Recag/C4_21 · Datasets at Hugging Face

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Chinese woman Guohoug Dai swam the 400-meter individual medley in 4:29.00, topping the old mark of 4:31.36 set in 1987 by Romanian Noemy Lung.
Chinese Jinyi Le erased German Franziska van Almsick's record in the 100-meter freestyle, swimming a time of :53.01. The previous record set in 1992 was :53.33.
The other Chinese record came in the 800-meter freestyle relay with a time of 7:52.45, topping a mark set by the United States in 1981 at 7:58.74.
Today: Partly cloudy. A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 80s inland… In the mid 80s coast. Southwest winds 5 mph shifting to the southeast in the afternoon. Tonight: Partly cloudy. Chance of showers and thunderstorms in the evening…then slight chance of showers and thunderstorms after midnight. Lows in the upper 60s. South winds 5 mph. Chance of rain 40 percent. Details here.
Today’s fire danger is moderate. Flagler County’s Drought Index is at 277.
The OED’s Word of the Day: bioastronautics, n..
Palm Coast’s Beautification and Environmental Advisory Committee meets at 5 p.m. at City Hall. Mary Giraulo is to be elected an arts commission member. The committee will hear updates on a series of current and upcoming landscaping capital projects around the city. See the presentation here.
The Flagler Beach City Commission meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall. The meeting will include a presentation by Cline Construction’s Hap Cameron on a rock-revetment possibility to protect the city’s beach. The commission will also hear a report from City Manager Newsom on the gathering of comments earlier this week about the Scenic A1A group’s planned planting of signs in the city. The full agenda and background materials are here.
Community Cats Fundraiser: Come and support Community Cats of Palm Coast at a fundraiser hosted by SeaCasas, a new gift and art boutique, from 5 to 7 p.m., at 213 S. Second St. in Flagler Beach. Enjoy wine, hors d’oeuvres by Vessel Sandwich Co., live music with Laurel, a chance at a door prize, and a complimentary ticket for a Chinese auction of unique store items. Volunteer sign up and kittens for adoption. $10 admission. For information call Elizaeth Robinson at 386-237-7690.
The Inspired Mic: The Inspired Mic is back and better than ever. Organizers have secured The Europa in the European Village as the new venue. The event starts at 6 p.m., prices remain the same, $10.50 advance ticket sales, $15 at the door. The Europa will be offering a $10 Light Hors d’ Oeuvres for those who would like to eat and enjoy the evening. With the purchase of a ticket, you receive entrance into the event, a drink ticket which can be used for beer, wine, well drink and entry into the end of the evening raffle. Call Melissa Chipps at 386/569.5188.
Jonathan Canales, Accused of Shooting His Wife in Mondex, Will Not Face Trial Just Yet: On November 15, 2014, as his then-common law wife Tiffany Norman was having dinner–shortly after putting her three young children to bed–Canales is alleged to have shot his wife with a small caliber gun. “I didn’t want to but it had to be done,” she said he told her.
Palm Coast Man Accused of Slamming 4 Year Old to Ground Is Committed to State Hospital: Four months ago Christopher Williams, 22, was arrested and charged with aggravated child abuse after allegedly picking up a 4-year-old boy and slamming him to the ground. The boy had been annoying Williams by opening and shutting a door. The incident took place in Palm Coast’s E-Section. The child was taken to a hospital in Gainesville in critical condition. He survived.
In Palm Coast’s Expensive Hunt for New Retailers, a Few Leads, But Only Low Wages: Last July Palm Coast signed a $135,000, three-year contract with a Texas-based marketing company to help the city recruit new retailers, fill empty storefront or build new ones, and spur the local economy. Tuesday morning, the company gave its first progress report to the Palm Coast City Council.
The Independent National Electoral Commission has said that supplementary elections will be conducted in 18 states of the federation on 23rd March, 2019.
It added that details of the states and constituencies where the elections will take place will be revealed on Thursday (today) before the close of business.
The Commission said that all observers and the media accredited by it to cover the 2019 general elections are free to observe the elections.
“They will have unimpeded access to the material distribution centres, polling units and collation centres,” INEC promised.
It added that the INEC Situation Room will be activated on Saturday, 23rd March, 2019, saying Nigerians can reach the Commission via 0700-2255-4632 and its social media platforms (twitter: @inecnigeria; Facebook: INEC Nigeria).
The Commission encouraged all registered voters in the areas where elections will be conducted to go out and cast their ballots.
Tech Brunch breaks down how complex technologies work. -- Ed.
The second heyday of cylindrical batteries is coming as electronic applications get bigger while going wireless, and Samsung SDI is one of the firms leading the trend with the newest form factor of the cells, says Jeong Sang-hun, principal engineer at the company.
“The latest 21700 cylindrical battery platform is on its way to becoming a new standard due to performance improvement and proven safety,” said Jeong in an interview with The Korea Herald on Thursday.
Jeong, who has 12 years of expertise in the field of battery technology, led the development of the 21700 platform that started to be mass produced last year.
With a diameter of 21 millimeters and a height of 70 mm, the cylinder-shape cell form is slightly bigger than the current market standard 18650 form -- 18 mm in diameter and 65 mm in height -- made by Sony about 20 years ago.
