, such as those of fireworks or motorbike backfire, drew Mike’s attention with the potential to activate his fight or flight response.
You might wonder why Mike’s brain could not differentiate situations that posed a real threat to his life - such as the sound of gunfire - from those that brought almost no danger - such as the loud noise made by a motorcycle engine. The tricky part was that not all combat-related memories were in parts of the brain Mike could consciously control. Our brains are, as Perry says, ‘’four-layered cakes,’’ where bottom layers navigate less complex, mostly regulatory functions like body-temperature regulation, breathing, and heart rate. The top parts are responsible for complex functions, such as thinking, speaking, and planning. These parts also can ‘’tell time.’’
When we receive input from our senses, they first go into the lower layers and then to the upper parts. Therefore, when Mike heard a sound of a motorbike backfire, his brain activated stress response - before the information went to the upper brain parts that ‘’tell time.’’ For this reason, Mike’s initial reaction to the sound was to lie down and protect his head - the same as he did during combat.
Mike Roseman was 24 years old when he was in a war. If traumatic experiences changed his brain, imagine how they modify the developing brains of infants or toddlers.
From the moment a baby is born, its brain starts creating associations about how the world works, connecting external stimuli, such as sound, light, or smell, with personal experiences. Take eye contact as an example. It can refer to love, interest, or care, as well as fear or anger, depending on the child's experience. The truth is, children, especially the younger ones, absorb much more than we are aware of. Even when they don't understand the words, they sense nonverbal signs, like tone of voice. They can detect tension and hostility in angry speech and despair in a depressed one. And, since people think children don’t make sense of the world around them when they are young, they don’t protect them from negative experiences, thinking they would leave no impact on them. For instance, they curse in front of children, beat them, or act violently toward others.
Oprah says numerous women who appeared on her show chose to stay in unhealthy relationships, believing their children were too young to feel any consequences. They would say something like, “Well, when he gets older, I’ll leave the abusive father.” What actually happens to children with abusive fathers is that their brains begin to associate men in general with threat, anger, and fear. For one boy Dr. Perry worked with, the smell of Old Spice would trigger his stress response because that was deodorant his abusive father was using.
Many phenomena of our everyday life are a direct consequence of the brain making sense of the world by creating associations and making memories. For instance, have you ever formed an unjustified bad first impression of someone? Considering your brain cataloged vast amounts of input from your past, it was likely because attributes of the person evoked something it previously stored as unpleasant.
Dr. Perry says that ‘’balance is the core of our health.’’ We feel and function the best when all our body’s systems have everything they need - when they are regulated and stabilized. When we lack something, we become dysregulated and feel discomfort. Therefore, we tend to return balance as fast as we can to avoid getting more upset. For instance, when we are hungry, we make ourselves a sandwich. If we are thirsty, we get a drink. In case we are cold, we look for warm clothes.
Oprah and Dr. Perry emphasize that it is essential for parents to realize that ‘’learning healthy self-regulation actually begins in infancy.’’ Babies usually cry because they are hungry, thirsty, sleepy, or need their diapers changed. ‘’Crying is their way to get themselves back into balance,’’ writes Dr. Perry, ‘’to get their caregiver to do what has to be done in order for them to get back into balance.’’
There are several important neural networks involved in regulation. They include our stress-response systems, networks involved in forming and maintaining relationships and giving pleasure. When an adult regulates a distressed infant properly, it feels satisfaction that discomfort is gone and connects the interaction with a caregiver with reward and regulation. Consequently, these bonding experiences create an infant’s positive perception of people. In other words, if caregivers are attentive, responsive, and nurturing, infants learn that relationships with other people can be rewarding and regulating.
Inadequate care of a hungry, scared or cold infant affects the child’s development negatively in two ways. First, it makes a child create a negative perception of people, and be distrustful of others. Second, stress-response systems in children with inadequate support from their caregivers are usually overactive and overly reactive. For instance, children living with domestic violence often find it hard to pay attention in class, as they are constantly looking for any signs of a potential threat in their environment. Drug addicts and alcoholics also serve as a great example of people with oversensitive stress systems. They usually use drugs and alcohol to get relief from the pain and distress they are constantly experiencing.
No matter how resilient a person is, they can never rebuild their pre-traumatic state completely. As Dr. Perry says, ‘’This is because our brain is changeable—malleable. It’s always changing.’’ Think of your brain as a metal hanger. If you want to change its shape, you can easily do it by applying force to it. Once you finish bending, it is impossible to return the hanger to its original state because the places where you bent it are now prone to breaking.
As each of us has a unique brain, we respond to traumatic events and recover from them differently. Several techniques, though, turned out effective in healing trauma among a great number of people. One of them is surrounding yourself with people who are present, supportive, and nurturing. Dr. Perry once worked with a girl called Ally who had witnessed her mother's death and the suicide of her father. Ally lived in a close-knit community with around 30 cousins, aunts, and grandparents. She was active in church, played sports, and had supportive elementary school teachers. Although she coped with sadness from time to time, there were no significant changes in her behavior - she managed to develop into a happy, active, and engaging girl. ‘’Most therapeutic experience—most healing—happens outside of formal therapy,’’ writes Dr. Perry. ‘’Most healing happens in community.’’
Oprah says that the church had a significant role in her trauma healing. For her, it was a safe place where she sought help and comfort from other people. She writes, ‘’I see that a key to healing from trauma is finding your ‘church home’—your people, your community. This can help build resilience, posttraumatic healing, and ultimately post-traumatic wisdom.’’
Activities based on patterned, repetitive movements are also an essential therapeutic tool. It is because rhythm is the core of a healthy body and mind. Most people can think of something rhythmic that calms them down. Therefore, if you are distressed, find what naturally puts your body and mind back in balance. It can be anything - music, laughter, dancing, knitting, cooking, walking, swimming, listening to the sound of waves on the beach - as long as it naturally soothes you and ‘’helps you stay open to the goodness in you and in the world.’’
‘’What Happened To You?’’ is a fascinating piece of writing that gives us a powerful insight into human behavior. It helps us understand ourselves and others better, so it will, hopefully, make us more compassionate, less judgemental, and more tolerant of unusual behavior. Ultimately, it will help us realize that trauma is, in a way, a gift. It is up to us to decide whether we will use it to move forward or stay trapped in pain forever.
Do you recognize any unhealthy patterns in your behavior? Reflect on your past experiences and try to figure out how they might have created them.
Oprah Winfrey is a philanthropist, media executive, and talk show host best known for hosting “The Oprah Winfrey Show” from 1986 to 2011. After the last season, she launched her own television network, the Oprah Winfrey Network. Born in a rural town in Mississippi, t... (Read more)
Bruce D. Perry is a child psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author. He is the principal of the Neurosequential Network, senior fellow of the ChildTrauma Academy, and an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago. As a... (Read more)
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I always found the idea of ‘coming out’ as strange or forced, but like many other LGBTQIA+ individuals I went through the same process on my journey to self-discovery and establishing my identity. I came out “officially” at the age of 17, or as I would prefer to say it, I started to let people in to who I am at 17. That is the same age that I decided to pursue an education in occupational therapy.
I applied to 9 schools originally and decided to attend D’Youville College in Buffalo, NY for my combined BS and MS of human occupation and occupational therapy. OT school was challenging, energizing, and fulfilling. I was fortunate to have incredible faculty, family, and friends who supported and challenged me with my crazy ideas like starting a community wellness clinic on campus or creating the official D’Youville OT instagram page – which is where the idea of @therainbowot grew from.
It was during professional development lecture in my final year of OT school where I found enough passion and frustration to start my lifelong mission for enhancing education, inclusion, representation, and advocacy for those within the LGBTQIA+ community, inside and outside of healthcare settings. I was so excited in class when we finally had a lecture where part of the class discussion was designated to address LGBT topics in OT. There was an objective to cover vast cultures including Korean and Latinx culture in a two hour span, leaving little time to cover all of the material, including LGBT+ topics. Without saying any names, it was clear to me that the professor was unprepared to answer questions about LGBT+ topics, especially those surrounding trans individuals – so the spotlight was turned to me (the token gay person). This wasn’t a new situation to me or the first time that I was placed with the responsibility to discuss LGBT+ topics in a class. I remember feeling powerful, frustrated, and concerned. There is a great amount of pressure when discussing topics and identities of the LGBT+ community, especially when my identity of being a white, gay, male (sex) does not come close to representing the entire community. It’s important to note that at the time of this class, I hadn’t really started acknowledging my non-binary identity, so I identified as a male. My concern came from the fact that I was one student, unable to represent or educate on all LGBT+ topics in only one section of the class. What did the other sections talk about? Did they discuss what it means to be trans? Did anyone validate the trans identity or provide definitions for the letters of the acronym? From there, the fire was lit to go on my own path of providing education and resources to anyone regarding these topics and more.
Where are we now? Well, The Rainbow OT has been running for just about a year. I launched my first LGBTQIA+ 101 series, a pronoun promise campaign, and have been a guest on two podcasts discussing LGBT+ related topics and occupational therapy’s role. With the support and safe space provided for friends that I owe the world to, I was able to let others in to who I am, a proud non-binary individual. I’m still in the beginning of my journey to self-discovery, but I am so happy with where I am when I look back at where I was. Where are we going next? You’ll just have to tag along and see.
The Rainbow OT | <urn:uuid:056f42a0-1b6a-4de8-89e4-d29baa1bf855> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://therainbowot.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573760.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819191655-20220819221655-00674.warc.gz | en | 0.973504 | 725 | 1.75 | 2 |
WALKING WITH THE LORD
WALKING WITH THE LORD
SOME SAY THAT IT CAN’T BE DONE TODAY. THEY SAY THAT IN THE PAST, THE DISCIPLES WALKED WITH JESUS. THEY SAY THAT IN THE PAST, WHEN JESUS WAS ON EARTH, PEOPLE COULD HAVE THAT PRIVILEGE, BUT NOT TODAY. JESUS HAS TO BE PHYSICALLY PRESENT IN ORDER TO WALK WITH HIM… NOT SO ! LOOK AT THIS–
Genesis 3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
Genesis 5:22 And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:
Genesis 5:24 And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.
Genesis 6:9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
COULD HE BE SEEN ? WAS HIS PRESENCE ALWAYS PHYSICAL ? IF NOT, CAN THIS SAME PRIVILEGE BE GRANTED TO PEOPLE TODAY ?
1. WALKING WITH HIM IS TO HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH HIM.
1 John 1:6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
WHAT IS FELLOWSHIP ? IT MEANS ONE THING WITH ONE PERSON AND ANOTHER TO SOMEONE ELSE. GOD’S DEFINITION IS THE ONE THAT COUNTS.
FELLOWSHIP IS TURNING OUR ATTENTION ON GOD, NOT EVERYONE ELSE. (Rejecting the distracting appeal of idolatry).
2 Corinthians 6:16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
FELLOWSHIP CANNOT BE OBTAINED IF WE DWELL IN UNBELIEF. IF WE ARE TO WALK WITH JESUS, WE MUST FOLLOW HIS WORD.
John 5:8 Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.
John 5:11 He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk.
John 5:12 Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?
FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD MEANS NO TIME FOR EVERYTHING. YOU WILL HAVE TO DROP FELLOWSHIP WITH OTHER THINGS IN ORDER TO MAKE THE ROOM. YOU CANNOT BE ALL THINGS TO ALL PEOPLE. YOU CANNOT FULFILL ALL THAT YOU WANT TO DO. TO HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH JESUS, YOU MUST DENY YOURSELF.
Mark 8:34 And when He had called the people unto Him with His disciples also, He said unto them, Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
IF A PERSON FAILS TO FOLLOW, THEY NO LONGER HAVE FELLOWSHIP.
Matthew 19:21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow Me.
WAS PETER HAVING FELLOWSHIP WITH JESUS WHEN HE FOLLOWED FROM A DISTANCE ? NO !
Matthew 26:58 But Peter followed Him afar off unto the high priest’s palace, and went in, and sat with the servants, to see the end.
2. BY PUTTING YOUR ATTENTION ON JESUS, YOU WILL LEARN THINGS THAT YOU WOULD MISS BY SIMPLY READING.
YOU SEE THE REAL STANDARDS. IT IS DIFFICULT TO REALLY TELL MUCH ABOUT A PERSON BY HEARING THEM IN A RELIGIOUS CONTEXT. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO KNOW THEIR STANDARDS WHEN IT ISN’T AROUND CHURCH. YOU SEE WHAT THE PERSON’S DESIRES REALLY ARE.
HOW CAN WE APPLY JESUS TRUE DESIRES TO OUR LIVES ?
- SEEK & SAVE THE LOST. Mt 18:11 “For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.”
- JERUSALEM. YOU WILL GET CONCERNED ABOUT ISRAEL. Luke 13:34 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!”
- HIS HURT OVER UNBELIEF. John 11:35 “Jesus wept.” (You don’t see such emotions while doing your own thing).
HIS FRUSTRATIONS OVER…
- PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T COME TO UNDERSTAND THE BASICS ABOUT GOD. “HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN WITH YOU ?” John 14:7-11 “Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me: or else believe Me for the very works’ sake.”
- PEOPLE WHO OUGHT TO HAVE FAITH, WHO DON’T EXERCISE IT. Luke 8:25 “And He said unto them, Where is your faith? And they being afraid wondered, saying one to another, What manner of man is this! for He commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey Him.”
- PEOPLE WHO SHOULD BE TRUSTING GOD, BUT TRY TO REASON THINGS OUT LOGICALLY AMONG THEMSELVES. Mark 8:16 “And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread.”
3. YOU GET TO SEE WHAT GOD DOES.
A child often has no idea what the parent does at work unless they go there and walk with him. The same is true to the Christian life.
- WALKING WITH JESUS IS ESSENTIAL TO RECOGNIZING AND DEFEATING DEMONIC ACTIVITY.
DEMONS OBEY. Luke 4:36 “And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with authority and power He commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out.”
- WALKING WITH JESUS IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW WHERE AND HOW TO PLACE OUR ACTIONS OF LOVE.
- THE HUNGRY CROWD. Matthew 15:32 “Then Jesus called His disciples unto Him, and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with Me now three days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way.”
- THE CHILDREN THAT OTHERS REJECTED. Mark 10:14 “But when Jesus saw it, He was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”
4. YOU GET TO SEE HIS ASSOCIATIONS.
THE PEOPLE WHO WALK WITH HIM SEE MORE. UNLESS YOU ARE WALKING WITH HIM, YOU MIGHT NOT SEE THEM. **SOME SAY, “I’M THE ONLY ONE SERVING THE LORD.”
Acts 9:26 And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.
YOU SEE WHO ISN’T WALKING WITH HIM, BUT PUT THEIR OWN DESIRES AND WAYS AHEAD OF HIS. THEY SIMPLY WON’T BE THERE.
1 John 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
“Walking With The Lord”
A Bible Study with Dr. Ed J. MacWilliams | <urn:uuid:361d5771-5a31-4815-b913-c6e5e5f3df26> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://solidrockbiblechurch.com/srbc/walking-with-the-lord/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571472.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811133823-20220811163823-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.904255 | 1,869 | 1.515625 | 2 |
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When the environment inside a furnace, storage tank or other vessel makes it difficult to inspect conditions or ensure that operations are proceeding normally, an observation port can provide a literal window to visually inspect inside.
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Observation ports are made with tough, durable glass, housed in a carbon steel housing, though fabricating with stainless steel or other metals is possible. Using borosilicate (Pyrex) or clear quartz glass, the viewing window on the port will stand up to high temperatures and high pressure environments. Quartz glass can withstand continuous operating temperatures of 1,600 degrees F while borosilicate can be used in continuous temperatures of 446 degrees F.
The observation port is not intended for air regulation or cooling, but purely for inspections or viewing of the chamber. With a tight seal and a sturdy construction using the toughest glass on the market, viewers can safely observe even dangerous environments, including conditions inside hazardous material holding tanks, furnaces, boiler rooms, water tanks and more. With five different sizes available, ranging from 4 inches to 12 inches, Gage Glass supplies round observation port assemblies use in the smallest and largest equipment or chambers.
Select the correct size for your observation port and choose between carbon steel, stainless steel and other types of housing materials to best suit your equipment and your application. For more information on any item or for assistance in placing a custom order, call Gage Glass today at 800-780-3776. | <urn:uuid:52a8dd58-2332-490f-a166-fb4f0d0a204f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://gageglass.net/product-category/observation-ports/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570868.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808152744-20220808182744-00069.warc.gz | en | 0.86438 | 423 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Fighting appeared to stop across most areas of western Syria on Saturday after a "cessation of hostilities" came into effect under a U.S.-Russian plan which warring sides in the five-year conflict have committed to.
The temporary halt in fighting marked the first time world powers have been able to negotiate a pause in Syria's civil war and the United Nations hopes it can lead to a new round of talks to end the conflict.
A monitoring group and the United Nations reported only isolated fire in western Syria after the cessation began at midnight on Saturday (5 p.m. ET Friday).
- Syrian government, main opposition accept truce
- U.S., Russia agree on ceasefire for Syria, but enforcement questions remain
"Let's pray that this works because frankly this is the best opportunity we can imagine the Syrian people have had for the last five years in order to see something better and hopefully something related to peace. Facts will tell," said UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura.
Damascus and its ally Russia, as well as a range of insurgent groups fighting against them, had said they would commit to the plan.
The truce does not apply to ISIS and al Qaeda affiliate the Nusra Front, and the Syrian government and Moscow have said they will not halt combat against those militants. Other rebels seen as moderates by the West say they fear this will be used to justify attacks on them.
The United Nations unanimously demanded late on Friday that all parties to the conflict comply with the terms of the plan, urging the government and opposition to resume talks and renewing calls to end a war that has killed more than 250,000 people and driven 11 million from their homes.
The United States warned this week that it might be hard to hold Syria together as a country if the conflict does not stop.
'No plane activity'
Fighting had raged across much of western Syria right up until the agreement came into effect, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Shortly after midnight, there was calm in many parts of the country, it said.
"In Damascus and its countryside... for the first time in years, calm prevails," Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said. "In Latakia, calm, and at the Hmeimim air base there is no plane activity," he said in reference to the Latakia base where Russia's warplanes operate from.
In the northern city of Aleppo some gunfire had been heard shortly after midnight, and there were some blasts heard in northern Homs province, but it was not clear what had caused them, he said.
On Friday at least 40 government soldiers and allied fighters, and 18 insurgents were killed in battles and air strikes in Latakia province, the Observatory reported. Also in the hours before the halt, six people died in an air raid in western Aleppo province, it said.
Near Damascus, dozens of air raids hit besieged Daraya suburb. Rescue workers said at least five people were killed in Douma northeast of the capital.
Nusra Front called for more fighting
Nusra Front on Friday called for an escalation in fighting, urging insurgents to intensify their attacks in a call that added to the dangers facing the fragile agreement.
Under the measure, which has not been signed by the Syrian warring parties themselves and is less binding than a formal ceasefire, the government and its enemies were expected to stop shooting so aid can reach civilians and peace talks begin.
Aid has been delivered to some besieged areas of the country this year in a series of localized agreements, but the United Nations demands unhindered access to all Syrians in need of help.
The Red Cross called for an end to the conflict in which most regional and world powers are now involved.
"It is time for the warring parties to end this horrendous conflict and for the world powers who can influence the situation to act decisively," its president Peter Maurer said in a statement. "The most urgent thing is to increase humanitarian aid... Humanitarian deliveries must not depend on political negotiations," he said.
UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said he intends to reconvene talks on March 7 provided the halt in fighting largely holds.
Peace talks collapsed earlier this month before they began, and Damascus and Moscow intensified assaults in the north and northwest of the country.
Moscow's intervention in the war in September with an air campaign has helped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces and their allies recapture territory, notably in Aleppo and Latakia provinces.
Rebels have advanced elsewhere including in Hama province, but fighting has largely tipped in favour of Damascus, which is also backed by Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian fighters.
Saudi Arabia, which supports insurgents, has said it is willing to send its forces into Syria to fight ISIS, and Turkey, another al-Assad opponent, wants ground troops deployed but has denied plans for unilateral action. The Syrian government has said the cessation plan could fail if foreign states supply rebels with weapons or insurgents use the truce to rearm.
The main Saudi-backed opposition alliance, which has deep reservations, said it would accept it for two weeks but feared the government and its allies would use it to attack rebel factions under the pretext that they were terrorists.
The U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG militia, which is battling ISIS in the northeast and Turkish-backed rebel groups in the northwest, said it would abide by the plan, but reserves the right to respond if attacked.
Fighting between the YPG and ISIS continued in Raqqa province, the Observatory said. | <urn:uuid:f54eaf22-edba-473f-a554-f5614ae9b03b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/syria-fighting-truce-1.3465319 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00402-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974377 | 1,118 | 2.25 | 2 |
Sharing things and helping other people may damage the economy,
but it's a great way to decrease our environmental footprint.
Since the earth’s resources are finite, competing to outconsume one
another is a self-destructive course of action.
This, however, is the natural outcome of capitalism, with its focus on
money at the expense of all else.
As technology has increased the impact of human activity
on our environment, concerns about environmental matters such as
pollution, climate change, resource depletion are being treated increasingly seriously.
However, the USA and some other countries still pursue economic gain above all else.
Such arrogant short-sightedness would be unthinkable from a less powerful nation,
and does at least highlight the problems of highly concentrating power.
The simple dogma of ‘do whatever makes money’ has lead to increasingly pathological
overconsumption. The ethos of competition has produced societies of
busy, stressed people often lonely and
As our economic system steadily grows in scope,
ever more aspects of life are
decreasing opportunities for unpaid, heart felt action by crowding it out through an increased
volume of commercially motivated transactions. By commodifying our
relationships - with other people, the wider community and the
natural envionment as a whole - ever more activity is brought into the
zero-sum, competitive model.
wasteful practices associated with the profit motive
are damaging our social and the natural environment.
However, our current problems may look small in years to come, as new technologies
such as genetic engineering and nanotechnology are magnifying the potential for
human impact on the environment.
Costing the Earth...
As a species, we have a decision to make about how (some would say whether) we want to develop
genetic engineering. It well illustrates the dangers of taking
a proprietary approach. One the one hand, a successful development would yield great dividends in
the form of sales, royalties from
intellectual property rights etc.
On the other a failure could cause catastrophic damage to the environment. The cost to planet earth of
disastrous environmental damage would go not only exceed the resources of any company or state to
put right, it could go beyond any financial reckoning.
Standard economics doesn’t have a lot to say
about calculations of this nature. Although alternative models are being developed,
a fundamental rethink is necessary if we are to overcome this risk, for the simple reason that
for a limited liability company the calculation becomes a lot easier -
any costs incurred over and above the value of its assets
can be safely (sic.) ignored since if a disaster were to happen the company
could be declared bankrupt and wouldn’t be liable.
Many countries have legislation to try to safeguard public health and the environment.
However, even without the very significant problem of
rent-seeking, such legislation cannot be expected to be very effective,
with technologies developing so quickly, and potential revenues so large.
The need for such ad hoc extra rules is in itself an admission of one of the more serious
problems of capitalism; the ‘free market’ is unsuitable
means to ensure people safeguard the environment
- the one resource which mankind really cannot afford to lose.
Environmental safety seems unlikely to be assured under capitalism,
which insulates people from their affect on their environment.
Altruistic economics, by contrast, encourages people to consider the impact
of their actions on others.
Warning to Humanity
Union of Concerned Scientists
Industrial Ecology - An Environmental Agenda for Industry
A not-for-profit, reader-supported, magazine and website concerned about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by commercial forces. Contains humorous, satirical and philosophical articles and runs campaigns such as TV Turnoff Week.
An Indian grassroots based environmental and social development organisation.
It has thousands of local ideas viewable, especially centered around areas such as organic farming and agricultural sustainability | <urn:uuid:de5847fc-476a-4bd5-8198-0a0b9c92f51f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.altruists.org/ideas/one_world/environmentalism/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280410.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00449-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934421 | 821 | 2.71875 | 3 |
“Shall sharpest pathos blight us, doing no wrong?”
So writes our greatest living poet, in one of the noblest poems he ever penned. And he speaks truth. The real canker of human existence is not misery, but sin.
After the first cruel pang, the bitter wail; after her lost life—and we have here but one life to lose!—her lost happiness, for she knew now that though she might be very peaceful, very content, no real happiness ever had come, ever could come to her in this world, except Robert Roy’s love—after this, Fortune sat down, folded her hands, and bowed her head to the waves of sorrow that kept sweeping over her, not for one day or two days, but for many days and weeks—the anguish, not of patience, but regret—sharp, stinging, helpless regret. They came rolling in, those remorseless billows, just like the long breakers on the sands of St. Andrews. Hopeless to resist, she could only crouch down and let them pass. “All Thy waves have gone over me.”
Of course this is spoken metaphorically. Outwardly, Miss Williams neither sat still nor folded her hands. She was seen every where as usual, her own proper self, as the world knew it; but underneath all that was the self that she knew, and God knew. No one else. No one ever could have known, except Robert Roy, had things been different from what they were—from what God had apparently willed them to be.
A sense of inevitable fate came over her. It was now nearly two years since that letter from Mr. Roy of Shanghai, and no more tidings had reached her. She began to think none ever would reach her now. She ceased to hope or to fear, but let herself drift on, accepting the small pale pleasures of every day, and never omitting one of its duties. One only thought remained; which, contrasted with the darkness of all else, often gleamed out as an actual joy.
If the lost letter really was Robert Roy’s—and though she had no positive proof, she had the strongest conviction, remembering the thick fog of that Tuesday morning, how easily Archy might have dropped it out of his hand, and how, during those days of soaking rain, it might have lain, unobserved by any one, under the laurel branches, till the child picked it up and hid it as he said—if Robert Roy lad written to her, written in any way, he was at least not faithless. And he might have loved her then. Afterward, he might have married, or died; she might never find him again in this world, or if she found him, he might be totally changed: still, whatever happened, he had loved her. The fact remained. No power in earth or heaven could alter it.
And sometimes, even yet, a half-superstitious feeling came over her that all this was not for nothing—the impulse which had impelled her to write to Shanghai, the other impulse, or concatenation of circumstances, which had floated her, after so many changes, back to the old place, the old life. It looked like chance, but was it? Is any thing chance? Does not our own will, soon or late, accomplish for us what we desire? That is, when we try to reconcile it to the will of God. | <urn:uuid:94f7ec6c-ee62-4d25-b856-0e1922a9751d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/14708/43.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281069.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00273-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983119 | 725 | 2.125 | 2 |
Six volunteers experienced severe inflammatory response during the Phase I clinical trial of a monoclonal antibody that was designed to stimulate a regulatory T cell response. Soon after the trial began, each volunteer experienced a "cytokine storm", a dramatic increase in cytokine concentrations. The monoclonal antibody, TGN1412, raised serum concentrations of both pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines το very hiγh values during the first day, while lymphocyte and monocyte concentrations plummeted. Because the subjects were healthy and had no prior indications of immune deficiency, this event provided an unusual opportunity to study the dynamic interactions of cytokines and other measured parameters. Here, the response histories of nine cytokines have been modeled by a set of linear ordinary differential equations. A general search procedure identifies parameters of the model, whose response fits the data well during the five-day measurement period. The eighteenth-order model reveals plausible cause-and-effect relationships among the cytokines, showing how each cytokine induces or inhibits other cytokines. It suggests that perturbations in IL2, IL8, and IL10 have the most significant inductive effect, while IFN-γ and IL12 have the greatest inhibiting effect on other cytokine concentrations. Although TNF-α is a major pro-inflammatory factor, IFN-γ and three other cytokines have faster initial and median response to TGN1412 infusion. Principal-component analysis of the data reveals three clusters of similar cytokine responses: [TNF-α, IL1, IL10], [IFN-γ, IL2, IL4, IL8, and IL12], and [IL6]. IL1, IL6, IL10, and TNF-α have the highest degree of variability in response to uncertain initial conditions, exogenous effects, and parameter estimates. This study illuminates details of a cytokine storm event, and it demonstrates the value of linear modeling for interpreting complex, coupled biological system dynamics from empirical data.
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
- Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all) | <urn:uuid:1a61717b-b01e-465b-81c1-ed104117d1f2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://collaborate.princeton.edu/en/publications/dynamics-of-a-cytokine-storm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571758.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812200804-20220812230804-00678.warc.gz | en | 0.886021 | 444 | 1.59375 | 2 |
- 1 How do I play.mov files on Windows 7?
- 2 How do I play mov files on Windows Media Player?
- 3 Can I play mov files on Windows?
- 4 Why can’t my PC play mov files?
- 5 How do I convert.MOV to MP4?
- 6 How do I convert MOV to MP4 on Windows?
- 7 Does Windows 10 play MOV files?
- 8 What program can open MOV files?
- 9 What program plays MOV files?
- 10 Is.MOV the same as MP4?
- 11 Can VLC player play MOV files?
- 12 How do I get MOV codec for Windows 10?
How do I play.mov files on Windows 7?
mov format is the video format used in Apple’s QuickTime program, which is a media player similar to Windows Media Player. Before Windows 7,. mov files are not supported by Windows Media player, so Windows (including Windows 10) users have to download Quicktime to play.
How do I play mov files on Windows Media Player?
Ways on How you can Play MOV Videos in Windows 10
- Install QuickTime for Windows 10.
- To play your MOV video using QuickTime, go to your MOV file.
- Right-click on the name and click Open with.
- Select QuickTime Player.
- QuickTime Player will open your video.
Can I play mov files on Windows?
How to Open an MOV File. Apple’s iTunes and QuickTime programs, VLC, Windows Media Player, and Elmedia Player are all able to play MOV files.
Why can’t my PC play mov files?
mov files might not be installed. Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file. In order to fix this problem, you need to install the proper codec which will allow you to play.
How do I convert.MOV to MP4?
About This Article
- Click Select Files.
- Select the MOV and click Open.
- Click the mov menu.
- Click video.
- Click mp4.
- Click Start Conversion.
- Click Download.
How do I convert MOV to MP4 on Windows?
To convert MOV to MP4, Right-click on MOV file and select open with Photos the video will open, on the right-up corner click “Edit and Create” and select “Trim”, after that click “Save As” to save it where you want and you can see the file MOV is converted to MP4.
Does Windows 10 play MOV files?
Quicktime player comes bundled with macOS (read our Mac media player review) and can be downloaded for free on Windows. Although. mov files can be run on Windows through Quicktime, they cannot be run using Windows Media Player (with the exception of Windows Media Player version 12). mov file on Windows 10.
What program can open MOV files?
Movie (QuickTime for Microsoft Windows) On Windows systems, programs that open MOV files include Quicktime Player, Roxio Creator, Cyberlink PowerDirector and PowerDVD, and Adobe Flash. On Macintosh systems, programs that open MOV files include Quicktime Player, Roxio Toast and Roxio Popcorn, and Adobe Flash.
What program plays MOV files?
How to Play MOV Files using MOV Player for Android on Android:
- Grab the app off of the official Google Play Store on your Android device.
- Launch the app and tap on the folder icon in the center to import your MOV file.
- Your file will now start playing on your screen.
Is.MOV the same as MP4?
MOV files often contain high bitrate video files with little to no compression. They are very high quality but have substantial file sizes. MP4 files contain highly compressed video files. The quality is often indistinguishable from uncompressed video, but the file sizes are much smaller.
Can VLC player play MOV files?
Mov Files. The VLC media player is designed to play back almost any type of media file on nearly any system. VLC comes with most necessary codecs preinstalled, including MOV-relevant files, so there are only a handful of reasons VLC won’t open your MOV files.
How do I get MOV codec for Windows 10?
Guide to Converting MOV to Windows 10 MP4, AVI, WMV, etc.
- Download and install the MOV video converter on Windows 10 PC. Launch the program.
- You should see the Output Profile windows immediately.
- Click the RUN button and start to convert MOV to Windows 10 formats MP4 H. | <urn:uuid:9bfff1a0-8082-415f-bc4b-16074d3680a6> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://flashback-games.com/faq/faq-how-to-play-a-mov-file-on-windows-7.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00067.warc.gz | en | 0.830558 | 998 | 2.125 | 2 |
Paint and Life: Fred Yates
This exhibition of paintings by Fred Yates spans a period of forty years from his first Cornish paintings to a group of canvases completed just a year before his death in 2008. As an exhibition it is not intended to chart the twists and turns of his development as a painter, on the contrary, I wanted to show how Fred’s final, highly expressive canvases painted in France seemed to return to the ideas and techniques he first developed forty years earlier in his first period of intense activity as an artist. The Tate’s major survey of Lowry this summer provides an opportunity to see Yates alongside an artist who was so important to him and with whom he is often compared; yet also to understand that it was Lowry who gave Yates the confidence to be himself, to find his own voice and to be anything other than another Lowry.
Lowry’s influence on Yates was significant and no doubt his example was the inspiration behind Yates’s decision to risk abandoning his teaching career and become a full-time artist in 1969. As another Manchester man, Lowry had proved it was possible to break through the patrician art establishment of post-war Britain and create an art that spoke to ordinary people, an objective that Yates held foremost in his work throughout his life. In 1954, Yates had come second to Lowry in a competition on the subject of ‘Art and Football’ and his celebratory dinner sitting next to Mr Lowry at the Cafe Royal was one of his proudest moments. Yet despite this early success it took another fifteen years for Yates to summon the courage to quit teaching; he knew that unless he found his own voice as an artist he would simply be bundled together with a wave of ‘Northern School’ artists. Yates looked on Lowry as a mentor, whose tireless, self-taught refinement of technique in drawing and painting was the key to unlock his own originality. Yates had grown to loathe academic art training and needed to ‘unlearn’ what he had been taught and what he had taught others for the previous two decades. From 1967 to about 1974 Yates devoted himself to defining his own style, experimenting with more expressive ways of using oil paint and finally emerging with the fearless approach to painting that was to characterise his technique for the next four decades.
As he gained in confidence as a painter his subjects began to emerge out of his new environment. Like Lowry, Yates set out to paint the world around him but his world was not the industrial north; in Cornwall it was the rural lanes, cottages and harbours that provided the backdrop to his experiments in painting. Despite his desire for a solitary life, Yates also needed an audience; he was a showman who was in his element chatting to the summer crowds that would watch him paint in the street and who might often find their way into the paintings. His deep affection for people meant that even in the largest crowds everyone was defined as an individual: shy children, prim elderly ladies, prostitutes and dog-walkers, fashionable tourists, fishermen, nannies with prams and gangs of punks; and most famously, the ubiquitous Manchester ladies in cloche hats and knitted shawls who first saw him paint in the forties and who had asked to be included – a promise Yates dutifully maintained throughout his life.
—John Martin, 2013 | <urn:uuid:80974b3c-61a0-4dd0-ab1b-95a0d2f8e8ef> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.jmlondon.com/exhibitions/66-paint-and-life-fred-yates/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573533.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818215509-20220819005509-00275.warc.gz | en | 0.992133 | 687 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Philosophy in Action
Our philosophy is learning through play as we offer a stimulating environment for children. Established educators coupled with family involvement and instructional variety create a stable yet dynamic community.
WCCC is open to all children regardless of race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, or disability.
The center staff members are actively engaged with the children, providing support and appropriate guidance. The low staff-to-child ratios allow our teachers to regularly interact with every child in the classroom on an individual basis. The professional staff are assisted by William and Mary Education and Psychology student interns, student employees, volunteer aides and parents. | <urn:uuid:c69eaac3-6811-4867-8886-14d87e0678d2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://williamsburgcampuschildcare.org/about/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571147.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810040253-20220810070253-00469.warc.gz | en | 0.927245 | 136 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The Accelerating Climate Impact: China-U.S. Collaboration and Investment Strategies Executive Education Program, organized by the California-China Climate Institute at UC Berkeley and CKGSB Americas, is a three-week long virtual learning journey for business executives and students to explore best-practices and potential collaboration, innovation, and investment opportunities between California and China.
The program offers extensive opportunities for executives to engage with high-level exchange with key governmental agencies, clean energy companies in the United States, and connect with the faculty community in the University of California system, including UC Berkeley.
In the immersive program, including content-rich sessions and ample networking opportunities, executives will learn the major concepts and policies in California and China in clean energy innovation and put these concepts to work. The program curriculum covers the following topics:
Session one will kick-off the program with high-level remarks from senior issue-experts from California and the U.S. sharing perspectives on tackling global climate change. This module will take a closer look at the latest climate science, U.S. and Chinese climate policy, climate risks and the nexus with COVID-19, and opportunities in energy efficiency and electrification.
Session two will focus on innovation opportunities and breakthrough technologies, including opportunities in California and China, long-term and net zero goals for business, and advanced technologies like carbon capture and storage.
Session three will turn to corporate finance and sustainability principles and climate risk management, sustainable development and the economics of renewable energy, carbon markets, and clean technology investment opportunities. | <urn:uuid:c44d3b31-b2ec-4869-8f64-917caacbdd00> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ckgsbamericas.com/program/accelerating-climate-impact/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572212.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815205848-20220815235848-00466.warc.gz | en | 0.917704 | 314 | 1.84375 | 2 |
First, what exactly is heap? Heap is an area of memory reserved for data that is created when a program is executed. Each process has a process heap that is created when the process is started, and is never deleted so long as the process is running. By default, this heap is 1MB in size. This is just an initial reservation though - as more is needed, the heap will expand. You can also specify a larger starting size in the image file by using the /HEAP linker flag. The default heap can be explicitly used by the program or implicitly used by some Windows internal functions.
Simply put, the default heap spans a range of addresses. Some of these ranges are reserved, some ranges are committed and have pages of memory associated with them. In this instance, the addresses are contiguous. If the default heap needs to allocate more memory than it has available in its current reserved address space, the heap can either fail the call requesting the memory, or reserve an additional range elsewhere in the process. By default, the heap manager will attempt to perform the second operation. When the default heap needs more memory than is currently available, it reserves another 1MB address range within the process. In addition, it also performs an initial commit of the memory needed from this reserved range to satisfy the allocation request. The heap manager then becomes responsible for managing this new memory region as well as the original heap space.
Processes can also create a private heap - a block of one or more pages in the address space of the calling process. The process can then manage the memory in that heap. There is no difference between the memory allocated from a private heap and that allocated by using the other memory allocation functions. When creating this private heap object, you can specify both the initial size and maximum size for the heap. It is important to remember that the memory of a private heap object is only accessible to the process that created it. If a DLL creates a private heap, it does so in the address space of the process that called the DLL. It is only accessible to that process. When a process no longer needs a private heap, it can recover the virtual address space. Within each process there is an array that maintains a list of all heaps.
Before wrapping up, let's quickly look at the Heap Manager itself. Many applications allocate smaller blocks than the 64kb minimum allocation granularity possible. Allocating such a large area for relatively small allocations is hardly optimal from a memory usage or performance standpoint. To address this, Windows uses the heap manager to manage allocations inside larger memory areas. The allocation granularity in the heap manager is relatively small. On 32-bit systems, this value is 8 bytes, and 16 bytes on 64-bit systems. The heap manager itself is structured in two layers - a front-end layer (which is optional), and the core heap. The core heap is responsible for the basic functionality and is mostly common across the user and kernel mode heap implementations. For user mode heaps only, an optional front-end heap layer can exist on top of the existing core functionality. There are two types of front-end layers: look-aside lists and the Low Fragmentation Heap (aka LFH which is available in Windows XP and later operating systems). Only one front-end layer can be used for one heap at a time. We'll discuss both of these in our next post on Heap.
- Book: Windows Internals, 4th Edition - Chapter 7 covers Memory Management in depth!
- MSDN: Managing Heap Memory in Win32
- MSDN: Automatic Memory Management
Source:→ Performance Team BlogMicrosoft, Windows, Heap, Heap Manager, Memory management, Troubleshooting, Architecture, Knowledgebase | <urn:uuid:738753ad-5757-4e1f-8e18-34fb6f1cd61e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.ditii.com/2007/06/26/what-is-heap-and-the-heap-manager-part-one/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00210-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926735 | 766 | 3.46875 | 3 |
What should my wireless network settings be set to?
The wireless network settings should only need the TCP/IP protocol with Obtain DHCP Address/DNS assigned as the primary settings.
The following is an example of the correct TCP/IP DHCP settings.