The size was deemed ideal to fit into a handheld camcorder, the most popular device at the time.
“Major customers are starting to adopt our platform, and we are seeing the range of applications expanding, from power tools, power banks, electronic cigarettes, energy storage systems, electronic bikes and forklifts to electric vehicles,” the developer said.
Cylindrical batteries are mainly used for power tools like wireless drills that require high power, and Samsung SDI’s proprietary low-resistance design helps raise the power, Jeong explained.
Along with the low-resistance design, high dexterity in handling the cell material -- nickel-cobalt-aluminum combination -- is part of the Samsung battery unit’s technological prowess.
The cylindrical shape made of aluminum also serves as a shield for external shocks and prevents explosions, which is considered a strong competitive edge over pouch-type batteries.
According to the industry, Samsung SDI was recently selected as a sole supplier of the 21700 cells by UK’s Jaguar for electric vehicles that are set for commercialization in 2020. Jaguar is only second to Tesla, which chose cylindrical batteries for its electric vehicles.
While hand-held power tools need four to five cylindrical cells, 6,000 to 7,000 units are needed for an electric vehicle to run on the cells.
“As Sony had been leading the market with the 18650 model for the past 20 years, we hope to see our new platform serve as the standard across industries for about the same period,” he said.
While anticipating the Samsung 21700 platform to take root in the electronics application market in the coming years, Jeong also foresees a new type of platform for cylindrical batteries in the longer term.
“In response to changing market needs, a new platform could be developed with a focus on further raising the energy density in a single cell,” he forecast.
Chief Financial Officer & Head-Individual Life, Lincoln National Corp.
Presently, Randal J. Freitag is Chief Financial Officer & Head-Individual Life at Lincoln National Corp. and Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer at The Lincoln National Life Insurance Co. (Investment Portfolio) (a subsidiary of Lincoln National Corp.).
Mr. Freitag received an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota.
President Donald Trump spoke to reporters in the White House briefing room on Thursday, but though he was apparently just a short distance away, his face loomed over the front of the room on two video screens.
The maneuver allowed him to avoid questions from reporters a day after excerpts from Michael Wolff’s scathing account of Trump’s first year in office were widely reported. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was left to field questions about the frequently embarrassing narrative and to denounce the book, "Fire and Fury," as full of lies and tabloid gossip.
The president, who offered a statement about his tax cut bill and the bonuses companies are giving employees as a result, was reported to have been working nearby in the Oval Office at the time.
Among the most explosive comments from Wolff's book was criticism from Steve Bannon, a former top Trump administration official, that Don Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russians at Trump Tower in June 2016 was "treasonous" and "unpatriotic."
Trump, in turn, insulted Bannon and said he had "lost his mind." The president's lawyers are trying to stop publication of the book, which was set for Tuesday, but has now been moved up to Friday morning.
Trump has already been under criticism for skipping an end-of-the-year press conference. He gave only one on his own in his first year in office, as USA Today noted last month.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why Trump did not talk to reporters in person.
Thursday's video appearance quickly earned a comparison to Big Brother and other comments on Twitter.
Big brother moment at the WH briefing right now. Trump on two giant TV screens literally four feet apart. When he’s done, Sanders thanks him like he’s there. These people are so weird.
TUESDAY: @PressSec: Trump is "one of the most accessible presidents we've ever had."
Current status: watching the president deliver a video message from the briefing room...a room that is roughly 200 paces from the Oval Office, where the president is working today.
If the President wants to make an appearance in the briefing room in front of reporters he should walk in there. He's down the hall.
By projecting light through the uterine wall of pregnant mothers, British scientists found that 34-week-old fetuses will turn their heads to look at face-like images.
We know babies love looking at the faces of their mom or dad. Now, for the first time, researchers have discovered that this preference develops in the womb several weeks before birth, according to a study published Thursday.
"We have shown the fetus can distinguish between different shapes, preferring to track face-like over non-face-like shapes," said psychologist Vincent Reid of Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, a co-author of the study. "This preference has been recognized in babies for many decades, but until now exploring fetal vision has not been attempted."
The findings, which appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Current Biology, were also the first to show it's possible to explore sight and cognition in babies before birth.
Researchers projected two patterns of three dots in the shape of a triangle through the uterine wall of 39 pregnant mothers: One pattern was in the shape of eyes and a mouth and the other was upside down. Scientists then measured how the fetus responded using high-quality, 4D ultrasound.
The ultrasound showed developing babies turned their heads to look more often at upright, face-like stimuli than those presented to them upside down.