The following are directions for checking the DHCP settings:
Windows Vista - http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/e070bf7b-6d5e-4f49-b4f7-10aa8d8b11e21033.mspx
Windows XP - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/expert/russel_02june17.mspx#ETD
Mac OS X 10.4 - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh2066.html | <urn:uuid:d522275b-beb9-49cb-86a5-6806e1e09a62> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.msjc.edu/Wireless/Pages/What-should-my-wireless-network-settings-be-set-to.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280065.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00542-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.752662 | 191 | 1.929688 | 2 |
Historic Walled Town of Cuenca
Source of picture-acepix.blogspot.com
Built by the Moors in a defensive position at the heart of the Caliphate of Cordoba, Cuenca is an unusually well-preserved medieval fortified city. Conquered by the Castilians in the 12th century, it became a royal town and bishopric endowed with important buildings, such as Spain’s first Gothic cathedral, and the famous casas colgadas (hanging houses) 15th Century, that appear suspended over the cliffs edge overlooking the Huécar river. One of these houses the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art, the museum being one of the finest of its kind.
The Old Town of Cuenca is an exceptional example of the medieval fortress town that has preserved its original townscape intact. Cuenca is an Islamic ensemble in origin, which reached its greatest splendour during the medieval and Renaissance centuries, when Cuenca had a leading place among the towns belonging to the Castilian crown. Cuenca is a ‘fortress town’ where the architecture conforms to the natural landscape, resulting in a cultural heritage of universal value.The city centre, remarkably beautiful, is presided over by a magnificent Gothic cathedral, the first’s Gothic cathedral. In the back end of the cathedral , there is a pedestrian bridge that crosses the gorge. The bridge provides an excellent view of the hanging houses and gives one a real feeling of the depth of the gorge.The old part of the city is hemmed in on three sides by a deep gorge carved out by two rivers. Along the cliffs of the gorge, a number of houses hang precariously on the edge. To the east of is the Serranía de Cuenca massif with scenic valleys, gorges, and waterfalls. Here are an interesting group of rock formations known as ‘The Enchanted City’. | <urn:uuid:58edc765-06e1-45db-a20b-33617c97e321> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.gounesco.com/historic-walled-town-cuenca/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281424.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00336-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943858 | 397 | 2.984375 | 3 |
IT'S SAID THAT THE government's cap-and-trade scheme is a market-based system.
As you'll see when you understand the nature of the cap-and-trade system, it's a way to deliver socialism under the guise of the market.
The essential point of the cap-and-trade system is not that 'emissions' are tradeable, but that the level of industry production is capped by government, and wealth is redistributed. Let me use a couple of analogies to explain how the cap-and-trade system works to "redistribute" wealth and throw a red blanket over business. (It will also help explain where your money will be going when the cap-and-trade nonsense starts kicking in, and what happens when politicians promise to "cap emissions by fifty percent by 2050.")
LET'S SAY THAT YOUR school or university were to determine that in marking assignments or exams that there are only so many marks to go around -- this is the "cap" part of the whole deal. We need to use the mechanism of the market, the argument would go, to lower the emissions of high marks -- to "trade" marks in order to efficiently redistribute the right to emit high grades.
Under a cap-and-trade system for students, those who have earned high marks and who want to have them awarded would have to buy the "right" to high marks from those who haven't earned them. They'd have to pay for the sin of studying hard and being successful. In other words, the school or university would determine who has the "right" to high marks in the first instance, and money would then change hands in order to purchase these "rights," passing from the hands of those who are using their brains to their fullest capacity to those who barely bother to turn their brains on in the morning, all in return for these "rights. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need, you see.
OR LET'S SAY THAT the cap-and-trade system were used at the Rugby World Cup. Let's suppose that the IRB took time out from changing the rules to make the breakdown even more confusing and from stopping Tonga wearing green hair and decided instead to put a "cap" on the number of tries teams are allowed to score so that teams like England who score their points more "efficiently" (ie., in a manner divisible by three) were rewarded rather than reviled.
Teams who produce their points by scoring tries would need to pay those who can't score tries for the right to have their points awarded. Let's say for example that the "cap" on tries per game is set at four tries. In order for the All Blacks to have their twelve tries against Romania awarded, they'll need to buy that "right" on the open market from teams who can't score tries. Scotland, for example. Or Ireland. Money will change hands, passing from those who have the ability to score tries (and who need these "try credits") to those who haven't that ability but have their "try credits" to trade.
Instead of heading home as losers, sooks like Brian O'Driscoll (left)whose teams have trouble crossing the try line would instead become major players on the world cup "try credit" market. Rugby played as a method of distributing alms.
YOU CAN SEE WHY the socialists love the cap-and-trade system. This gives governments complete control over what Lenin called the commanding heights of production, giving them the power to limit producers that they haven't had since Brezhnev was a lad. Not only that, it gives them the power to force producers to redistribute profits from those who've earned them to those who can't. From each according to their production ability; to each according to their need for cash.
And it does this all to the loud applause of the world's markets! Using the market to introduce world socialism. What could be more ingenious?
I HOPE YOU'VE FOUND these analogies useful in seeing the nature of the cap-and trade system. But there's more. We're now in a position to see where all your money is going.
We've already been told that when the cap-and-trade system kicks in that the price of fuel and power (and everything that uses fuel and power) is going to rise dramatically. That money isn't going to government to lower other taxes. Oh no. It's being paid by the productive to those who are unproductive. On the "international carbon market" these are called "carbon credits" -- as Brendan O'Neill argues, these are "rights" bought by producers with money that is delivered to those who "keep brown people in a state of bondage."
"Welcome," as he says, "to the era of eco-enslavement." | <urn:uuid:dc1cd3ab-5a0c-429f-ad12-7b6387fa585a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://pc.blogspot.com/2007/10/explaining-cap-and-trade-welcome-to-era.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281226.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00376-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980193 | 999 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Level of education Master
Type of instruction Full-time
Duration 2 years
- Foreign Language
- History of Physics and Applied Mathematics
- Computer Technologies in Fundamental Research
- Monte-Carlo Methods in Theory and Practice
- Optical Transmission and Processing of Signals
- Modern Philosophy and Methodology of Science
- Modern Problems of Natural Science
- Theory and Methods of Digital Image Processing
- Digital Culture: Technology and Security (eLearning)
- Information Expert Systems
- Practical Training
- Methods of Analysing Stability of Numerical Schemes for Solving Nonlinear Problems
- Applied Problems of Vacuum Micro- and Nanoelectronics
- Fundamentals of Modelling Moving Medium Mechanics
- Statistical Methods for Data Processing
- Nonlinear Problems of Mathematical Physics
- The programme is taught by academic staff who have a high publication activity. This makes it possible to attract students to solve challenging research and practical tasks.
- The programme is based on the fundamental and applied achievements of Russian university education and the traditions of the applied mathematics school of St Petersburg University.
- Graduates receive an education that makes it possible for them to solve current issues of designing and managing: various technical objects; engineering processes; economic and social systems; information systems. They will be able to: carry out practical activities to apply various mathematical methods and computer technologies; and acquire and develop new technologies.
The programme is designed for master students who carry out practical activities in the application of methods of applied mathematics and physics using computer technology. The fields of application: natural sciences, natural and exact sciences, social and economic sciences.
The professional activity of the graduates includes research, design, engineering and manufacturing, organisational and managerial, normative and methodological, consulting, socially-oriented and pedagogical work related to the use of mathematics, programming and high-performance computing.
- Information systems specialist
- Systems analyst
- Educator (professional training, professional education and additional professional education)
- Specialist in R&D organisation and management
- R&D engineer
- Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (Germany)
- Jaroslav Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry (the Czech Republic)
- The National Taiwan University (Taiwan)
- The University of Surrey (Great Britain)
- The University of Tsukuba (Japan)
- Mahatma Gandhi University (India) | <urn:uuid:f336885e-e83d-45ba-a505-5833f2db312e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://english.spbu.ru/admission/programms/graduate/applied-informatics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571198.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810161541-20220810191541-00272.warc.gz | en | 0.874963 | 517 | 2.234375 | 2 |
This word map graphic was generated from the text on this web page by Jonathan Feinberg's Wordle applet.
Human knowledge has become staggeringly huge. As my growing pile of unread books shows, we can't keep up even in areas we are interested in. I constantly find that curiosity leads me from one thing to the next (Richard I to the Knights Templar, Wavelets to signal processing to Kolmogorov complexity). I will not live long enough to delve into all of the areas of computer science and mathematics that I am interested in. This is one of the saddest parts of mortality.
The web is wonderful because it allows me to reference work that I would otherwise have a hard time getting access to or even learning about. The web also makes things worse in some ways too, as the web page demonstrates. I frequently find information that I might want to reference at some point in the future, so I make a note of it on this Web page.
This web page was started soon after www.bearcave.com came on-line, in June of 1995. Back then, everyone had a links pages, so we created a links page too. As with the rest of bearcave.com, this links page has evolved. Many of the links on this page I have added for myself, although the narrative is usually written for others. But as this Web page expands I feel a bit like Ted Nelson and his files (see The Curse of Xanadu by Gary Wolf, Wired Magazine, June 1995). There is a real danger that any system of notes and annotations will become useless as it grows to the point where finding material becomes difficult (then you need an index to the index). While this web page does not have an index (other than Google), it has acquired a disturbingly long table of contents (see Links to the Links, below). In fact, it is starting to resemble a sort of demented "blog".
Without better tools (see the links on Cyc, below) there may be a limit to human knowledge, not because there are not new things to discover, but because the human knowledge base becomes too unwieldy. Our lifetimes are limited, as is our brain capacity. From the point of view of intellectual work, upgrading the life span would be not very useful without upgrading our brain storage and retrieval capacity. As human knowledge grows there may come a time when people become so narrowly specialized that progress stops. Or that a person must spend their lifetime simply mastering what is known in a given field, without contributing anything new.
|Links to the Links|
|The ANTLR Parser Generator|
|Bears Hate SPAM|
|The Bear Products International Spam Filter|
|Other Bear Web sites of various flavors|
|More Ursine Web Pages|
|Stuff (cool material items)|
|Companies Involved with Semantic Graph Software|
|Graphs and Semantic Graphs|
|PuTTY: An alternative to Windows Telnet|
|Subversive Software Developers|
|Snort: Protection from Subversive Software Developers|
|BSD UNIX: live free or die|
|CD-ROM and DVD-ROM Software for Linux|
|Miscellaneous Software Applications|
|XML and Related Technologies|
|What is Microsoft .NET?|
|Computer Science Links|
|Art and Computer Science|
|C++ Development and Debugging|
|Mathematics and Statistics Links|
|Agent Based Software and Modeling|
|Source Code Documentation Generators|
|Market Intra-day Data and Trade Execution|
|Time series data base support and the K language|
|Geospatial Information Systems|
|ISP's for UNIX Software Engineers|
|Literary Agents for Software Engineers and Computer Scientists|
|On-Line Libraries and literature sources|
|Local web site search engines|
|Google's Successor (fugetaboutit)|
|Some of our friends (hmm, not many friends)|
|Web Magazines and Periodicals|
|A Few Interesting People|
I have used the ANTLR parser generator to develop the Bear Productions International Java compiler front end. I have also written a fair amount about ANTLR on the bearcave.com web pages.
ANTLR has been used to create a wide variety of software tools. One interesting example is Ephedra, a C/C++ to Java translator developed by Johannes Martin in his PhD dissertaton.
Java has references, which are pointers, by another name. However, Java does not have references to references, which could be used to model pointers to pointers in C++. This is a problem when it comes to translating some C++ algorithms to Java. For example, translating the algorithm that supports binary tree delete.
SPAM is the term applied to unsolicited e-mail sent out by mass junk e-mail advertisers. SPAM threatens to flood our e-mail accounts with junk mail, making them unusable. I started writing about SPAM here years ago, when the problem first started to appear. Here is something I wrote about the infamous Stanford Wallace an "innovator" in mass spamming:
One of the most despicable SPAMers is Stanford Wallace (known as SPAMford). Mr. Wallace runs a company called Cyberpromotions. Wallace believes that the more controversy he can stir up, the more attention he will get and that his business will increase as a result. Recently Wallace hosted a site registered with interNIC as godhatesfags.com. This is a "Christian" hate site mainly aimed at gay men and lesbian women. The site is also antisemitic and states that Jews are in league with gays and are damned as well.
Wallace hosted this fountain of pathalogical hate in the hope that it would attract media attention. Wallace is a good example of the kind of scum that take part in SPAM "marketing". Fight SPAM and don't do business with anyone who uses SPAM marketing. Don't do business with an ISP (Internet Service Provider) that allows their site to be a SPAM platform.
Things change fast in Internet time. SPAMford Wallace has been driven off the Internet. He lost several lawsuits and has been looking for some other way to scam bucks. Those wonderful "Christians" at godhatesfags.com are (or were) hosted by www.L7.net (or at least they were at the time of this writing). As a strong believer in the first amendment, I have to support their right to post their spew.
Ever the master of reinvention Spamford Wallace went legit. He is opened a nightclub, complete with go-go dancers. But as Wallace points out at the end of a Wired News article, the spam continues. Wallace's night club, Plum Crazy filed for bankrupcy in 2004. Ever the master of the quetionable businesses, Spamford apparently went back to his roots:
Spam King must step down: This might make you feel a little better the next time you have to close dozens of pop-up windows or spend an hour removing "spyware" or "mal-ware" from your computer: A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against Stanford Wallace, a man known as the "Spam King," which will force him to disable most of his software. Mr. Wallace's case is the first action launched by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in its crackdown on ad-ware and spam. He has also allegedly been selling software called "Spy Wiper" and "Spy Deleter" that the FTC says doesn't work.
The Globe and Mail, Mathew Ingram's Globe and Mail Update, October 25, 2004
You don't have to be very smart to be a spammer, just totally lacking in morality. A great site that can be used to track SPAMmers down to their ISP or web provider is Sam Spade (dot org). I use this site frequently and am grateful to firstname.lastname@example.org who hosts this site and keeps its software running in the face of outraged spammers.
At the time I wrote this some people estimate that the industry wide cost for SPAM is about $10 billion (US). The SPAM problem has been growning, day by day, week by week, month by month. We definitely see this at bearcave.com. Yet there are no laws that have any teeth that attack the SPAM problem, nation wide, in the United States. Why is this? An excellent answer is provided by Keith H. Hammonds in his Fast Company article The Dirty Little Secret About Spam (Fast Company, August 2003, Issue 73, Pg. 84). The sub-title is: What J.P. Morgan Chase and Kraft want is exactly what the guys peddling porn and gambling want: free access to your inbox. That's why there's no easy solution to a problem that could soon make the world's email system crash and burn.. The point made by Mr. Hammonds is that laws have not been passed because "direct marketing" companies and large corporations have fought any laws that might stop them from SPAMming.
Banks, morgages companies and other large comporations, like Kraft which sells the widely spammed "Gevalia Kaffe", pay for leads or affiliates that bring them buyers. Spammers provide these leads, sometimes through multiple "cutouts". In Who profits from spam? Surprise: Many companies with names you know are benefiting by Bob Sullivan (MSNBC, August 8, 2003) followed the path from spammer to the company that benifited (and ultimately paid the spammer). These companies all denied that they had anything to do with spam. But the system was set up so that they did not know who provided the "leads" or affiliate links.
One company arms both sides in spam war, By Saul Hansell, November 25, 2003, The New York Times, republished on news.com
This article discusses a company called IronPort, which makes a specialized computer system described by some as a "spam cannon". Apparently this system is designed to rapidly send vast amounts of e-mail. Some believe that IronPort's customers are spammers. IronPort claims that their products are used to send e-mail only to those how have "opted-in".
Ironicaly, IronPort has recently purchased SpamCop. SpamCop runs a spammer blacklist which includes IronPort's customers, according to this article. After being repeatedly attacked by spammers, Julian Haight, who runs SpamCop, was forced to look for a buyer.
Report: A third of spam spread by RAT-infested PCs By Munir Kotadia, December 3, 2003, CNET News.com
RAT is the acronym for Remote Access Trojan. This article discusses an alarming trend where spammers are using viruses and other computer security attacks in order to take over computers so that they can be used to send SPAM, or in some cases Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDOS). Such a DDOS attack was recently launched at the anti-spam site run by the Spamhaus Project (see reference below).
New e-mail worm targets antispammers, By Reuters, December 3, 2003 (published on news.com)
This article discusses a distributed denial of service attack that targeted the Spamhaus Project. This attack was launched from virus infected computers.
Sending someone spam is the quickest way possible of demonstrating that you are a clueless Internet user who knows little about technology. In particular sending spam to people who, at one time, had e-mail addresses that had "!" characters in them is a quick way to become very unpopular. These people remember an Internet without spam. Spamming people like this with your resume is the quickest way to get identified as someone they don't want to work with, as a gentleman named Bernard Shifman demonstrates. Finally, as Mr. Shifman should have known, the Internet has a long memory (sometimes disturbingly so given Google's USENET archives). It is not a good idea to send anyone you are not intimate friends with e-mail that you would not want posted on a company bulletin board (you know, the old kind, made of cork).
The mass layoffs that resulted form the 2000/2001 "dotcom dieoff" has lead more desperate people than Mr. Shifman to send out their resume in spam e-mail. I suppose that it is now a phenomena, since there is a Washington Post article discussing resume spam.
There are a variety of reasons that bearcave.com exists, but one of them is to open professional doors for the humble author of this site. The lesson here is, content, not spam.
Since I registered bearcave.com, I have fought spam by tracking down those who sent my account spam and getting their accounts and web pages canceled. My efforts and the efforts of others in the anti-spam Jihad have had little effect. The tide of spam keeps rising. Currently I get between 50 and 100 spam e-mails a day. So I finally threw in the towel and wrote an e-mail filter for my UNIX shell account. The C++ source code for the mail filter, along with its documentation is published here. This mail filter not only gets rid of the vast majority of the spam, but it also gets rid of stupid bear mail (see below).
The spam filter above allowed me to continue using my iank at bearcave.com email address. However, I still got vast amounts of spam: a few hundred junk emails in my junk "folder". My spam filter is pretty accurate, but once in a while it would throw valid email into the junk folder. When my junk email got into the hundreds of emails, I would frequently delete it. On a few occasions I lost emails that I would have wanted to read. These problems made it clear that yet another version of this spam filter would be needed. I was happy to discover a Google Gmail based solution.
Google's Gmail provides directions for setting up a Gmail account so that it handles domain email. For example, I have routed email to iank at bearcave.com to my Gmail account. The GMail directions include the MX record settings to give your ISP for forward your email.
Paul Graham is the author of at least two books on Lisp and some elegantly written and thoughtful essays. On of my favorite is The Hundred-Year Language, which is a thoughtful essay on the evolution of languages for designing software. Paul also wrote this Web page which consists of links to his work on filtering spam, particularly using Baysian techniques.
SpamBayes: A Bayesian anti-spam classifer written in Python
SpamBayes is an open source Python implementation that started with Paul Graham's Bayesian spam filtering algorithm. They claim that they have improved on this algorithm. The spam filter is available as an Microsoft Outlook plugin, a POP proxy filter, or a procmail filter.
This is a link rich web page which discusses the technical detials of various spam filtering techniques.
Field Guide to SPAM by John Graham-Cumming
Compiled by Dr. John Graham-Cumming, a leading anti-spam researcher and member of the ActiveState Anti-Spam Task Force, the ActiveState Field Guide to Spam is a selection of the tricks spammers use to hide their messages from filters, providing examples taken from real-world spam messages.
From the Field Guide to SPAM web page
I sort of lumber around and take life at a slow considered pace. I am getting hairier by the day and I'm a fairly big guy (6'1"). So, in short, I'm just an ursine sort of person. So when got my domain in 1995, the name bearcave seemed to make sense. As it turns out, there are other people who consider themselves "bears". While browsing around on the Web, I met some really nice people who consider themselves Bears also (there is even an IRC channel named #bearcave, which is totally independent of this Web site).
The most common definition of a "bear" is a homosexual or bisexual man who is hairy, has facial hair, and a cuddly body. However, the word "Bear" means many things to different people, even within the bear movement. Many men who do not have one or all of these characteristics define themselves as bears, making the term a very loose one. Suffice it to say, "bear" is often defined as more of an attitude than anything else - a sense of comfort with our natural masculinity and bodies that is not slavish to the vogues of male attractiveness that is so common in gay circles and the culture at large.
Resources for Bears FAQ
I corresponded a bit with a couple of Bears (Scott and Kevyn), who seem like really nice people. There is little enough love and warmth in this world and these Bears seem to be loving and warm people. Although I happen to be straight, I would be honored to be considered a Bear.
In general I hold the essayist, writer and professional pundit Andrew Sullivan in contempt (gay Republican Bush II supporter pretty much summarizes it). But he did write a good essay on bears (of the gay variety), published in Salon.
Stupid Bear Mail
OK, some bears are way cool. Having said this, let me take a moment to comment on bearcave.org. This now defunct "bear" site once offered free Web e-mail accounts. Back then the ISP that hosted bearcave.com routed all of the email that went to bearcave.com to my email account. As it turned out, some of the bearcave.ORG users would enter .com when they meant .org. A few others intended to send their email to bearcave.net, the more intelligent "bear" site that at one time hosted several users (currently it seems to be exclusively Brian's web site).
There are those who don't really understand what domains are and think that it would be cool to have an address like email@example.com. One misdirected note had an enclosed picture of the guy's cock and asked the addressee to send him a picture of his. My only comment is that being gay does not excuse acting like a teenage boy. If you're sending e-mail like this out you should grow up or move to Palm Springs. For a selection of e-mail from bears trolling for other bears, click here.
In order to use my e-mail in the face of the massive stream of spam that gets directed to anyone with web pages and published e-mail addresses, I implemented a spam filter which put the misdirected "bear" mail in my junk "folder", along with the spam.
The Evolution of Bears by Don Middleton, published on The Bear Den Web page. The Bear Den Web page has lots of information on bears (the real ones, not the human kind) and links to other bear sites on the Web.
The impact of mankind on our planet is causing one of the largest species die outs in geologic history. Some species of bear, like the Giant Panda Bear, are near extinction. Gary Coulbourne and Phil Pollard have created the www.bears.org Web site "dedicated to the preservation of the accurate Bear beliefs". Gary writes:
Many of the species of bears in the world are slowly dwindling. We are not alone on the Earth. Thousands of other forms of life live here too. If we are to survive, we must do it together. Not just humans and bears, but humans and everything that lives
Among the pages on this site is an interesting set of pages on the various species of bear. When I looked at the Web page, it was still growing. Gary and Phil's page looks like it will be an important contribution to ursine information on the Web.
Beautiful Kitchen Knives
At the Bearcave we love good food (and other sensual experiences). I've been cooking since I was a little kid (my sister was given a Susie Homemaker oven which I quickly appropriated (hey, I shared the cakes with her). Good knives are important tools for any chef. I had been using a terrible Henkel knife that my mother gave me when I went off to college. The knife would not hold and edge and I had to sharpen it all them time. After spending years suffering with this knife I decided to buy a new 6-inch kitchen knife.
Some of the kitchen knives that caught my eye are made in Japan, using the techniques that are similar to those used to make samurai swords. The web site Japanese Woodworking Tools has an amazing selection of beautiful knives, in a range of prices (from about $70 US to over $1000 US). The 4" Ryusen Damascus paring knife and the 6" Ryusen Damascus small slicing knife are shown below:
I own both of these knives and I absolutely love them. They are not cheap, but they should last a lifetime and then can be passed on to your heirs. The folded steel construction makes the blades very strong, so the knives can be remarkable thin. They hold a very sharp edge. In fact so sharp that you really need to threat these knives with respect (we never leave them in the sink or the dish drainer to avoid any accidents).
One word of caution about these knives: the thinness of the blades makes them more fragil than thicker chef's knives. I was slicing down the lenght of some snow crab legs with my 6" knife and I shattered parts of the edge. Fortunately I was able to repair it with a Sharpton Water Stone (also sold by The Japan Woodworker Catalog). So if you have these knives, it's useful to have a thick chef's knife as well.
An article on Japanese knives and the chefs who love them can be found in This blade slices, it dices by Harris Salat, February 1, 2008, Salon.com
La Quercia Artisan Cured Meats (pronounced La Kwair-cha)
I have gone through some evolution when it comes to cured meats like prosciutto. Cured pork is not cooked and the idea of eating uncooked pork bothered me for some time. After visiting Italy twice, I could not escape the fact that cured pork tasts pretty good. To reconcile the two conflicting ideas: cured pork tastes good and eating uncooked pork is bad I came up with the following train of thought. Cooking meat denatures the proteins, which makes the proteins more difficult for bacteria to digest (but makes it easier for humans to digest). This is why cooked meat keeps longer than raw meat. Curing meat also denatures the proteins in the meat. Cured meat also contains preservatives like salt and sometimes smoke. The process of curing meat is similar to cooking. Ergo, cured meat is similar to cooked meat, so it's OK to eat cured pork. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
After returning from Italy I started buying Italian prosciutto from CostCo. I read about La Quercia Artisan Cured Meats in the New York Times. I like to support US artisans, so I ordered the La Quercia kitchen sampler. The prosciutto is fantastic, better than the Italian prosciutto. The sampler comes with Prosciutto Americano crumble and it took me weeks to go through it. A couple of teaspoons adds wonderful flavor to an omlette with aged cheddar cheese.
The pigs that become the La Quercia meat are all free range and are raised humanely:
All of the pork we use comes from suppliers who subscribe to humane practices. To us this means that the animals have access to the out of doors, have room to move around and socially congregate, and root in deep bedding. We do not use meat from animals that have been given subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics or kept in large animal confinement facilities.
The meat for our Prosciutto Americano is all from antibiotic free, animal by product free, hormone free pork.
For La Quercia Rossa, our Heirloom Breed Culaccia, we use Berkshire meat from animals that have not had subtherapeutic antibiotics and have had no antibiotics at all for at least 100 days prior to harvest.
Americans eat too much meat and we'd be better off if we ate half as much meat and paid twice as much for animals that are raised well.
At least on paper this system is as close as any commercial system I've seen to the Nebraska/ADVISE Distributed Semantic Graph System Database System I worked on at Lawrence Livermore. They seem to be thinking about the important issues, like entity disambiguation and security. They also seem to be trying to integrate unstructured data input via Attensity (good luck with that). Visual Analytics also claims to be "partnering" with TARGUSInfo, which is a consumer data mining company.
Investigative Analysis Software is a British company that has developed Analyst's Notebook and Analyst's Workstation. They have also purchased a small company which used to be on this list called Anacubis which makes software that allows graph browsing and construction of networks of information. Interestingly, this product is aimed at "commercial intelligence". Obviously a tools like this has applications in other areas (assumign that it provides some level of power).
Cogito was named for one of the few propositions that are provable without reference to the senses, Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am). Cogito has developed a database system based on semantic graph technology.
IBM Entity Analytics Solutions. IBM purchased Jeff Jonas' company SRD (Systems Research and Development), which made a product called NORA. Apparently Jonas' company lives on in Nevada as a division of IBM, with Jeff Jonas becoming an IBM distinguished engineer and the chief scientist of IBM's Entity Analytics division. See also IBM Beefs Up Criminal Detection/Analytics Software (news.yahoo.com)
SRD's original web pages stated:
NORA. is a software solution that uses SRD's unique Entity Resolution. technology to cross-reference databases and identify potentially alarming non-obvious relationships among and between individuals and companies. Companies use the generated NORA Intelligence Reports and alerts to focus investigative and audit resources on areas of real concern.
NORA is apparently used by gambling casinos to identify card counters and cheaters (casinos seem to view these groups as roughly similar, since both groups are engaged in taking the casino's money, rather then the casino taking theirs).
For more on Systems Research and Development:
IBM semantic graph related research projects:
Web Fountain is a project at the IBM Almeden Research Center involved with data mining the Web. According to the New York Times (Entrepreneurs see a web guided by Common Sense by John Markoff, November 12, 2006), Web Fountain "has been used to determine the attitudes of young people on death for an insurance company was able to choose between the terms "utility computer" and "grid computing" for an I.B.B. branding effort." IBM has also used Web Fountain "to do market research for television networks on the pop;ularity of showns by mining a popular online community site" and "mining the 'buzz' on college music Web sites". In this last case "researchers were able to predict songs that woujld hit the top of thte pop charts in the next two weeks." The IBM researcher mentioned in reference to Web Fountain is Daniel Gruhl.
From the Visible Path web pages:
The Visible Path platform applies the science of social network analysis to allow professionals to access the entire enterprise's trusted relationship network without invading privacy or compromising relationships. The platform integrates tightly with corporate SFA, CRM and business intelligence applications to measurably accelerate sales cycles, increase close rates, and reduce the cost of lead generation and customer acquisition.
According to a December 4, 2007 CNET article, Visible Path is being acquired:
Visible Path, which makes social-networking tools for business users, is set to be acquired.
A company representative on Tuesday said that Visible Path has signed a term sheet with a multibillion international company to sell the firm. She said the service is expected to continue operating.
Visible Path has confirmed the buyout, but the identify of those clueless enough to purchase this company remains in question as I write this (Dec. 7, 2007).
Apparently the Visible Path management "will not be continuing on" after the acquision. I have heard (but not confirmed) that the Visible Path engineering group has been entirely offshored to India.
Given the meager Visible Path technology, Kleiner Perkins will be lucky to get their money back, much less the factor of ten return that Venture Capitalists like to get.
One of the founders of Radar Networks is Nova Spivack. His Minding the Planet blog can be found here (apparently also at www.mindingtheplanet.net). According to a New York Times article (Entrepreneurs see a web guided by Common Sense by John Markoff, November 12, 2006):
Radar Networks, for example, is one of several working to exploit the content of social computing sites, which allow users to collaboratet in gathering and adding their thoughts to a wide array of conent, from travel to movies.
Radar's technologhy is based on a next-generation database system that stores associations, such as one person's relationship to another (colleague, friend, brother), rather than specific items like text or numbers.
Radar Networks has a product called Twine which builds semantic content on the Twine site. An hour long demo, with the Radar Networks founder, Nova Spivak can be found on Robert Scoble's blog here. I tried to add a comment, which didn't seem to get posted. I was able to grab it from the web page and I've pasted it in below:
One of the features that is very powerful with the Web and the Internet that it is built on is that it is decentralized. Short of destroying technological civilization there is no way to destroy the Internet and the Web. Nor can the web be controlled. It is distributed on vast numbers of computer systems that are scattered around the world. Sites like Google do mirror much of the web, but the data exists elsewhere and is just mirrored on the Google mega server farm.
Currently Twine is entirely centralized. This creates a variety of problems. Twine has control of your Twine content and it exists in one logical place, the Twine server farm. Twine is not distributed through the Internet. Even if Twine opens their API, everything is still on Twine. I suppose that you could suck your graph off in something like RDF and put it on another system, but these systems don't exist yet.
It could be argued that FaceBook, LinkedIn and MySpace also control all content. At least some of these sites have probably also had to manage exponential growth. But Twine is not Semantic Web. Twine is a site that builds semantic graphs and presumably supports some of the semantic web standards. Perhaps the idea is that Twine is a seed from which the Semantic Web will grow. This remains to be seen.
There are also some serious scalability problems, which I at least, have not idea how to solve. As the size of the Twine graph grows, the link structure of the graph will grow as well. Exponential growth is easy to imagine with Twine data and their link structure. This will require a similar increase in their hardware support. Even if they purchase the necessary hardware infrastructure, some kinds of queries will become more difficult. For example, path traversal between two points (e.g., the connection in the graph between Ian Kaplan and Nova Spivack). As the size of the graph increases, each "hop" in that connection can bring in more links entities. This problem could be especially bad because Twine seeks to forge topic links automatically throughout the graph.
On the hype end of things: automatic entity extraction, the automatic recognition of names, places and organizations, is error prone. We can argue about how error prone, but I have yet to see an entity extraction system that does not mark "bank of cooling towers" as an organization (perhaps a financial organization). If these errors are not filtered out by a human, there will be some amount of "cruft" build-up of false links.
Link extraction is even more difficult. For example, the link between Paul Wolfowitz and Iraq. In Twine links are simply links through the entities (e.g., I have a reference to Wolfowitz and it become linked to other content with the same word).
Semantic Web has not been very promising so far because there was no motivation to use it and no tools to automatically build content. Twine is interesting because it is actually a step toward motivating semantic graph use. But it still seems like an early step.
21st Century Technologies appears to be a small software consulting and product company (with a very impressive staff). They provide a variety of services based on the background of their staff. 21st Century Technologies is on this list because they do semantic graph data mining and analysis. In fact, reading their description of their Lynxeon system was like reading the description of the ADVISE system I worked on. It is not clear from the web site that Lynxeon is a core focus of their company, however. Building large scale semantic graph systems takes a lot of resources. Whether the Lynxeon system lives up to their description remains to be seen.
Danny Hillis, someone who keeps turning up in my list of interests, is one of (or the) founder of Metaweb Technologies. Metaweb is, apparently, doing something with semantic graphs or social networks. At the time this was written they were in "stealth" mode and what they are actually doing has not been publicly disclosed.
Despite the fact that few people have probably heard of Metaweb, they apparently think that they are Google (or the next Google). Perhaps Hillis thinks his past record with start up companies justifies this view. Or perhaps it is the amazing quality of Hillis' Phd thesis (which became the book The Connection Machine) that justifies this view. Or perhaps Hillis is a legend in his own mind. What ever the case, in order to apply for a job as a database engineer they want you to answer the following questions (which I'm quoting here under the copyright doctrine of fair use):
To apply, please respond to the following four questions in your cover letter. Brevity is the soul of wit.
1. Programming Languages have changed very little in the past 30 years: OO (Smalltalk) dates from the mid seventies. Closures and continuations (Scheme) were invented in the late seventies. List comprehensions, and other lazy functional constructs date from the early eighties. Is this vocabulary "it" for programming?
2. Have you ever built something you could have bought? If so, what and why?
3. What is your favorite time of day?
4. Imagine a graph that consists of directional links between nodes identified by small non-negative integers < 2**16. We define a "cycle" in the graph as a nonempty set of links that connect a node to itself.
Imagine an application that allows insertion of links, but wants to prevent insertion of links that close cycles in the graph.
For example, starting from an empty graph, inserting links 1 2 and 2 3 would succeed; but inserting a third link 3 1 would fail, since it would close the cycle 1 2 3 1. However, inserting a link 1 3 instead would succeed.
In your favorite programming language, declare data structures to represent your graph, and give code for an "insert link" function that fails if a new link would close a cycle. What, roughly, is the space- and time-complexity of your solution?Instructions
Please submit cover letters and resumes in plain text or HTML only to (their email address) and include your answers to the questions above.
Perhaps the job market in the computer industry is so bad now that people will actually respond to all of these questions just for the chance of getting a job at an unknown startup company. This kind of game, that employers play with prospective employees, is what makes me glad that I have a job that I'm currently happy with.
How much you are willing to tolerate these little job interview questions probably depends on how desperate you are to get the job and whether you find the question interesting. I will confess that I did find one of MetaWeb's questions (for a "Semantic Tools Engineer") interesting:
Mark V. Shaney is an ancient Usenet bot that generated realistic (for some value of reality) prose that fooled many educated people into thinking a human was the author. (See http://groups.google.com/group/net.singles/msg/531b9a2ef72fe58 for an example.) Describe succinctly an approach, algorithm, or technique you would use to automatically distinguish Mark's prose from human prose, assuming you don't have access to his compiled program or source code.
According to Wikipedia the "Mark V. Shaney" text was created with a Markov model which mirrors the statistical distribution of words in english text. So it can be assumed that simple statistical tests on the text will not distinguish it from human written text. The text also appears to have relatively correct grammar structure, so simple grammar parsing does not look like it would be a good test either. The irony is that the software to differentiate such synthetic text from real text may be much more complicated that the software that created the text.
As of May 2007 MetaWeb has disclosed a bit more about what they do, although their business model is still obscure to ordinary mortals like myself. MetaWeb has spun off the an a site called freebase. Freebase is a term most often associated with hard core cocaine use, but in this case refers to free + database = freebase according to the web site. Freebase has been created with MetaWeb's technology. MetaWeb is looking for engineers with experience with the Semantic Web, so perhaps MetaWeb provides semantic mark up and semantic graph technology. As it noted, my work and interests have an odd intersection with Hillis'.
What is Freebase?
Freebase.com is home to a global knowledge base: a structured, searchable, writeable and editable database built by a community of contributors, and open to everyone. It could be described as a data commons. Freebase.com is enabled by the technology of Metaweb, which is described at www.metaweb.com.
Obviously this sounds a great deal like Wikipedia. To this freebase provides the cute and content free answer:
How is Freebase different than the Wikipedia?
It's an apple versus an orange: each is deliciously different. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with information arranged in the form of articles. Freebase is more of an almanac, organized like a database, and readable by people or software. Wikipedia and Freebase both appeal to people who love to use and organize information. In fact, many of the founding contributors to Freebase are also active in the Wikipedia community. Whenever Freebase and Wikipedia cover the same topic, Freebase will link to the Wikipedia article to make it easy for users to access the best of both sites.
Given the vast and growing size of Wikipedia, I'm not sure what content freebase thinks to publish that is not on Wikipedia. Wikipedia attempts to avoid gross bias and overt commercialism, perhaps this will be freebase's forte.
This North Carolina based company seems to build learning algorithms on top of graphs. It's not clear whether these are semantic graphs or not. The company was founded by people with experience in neural nets and learning systems.
Analytic Technologies is a small software company run by Steve Borgatti and Roberta Chase. Steve is a professor at the University of Kentucky where he teaches social network theory and analysis. The social analysis software is targeted at small graphs and, with refreshing candor, Prof. Borgatti writes that it goes slow around 10K vertices.
(Graphs are also frequently called networks)
The idea of representing relationships as graphs is both very old and very new. The idea has been around for a long time, but people are just starting to structure database systems in this way. See my long review of the book Linked, which discusses self-organizing complexity and networks. This review includes links to related literature and links to graph (network) visualization software.
Simile is an MIT group that is working on a variety of useful Web software which can be used to build and process semantic web content. Simile includes tools for RDF, web page processing ("screen scraping") and building semantic content from other web pages.
InFlow Software from orgnet.com
Orgnet.com is a consulting company that appears to also sell a software tool that they claim you can use to analyze your organization to understand the self-organizing network relations.
The Semantic Web and the Resource Description Framework (RDF)
Arguably the most well know graph research project is the Semantic Web which is sponsored by W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium). Tim Burners-Lee is the Semantic Web's most well known proponent.
The Resource Description Framework is apparently a language and software framework for publishing and discovering semantic web information. A very "link rich" review, written by Brian Donovan, of the book Practical RDF: Solving Problems with the Resource Description Framework by Shelley Powers, O'Reilly, July 2003, was published on Slashdot.
An Introduction to RDF by Ian Davis
Uncloaking Terrorist Networks by Valdis E. Krebs, First Monday, Vol. 7, No. 4, April 2002
Valdis Krebs is involved (or perhaps the principle behind) www.orgnet.com, mentioned above.
This is a somewhat primative tool that allows graphs to be constructed from google results and other data.
WebGraph Department of Science and Information, Universita degli Studi di Milano
From the abstract of the paper The WebGraph framework I: Compression techniques by Paolo Boldi and Sebastiano Vigna, Technical Report 293-03, Universitartimento di Scienze dell'Informazione, 2003:
Studying web graphs is often difficult due to their large size. Recently, several proposals have been published about various techniques that allow to store [sic] a web graph in memory in a limited space, exploiting the inner redundancies of the web. The WebGraph framework is a suite of codes, algorithms and tools that aims at making it easy to manipulate large web graphs. This papers presents the compression techniques used in WebGraph, which are centred around referentiation and intervalisation (which in turn are dual to each other). WebGraph can compress the WebBase graph (118 Mnodes, 1 Glinks) in as little as 3.08 bits per link, and its transposed version in as little as 2.89 bits per link.
PuTTY: an Open Source Telnet by Simon Tatham
At the Bearcave we do not use Microsoft's Outlook Express. This software is simply an invitation for viral infection (for some examples see my web page Why are there still e-mail viruses?). If we really, really need a Windows based e-mail program we use Eudora. Interestingly, Eudora is also the choice for the email program used at the Lawrence Livermore National Labs., where security is taken very seriously.
In general we read our e-mail on our shell accounts on Idiom. This means that we use Telnet a lot. This was no problem when we lived in California with its high Internet router density, but it became a problem when we moved to New Mexico, where there can be significant lag over the Internet. Telnet is particularly sensitive to this lag and the Microsoft Windows Telnet program has a habit of hanging up the connection while we are in the middle of an edit. Obviously this is pretty irritating, so I looked around for an alternative. One of my colleagues pointed me to PuTTY. I just started using this program. It seems to be slower than Windows Telnet. On a 56K baud connection I can type slightly faster than PuTTY sends and echos characters back. It handles window resizing properly, sending windows size information to the UNIX system properly.
Unfortunately it turned out that PuTTY was no more tolerant of network lag (timeout) than Microsoft's telnet. However, PuTTY supports a number of nice features, including SSH (encrypted) login. This makes it a good choice for network links that are monitored.
I think that breaking into computer systems and destroying information is both juvenile and criminal. I never cease to be amazed that the people who do this don't have something better to do with their time and talents. However, writing btp gave me an apprecation for client-server software. I'm also very irritated with Microsoft, which seems to take a very cavalier attitude toward system security. So I admire the work of the Cult of The Dead Cow. They have written a client-server program called Back Orifice 2000, which can be used to remotely and control a Windows PC over the Internet. This control can optionally be done covertly, which has lead to the controversy surrounding The Cult of the Dead Cow. Back Orifice is available as Free Source, which is the only way I would download it since The Cult of the Dead Cow notes:
BO2K Defcon CDs accidentally tainted with Chernobyl virus. We did it, it's our mistake. If you got a BO2K CD or downloaded the software from a 3rd party mirror, you need to scan your system for CIH v1.2 TTIT.
So look at the source code before you compile the program. There have been a number of cases where trojan horse code has shown up in open source software (for example, in DNS support code). Despite all this, the sophisticated features and Open Source make Back Orifice a nice program to learn from. Programs like Back Orifice would be much less dangerous if Microsoft paid any real attention to security. The fact that executable e-mail enclosures can install a trojan horse like Back Orifice on a Microsoft system is inexcusable on Microsoft's part. Given the current state of security on Windows NT, I would never use a Windows NT system as an Internet front end.
Update: January 13, 2000
The Cult of the Dead Cow web page seems to be a dead end. All that is seen is something that says "filling ditches with snitches, head up cDc 2000". I did not find any links to click elsewhere. The cDc folk are also associated with L0pht Heavy Industries. The L0pht folk have recently formed a venture funded company known as @Stake, which specializes in computer security issues.
Update: September 29, 2003
The company @Stake does not resemble the sort of company that I would have expected the CdC/L0pht people to be involved with. @Stake recently announced that they fired their Chief Technology Officer, Daniel Geer for co-authoring a report critical of Microsoft. Given that the L0pht fold wrote Back Orifice, this is a strange turn of events. I have moved my notes on Daniel Geer's firing and @Stake off this web page, since this web page is already so long. These notes can be found here.
Update: August 7, 2005
The Cult of the Dead Cow web page is back. I'm trying to get them to sell Cult of the Dead Cow teeshirts with the way cool graphic from the front page (La Vaca es Muerto).
Snort is a open source packet sniffer and intrusion detection package. It is described in the article Snort - Lightweight Intrusion Detection for Networks by Martin Roesch. Snort runs on both Unix systems and Windows systems.
Ethereal is another network sniffing program. Like many tools Ethereal can be used a number of ways. I've used it to track down network problems on my local network.
Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
The study of an academic discipline like computer science is, in large part, the study of history. We learn what others have done before. With Linux there seems to be an entire generation that is almost willfully ignorant of history. Linux has a monolithic kernel which is now so big that it is a struggle for anyone to understand it. Before Linux other operating systems like Mach, BSD Unix and even Windows NT were moving away from a monolithic structure into an operating system composed of components.
UNIX has a long history. The first version of UNIX that I used did not have virtual memory (e.g., System III). Once UNIX escaped from Bell Labs different versions started to develop. There was AT&T's version, System V, Sun's version (called SunOS back then), and the Berkeley version. The Berkeley version of UNIX had TCP/IP networking first and had a huge influence on the course of UNIX developement. Once the AT&T code was removed from UNIX, an open source version of the Berkeley Standard Development (BS) release was born. Versions of BSD calved off as well. James Howard has written a great article titled The BSD Family Tree which describes the various BSD versions and other BSD derived UNIXs.
What ever the virtues of BSD UNIX, Linux has now become the UNIX standard. There are number of reasons I like to use Linux for development. The operating system is transparent and easier to understand than Windows (NT, 2000, XP or what ever Microsoft calls their latest release). But despite what the Slashdot crowd claims, all is not wonderful on Linux. There are not many options when it comes to software to burn CD-ROMs and especially DVD-ROMs. I purchased a Plextor DVD-RW drive so that I could back up my hard drives. Here are some notes on CD/DVD-ROM software for linux:
Most people use X-CD-Roast on Linux. While I've succeeded in using this software to make copies of my music CDs (for personal use at work, I should add), I have never gotten it to work with a DVD (although I've destroyed several DVDs in the process). I find the user interface difficult and the documentation inadequate.
This software, for the Linux KDE Window system, looks really promising. I have not tried it yet, but I have hopes that it will be better than X-CD-Roast. One point of concern is that the documentation link does not point to anything but links to discussion groups. There is, apparently, a book in german on the software. So I will hope for an english translation.
Lets see, CD-Roast uses cdrecord. The cdrecord software is open source and this is a branch off of the cdrecord tree. I guess my comment is "free, perhaps, but easy?"
DVD+RW/+R/-R[W] for Linux by Andy Polyadov
Some notes by Andy Polyadov on CD/DVD tools on Linux. Some of this material may be a bit dated.
A Slashdot discussion on DVD recording tools. As I recall the summary was that CD-Roast is about the best there is.
This section includes links to various software applications that I've found useful.
Audiograbber: CD-ripper for Windows
I am preparing to move my office at work into an area where personal electronics and music CDs are not allowed. MP3 files are allowed, however. So I looked around for a music CD "ripper" that I could use "rip" my music CDs to MP3 files and store them on my computer's hard disk. I have been very happy to find the freeware Audiograbber application. Audiograbber is very easy to use, has a small disk footprint and is not infected with spyware. I am also pleasantly surprised at how small the compressed MP3 files are. I'm sure that I'm losing some quality compared to a music CD, but I'm playing the music on cheap computer speakers, so I have not noticed any difference.
The evil RIAA stalks the earth looking for grandmothers who might be downloading rock oldies without paying the members of the RIAA (the horror, the horror). I'm sure that the RIAA dislikes programs like Audiograbber because this software makes it easy to convert music CDs into MP3 files. However, despite what the RIAA would like to think, it is still legal to make a personal copy, for your own use, of the music that you have purchased. That is exactly what I have done.
While I despise the heavy handed tactics of the RIAA and the general stupidity of the major music publishers (suing your customers, there's a good business model), I strongly believe that people should be paid for creating music (or books or software). So I would never publish music that I've ripped as a matter of principle.
At Bear Products International we are involved in compiler development, including software tools and compilers for Java. Compared to, for example, the IEEE Verilog standard, the Java Language Specification and the Java Virtual Machine Specification are models of clarity. However, there are still some holes. Some of these issues are discussed in The Java Spec Report. There is a lot of good material here, but its last update is listed as September 1998.
The www.bmsi.com Java Web page by Stuart D. Gathman publishes several interesting sources, including a Java class dependence analyzer. Java dependence analysis is interesting for a Java compiler because the compiler must compile classes that are referenced by the class being compiled. Clearly this is a recursive process.
Bill Venners, author of Inside the Java 2 Virtual Machine has a great web site with lots of information on the JVM, Java and Jini (the coolest Java technology yet released). The site is named after Venners' consulting company, Artima Software. You can click on the icon below to go to the Artima site.
Other bearcave.com Java related link pages:
Links to Web Pages Related to Compiling Java (to native and JVM byte code)
Sources for the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This list concentrates on open source JVMs and JVMs for embedded systems. I have not included obvious sources like Sun and IBM.
This web page provides a limited set of links to compiler related resources on the Web.
Castor supports serialization from Java to XML and to SQL (to update a database to provide persistance). The Castor software reads an XML Schema and generates Java classes which include code to "marshal" (write) to XML and "unmarshal" (read from) XML into the Java class.
I found Castors approach somewhat unexpected, at least for Java. Using Java introspection it is possible for Java software to discover the structure of an object. The object can then be written to or read from XML. In a non-XML context this is the operation defined by the Serializable interface.
Sun's Java 1.4 release (and later releases) includes an XMLEncoder and XMLDecoder which will encode and decode a Java class into XML form. John Zukowski, an active voice in the ANTLR community, wrote a brief tutorial on using the XMLEncoder and XMLDecoder classes. These XML serialization classes presumably makes use of the Java reflection API.
The Rogue Wave XML Object Link is a tool that reads XML schemas and generates C++ classes that include the marshalling and unmarshalling code. Although I like Rogue Wave software, I've always found it too expensive for use on my personal software projects, so I expect that this is another example of expensive Rogue Wave software. Perhaps its time to create an open source version.
This is an open source (MIT software license) C toolkit for parsing and validating XML. It apparently supports both "push" SAX type parsers, where you supply callback functions and "pull" parsers, where the parser requests the next token (this is a great feature, since many applications fall into this catagory). The parser can also generate DOM objects. All-in-all, it looks pretty good.
The Expat XML Parser developed by James Clark (no, not the Netscape guy).
Expat is an XML parser for C (or C++, using C linkage I assume). The main claim to fame, at least originally, for Expat, was speed. I don't know if this remains true compared to later versions of Xerces. However, this is the parser that was used for the Mozilla browser. Expat is probably smaller and easier to understand that Xerces, which can be a big plus.
James Clark has a software company in Bangkok, Thailand called Thai Open Source. Perhaps the name Expat is inspired by Mr. Clark's experience.
Building a Data Structure with Expat by David M. Howard (the link is on this web page, under publications).
David M. Howard's web page Building a Data Structure with Expat describes a limited version of Rogue Wave's XML Object Link. That is, a software tool that reads XML Schemas and generates C structs.
The Expat parser is targeted at C (or at least C linkage). XP is for Java. What makes XP interesting is that it seems to be designed for speed and it is does "pull" style (or demand style) parsing, not SAX callbacks. In the demand style parsing, the program doing XML semantics asks for the next token, which is delivered by the XML parser. In the SAX style the parser calls the semantic routines, which makes many applications difficult to implement. This is why people still tend to use DOM parsers.
The XP link above is from James Clark's XML Resources web page. This includes links to a number of tools that James Clark has developed for XML processing.
XML Pull is a fast Java XML parser with a very simple interface. Unlike SAX parsing, which produces events as it parses an XML document, XML pull allows a parser to be written that requests the next token. The XML Pull web site includes a brief tutorial and a discussion of how to use XML Pull with the Java XmlSerializer interface. I have also written some web pages on how XML Pull can be used and why it is better than SEX, ah SAX.
XPA: XML Processing for ANTLR, developed by Oliver Zeigermann
XPA allows SAX to be integrated with ANTLR. Oliver writes in the antlr-interest Yahoo discussion group:
It allows you to feed XML SAX events into ANTLR parsers as token streams. Optionally, if you do not care for space, you can create an AST from a SAX parser and transform it using ANTLR tree parsers.
The Resin XML Application Server from Caucho Technology
The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) for XML is a way to pass data to and from Java servelets. The Resin XML application server is very fast and light weight. It is available for developing without fee and can be deployed in applications were no fee is charged (e.g., open source) without a license fee.
I've published some notes I wrote while installing and using Resin. These notes can be found here.
Unlike Resin, JBoss is an open source project. However, JBoss is definitely a commercial endeavor. Most open source projects are described in purely engineering terms. The project has these objectives, the software currently provides these features. One of the strange things about reading the JBoss web site is that it departs from simple concise engineering description, toward the language used by marketing people. At times the buzzwords start to get out of hand as well. For example:
The Aspect-Oritented Programming architecture of JBoss 4.0 enables it to provide a wide range of services, including object persistence, caching, replication, acidity, remoteness, transactions and security. The framework allows developers to write plain Java objects and apply these enterprise-type services later on in the development cycle -- without changing a line of Java code. This new concept of programming provides a clean separation between the system architect and the application developer. The iterative development process becomes more fluid as architectural design decisions can be made later on in the development process without changing any of your Java code. Entirely unique among Java-based application servers today, this architecture combines the simplicity of standard Java with the power of J2EE.
JBoss 4.0 brings Aspect-Oriented technology to Java through a pure 100% Java interface. Base on the new JBoss.org project Javassist, JBoss-AOP allows you to apply interceptor technology and patterns to plain Java classes and Dynamic Proxies.
JBoss has sometimes been given as an example of an open source project which actually brings in revenue. Does this mean that marketing and marketing driven exposition are necessary for a commerical enterprise?
Amazon has a SOAP/XML over HTTP interface to their software. They call this the Amazon Web Service.
The ETTK is based on SOAP and Apache AXIS. This is a package to support distributed computing and what IBM has come to call "autonomic technologies". The link above is under IBM's alphaWorks . In many cases projects move from alphaWorks to either a IBM product or an open source project.
Before there was XML, there was IDL (the Interface Definition Language). Sun's Java platform also supports IDL and CORBA. As the above link entries show, there is a vast and rich set of software to support XML. However, from a simple language pont of view it is not clear to me what advantages XML provides above and beyond IDL what IDL provided.
There was a theory that humans would not actually read XML. It would be created and consumed by software. XML's structure certainly reflects this. However, humans do read and write XML Schemas. XML is, arguably, more difficult to read than IDL.
XML related web pages on bearcave.com:
This web page consists of my notes on installing the Resin HTTP server, AXIS SOAP support and Apache SOAP services.
This web page is intended to be a commentary on XML. Right now it is a set of annotated links. I plan to eventually finish this commentary and add the links above to this web page.
Somehow What is the Matrix is a more interesting question. But, like everything the evil empire foists on us (remember OLE, COM, DCOM and ActiveX), .Net is here whether we like it or not.
Microsoft .NET by DrPizza in ARStechnica, February 2002
Once Microsoft marketing gets ahold of something, it becomes entirely obscured by smoke, mirrors and the grand vision that Microsoft wants to sell you (which, of course, is only available on the Microsoft platform). This was certainly true of a now fading object technology called OLE. It is even more true of Microsoft's ".NET". As DrPizza (Peter Bright) writes at the start of his excellent and extensive article on Microsoft's .NET:
In a remarkable feat of journalistic sleight-of-hand, thousands of column inches in many "reputable" on-line publications have talked at length about .NET whilst remaining largely ignorant of its nature, purpose, and implementation. Ask what .NET is, and you'll receive a wide range of answers, few of them accurate, all of them conflicting. Confusion amongst the press is rampant.
The more common claims made of .NET are that it's a Java rip-off, or that it's subscription software. The truth is somewhat different.
What is impressive is that Mr. Bright seems to have written this article while an first year undergrad at the British Imperial College.
Microsoft's .NET seems to consist of two components: the common language interface (CLI), which is a compiler intermediate/virtual machine instruction set and Web services. The Web services are based on Microsoft's C# language and their web server technology. The real "point of the spear" as far as Microsoft is concerned is Web services, since this sells Microsoft operating systems and application software.
Microsoft .NET has not exactly taken the world by storm. There are several reasons for this. .NET is platform specific, although some componenets, like the CLI and C# are public standards. If you want to make use of .NET technology you pretty much have to do it on a Windows platform. However, a significant fraction of the web servers in the world use Apache or other non-Microsoft software. In most cases these non-Microsoft web servers run on UNIX or Linux. Java is also increasingly being used for Web services. Java has the advantage of running on UNIX, Linux and Windows. This appears to be a case where Microsoft attempted define a standard on the Windows platform and failed. .Net: 3 Years of the 'Vision' Thing by Peter Galli, eWeek, July 7, 2003, provides a brief discussion of the tepid adoption of .NET.
In Pursuit of Simplicity: the manuscripts of Edsger W. Dijkstra, University of Texas
Computer science and computer engineering are now getting old enough that the pioneers are starting to pass from us. Seymour Cray is gone, as is Edsger Dijkstra. I have read some of the essays published on this web site in Dijkstra's book Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective. Dijkstra come at computer science from an applied mathematics perspective. His computer science essays are interesting and educational. He was also a man of strong opinions and this makes his essays amusing. I am not convinced that viewing a 200,000 line compiler as a piece of mathematics is the right approach. Rather I'd say that the compiler is a set of data structures and transformations, with some mathematical algorithms like register coloring. So Dijkstra is certainly not the final work on software engineering and computer science. But he is someone who greatly influenced the field and this influence is felt today (Java has no GOTO).
I placed this link near the top of the computer science section because Paul Graham represents many of the things that I love about computer science. In Paul's essay Hackers and Painters he writes
When I finished grad school in computer science I went to art school to study painting. A lot of people seemed surprised that someone interested in computers would also be interested in painting. They seemed to think that hacking and painting were very different kinds of work-- that hacking was cold, precise, and methodical, and that painting was the frenzied expression of some primal urge.
Both of these images are wrong. Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike.
Like Don Knuth, Paul views computer science as both a science and an art. Sometimes I feel that this view is dying in the world around me. Computer science does not seem much valued anymore. Software engineering jobs have become hard to come by and employers seem to care most about whether you have mastered the latest buzzwords, not whether you have a deep background in computer science and software engineering. Job interviews frequently degenerate into inquisitions where the interviewee is asked to write a series of minor algorithms on a whiteboard. Fewer and fewer people seem interested in whether you can solve complex engineering problems. Like Knuth before him, Graham shows that there is more to computer science that whether you can pick the right Java class library component.
A slashdot discussion of Robert Milner's work on algorithmic proofs and proof of correctness.
This slashdot posting includes a number of interesting links to Robert Milner's work and related work by others including Peter Lee at CMU.
I've always been fascinated by the idea of applying theorem proving techniques to software. These techniques have been used in VLSI logic design tools to show that two designs are equivalent.
However, the application to software is more problematic. The problem in software is that one would like to assure that the software "does the right thing" or at least does not suffer from catastrophic defects. In theory you can show that a body of software implements a specification (which must, in turn, be specified in some formal language). But there is no way to prove that the formal specification is without catastrophic error in the context of the application.
Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer Programming by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi
The authors write:
This textbook brings the computer science student a comprehensive and up-to-date presentation of all major programming concepts, techniques, and paradigms. It is designed for second-year to graduate courses in computer programming. It has the following notable features:
- Concurrency: the broadest presentation of practical concurrent programming available anywhere. All important paradigms are presented, including the three most practical ones: declarative concurrency, message-passing concurrency, and shared-state concurrency.
- Practicality: all examples can be run on the accompanying software development platform, the Mozart Programming System.
- Programming paradigms: the most complete integration of programming paradigms available anywhere.
- Formal semantics: a complete and simple formal semantics that lets practicing programmers predict behavior, execution time, and memory usage.
The book is organized around programming concepts. It starts with a small language containing just a few concepts. It shows how to design, write programs, and reason in this language. It then adds concepts one by one to the language to overcome limitations in expressiveness. In this way, it situates most well-known programming paradigms in a uniform framework. More than twenty paradigms are given, all represented as subsets of the multiparadigm language Oz.
Parsing Techniques - A Practical Guide by Dick Grune and Ceriel J.H. Jacobs
Parsing Techniques was originally published as a book. The authors write:
The latest publisher, Prentice Hall, claims their stock has run out. Specialized book shops may still have a copy or two. Prentice Hall has indicated that they will not reprint. Copyright of the book has been returned to us, and we are now (Spring 2003) working on a second edition, updated with recent developments. At the moment we are looking for a publisher.
I have not been able to find this book on any of the used book sites (e.g., abebooks.com, amazon.com used book sellers or alibris.com). Fortunately, Parsing Techniques is now published on-line by the authors. This is an extensive, practical, well regarded discussion on parsing.
ISO 14977 EBNF Standard (PDF)
Extended Bacus Naur Fform is the oldest language used to define grammars. Apparently there is an ISO standard (ISO 14977). The above link is a copy of the PDF in some one's home directory, so it is possible that this link will disappear.
In a formal sense, the process of correctly compiling a program in a language like Java or C++ into byte code or processor assembly language is a process of rewriting the program from the input language into the lower level langauge. The distance between the input language (C++) and the target language (assembly language) means that the rewrite process takes many steps.
Stratego is described as:
Stratego is a modular language for the specification of fully automatic program transformation systems based on the paradigm of rewriting strategies. The construction of transformation systems with Stratego is supported by the XT bundle of transformation tools. The Stratego/XT distribution integrates Stratego and XT.
The Stratego compiler is, interestingly enough, implemented in Stratego (via bootstrapping).
I believe, by the way, that stratego is a latin term for general.
The Elegant compiler generator tool kit from Philips Research (released under the GNU copyleft).
From the Elegant web page:
What is elegant?
Elegant started as a compiler generator based on attributed grammars (the name stands for Exploiting Lazy Evaluation for the Grammar Attributes of Non-Terminals) and has grown into a full programming language. Although it has been inspired by the abstraction mechanisms found in modern functional languages, Elegant is an imperative language that does not discourage side-effects.
Elegant is written in Elegant. (Beware of any language implementation not written in that same language!) and has been used for internal use within Philips for about 15 years now. In this period, dozens of compilers have been built with Elegant. Elegant release 7 is distributed under the Gnu General Public License.
Front is front-end generator for Elegant. It will generate an Elegant attribute, a scanner and an implementation for the abstarct syntax tree from one BNF-like specification. Front can alternatively generate a front-end in C, using Bison and Flex. Click below for more details on the C-version of Front
My colleagues and I have been working on a query language which has grown to be fairly complex. One of the tools that is provided with Elegant is an EBNF to railroad diagram translator. Having syntax railroad diagrams would make our documentation easier to understand. But we have been unable to get this software to build and execute properly.
Like many large corporations, Philips has made big cutbacks in their research groups. I'm not sure that Elegant is still alive.
For other EBNF to graphic format (e.g., postscript) see:
Unfortunately this software is written in Haskell98, which makes it a bit less portable than it would be if it were written in Java or C++.
Quoting from the comp.compilers posting that announced the availability of LLVM:
LLVM is a new infrastructure designed for compile-time, link-time, runtime, and "idle-time" optimization of programs from arbitrary programming languages.
LLVM uses a low-level, RISC-like, language-independent representation to analyze and optimize programs. Key features include explicit control flow, dataflow (SSA), and a language-independent type system that can capture the _operational behavior_ of high-level languages. The LLVM representation is low-level enough to represent arbitrary application and system code, yet is powerful enough to support aggressive "high-level" transformations. The LLVM infrastructure uses this representation to allow these optimizations to occur at compile-time, link-time and runtime.
Release 1.0 is intended to be a fully functional release of our compiler system for C and C++. As such, it includes the following:
- Front-ends for C and C++ based on GCC 3.4, supporting the full ANSI-standard C and C++ languages, plus many GCC extensions.
- A wide range of global scalar optimizations
- A link-time interprocedural optimization framework, with a rich set of analyses and transformations, including sophisticated whole-program pointer analysis and call graph construction.
- Native code generators for x86 and Sparc
- A JIT code generation system for x86 and Sparc
- A C back-end, useful for testing and to support other targets
- A test framework with a number of benchmark codes and some applications
- APIs and debugging tools to simplify rapid development
The Scheme Dialect of Lisp
How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Computing and Programming, by Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, Matthew Flatt and Shriram Krishnamurthi, MIT Press (paper book edition, 2001, on-line edition, 2003)
The DrScheme Programming Environment. The DrScheme Programming Environment runs on must platforms, including Windoz and Linux.
The TeachScheme! Project. A guide to teaching programming, via Scheme and How to Design Programs.
For some people the answer to "How to Design Programs" is "in LISP (or perhaps, Scheme). I have to confess that while I have worked in LISP and Scheme, I've never been very good. Not like I am in C++ or Java. Perhaps this is a result of having my mind warped by Pascal at an early age.
The book How to Design Programs appears to be a more approachable version of The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (see below). This books seems to be an attempt at an everyperson's tutorial on programming. At least where "everyperson" has taken high school algebra. The DrScheme programming environment looks promising.
The Structure and Interpreation of Computer Programs is a classic computer science text book. I read somewhere that MIT is revising its CS and EE courses, but for many years this book was the text used by the MIT freshman core computer science course. This is an amazingly deep and wide ranging book. It is available via the above link on-line, in HTML form.
Partial Evaluation and Automatic Program Generation by N.D. Jones, C.K. Gomard, and P. Sestoft, with chapters by L.O. Andersen and T. Mogensen, 1993. In the preface the authors write:
This book is about partial evaluation, a program optimization technique also known as program specialization.
It presents general principles for constructing partial evaluators for a variety of programming languages, and it gives examples of applications and numerous references to the literature.
This web page publishes the complete text of this book in postscript and PDF format.
The SQL expression language that is used to access and modify relational databases has been criticized (by C. J. Date, Hugh Darwen and Fabian Pascal) as not being faithful to the relational model. The critics of SQL claim that the shortcomings of SQL make is more difficult to use and to understand.
Rel is an experimental implementation of a language that is supposed to avoid the pitfalls of SQL. Rel is based on a language originally described in the book Foundation for Object/Relational Databases -- The Third Manifesto by C. J. Date Hugh Darwen, (Addison-Wesley, 1998 and published as a second edition in 2000). This book contains a section titled "Tutorial D" which describes the language.
The Beyond3D Web site has excellent articles on 3D graphics, hardware graphics accelerator architecture, products and much more. This site provides the kind of clear and detailed discussion of 3D graphics hardware that Ars Technica has been providing for processor architectures.
ReiserFS seems pretty dead right now. As I write this, Hans Reiser is on trial for the murder of his wife. This case has had many twists, including the revelation that Reiser's wife was involved with a man who claims to be a serial killer. Interestingly, the police have not arrested this individual.
Even if it were not for the tragic events surrounding Hans Reiser and
his family, work in the Linux community on file systems seems to have
June 5, 2007
The ReiserFS is a file system for Linux. It does "journaling" which means that like data base transactions, a ReiserFS file system transaction is either complete or in a known state of process. If it is in a known state of process it can be either completed or removed. This avoids the horrible UNIX fsck (f-suck) which has been done for twenty years when UNIX systems boot.
The ReiserFS uses "fast balanced trees" and they claim that this gives it much better worst case performance.
The file system supports "plug-ins" so one can, for example, plug in an encryption module. Slashdot.com reported that the company that is developing ReiserFS (which is an open source project), Namesys, received $600K from DARPA to develop encryption plug-ins for the file system.
The ReiserFS web pages include documentation on high performance file system data structures. One of the great things about the ReiserFS project is that it is dedicated to sharing the computer science information behind ReiserFS, rather than keeping it secret.
the Journey Operating System has some interesting features. It apparently has a journaling file system (e.g., a file system that acts like a database, where operations are either committed or rolled back). Journey OS also includes something called a HyperQueue for interprocess communication and communication with the operating system. HyperQueue apparently avoids most context switches on what would usually be operating system calls.
Apparently Journey OS is largely or completely the work of J. Charles Kain. Sadly he has written very little about the design objectives of Journey OS or the architecture of the software components he has published so far. Perhaps looking at the example of Linux he believes that if you publish the software, they will come, even thought there is little in the way of documentation beyond an overview. After all, getting the source code out there is the important thing, right? And Journey OS has some way cool icons, so what more does it need.
The popularity of Linux is to some degree a historical accident. Linux is not popular because of technical excellence. Compared to operating systems like Mach, which evolved into the Next operating system, which evolved into Apple's OS X, Linux has been, historically primative. In fact, the BSD based operating systems (freeBSD, openBSD and netBSD) have been through much of Linux's existence better designed and more stable. So it is unlikely that Journey OS is going to take the world by storm because it is "way cool".
This is not the appropriate place to publish a long rant on software documentation. Such a rant can be found elsewhere on these web pages. But it is probably worth quoting something I read on the web page of a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. This professor wrote that if you could not write well, don't bother applying for a graduate student position in his group. It does not matter how brilliant you are, he wrote, if no one understands what you have done or why you did it.
Some University projects may suffer from the opposite problem of projects like Journey OS: they publish lots of paper and don't build anything that works. This does not change the fact that software source code is not a medium for communicating ideas to humans. Programming languages are designed to represent algorithms in a form that can be efficiently compiled for execution on computer hardware. Anyone who claims that a large body of software is "self documenting" either can't write clearly or is simply lazy. People who do not document their source code are pushing work that they should have done onto someone else who will have to maintain the code at a later time. These poor souls will have the unenviable job of trying to understand a large body of undocumented source code so that it can be fixed or modified. In the case of the Journey OS, it seems likely that most people will not bother to wade through some obscure project whose motives and design are unstated. Regardless of how cool and brilliant it is.
Statistical Techniques in Language Translation: Franz Josef Och's web site at the University of Southern California's Information Science Institute
See also my web page on natural language processing information extraction.
Scott Ladd is a software engineer and author of a number of books including books on C++ and genetic algorithms. His web site has some interesting material, including some benchmarks that compare C++, Fortran and Java (Linux Number Crunching). Although this remains controversial for some people, it was no surprise to me that Scott concludes that Java is a poor choice for numerical simulation.
Large Limits to Software Estimation (PDF) by J.P. Lewis, July 2001
Large Limits to Software Estimation is an interesting paper. The paper shows that there are theoretical limits to estimating software complexity. Since software complexity cannot be exactly estimated, schedules for constructing software are sure to be off.
One has to be careful with mathematical proofs like this. They can be both true and false in practice. For example, perfect register allocation is impossible to solve in a reasonable amount of time (e.g., the time in which a compiler should compile a piece of code). So on one hand we can say that optimal register allocation is an intractable problem. But a solution that is 80% of the perfect solution will be good enough, in practice. So if we could estimate the complexity of software with 80% accuracy, this would be good enough in practice. Of course it's not clear that we can do this and the history of software development projects does not encourage optimism.
This article was discussed at length on SlashDot. I did not actually see anyone address the content J.P. Lewis' article. They simply blathered on about their own experience and how their methodology worked or did not work in estimating software projects. Perhaps this is part of the problem in software estimation too.
J.P. Lewis' paper caused a stir in the software engineering community, probably as a result of its clarity and its negative implications. A subsequent paper, elaborating on the July 2001 paper, can be found here.
Are there limits to software estimation?, a response to J.P. Lewis' article by Charles Connell, published on slashdot.org, January 11, 2001
One of the points raised by Lewis in his original article is that we are more likely to be right in our estimates for the time to complete a project if we have implemented similar software before. For software where we have no previous experience, the estimates become doubtful.
Extensive design and implementation documentation is, to some degree, a dry run for the software implementation. If this documentation is complete the author has, at least in thought, completed a prototype. As a result, the time estimates are likely to be more accurate.
I like Lewis' paper and I think he has some valid points. I certainly prefer Lewis' approach to the hype and fuzzy thinking in some of the software engineering literature (e.g., if methodology X is followed all of the problems previously encountered in large software projects will be avoided). But as Charles Connell points out in his critique, software estimation is not aimed at finding a perfect time estimate:
The real-world problem of software estimation is much less strict than Lewis states. We are just trying to get somewhere close a reasonable percentage of the time!
One of the points that Lewis raises is that the process tends to be inherently subjective and claims at objective methodologies are likely to be wrong.
Complexity, in terms of a software project, is not reducable to Kolmogorov complexity. For example, I have been working on wavelet algorithms for a year. The actual algorithms, once they are developed, are relatively small and simple (a.k.a. elegant). These algorithms should have a relatively low Kolmogorov complexity. In fact, they can be described largely using matrices, which ties directly into the Kolmogorov description.
The ideas behind wavelet algorithms are complex. In particular, some wavelet algorithms are only reversible for infinite data sets. In the case of finite data sets, errors are introduced at the edges of the data. Techniques like Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization have been proposed to deal with this problem, but this technique does not always work in practice. Other wavelet algorithms (e.g., some lifting scheme algorithms) do not have these problems, but developing the wavelet and the scaling functions takes a lot of insight.
As these issues demonstrate, Kolmogorov complexity will provide no measure for the "conceptual complexity" behind an algorithm. Yet conceptual complexity is of critical importance if the task at hand is developing software for wavelet compression of images.
Fast Algorithms for Sorting and Searching Strings by Jon L. Bentley and Robert Sedgewick (in pdf format), January, 1997
The related web page on string algorithms includes the article Ternary Search Trees (also by Bentley and Sedgewick)
Cotse Security is a web site run by Stephen K. Gielda, who does computer security consulting work. Stephen's web site discusses issues concerning computer security, privacy, anonymity and freedom of expression. As with many other people, Stephen has found that there tends to be a conflict between anonymity and accountability.
This web page showcases the work of Jared Tarbell. Jared's work is truly the intersection of art and computer science. He seems to use as a starting point a computer algorithm, from which he develops striking dynamically evolving art.
I first saw Jared's work Substrate running as a screen saver on a colleagues computer. Substrate looks like a cross between a fractal or cellular automata created city and impressionist art.
This is Jared Tarbell's studio/company. This has links to Jared's publications and more of his images.
This section includes links to software libraries, software frameworks, system tools (e.g., compilers) and software that I find interesting from a computer science perspective.
The Boost library publishes a set of library functions (in source form) that are compatible with the C++ Standard Template Library (STL). There are some interesting functions published in the Boost library. These include classes to support graphs and graph manipulation. However, unlike STL, there does not seem to be any guiding direction for what is included. For example, the math library section includes quaterion functions, which are used by people doing 3-D programming and tracking applications. This is cools stuff, but certainly not as generally useful as the string class or the vector template in the C++ STL.
POSIX Threads (known as Pthreds) have kernel level support on several UNIX systems and provide a platform independent way to implement therading. Pthreads have no native support on Windows (Win32). The Pthreads Win32 package from RedHat provides a Pthreads interfact to the Win32 native threads.
The Boost library also has a threads package. I can't see why anyone would use this package if Pthreads is available. Pthreads is well documented and is a POSIX standard. This means that your code is more likely to be portable between platforms.
Posix Threads Programming: a tutorial from the Lawrence Livermore National Labs. This is part of the Livermore Computing Training. There are additional tutorials on Python, OpenMP, MPI and other topics.
OpenTop is an implementation of some of the core components of the Java class library, for C++. Compared to Java, C++ has a fairly limited class library (consisting of at most the Standard Template Library, Boost and a few others). OpenTop provides many of the core Java classes, which is a big step forward. An added advantage is that these classes will also be familiar to any Java programmer.
OpenTop is available as GPLed Open Source and as a commercial product (presumably the commercial product is a different source base).
This appears to be a Free Software project repository for projects that are not an official part of the Free Software Project. This software is described as "Free Software" for free operating systems (e.g., not Windows).
Digital Mars is Walter Bright's company and publishing site for his compilers. Walter was the author of the Zortech C and later C++ compilers. The Zortech C++ compiler was one of the first compilers available for the IBM PC (this was the version of C++ based on The Annotated C++ Reference Manual by Ellis and Stroustrup. The Zortech compiler was also one of the most reasonably priced and was the first C++ compiler I purchased. Zortech was purchased by Synantec, before they got into the anti-virus software. Walter apparently also wrote the Semantec Java compiler.
The Digital Mars web site publishes compilers for Win32 and DOS. The Digital Mars compilers and runtime libraries are available on CD-ROM for around $30, which as far as I'm concerned is just about free. You can also download the compilers if the CD is too expensive for you (go on, buy the CD).
There are also some interesting libraries published on the site, including the C++ STL and Boehm's garbage collector ported for the Digital Mars compiler/runtime environment.
Walter Bright continues an amazingly productive and innovative career. He has designed the D Programming Language. He has apparently written a compiler for D as well. As the name suggests, D is meant to be a successor to C/C++. Unlike C++, D does not have lots of compatibility baggage.
Walter has not only written a number of optimizing compilers for various languages, he has also written a multiplayer strategy game called Empire.
BrookGPU: Brook for GPUs is a compiler and runtime implementation of the Brook stream program language for modern graphics hardware.
Modern graphics processors usually have at least four floating point arithmetic units. This make graphic processors (GPUs) the fastest numeric engines available for microprocessor prices. The BrookGPU project is based at Standford and is sponsored in part by DARPA.
The Mono project is an attempt to implement version of Microsoft's stadardized software components on Linux. Currently these are the C# langauge and the Microsoft CLI (Common Language Interface). Other, non-standardized components, will be implemented as well.
I have mixed feelings about the Mono project. The C# language and the .NET framework can be seen as yet another attempt by Microsoft to control the computing platform.
My perception, at the time this was written, is that .NET is losing ground to Enterprise Java. Enterprise Java is not simply Sun Microsystems, but includes a number of other companies like IBM, Oracle and Weblogic. Potentially this gives enterprise Java a development base that is so large that even Microsoft cannot compete with it. One advantage of enterprise Java is that it runs on both Windows and Linux. Portability and the large developer and user base make enterprise Java a huge treat to Microsoft's attempt to dominate enterprise software.
The Mono project brings portability to .NET, removing one of the advantages of enterprise Java. To the extent that Mono is usable (currently an open question), this could help Microsoft gain acceptance of .NET. Mono is an open source project and most developers are donating their development time. To the extent that developing Mono helps Microsoft, developers have to ask themselves whether this is how they want to spent their free time.
Some writers have pointed out that a successful Mono project which becomes widely adopted for on Linux could be destroyed by Microsoft, threatening any project that relied on Mono. See Mono-culture and the .NETwork effect posted on Librenix, October 13, 2003.
Hoard is a fast, scalable and memory-efficient allocator for multiprocessors. Hoard solves the heap contention problem caused when multiple threads call dynamic memory allocation functions like malloc() and free() (or new and delete). Hoard can dramatically improve the performance of multithreaded programs running on multiprocessors.
I have implemented a C++ reference counted String container. As it turns out, this software exposes much of the complexity of C++. You can only assure proper function with a fairly large test suite and with a software tool to verify memory use (this is why people like Java).
I've used Purify, a commercial software tool that runs on the Sun Microsystems workstations, for verifying memory use in the past. For a cave based software developer like me Purify has a substantial license fee. This license fee can definitely be justified for commercial software, but it is harder to justify for software that I give away. Purify was originally developed for the Sun platform and has a good reputation on this system. At least at the time of this writing, Purify's reputation is not as strong on other systems, especially Linux.
Valgrind is an excellent open source alternative to Purify. Object code that is processed by Valgrind does not seem to suffer a huge performance penalty. On Linux I was able to use Valgrind to find some reference before definition errors in my String container test suite. The results produced by Valgrind are not as easy to understand as those produced by Purify. Also, Valgrind does not have Purify's nice GUI interface.
Commercial C++ Memory Debugging Tools
The complexity of some C++ code means that it can be difficult to tell whether there are memory errors. Memory errors take several forms, including references to memory that has been deallocated and failure to free allocated memory. In addition to the Open Source valgrind tool mentioned above, there are a few commercial tools. One of the first commercial tools to provide sophisticated memory reference debugging was Purify which is currently sold by IBM/Rational.
As noted above, Purify is an excellent tool and is very easy to use. I have used it to verify a number of large software systems on Sun's Solaris verson of UNIX. From my point of view, the problem with Purify is its cost, which at the time of this writing is over $1,000 for a single license.
Parasoft sells a tools called Insure++ which does many of the same things that Purify. However, like Purify, the Insure++ software tool is expensive (I've seen quotes around $1,200 per license).
A company named Software Verification sells a tool called Memory Validator. This is more affordable. At the time of this writing their web site states that it is available for at an "introductory price" of $299 and is usually priced at $399. The authors of Memory Validator discuss it in Software Verification's Memory Validator
TOM is a tool for doing pattern matching on trees. For example, the abstract syntax trees generated by a compiler. TOM has also been used for pattern matching in rule based systems. This last application particularly caught my eye. Perhaps it is possible to use TOM for pattern matching in information extraction applications in natural language processing.
Fnorb: An Object Request Broker for Python
As I write this XML technologies seem to be all the rage. Or at least them seem like a disease that can't be eradicated. Before there were XML Schemas (XSDs), XSLT and XPath, there was IDL, CORBA and related object marshalling and unmarshalling technologies. Like XML, these offered platform independent ways to distribute data. Fnorb is a Object Request Broker platform for Python.
Zope is yet another Web application framework. The web site humbly describes Zope as:
Zope is a unique software system: a high-performance application server, a web server, and a content management system. Straight out of the box, it is a complete and self-contained solution, that includes a robust, scalable object database, web services architecture, and powerful programming capabilities.