"The behavior of the fetus’ here shows that they did see the shapes that we presented as they distinguished between the two patterns," said study co-author Kirsty Dunn, also of Lancaster University.
"It turned out that they responded in a way that was very similar to infants," Reid added.
And while fetuses' eyes are likely to be closed most of the time, the ultrasound scans often showed them blinking.
Dunn said researchers knew it was possible for light to travel to the fetus and that eyes functioned before birth, but this study allowed a deeper understanding of sight development.
"We have been able to explore the use of all the fetal senses except vision up until now," Dunn said. "This includes touch, taste, smell, balance and hearing. But we wanted to move forward with understanding fetal vision."
Neither mothers nor fetuses were in danger during the research. "We were very careful and made sure that the light was bright enough to enter the womb but not too bright as to be unpleasant or aversive for the fetus,” Reid said.
In general, though, he discourages pregnant mothers from shining bright lights into their bellies.
The castle was a model for Prince Eric's castle in Disneys' "Little Mermaid."
Few castles in Europe blend history, mystery and scenery as does Chillon, on the far eastern end of the Lake Geneva shoreline.
The most visited historic site in Switzerland, the castle is just outside the resort city of Montreux, along what was in antiquity the main trade road to Italy.
Some sort of a fortification has stood on the site since the 11th century. As it grew in size and strategic importance, the fort, and then the castle, were claimed by several families and regimes, eventually being property of the Swiss Canton of Vaud in 1803.
Two thick, oval walls wrap around four courtyards and a total of 25 buildings. Among them are three great halls, a weapons room, chapel and the wonderful "Camera Nova" with its circa 1590 wardrobe, 1620 ceramic stove, and windows with a sweeping view of the lake.
In recent years, the wine cellar has been restored and reactivated as a working winery that has made it a popular stop on the Swiss and Italian wine trails. Its "Grand Cru" Clos de Chillon is aged and bottled there.
A sunbeam which hath lost its way.
Byron's poem "The Prisoner of Chillon" was inspired by the true story of the incarceration of the monk Francois Bonivard there in the 16th century. The writer carved his name on a pillar in the dungeon.
To balance that, however, it is said that Chillon was a model for Prince Eric's castle in Disney's "The Little Mermaid."
Despite the sweltering heat of Varanasi, and the hectic campaign that he has been running with Aam Aadmi Party founder Arvind Kejriwal for the past few weeks, AAP leader Manish Sisodia manages to steal a moment for everyone who wants his attention.
It could be in the form of a smile, a wave, an encouraging pat or even a morning walk at 5 am every day.
He is proud of the AAP campaign in Varanasi, of the volunteers who have flooded the city and, in a campaign that has included a mix of the traditional and the modern, convinced the Benaras voter to take Kejriwal and his party as a serious contender in the constituency.
As the countdown begins to D-day, Sisodia discusses the elections and the rivals AAP hopes to defeat on May 12, in an interview with Savera R Someshwar/Rediff.com.
We are in the last phase of the elections. How do you assess the Aam Aadmi Party's chances across India?
We have done our best in the last 2, 3 months. Now let us see. We are in a neck-to-neck fight in at least 100 seats.
Which of these seats does the Aam Aadmi Party consider most essential when it comes to victory?
All seats are important for us. The candidates have really worked very hard and we have a fair shot at a win.
If you ask me politically, however, two seats are very important for us -- Amethi and Benaras (Varanasi).
We want to change the political system in this country. In order to do that, we need to win these two seats.
Image: BJP leader Narendra Modi at a rally in Rohaniya, near Varanasi.
Today, two kinds of politics take place in India.
One is clean politics. It is focused on social service and on the need to change the system.
The second kind believes in paise se satta, satte se paisa (money begets power and power begets money). This is the game played by parties like the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which each heads its own coalition.
The steering head of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is contesting the election here in Varanasi. The steering head of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance is contesting the election from Amethi.
In dono ko harana hain! (Both these people must be defeated)!
If they can be defeated, it will prove that politics in India is finally changing.
What kind of vibes are you getting in Benaras?
Initially, when we came here, we had to battle pre-conceived perceptions that had been created by the media.
Things like, Benaras is a Hindu city, so Modi will definitely win here.
But when we went to the people, we found that there was a zameen-aasman ka antar (huge difference) between what the television sets were saying and what people were saying.
In the last one month, we have connected with the people of Benaras. It is now a neck-to-neck fight with the BJP here.
The people who are saying this would, if they could, make Modi the prime minister of this country without the bother of going through an election.
What, according to you, is the ground reality?
The reality is that there is a neck-to-neck fight in this constituency. Let us see what happens on May 12.
Image: Aam Aadmi Party leader Manish Sisodia.
What about the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, which heads the government in the state? Do they feature in the equation at all?
The Congress and the SP have lost their ground.
As for Modi, he is surviving on advertisements, the media and his money power.

Chinese woman Guohoug Dai swam the 400-meter individual medley in 4:29.00, topping the old mark of 4:31.36 set in 1987 by Romanian Noemy Lung.

Chinese Jinyi Le erased German Franziska van Almsick's record in the 100-meter freestyle, swimming a time of :53.01. The previous record set in 1992 was :53.33.

The other Chinese record came in the 800-meter freestyle relay with a time of 7:52.45, topping a mark set by the United States in 1981 at 7:58.74.

Today: Partly cloudy. A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 80s inland… In the mid 80s coast. Southwest winds 5 mph shifting to the southeast in the afternoon. Tonight: Partly cloudy. Chance of showers and thunderstorms in the evening…then slight chance of showers and thunderstorms after midnight. Lows in the upper 60s. South winds 5 mph. Chance of rain 40 percent. Details here.

Today’s fire danger is moderate. Flagler County’s Drought Index is at 277.

The OED’s Word of the Day: bioastronautics, n..

Palm Coast’s Beautification and Environmental Advisory Committee meets at 5 p.m. at City Hall. Mary Giraulo is to be elected an arts commission member. The committee will hear updates on a series of current and upcoming landscaping capital projects around the city. See the presentation here.

The Flagler Beach City Commission meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall. The meeting will include a presentation by Cline Construction’s Hap Cameron on a rock-revetment possibility to protect the city’s beach. The commission will also hear a report from City Manager Newsom on the gathering of comments earlier this week about the Scenic A1A group’s planned planting of signs in the city. The full agenda and background materials are here.

Community Cats Fundraiser: Come and support Community Cats of Palm Coast at a fundraiser hosted by SeaCasas, a new gift and art boutique, from 5 to 7 p.m., at 213 S. Second St. in Flagler Beach. Enjoy wine, hors d’oeuvres by Vessel Sandwich Co., live music with Laurel, a chance at a door prize, and a complimentary ticket for a Chinese auction of unique store items. Volunteer sign up and kittens for adoption. $10 admission. For information call Elizaeth Robinson at 386-237-7690.