Apparently Zope is closely integerated with the Python language, originally developed by Guido van Rossum. On a side note: although object databases been around for some time, they do not seem to have made much of a dent in the relational database model.
Zope is refered to as a "content management framework". Apparently Plone builds on top of Zope to provide a "content management system". The main goals of CMS are to allow easy creation, publishing and retrieval of content to fit a business needs. (from the plone.org web pages). I guess if you already know what content management frameworks and contement management systems are, this is probably all crystal clear. Obviously bearcave.com could use something to help beat it into a more organized whole.
The Visualization Toolkit: an open source toolkit for graphics visualization
this is a 2D and 3D graphics visualizatin toolkit, which seems to run on all major platforms. Unlike many open source projects, the Visualization Toolkit is extensively documented in a user guide and a text book.
Steganography is the art and science of hiding information within other information. For example, hiding a message within an image. The Stegdetect program claims to find such messages. I think that the proper way to refer to this is that it claims to find some such messages.
One of the problems with steganography and internet images is that most images are encoded in .jpg (JPEG) format. In general JPEG compression uses lossy compression (information is lost when the image is compressed). The human eye usually does not notice the information that is lost, so the "lossyness" of the compression scheme does not effect the apparent image quality. However, if information is buried in the image "noise", JPEG compression may destroy the hidden message.
The problem with JPEG compression aside, one interesting way to hide information is to apply a wavelet noise filter to the image. This will remove noise from the image without affecting its quality. An encrypted message (which is similar to noise) can then be plugged into the "holes" left by the noise filter. If the message appears in a particular wavelet spectrum, it can be recovered by applying a wavelet transform. Assuming that such a technique worked (which is an open question), statistical tests might not work well in detecting such an image.
At the Bearcave we have a large library of books. Readerware supports book indexing and cataloging. I first found out about it at a bookstore in Barcelona (Hibernian Books) which used Readerware to track their inventory.
Misinterpretation, yet another excellent article by "Robert X. Cringely" on code obfuscation (as it applies to Java byte code, .NET code and native code).
The article mentions a small software company called PreEmptive Solutions, which makes obfuscator software for Java and .NET object. They have developed a technique that they call Program State Code Protection which could be applied to native code as well.
Arxan is another company involved in this area.
On February 17, 2004 I attended an unclassified talk at LLNL given by John Grosh, who is the associate Director for Advanced Computing, Information Systems Directorate at the Department of Defense. He was talking about the various DoD computing initiatives. One of these involved issues of code obfuscation to protect codes with national security importance. The thinking is that the US can no longer control the export of high performance computers, but it may be able to control the export of important software and the associated algorithms.
While DoD may be concerned with byte code based codes, my impression was that the primary area of concern was native (microprocessor) code. While there are several companies that sell "obfuscation" products for Java byte code, I have not heard of a company that does this for microprocessor instruction sets.
There are a number of interesting questions here. If you have highly optimized code for a modern processor, how well can you do disassembling it into the source language? I am not sure of the answer to this question. But at MasPar Computer Corp. we worked on a debugger for optimized code. It was a difficult problem and in many cases the debuger got confused. My impression is that the general feeling is that disassembly of machine code does not do very well.
Another problem, pointed out by one of my colleagues, involves embedded system code. Modern weapons platforms (e.g., planes, tanks, helicopters) have increasing amounts of embedded software. These platforms are captured every-once-in-a-while (like the signal intelligence plane captured three years ago by China). If the computer systems are not destroyed, the possessor of the platform can understand the system by examining the software. So DoD is probably concerned on a number of levels about protecting code.
GnuPG: the GNU Privacy Guard
Network Associates bought Phil Zimmerman's PGP and commercialized it. Apparently it never made money, perhaps because a free version existed in parallel. In early March Network Associates announced that they had been unable to find a buyer for their PGP division. They subsequently fired 18 members of the staff and announced that there would be no new development. GnuPG offers a complete replacement:
GnuPG is a complete and free replacement for PGP. Because it does not use the patented IDEA algorithm, it can be used without any restrictions.
GnuPG is, of course, open source.
CDex: CD-ROM to .wav, MPEG, etc
A great source of 1-D data for signal processing via wavelets or Fourier transforms is music stored on CDs. The problem is getting the music in digital form off the CD so it can be fed to signal processing code. CDex is an open source program read a track off a CD-ROM into a .wav file (which is more or less a pure bit-stream). It turns on Windows NT, which is the platform I use for developing a lot of my signal processing software. It apparently needs Adaptec's ASPI manager, what ever that is (I have not installed this software yet, but I do have an Adaptec UltraSCSI CD-ROM/Disk interface).
The Backplane web page provides the following description:
The Backplane Open Source Database is a replicated, transactional, fault-tolerant relational database core. Currently supported on Linux and FreeBSD, Backplane is designed to run on a large number of small servers rather than a small number of large servers. With Backplane, it is possible to spread the database nodes widely, allowing database operations to work efficiently over WAN latencies while maintaining full transactional coherency across the entire replication group.
Backplane's native quorum-based replication makes it easy to increase the database capacity (by simply adding a new node), re-synch a crashed server, or take down multiple nodes for maintenance (such as an entire co-location facility) - all without affecting the database availability.
Rekall: An Open Source Database Front End
Rekall is a database agnostic frontend which is implemented in Phython. The GUI is implemented QT.
Rekall supports the creation of custom forms and data retrieval displays. These forms are aimed at end users, rather than database developers. This seems different from tools like TOAD or TORA which are database frontends for developers. Rekall includes python debug capability for forms and table display development.
PostgreSQL Manager from Electronic Microsystems
While I have studied database system architecture and theory, I only started using databases relatively recently. When I first started using Oracle, I did not know that there were tools like database management and administration tools. I used Oracle's shell interface (sql*plus). Then I discovered the TOAD Database Manager for Oracle. TOAD provides a very nice interface for entering SQL statements. It provides an excellent schema browswer which shows the database tables and the table structure. Life was much easier. No I can't imagine living without a tool like this.
Most of the database management tools are aimed at commercial databases, especially Oracle. I was very happy to Google into the PostgreSQL Manager. It turns on both Windows and Linux and has a very reasonable license cost.
The only problem is that I've been unable to get the evaluation version to connect to postgresql running on my local Linux system...
The company has no contact address. When I first sent mail to firstname.lastname@example.org I got a bounce from a Russian email address:
... while talking to ems.ems.ru.: >>> RCPT To:
<<< 550 : Sender address rejected: undeliverable address: host shell2.webquarry.com[126.96.36.199] said: 553 5.3.0 550 5.1.1 email@example.com... User unknown
I've since submitted a problem report through their support web page. We'll see what come of it.
SQuirreL SQL Client is a graphical Java program that will allow you to view the structure of a JDBC compliant database, browse the data in tables, issue SQL commands etc.
This is a free (as in beer) Verilog simulator and synthesis tool. This software has been developed by Stephen Williams and he holds the copyright to the software (e.g., it is not GPLed).
From poking around the web pages I'm not sure how much of the Verilog standard is supported. Verilog is a huge language, with complex simulation semantics. Implementing a full simulator for Verilog is a major task. Implementing Verilog logic synthesis on top of this seems like a task that is much too large for a single person, even if that person has a trust fund and does not have to work for a living (which is not the case for Mr. Williams).
To quote from the OVM Project main web page:
The goal of the Ovm project is to develop an open source framework for building programming language runtime systems. Ovm is a DARPA funded collaborative effort between Purdue University, SUNY Oswego, University of Maryland, and DLTech. The current emphasis for Ovm is to produce a Java. Virtual Machine compliant with the Real-Time Specification for Java.
Quickly glancing through this site and the, at the time of this writing, sparse publications, it is not clear to me how this project attracted DARPA funding. DARPA projects are usually either aimed at pushing the state of the art or at providing technology that is of interest to the US military. This project does not seem to meet either of these criteria. There are some existing open source runtime systems for Java. There does not seem to be huge demand for building a myraid of different runtime systems.
Mutt E-Mail Client, an email client with an Elm-like interface.
While I am a follower of the one true religion (Emacs, you dolt) and use Emacs Rmail, my beloved, while also an Emacs user, uses Elm. I'm planning on moving to a new ISP and I wanted to do what I could to make sure that my beloved has a familiar e-mail client. Mutt looks like it may "fill the bill".
Disk Backup Software
Backing up a hard disk to preserve data in the event of a system crash has always been a tedious process. For years the best alternative was DAT tape. However, DAT tape drives were expensive as were the tapes themselves. An alternative was the "Travan" tape drives. My experience with these tape drives was not good. They seemed to be sensitive to dust and I had one tape drive fail after only limited use. Even when the Travan tape drive worked, they were very slow.
The availability of write once DVD burners has been a great step forward. A DVD can hold about 4.7 giga-bytes. Unfortunately many of the DVD data applications simply back-up directories and files. This is not much help in the event of a disk crash where it would be nice to restore the disk from a disk image stored on one or more DVDs.
Slashdot had an interesting, and for me, timely discussion on disk imaging software. See Experiences w/Drive Imaging Software?
I wish I had seen this discussion before I purchased Paragon Software's Drive Backup application. This application did not recognize my Pioneer Electronics DVD-104 DVD burner. Paragon is a German company and there is no phone contact in the United States. The only way to contact Paragon is via their support e-mail address. They ignored the first two e-mails I sent. Fortunately I paid via a credit card. When I sent Paragon e-mail telling them that I was going to contact my credit card company and dispute the charge, I finally got a reply. In the e-mail that they were replying to I explained that my computer was running Windows XP and I was having problems with the Pioneer DVD-104. I got an obscure note back suggesting that I download the Linux version.
Disk backup software is the last line of defense and the reliability of this software is critical. My experience with Paragon did not lead me to believe that I could trust their software. I have removed this software from my system and written my credit card company asking them to back out the charge for the Paragon software (later: eventually, I did manage to get a refund). I will never purchase another Paragon Software product.
A better alternative seems to be the Symantec Ghost backup program. A number of posters on Slashdot used this program. Apparently some versions of this software had problems with Microsoft copy protection. From looking at the Microsoft knowledge base article on these problems it appears that later versions (e.g., the 2003 version) may have corrected these problems. I currently have this on order. I'll update this section when I receive it and have had a chance to use it.
Net Express, the hardware vendor for the The Bear Cave
At the Bear Cave we do not buy off-the-shelf computer systems made by companies like HP, IBM or Dell (the exception is laptop systems). We place high premium on reliability and performance. For example, we have been using SCSI disks for many years because they tend to be more reliable and are faster. Companies like HP and Dell compete heavily on price. The systems they sell tend to cut corners to save money that result in less reliability and lower performance. For example, a system with a high speed processor can be crippled if it is not built with high performance memory.
One of the best system integrators we've encountered is Net Express. They have a vast knowledge of the currently available hardware. You can tell them the characteristics of the system that are important to you and they will build a system to these specifications.
When it came time for the Bear Cave to purchase a Linux system, Net Express was invaluable. Operating system installation and configuration are included with the system purchase. Net Express understands Linux construction and configuration. They will make sure that all the proper drivers are installed for the hardware you've chosen. We've been extremely happy with the system we purchased and the support we've gotten. In short, Net Express Rocks!
The Shuttle Cube
The Shuttle Cube is a very compact, fully functional computer system. At the time this was written it is largely for people who are willing to build their own system or for system integrators. A fully configured system (1Gb of memory, hard disk, DVD/CD ROM, processor) runs about $1,000 US. The catch is that you have to put it together. Parts are available from electronic retailers like Fry's. Assembled Shuttle Cube systems are available from The Book PC. Fully configured systems run about $1,400 (e.g., latest AMD processor, 1Gb RAM, DVD-R/W, 80Gb 7,200 RPM disk, etc...). Note that this is without a monitor/LCD display.
Ruby is yet another scripting language, joining the worlds most popular write only language Perl (e.g., Perl is difficult to read), Python, Php, among others. Perl has been growing over the years like some demented spawn from the deep and has become "object oriented" (if such an idea can really be applied to Perl). Ruby was designed from the beginning to be object oriented.
Major programming languages have converged around C style syntax (e.g., C++, Java and C#). One view of this was that language design was largely dead. This certainly does not seem to be the case with interpreted or scripting languages.
The F# programming language is an implementation of ML targeted at Microsoft's .NET programming environment (F# has been implemented by Evil Empire, I mean, Microsoft Resarch). Despite the research nature of this project, it does not appear to be "open source". Given Microsoft's claim that open source/Free Software is akin to a communist plot (e.g., anti-capitolist), I suppose that this is not surprising.
The Microsoft F# languages appears to be a new implementation of Caml, which was developed by a project at INRIA in France (INRIA is the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control). I assume that the Microsoft's version is called F# rather than simply Caml targeted at .NET because it was not developed from the INRIA source base. Unlike the closed source Microsoft version, targeted at Microsoft's .NET (which as far as I know only runs in the Windows platform), there is also INRIA's Caml. I have not looked at the distribution license for Caml, but it appears to be distributed in both source and object releases. Caml also has a consortium of users.
Here are some additional F# references:
The Eiffel Programming Language
Although C++ is powerful, it takes years to learn. It is also easy to make mistakes in C++. For example, it is dangerous to ship any product implemented in C++ which has not been checked with a memory use verification tool like Purify (from IBM) or the open source ValGrind. The standard C++ class libraries (e.g., the Standard Template Library) are tiny compared to Java's huge class library.
The Java language is not as powerful, but Java supports garbage collection, so memory reference errors are largely limited to null pointer references. The Java class library can save huge amounts of time. However, Java is slow.
Some people have called the Eiffel programming Language the best professional language available. Ignoring the issues of class library support (a not inconsiderable issue), Eiffel seems like a promising alternative to Java and C++. So where can you get development tools for Eiffel?
SmartEiffel currently supports an Eiffel to C compiler and an Eiffel to Java byte-code compiler, along with an Eiffel debugger. This project is apparently sponsored by the French state sponsored research organization INRIA. This software is published under the Free Software Foundation Copyleft.
The fact that Eiffel can be compiled into Java byte-code seems to imply that the vast Java library would be available from Eiffel.
Eiffel Software was founded by the inventor of Eiffel, Bertrand Meyer, so one might think that this would be the natural source for Eiffel development tools. At least in my case this is not true. Eiffel Software has apparently been been taken over by marketing people and managers without recent software development experience. You can't find out the cost of an EiffelStudio license without filling out a silly form. After filling out the form I gasped at the license cost. As of July 2003, Windows and Linux licenses for EiffelStudio were listed at $4,799. An "Enterprise" UNIX license was $7,999. In contrast, a Microsoft Visual C++ .NET license at full price is under $1,000 (which I think is expensive).
I'm a software engineer. I like to be paid for my work. I'm sure that others do too. So I don't find paying license fees for software unreasonable. But there is no way I can afford these fees. I have not purchased a copy of MatLab because I could not justify its cost and MatLab is relative cheap compared to Eiffel.
The Object Tools web site looks like it was built by developers for developers. Object Tools sells Eiffel development tools for all the major platforms and their license feels are much more affordable. As of July 2003 a "Personal" Eiffel license was $100 and a "Professional" Eiffel license was $450. These are license fees I can afford. The Object Tools compiler produces COFF (Common Object File Format), which can be linked with C.
I was only able to find the Eiffel software tool vendors listed above. So the language does not seem to have taken the world by storm. However Eiffel can be linked with C. Eiffel can also be called via the Java Native Interface for native compiled Eiffel or directly in the case of the Java byte-code compiled Eiffel. As long as reasonably priced development tools are available, it may not matter how popular Eiffel is.
AMPL is a comprehensive and powerful algebraic modeling language for linear and nonlinear optimization problems, in discrete or continuous variables.
Developed at Bell Laboratories, AMPL lets you use common notation and familiar concepts to formulate optimization models and examine solutions, while the computer manages communication with an appropriate solver.
AMPL's flexibility and convenience render it ideal for rapid prototyping and model development, while its speed and control options make it an especially efficient choice for repeated production runs.
From the AMPL web site
The link above is on the www.opengl.org web site. The abstract for the openGL Shader Language draft specification summarizes the objectives of the shader language as:
The recent trend in graphics hardware has been to replace fixed functionality with programmability in areas that have grown exceedingly complex (e.g., vertex processing and fragment processing). The OpenGL Shading Language has been designed to allow application programmers to express the processing that occurs at those programmable points of the OpenGL pipeline. Independently compilable units that are written in this language are called shaders. A program is a set of shaders that are compiled and linked together.
The aim of this document is to thoroughly specify the programming language. The OpenGL entry points that are used to manipulate and communicate with programs and shaders are defined separately from this language specification.
The OpenGL Shading Language is based on ANSI C and many of the features have been retained except when they conflict with performance or ease of implementation. C has been extended with vector and matrix types (with hardware based qualifiers) to make it more concise for the typical operations carried out in 3D graphics. Some mechanisms from C++ have also been borrowed, such as overloading functions based on argument types, and ability to declare variables where they are first needed instead of at the beginning of blocks.
The openGL Shader Language seems to be in direct competition with the Cg language developed by NVidia and Microsoft (see The Cg Tutorial: The Definitive Guide to Programmable Real-Time Graphics by Randima Fernando and Mark J. Kilgard, Addison Wesley, 2003).
Steve Ramsay's Guide to Regular Expressions, Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia
I've been using UNIX longer than I'd like to admit (let's just say that the first UNIX system I used did not have virtual memory). In all this time I've never learned to love "regular expression" notation which is used to define text matching sequences for software like egrep and Perl. While Steve Ramsay's Guide to Regular Expressions has not persuaded me to love regular expressions, it provides an excellent reference guide.
Lets face it: for many applications C++ sucks compared to Java.
The class libraries that are available for the Java programming language from Sun Microsystems, the Apache project and other sources are the largest collection of reusable software in existence. The widely used Eclipse development environment supports a common development platform on both Windows and Linux. I will not go into Eclipse's features and virtues here, except to say that Eclipse is an excellent environment for creating, debugging and managing large software projects.
Then there's C++. The language is a crufty offshoot of C from the early days of object oriented programming languages. When it comes to class librarys that are available without a license fee, if pales beside Java. There is the Standard Template Library and the Boost library and perhaps a few others. There are, however, many situations where Java is not an appropriate choice as an implementation language and C++ is the only reasonable choice. In this case, what tools exist for developing large C++ applications and for understanding large C++ software sources.
Microsoft's Visual C++ is an excellent development and debugging platform as long as your only want to develop on Windows. Eclipse has a C++ environment, but at the time I wrote this it is not as good as the Java environment and is buggy.
There was an informative short post on Slashdot answering a question about what tools to use for making since of a large C++ source base.
I had a pile of C++ dropped in my lap 2 years ago by Richard Steiner
My main tool for figuring it all out was to use exuberant ctags to create a tags file, and Nedit to navigate through the source under Solaris, with a little grep thrown in. I also used gdb with the DDD front-end to do a little real-time snooping.
I've since added both cscope and freescope, as well as the old Red Hat Source Navigator for good measure.
Of course Richard is wrong about Nedit. There is one true editor and it's name is Emacs and Richard Stallman is it's prophet.
The GNU Scientific Library (GSL) is an excellent, portable, source for a fairly wide range of numerical software, including random number generators, basic statistics code and linear algebra codes. The GSL is available on UNIX platforms and a self-installing release is available for Windows. I have used the GSL random number functions for developing random walk generators, which I used to test my Hurst exponent estimation code.
HTML supports a few simple features for mathematics notation, for example, HTML supports subscripts and superscripts. However, when it comes to even mildly complex equations like (si + si+1)/2, HTML is pretty awkward. Someday there is supposed to be something called mathML, which is an HTML extension to support mathematical notion. At the time of this writing, it is not there yet.
I have used MathType to "type set" all of the equations in my wavelet web pages. The MathType package allows complex mathematical notation to be defined and the resulting equation saved as a GIF. I would have preferred JPEG, but GIF can be converted to JPEG by a number of tools.
My interest in digital signal processing, wavelets and image processing lead to an interest in mathematics (which previously existed as a college graduation requirement).
Computer science is a relatively young field. The formal study of mathematics goes back over two thousand years and spans all human socieities. Mathematics is a vastly larger area that computer science, although there is, obviously, some significant overlap. I am always in search of mathematics reference material, since I've found that many authors write for those who are already knowledgable in the field and do not always define their terms. Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics looks like a very useful reference.
Slashdot book review review: Five Free (Online) Calculus Text Books by Ben Crowell, March 8, 2004
Sean's Applied Math Book by Sean Mauch
Sean Mauch is an applied math grad student at Cal. Tech. Unlike many people in academia Sean seems to have a strong interest and talent for teaching. Of course this may mean that his academic career is in danger since teaching is not valued at most Universities.
ABLE provides a set of Java "beans" which allow intelligent "agents" to be constructed. A fairly wide variety of agents are supplied (e.g., agents to read time series, access relations databases, perform neural net computation).
And speaking of neural nets...
SNNS includes a rather rich environment for building neural nets and similar learning systems. These include Kohenen maps (self-organizedmaps), along with a wide variety of neural nets.
Agent-based computational economics at Iowa State University Department of Economics.
Agent based modeling of non-linear systems, like financial markets, has a natural attraction. The only problem with these models is that they can behave in unpredictable fashions. If you cannot predict your profit and loss bands in a model then the model is dangerous when it comes to trading real money, in real markets.
This is another Iowa State University economics department web page.
From the Cougaar index Web page:
Cougaar is a Java-based architecture for the construction of large-scale distributed agent-based applications. It is a product of two consecutive, multi-year DARPA research programs into large-scale agent systems spanning eight years of effort. The first program conclusively demonstrated the feasibility of using advanced agent-based technology to conduct rapid, large scale, distributed logistics planning and replanning. The second program is developing information technologies to enhance the survivability of these distributed agent-based systems operating in extremely chaotic environments. The resultant architecture, Cougaar, provides developers with a framework to implement large-scale distributed agent applications with minimal consideration for the underlying architecture and infrastructure. The Cougaar architecture uses the latest in agent-oriented component-based design and has a long list of powerful features.
Apparently if you're building Agent based systems (and funded by DARPA) you've got to use that word architecture. D-OMER is available in both Java and Lisp (OmarJ and OmarL, respectively). The OmarJ software is described as:
OmarJ is an agent development environment that provides tools for creating and managing systems of agents operating in a distributed computing environment. OmarJ provides most of the features of OmarL with significant enhancements, including a much improved external communication layer that uses Jini for inter-node communication, and the ability to break out of simulation mode and run agents in a non-time-controlled environment. Simulation mode uses a Java implementation of the OmarL event-based simulator.
The Cyc Artificial Intelligence System
Note: Cycorp as a commercial (or semi-commercial) entity has been replaced by Cyc Foundation and the OpenCyc (OpenCyc.org) open source project.
Since its inception in the 1950s, the field of AI has been characgerized by massive overstatement and hubris. So I take the statements made by people in this field with a bit more than a grain of salt. Although many of the inflated claims and fantasticly over ambitions milestones have proven to be false, there has been solid, steady progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI). For example, IBM now has chess software running on their parallel processors that play at the Grand Master level.
The Cyc system, produced by Doug Lenat and his colleagues at Cycorp in Austin Texas looks like it might be an AI milestone. I first read about Cyc in this LA Times article. Lenat observes that intelligent behavior is based on a vast storehouse of "common sense" information about the world. Until this common sense background is built up it does not makes sense to attempt build expert knowledge, since the expert knowledge will be misapplied. Cycorp has spent what they estimate as 500 person years building up such a knowledge base and its related infrastructure (e.g., input and internal knowledge representation languages and AI software to use the knowledge base). At the time I created this link, Lenat claimed that Cyc was near the point where it could start reading in text and building up its own knowledge base, although it would have to ask for clarification in some cases.
According to the Cycorp press release some of the Cyc software and knowledge base are being made publicly available:
Douglas B. Lenat Ph.D., founder and President of Cycorp, Inc. announced that a greatly expanded version of the Cyc Common Sense Knowledge Base will be made available in open access form under the name OpenCyc. In addition, Cycorp will, for the first time, provide the Cyc Inference Engine and a suite of tools for creating knowledge-based applications. OpenCyc 1.0 will be released on July 1, 2001
On the Web page discussing Cyc applications they describe how Cyc can selectively access on-line information sources like the Internet Movie Database or the CIA World Factbook. Of course the Web contains both relatively reliable sources, like these and far less reliable ones. Humans frequently make errors of judgment, embracing complex conspiracy theories for conspiracies that do not exist. The common sense that Lenat discusses as the basis for Cyc is not quite so simple. If Cyc is at some point able to build its database from written material and it were turned lose on the Web its knowledge base would become poisoned with both solid information and bizzare "facts" published by cranks.
Machines in the Myth: the state of artificial intelligence by DeAnn DeWitt, chipcenter.com, August 2001
This article discusses Cyc and provides a brief survey of artificial intelligence.
Artificial Stupidity, Part 1. The saga of Hugh Loebner and his search for an intelligent bot has almost everything: Sex, lawsuits and feuding computer scientists. There's only one thing missing: Smart machines. By John Sundman, Salon, February 26, 2003
Artificial stupidity, Part 2 Can chatterbots be as dumb as a box of hammers and still pass the Turing test? Go ask ALICE, she might know. By John Sundman, Salon, February 27, 2003.
John Sundman's web site wetmachine.com. This web site includes links to sample chapters of John Sundman's book Acts of the Apostles and Cheap Complex Devices.
The Loebner prize is a prize for, in essence, passing a version of the Turing Test (originally proposed by Alan Turing). Apparently the Loebner prize and the Turing Test are now considered anathema in the artificial intelligence community. These two articles discuss the rather eccentric Hugh Loebner, the prize and the artificial intelligence community.
Machine intelligence and the Turing Test, Technical Forum, IBM Systems Journal, Vol 41, No. 3, 2002. This web page contains two articles by artificial intelligence researchers, some of them quite famous (e.g., McCarthy and Minsky).
Why the future doesn't need us by Bill Joy, Wired Magazine, April 2000.
Bill Joy is one of the founders of Sun Microsystems and is pretty famous within the computer industry. Joy has been involved in some very impressive developments, which include the Java langauge and JINI. He has also been involved in some not so impressive developments, like the UNIX cshell. And Joy has been involved in some which are simply stupid, like his article, published in Wired, which warns of technological peril from artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. As the articles on the Loebner prize point out, AI has a long way to go before it become a threat:
Spend a few minutes chatting with even the best of the bots, and you will cease to be threatened by their imminent eclipsing of humanity. Their performance is, in Loebner's own word, gruesome.
John Sundman, Artificial stupidity, Part 2
Somewhere out on the far horizon there may lurk David Zindell's silicon God, an artificial intelligence of great power that is a threat to humanity. But we are no closer to achieving this that we are of building Zindell's diamond hulled starships that can cross between star systems in the "manifold".
AI Founder Blasts Modern Research by Mark Baard, Wired New, May 13, 2003
Among the reasons that artificial intelligence researchers do not like the Turing Test is that it does not necessarily demonstrate learning. All it does is provide a simulation of a person. The core challenge for AI is learning and the ability of the system to display "common sense". That is, to know that red spots on a car are an example of rust, not measles. This is the challenge that Cyc attempts to address.
This Wired News article discusses a speech that Marvin Minsky gave at Boston University criticizing current progress and approaches in AI. He is particularly critical of the autonomous robot work, which requires nuts and bolts work like mechanical design and soldering. Apparently Minsky feels that this is a waste of time compared to developing heuristic AI algorithms. Part of the problem, however, is that the US Dept. of Defense is willing to fund autonomous vehicle/robot work and funding influences the research that people actually do.
The Aims of Artificial Intelligence: A Science Fiction View Ian Watson, published on the IEEE Computer Society Web site.
This article is an overview of science fiction speculation on artificial intelligence. Ian Watson is a British science fiction writer. In this article he covers many of the classic speculations, from Frank Herbert's Destination: Void to The Matrix. Watson does not mention David Zindell's work, which includes some of my favorite speculation on AI and the paths that intelligences may seek to take. But Zindell is even less well known than Watson.
Most software engineers do not document their source code. This makes the reasoning behind the implementation of the source code difficult to understand and harder to maintain. I find it interesting that "open source" projects, which many people work, do not place an emphasis on documentation. The coding standards for open software like Mozilla only mention documentation in passing (or at least this was the case last time I looked).
For the minority of software engineers who do document their code, documentation generators are great tools, at least in concept. Documentation generators read source code and produce HTML web pages. Here is a partial list of documentation generators:
Javadoc reads the source code for a set of java classes and generates web pages. The are primarily useful for understanding the class interfaces. Javadoc is part of the standard Sun Microsystems Java release. See http://java.sun.com. For an example of Web pages generated with Javadoc, see my documentation for javad, a class file disassembler.
The doxygen program is a documentation generator for C++. It allows source code to be included in with the generated documentation, which makes it better for generating source code base documentation. Doxygen can be found at http://www.doxygen.org. An example doxygen generated web pages for a SPAM filter can be found here.
Doxygen can use the dot program to generate cool diagrams of the software structure. Dot is part of AT&T Labs' Graphviz
Literate Programming Tools
Donald Knuth, the author of the classic books in The Art of Computer Programming series has written some articles on "Literate Programming". The idea is to join algorithms and documentation to produce elegent documents for elegent algorithms. A software tool, called cweb reads the annotated software source and generates the documentation. While I love the idea, I've found that in practice, the cweb annotation tends to obscure the source code making it difficult to read. In any case, here are some "Literate Programming" tools:
The cweb tool can be downloaded from http://www.literateprogramming.com. This web site also includes links to other tools, articles and examples.
FunnelWeb, written by Ross N. Williams.
Elsewhere on these web pages I've written about statistics and wavelet techniques applied to financial data. Working at Prediction Company left me with an interest in quantitative finance and what might be classified as the microeconomics of markets. Here are some link for finance, quantitative finance and microeconomics (e.g., the low level economics of markets):
John P. Scordo has an interesting web site, www.research-finance.com which includes useful links to the finance literature. This literature is huge and includes not only journals from finance and economics, but more recently journals like Physica A, from physics (e.g., econophysics), so the links are necessarily selective.
Peter Ponzo is a retired math professor who taught at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He writes that he retired early, which resulted in a smaller pension payout. He took his payout and put it in a self-directed investment fund. He then started studying investment, finance and economics. Apparently when he started discussing some of these issues on an investment discussion group he was accused of "gumming things up with mathematics". I guess that those are fight'n words for a math prof. So Prof. Ponzo started his Gummy Stuff web pages. The result are some wonderful tutorials and essays, including topics like Ito Calculus (presented in a very approachable form). If these essays are anything to go by, Peter Ponzo was a wonderful teacher, a practice which he continues to this day.
In addition to Prof. Ponzo's wonderful essays and tutorials there are recipes from his wife, Heidi and much more. Finance, statistics, food, what could be more fun (well, there is one more thing...)
Prof. Sornette wrote a very interesting book titled Why Stock Markets Crash?. This web page contains an interesting discussion of the work that Prof. Sornette's group has been doing on market dynamics, along with links to various papers they have authored. It seems wise to start with the book and then move on to the papers.
Exchange traded options, terrorism and Sept. 11
After 9/11, there was talk that terrorists or their ilk had profited by taking bearish positions in the options market ahead of the attacks. Even the evening news programs wondered aloud about Osama bi8n Laden's supposed insider dealings. That talk was soon relegated to the realm of urban myth.
Allen Poteshman, assistant professor of finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, dusted off the rumor and parsed the data again. His findings are, at the least, disturbing.
In a paper under review for publication by the Journal of Business and available on his Web site (www.business.uiuc.edu/poteshma), Prof. Poteshman runs through already discussed evidence, such as options dealings in airline stocks in the days leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, among other findings. He finds that most of the evidence based on options-ratio statistics is indeed inconclusive.
Coming at the matter in another, more specific way, the professor discovered that an inordinately high number of put options were purchased during the four sessions preceding the attacks. In other words, the options market suggested an unusually high level of bearishness about stocks.
The professor drew on data he had been trying to get from the Chicago Board of Options Exchange even before the attacks. He says the CBOE provided him with the data broken down by numbers of purchases and sales of non-market makers, along with whether these were new positions or traders closing out existing positions.
Rather than use the data to look at put/call ratios -- which would -- reflect buying as well as selling -- for a few days before the -- attacks, Prof. Poteshman built up a distribution of put buys and compared the week before Sept. 11, 2001, to many weeks before hand. When he did that, the sessions preceding the attacks looked unusually busy for put buying -- about the 95th percentile, meaning that more -- than 95 out of 100 times, there is a smaller volume of put buying than what he saw right before the attacks.
People can draw whatever conclusions they want, the professor said, but in economics, an event that is in the 95th percentile generally is regarded as an unusual occurrence.
The Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2004, Pg. C4
The paper discussed above is Unusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 by Allen M. Poteshman, Draft of March 10, 2004 (PDF format)
Professor Poteshman has published a number of other interesting papers, a number of which involve the exchange traded options market. These can be found on his publications web page.
Prof. Stanley's group does work in a remarkable variety of areas, from polymers and glasses to complex networks and financial markets. Prof. Stanley and his group have published some interesting papers on power laws behavior in financial markets. Among the many interesting papers referenced on Prof. Stanley's publications web page is Quantifying Signals with Power-Law Correlations: A Comparative Study of Detrending and Moving Average Techniques (PDF). Market trading models must deal with a great deal of noise in their input data. So filtering techniques are of great interest.
Information may want to be free, but market data (e.g., historical and current stock open and close price, volume, etc...) costs money. Given the growth in the Internet and in networking in general one might think that market information would be easy to find. This is true only if you can spend thousands of dollars a year for market information. I've tried to gather here a list of market information providers who provide data at prices that are affordable by individuals. The fact that a company is listed here in not necessarily an endorsement.
A number of sites sell daily open and close price information. The prices are frequently adjusted for splits, but in many cases they don't also provide information on dividends. A stock will frequently drop after a dividend is issued, since the company is worth less (since part of the corporate value has been paid out to shareholders). Without dividend information a market model may be mislead by a change in stock price that can be explained by the issuing of the dividend.
The ideal case is actually to have raw market data (the actual unadjusted market prices) along with time series for splits and dividends. This allows software associated with a model to create an adjusted time series that can be customized for the application.
Yahoo's finance site is an excellent source of split and dividend adjusted close price data. Of course it is only available one stock at a time, but it should be possible to write software that would "mine" Yahoo.
Market Source On-line: historical end of data (close price) data.
The pricing seems very reasonable. They provide stock, mutual fund and index end of day data. They also include split information, which allows historical data to be adjusted. They don't mention dividend data, which is equally important. In the case of corporate spin-offs or special dividends, the dividend issue can make a big difference in the stock price. If the stock price is not adjusted by the dividend amount it will appear that the stock took a big dip the day after the dividend was issued. This will mislead any models that use this data.
TickData sells historical intra-day "tick data" for all US equities. The volume of this data is huge. The cost is about $10 to $18 per stock. They sell the entire database for $35,000. One would probably need a substantial RAID array just to store this data.
Prophet Finance sells historical market data on CD-ROM and sells current market data update information by subscription. Apparently this data can downloaded daily in several ways, including FTP. Prophet Data claims that they put a lot of effort into cleaning up their data, which is important, since raw data can contain errors. Using "dirty" data in models can destroy meaningful results.
This company seems to sell stock market data and analysis software. When I looked at the web page it was long on hype and short on information. Apparently you get a CDROM of historical data. They then sell you live updates to this database (e.g., current market data). I found it difficult to understand what data you got along with the various options and what format this data was included in. For example, they provide daily stock market data (close price, volume, etc), they also provide cluster information (e.g., a cluster being a group of stocks, like banks). They also provide analyst recomendation information. But I had a difficult time understanding which packages include which data set.
Here is a list of sites that provide intra-day "tick-data" (at least for the NYSE) or tick-data plus trade execution. A listing here does not imply any kind of endorsement.
Interactive Brokers looks very interesting. According to their web site they provide low cost trade execution. Interactive Brokers also provides a software API that provides access to market information and trade execution. Apparently this interface is to their "Trader WorkStation" (TWS). TWS can be hosted on Windoz or UNIX (which I assume means Linux).
DTN Market Access offers tick-data at a reasonable price. They also sell a Windows hosted software package that allows interface via an API.
Time series are data sets where each data point is associated with a time value. For example, market close prices, intra-day bid/ask/volume data. Relational databasae vendors like Oracle and Informix offer packages that support time series storage and retrieval. However, the nature of time series storage and retrieval does not fit well into the classic relational model. As a result of this mismatch, the performance of relational database systems tends to be relatively poor for time series data. One exception is the database from Kx Systems which is designed to support time series data and real time time series feeds.
When I looked at Kx Systems' products it was only from a database point of view. The company I was working for had their own in house language for doing time series processing. It turns out that Kx Systems also supports a langauge called "K", which is a vaguely reminiscent of APL. I read about "K" in A Shallow Introduction to the K Programming Language, November 14, 2002, published in Kuro5hin.
Large amounts of time series data are collected in many areas of science. As a result, it is surprising that time series databases are difficult to find, compared to relational databases. One of the few open source time series databases is RDDTool, which is available under the GNU Public License.
GRASS is a free, open source software project (covered under the GNU Public License). It was originally developed under a US Army Corp. of Engineers contract. From the GRASS web page:
Commonly referred to as GRASS, this is a Geographic Information System (GIS) used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics/maps production, spatial modeling, and visualization. GRASS is currently used in academic and commercial settings around the world, as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting companies.
There are some links that I created when I was searching for a host for bearcave.com (this web site). As I note below, I finally settled on WebQuarry and I have been very happy with their services and support.
WebQuarry. This looks very promising. They support Linux shells and provide bandwidth at a reasonable cost. (This was the ISP I eventually chose and that currently hosts bearcave.com).
Hurricane Electric. This is a Linux host. They support virtual hosting. The problem with Hurricane Electric from my point of view is that you cannot get multiple UNIX shells.
Aktiom Networks Colocation. This is a colocation only site, but they offer colocation for $60/month, with a full server and 30Gb/month of bandwidth. Sounds pretty interesting. The only issue that worries me is dealing with security issues. I spend enough time on bearcave.com as it is, without having to dive into all the security issue.
freeBSD shell (via SSH) - yeah baby! Their "experienced" user account includes 4Gb transfer per month, lots of disk, Java Servlets, JSP and C/C++ compilers.
This ISP is interesting because they provide shell access, databases (mySQL and PostgreSQL) and Java web services support (servlets and JSP). Their fees for bandwidth seem reasonable.
Linux based Java servlet hosting (using Apache Tomcat). Shell access via SSH, plus development tools (Java, C++). Very reasonable prices (in fact, the hosting prices seem too cheap).
Once upon a time, during a long dead age, I wrote a book, Programming in Modula-2. I think that it is safe to say that many more people have read the web pages on bearcave.com than ever read this book. Somethings I think about writing another book. One thing I learned is that it is worth the cost to have an agent. You get a much better deal from the publisher and you have someone on your side who understands the ins and outs of publishing contracts.
Waterside Productions, Inc is a literary agency that specializes in technical and non-fiction titles.
This UK site publishes a number of science fiction and so called cyberpunk works. These include:
Metrophage by Richard Kadrey
This seems to include on-line version of all of William Gibson's books. I guess that I'm of two minds on this: Gibson is an artist of unique talent who makes his living from the royalty paid on his books. The contract between reader and author is necessarily that we buy their books. When you read a work on-line you may be violating this contract. So if you like William Gibson's books, go out and buy them.
On the other hand, books are expensive, even paperbacks. Just as on-line MP3s are a great way to understand if you like the work of a band or a musician, on-line books give you exposure to a writer. William Gibson is one of the seminal writers of the twentieth century. So read some of the work published via the link above. If you like it, buy Gibson's books.
CiteSeer: Scientific Literature Digital Library
This library of journal articles and scientific and engineering publications. The CiteSeer library is one of the great resources available on the Internet. The ability to rapidly access technical publications and the references that they cite drastically reduces the difficulty of doing research. As a result, this database has greatly increased the speed that human knowledge is disseminated. In summary, this is simply a fantastic resource.