The Inspired Mic: The Inspired Mic is back and better than ever. Organizers have secured The Europa in the European Village as the new venue. The event starts at 6 p.m., prices remain the same, $10.50 advance ticket sales, $15 at the door. The Europa will be offering a $10 Light Hors d’ Oeuvres for those who would like to eat and enjoy the evening. With the purchase of a ticket, you receive entrance into the event, a drink ticket which can be used for beer, wine, well drink and entry into the end of the evening raffle. Call Melissa Chipps at 386/569.5188.

Jonathan Canales, Accused of Shooting His Wife in Mondex, Will Not Face Trial Just Yet: On November 15, 2014, as his then-common law wife Tiffany Norman was having dinner–shortly after putting her three young children to bed–Canales is alleged to have shot his wife with a small caliber gun. “I didn’t want to but it had to be done,” she said he told her.

Palm Coast Man Accused of Slamming 4 Year Old to Ground Is Committed to State Hospital: Four months ago Christopher Williams, 22, was arrested and charged with aggravated child abuse after allegedly picking up a 4-year-old boy and slamming him to the ground. The boy had been annoying Williams by opening and shutting a door. The incident took place in Palm Coast’s E-Section. The child was taken to a hospital in Gainesville in critical condition. He survived.

In Palm Coast’s Expensive Hunt for New Retailers, a Few Leads, But Only Low Wages: Last July Palm Coast signed a $135,000, three-year contract with a Texas-based marketing company to help the city recruit new retailers, fill empty storefront or build new ones, and spur the local economy. Tuesday morning, the company gave its first progress report to the Palm Coast City Council.

The Independent National Electoral Commission has said that supplementary elections will be conducted in 18 states of the federation on 23rd March, 2019.

It added that details of the states and constituencies where the elections will take place will be revealed on Thursday (today) before the close of business.

The Commission said that all observers and the media accredited by it to cover the 2019 general elections are free to observe the elections.

“They will have unimpeded access to the material distribution centres, polling units and collation centres,” INEC promised.

It added that the INEC Situation Room will be activated on Saturday, 23rd March, 2019, saying Nigerians can reach the Commission via 0700-2255-4632 and its social media platforms (twitter: @inecnigeria; Facebook: INEC Nigeria).

The Commission encouraged all registered voters in the areas where elections will be conducted to go out and cast their ballots.

Tech Brunch breaks down how complex technologies work. -- Ed.

The second heyday of cylindrical batteries is coming as electronic applications get bigger while going wireless, and Samsung SDI is one of the firms leading the trend with the newest form factor of the cells, says Jeong Sang-hun, principal engineer at the company.

“The latest 21700 cylindrical battery platform is on its way to becoming a new standard due to performance improvement and proven safety,” said Jeong in an interview with The Korea Herald on Thursday.

Jeong, who has 12 years of expertise in the field of battery technology, led the development of the 21700 platform that started to be mass produced last year.

With a diameter of 21 millimeters and a height of 70 mm, the cylinder-shape cell form is slightly bigger than the current market standard 18650 form -- 18 mm in diameter and 65 mm in height -- made by Sony about 20 years ago.

The size was deemed ideal to fit into a handheld camcorder, the most popular device at the time.

“Major customers are starting to adopt our platform, and we are seeing the range of applications expanding, from power tools, power banks, electronic cigarettes, energy storage systems, electronic bikes and forklifts to electric vehicles,” the developer said.

Cylindrical batteries are mainly used for power tools like wireless drills that require high power, and Samsung SDI’s proprietary low-resistance design helps raise the power, Jeong explained.

Along with the low-resistance design, high dexterity in handling the cell material -- nickel-cobalt-aluminum combination -- is part of the Samsung battery unit’s technological prowess.

The cylindrical shape made of aluminum also serves as a shield for external shocks and prevents explosions, which is considered a strong competitive edge over pouch-type batteries.

According to the industry, Samsung SDI was recently selected as a sole supplier of the 21700 cells by UK’s Jaguar for electric vehicles that are set for commercialization in 2020. Jaguar is only second to Tesla, which chose cylindrical batteries for its electric vehicles.