This site links together the WayBackMachine, Project Gutenbert, Open Source Books and many other Internet information sources. The archive seems to contain incomplete works in at least one case. I took a look at Andrew S. Grove's High Output Management which is archived as photographs. One a few pages seem to be available and the link that is labeled "PDF" is broken.
The bearcave.com web site is one of the major works of my life and I'm happy to see that it is archived by the WayBackMachine. Currently this archive is about a year and a half out of date. I find it comforting to think that my work may live beyond my lifetime (although it is an open question as to who would be interested in bearcave.com a century hence).
MIT's library of classic literature. This is a huge collection of classic Greek and Roman literature ranging from the writings of Aeschines to Xenophon.
Baen Books is a publisher of science fiction books. This on-line library publishes complete science fiction notes, reserving only commercial rights.
Remittance Girl is a wonderful writer and a gifted graphic artist. Her web site publishes her writing, including her on-line novels The Waiting Room and The Mistress of Dakao. Remittance Girl's prose is vivid and elegant, it is also erotic. So if this offends you, this may not be the site for you.
Graphic novels are a form of literature, intermixed with graphic art. Broken Saints is an on-line graphic novel/anime. However, unlike static art, this is done in "Flash". The art is beautiful and some of the words are haunting. They have released a DVD set which publishes a version of the anime on the Broken Saints site.
Bartleby.com: Great Books Online
This web site started out as Columbia University's Project Bartleby. The Columbia University project placed a large body of classic literature (to which copyright had expired) on the Web. What started out as an academic resource has become a commerical site, with adds and annoying pop-up windows. There is even a Bartleby.com CEO named Steven H. van Leeuwen.
Given the costs I pay each month to support bearcave.com, I certainly understand the cost of bandwidth. However, Universities usually buy a fair amount of bandwidth. I suspect that if Columbia cracked down on MP3 downloads, they could probably support Project Bartleby without noticing. I'm not sure what prompted the conversion of an academic resource into a rather bogus commercial site.
William H. Calvin's Books and Articles Prof. Calvin teaches at the University of Washington at Seattle. He writes on topics ranging from neurobiology to the Anasazi (a Native American tribe).
Bearcave.com has been on-line since 1995. I have steadily added content. As the site grows, even I forget what I've placed on bearcave.com or where it is. I know that for visitors it's even worse. I find that it is a constant struggle to organize the hierarchy from the main web page. So it may be time to add a local search engine. One that was recommended to me is http://www.mnogosearch.org. The mnogosearch.org search engine is open source and covered by the GNU General Public License. The user can control the index generation and it apparently runs via a CGI scrip with C, PHP and Perl search front ends. Idiom.com, the superlatively wonderful host of bearcave.com, supports PHP.
According to an August 14, 2001 article in WiredNews (Searching for Google's Successor, there are some competitors to Google emerging (of course how any of these sites make money is still an open question). I expect that most of these sites will be weeded out, unless they succeeded in developing a dramatic and lasting advantage over Google. This seems unlikely, since Google has resisted becoming distracted by other issues (e.g., being a "portal") and concentrates on being a great search engine. One search engine, which was not listed in the WiredNews list is alltheweb.com. This is a very good search engine, with a huge database. While alltheweb.com is good, I don't see it offering enough advantages to displace Google. Google's success means that they have money to spend on constant improvement.
Any way, these "upstarts" are listed below. Some of them have already died since the WiredNews article appeared (www.lasoo.com and the CURE research database)
Then again... MIT Technology review published an excellent survey article on emerging search engine technology (Search Beyond Google by Wade Roush, March 2004). Among those mentioned is Teoma (listed below).
This site uses link references and content to rank pages. They claim to be able to do searching and ranking on less hardware.
Teoma uses link ranking based on pages with similar content. For example, if my Web page on wavelets points to someone else's web page on wavelets, that gives them an increment in ranking.
This is a search engine that catagorizes the result of other search engines (e.g., Google, Alta Vista and HotBot). The clustering and catagorization of results is a very nice feature of this search engine.
When I tried out these search engines, using bearcave.com words as a target (e.g., "ian kaplan" templar for my material on the Knights Templar), I got hits on Google, but nothing on these other pages. I assume that this means that these search engines are still building up their web data base.
Even with the "dotcom" crash of 2001 I assume that the data on the Web is growing at an exponential pace. So building up a local approximation of the web is difficult task.
Christopher Glaeser's Nullstone Compiler Test Suite page. The Nullstone test suite is one of the best ways to test compiler optimizations. Christopher also has links to a number of other compiler related resources.
Back in 1995 there was a boom in Web content companies. There was only a fuzzy notion of how these companies would make money. There was the general idea that exponentially increasing numbers of people were gaining access to the Web and that these people would want content. How this content would pay for itself was left for the future (lot of advertising or something). In the dark days of the "dotcom" bust of 2001 web content looks like its in trouble. Sites like Feed have gone out of business. The remaining sites, like Salon, have announced still more staff cuts, which will definitely have an effect on content. I can only hope that this does not become a collection of graveyard markers.
Salon. Some people call Salon the New Yorker of the World Wide Web. Salon definitely has an intellectual tone, but it does not have the New Yorker's literature and jouralism "from on high" attitude (the New Yorker only grudgingly publishes letters from readers, for example). I also read Salon regularly.
Guardian Unlimited is the on-line publication of the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdon. The Guardian is a UK leftist intellectual publication. However, unlike The Nation and Mother Jones in the United States, the Guardian has wide circulation in the UK.
After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center the US press largely acted as the propaganda arm of the Bush II administration. This continued during the run-up to the war with Iraq, when few in the press criticized the obvious lies the Bush II and others in his administration were telling about the treat that Iraq presented to the United States. An alternate, and history has shown, more accurate account of events was available from the Guardian Unlimited.
In the United States there is a deep suspicion of intellectuals and the educated. The remarkable popularity of Bush II rests in part on the fact that he was untouched by his education and is as far from an intellectual as you can get without being mentally impaired. The Guardian presents an interesting contrast with many US publications. The Guardian book reviews are excellent and have a definite intellectual cast without moving toward unreadable academic works.
Ars Technica is translated, according to the "who we ars" web page, as "the art of technology". The have some great to adequate material on some fairly hard core technology issues, like modern processor architecture and performance. I'd place Ars Technica somewhere between a news.com article and a journal article. Definitely more detail and depth than a technology news article, but they do not assume level of expertise that journal articles do.
ACM's version of IEEE Spectrum: technical, but readable by non-specialists.
Nerve Magazine. This magazine came on-line around June 1997. Nerve is sort of a Salon of sex. The writing is excellent and intelligent. Nerve is a publication that shows how important the defeat of the communications decency act was. By making the Web as free as print media we have publications like Nerve. As the CDA shows, America is obsessed with sex and can rarely come up with anything intelligent on the topic. Nerve is a wonderful exception. Nerve's articles are well written, intelligent and, in some cases, very erotic.
Clean Sheets. This is a literary erotica site, somewhat along the lives of Nerve. They publish some very good (and very hot) material on occasion. Clean Sheets, like Salon and Nerve are all having problems supporting free content with advertising. At this time it remains unclear who these sites will survive in the long run.
FEED is another great on-line publication. FEED is published by a small staff, so it is not updated that often. But its content and layout are excellent.
Sadly as of June, 2001 FEED has shut down. They were a site that tried to keep within a modest budget and meet their expenses. Unfortunately this approach was not successful and they ran out of money.
As we at bearcave.com well know, bandwidth is not free. Someone has to pay bandwidth, diskspace and computer fees for material to be published on the web. The feed web site at www.feedmag.com no longer publishes the FEED content. This is tragic since FEED published some excellent material. FEED can still be found in the Internet Web archive, at www.archive.org.
Internet contains an increasing amount of the knowledge and intellectual creations of the human race. The disappearance of FEED's content is an example of a serious problem for the Internet as a repository of information. The archive.org site currently provides a last resort for internet information. Archive.org also requires a constant flow of funding. Tragically, there is no guarantee that archive.org will be permanent.
HotWired, was Wired magazines on-line publication. It used to be very good, but as the money started to run out it went down hill fast. In many ways, the decline of HotWired was the harbinger of the "dot-com" bust. The HotWired site is only good as a reference on HTML.
CyberWire Dispatch, by Brock N. Meeks. Brock used to write a column titled Muckracker for HotWired and he has published in WIRED magazine as well. I think that Brock was one of the best political commentators writing today. He has since moved on to become an editor at MSNBC and only occasionally writes articles on Washington politics. His work is now "balanced". I miss those angry articles.
Silicon Valley's newspaper and one of the best newspapers in California.
OK, I read Marx in my youth, when I did not know any better. There are still parts of Das Kapital I like (Marx's discussion of capital formation through the excess value created by labor). But I think that Marx ignored human nature. And dictatorships always go bad. But I still have a few liberal leanings which I excercise by reading The Nation.
Another liberal magazine.
The Nation, Mother Jones... There is a pattern here. Yeah, I'm a liberal intellectual. As a member of this rare and endangered species, I'm happy to add WWW.WHITEHOUSE.ORG to my links page. WWW.WHITEHOUSE.ORG, the parody web site that gets fan mail from Dick Cheney thanking them for their biographical sketch of his beloved wife, Lynn.
In the dark times of terrorism, war, fear and unemployment that have been the hallmarks of the Bush II Presidency, there is hope while sites like WWW.WHITEHOUSE.ORG are published. Dissent and the free press still exist in the United States.
Before George W. Bush gained the Presidency in 2000 I was not terribly concerned with politics. I come from a long line of Democrats (my Grandfather on my Mother's side worked for Franklin Roosevelt's administration). I've always voted for Democrats. But I did not have a lot of political passion. I believed to some degree the claim that there was not that much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. Both sides sucked down money from large corporations and neither side seemed terribly interested in working to represent the voters.
George W. Bush changed all that. Bush has been a disaster for the United States on almost any level that can be named. On the economic front the Bush administration have been nothing more than tax cut and spend big government Republicans. Bush has never vetoed a spending bill and the Republican Congress has spent money with abandon. Bush and his administration started a war with Iraq, which we now know posed no danger to the United States. This war has cost well over 200 billion dollars and at this writing, over 1800 lives of US sevice people and tens of thousand Iraqi lives. The major achivement of the Bush administration in Iraq has been to install an Islamic government that is closely allied with Iran, a country that is no friend of the United States.
The Bush administration is anything but conservative. They are radicals bent on restructuring the United States and other areas of the world. The problem is that they seem incapable of formulating policy and everything they have done has been done incompetently. Whether you are a Liberal or a Conservative, you should oppose this administration.
The Web has been a great resource for speading political information and for organizing opposition to the Bush administration's policies. Here are some of the web sites and Blogs that I read regularly:
The Rude Pundit writes with the flair of Hunter S. Thompson before all of the drugs Thompson took fried his synapses. The Rude Pundit is rude, crude and entirely partisan. Don't read this blog if you're easily offended.
This blog is by Riverbend, an Iraqi woman and computer scientist. Riverbend's english is excellent and she writes movingly about what it is like being an Iraqi in these times. Riverbend's writing has been reprinted in the book Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq
Professor Cole is an aribic speaker and professor at the University of Michigan. His daily entries cover news about Iraq that is frequently either missing or buried in the US press.
I'm a rather boring person. My life is work, computer science, my beloved wife, books, a bit of cooking and not much else. But there are lots of interesting people, many more than I could ever meet, read or hear of. If you're not included here, my apologies. I'm sure you're more interesting than I am. As with everything else on this web page, this is a random collection driven by serendipity and the power of Google.
Most people who use a search engine like Google appreciate the Web for the massive about of information (but true and less true) that it now contains. If the Web is not already the largest repository of human information, it will be soon.
What people may not appreciate as much is the function of the Web as a serendipity engine. The Web is a function of links created by humans with different interests. These links lead the reader to unexpected places. Sometimes this is just information, but in a few cases when one is really lucky, you can find very special people.
Such a fortuitous accident lead me to Mari-Ann Herloff's writing. Mari-Ann lives in Denmark, so I have never had the opportunity to meet her in person. But in a small way I feel that I have had the good fortune to know a little part of her through her writing.
Vince Cate runs a small ISP and co-location provider on the Caribbean island of Anguilla. Running an ISP on a Caribbean island is probably enough to qualify anyone as interesting, but Vince is an interesting person for a number of other reasons.
Vince is a computer scientist (OK, this probably qualifies one as unintersting) who, as a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon worked on the Alex Filesystem project. He moved to Anguilla just as cryptography was staring to become publicly accessible (that is, cryptography was not just the domain of the NSA, but also university researchers and computer scientists building financial transaction systems). At that time the US government and other governments like the UK attempted to suppress cryptography. The attempt to suppress software that implements strong cryptographic algorithms (encryption which cannot be broken using a realistic amount of computer processing power) failed. Strong cryptographic software is now widely available and this seems to have been accepted, however reluctantly, by the US and other governments.
But back in the 1990s this was not the situation. Under the US arms export laws it was illegal for a US citizen to export cryptographic software or to take part in the development of cryptographic software which would be exported. In response to these government restrictions the cypterpunk movement was born. In the US the first amendment provide broad protection for information published on paper. The source code for cryptograpic algorithms were published in book form, since publishing these same algorithms as computer data (e.g., computer readable ASCII text) or executables was illegal. Companies like Sun Microsystems contracted with Russian software engineers and cryptographers to implement algorithms which could be legally exported (since they were not develooped in the US).
During this era Vince Cate moved to Anguilla to implement strong cryptographic software for financial transactions. Since his status as a US citizen make this illegal for him, he gave up his US citizenship (see Encryption Expert Says U.S. Laws Led to Renouncing of Citizenship by Peter Wayner, The New York Times, Sunday, September 6, 1998).
Anguilla uses a consumption tax (I assume that this means a sales tax), and has no income tax. By giving up his US citizenship this also avoided US tax law, which as someone who seems to have Libertarian and Objectivist (Ayn Rand's philosophy) sympathies was also attractive.
Vince Cate seems to have been one of the organizers of the Financial Cryptography conferences which were held in the late 1990s (apparently 1997 through 2000).
Perhaps it is just an emotional connection, but I believe that there are many advantages to US citizenship and I treasure the fact that I am a US citizen. So from my point of view Vince Cate gave up this valuable asset over what turned out to be a short term issue (e.g., the control of cryptography). At most he is now a tax refugee and not even a wealthy one like Kenneth Dart.
I wondered who Rachel Chalmers is. You don't find that many people who both write well and understand the work of Dijkstra. The awesome power of Google lead me to a few places, listed below. According to a biographical sketch posted on the(451) web site Ms. Chalmers "has a degree in English literature from the University of Sydney and a Master's degree in Anglo-Irish literature from Trinity College, Dublin."
the(451). This is a web site and company that publishes reports on technologies and companies.
The author "blurb" on the Salon article metions that Ms. Chalmers is from Australia. So I assume that the essay Beyond the Bay, which is about people she knew in Australia, is hers. (These web pages would not display using Netscape. I could only get them to display using Microsoft's Internet Explorer).
Rachel Chalmers interviews Jim Gleason. Jim Gleason is/was the president of the New York Linux Users Group and the interview discusses Jon Johansen, the Norwegian teenager who published some simple code to break DVD encryption, allowing DVDs to be played on a computer running Linux.
The unknown Hackers: Bill and Lynne Jolitz may be the most famous programmers you've never heard of by Rachel Chalmers, Salon, May 17, 2000
Cosma Shalizi is a researcher on complex systems at the Santa Fe Institute and the University of Michigan. He worked with James Crutchfield and knows Doyne Farmer. Farmer founded the Prediction Company where I spent a wonderful and horrible two years. I quoted some lovely sentences from the paper he co-authored An Algorithm for Pattern Discovery in Time Series on my web page which discusses using wavelet compression in time series prediction. Cosma Shalizi's web page included links to some interesting book reviews and various technical papers. Perhaps in satire someone labeled Cosma's web page as one of the worst ever. I most certainly disagree.
Alan Donovan implemented an Emacs plug-in for Eclipse. As a diehard Emacs user and someone who does all of their Java development (and perhaps C++ development in the future) with Eclipse, I appreciate this plug-in.
Alan's web site at MIT has a number of interesting web pages, including the Emacs plug-in. He has a page on the Newton-Raphson approximation for roots (e.g., square root) as a fractal function, which is a feature of this function that I never knew about. Other interesting "hacks" include a web based Othello program and 3D graph plotting code.
On the web page, Alan notes that he has taken a leave from the MIT graduate program to work for Google in New York. Other than Google's ubiquitous search engine and advertising model, Google has not branched out into other areas successfully at the time of this writing. In fact, as time goes on, Google looks more like an advertising/media company than a software company. Still, if sheer numbers of talented computer scientists are any indication, Google seems to have a bright future as a software company.
Mike Benham's www.ThoughtCrime.org web site
I'm not sure what to make of Mike Benham's web site. It has a large Big Brother Is Watching You picture from the 1984 movie. It seems to be a sort of techno-anarchist web site. Perhaps the fact that Mike seems to be a fan of Jack Kerouac says something in itself.
By the way, I don't have much sympathy for anarchism. Anyone who wants to know what anarchy is like should think of Baghdad, right after the US invasion, when all of Saddam's government took off. Anarchy seems to be a philosophy that is most attractive to teenagers and those close to them in age or world view. The same goes for Libertarianism, which seems to me to be anarchy with a capitalist guise.
What ever the case is with www.thoughtcrime.org, I find Mike a lyrical writer and his stories section is pretty interesting. In the savage world that the computer industry has turned into after the dot-com bust, it can sometimes be difficult to remember what it is that we loved which originally motivated us to go into this line of work. Mike writes:
[...] it should seem reasonable that I should no longer refer to myself as a programmer but rather as a poet. The vast difference between societies perception of a poet and a programmer is the result of many wrong turns in logic and understanding. Programming is not an exact science. Programming is an art. Programmers are constantly searching for the elegant solution to a problem. For any given problem there exists an infinite number of solutions. No solution is "correct" or "incorrect," so programmers try to create a solution that is as elegant as possible. Arriving at a truly elegant solution is an art.
I don't think that Don Knuth could have put it better.
The only problem with software as poetry is that only other software engineers can understand what we have created. There is another problem too, which is not limited to software. People no more agree on what is elegant and beautiful in software than they do about these qualities in english or architecture.
Mike also started the Distributed Library Project, which is an interesting experiment in creating communities through shared interests in books. The idea is that one might lend books to other members of the Distributed Library Project. This is not required of Distributed Library Project members, however. There is an eBay style feedback system to rate borrowers and a slashdot collaborative filtering system for discussions.
There are other web sites for book discussion and the whole idea of lending out books from my personal library makes me nervous. My personal library is my most prized possession and I rarely lend books. So while I'm not sure that the Distributed Library Project will fly, Mike gets kudos for stepping up and giving it a try.
My first reaction to the Distributed Library Project was that it was an attractive idea. I live in the East Bay (of the San Francisco Bay Area) and outside of Berkeley, it seem to be pretty much of an intellectual wasteland compared to the San Francisco Peninsula (e.g, Menlo Park, Palo Alto). Although I work with lots of Phds, many of them don't seem to have a wide variety of interests, nor are they necessarily well read (somewhat to my surprise). So the idea of community was attractive, but I have to also realize that I have little time beyond by work and my beloved wife. So much for community...
Frank is a PhD student at Utrecht University's Informatica department. He works on programming languages, which is related to my interest in compiler design and implementation. He was born in Germany, raised in the Los Angles, got his undergrad degree at Cornell and worked in Japan. Clearly Frank is an interesting person and his web pages has some great links.
Joel Spolsky's Joel on Software web page
Apparently Joel Spolsky is an ex-Microsoft manager and software developer. It also appears that Joel got rich at Microsoft. Joel seems to have the common Microsoft perception that he is a Master of the Universe (after all, that's why he is rich). For example, this is what Joel writes about the book A Random Walk Down Wall Street
If you spend enough time in this industry it's almost impossible to avoid suddenly finding yourself with a big pile of money that you are going to have to manage somehow.
Perhaps the real truth is that Joel is rich as a result of fortuna. Nassim Taleb's excellent book Fooled by Randomness has some wonderful commentary on how people commonly attribute good fortune to skill, hard work and other virtues.
There is one thing we know for sure: Microsoft employees did not get rich as a result of the fine software they produced. Microsoft brought us MS-DOS. Microsoft brought us Windows 3.1 when they could have been running UNIX. It was not until Windows NT 4.0 that they actually clawed their way to up to something resembling a stable modern operating system. And don't get me started on Word, Powerpoint and other fine Microsoft products.
What Microsoft people tend to forget is that they got rich because Microsoft is a monopoly. It has nothing to do with whether their products were better (or whether they "innovated for the customer"). For some of the economic theory behind Microsoft's success see Brian Arthur's writing.
Mr. Spolsky now runs a software company called Fog Creek Software. Obviously I find Joel irritating. Joel thinks that Bjarne Stroustrup is a genius. In contrast I hope that Stroustrup will find interests beyond adding new features to the already massively bloated and hacked up C++ language. I've included Joel here because sometimes he does have some valuable and profound things to say. Also, just because someone irritates you does not mean that you should not listen to them. It is also a good thing to reflect on why someone irritates you.
I was very fortunate that early in my career I was fortunate to work for one of the best managers I've worked for, Colin Fulton.
Long ago in a world that now seems long gone, I spent about a decade working on high performance parallel processors. The first of these was called the LDF-100 (I later worked on a heterogeneous processor project sponsored by DARPA and the MasPar massively parallel supercomputer). The LDF-100 was a dataflow parallel processor which we designed for signal processing and other numeric applications. I was part of a small group at Loral Instrumentation which developed the LDF-100. The group lead was John VanZandt, who now heads a consulting company called CEO Consultancy.
CEO Consultancy does both "onshore" and "offshore" consulting and software development. Their offshore team is in Malaysia.
Malaysia is in the news in the West every once-in-awhile as a result of the pronouncements and actions of its Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. In the 1990s Mahathir was famous for his predictions that Malaysia would be a high tech center. Before the 1997 currency crash (which Mahathir blamed on foreign, especially Jewish, speculators) the Malaysian government was planning large investments in high speed networking infrastructure and technology research. More recently Mahathir made the news for stating that that the Jews run the world by proxy. Mahathir is also famous for jailing Anwar Ibrahim, a Malaysian politician who was widely seen as Mahathir's political successor. Anwar was jailed on charges that are believed to be false by many foreign observers. Apparently there were political factions in Malaysia, particularly Malaysian's business people of Chinese heritage who feared Anwar's Islamic platform. Jailing Anwar forced him out of politics so he is, in theory, no longer a threat.
Electronic Voting, computer security and electoral fraud
Black Box Voting by Bev Harris, from Plan Nine Publishing
After the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida there has been a move in many states away from punch card ballots toward computerized voting machines. At least in broad concept this seems like a good idea. However, the implementation has been criticized by the computer science and computer security community. The current voting machines have no paper trail or any other kind of audit trail (e.g., write-once CD-ROM for example). Without an audit trail to track the votes that voters make to the actual count there is grave concern that computerized voting systems will allow elections, especially close elections to be stolen. without an autid trail there is no way, in fact, to prove whether the election was stolen or not.
Bev Harris' book Black Box Voting discusses the security issues surrounding the current voting machines. Diebold, the manufacturer of these systems has been suing Ms. Harris in an attempt to suppress the publication of internal memos that Diebold finds embarassing.
Black Box Voting will be available in both trade paperback form and in electronic form (in PDF format).
In April 2004 a California State committee recommended that Diebold be banned from selling electronic voting machines to the State of California. They also recommended that the State Attorney General pursue civil and possibly criminal action against Diebold.
VoteScam: the Stealing of America by James Collier, Victoria House Press, 1992
The United States may have a better record of electoral honesty than a South American "banana republic", but elections in the US have never been entirely honest. Under the first Mayor Daily, Chicago was famous for the "ward bosses" who could deliver blocks of votes.
The presidential election between Nixon and Kennedy was close, although Kennedy did appear to win the popular vote and the electoral vote. However, Nixon believed that the election was stolen from him with the help of Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy's Vice President. Nixon considered contesting the election, but was told not to rock the boat by the Republican party bosses. They probably feared exposing the system. Johnson has long experience rigging elections in Texas:
Some votes for Lyndon Johnson were being purchased more directly, for it was not only the size of Texas that made campaigning so expensive but the ethics that pervaded politics in entire sections of it.
One of these sections was San Antonio, and the area south of it to the Rio Grande. "The way to play politics in San Antonio," as John Gunther was to write, "is to buy, or try to buy, the Mexican vote, which is decisive."
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path To Power by Robert A. Caro
According to Caro, Johnson would talk of an election he lost, describing the critical mistake he made in announcing his vote count first. This gave the opposition a number to beat, which they did, presumably by rigging the voting box and buying voting blocks.
Rereading these accounts of dirty Texas politics reminded me of the political environment from which Governor Bush and Tom DeLay arose. Perhaps this is where Bush II learned to use ugly political strategies when the need arises.
I have not read the book Votescam. Apprently it discusses voting fraud and the web site has links to a number of articles discussing this topic. The chapters that are published on-line are not particularly well written. Like any good conspiracy story, the CIA is mentioned. While the CIA certainly helped rig elections in other countries, I find it unlikely that they did this in the US.
Election fraud has no place in a Republic and no place in the United States. Especially with modern technology it should be possible to hold verifiable precisely correct elections. Having said this, breathless claims that voting fraud is something new is obviously wrong. What we can hope is that election fraud will be something that is consigned to the past.
Shooting Ourselves in the Foot Grandiose Schems for Electronic Eavesdropping may Hurt More Than They Help, "Robert X. Cringely", July 10, 2003, Public Broadcasting System written editorial
I don't have a links sub-section directly dealing with security and privacy (I probably should, since there are lots of dimensions of these topics). So for the time being, this link goes under "miscellaneous".
This is a rather amazing article on the computers that support the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). These Sun Workstations apparently sit at various phone centers and support wiretapping of the digital phone system. According to "Cringely" these systems sit directly on the Internet.
History has shown that no computer system is totally secure (e.g., hackproof). For this reason, government classified computer systems are never connected to the public internet or to the phone system. Not only are the CALEA systems connected to the Internet, but apparently they have less than state-of-the-art security. Cringely claims that the CALEA systems have been hacked by a variety of people, both inside the US and outside (e.g., foreign intelligence). Once taken over, these systems can be used for unauthorized taps. Perhaps almost as bad, there is no logging, so it is possible for recorded information to be "lost". Conversations that could show innocence might be removed or never turned in by unethical members of the police or the prosecutors office.
The original link to this article was posted on slashdot. Although some of the slash dot response was "oh, everyone knows that, its old news", in a quick Google search I was unable to find other articles that verified Cringely's article. If what Cringely claims is true, it's pretty horrifying.
Government Holds Back Scientist's Book by Richard Benke, Federation of American Scientists, May 29, 2001
This brief article is about the United States government suppressing Dan Stillman's book Inside China's Nuclear Weapons Program. Stillman was a scientist and weapons designer at Los Alamos National Labs for 29 years. After retiring he was invited to tour the Chinese nuclear weapons labs. This was after a Chinese American scientist, Wei Ho Lee was accused of passing atomic secrets to the Chinese. There are those who believe that the government is suppressing the book to cover its embarrassment over the evidence in the book that the Chinese developed a new generation of nuclear weapons without foreign information.
A fascinating account of Dan Stillman's visits to Chinese weapons complex facilities and associated universities can be found in Thomas C. Reed's article The Chinese nuclear tests, 1964-1996, published in Physics Today. Thomas Reed was at one time a nuclear weapons designer. He is collaborating on a book with Dan Stillman. Along with this article, he provides a list of Chinese nuclear weapons tests that was provided to Stillman by the Chinese.
Other articles on Dan Stillman's attempt to get his work published:
Our Secretive Government, the Cincinnati Post, June 12, 2002
The book Inside China's Nuclear Weapons Program by Dan Stillman was supposed to be 500 pages in length. Stillman apparently won all of the court cases I've seen referenced on the Web. The last reference I've seen, however, was in 2002. As of January of 2006 Stillman's book still has not been published, nor have I seen any recent references to its status.
And speaking of The Labs, the SPSE is a professional organization for Lab employees.
Interviewing With An Intelligence Agency (or, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Fort Meade) By Ralph J. Perro (a pseudonym), November 2003 (Federation of American Scientists (FAS) web site).
And speaking of security... This is a rather disturbing account of interviewing with the NSA. I write that this is a disturbing account because the interview process seems to weed out many potential employees who would be an asset to the NSA and our country, while not being much use in protecting government secrets from people who might disclose them.
This essay is published as part of the FAS Intelligence Resource Program web page
And, speaking of Intelligence: Selections from the Senate Committee Report on Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy chaired by Senator John F. Kerry, December 1988
As I write this Senator John F. Kerry is much in the news as the Democratic nominee to run against George W. Bush. During the primaries a number of Kerry's Democratic rivals accused him of being little more than a slighly liberal version of G.W. Bush. After the 2002 mid-term elections many in the Democratic party critized the party leadership of being spineless. Kerry has been tarred with this brush as well.
Contradicting these views of Kerry is his past. His investigation of the Contra war was not terribly popular with either Democrats or Republicans. Yet what his committee found turns out to have been largely true.
This is Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's report on the Iran/Contra scandal which ended in part when George H.W. Bush pardoned many of those involved.
The BCCI Affair A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate by Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown December 1992
Kerry also investigated the BCCI bank, which had a number of notorious connections. This was even more unpopular than the Contra investigation, since some of those involved in this massive fraud were powers in the Democratic party.
The Man Who Knew , A Public Broadcasting System FRONTLINE Documentary
From the PBS web page on this documentary:
For six years, John O'Neill was the FBI's leading expert on Al Qaeda. He warned of its reach. He warned of its threat to the U.S. But to the people at FBI headquarters, O'Neill was too much of a maverick, and they stopped listening to him. He left the FBI in the summer of 2001 and took a new job as head of security at the World Trade Center.
John O'Neill died in collapse of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed by the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He was working to get people out of the buildings.
don't support that": We're not here to help fix your computer. We just
want to get you off the phone.
A tech-support slave tells his hellish tale. By Kyle Killen, February 23, 2004, Salon.com
Four years after I graduated from college I went to work for a division of a defense contractor that made telemetry instruments (if you really want to know who this was, you can look at my resume). Many of the hardware engineers at this company were hardware hackers. They did not so much design hardware as hack it until it worked. Many of their initial designs had serious timing problems. The lack of real design coupled with agressive schedules meant that on some occasions there was no working hardware to ship when a deadline arrived. However, this company shipped it anyway.One of the engineers who worked on my project had started out in customer support. I asked her how this company got away with shipping hardware they knew did not work. She said that simply having a sympathetic voice on the other end of the phone who promised to fix the problem worked wonders. In many cases they were able to mollify the customers and ship something resembling working hardware a few weeks later.
Apparently the telephone support at computer manufacturers have dispensed with the sympathetic voice. Or, more accurately, at the outsourcing company hired by the computer manufacturer. According this this account from "support Hell", the people answering the phone know little, if anything about computers. In fact in many cases the support people know less than the person calling them. The job of telephone support is simply to get the caller off the phone in under 12 minutes. All the outsourcing company cares about is call volume, since this is what they're paid for. So it is not much of a surprise that there is a move to outsource these knowledge-less telephone support jobs to India.
Of course after reading this article I've even more confirmed in my practice of buying computer systems from local integrators, not Dell, HP or IBM.
This is a well written, interesting and beautifully produced biography of Julius Caesar. A bibliography is also provided.
Ms. Cross has also written a set of Web pages on the women of classical Rome: Feminae Romanae: The Women of Ancient Rome.
Graphic Novelest Joe Sacco on the power and ignorance of the United States (salon.com)
I think the American population should be sent to The Hague to be judged. This is a country that has an enormous impact around the world. What is decided in Washington, D.C., when George [W.] Bush lifts his little finger -- someone around the world is going to feel it. To me it seems almost criminal that the people who live here, who elect someone like that -- if they really knew how other people's lives are affected by American policies, maybe they would pay more attention. It's appalling the amount of ignorance here about world events.
Sacco is a citizen of the Island of Malta, off the coast of Italy. What is fascinating is that despite the faults that Sacco sees in the United States, he still seems to feel that the US holds out hope and promise. Sacco is currently a permanent resident of the US (e.g., he has a "green card") and is applying to become a citizen. When asked if his criticism of the United States is in contradiction with his plan to become a citizen he responds
I have a deep affection for this country [the United States], and in many ways living here and deciding to seek citizenship is my little way of taking some personal responsibility for how it acts. So I don't see a contradiction at all. I see a duty.
Offshore Data Centers and Offshore Banking
First, to avoid any misunderstanding, unlike some wealthy citizens of the United States, I believe that paying taxes is part of supporting the infrastructure of the country. So I'm not one of these "move your money offshore and avoid taxes" people.
However, I have noticed that many wealthy individuals and large corporations do not share my views about the obligation to support the country that provided them the environment where they could amass their wealth. There seems to be a large, but little discussed, offshore banking system. Many large banks, like the Royal Bank of Canada, have offshore subsidiaries. Many US corporations have also located offshore or set up offshore companies. One of the most famous examples is Rupert Murdoch's New Corp, which pays some of the lowest corporate rates in the world by using complex offshore corporate structures.
Many large transactions are also handled offshore for tax reasons. These include commodity sales and the sale oil tankers. Finally there are illegal or semi-legal transactions, like drug money laundering and arms sales.
There is no point in an offshore transaction if a judge in the United States or a European country can force the disclosure of financial records. This means that these records must exist offshore as well. Given the complexity and size of offshore money flows, these transactions have long passed the paper ledger stage and are handled by computer. These computer systems must be located offshore as well. However, what is odd is that it is difficult to locate much in the way of an offshore data center infrastructure or hiring of information technology people to manage this infrastructure.
In the case of a large bank, like the Royal Bank of Canada, there is an existing information technology staff which has the knowledge to set up an offshore data center. Once the physical infrastructure is in place the bank can use its existing software (perhaps with additional support for cryptography). However, it might also make sense to use a co-location facility, where security, local power supplies and hardening against natural disaster like hurricanes can be amortized among a group of customers. I've found a few footprints to such data centers, which are listed below:
The Blogshares Listing for Bearcave.com (referred to on Blogshares at The Bear Cave
The Blogshares main page describes Blogshares as:
BlogShares is a fantasy stock market for weblogs. Players get to invest a fictional $500, and blogs are valued by incoming links.
As the astute reader may have noticed, bearcave.com is not, exactly, a blog. But bearcave.com is my own personal soapbox, so perhaps I'm not stretching the truth too far.
Star Bridge Systems makes a programmable FPGA based "parallel processor". Apparently it has been used by NASA Langley in some real applications. The big problem with FPGA programming is expressing the algorithm. While C can be converted to synthesizable logic, the result is usually very slow. However, hardware design, which results in good FPGA based algorithms is very time consuming. Languages like Handel-C attempt to bridge the gap between algorithms and their hardware implementation. Star Bridge claims to offer a software development environment that helps here as well.
When looking at the background of the founders of Star Bridge, you find people with backgrounds in small technology companies. But they don't seem to be technology heavy weights. For example, the company does not seem to be a University of Utah spinoff. This is not to say that people without hard core technology backgrounds cannot deliver innovative solutions, but they do require a closer look to make sure that it is not hype and that they really understand the issues.
The company's founder and chief technologist, Kent Gilson, is a 37-year-old high-school dropout who for years has been derided by computer scientists as, well, a bit of a fringe character. The company's chief executive, Daniel Oswald, joined Star Bridge four months ago after running a foundation that dealt with ancient religious texts and Mormon studies.
The company seems to have had some rocky moments, according to the Forbes.com article:
Gilson says he understands that people will be skeptical about the claims he is making. It doesn't help that two years ago one of Star Bridge's first customers sued the company, claiming he made payments totaling $200,000 to Star Bridge and never got a workable computer. A few months ago Star Bridge settled the dispute by giving the customer shares in Star Bridge in exchange for his $200,000.
Gilson insists his dream machine actually works. "I live in the future," he says. "Most people are pessimists who live in the present or the past."
But in the end, they're still nothing more than video games by Jewels, in Jive Magazine
This is a discussion and account of video game addiction by a writer who started investigating massive multi-player on-line games, like Everquest.
"Addiction" is a term that has been massively over used. The implication in some cases has been "It was not my fault, I'm an addict". It's a disease, not a moral failing. As I've noted above, we all have a choice about whether we walk through the door or pick up the straw.
Even the nature of "addiction" is wonderfully undefined. My definition for addiction is a behavior that interfears with the functioning of your life in a harmful way. For example, it harms your relationships, your ability to earn money to pay your hills or has a negative impact on your health. Lots of things can fall into this catagory. Gambling (as discussed above), sexual obcession, over eating (think Paul Prudhomme) and, as in this article, video games. One of the problem with the whole addiction label is the question of where the line is between passion and obcession and addiction. Their work can consume most of the lives of artists, writers and scientists, for example. Is Everquest art?
An Engineer's View of Venture Capitalists, by Nick Tredennick
I'm not sure what the history of the name Kuro5hin is, but it's a good site. In addition to publishing A Casino Odyssey, they published a link to Nick Tredennick's stories from the start-up wars, which is published in IEEE Spectrum. Tredennick's article does an excellent job describing the problems that engineers face in venture capital funded startups. I've covered some of these issues in on my web page Venture Caplital and Start-up Companies.
Sadly, I think that Tredennick's solutions are naive. He suggests that if engineers funded start-up companies, they would give a larger share to the engineering talent that makes the company possible. I think that the truth is that when engineers start thinking like venture capitalists they will act like venture capitalists. Engineers will be just as willing to exploit the engineering staff as VCs are.
'If he could get away with it here, no lock in the world is safe' by Oliver Burkeman, July 17, 2003, The Guardian UK
Art and jewel thieves are romantic figures. They are the aristocracy of the criminal world, using charm and intellect to steal from the very rich. This Guardian story is of a real jewel heist in the London diamond district. The heist took place in a heavily guarded safty deposit vault. The person who committed the theft became a regular in the community, allowing access to the value without arousing suspicion. Those interviewed for the article said that known destructive techniques (drilling, explosives, etc...) would not have worked because they would have attracted attention. Now if only is Sean Connery will still be available to play the thief in the movie that is sure to follow.
Unofficial, on the ground views, of the US Military in Iraq:
Passport to the Pub: A guide to British pub etiquette (PDF) by Kate Fox, Social Issues Research Centre
Apparently this was commissioned by the British Brewers and Licenced Retailers Association. From Passport to the Pub
Pub-going is by far the most popular native pastime. The 61,000 pubs in Britain have over 25 million loyal customers. Over three-quarters of the adult population go to pubs, and over a third are "regulars", visiting the pub at least once a week. The pub is a central part of British life and culture. If you haven't been to a pub, you haven't seen Britain.
Visitors to Britain are bewitched by our pubs, but they are often bothered and bewildered by the unwritten rules of pub etiquette. This is not surprising: the variety and complexity of pub customs and rituals can be equally daunting for inexperienced British pubgoers.
In 1995, for Passport to the Pub, the SIRC Research team, led by Research Manager Joe McCann and Senior Researcher John Middleton, embarked on yet another six-month anthropological pub-crawl. In total, the research on which this book is based has involved observation work in over 800 pubs, consultations with over 500 publicans and bar staff and interviews with over 1000 pubgoers, both natives and tourists.
Our first task in the preliminary research for this project was to find out how much tourists knew about pub etiquette. Not surprisingly, given the lack of information available, we found that what tourists didn\222t know about pub etiquette would fill a book. This is the book
Hunter S. Thompson is dead (2/20/2005)
Hunter S. Thompson took his own life on Sunday. In a spectacular eulogy to Thompson, The Rude Pundit writes of the motivation for Thompson's act: "Chances are it's the same old story - depression, disease, drugs, or some combination thereof."
Thompson's notorious long running substance abuse took a toll years ago. Someone I knew worked at the San Francisco Examiner when Thompson was writing a weekly column for them. Thompson would phone in the column, which was largely incoherent and his assistent would write some kind of riff on Thompson's demented disordered dialog.
The toll that drugs and alcohol took on Thompson in his later years should not distract from his stature as a writer. Books like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and Fear of Lono are American classics. Even near the end, Thompson could still rise up and recognize evil in its embodiment in Bush II and his cronies. In an interview before the 2004 election Thompson said "This is the darkest hour that I have seen in my long experience as an American. This is evil." And so it is, Doc, so it is. Thompson was a long time gambler on sports. Like many of us, sadly, Dr. Gonzo called the 2004 election wrong in his 2004 Rolling Stone article on the election.