While hand-held power tools need four to five cylindrical cells, 6,000 to 7,000 units are needed for an electric vehicle to run on the cells.

“As Sony had been leading the market with the 18650 model for the past 20 years, we hope to see our new platform serve as the standard across industries for about the same period,” he said.

While anticipating the Samsung 21700 platform to take root in the electronics application market in the coming years, Jeong also foresees a new type of platform for cylindrical batteries in the longer term.

“In response to changing market needs, a new platform could be developed with a focus on further raising the energy density in a single cell,” he forecast.

Chief Financial Officer & Head-Individual Life, Lincoln National Corp.

Presently, Randal J. Freitag is Chief Financial Officer & Head-Individual Life at Lincoln National Corp. and Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer at The Lincoln National Life Insurance Co. (Investment Portfolio) (a subsidiary of Lincoln National Corp.).

Mr. Freitag received an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota.

President Donald Trump spoke to reporters in the White House briefing room on Thursday, but though he was apparently just a short distance away, his face loomed over the front of the room on two video screens.

The maneuver allowed him to avoid questions from reporters a day after excerpts from Michael Wolff’s scathing account of Trump’s first year in office were widely reported. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was left to field questions about the frequently embarrassing narrative and to denounce the book, "Fire and Fury," as full of lies and tabloid gossip.

The president, who offered a statement about his tax cut bill and the bonuses companies are giving employees as a result, was reported to have been working nearby in the Oval Office at the time.

Among the most explosive comments from Wolff's book was criticism from Steve Bannon, a former top Trump administration official, that Don Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russians at Trump Tower in June 2016 was "treasonous" and "unpatriotic."

Trump, in turn, insulted Bannon and said he had "lost his mind." The president's lawyers are trying to stop publication of the book, which was set for Tuesday, but has now been moved up to Friday morning.

Trump has already been under criticism for skipping an end-of-the-year press conference. He gave only one on his own in his first year in office, as USA Today noted last month.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why Trump did not talk to reporters in person.

Thursday's video appearance quickly earned a comparison to Big Brother and other comments on Twitter.

Big brother moment at the WH briefing right now. Trump on two giant TV screens literally four feet apart. When he’s done, Sanders thanks him like he’s there. These people are so weird.

TUESDAY: @PressSec: Trump is "one of the most accessible presidents we've ever had."

Current status: watching the president deliver a video message from the briefing room...a room that is roughly 200 paces from the Oval Office, where the president is working today.

If the President wants to make an appearance in the briefing room in front of reporters he should walk in there. He's down the hall.

By projecting light through the uterine wall of pregnant mothers, British scientists found that 34-week-old fetuses will turn their heads to look at face-like images.

We know babies love looking at the faces of their mom or dad. Now, for the first time, researchers have discovered that this preference develops in the womb several weeks before birth, according to a study published Thursday.

"We have shown the fetus can distinguish between different shapes, preferring to track face-like over non-face-like shapes," said psychologist Vincent Reid of Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, a co-author of the study. "This preference has been recognized in babies for many decades, but until now exploring fetal vision has not been attempted."

The findings, which appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Current Biology, were also the first to show it's possible to explore sight and cognition in babies before birth.

Researchers projected two patterns of three dots in the shape of a triangle through the uterine wall of 39 pregnant mothers: One pattern was in the shape of eyes and a mouth and the other was upside down. Scientists then measured how the fetus responded using high-quality, 4D ultrasound.

The ultrasound showed developing babies turned their heads to look more often at upright, face-like stimuli than those presented to them upside down.

"The behavior of the fetus’ here shows that they did see the shapes that we presented as they distinguished between the two patterns," said study co-author Kirsty Dunn, also of Lancaster University.

"It turned out that they responded in a way that was very similar to infants," Reid added.

And while fetuses' eyes are likely to be closed most of the time, the ultrasound scans often showed them blinking.

Dunn said researchers knew it was possible for light to travel to the fetus and that eyes functioned before birth, but this study allowed a deeper understanding of sight development.

"We have been able to explore the use of all the fetal senses except vision up until now," Dunn said. "This includes touch, taste, smell, balance and hearing. But we wanted to move forward with understanding fetal vision."