Thompson's obituary for Richard Nixon was titled He was a Crook. Reading this bitter and biting rememberance of Nixon, once viewed by many as the worst president of the modern era, it is difficult to avoid thinking of our current era and Bush II, who Thompson viewed as worse than Nixon.
At the bearcave we've been lucky enough to collect a few pieces of art (and lots of books on art and architecture). We have a couple of pieces of art by a modern Japanese artist, Hisashi Otsuka (we have, Lady Murasaki Revisted, shown below, for example).
We also like some of the photorealists, in particular the late American artist John Kacere. We have Kacere prints from the Ro Gallery in New York.
Sometimes an artists will do a work we like, even though we are not wild about all their work. For us this was true of Jack Henslee. We have one of his prints as well. His work can be found at has the The Painted Lady web site.
The Web forges the strangest and surprising connections. The Web is an engine of serendipity. I went from a book review written by Felicia Sullivan published on Amazon to the Web magazine she publishes, Small Spiral Notebook. I found the painting at the top of the Web page of Small Spiral Notebook haunting. One of those pictures you see and don't forget (for different reasons that John Kacere's work). I noticed in the fine print that the "images" were from Michael Paige-Glover. Google lead me to Michael's web site (PaigeGlover.com). Michael is a very talented painter and I hope to see more of his work.
Many of the links above are examples of how the Internet has changed the flow of human information. To those doing research the Internet gives rapid access to a vast body of literature and to recent research results.
Literary, mathematical and scientific information represents the best of what the Internet has to offer. Then there is the wierd stuff. A compendium of wierd links would be vast and would grow all the time. I've included a few here that I've run into over the years. I hope that it is obvious that I don't endorse any of these web sites.
The code to prevent unauthorized launch of nuclear missiles were all set to 00000000. No, I'm not making it up! See Keeping Presidents in the Nuclear Dark (Episode #1: The Case of the Missing "Permissive Action Links") Bruce G. Blair, Ph.D, Feb. 11, 2004
This is not weird the way stories of space aliens or bizarre conspiracy theories are. This is weird in the sense that if a thriller writer wrote this, no one would believe them. It may also be wierd because it suggests that our survival is, to a degree, a matter of fortune that no terrorist or madman seized control of a nuclear weapons instillation.
For anyone who has seen the movie Dr. Strange Love this is a very scary idea. It is also ironic that after the movie came out the US Air Force denied that an unauthorized nuclear launch, of the type depicted in the movie, could ever take place.
The Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha quietly decided to set the "locks" to all zeros in order to circumvent this safeguard. During the early to mid-1970s, during my stint as a Minuteman launch officer, they still had not been changed. Our launch checklist in fact instructed us, the firing crew, to double-check the locking panel in our underground launch bunker to ensure that no digits other than zero had been inadvertently dialed into the panel. SAC remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders. And so the "secret unlock code" during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War remained constant at OOOOOOOO.
Sheldon Nidle's Planetary Activation Organization web site describes the galactic organization that has arrived in our solar system. At one time Mr. Nidle announced the date of contact with our galactic brethren. As is so often the case when someone is foolish enough to announce a date (e.g., the date of the end of the world), the date for contact with the galactic others has come and gone. No obvious aliens around. Of course its possible that George Bush Jr. is an alien android. I've always assumed that he's simply an intellectually limited individual controlled by his father's old cronys and the moneyed faction of the Republican Party. But its possible he's one of those aliens Mr. Nidle writes about.
According to Mr. Nidle, the Aliens have arrived. The Galatic Federation is here and they have contacted him. Perhaps a strange choice, but maybe it was Mr. Nidle or George W. Bush. I guess that if I had a choice between the two, I'd choose Mr. Nidle too.
What ever the case, the aliens are here, according to Mr. Nidle and his web page even has descriptions of some select members of the Galatic Federation. Mr. Nidle continues to work to bring the Earth to global consciousness or light or what ever. To help aid Mr. Nidle in his hard work, you can now donate money via credit card.
I found out about this site through a massive spam on Usenet. The site claims that they had nothing to do with this spam. Personally, I don't lend a lot of credence to statements made by those who believe in "mind control" and radio voices. Perhaps they did it under mind control and don't remember.
Treatement of mental illness is still primative, but the drugs are getting better. The authors of this site might find happier lives with the aid of these medications.
The definition of sanity depends on the current culture. These days we'd put Joan of Arc on drugs to help her control her "voice". The French would speak English and the height of cuisine would be bangers and mash.
Here, without (much) further comment on my part here is the description from the Trance Formation web site. I particularly enjoyed the part about "White House sex slave". Did Ms. O'Brien have to interview for this job, or was she recruited? What would Congressmen Bob Barr and Dan Burton (the arch nemesis of President Clinton) have to say about this executive privilege?
TRANCE Formation of America is the first documented autobiography of a victim of government mind control. Cathy O'Brien is the only vocal and recovered survivor of the Central Intelligence Agency's MK-Ultra Project Monarch operation. Tracing her path from child pornography and recruitment into the program to serving as a top-level intelligence agent and White House sex slave, TRANCE Formation of America is a definitive eye-witness account of government corruption that implicates some of the most prominent figures in U.S. politics.
Navahoax by Matthew Fleischer, LA Weekly, January 25, 2006
back to home page | <urn:uuid:d4ea2784-ef64-4249-b833-9c9f2ac0eb65> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.bearcave.com/links.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00143-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955718 | 44,761 | 1.859375 | 2 |
✋ What Kind of Friend Are You?
You rely on your friends in good times and bad. You use their shoulders to cry on when you’re upset, and you celebrate with them when you’re happy. You wouldn’t be the same without them.
Do they get the same things from you? Are you a true blue friend, or do you leave something to be desired?
Take this test to find out what kind of friend you are. Then, you’ll know if you’re the type of friend that everyone wants to have or if you need to do a little work to become a better buddy to your pals.
Tips for Taking the Test
When you take the test, you might be tempted to answer the questions the way you want to be perceived. However, it’s important that you answer each question truthfully. You might not like the answer, but the truth needs to prevail so you’ll find out what type of friend you really are.
Take your time as you move through the questions. Give each question some thought so you can dig deep and learn more about your inner friendship style.
Analyzing the Results
The results will tell you what type of friend you are and give you some tips. You might find out that you need to do some work on yourself to become a better friend. If you do, don’t despair. Most people have to do some work, whether it’s being more giving or learning to stand up for themselves. Do the work and then retake the test. After you put in the work, you can change your friend profile and become an even better friend. Then, it will be easier for you to create strong bonds that last a lifetime.
Take the test and then share your results so everyone knows what type of friend you are. Encourage your friends to take the test, as well. If all of your friends learn more about the types of friends they are, you can create an open dialogue that will help everyone treat each other even better. That’s how real friendships are made. | <urn:uuid:a78f4bc8-8715-4e76-8dc3-1aa25f2d635d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://365tests.com/friendship-tests/what-kind-of-friend-are-you/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283008.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00079-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942095 | 433 | 1.804688 | 2 |
“The consequences of cutting corners in calf nutrition just to save costs can have a long lasting effect,” says Cargill’s calf and heifer specialist Bianca Theeruth. This is the advice being given to producers who may be tempted to do this, according to a press release from the company.
"Maintaining target growth rates in calves and youngstock is like achieving high interest rates – it's the herd investment," says Theeruth. "I appreciate, with volatile and falling milk prices, why producers might look to shave costs from the milk powder of creep feed bill and use a cheaper option but this will soon be reflected in growth rates."
Short-term gain could mean long term losses
Less expensive and lower-spec calf milk replacers or creep feeds can look appealing for producers contemplating their cash flow, but it's often a false economy. "The danger here is that it's just short-term gain. At the end of the month, the balance sheet may look slightly better, but remember this is a long-term investment and there will be a price to pay in the longer term. Lower growth rates can affect age at calving and this has been shown to impact on lifetime productivity."
Increasing the age at first calving from 24 to 28 months can cost around £160 (USD$243) per heifer in feed costs alone and a recent Belgian Study showed that animals that calved at 24.6 months had 3.85 lactations compared with three lactations for those calving at 27.9 months, and 34 more productive days during their life than the older calving heifers.
Provide good quality colostrum and milk replacer
Keeping calves and heifers on target has a direct effect on the whole dairy system efficiency. Heifers need to be gaining 0.75 – 0.8kg/d from milk feeding phase up to calving. The key rules are to ensure that plenty of quality colostrum is fed, starting soon after birth, providing a high quality milk replacer through a reliable feeding system and giving calves solid feed of high quality from three days old to help rumen development and prevent growth rate checks. Calves should have access to fresh clean water. Post weaning, heifers need fresh grazing and drier forage with concentrates offered to help to stabilise intakes and performance
"So while the natural reaction to any squeeze on income is to try to reduce costs, the money spent on youngstock is vital and an important financial investment – not a luxury," she adds.
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Or register to be able to comment. | <urn:uuid:f18480d4-b3da-4112-9d98-2a459e048ab0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.allaboutfeed.net/Feed-Additives/Articles/2015/2/Avoid-cutting-corners-when-it-comes-to-calf-nutrition-1702532W/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00394-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954502 | 542 | 2.40625 | 2 |
A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places with a Description of the Lakes and a Sketch of a Tour in Wales and Itineraries, Illustrated with Maps and Views (1803) by R. Phillips:
The proximity of Lyme and Charmouth for they are within two miles of each other, and the constant intercourse which is kept up between those who visit either the one or the other , evinces the propriety of classing them together. As Lyme however is the most important and the best frequented, it first claims attention. This ancient borough town, which is governed by a mayor and other corporate officers , and returns two members to serve in parliament ,stands in Dorset but on the borders of Devon, distant about 143 miles from London. It is built on the declivity of a craggy hill at the head of a little inlet of the sea, and contains many respectable looking houses with pleasant gardens, particularly in the upper part of the town; but the streets are steep and unpleasant. In the lower part of the town the houses are mean, and the streets so intricate, that a stranger, as has been wittily remarked, will sometimes find himself bewildered and entangled as if he were thridding a forest or the labyrinth of a fox-den. Here the lower order of the inhabitants in general reside, having accidentally that position which nature and fortune have assigned them. To be a person of consideration at Lyme it is necessary to toil up the hill and to fix one's abode where it is in danger of being assailed by every wind that blows. Altogether , however, Lyme is not an unpleasant place for company, in the bathing-season; for whose use and accommodation several machines are erected in the beach, which is pebbly, and consequently uncomfortable to walk on. Lyme has a small Assembly-Room, Card-Room and Billiard-Table all conveniently ranged under one roof ; and had the Library been joined to it, all the amusements which the place can furnish would have been comprise din one building. The situation for this edifice is happily chosen, as it commands a charming marine view as far as the Isle of Portland, eight leagues off, and the interior is compact and well arranged. Magnificence is not essential to enjoyment: often more happiness is found in a cottage than in a palace; and the rooms at Lyme frequently exhibit as cheerful countenance as are to be seen at Bath or Brighton. The Golden Lion and Three Cups are respectable houses of entertainment and lodgings may generally be procured on easy terms, and without difficulty. This town has a share of the Newfoundland and coasting trade, but both have long been on the decline. Properly speaking, Lyme has neither creek or bay, road nor ruin; yet it has a harbour of the most singular construction; called the Cobb, where ships ride in perfect safety. The materials o this rude harbour or pier are vast stones, weighted out of the sea, and arranged in such a manner as to break the violence of the tide which has here made great incroachments, the cliffs being composed of a kind of marle and blue clay incorporated with lime, which easily give way. Even the church here is said to be in danger; yet no attempts are made to secure it from the levelling principals of the waves; though Lyme is neither deficient in religion or loyalty. Lyme upon the whole may perhaps be regarded, when compared with other sea-bathing places, as one of the most eligible and best adapted for answering the various purposes for which it has for some time past been the rage to make annual excursions to the coast. These objects, it is likewise worthy of remark may, on this comparatively retired and humble spot, be secured in a manner more compatible with the rigid rules of economy , than at places of more public and splendid resort: places which will , in general, be found better calculated to ruin the fortunes, than to mend the constitutions, of their fashionable visitors. Lodging and boarding at Lyme are not merely reasonable , they are even cheap; the dissipation of the healthy, and the suitable accommodations of the sick are within the reach of ordinary recourses. It is frequented principally by persons in the middle class of life, who go there, not always in search of their lost health, but as frequently perhaps to heal their wounded fortunes, or to replenish their exhausted revenues. The resources for intellectual improvement or gratification are in this pretty much what they are in most other places of a similar nature : the libraries are neither copious nor select; although principally composed of novels ,many of the best even in this class of books are wanting, as well as some in the most respectable and popular amongst the periodical publications. Neither Monthly Magazine nor the Monthly or Critical Reviews were to be met with during the last summer, at any of the literary lounges of this place.
Use the "Show me" link to locate Lyme on the map. You may need to scroll down to see Lyme highlighted. | <urn:uuid:c54eaca8-a315-47c2-906a-32ad898c2446> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.pemberley.com/images/landt/maps/persuasion/Lyme.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279224.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00478-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972541 | 1,022 | 2.046875 | 2 |
The surname of HEASE was a locational name 'the dweller at the haw' the enclosure. Local surnames, by far the largest group, derived from a place name where the man held land or from the place from which he had come, or where he actually lived. These local surnames were originally preceded by a preposition such as "de", "atte", "by" or "in". The names may derive from a manor held, from working in a religious dwelling or from literally living by a wood or marsh or by a stream. The name was derived from the Old English word HAES. Early records of the name mention HESA (without surname) listed as a tenant in the Domesday Book of 1086. The name was documented as HAESE (without surname) in the year 1168. Richard de la Hay was documented in the year 1170 in London. Roger del Heys was recorded in 1200 in County Norfolk. Eborard de la Heye was recorded in County Norfolk in the year 1273. Ricardus del Haye, of Yorkshire was listed in the Yorkshire Poll Tax of 1379. Cecelia de la Hay was documented in County Somerset during the reign of Edward III (1327-1377). A notable member of the name was Isaac Isreal Haynes (1832-81) the American Artic explorer, born in Pennysylvania. He sailed as a surgeon on an exhibition in 1853 until 1854, and published 'An Artic Boat-journey' in 1860. Between the 11th and 15th centuries it became customary for surnames to be assumed in Europe, but were not commonplace in England or Scotland before the Norman Conquest of 1066. Those of gentler blood assumed surnames at this time, but it was not until the reign of Edward II (1307-1327) that second names became general practice for all people. In many parts of central and western Europe, hereditary surnames began to become fixed at around the 12th century, and have developed and changed slowly over the years. As society became more complex, and such matters as the management of tenure, and in particular the collection of taxes were delegated to special functionaries, it became imperative to distinguish a more complex system of nomenclature to differentiate one individual from another. The associated arms are recorded in Sir Bernard Burkes General Armory. Ulster King of Arms in 1884.
Orders over $85 qualify for Free Shipping within the U.S. (Use coupon code: FREESHIP). | <urn:uuid:aa4749c9-bde1-44b8-aeca-f52ac42e5828> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.4crests.com/hease-coat-of-arms.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719784.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00426-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979439 | 522 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Speaking at American University’s Key Executive Leadership program’s FedTalks Speaker Series recently – presented by the School of Public Affairs as “Women and the Future, revisited” – Gwendolyn Sykes and Zina B. Sutch, Ph.D. shared stories of the winding roads that took them to positions of authority and influence in the federal government. Both have leveraged their various senior-level roles in government and education to affect genuine cultural change.
Some of the tips that they gave women and men alike include the following:
Work On You.
Strengthen your self-awareness every day. Be conscious of what you say, how you sound, how other people respond to you, and what you wear but not so much so that you’re taken out of reality. Are you carrying yourself with executive presence? If not, what can you do to change that? Let the answers come to you naturally then putting them into action and you will find that change coming naturally. Learn what your fears and triggers are and face them; find a way to change them, get around them or move past them.
Moderate Your Internal Speech
Be conscious of your self-dialogue. What you say to yourself drives your attitude, behavior, perspectives and performance, far more than you think. “Pay attention to the voices in your head,” Sutch implored the audience, adding, “What are you telling yourself that you need to stop telling yourself?” She is onto something here.
On a Personal Note
I can say that I was affected by what I told to myself in the past as well as how I looked at myself because of my inner-dialogue. As a result of this, I ended up with a poor perception of myself and instead of talking to yourself in the negative, focus on what you achieve on a daily basis. Thanks to this simple change in tactics, I’m now able to recognize where I shine and where I don’t. Since I was able to put everything in order from great to bad, I was able to see everything more clearly and move on from there. You can too.
Show Them That You’re Serious
Show you are a leader that you are open to learning new things. Every job can teach you something new, even if you believe there is nothing left to learn. Get educated, with both degrees and certifications but don’t stop there. Do trainings, always be reading something you’ll learn from and get coaching if you can.
And remember To…
Ask, ask ask! I call this strategy leveraging “mini-mentoring moments.” Ask a friend or family member whose opinion you value for 15 minutes of their time. If there is some specific issue you want advice on, ask them a specific question right there in the moment; whether that be in an elevator, the conference room or wherever you happen to be. Ask your boss what it would take for you to achieve a certain job, a raise, or to be put on a specific task force, committee or board. Do not assume they know you want it. Make sure they know you want it! | <urn:uuid:2a7417a2-e4ee-4ebe-a1ef-38bf54bf993c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://webdesignvero.com/2019/06/career-tips-we-should-all-embrace/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571584.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812045352-20220812075352-00671.warc.gz | en | 0.968023 | 662 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Eutelsat awarded €100m contract for next-gen European navigation overlay service
JOHANNESBURG — The European GNSS Agency, GSA, has awarded a €100 million ($121 million) contract to Eutelsat Communications to develop and operate the agency’s next-generation EGNOS satellite navigation overlay service.
The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) is used to improve the performance and accuracy of U.S. GPS signals. These signals can then be utilized for safety critical applications for aviation, maritime and land-based customers like railway and road management agencies.
With the Feb. 9 contract signing, the GSA has entrusted Paris-based Eutelsat with the development and operation of the agency’s next-generation EGNOS GEO-4 service. Also referred to as EGNOS Version 3, the new service will make several improvements on its predecessor including integrating signals from Galileo, Europe’s own navigation system.
The 15-year EGNOS GEO-4 contract awarded to Eutelsat is worth €100 million. An initial €15 million of the total contract award will be available to Eutelsat. The additional €85 million will be subject to funding confirmation from the European Union.
The EGNOS GEO-4 payload will be hosted aboard the Eutelsat Hotbird 13G satellite, which will be used for television broadcasting to customers in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The contract for the Hotbird 13G satellite was awarded to Airbus Defence and Space in 2018 with an expected launch date of 2021.
During a Feb. 9 press briefing, Eutelsat CEO Rodolphe Belmer said the launch of Hotbird 13G had been delayed to 2022. Belmer cited manufacturing delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic for the revised launch date.
GEO-4 payload is the second EGNOS payload to be hosted aboard a Eutelsat satellite. The first, GEO-3, was launched aboard Eutelsat 5 West B in October 2019.
The EGNOS system has been operational since 2009. It is currently made up of 40 monitoring stations, two mission control centers, six navigation stations, three geostationary assets hosted aboard larger satellites, and the EGNOS Wide Area Network, which provides the communication network for all ground segments. | <urn:uuid:4bc1773b-a1d3-4d79-99a4-eb0c4716b23b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://spacenews.com/eutelsat-awarded-e100m-contract-for-next-gen-european-navigation-overlay-service/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00070.warc.gz | en | 0.922495 | 497 | 1.710938 | 2 |
The University of Minnesota makes non-payroll payments to individuals and businesses in the course of the University’s trade or business. Federal and State tax regulations require that the University report certain types of non-payroll payments (excluding payments processed through the University’s Purchasing Card (PCard) program) to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), state taxing authorities, and recipients for payments made in each calendar year. The payments are reported to recipients on IRS Form 1099.
1099-MISC, Miscellaneous Income Reporting Requirements
The reportable threshold for all non-payroll payments (except royalty payments) is an aggregated amount of $600 or greater during a calendar year. Royalty payments have a threshold of $10 or greater during a calendar year.
All non-payroll payment recipients require an entity type and must be a US citizen or entity for tax purposes. Payments to non-US taxpayers may be reported on IRS Form 1042-S: Foreign Person’s U.S. Source Income Subject to Withholding.
The reportable entity types include:
- sole proprietorships,
- trusts, and
- corporations (medical and legal services only)
Government and tax-exempt organizations are excluded from reportable entity types.
Units must report all non-payroll payments issued outside of the Enterprise Financial System (EFS) to the reportable entity types listed above, including but not limited to the following:
- medical / healthcare services,
- legal settlements,
- attorney’s fees,
- human participants payments,
- certain deceased employee wages or benefits,
- taxable fringe benefits received by retired employees or non-employees,
- gifts or prizes, and
- payments for services provided by non-employees
Note: unsubstantiated and/or undocumented employee expense reimbursements may be reported as compensation on IRS Form W-2.
Payments and Tax Reporting for Human Participants
IRS regulation requires the University to report payments to human participants totaling $600 or more during a calendar year. University departments and/or Principal Investigators must obtain a W-9, including the human participant’s name, address and social security number when the cumulative payments over a calendar year equals or exceeds $600 (that are not set up as a supplier in EFS ). This includes payments made via the Prepaid Debit Card, Single Payment Supplier (SPV), Zero Balance Accounts, Contingent Accounts and through Cash Advances.
This requirement does not conflict with HIPAA regulations. University faculty and staff must not include health or detailed information regarding the study in the payment documentation.
1099-K, Merchant Card and Third Party Network Payments Reporting Requirements
Payments processed through the University’s U Card program requires the University to report on IRS form 1099-K.
IRS Deadline Requirements
Purchasing Services is responsible for ensuring that all 1099 forms are sent to recipients by January 31st of the following calendar year. If the due date for filing IRS Form 1099 falls on a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday, the form is due on the next business day.
To comply with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reporting rules related to non-payroll payments made by the University, University units are responsible for providing recipient and payment information to Purchasing Services. Requirements and deadlines vary depending on the amount of the non-payroll payment and if the payment occurs within EFS.
Payments that must be reported to Purchasing Services include:
- One-time, aggregated, cash or non-cash payments to a recipient that meets or exceeds $600 during a calendar year, and
- Payments that are processed outside of EFS, or
- Payments where the recipient’s name, address and tax ID for 1099 reporting are not readily available in EFS.
The table below shows payment types and the University unit responsible for providing the information to Purchasing Services.
|Payment type||Responsible party|
|Athletics tickets||Athletics Department|
|Deceased employee’s wages/vacation payout||Payroll Services|
|Non-employee moving expense reimbursement||Department/Cluster|
|Non-employee tuition benefits||Payroll Services/Department|
|Non-cash payments (e.g. gift, store gift cards)||Department/Cluster|
|Cash advance funds used to pay human participants||Principal Investigator (PI), research study coordinator or the department|
|Prepaid Debit Card used to pay human participants||Principal Investigator (PI), research study coordinator or the department|
|Single Payment Vendor (SPV)||Department/Cluster
Note: SPV is not allowed for payment of goods or services that are =>$600 or the vendor is paid more than one time. If a payment was issued that is not in compliance with the SPV process, contact [email protected] immediately for assistance.
|Checks written from ZBA Contingent account||Account holder|
|Checks written from ZBA Research account
U Card Office
Payments processed in the Enterprise Financial System (EFS) require an existing supplier record. If the supplier does not exist in EFS, units must complete form UM 1679 – Supplier Authorization/Change Form to have the supplier created in EFS prior to payment being issued.
If the non-payroll payment occurs outside of EFS, units must complete form Supplier W-9 -Request for Taxpayer Identification Number and Certification and submit to Purchasing Services.
- If the payment is $600 or greater (cash or non-cash) or $10 or greater for royalty payments – the form must be submitted at the time of payment.
- For payments that aggregate to $600 or greater during the calendar year - All final information must be submitted to Purchasing Services by the 3rd business day in January following the calendar year the payments were made.
If units provide incorrect recipient information or if any information is missing, future payments to the supplier may be put on hold until all issues are resolved and/or all documentation is received.
Required information and instructions for submitting data to Purchasing Services
Recipient’s name, which is used on the individual’s or organization’s tax return, Social Security Number or Employer Identification Number (EIN), current address, and the total payment amount.
For all non-payroll payments, excluding U Card, the required information must be submitted to Purchasing Services on form 1099-Misc Reporting Template.xlsx. The submitted form must be in Excel format.
For U Card reporting, the required information must be submitted to Purchasing Services on form 1099-K Reporting Template.xlsx. The submitted form must be in Excel format.
How to submit recipient information for payments that occur outside of EFS
Social Security and Employer Identification (EIN) Numbers are classified as private, highly restricted data according to Administrative Policy Data Security Classification.
The data must be transmitted to Purchasing Services via Box Secure Storage. The responsible staff member should set up an account with Box Secure Storage and contact Purchasing Services at [email protected] Purchasing Services will create and share the folder with the requester.
- If the payment is $600 or greater (cash or non-cash) or $10 or greater for royalty payments, the form must be submitted at the time of payment.
- For payments that aggregate to $600 or greater during the calendar year, all final information must be submitted to Purchasing Services by the 3rd business day in January following the calendar year the payments were made. | <urn:uuid:dcb78c1f-81f5-4918-9033-09d3109bee94> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://policy.umn.edu/finance/accountspayable-proc04 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573744.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819161440-20220819191440-00477.warc.gz | en | 0.916968 | 1,643 | 1.617188 | 2 |
- Mon-Thu 08:00 – 20:00
Friday 07:00 – 22:00
Saturday 08:00 – 18:00
Ask the Experts
Acne scarring frequently results from severe inflammatory nodulocystic acne that occurs deep in the skin, but scarring also may arise from more superficial inflamed lesions.
Nevertheless, the only sure method of preventing or limiting the extent of acne scars is to treat acne early in its course, and as long as necessary. The more that inflammation can be prevented or moderated, the more likely it is that scars can be prevented.
The objective of scar treatment is to give the skin a more acceptable physical appearance. Total restoration of the skin to the way it looked before you had acne is often not possible but scar treatment does usually improve the appearance of your skin.
At Refresh medical aesthetics all patients with skin conditions are treated by a qualified medical doctors who have experience in treating acne.
The Vampire Facial “Platelet Rich Plasma”
BIO-GOLD STANDARD RETINOL MICRONEEDLING
DarkSpots Kojic Acid Peel | <urn:uuid:f5a785ff-f018-43ea-b352-56874ad3e2d3> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://refreshmedicalaesthetics.co.za/acne-scarring/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572304.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816120802-20220816150802-00465.warc.gz | en | 0.916301 | 269 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Los Angeles fits another piece of transit puzzle
- Article by: JUSTIN PRITCHARD
- Associated Press
- February 21, 2014 - 2:45 AM
LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles is finally getting around to fixing a major flaw in its public transit system: Light rail riders can't travel from one side of downtown and out the other without waiting at platforms to transfer twice. And paying two extra fares.
It's the kind of problem that has helped keep many commuters in their cars, despite the region's notoriously clogged highways.
Transit planners had a solution long ago — and now they have the money to start building.
On Thursday, local and national transportation officials gathered to sign a grant agreement directing $670 million of federal money over several years toward a $1.4 billion project that will let light rail passengers travel beneath downtown without leaving their seats.
The regional connector — as the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority calls it — will tie together three existing light rail lines with a new tunnel and three new stations.
With federal money secured, major construction should begin later this year. If all goes well, the project would open in 2020. The funding not promised under the federal grant will come from U.S. Department of Transportation loans, state money and — critically — local sales tax receipts.
The region's longstanding ambivalence toward public transit has started to change in recent years. A single subway line of 4 miles debuted in 1993, but enthusiasm — and money — for a world-class transit network was limited. By adding new light rail lines piecemeal, the system ended up with the disjointed connections that the regional connector is designed to smooth out.
"Back in the day, when this was still the capital of cars in the world, the idea of putting a subway underground was a really tough sell," said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. "People were willing to dip their toes in, but nobody ever jumped into the water — before traffic got so bad a decade ago that we really started with more comprehensive plans. There's a market for this now."
In 2008, Los Angeles County voters agreed to tax themselves in exchange for significant investments in the subway and light rail (and, yes, greater freeway capacity).
Part of the successful pitch for that tax was the regional connector. Currently, a rider going from West Los Angeles to Pasadena, northeast of downtown, must take a light rail train, transfer on the west edge of downtown to a subway, then transfer to a different light rail line on the other side of downtown. The new project should lop off about 20 minutes from that trip.
"Los Angeles, to its credit, had to build a vision for transit. The city was not designed around a transit network," said Therese McMillan, the deputy administrator of the Federal Transit Administration who formally announced the grant Thursday.
McMillan should know — she grew up here, and while she said she took buses in the 1970s during her high school years, rail was not an option. The once-extensive street cars had been ripped out a few decades before.
To have a rail rebirth, she noted, local politicians and transit officials needed to generate momentum slowly. "In those cases, you have to build it in pieces," McMillan said. "Funding is always a challenge."
Local transit officials hope they'll see McMillan again soon — with an announcement that the federal government will help fund the extension of the subway through Beverly Hills to the west side of Los Angeles. LA Metro has requested $1.25 billion of federal funds for that project.
A decision on that grant request likely will come later this year.
© 2016 Star Tribune | <urn:uuid:e55ae4b2-3ffa-4346-afd3-5a7f032c3d6e> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.startribune.com/printarticle/?id=246487911 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719286.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00499-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96781 | 756 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Seven Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) announced a new coordination platform on economic migration and forced displacement today in a meeting with G7 officials at the World Bank Annual Meetings, to advance strategic priorities, including improving data and evidence and strengthening technical assistance to maximize the impact of projects supported by MDBs.
While economic migration and forced displacement are distinct issues and require a different response, each has emerged as a complex development challenge. As of end-2015, there were an estimated 250 million international economic migrants worldwide; as of end-2016, roughly 66 million people were forcibly displaced as refugees or internally displaced peoples fleeing conflict and persecution.
The new platform represents a strong effort by MDBs to enhance collaboration to address these challenges, utilizing their longstanding experience in sectoral work and poverty reduction. It responds to a request made earlier this year by the G7, under its current Italian presidency. After presenting a strategic framework for action at the G7 meeting in Bari, Italy, in May 2017, MDBs worked closely to prepare specific initiatives for deeper collaboration under a new platform. Discussions are also underway to establish a financing facility to support coordinated activities.
The platform aims to accelerate activities in four areas:
Enhance policy dialogue on economic migration and forced displacement through common analytical work;
Define priorities to best address migration and displacement, by identifying gaps in current MDB initiatives;
Facilitate an agreed approach between MDBs on technical assistance for preparation and implementation of high-impact projects;
Strengthen data and evidence to improve understanding of the development dimensions of migration and displacement, to inform more impactful project-level interventions.
At the Annual Meetings, representatives of MDBs – World Bank Group, European Investment Bank, Islamic Development Bank, African Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development – with G7 deputies and strategic partners including the European Commission discussed specific activities for collaboration, including strengthening protection for female migrants in vulnerable work and other vulnerable populations, such as migrant children and victims of gangs; enhancing preparedness for refugee inflows; and leveraging collective instruments to attract private capital to lagging regions.
Longer-term strategic priorities to enhance MDB engagement on the migration and displacement issues were also discussed, such as strengthening data and analytical evidence on these two issues and providing technical assistance for related projects. A new joint data initiative between the World Bank and UNHCR will also be launched soon, enabling fuller, more impactful use of data to design and deliver programs that benefit refugees.
Kristalina Georgieva, Chief Executive Officer of the World Bank said, “Economic migrants and the forcibly displaced both face heightened levels of vulnerability, and their presence creates development risks and opportunities for the host communities in which they live.”
Werner Hoyer, President, European Investment Bank, noted that, “Migration and forced displacement pose long term challenges for people everywhere: the countries they leave, those they cross, those they travel to. This is not new, but for too long we have lacked a joint, coordinated approach to address both the root causes and the consequences. Global institutions like MDBs have a special responsibility to cooperate. It is urgent for us to work better together to address the shocks and stresses that arise from this deep change." | <urn:uuid:2e30d026-e3f4-4a74-acce-7fbc7627aea6> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://m.reliefweb.int/report/2272654/world/mdbs-announce-new-coordination-platform-accelerate-support-economic-migration-and?lang=es | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573667.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819100644-20220819130644-00071.warc.gz | en | 0.939906 | 678 | 2.015625 | 2 |
House on the Beach
Editor's Note: Here is another review of a novel about the Yucatan, brought to us by our regular contributor, James Dayton Gunn, PhD. Unlike the historical novels he has reviewed in the past, this one takes place in modern times and may just give us insight into the lives of our Yucatecan neighbors. Enjoy!
The House on the Beach: A Novel by Juan García Ponce (who was born in Mérida in 1932) was first published in 1966. When published, it was titled "La casa en la playa" and was only recently translated into English and published by the University of Texas Press, 1994. (It is also available from Amazon in a Kindle edition). The novel is an example of a type of work of fiction that became popular in the latter part of the 20th century, a work that deals with “the human condition”. Juan García Ponce is one of Mexico's major writers of the twentieth century, a writer who is one of a group who broke away from the styles and themes of the post-Revolutionary "Mexican School". Instead, they produced works that explore interpersonal relations, the sometimes-conflicting demands of family and work, and human sexuality. This novel is among the best known of the works produced by that group.
Summer in Progreso
The House on the Beach portrays the personal interactions of a group of a half dozen friends, all young adults, during a summer on the beach in a town somewhere near Progreso. It is one of those works in which nothing of any great significance happens, as the author exposes us to the thoughts and events that affect the lives of a group of seemingly normal people during a few months in the summer.
The events take place in the 1960s. The narrator is a young single woman named Elena who lives and works in Mexico City. She is a close friend and former schoolmate of Marta, who is from Yucatan and who has married, had two children, and now lives in the house on the beach. Elena’s summer visit churns up curious reactions and unexpected feelings within herself and among Marta’s group of friends. Like the waves on the beach, the interaction among the members of this group ebb and flow bringing ashore the issues that concern them: love, friendship, jealousy, unfaithfulness, personal freedom, marriage, sexual attraction, family and work, life in a provincial city (Merida) , traditional and unconventional gender roles, and so on.
Elena and Marta were once very close, but years have passed and their lives have gone in very different directions. Elena is a successful, single professional woman in Mexico City, with an equally successful boyfriend. She is an archetype of the modern professional woman living in the bustling environment of a world class city. On the other hand, Marta is apparently a typical contented housewife and mother in a traditional marriage in the quiet and conservative province of the State of Yucatan.
Marta’s husband, Eduardo, is a son of a wealthy established Mérida family with a lovely old home in the city. Picture one of the beautiful mansions along Avenida Colón or Cupules, or in Itzimná. Among Marta’s friends are Celia and Lorenzo, a married couple who also live in a house on the beach. One of Eduardo’s oldest and best friends is Rafael, who has a medical practice in Mérida, but manages to spend a lot of his time at the beach. It is the interaction among these six persons that make up the content of this novel. Of course, I will not tell you the details of what happens and spoil your own reading of the work, but I can describe the circumstances.
Celia is now Marta’s closest friend and shares with her some responsibility for the care of the children. She sees Elena as an interloper who threatens her relationship with Marta and Marta's children. Though these six “friends” spend a lot of time together on the beach and are often together in the evenings, Celia never uses the intimate and friendly “tu” form with Elena. She keeps their relationship distant and formal. As time passes, Rafael and Elena grow closer until the inevitable sexual attraction between the only two single persons in the group overwhelms them. After the obvious outcome ensues, the reactions among the members of the group causes the reader to suspect that Marta and Rafael themselves are or had been more than just friends and that there are hidden and uncomfortable undercurrents flowing beneath the surface in the relationships among these individuals. At the very end of the story, Elena departs on a plane to Mexico City and the reader is left with no answers and no conclusion. This is a “slice of life” narrative that transpires without a beginning or an end, with no plot at all.
Why You Might Read This Book
Of most interest perhaps for the readers of Yucatan Living are the descriptions of what life was like on the beach north of Merida and in the city of Merida itself 50 years ago.
At one point, for instance, the father of Eduardo dies. There is a long and detailed description of the activities and rituals related to the several days of public mourning in the family mansion in Merida. Surprisingly perhaps, in most respects, everything seems not very different from what it is now, except for the description of the endless fields of henequen on the road between Merida and Progreso.
We hope you'll read this book and share with us your impressions in the Comments section! | <urn:uuid:f29affd2-c1ca-4a76-b4e7-c2e871be8bac> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://yucatanliving.com/art/house-on-the-beach | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570765.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808031623-20220808061623-00270.warc.gz | en | 0.964461 | 1,177 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Three years ago, Awot Haile was a longtime resident of an Ethiopian refugee camp with few prospects for a career or a home of his own.
Now he has a month-old Habitat for Humanity home, as many jobs as he can handle, and a realistic ambition to become an executive chef.
“I got freedom to work, so I work everywhere,” Haile says in careful, lilting English as he finely chops ginger for a salad dressing that will soon be sold at the Boise Co-op. “I am very friendly to them and they are nice to me.”
The 33-year-old native of Eritrea, a tiny African nation wedged between Somalia and Ethiopia, learned English skills, then serious cooking chops, through Create Common Good. When he completed a three-month paid training program in 2011, Create Common Good hired him part-time to work in the kitchen. Last year the nonprofit gave him a full-time gig that includes running its school-lunch program.
He beams as he talks about that job, which allows him not only to make charter school children’s lunches but deliver them and interact with the students.
“The kiddos, they like me,” he says. “It’s fun.”
Create Common Good founder and CEO Tara Russell calls Haile “a fantastic rising star” who exemplifies her group’s slogan: “We use food to change lives.”
The organization grows food on two small, pesticide-free East Boise farms. Its trainees cook food in a big new commercial kitchen, turning out restaurant sauces, packaged snacks and an array of commissary fare.
Create Common Good trains refugees to work in restaurants, cafeterias and other food-prep arenas, then helps them find jobs that can support their families. It boasts a 95 percent placement record for the more than 300 people CCG has trained in the past five years.
And everything the organization does, it plans to do much more of — soon.
“Right now we have five to seven regular clients and a handful of retailers who sell our products,” Russell says. “And we have about 20 potential new commissary customers.”
“In five years we want to become the premiere commissary and prepared food provider throughout the Pacific Northwest as well as to be a leading example and model of social enterprise across the country,” she says.
“Tara’s philosophy is ‘Dream big, start small, scale fast,’” says Rob Lumsden, owner of Flatbread Community Oven and a member of Create Common Good’s strategic advisory board.
The kitchen and farm fields are training grounds to help refugees and others gain the skills and knowledge they need to get jobs.
“Their relationship with the community shifts from dependency to contribution,” Russell says.
Not only does Create Common Good aim to make its clients self-supporting, it wants to approach that goal as an organization.
“Last year, 80 to 85 percent of our revenue was charitable, and 15 to 20 percent came from food products and services,” she says. “In the next three to five years, I want to kind of flip the math, so that food product revenue covers at least 70 to 75 percent of our expenses.”
The organization now has 11 paid staff members, about 1,000 volunteers a year and a 2013 budget of $1.1 million.
“Three years ago, we had no money and no paid staff, and we sort of boot-strapped our way to where we are now,” Russell says.
KITCHEN LEAP OF FAITH
Achieving CCG’s big dreams will be easier now that the nonprofit has its own 4,000-square-foot headquarters on South Federal Way with a gleaming kitchen occupying half of it. Until June, Create Common Good shared a small kitchen at the Cathedral of the Rockies.
“They were knocking out 600 meals a week on two burners and one convection oven,” says Tony Harrison, who provides free public relations services for the organization. “Now they have a real commercial kitchen.”
Russell says the roughly $350,000 investment, funded by grants and loans, is “very much a leap of faith, but we needed to do it in order to grow.”
The dream of a commercial kitchen became more practical when Fundsy selected Create Common Good as the sole beneficiary for its next funding cycle. Fundsy generally raises about $200,000 through auctions at its galas, which are held every other year — including next May. That should allow CCG to pay off most of its kitchen debt, Russell says.
The equipment includes steam kettles and a giant “tilt skillet.”
“With this amount of equipment here, I could feed 1,000 people like that,” says Executive Chef Brent Southcombe, snapping his fingers. A former Chef of the Nation winner for Australia, the Brisbane native worked in international restaurants and five-star hotels before signing on to head Create Common Good’s culinary program.
“When we walk into Whole Foods or Micron and we see our people in chef’s uniforms, no amount of money could bring you that kind of joy,” Southcombe says.
HAPPY HIRING GROUND
Training ranges from knife techniques and food safety to practical language and employment-enabling skills. Some people need only a couple of weeks to gain what they need to find a job that fits them. Others need eight to 10 weeks, Russell says. Instructors include a pastry chef and a cheesemaker.
Micron’s cafeteria and Whole Foods’ prepared-food department each employ several Create Common Good graduates. Kitchen-trained refugees are making inroads at local restaurants, too.
“Some of our early employees we took from Common Good, and many of those employees are still with us today,” Boise Fry Co. co-owner Blake Lingle says. “I think that’s a tribute to the work that they’ve done.”
“We’ve had really good luck with Common Good,” Lingle says.
So has Flatbread Community Oven, which hired CCG graduate Haile as a pantry prep cook about seven months ago.
“We have a relatively complex kitchen operation,” Lumsden says. “Awot was up to the challenge and is doing a phenomenal job.”
Lumsden says he would “absolutely” hire more people from Create Common Good.
“The level of appreciation that their employees have is remarkable, and it’s hard to come by,” he says.
Haile has been working about 25 hours a week at Flatbread in addition to his full-time job at CCG. At times he has juggled four or more jobs at various local restaurants: “I’d leave my house at 4 a.m. and come home at 1 a.m. again.”
It’s important, he says, to learn various styles of popular American eateries so he can reach his long-term goal.
Executive Chef Southcombe, Haile’s mentor and supervisor at Common Good, sees that goal as attainable.
“You don’t need to go to culinary school to achieve excellence,” he says. “You just need people to believe in you.”
NOT JUST REFUGEES
So far Create Common Good has focused primarily on training refugees, most of whom come from Africa, Asia or the Middle East. Russell estimates that a third of all adult refugees who come to Idaho go through Create Common Good’s training programs.
Most have been referred by refugee assistance agencies, but now that the operation has room to grow, Russell plans to draw trainees from a broader spectrum of at-risk communities, from the homeless to domestic violence survivors and those rebuilding their lives after substance abuse.
Already, she says, the program is training a former drug user who has turned out to be “a rock star in the kitchen.”
She envisions many new outlets for Create Common Good products. This fall, the organization plans to provide school lunches (Haile’s program) to up to five local charter and private schools, and it will launch an “order-driven prepared food program,” where families can order meals or buy their children’s school lunches from Create Common Good.
In June, the nonprofit hosted the first installment of a planned monthly Supper Club, a three-course, sit-down dinner at the new headquarters. Initially limited to donors and supporters, the guest list is now open to the public.
COMMON GOOD FARE
Shelf-stable products, including fruit and nut bars, are sold with Create Common Good labels at Whole Foods and elsewhere. And the nonprofit’s kitchen produces an array of fresh stocks, sauces, dressings, salads and desserts and pastries. It also runs a “chop shop” to produce pre-cut vegetables for sale.
“We make it fresh, and we make it to order,” Russell says.
Many of Boise Fry Co.’s sauces, including the popular blueberry ketchup and garlic aioli, are made by Create Common Good to Boise Fry Co.’s specifications. Lingle says the three restaurants will likely have more items, such as pickles, made by Create Common Good in the future.
Create Common Good also sells its produce as “farm shares” to families who want part of the bounty and as restaurant-ready vegetables. Boise Fry Co. has used its German butterball and purple Viking potatoes, Lingle says, but the farm plots — about 5 acres total — are not big enough to consistently meet the restaurants’ spud needs.
Flatbread Community Oven is interested in partnering further with Create Common Good to prepare products for the Boise company’s five restaurants, Lumsden says.
“We’re giving them a lot of our recipes to see if they can execute to our standard,” he says. “They need their refugees to develop kitchen skills so that they’re marketable, and the only way to do that is to increase the volume in their kitchen. It feels great to give them that opportunity.”
“We’re huge fans of their mission, and the people that they employ in trying to achieve that mission.”
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Used wool clothing can be recycled into new, original accessories. Recycling old clothes extends the life of existing fabrics and reduces the energy needed to make new fabrics (See Reference 1). A do-it-yourself hat with ear flaps is one sewing project that can be easily sourced from an old wool sweater or from multiple wool castoffs. This project can be sewn from basic shapes or fit to a more elaborate sewing pattern.
Source your wool for recycling. A generous estimate for source material needed for an adult hat is two 14-by-7-inch squares plus four 4-by-5-inch rectangles for double-sided ear flaps. If your wool material swaths are too small, sew multiple pieces together into a patchwork that fits the source size (See Reference 2).
Measure and draw the shapes of the hat body onto the wool using a fabric pencil. If you are following a sewing pattern, use the shapes and sizes it prescribes. Without a pattern, use a tape measure to find the circumference around the head of the future hat wearer. Use one half of this measurement as the diameter length to form a semicircle shape. The minimum radius for the semicircle should be one-quarter of the circumference measurement. For example, for a circumference of 22 inches, the semicircle should measure 11 inches across the flat base and have a radius of 5.5 inches; using a larger radius will form a taller, less rounded hat. Two semicircles of these dimensions will become the front and back of the hat body (See Reference 2).
Shape the ear flaps. Starting with a 4-by-5-inch rectangle, round the corners of one short edge by drawing a semicircle with a 2-inch radius. Four fabric pieces of this size and shape will become two fronts and two backs of double-sided ear flaps. These flaps can be sized proportionately smaller if the hat is intended for a child.
Cut the shapes of your hat from the wool using fabric shears or sharp scissors. Cut along a line slightly outside of your drawing to allow a sewing margin; this margin may be ignored if your fabric is very stretchy and you want a tight fit. If you are following a paper sewing pattern, pin the pattern pieces over the wool fabric and cut around them as the pattern instructs.
Pair your cut fabric shapes by placing the right, or outward-facing, sides together and pinning them in place. The two large semicircles should be pinned around the curved edge to form the body of the hat. The ear flap fronts and backs should be paired, matched and pinned along the long and curved edges. Trim away any inconsistencies between the edges of the matched pieces. If following a sewing pattern, check the instructions for which edges to pin before sewing.
Sew the pieces together, creating interior seams along the pinned edges. Since wool edges are subject to fraying, it is wise to use an edging or "overlock" type stitch if your machine has the option. If you're sewing by hand, an overcasting stitch can be used to mimic a machine's overlock -- attaching the two pieces and wrapping the thread around loose edges (See Reference 3). Be sure not to sew across the flat edges of the hat body or the short edge of either ear flap.
Invert the hat body and two ear flaps so the right sides are facing outward. If the flat base of your hat body is a ragged edge, consider finishing it by sewing a hem or attaching edging material. If you're using a sewing pattern, continue following the instructions for hat assembly procedures.
Locate the position of the ear flaps. Each ear flap should be centered on the sewn seam at either side of the hat body. Flip the ear flaps upward in their place so the right side of the flap lies against the right side of the hat body. Pin the flaps in this position and double-check for symmetry.
Sew the ear flaps to the hat base, again using an overlock or edging stitch type. Be careful that all three pieces of fabric are attached within this seam -- the back of the ear flap, the front of the ear flap and the edge of the hat base. These seams may need to be sewn by hand if your machine cannot handle the thickness of the layered material.
Flip the attached ear flaps down and your recycled wool hat is ready to wear. If any seams protrude or feel uncomfortable, iron them flat in place with a warm iron (See Reference 3).
Things You Will Need
- Used wool fabric
- Flexible measuring tape
- Fabric pencil
- Sewing pattern (optional)
- Fabric shears or sharp scissors
- Straight pins
- Sewing machine or needle and thread
- If your recycled wool source has multiple colors or other decorative features, you may want to design those into the new hat by placing the pattern pieces creatively.
- Ribbed edging from a sweater bottom can be used as the base for the hat body or added to the semicircles for a finished-looking and snug-fitting edge (See Reference 2).
- Heat causes most types of wool to shrink, so be careful to avoid warm water or heated dryers when caring for recycled wool items.
- Charter Recycling: Why Recycle Clothes?
- One Pearl Button: Recycled Luxury: Sweater to Long Mittens and Cloche Hat Tutorial
- "Claire Shaeffer's Fabric Sewing Guide"; Clarie Schaeffer
- Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:62aaaf72-315a-47f2-8c1f-b598ceafedaf> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://homeguides.sfgate.com/diy-recycled-wool-hat-ear-flaps-79253.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283008.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00081-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.874685 | 1,157 | 3.234375 | 3 |
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Environment Articles - Keep up to date with the latest Environment Articles and information with Absorb Environmental Solutions, Environmental Protection Agency including environmental news, company updates, new product, service and training information, and more. | <urn:uuid:1f8374b0-2f95-4c74-a8d2-955bebfafe9f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.absorbenviro.com.au/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283689.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00352-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.868906 | 184 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Every two years, when the Olympic games roll around, I hear the same complaints on practically every message board:
“Olympic television coverage in the US spends too much time on human interest stories, ann not enough on the sports.”
“Olympic television coverage in the US is too America-centric.”
“Olympic television coverage in the US shows only popular sports.”
“Olympic television coverage in the US is dumbed down, and they explain the rules for everything.”
After one of these comments rolls around, inevitably someone from Seattle, Detroit or Buffalo will chime in and say how much better the coverage is on Canadian television.
I’ve watched Olympic coverage on Canadian television, and it really doesn’t seem like it’s much better than in the US. The production values and associated graphics aren’t as slick, bringing out the argument that the Canadian coverage is more “real”. I see as much, if not more Canada-centrism on Canadian broadcasts than on US broadcasts. There’s a ton of human interest stories on Canadian Olympic broadcasts, too. Also, there’s going to be more explanation and “dumbing down” of sports like curling and hockey in US broadcasts, because throughout much of the US there’s very little knowledge of them, bit for track and field, it’s not as if commentators are saying things like “Let’s explain the 100 meter sprint for our audience; the length of the sprint is 100 meters, or about 110 yards or 330 feet, annd the first to cross the finish line wins. The second to cross ends up in second place. The third to cross ends up in third place, The runners run with their legs and feet.”
There seems to be this belief that in other countries, Olympic television coverage shows obscure sports a’plenty, with almost no flag waving. Is this true, or just another case of the “Everything’s better in Europe than the US” variety of grass-is-greener syndrome? | <urn:uuid:a20e08b3-d1a0-4900-8bb3-027955eb464c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-olympic-television-coverage-outside-of-the-us-really-_that_-much-better/459532 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00071.warc.gz | en | 0.95181 | 456 | 1.789063 | 2 |
'Canned' (i) was a British naval bombardment of Italian coastal positions and dumps at Banda Alula in Italian Somaliland (28 November 1940).
The undertaking fell within the British naval programme to ensure the effective protection of convoys passing in either direction along the Red Sea between the Suez Canal and the Arabian Sea. For a time this task was assigned to the New Zealand light cruiser Leander, which was the senior ship of the Red Sea force for almost six months. On 2 July 1940, in the eastern approaches to the Gulf of Aden, the cruiser and two sloops met BN.1, the first convoy from Bombay, of nine merchant vessels including six tankers. Northbound for Suez, this convoy was escorted through the Red Sea to a position beyond Port Sudan where the first southbound convoy, BS.1, was met and the respective escorts changed over. This convoy was dispersed 200 miles (320 km) east of Aden on 15 July.
Varied only by brief visits to Aden for fuel, stores and maintenance, this was Leander's routine for almost five months, during which the cruiser steamed more than 30,000 miles (48280 km) in company with slow convoys and averaged only five days a month in harbour.
The Italians attempted to intervene with their Red Sea force of submarines, but these were ineffectual and checked by the destruction of five boats and the capture of a sixth during the latter part of June. Thereafter the boats gave little trouble, and their only success against the ships escorted by Leander was the sinking, on 6 September, of an elderly Greek tanker which had straggled far behind the BN.4 convoy.
Italian aircraft were equally unenterprising: these made the occasional hit-and-run raids on Aden and a number of convoys, but hit no ship though one vessel of the BN.5 convoy was damaged by a near miss on 20 September and towed to Aden.
A break in the monotony of convoy escort came in the early hours of 21 October as the BN.7 convoy passed to the east of the approaches to Massawa. The British sloop Auckland sighted and engaged two Italian destroyers, the Australian sloop Yarra joining in shortly before the Italian ships turned away. Two torpedoes failed to hit the Australian ship. Leander steamed to intercept the Italian ships and opened fire, first on one and then on the other, before they disappeared into haze. The cruiser then returned to the convoy. An hour later the British destroyer Kimberley reported that she was heading to intercept the Italian ships off Harmil island at dawn. At 05.50 Kimberley sighted one destroyer in that locality. The two ships opened fire on each other and a few minutes later a shore battery joined in the action. Kimberley closed to 5,000 yards (4570 m) and by 06.25 the destroyer Francesco Nullo had stopped, on fire and listing heavily. The Italians abandoned their ship, which was sunk by two torpedoes. Kimberley then engaged the shore battery until she was hit in the engine room, but the two Italian guns were silenced.
Leander left the convoy and steamed at high speed to the assistance of Kimberley, which the cruiser took in tow outside the reefs at 10.00. A few minutes later Italian aircraft attacked, dropping 15 bombs which burst in a line about 200 yards (185 m) ahead of Leander, and two others which failed to explode. The cruiser and her tow took station astern of the convoy at 12.45.
Leander was relieved by a sister ship, the Australian Hobart, on 26 November 1940. In less than five months the New Zealand cruiser had escorted 18 convoys totalling 396 ships of some 2.5 million tons and comprising numerous troop transports and supply ships, as well as many oil tankers. These were about one-third of the troops and supplies carried through the Red Sea during the period.
By this time the British blockade was largely effective in preventing supplies reaching the Italians in Somaliland and Eritrea.
When it was learned that a factory at Banda Alula had completed the manufacture of 1,000 cases of tinned fish for consumption in Somaliland, Leander was ordered to carry out 'Canned' (i) with the object of demolishing the factory and the radio station at Banda Alula, some 32 miles (52 km) to the west of Cape Guardafui at the tip of the Horn of Africa.
When Leander arrived off the place on the morning of 28 November, her floatplane bombed the radio station and, after learning that the factory be abandoned, shelled it at a mean range of 4,000 yards (3660 m), the 98 rounds from her 6-in (152-mm) guns causing considerable damage and setting the buildings on fire. After recovering her floatplane once this had made a second attack on the radio station, Leander steamed to Bombay, which she reached on 2 December. Here the ship was refitted over a period of 25 days before departing the Indian port on 27 December, escorting a convoy of 29 ships when it entered the Red Sea. The cruiser returned with a southbound convoy to Aden and arrived at Colombo in Ceylon on 21 January 1941. | <urn:uuid:953eeac5-d4b7-48f1-8fbc-e17586b9a596> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://codenames.info/operation/canned-i/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571719.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812140019-20220812170019-00272.warc.gz | en | 0.978353 | 1,089 | 2.4375 | 2 |
When the online advertising industry recently issued seven principles to protect consumer privacy, you could see the lines being drawn.
This Wired piece concludes the industry offered nothing new to the debate and in effect is begging for government regulation. Meanwhile, according to BusinessWeek, requiring Web surfers to opt-in to third-party cookies, as many privacy advocates would require, would destroy the whole online advertising industry.
Consumer backlash recently prompted BT to back away from the Phorm tracking plan in the UK and the FTC called Sears to task for its efforts to track consumer behavior, so it’s apparent the government will step in, if necessary.
Indeed, the seven principles were issued in response to an FTC report telling the industry that the agency would require self-regulation or government would take action.
In a nutshell, the principles are these:
3. Consumer Control
4. Data Security
5. Changes to Existing Online Behavioral Advertising Policies and Practices
6. Sensitive Data (what kinds of data will require consent)
7. Advertiser Accountability
David Young, a partner at Goodwin Procter who handles cases in privacy, intellectual property and advertising law, sees the industry move as a way to buy time. In an industry where there’s little agreement, he calls the move, “impressive that they got so many players together on it.” But as he points out, nothing has actually been implemented “and to some extent the devil’s always in the details.” It remains to be seen how these principles will work.
So we asked three privacy proponents how, exactly, consumer privacy should actually play out on your screen. Though by no means a comprehensive summary of their views, three points stood out in the conversations.
Show Me the Value
John Simpson, consumer advocate for California-based nonprofit Consumer Watchdog, doesn’t believe this industry will be able to regulate itself. It seems intent on keeping the consumer uninformed, and it can only succeed if it provides more transparency, he says.
“If online advertising is this wonderful thing that brings a clear benefit, I don’t see why it has to be done in stealth mode,” he says.
He believes opting in should be consumers’ choice, not the current model where they have to work to opt out of having their Web-surfing habits monitored. He says that if advertisers clearly explain their programs and how that benefits customers, those users are likely to be willing to be part of it.
“With certain kinds of business models, if people understand it, they’re perfectly comfortable with it,” he says. “What upsets people is when they discover that they haven’t been told truthfully what’s going on and their personal data is being used in ways that they had no idea.”
What if it were like your supermarket’s loyalty program, he asks. You agree to be tracked and get something in exchange. At the supermarket, it’s often lower prices and coupons tied to your actual buying habits. People understand that program and agree to it.
And what if they could choose the ads they’d like to see? If he were planning to buy a car in six months, Simpson said he’d like to be able to sign up for more car ads for that period, he said.
Make it Easy to Opt Out
Like Simpson, Christopher Soghoian, who created a Firefox add-on for a single opt-out from online advertising tracking, has real problems with the idea that it’s so difficult to say you don’t want your online behavior tracked.
Soghoian is a doctoral student at Indiana University’s School of Informatics and a student fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He’s pushing for a single way for consumers to opt out, much like the federal Do Not Call list.
He recently updated the Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out, (TACO), to provide a single way to opt out of targeted advertising on some 84 advertising networks.
Though the Network Advertising Initiative provides a single opt-out for its 34 members, Soghoian says people would have to visit about 50 other Web sites to opt out of all the advertising networks. Most Web users, he says, don’t even know the names of most of the companies tracking them online, so they have no idea where to even go. And figuring out how to opt out at all those sites is no easy task, he says.
The sites send a cookie to your computer saying not to track you. If you delete your cookies, you have to opt out at all those sites again. But worse, he says, is that there is no standard expiration date for those opt-out cookies. Google’s opt-out cookies expire after three years, provided you don’t visit another Google site in that period. But he says some opt-out cookies expire after six months. He’s found one that expired after one month and one that lasted only 10 days.
“These companies are not telling consumers, ‘Oh, by the way, even under ideal circumstances you’ll need to come back to our Web site every 30 days or every six months and opt out again,’” he said. “This is just an industry that time and time again has just been digging its heels in. Ten years ago there were hearings on cookies and tracking on the Web and there were hearings again last month. And it was basically the same arguments being trotted out in many cases by the same people. Things haven’t changed except that now people are tracked by even more companies.”
He points to the junk mail industry, which has provided a single place for consumers to opt out and, as he puts it, has “sucked the air out” of any arguments that government needs to step in.
Soghoian considers his opt-out tool, which he is working with Mozilla on to make part of the browser, only an interim solution.
“My tool is cool, but people shouldn’t have to download software to do this,” he said.
Show Me the Value, Part II
Another concern advertisers voice in the blogosphere is that consumers don’t understand the difference between behavioral advertising, which is based on a person’s surfing habits, and contextual advertising, which is based on the person’s search terms or the topic of the page that person is reading at the time. Paid search, of course, ties in to specific search terms. Market tracking firm eMarketer estimates $1.1 billion will be spent this year on behavioral advertising, with that market growing to $4.4 billion by 2012. At the same time, though, it expects $12.29 billion to be spend on search and contextual advertising in 2009, neither of which requires third-party cookies. And it expects that market to grow to $17.69 billion by 2012, a pretty healthy market on its own.
So what is the problem with making the opt-out the default and letting people choose to be part of behavioral advertising efforts?
Young explains that advertisers fear people just won’t do it – even if they have no qualms about it. He explains it this way:
“The problem that you wind up with is that you end up with the Tivo problem, which is that if we make it so easy and people have to opt-in, then nobody’s going to do it. [The industry worries] there’s not going to be all this advertiser support for all this free content that we enjoy on the Internet, that the basic business model supporting the Internet is going to crumble.”
He said that’s where the education component of the industry’s initiative comes in. He says it has to better explain to consumers that advertising is what supports free content.
“I think part of that should be them explaining that we want this data because this is why advertisers come in and support the free content that you want. So they’ve got to make that case. They’ve got to explain why there’s two sides to this,” he said. | <urn:uuid:a70f3b2b-83b5-4469-947a-f2969edcfc48> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://insidegoogle.com/2009/07/experts-make-the-transparent-case-for-behavioral-advertising/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00212-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960563 | 1,730 | 2.125 | 2 |
CNN speaks with Fareed about the unrest in Ukraine and what, if anything, the United States should do. This is an edited version of the transcript.
Earlier this month, a phone conversation was leaked between a high-ranking State Department official, Victoria Nuland, and the current U.S. ambassador in Ukraine. Nuland had some embarrassing comments about the E.U. on what is going on in Ukraine now. Is it your sense that this was leaked by the Russians or the pro-Russian Ukrainians to embarrass the United States?
My guess is it was leaked by the Russians because they do have the capacity to overhear that kind of conversation. The basic point Victoria Nuland was trying to make, I think, is that the European Union has been playing a kind of slow economic game here, whereas the Russians have been playing a fast geopolitical game.
By which I mean the European Union has been offering the Ukrainians a deal and association, but as long as they make certain kinds of structural economic reforms and get rid of subsidies on various industries. In other words, it's a kind of almost like a regular trade negotiation where they're trying to get the Ukrainian economy to become more market friendly.
The Russians, on the other hand, are playing a geopolitical game, and they first offered Ukraine essentially a $15 billion bribe, subsidized fuel and such, and then just recently, another $2 billion. So, Putin is basically saying here's cash, no conditions asked, you be part of my sphere of influence.
The Europeans, however, are playing this much longer-term game to try to turn Ukraine into a kind of middle class, you know, liberal democratic, capitalist society, and the two timetables are completely off. So, the Europeans have badly misplayed this hand. They should have, if they were going to step in there and try to wean Ukraine away from Russia, they needed to do something fast. They needed to do something that was overwhelming and that made it very difficult for the president to turn them down.
President Obama said there will be consequences if people step over the line in Ukraine, referring to the government in Kiev right now. What realistically could those consequences be?
Very little, because the truth of the matter is we're not going to send an army there. And if we put sanctions on Ukraine, the danger is it will only push the Ukrainians closer to Russia. I'm not saying we shouldn't do something. I'm just saying our options are much more limited. The crucial issue here is what does the Ukrainian army do? The country is divided, but not quite 50-50.
The Ukrainian part, if you will, is larger, and I think the younger population – the future of Ukraine –clearly looks to the west. The ethnic Russian part is only about 17, 18 percent. And if you look at Kiev, 75 percent of them didn't vote for this president.
So, that's why Kiev has become the heart of these protests. But what will the army do? Will the Ukrainian army be like the Egyptians and side with the people, or will they be like the Syrians and side with the government? | <urn:uuid:5220703b-f832-45fa-acca-cae698b8dd15> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/20/zakaria-very-little-the-u-s-can-do-on-ukraine/?hpt=hp_bn2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00390-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975206 | 647 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Breakthrough promises $1.50 per gallon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions
UK-based Cella Energy has developed a synthetic fuel that could lead to US$1.50 per gallon gasoline. Apart from promising a future transportation fuel with a stable price regardless of oil prices, the fuel is hydrogen based and produces no carbon emissions when burned. The technology is based on complex hydrides, and has been developed over a four year top secret program at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford. Early indications are that the fuel can be used in existing internal combustion engined vehicles without engine modification.
According to Stephen Voller CEO at Cella Energy, the technology was developed using advanced materials science, taking high energy materials and encapsulating them using a nanostructuring technique called coaxial electrospraying.
“We have developed new micro-beads that can be used in an existing gasoline or petrol vehicle to replace oil-based fuels,” said Voller. “Early indications are that the micro-beads can be used in existing vehicles without engine modification.”
“The materials are hydrogen-based, and so when used produce no carbon emissions at the point of use, in a similar way to electric vehicles”, said Voller.
The technology has been developed over a four-year top secret programme at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, UK.
The development team is led by Professor Stephen Bennington in collaboration with scientists from University College London and Oxford University.
Professor Bennington, Chief Scientific Officer at Cella Energy said, “our technology is based on materials called complex hydrides that contain hydrogen. When encapsulated using our unique patented process, they are safer to handle than regular gasoline.” | <urn:uuid:9cccad60-822c-4a13-89ca-590e18bbd856> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://newatlas.com/breakthrough-promises-150-per-gallon-synthetic-gasoline-with-no-carbon-emissions/17687/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988722459.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183842-00345-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931978 | 362 | 2.515625 | 3 |
This is probably not the best time to put up a suggestion for next (November or December) project but I will probably forget it if I wait.
So far we have either been doing our own personal project or a collaboration. Despite being called a competition, there aint much competition between the participants. A topic I find very interesting is AIs, I have made a few myself as part of my studies and it is something I may later decide to specialize in, hence I suggest an AI programming competition.
So here is my suggestion:
The objective is to program an AI for a 1v1 game we design ourself. The AIs are then to compete with each other and see who wins. (Winner will earn much glory on behalf of its creator)
My suggestion of a game:
Each player/AI have a castle, the objective is to destroy the other players castle. Connecting the castle are two lanes. The players can build units, each with their strengths and weaknesses. Once built, the unit can not be controlled and will start walking down a lane of the players chose, fighting any hostile unit that it meet on the way. Each unit has a build cost, currency is earned at regular intervals.
Possible actions by the player/AI:
-Do nothing -> Wait for the game to progress.
-Build One or more unit and send them down a lane
-invest -> Spend currency to increase the the currency received at each tick.
The communication between the game and AIs is done via an interface that prevents them from cheating. The interface will also provide the AI by means of inspecting the game field. Inside the AI class itself the programmers are free to do whatever magic they want in order to win the game.
Functions possible by the interface:
-View All My Units
-View All Opponents Units
-View My Currency
-Invest My Currency | <urn:uuid:cf8a7d23-2d3d-436b-9975-4118c14c5fa9> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://rbwhitaker.wikidot.com/forum/t-1046220/next-community-project | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00099-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967258 | 387 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Glossary of Terms
Agricultural Equipment: Agricultural tractors, self-propelled machines, implements, and combinations thereof designed primarily for agricultural operations.
ASAE: American Society of Agricultural Engineers
Agricultural Implement: Agricultural field equipment that is not self-propelled, used in agricultural operations for the production of food and fibre.
American National Standard ANSI/ASAE: A standard approved by the American National Standards Institute and the American Society of Agricultural Engineers.
Beacon: An amber oscillating or rotating warning lamp, commonly located on operator cabs of heavy equipment.
Conspicuity Tape: Retroreflective materials, usually self adhesive.
CSA: Canadian Standards Association
Daytime: The period that starts immediately following the half hour after sunrise and ends immediately a half hour before sunset.
Escort Vehicles: An agricultural tractor or a motor vehicle other than a motorcycle, moped, or a mobility vehicle.
Existing Equipment: Agricultural equipment manufactured prior to January 1, 1998.
Extremities: An extremity is the extreme projection of the equipment in question. For example, the extremity of a tractor may be the protruding axle stubs. On a cultivator it may be the protruding shovels when folded into transport position.
Farmstead Equipment: Equipment, other than agricultural field equipment, tractors, or self-propelled implements, used in agricultural operations for the production of food and fibre (examples include livestock equipment feeding systems, livestock watering and waste handling systems, crop dryers, milling systems, material handling equipment, etc.). This is generally stationary equipment, and is only occasionally moved on a public road.
Flashing Amber Warning Lamps: A regularly and predictably interrupted amber coloured light source used to identify the extremities of slow-moving equipment on public roads. Flashing Amber Warning lamps must meet SAE Standard J974, Flashing Warning Lamp for Agricultural Equipment.
Coloured Fluorescent Flags: A coloured fabric or other flexible material impregnated with dyes that absorb radiation from one source and emit it again as visible light, so as to appear bright and glowing. For the purpose of compliance to the Lighting and Marking Regulation, the flags must have an area not less than 0.2 m² (320 in.²) and be mounted such that the full area is visible to traffic approaching from the front or rear. Suggested colours are orange and red. (FIGURES 3, 4, 10, 11).
Hard Wiring: Permanently installed wiring on a self-propelled machine that connects with and works in concert with permanently installed wiring and lighting on attached implements.
Headlamps: A non-interruptible (as opposed to flashing) white coloured light source used to illuminate the path of travel of equipment for operators, and identify moving equipment for oncoming traffic on public roads. Headlamps must conform to SAE Standard J975.
Impair: To dim or conceal (wholly or partly) a lamp or marking with some external interfering object.
Lateral: Surfaces spanning a horizontal distance.
Left Side: The left hand side of a tractor, self-propelled implement of husbandry, agricultural implement, or farmstead equipment, as determined from the rear of the vehicle facing in the direction that it moves.
Lensing: Covers on lamps that diffuse and colour the light emitted from a source.
Lighting: Lamps used to illuminate and identify various parts of a machine to mark its size and position on a public road.
Marking: Signs and reflectors or reflective materials used to identify various parts of a machine and mark its size and position on a public road.
New Equipment: Agricultural equipment manufactured after January 1, 1998.
Nighttime: The period that starts a half hour before sunset and ends a half hour after sunrise.
Practicable: Possible to practice or perform, likely to meet the needs of a case.
Reflectors: Can be part of lensing in lamps provided the lensing meets the reflective requirements of SAE Standard J594, Reflex Reflectors.
Reflective Materials: Other than reflectors which are part of lensing in lamps. Reflective material must meet the reflective requirements of ANSI/ASAE Standard S276.3, Slow-Moving Vehicle Identification Emblem.
Right Side: The right hand side of a tractor, self-propelled implement of husbandry, agricultural implement, or farmstead equipment, as determined from the rear of the vehicle facing in the direction that it moves.
Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Standard: A standard approved by the Society of Automotive Engineers.
Self-propelled Equipment: Equipment that is conveyed by its own power source.
Seven-pin Connector: A standardized wire harness connector used to connect hard wiring on a self-propelled machine to hard wiring on an attached implement for the purpose of controlling lights or other electrically powered equipment on the attached machine. The connector must meet the requirements of CSA-M663-92, Seven-Pin Electrical Connector and Cable for Agricultural Towing/Towed Equipment or SAE Standard J560, Seven-Conductor Electrical Connector for Truck-Trailer Jumper Cable, and must be mounted on the towing vehicle according to ASAE Standard S279.9, Lighting and Marking of Agricultural Field Equipment on Highways. See FIGURE 17 for wiring diagram.
Slow-Moving Vehicle (SMV) Emblem: A brightly coloured, triangular sign as described in ASAE Standard S276, Slow-Moving Vehicle Identification Emblem.
Symmetrically Mounted: Mounted at the same height and at the same distance from centre.
Tail Lamps: A non-interruptible (as opposed to flashing) red coloured light source used to identify the rear of machinery on public roads for approaching traffic. Tail lamps must conform to SAE Standard J585.
Towing Vehicle: A tractor, self-propelled implement of husbandry or motor vehicle.
Unison Flashing: Two or more lamps that flash on and off simultaneously. | <urn:uuid:4c2d02bb-7966-4696-8397-f1ab91623e41> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.pami.ca/beseenbesafe/beseennf/append2.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280364.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00025-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903206 | 1,251 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Once is enough for most pupils who are sent home
Nine times as many boys were excluded than girls in primaries and four times as many in secondaries. The worst years were in primary 5 and S3 and S4. The most common reasons for exclusion were fighting and assault, disruptive behaviour, failure to obey rules and abuse or insolence.
Most were subsequently readmitted and almost all pupils described decisions about exclusion as unfair or an overreaction. Some said they were picked on by teachers because they came from "the wrong part of town". | <urn:uuid:5a973092-63fa-4e49-b3b3-96e6ecf51ae1> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://www.tes.com/news/tes-archive/tes-publication/once-enough-most-pupils-who-are-sent-home | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720737.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00219-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.995151 | 110 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Atypical hand-foot-mouth disease in children: a hospital-based prospective cohort study
© Huang et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013
Received: 15 March 2013
Accepted: 18 June 2013
Published: 24 June 2013
In 2010, we observed children with atypical presentations of hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD), such as rashes on earlobes and faces, or bullae on trunks and bilateral limbs. Hyperpigmentation later developed as the bullous lesions crusted. Thus, we intended to study the etiology of the illness and the phylogeny of the pathogens.
Patients were prospectively enrolled in a tertiary medical center in Taipei, Taiwan. The definition of atypical HFMD includes symptoms of acute viral infection with either of the following presentations: (1) maculopapular rashes presenting on the trunks, buttocks or facial areas, or (2) large vesicles or bullae on any sites of the body. Patients were classified into two groups according to vesicle sizes by two pediatricians at different points in time. The large vesicle group was defined as having vesciculobullous lesions ≥ 1 cm in diameter; the small rashes group had maculopapular rashes < 1cm in diameter. Two throat swabs were collected from each patient for virus isolation and reverse transcription polymerase chain reactions.
We enrolled 101 patients between March and December 2010. The mean age of the participants was 3.3 ± 3.0 years (median age: 2.5 years, range: 21 days-13.5 years). The ratio of males to females was 1.8 to 1. All samples were enterovirus-positive, including coxsackievirus A6 (80%), coxsackievirus A16 (6%), enterovirus 71 (1%), coxsackievirus A5 (1%) and 12 non-typable enterovirus (12%). Bullous fluid aspirated from 2 patients also grew coxsackievirus A6. Among the patients infected with coxsackievirus A6, 54% (45/81) had bullae, compared to 25% (5/20) of those having non-coxsackievirus A6 infections (P=0.02). Fourteen cases had myoclonic jerks and one boy was diagnosed with febrile convulsions. None had complications or sequelae. Phylogenetic analysis showed the strains in Taiwan in 2010 shared more commonality with strains from Finland in 2009 (GenBank: FJ870502-FJ870508), and were close to those circulating in Japan in 2011 (GenBank: AB649286-AB649291).
Coxsackievirus A6 infections may cause atypical manifestations of HFMD, including vesicles or papules on faces or bullae on trunks. These features could provide valuable information to distinguish this versatile enterovirus infection from other virus-induced vesiculobullous diseases.
KeywordsHand-foot-mouth disease Onychomadesis Vesiculobullous rash Large vesicles Enterovirus Pigmentation Phylogenetic analysis
In children with infectious diseases, cutaneous lesions usually provide clues for early diagnoses [1, 2]. Hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD), a common and potentially fatal infectious disease in children, largely relies on clinical manifestations for early diagnosis, including maculopapular or vesicular rashes on soles, palms and buttocks, and oral ulcers in the pharynx . Enteroviruses, particularly enterovirus 71 (EV71) and coxsackievirus A16 (CVA16), are known to cause HFMD. Most oral-dermatological phenotypes are self-limited; however, in certain patients, EV 71 infection may lead to severe neurological complications, especially in young children . For example, during an outbreak in 1998 in Taiwan, EV71 caused 78 deaths out of more than 129,000 patients who had presented with HFMD or herpangina initially . Since then, the Centers for Disease Control in Taiwan (CDC-Taiwan) have been closely monitoring the trends of enterovirus infections by cooperating with the Sentinel Physicians Surveillance and Virology Reference Laboratories Network. The surveillance database is published weekly and provides information regarding the circulating trends of enteroviruses .
Since spring 2010, we have observed an unusual type of skin lesion presenting on children in Taiwan, including large vesicles or bullae over the limbs, trunks or buttocks and papules on faces, accompanied by fevers, stomatitis, and sore throats. Moreover, a few children developed onychomadesis, desquamation and skin pigmentation over the areas previously presenting with large vesicles or bullae. These presentations shared several of the traits of HFMD, including vesicular regions on limbs and oral ulcers, yet with distinct vesiculobullous lesions from the typical maculopapular rashes. Over the past decade, the association between onychomadesis and enterovirus infection has been reported in coxsackievirus A5 (CVA5), coxsackievirus A6 (CVA6) and coxsackievirus A10 [7, 8]. However, whether the morphology and distribution of vesicles and accompanying symptoms varied among enterovirus infections of different serotypes remained unknown. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the etiology of the atypical presentations of HFMD during the epidemic period.
The yield rate of viral cultures was only 18% (18/101). Six specimens were CVA16-positive and 1 was EV71-positive. RT-PCR was performed for these 7 specimens and confirmed the same results of the viral cultures. Four were positive for enterovirus with uncertain serotypes due to an initial limitation of available antibodies, and were later confirmed to be CVA6 by RT-PCR and VP1 sequencing. Of the remaining seven samples, one was echovirus 9, five were cytomegalovirus, and the last was herpes simplex virus. Cytomegalovirus and herpes simplex virus were considered latent viruses and not related to atypical HFMD.
Throat swabs of all participants were shown to be enterovirus-positive by RT-PCR and the subsequent VP1 sequencing revealed eighty-one (80%) to be the serotype of CVA6, six (6%) of CVA16, one (1%) of EV71, one (1%) of CVA5 and 12 (12%) of non-typable EV (NTEV), which could not be further serotyped due to low viral titers. Additional samples from bullous fluid were collected from 2 patients, which were further detected with RT-PCR and VP1 sequencing. Both were positive for CVA6. The viral load was 1.5*105 copies/mL from Patient 1 (12.5 years old, male) and 1.9*107 copies/mL from Patient 2 (2.9 years old, male). The viral loads of the throat samples, from these two children on the same dates as the fluid sample being collected, were lower than that of the bulla fluid (Patient 1: 1*103 copies/mL; Patient 2: 5*105 copies/mL).
Clinical presentations of two types of atypical HFMD
A typical HFMD (N=101)
Large vesicles (N=50)
Small rashes (N=51)
3.3 (± 3.8)
4.0 (± 3.7)
2.7 (± 1.8)
Clinical presentations of patients acquiring CVA6 and non-CVA6 enterovirus infection
CVA6 positive (N=81)
3.4 (± 1.3)
2.3 (± 0.6)
2.3 (± 3.1)
2.3 (± 0.6)
Seventeen cases (17%) were hospitalized. All were discharged smoothly. Most hospitalized patients were preschool children (mean age: 2.6 ± 2.9 years) and the mean hospitalization duration was 3.2 ± 1.3 days. Dehydration was the primary cause for hospitalization (76%). Among 15 children presenting neurological symptoms, only two patients required hospitalized evaluation. One child developed frequent myoclonic jerks and the other had febrile convulsions. The hospitalization rate did not differ between two skin-lesion groups, or between CVA6 and non-CVA6 groups.
Our data showed most of the CVA6 infections are a common cause of atypical HFMD in children with relatively benign courses. Among the lesions of atypical HFMD, distinct bullae or large vesicles were more likely to occur on CVA6-positive children. Also, children with CVA6 infections had higher chances developing bullous vesicles.
Before the epidemic in 2010, CVA6 circulation had been observed in 2007 and 2009 in Northern Taiwan. In the study by Lo et al. , most children infected with CVA6 were < 7 years of age. Although 2% of the children (3/141) had meningitis or encephalitis, none had sequelae. The frequencies of myoclonic jerks (21.3%) and febrile convulsions (3.5%) reported in Lo et al’s study were similar to ours. However, less than 13% of children presented with HFMD. Herpangina was the predominant phenotype, which might be accompanied by fever, decreased oral intake and upper respiratory symptoms (e.g. cough and rhinorrhea). The epidemic CVA6 strain in the current study in 2010 shared a great deal of genetic commonality with the CVA6 strain in 2009 in Taiwan as determined by VP1 sequencing. Chen et al. sequenced complete genomes of circulating CVA6 strains between 2009 and 2010 in Taiwan, and revealed little difference in VP1 sequences. However, several changes in amino acids were noted in structure proteins (VP2 and VP3) and non-structure proteins (2A, 3C and 3D) . Whether the variations in amino acids contribute to the discerning clinical presentations in 2010 still needs further investigation.