Neither mothers nor fetuses were in danger during the research. "We were very careful and made sure that the light was bright enough to enter the womb but not too bright as to be unpleasant or aversive for the fetus,” Reid said.

In general, though, he discourages pregnant mothers from shining bright lights into their bellies.

The castle was a model for Prince Eric's castle in Disneys' "Little Mermaid."

Few castles in Europe blend history, mystery and scenery as does Chillon, on the far eastern end of the Lake Geneva shoreline.

The most visited historic site in Switzerland, the castle is just outside the resort city of Montreux, along what was in antiquity the main trade road to Italy.

Some sort of a fortification has stood on the site since the 11th century. As it grew in size and strategic importance, the fort, and then the castle, were claimed by several families and regimes, eventually being property of the Swiss Canton of Vaud in 1803.

Two thick, oval walls wrap around four courtyards and a total of 25 buildings. Among them are three great halls, a weapons room, chapel and the wonderful "Camera Nova" with its circa 1590 wardrobe, 1620 ceramic stove, and windows with a sweeping view of the lake.

In recent years, the wine cellar has been restored and reactivated as a working winery that has made it a popular stop on the Swiss and Italian wine trails. Its "Grand Cru" Clos de Chillon is aged and bottled there.

A sunbeam which hath lost its way.

Byron's poem "The Prisoner of Chillon" was inspired by the true story of the incarceration of the monk Francois Bonivard there in the 16th century. The writer carved his name on a pillar in the dungeon.

To balance that, however, it is said that Chillon was a model for Prince Eric's castle in Disney's "The Little Mermaid."

Despite the sweltering heat of Varanasi, and the hectic campaign that he has been running with Aam Aadmi Party founder Arvind Kejriwal for the past few weeks, AAP leader Manish Sisodia manages to steal a moment for everyone who wants his attention.

It could be in the form of a smile, a wave, an encouraging pat or even a morning walk at 5 am every day.

He is proud of the AAP campaign in Varanasi, of the volunteers who have flooded the city and, in a campaign that has included a mix of the traditional and the modern, convinced the Benaras voter to take Kejriwal and his party as a serious contender in the constituency.

As the countdown begins to D-day, Sisodia discusses the elections and the rivals AAP hopes to defeat on May 12, in an interview with Savera R Someshwar/Rediff.com.

We are in the last phase of the elections. How do you assess the Aam Aadmi Party's chances across India?

We have done our best in the last 2, 3 months. Now let us see. We are in a neck-to-neck fight in at least 100 seats.

Which of these seats does the Aam Aadmi Party consider most essential when it comes to victory?

All seats are important for us. The candidates have really worked very hard and we have a fair shot at a win.

If you ask me politically, however, two seats are very important for us -- Amethi and Benaras (Varanasi).

We want to change the political system in this country. In order to do that, we need to win these two seats.

Image: BJP leader Narendra Modi at a rally in Rohaniya, near Varanasi.

Today, two kinds of politics take place in India.

One is clean politics. It is focused on social service and on the need to change the system.

The second kind believes in paise se satta, satte se paisa (money begets power and power begets money). This is the game played by parties like the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which each heads its own coalition.

The steering head of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is contesting the election here in Varanasi. The steering head of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance is contesting the election from Amethi.

In dono ko harana hain! (Both these people must be defeated)!

If they can be defeated, it will prove that politics in India is finally changing.

What kind of vibes are you getting in Benaras?

Initially, when we came here, we had to battle pre-conceived perceptions that had been created by the media.

Things like, Benaras is a Hindu city, so Modi will definitely win here.

But when we went to the people, we found that there was a zameen-aasman ka antar (huge difference) between what the television sets were saying and what people were saying.

In the last one month, we have connected with the people of Benaras. It is now a neck-to-neck fight with the BJP here.

The people who are saying this would, if they could, make Modi the prime minister of this country without the bother of going through an election.

What, according to you, is the ground reality?

The reality is that there is a neck-to-neck fight in this constituency. Let us see what happens on May 12.

Image: Aam Aadmi Party leader Manish Sisodia.

What about the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, which heads the government in the state? Do they feature in the equation at all?

The Congress and the SP have lost their ground.

As for Modi, he is surviving on advertisements, the media and his money power.