In our study, CVA6 was the major strain of enterovirus that caused atypical HFMD. In the same epidemic period, CDC-Taiwan retrospectively analyzed 130 patients with laboratory-confirmed CVA6 infections. Their findings showed that CVA6 patients had higher chances of experiencing desquamation (51%) and onychomadesis (37%) . This study did not analyze early presentations of the infection as in ours. Thus, the two studies are in some part complementary, showing that in CVA6 infection, vesiculobullous lesions might develop early, followed by marked desquamation and pigmentation on palms and soles as the bullae crusted. Nail deformities could also be observed after the resolution of infection. These uncommon manifestations may provide valuable information to detect enterovirus infections in endemic countries. Early diagnosis is beneficial to pediatric patients in order to limit invasive examinations, such as skin biopsies, when determining the pathogenesis.
We examined the bullous fluid collected from the skin lesions. The viral loads of CVA6 were higher in the bullous fluid than in the throat swabs. Similar observations have not been reported among the other HFMD patients. Vesicular or bullous fluid may be considered a specimen for a more sensitive but also more specific source to determine the infectious etiology of HFMD, since issues may be raised that bystander viruses and true pathogens are indistinguishable in samples from throats and feces. In murine models, viral titers of EV71 were much higher in muscle and skin compared to those in the intestines or brain , suggesting enteroviruses also propagate in other organs. It once again addresses the importance of hand hygiene in the prevention of HFMD. The transmission of enterovirus is not limited to the oral-fecal route. Rather, it may pass on to other hosts through fluid from ruptured skin lesions.
In the summer of 2008, a CVA6 outbreak was reported in Finland and Spain, and the circulating strains in these two countries shared high levels of similarity based on partial VP1 sequences [7, 8]. In the following years, outbreaks of vesicular-bullous eruptions and onychomadesis occurred in Taiwan (2010), Japan (2011) and the United States (2012), and CVA6 was the viral stain responsible for the events [11, 13–15]. According to these reports and ours, the majority of the infected patients had uncomplicated symptoms. The clinical presentations of CVA6 infections were quite different from those of EV71-infected children, who usually presented small papules or vesicles on distal limbs. Also, young children with EV71 infections had much higher chances of developing severe neurological complications, sequalae or mortalities . Moreover, CVA6 has become one of the endemic strains of enterovirus in Singapore, China and Thailand in recent years [17–19]. It is not known whether CVA6 may transform into a more virulent stain as it circulates in broader regions. Further research is needed to understand the mechanisms that cause atypical HFMD and in monitoring CVA6 epidemiology.
Several limitations of this study are summarized: (1) children with maculopapular rashes over the uncommon sites in addition to the bullous vesicles might be considered as having viral exanthems, leading to underrepresentation among the small rashes group. (2) Children who developed skin lesions in the later phase of infection might be under-represented if they were not hospitalized, or if they were discharged early. (3) The number of patients was relatively small due to the short epidemic period. More investigations with expanded cohort sizes are required to explore the relationship between skin phenotypes and enterovirus species, to provide evidence in clinical diagnosis.
xCoxsackievirus A6 infections may cause atypical presentation of HFMD, including small vesicles on faces or vesiculobullous lesions on trunks. The majority of patients were self-limited. The pathogenesis of CVA6-induced bullae should be further investigated.
Patients and methods
Definition of atypical HFMD
The definition of atypical HFMD includes symptoms of acute viral infection (such as fevers, coughs or diarrhea) with either of the following presentations: (1) maculopapular rashes presenting on the trunks, buttocks or facial areas, or (2) large vesicles or bullae on any sites of the body. Patients were classified into two groups according to vesicle sizes by two pediatricians at different points in time. The large vesicle group was defined as having vesciculobullous lesions ≥ 1 cm in diameter; the small rashes group had maculopapular rashes < 1cm in diameter. We compared the clinical symptoms between the two groups.
National Taiwan University Hospital is a tertiary medical center in Taipei, Taiwan, with 266 beds in pediatric departments. Children with atypical HFMD were enrolled prospectively through the outpatient clinics and the emergency department between March and December 2010. Children who met the following conditions were enrolled: (1) Under 18 years old, and (2) skin lesions compatible with atypical HFMD. The early presentations of atypical HFMD show two distinct characteristics: (1) bullous lesions on limbs (i.e. elbows and knees), buttocks and trunks, and (2) maculopapular rashes on trunks, earlobes, and facial areas (i.e. periocular region). Compared to these features, children with typical HFMD commonly develop small vesicles (<0.5cm in diameter) or macular rashes on the knees, elbows, palms and soles. Written informed consent was obtained from each of the subject’s parents or guardians, and additional informed consent was obtained from the subject himself or herself if the subject was older than 8 years old. Pictures of specific skin lesions were taken also with consent.
Patients who met any of the following condition were excluded: (1) Failure to obtain complete demographic data, consent, or adequate clinical samples, (2) skin lesions were the results of diseases other than atypical HFMD (such as drug hypersensitivity, Kawasaki disease, or varicella infections), as determined after evaluation by related specialists, and (3) having a history of systemic illness, which might lead to an immunocompromised state (e.g. patient received chemotherapy or immunosuppressive medications).
Information regarding the demographic data, medical history and contact history were obtained from the patients or their caregivers. For hospitalized patients, our clinical observation continued in the outpatient clinic until one week after discharge, to determine any sequelae development. Two throat swabs were collected at the time of diagnosis, one for viral isolation and the other for polymerase chain reactions (PCR), to determine the etiology. Clinical symptoms and signs were recorded on the day of enrollment.
Six types of cell lines were prepared for throat swab inoculation, including human embryonic lung cells (HEL), human larynx carcinoma cells (HEp-2), rhabdomyosarcoma cells (RD), monkey kidney cells (MK-2), and Madine-Darby canine kidney cells (MDCK). After inoculating throat swabs into the cells above, daily observation of the cytopathic effect (CPE) was continued for 4 weeks. An immunofluorescence study (Chemicon International Inc., Temecula, CA) was performed once CPE occurred, to determine the pathogen.
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
(a) viral RNA extraction
Throat swabs were prepared for viral RNA extraction, by using a MagNA Pure LC Total Nucleic Acid Isolation kit (RNA and DNA extraction kit, Roche).
(b) reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)
Reverse transcription was performed with a First Strand cDNA Synthesis Kit for RT-PCR (Invitrogen, CA, USA). Previously extracted viral RNA was mixed with dNTP and random hexamers. We performed real-time PCR for pan-enterovirus with primers and probes based on the highly conserved region in the 5’-untranslated region of the enterovirus genome. The sequences of primers and probes are listed as follows: forward primer, 5’-TCCTCCGGCCCCTGAATG-3’; reverse primer, 5’-AATTGTCACCATAAGCAGCCA-3’; Pan-enterovirus probe, 6FAM-AACCGACTACTTTGGGTGTCCGTGTTTCXT-PH.
The mixture was incubated for the reaction at 65°C for 5 minutes. We subsequently added reagents into the mixture, which included buffers, MgCl2, dithiothreitol (DTT), RNase inhibitors and reverse transcriptase. Subsequently, the samples were incubated at 25°C for 10 minutes followed by 50°C for 50 minutes, 85°C for 5 minutes, and 4°C for 5 minutes.
(c) molecular typing of the circulating enterovirus during the surveillance
A molecular typing of enterovirus was performed, once the samples showed positive results for enterovirus in real time RT-PCR or cytopathic effects. Three types of genogroup-specific generate oligonucleotide primers flanking the VP1 region were designed, including EntAF TNCARGCWGCNGARACNGG, EntAR outer ANGGRTTNGTNGMWGTYTGCCA, EntAR inner GGNGGNACRWACATRTAYTG; EntBF GCNGYNGARACNGGNCACAC, EntBR outer CTNGGRTTNGTNGANGWYTGCC, EntBR inner CCNCCNGGBGGNAYRTACAT; EntCF TNACNGCNGTNGANACHGG, EntCR onter TGCCANGTRTANTCRTCCC, EntCR inner GCNCCWGGDGGNAYRTACAT. The PCR product was purified using the Gel/PCR DNA fragments extraction kit (Geneaid, Taiwan) before sequencing. Auto-sequencing with the forward primer was performed on an ABI 3730XL automatic sequencer (AppliedBiosystems, CA, USA). The serotypes of the enterovirus were determined by comparing partial VP1 sequences to the sequences in the public gene database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information.
To investigate the lineage of the circulating strains, we performed phylogenetic analysis for the partial sequence of the VP1 gene of present species and several previous CVA6 strains. The comparison of sequences was based on the partial VP1 sequences of CVA6. We selected the strains of CVA6 isolated from different countries between 2004 and 2012 to construct a phylogenetic tree: a) Taiwan, GenBank: EU908166 (2004), EU908170 (2005), JN896786 (2009), JN896796 (2009), JQ390220-JQ390221 (2010), KC297130-KC297135 (2010, strains from the current study); b) USA, AY421764 (2004); c) Finland, FJ870502- FJ870508 (2009); d) Japan, AB649286-AB649291 (2011); and e) China, JQ964234 (2012). We used Geneious 6.0.4 (Biomatters Ltd., New Zealand) to analyze the sequence and complete the diagram of phylogenetic analysis.
We used SPSS Ver. 19 (IBM, USA) to analyze the clinical data. Descriptive statistics were expressed as mean ± standard deviation (SD) for continuous variables. The median value was used instead when continuous variables were not normally distributed. A Student’s t-test was used to compare the continuous variables with normal distributions in two independent groups; a Mann–Whitney U test was for continuous variables without normal distributions. A Chi square test was performed to compare categorical variables. P- values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant.
Centers for disease control in Taiwan
Polymerase chain reaction
Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction
This paper was supported by the National Science Council (NSC 101-2321-B-002 -004 and NSC102-2325-B-002-075) and National Taiwan University Hospital (A1 program). The study sponsors did not play any role in the study design, the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, the writing of the report, or the decision to submit this paper for publication.
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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. | <urn:uuid:75cb2e38-079a-4f3f-9dd5-adbccec83175> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-10-209 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284411.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00459-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.895995 | 6,549 | 2.46875 | 2 |
This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.
This week, Serbia arrested one of Europe's most wanted men. Former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic spent sixteen years in hiding. He is accused of genocide and other crimes during the war fought after Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia announced charges against Mr. Mladic in nineteen ninety-five. He is charged with the killing of eight thousand Bosnian Muslim men and boys that year at Srebrenica, a town on the border of Serbia. Srebrenica was supposed to have been protected as a United Nations "safe area."
Mr. Mladic is also accused of ordering or carrying out war crimes during the three years in which Sarajevo was surrounded and attacked.
His son, Darko Mladic, says his father is not in good health. He also says his father believes he is not guilty of the charges. But on Friday, a court in Belgrade ruled that Ratko Mladic is healthy enough to be tried in the Netherlands. His lawyer said he would appeal the ruling.
Russia, an ally of Serbia, has called for a fair trial.
The capture of Mr. Mladic was a condition for Serbia to become a candidate to join the European Union. Another condition has been the capture of former Croatian Serb political leader Goran Hadzic, who has yet to be arrested.
The wartime political leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, was captured in two thousand eight. He also faced charges in The Hague, but his trial was suspended. Former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic also went before the tribunal, but he died during his trial.
Serbia has been under intense international pressure to arrest Ratko Mladic. President Boris Tadic announced that he was arrested Thursday morning. The former general was at a farmhouse in a village about one hundred kilometers from Belgrade.
The arrest happened during a visit by Catherine Ashton, the foreign policy chief for the European Union. But President Tadic dismissed the suggestion that the government could have acted sooner.
BORIS TADIC: "We are not making calculations when and how to deliver. We are doing that because we truly believe this is in accordance with our law."
The Serbian president said there will be an investigation into how Mr. Mladic avoided arrest for so long.
Kada Hotic from the Mothers of Srebrenica Association accused Serbia of knowingly hiding a man she calls a "monster." Still, she and other family members of victims welcomed the arrest, while some Bosnian Serbs expressed anger.
JAMES KER-LINDSAY: "Many Serbs, yes, do regard Ratko Mladic as some sort of hero."
James Ker-Lindsay is an expert on southeast Europe at the London School of Economics.
JAMES KER-LINDSAY: "They look to the events that took place in Bosnia and rather than seeing him as a military leader of an act of aggression rather view him as being the defender of the Bosnian Serb people. So in that sense, there is a certain degree of latent support for him."
But Mr. Ker-Lindsay says Serbs are conflicted because they understand that their country's future has to be a part of Europe.
JAMES KER-LINDSAY: "It's not about forgetting what took place in Bosnia or, indeed, the entire Western Balkans in the nineteen nineties. But it's about recognizing that Serbia's got to atone for this, pay its price and move on. And people understand that Mladic is absolutely central to that process."
And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember.
Contributing: Selah Hennessy and Kate Woodsome | <urn:uuid:199e09c3-1c12-41fa-9da8-25fad342322e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.51voa.com/VOA_Special_English/Arrest-of-Mladic-Brings-Serbia-a-Step-Closer-to-EU-41948.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572870.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817062258-20220817092258-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.982418 | 809 | 2.109375 | 2 |
I am working with a simple piece of geometry in Maya 2008.
It's a Subd plane. I combined an EP curve and the geometry using the Extrude command. I switched to Polygon mode from the Marking Menu and began pushing & pulling on the cage's vertices. No big deal. I am able to expand the geometry to match the underlying Image Plane.
I repeated the same process two more times, using the same piece of geometry. Each time I would draw out another EP Curve and use the Extrude command to continue expanding the existing geometry. Everything works just fine, but before long, my geometry has what might be three separate poly cages and it gets kind of annoying after a while because it makes it hard to see what's going on.
This is where it becomes difficult... as you can see from the screenshot, the Outliner reveals that my polyToSubd geometry consists of three separate pieces of geometry (polyToSubdShapes) and now when I switch over to Polygon mode in the Marking Menu, I am able to move the poly cage's vertices on two of the poly Shapes independent of the original geometry! If that makes any sense. I pull on the vertices and the cage moves but the underlying geometry (Shape) does not. That's my first clue that something's wrong.
I don't want three separate pieces. Just the one I'm working with, but I can't seem to delete the others. If I delete one, they all disappear. Is there any relationship between the number of curves I have created (and eventually deleted) and the number of plyToSubdShapes that make up my polyToSubd plane?
In an earlier post, I was experiencing the same problem. I just assumed I had accidently duplicated a piece of geometry and the hidden one was poking up through the original geometry's surface. Now I suspect it was the polyToSubdShape that was poking through the surface.
A little help please. | <urn:uuid:d5abdb19-2bee-449b-b73a-e3acecaac34b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://simplymaya.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30608 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284405.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00037-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961863 | 412 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Polonius is a character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. He is chief counsellor of the king, and the father of Laertes and Ophelia. Generally regarded as wrong in every judgment he makes over the course of the play, Polonius is described by William Hazlitt as a "sincere" father, but also "a busy-body, [who] is accordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent". In Act II Hamlet refers to Polonius as a "tedious old fool" and taunts him as a latter day "Jephtha".
Polonius behind the curtain by Jehan Georges Vibert, 1868
|Created by||William Shakespeare|
Polonius connives with Claudius to spy on Hamlet. Hamlet unknowingly kills Polonius, provoking Ophelia's fit of madness, ultimately resulting in her early death and the climax of the play: a duel between Laertes and Hamlet.
Father of Ophelia and Laertes, and counselor to King Claudius, he is described as a windbag by some and a rambler of wisdom by others. It has also been suggested that he only acts like a "foolish prating knave" to keep his position and popularity safe and to keep anyone from discovering his plots for social advancement. It is important to note that throughout the play, Polonius is characterised as a typical Renaissance "new man", who pays much attention to appearances and ceremonious behaviour. Some adaptations show him conspiring with Claudius in the murder of King Hamlet.
In Act 1, Scene 3, Polonius gives advice to his son Laertes, who is leaving for France, in the form of a list of sententious maxims. He finishes by giving his son his blessing, and is apparently at ease with his son's departure. However, in Act 2, Scene 1, he orders his servant Reynaldo to travel to Paris and spy on Laertes and report if he is indulging in any local vice.
Laertes is not the only character Polonius spies upon. He is fearful that Hamlet's relationship with his daughter will hurt his reputation with the king and instructs Ophelia to "lock herself from [Hamlet's] resort". He later suspects that Ophelia's rejection of Hamlet's attention has caused the prince to lose his wits, and informs Gertrude and Claudius of his suspicion, claiming that his reason for commanding Ophelia to reject Hamlet was that the prince was above her station. He and the king test his hypothesis by spying on and interrogating Ophelia.
In his last attempt to spy on Hamlet, Polonius hides himself behind an arras in Gertrude's room. Hamlet deals roughly with his mother, causing her to cry for help. Polonius echoes the request for help and is heard by Hamlet, who then mistakes the voice for Claudius' and stabs through the arras and kills him.
Polonius' death at the hands of Hamlet causes Claudius to fear for his own life, Ophelia to go mad, and Laertes to seek revenge, which leads to the duel in the final act.
The literary origins of the character may be traced to the King's counselor found in the Belleforest and William Painter versions of the Hamlet legend. However, at least since the 19th century scholars have also sought to understand the character in terms of Elizabethan court politics.
Polonius was first proposed as a parody of Queen Elizabeth's leading counsellor, Lord Treasurer, and Principal Secretary William Cecil, Lord Burghley in 1869. Israel Gollancz also suggested that Polonius might have been a satire on Burghley. The theory was often finessed with supplementary arguments, but also disputed. Arden Hamlet editor Harold Jenkins, for example, criticised the idea of any direct personal satire of Burghley as "unlikely" and "uncharacteristic of Shakespeare".
Gollancz proposed that the source for the character's name and sententious platitudes was De optimo senatore, a book on statesmanship by the Polish courtier Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki, which was widely read after it was translated into English and published in 1598 under the title The Counsellor. "Polonius" is Latin for "Polish" or "a/the Polish man." The English translation of the book refers to its author as a statesman of the "polonian empyre".
In the first quarto of Hamlet, Polonius is named "Corambis". It has been suggested that this derives from "crambe" or "crambo", derived from a Latin phrase meaning "reheated cabbage", implying "a boring old man" who spouts trite rehashed ideas. Whether this was the original name of the character or not is debated. Various suggestions have been made to explain this. G. R. Hibbard argues that the name was originally Polonius, but was changed because Q1 derives from a version of the play to be performed in Oxford and Cambridge, and the original name was too close to that of Robert Polenius, founder of Oxford University. Since Polonius is a parody of a pompous pseudo-intellectual, the name might have been interpreted as a deliberate insult. The title page of Q1 specifically states that the play was recently performed in London, Oxford and Cambridge.
Stage and film portrayals
In most productions of the 20th century, up to about 1980, Polonius was played as a somewhat senile, garrulous man of about seventy-five or so, eliciting a few laughs from the audience by the depiction. More recent productions have tended to play him as a slightly younger man, and to emphasise his shiftiness rather than pompous senility, harking back to the traditional manner in which Polonius was played before the 20th century. Until the 1900s there was a tradition that the actor who plays Polonius also plays the quick-witted gravedigger in Act V. This bit suggests that the actor who played Polonius was an actor used to playing clowns much like the Fool in King Lear: not a doddering old fool, but an alive and intelligent master of illusion and misdirection. Polonius adds a new dimension to the play and is a controlling and menacing character.
One key to the portrayal is a producer's decision to keep or remove the brief scene with his servant, Reynaldo, which comes after his scene of genial, fatherly advice to Laertes. He instructs Reynaldo to spy on his son, and even suggest that he has been gambling and consorting with prostitutes, to find out what he has really been up to. The inclusion of this scene portrays him in a much more sinister light; most productions, including Laurence Olivier's famous 1948 film version, choose to remove it. The respective productions starring Richard Burton and Kenneth Branagh both include it. Although Hume Cronyn plays Polonius mostly for laughs in the Burton production, Polonius is more sinister than comic in Branagh's version.
Polonius's most famous lines are found in Act 1 Scene 3 ("Neither a borrower nor a lender be"; "To thine own self be true") and Act 2 Scene 2 ("Brevity is the soul of wit"; and "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't") while others have become paraphrased aphorisms ("Clothes make the man"; "Old friends are the best friends"). Also, the line he speaks when he is killed by Hamlet in Act 3 scene 4 ("O, I am slain!") has been subject to parody and ridicule due to its obviousness.
- Hume Cronyn won a Tony Award for playing Polonius opposite Richard Burton's Hamlet in John Gielgud's 1964 Broadway production. No other actor has ever won an award for playing Polonius in any professional American stage version of Hamlet, nor for playing him in a film version of the play.
- In "The Producer", a 1966 episode of Gilligan's Island, Polonius' "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" speech is performed satirically, first by series regular Alan Hale Jr. as The Skipper playing the role of Polonius (with Dawn Wells as Mary Ann playing Laertes) in a musical production of Hamlet by the castaways, then by Phil Silvers guest-starring as a famous stage producer who finds himself on the island.
- Actors who have played Polonius on film and television include Hans Junkermann, Ian Holm, Michael Redgrave, Ian Richardson, Oliver Ford Davies, Bill Murray, and Richard Briers.
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Polonius.|
'Hamlet' in William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays.
- "Polonius at Encyclopædia Britannica". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 10 July 2014.
Hamlet Act II scene ii – William Shakespeare.
- French, George Russell. "Notes on Hamlet." Archived 10 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine In Shakspeareana Genealogica. London: Macmillan & Co., 1869. pp. 299–310.
- See, for example, Lilian Winstanley, Hamlet and the Scottish Succession, 1921, 112; 114–118; John Dover Wilson, The Essential Shakespeare, 1937, 104; Joel Hurstfield, The Queen's Wards, 1958, 257; A.L. Rowse William Shakespeare: A Biography, 1963, 323; Shakespeare The Man, 1973 185, 186.
- Jenkins, Harold, ed. Hamlet (1982), 142.
- Daniel H. Cole, "From Renaissance Poland to Poland's Renaissance: The Struggle for Constitutionalism in Poland by Mark Brzezinski," Michigan Law Review, Vol. 97, No. 6, 1999
- William Shakespeare, Philip Edwards (ed) Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p.71.
- Courtney, Krystyna Kujawinska. “Shakespeare in Poland: selected Issues” Internet Shakespeare Editions, University of Victoria, 2003, p. 2.
- G. R. Hibbard (ed), Hamlet, Oxford University Press, 1998, p.69-75.
- "See all of Polonius's lines". Opensourceshakespeare.org. Retrieved 10 July 2014.
- Elizabeth Abele (20 November 2013). Home Front Heroes: The Rise of a New Hollywood Archetype, 1988–1999. McFarland. p. 187. ISBN 978-0-7864-7333-5. | <urn:uuid:77dbf6bb-cbb9-4055-a737-40b5e059478f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://zims-en.kiwix.campusafrica.gos.orange.com/wikipedia_en_all_nopic/A/Polonius | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571993.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814022847-20220814052847-00674.warc.gz | en | 0.954234 | 2,345 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Before Southampton had its Parrish Art Museum, before the Rogers Memorial Library had settled into its original home at the corner of Main Street, and long before Jobs Lane became a posh place for discriminating shoppers to graze the displays of fancy boutiques, Harry Lillywhite & Son was supplying bicycles and sporting goods to the village’s resort sports, fitness fanatics and Great Outdoors enthusiasts.
In 1895, when Harry and his son opened the landmark Southampton business at the foot of Jobs Lane, their neighbors were John Hen’s saloon, notorious for serving a raucous Saturday night crowd, and Agawam Hall, where the entertainment ranged from vaudeville acts to high-toned oratory.
From the day it opened in 1895 until it was sold to Roy and Polly Stevenson in 2001, Lillywhite’s, operated by succeeding generations of the family, was the place to go for sports equipment, bicycles, games and eventually toys. For anyone raised in Southampton before the turn of the 20th century, the trip to Lillywhite’s—the heavy door, the creaking
floor, the manly aroma of leather mitts, the enticing array of bikes and balls, and the favorable odds of leaving with at least a balloon—stands out among childhood’s indelible memories.
What may come as news to many in the Hamptons who look upon Lillywhite’s as a uniquely local phenomenon, is the family’s historic renown in the world of sports, and the breadth of its reach in that world. An exhibition opening on Saturday, June 14, at the Southampton Historical museum titled “Sporting Life in the Hamptons: The Lillywhite Family Collection” will illuminate the prominent roles Lillywhites have played in the development of cricket, tennis, golf, biking and even baseball since the mid 19th-century, when Frederick William Lillywhite, a superb cricket bowler, led the British team to victory over Australia for the first time in many years and became a national hero. In 1844, he had also established himself in London as a cricketing and sports outfitter, operating the business out of his home.
Jack Lillywhite, Frederick William’s great-great grandson and curator of the exhibition, has drawn from his extensive collection of Lillywhite sporting goods, paraphernalia, ephemera, photographs, documents and books for the Historical Museum show, which focuses not only on the Southampton establishment but on branches in St. Augustine, Palm Beach and Hamilton, Bermuda. Mr. Lillywhite, who spent his early childhood in Southampton when his grandfather, William, and later his father, James, and Uncle Harry were running the store, has been collecting seriously since 1995 and operates a private Lillywhite museum in Palm Coast, Florida.
The Lillywhite Family Museum, in fact, is one of three sponsors of the exhibition in Southampton, along with Harry Hackett III and Louise Collins M.D.
Outlining the family history in an e-mail, Mr. Lillywhite noted that a six-year residence in England, where the family originated, enabled him to study his forbears’ history in detail. In addition to Harry, who first came to America in 1856 as an 18-year-old cricket professional and made the U.S. his permanent home in 1886, three other members of Frederick William’s large brood followed in their father’s sporting footsteps:
John became an illustrious cricketer, playing for his country numerous times, even facing his brother Harry on a North American cricket pitch. His brother Frederick accompanied the English team as a scorer, journalist and promoter and later wrote a seminal book titled “The All England Cricket Team’s Trip to Canada and America of 1859.” And James Sr. also became a well-known cricketer and originated the famous Cheltenham Cricket Festival in England.
James later became a senior partner in a sporting goods business, which, after several mergers and moves, settled into quarters on Piccadilly Circus as the premier sporting goods store in the British Empire.
Among the brothers, it was Harry, Jack Lillywhite’s great-grandfather, whose sporting and business interests brought him to Southampton with his son William and daughter Charlotte, a nurse who in 1908 was put in charge of Southampton’s first hospital facility. After a stint with Wright & Ditson, supplier of tennis balls for American enthusiasts, Harry left the company in 1889 to supervise the building of the original tennis courts at Congress Spring Park, Saratoga, designated site of the National Lawn Tennis Tourney. It didn’t take long for word of Lillywhite’s expertise to reach the Meadow Club, which invited him to Southampton to plan and install courts that became known as some of the finest grass courts in the country.
After five years as superintendent at the Meadow Club, Harry opened his business on Jobs Lane with his son. A 1913 survey of Southampton businesses published by the Sea-Side Times lauds Harry for his expertise “in making cricket grounds, bowling greens, croquet and tennis courts” and notes that “he has been doing this work for many aristocratic clubs on Long Island, as well as for many private parties.” | <urn:uuid:68a1f724-01ad-4337-9d1d-0006d08f7421> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.27east.com/news/article.cfm/Other/148482/Lillywhites-broad-reach-in-world-of-sports-reflected-in-museum-exhibition | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00094-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975994 | 1,089 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Who led the campaign to ban the use of feathers in fashion and helped to establish the oldest Audubon Society in the US?
- George Bird Grinnell
- Harriet Lawrence Hemenway and Minna B. Hall
- John James Audubon
- The Governor of Massachusetts
We appreciate your time and valuable feedback in helping us make QuizzClub better! | <urn:uuid:adcbcd21-911e-4a39-94ce-aa9c51f027b0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://quizzclub.com/questions/who-led-the-campaign-to-ban-the-use-of-feathers-in-fashion-and-helped-to-establish-the-oldest-audubon-society-in-the-us/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281424.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00330-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.870181 | 76 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Focus: Electrons Come to Order
Electrons don’t normally know one direction from another, so researchers were perplexed a few years ago when they found a cold plane of electrons suddenly choosing to conduct many times better in one direction than in the perpendicular one. Maybe they could acquire a preferred orientation by acting like liquid crystals, theorists proposed. Now, in the 27 May print issue of PRL, a group reports it has worked this theory out well enough that experimenters may finally have some detailed signs to search for.
The puzzling result appeared when electrons were sandwiched between very smooth gallium arsenide semiconductor crystals and put under a magnetic field perpendicular to the plane–the famous quantum Hall state. When researchers chilled them and applied the right field strength, the electrons consistently chose one direction (with respect to the crystal axes) in which to dramatically maximize their conductivity . The effect seemed similar to the alignment of domains in magnetic materials under an applied field or the electrically induced ordering of cigar-shaped liquid crystal molecules. But in these other examples, the particles have a preferred direction built in.
One way for electrons to pick out a direction is to line up in “charge density waves”–alternating rows of high and low electron density. Such striped states show up in a variety of systems where a long range, repulsive force competes with a short range, attractive one. For electrons, the Pauli exclusion principle paradoxically leads to an effective attraction that balances the particles’ electrostatic repulsion at short distances. Researchers believe this tension results in stripes that are stable under magnetic fields of a certain strength. Fluctuations and branches in these stripes should create a maze riddled with patches of stripes pointing in various directions, like randomly oriented liquid crystal molecules.
Theorists predicted that stripe patches should line up at low temperatures just as liquid crystal molecules do . Now, Leo Radzihovsky of the University of Colorado in Boulder and Alan Dorsey of the University of Florida in Gainesville have added low temperature quantum corrections to this model, wringing some detailed predictions from it in the process. For instance, the stripes should oscillate like rows of corn in a breeze, and their theory describes the detailed properties of this vibration. To measure the effect, experimenters could follow the changes in acoustic waves traveling through gallium arsenide.
Mystery still surrounds one crucial ingredient in the mix, though. Whereas a magnetic field helps to align ferromagnetic atoms, “the field for the [electron stripe] liquid crystals is gallium arsenide itself,” says Dorsey. No one understands exactly how the asymmetric crystal influences the electrons.
According to Eduardo Fradkin of the University of Illinois in Urbana, the new model fills an important gap by describing how the stripe patches move quantum mechanically under a magnetic field. Testing the new theory, however, will be “a daunting prospect, but you can probably do it,” says Jim Eisenstein of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and a member of the team that first reported the effect. Already, in a paper submitted to Physical Review B he and colleagues report a relationship between the applied magnetic field and the temperature at which the effect kicks in that supports the liquid crystal hypothesis, he says. “The evidence is that a quantum [liquid crystal] is really at the center of what’s going on here,” says Fradkin.
JR Minkel is a freelance science writer in New York City.
Focus story on the experimental result from 1999. | <urn:uuid:f31fc6d1-b6f7-4c81-b423-ab3f4cd9b97f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://physics.aps.org/story/v9/st25 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280835.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00045-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921178 | 725 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Happy Friday, everyone! We’ve had a pretty exciting week here at Imagine Learning as we’ve brought you recaps from days one, two, and three of the National Title I Conference in Tampa, thoughts on Utah’s immigration stance and the Utah Compact, and a printable activity for Black History Month.
But don’t worry, the excitement will continue next week with free Imagine Learning valentines, an introduction to our new webinar series, and other exciting posts. So stay tuned.
Before we sign off for the weekend, here are a few links that caught our eye this week:
- Challenging the Gifted A look at one amazing program that’s keeping gifted students challenged and engaged.
- Research Finds Text Messaging Improves Children’s Spelling Skills A new study found that text messaging did not hinder kids’ literacy development; in fact, just the opposite.
- Rote Memorization: Overrated or Underrated? If nothing else, click over to this article to watch a 3-year-old recite Billy Collins’s “Litany.”
- Bending and Stretching Classroom Lessons to Make Math Inspire This article links to another great video–Vi Hart’s popular youtube clip about doodling in math class.
- 25 Comical Quotes about the Confusing English Language If you work with English learners, you’ll want to check these out–twenty-five wonderful and hilarious ways the English language confuses us all. | <urn:uuid:6a5631b9-ecee-433f-af9f-7a66eedb12e3> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.imaginelearning.com/blog/2011/02/weekly-wrap-up-and-weekend-links-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720380.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00055-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.892912 | 323 | 2.609375 | 3 |
The pillars of aQuantum were research and innovation in the field of quantum software engineering and programming. However, there are other reasons for the creation of aQuantum, being one of them that we detected the need within Europe for greater collaboration between organizations in Europe.
Quantum Flagship was founded by the European Commission in October 2018 to get more people and organizations involved in helping Europe to archieve their long-term quantum vision. The Flagship is a large research organization created to assist existing research entities and help with the creating of new ones. It is a commitment and a need for Europe with the future.
At aQuantum we share the principles and vision of Quantum Flagship and want to collaborate. Our sincere belief is that we will be able to move faster and decisively as many more existing organizations collaborate with a common and determined purpose because, precisely, collaboration and connection, in such a large and unknown world, is what can help so we do not get lost in the vastness. Just as qubits are entangled, we are all entangled in this world and our future depends on each other.
You can find us at Quantum flagship here.
In flagship you can also find events about the quantum world around the world. | <urn:uuid:c9fba723-649a-4cca-a751-95de4b4a2418> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.aquantum.es/entangled-sailing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571692.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812105810-20220812135810-00067.warc.gz | en | 0.96982 | 248 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Today we will tell you not only how to paint eggs for Easter with napkins, but also how long to boil them to get the desired result. Also on how to choose a fresh product and tell you a few tips on the preparation process. Successes!
So that everything will turn out beautifully or even to take your breath away, carefully select the drawings on the napkins. The better you pick, the more beautiful your work will be..
To wipes are not torn, try to find dense. Of them, and easier to cut fragments and easier to handle them. If during the sticking the drawing eats a little, it will not be terrible to fix it, in fear of tearing.
For the second option, you can use both dry and helium dyes. At the same time it will be even more convenient to use dry ones. After all, a napkin dipped in vinegar will accept dry powder better than a gel..
Preparation and step-by-step master class
You will be surprised how easy it is to decorate ordinary chicken eggs with napkins. You need only a few ingredients to create this beauty on your holiday table..
So, you will need: one pack of gelatin, the desired number of eggs and napkins with pictures.
How to paint eggs for Easter with paper napkins:
- First you need to pick up the eggs. Today we have white and yellow. They are the same, just in the second case, the shell is richer in iodine;
- Wash the product and boil to the desired state. Usually it is boiled “hard-boiled” so that the yolk is completely ready. It takes about 10-15 minutes of boiling from the moment of boiling water. If you want a more liquid yolk, you will have to reduce the cooking time. Depending on how you see the center of the egg, reduce the cooking time. For example, if you boil for seven minutes, the yolk will be almost ready;
- Cooked eggs need to cool. To do this, you can simply leave them in water or to speed up the process, boiling water must be drained and the product iced down. When the water heats up in five minutes, it needs to be drained and replaced with new, cold water. So they can be cooled much faster;
- Next, you need to do gelatin. Pour the granules with water according to the instructions on the package. When the gelatin swells, dissolve it on the stove, but do not bring to a boil;
- Now you can do napkins. Choose the most beautiful ones for yourself and disassemble them into layers. Leave the topmost layer (with the picture) and cut out what you like: a bunny, a flower and other fragments;
- Now the fragment must be attached to the egg and smeared on top with a brush, applying gelatin from the center to the edges of the picture. Give a little dry and ready!
We paint eggs for Easter with our own hands with food dyes and napkins
To decorate Easter eggs with dyes using napkins, you will also need a minimum number of components. This is a very simple process – much simpler than the previous one. This task will be appreciated by your children, so if you are already a parent, be sure to connect the little ones to the exciting task..
You will need some vinegar, eggs (how much you plan to dye), food colors and ordinary white napkins..
- The first step is to pick up the eggs and it is desirable that they be white. This color is more likely to perceive staining;
- Next, they need to explore the freshness. If you are still in the store, then the product can be trotted (in case you choose by the piece). A dull sound indicates that the egg was full of oxygen and has already deteriorated. Fresh product should be silent in response. If the product is already purchased, you can try the method with a bowl of water. For this you need a deep bowl full of water. Dip eggs one by one and remember that the higher it rises, the worse its condition;
- Choosing a product it is necessary to boil it beforehand so that you can eat it later. For a solid center, boil for at least ten minutes, preferably a quarter of an hour, for sure;
- Next, they need to cool, drain boiling water and fill them with cold water. After five minutes, the water needs to be changed to a colder one and then the process is repeated;
- Dry dried eggs;
- Wrap them in napkins and moisten them with vinegar;
- Next on the napkins from all sides to drip food colors in different colors;
- Remove the eggs and allow the wipes to dry completely (about two hours).
Let’s sum up
If you are celebrating Easter and you have children – consider that you have trumps in your hands. This task will entice the kids, and as a result you will receive a bright decoration not only for the table, but also for the whole house.!
Now you know how to paint eggs with beautiful napkins. To make your Easter as bright, colorful and colorful as possible, do not forget to buy a few dozen eggs to decorate your home with new colors! This kind of decor is good because it is edible. Therefore, to say that the money will go down the drain – the tongue will not turn. It is fun, bright, beautiful and tasty. Be sure to try! | <urn:uuid:be7c38be-1f64-4360-8c11-f77e80ae8788> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://promobonusdeposit.com/nutrition/how-to-paint-eggs-for-easter-doily-do-it-yourself/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572063.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814173832-20220814203832-00671.warc.gz | en | 0.950021 | 1,151 | 1.703125 | 2 |
DENVER — Only about 36 percent of Colorado residents would be willing to kill someone for money, according to a study by GetSafe.
The study asked 2,000 Americans about what crimes they’d be willing to commit for cash.
“Colorado residents are some of the least likely to commit crimes,” researchers said in a news release.
According to researchers, people in Colorado and other mountain states are the least likely to kill for cash, while people in North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri were among the most likely to kill someone for money.
Researchers found most people can’t afford to pay someone to kill someone.
Men who said they’d be willing to do it wanted about $100 million, while women wouldn’t kill unless the payout hit $500 million.
Finding someone who would punch someone else for money is a lot easier — about 70 percent said they’d do it — but it would still cost a pretty penny, about $1,500.
The crimes people were most willing to commit for cash are running a red light, peeing in public and stealing candy.
“If these questions — and the answers — make you uncomfortable, you’re far from alone,” the researchers said.
According to the Wall Street Journal, around 30 percent of Americans have a police record of some kind. | <urn:uuid:4215055e-761b-4993-9233-c92851bdd2f0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://kdvr.com/2016/10/17/study-only-36-percent-of-colorado-residents-would-kill-someone-for-money/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00209-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961738 | 290 | 2.0625 | 2 |
The Support Station brings dignity and convenience to hygiene care for people with disabilities. In addition to hygiene, it can also be used to aid any sit-to-stand transfer.
With the Support Station, even partially weight-bearing individuals can receive hygiene care in an upright position. This makes the process more dignified, improving access to clothing and skin and eliminating heavy lifting on the part of the caregiver.
An innovation in toileting, the Support Station enables toilet transfers for people with physical disabilities. In consultation with therapists, Rifton designed it to allow clients to assist in their own personal hygiene, providing them greater dignity and independence. At the same time, the Support Station provides benefits to staff by reducing staff injury due to heavy lifting and difficult transfers.
The Rifton Tram is a transfer and mobility device delivering in three powerful functions. Gait Trainer. Sit to Stand. Seated capability. At only 32kg the TRAM’s compact lightweight frame is maneuverable in confined areas and simple to transport and store.
The Rifton Wave system has been thoroughly reimagined to improve bathing and showering – for the client and for the caregiver.
In Rifton supine standing frames clients can stand at eye level with their peers. Adjustable supports on the standing aid allow for functional alignment with the client’s arms free for activities.
The Rifton E-Pacer is the newest addition to the Pacer Family. Offering sit – to – stand lift functionality which removes a major barrier to gait training for large or high key dependant clients. | <urn:uuid:8d46936d-a0d9-4c89-9fb6-dacf1d047752> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://medix21.com.au/products/aged-care/sit-to-stand-aged-care/support-station/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572127.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815024523-20220815054523-00274.warc.gz | en | 0.931397 | 326 | 1.859375 | 2 |
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