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Table of Contents
Proposition
Alfresco provides an open-standards, open-source content repository with compatibility to legacy systems. The initial offering will be attractive to teams building portals and content collaboration. The value to a customer is the utilisation of low cost software without vendor lock in, with no risk to the development or production use of the software.
Opportunity
According to surveys, the number one problem facing the $2.5B content management industry is the high cost of commercial software followed by lack of flexibility, customization, usability and inability to migrate old content. Target is professional developers of portals, content applications and on-line services struggle to meet the needs of end-users creating and sharing content as compliance, knowledge sharing and e-business initiatives move higher on the IT agenda, especially in content-intensive industries such as financial services and life sciences. End users prefer to just use shared file systems and e-mail to share and manage content.
Product Positioning
Alfresco solves the major problems facing enterprise users of content management with an open-standards, open-source content management system and repository. Alfresco reduces the software, hardware, development and deployment cost of ECM by one-fifth by using open source distribution and a low resource architecture. Alfresco’s out of the box content management components deliver content solutions in a fraction of the time. Alfresco’s automated processing dramatically simplifies content contribution, substantially reducing people and training costs. Our next generation modular component architecture pushes intelligence closer to the content to avoid replicating business logic in applications, portals and websites. Alfresco’s distributed architecture increases the sharing and synchronization between departments and partners. By implementing open standards, Alfresco avoids vendor lock-in. Open source means Alfresco’s community continues innovating the product over time.
Team
Alfresco has one of the most experienced teams in enterprise software in Europe and in content management in the world. CEO John Powell was the former COO of Business Objects with 25 years experience. CTO John Newton was the founder and architect of Documentum with 25 years experience. The engineering team was responsible for Documentum’s Java Web Development Kit and portal integrations.
Content Management Market
Content Management is now perceived as a fundamental requirement to meet challenges of business regulation and compliance. There are dozens of vendors in the content management space. The commercial space is dominated by the Enterprise Content Management vendors such as Documentum, IBM, FileNet and OpenText (Note 2). Microsoft is commoditizing the departmental & SME market with Sharepoint. In 2004, the content management market was over $2B in revenue from a consolidating number of vendors and $1.1B in support and services revenue, conditions ripe for open source (Note 3). Most open source content management products are for web CM. These are generally amateur efforts, and none support enterprise and content management standards. Similarly the architectures of current ECM products are old, complex, and proprietary with poor interoperability; this has been the primary cause of failure of current projects. The current fragmentation of the market means most enterprises have still not bought an enterprise wide standard that creates a lower barrier to entry than MySQL faced in the RDBMS market.
Open Source Business Model
For customers, the open source model ensures customization, rapid innovation, low cost and low risk. For the company it minimises capital by leveraging the internet low cost of distribution and scaleable low-cost engineering. By addressing a market of inherent complexity and offering a product that stores and manages valuable business information, we are confident we can build a company offering value added services to customers for support, indemnity, certification and integration. Alfresco will offer priority support for defined configurations, migration services, priority patches. We will initially target enterprises as a low-cost, open-source alternative to Microsoft SharePoint followed by ISVs as an embedded solution spreading usage.
Risks and Mitigation
Alfresco’s concepts and strategy have been validated by speaking to over 30 experts in open source and content management.
John Newton, as the co-founder of Documentum, knows the content management space extremely well. There are few technical risks as the development team have built these types of systems before and have a head start with an existing core framework. Market risks are mitigated by having a low cost model and a modern, modular architecture to compete against commercial vendors where customers are dissatisfied with high costs and vendor lock-in. Open source has no dominant supplier and the team’s heritage is much stronger than any open source provider.
We believe the services model rather than proprietary licences to be more applicable to our business and also to be more successful.
Notes
1) A world-wide survey of content management users by the Institute for Information Architecture across 400 enterprise CM users recently uncovered that the number one problem facing CM initiatives was the high cost of commercial software followed by lack of flexibility, customization, usability and inability to migrate old content.
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Sunday, June 22, 2014
Corroborating Haynes Labels
A drum in my personal collection manufactured by J. C. Haynes & Co. bears a fantastic label inside which reads in part: "Manufacturers and Importers of Brass and German Silver Musical Instruments. / J. C. Haynes & Co., / Importers, Wholesale and Retail Dealers in / Musical Instruments, Strings, Sheet Music, and Musical Merchandise. / 33 COURT ST., opp. the Court House. / John C. Haynes. Oliver Ditson. C. H. Ditson. J. E. Ditson." Left incomplete, however, are the blanks where the date and owners name can be filled in. Even upon close inspection, no handwriting can be made out. One theory as to why this information isn't present is that the ink has simply faded over time. It now appears more likely that these blanks were never filled in at all. We can say this with a bit of confidence after comparing it with another similar instrument.
J. C. Haynes & Co. Drum, ca. 1870s - 1880s
J. C. Haynes & Co. Drum Label, ca. 1870s - 1880s
The example seen below was recently offered up on ebay by a seller from Texas with the username "all_things_peacock". The drum is quite similar to mine, especially upon viewing the shells from the inside. Both drum appear to be made of a dark hardwood and have narrow reinforcing rings made of a lighter colored wood at each bearing edge. The labels on these two instruments are a perfect match which helps solve a bit of a mystery as to how old my own drum is. Past research showed that the address on a Haynes label by itself was not enough to accurately date a drum beyond a decades wide window spanning most of the later half of the 19th century. But this new label, complete with a hand written date provides a firm point on the timeline. September 9th, 1880 it reads, which happened to be a Thursday for what it's worth.
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"%1$@ %2$@ has been downloaded and is ready to use! This is an important update; would you like to install it and relaunch %1$@ now?" = "O app %1$@ %2$@ foi baixado e está pronto para uso! Esta é uma atualização importante; deseja instalar e reabrir o app %1$@ agora?";
"%1$@ %2$@ has been downloaded and is ready to use! Would you like to install it and relaunch %1$@ now?" = "O app %1$@ %2$@ foi baixado e está pronto para uso! Deseja instalar e reabrir o app %1$@ agora?";
"%1$@ can't be updated, because it was opened from a read-only or a temporary location." = "O app %1$@ não pode ser atualizado porque foi aberto de um volume somente leitura ou local temporário.";
"Use Finder to copy %1$@ to the Applications folder, relaunch it from there, and try again." = "Use o Finder para copiar o app %1$@ para a pasta Aplicativos, reabra-o e tente novamente.";
"%@ %@ is currently the newest version available." = "%1$@ %2$@ é a versão mais recente disponível.";
"%@ %@ is currently the newest version available.\n(You are currently running version %@.)" = "%1$@ %2$@ é a versão mais recente disponível.\n(Você está usando a versão %3$@.)";
/* Description text for SUUpdateAlert when the update is downloadable. */
"%@ %@ is now available--you have %@. Would you like to download it now?" = "%1$@ %2$@ está disponível — sua versão é %3$@. Deseja baixá-la agora?";
/* Description text for SUUpdateAlert when the update informational with no download. */
"%@ %@ is now available--you have %@. Would you like to learn more about this update on the web?" = "%1$@ %2$@ está disponível — sua versão é %3$@. Deseja saber mais sobre esta atualização na web?";
"%@ downloaded" = "%@ baixados";
"%@ of %@" = "%1$@ de %2$@";
"A new version of %@ is available!" = "Uma nova versão do app %@ está disponível!";
"A new version of %@ is ready to install!" = "Uma nova versão do app %@ está pronta para ser instalada!";
"An error occurred in retrieving update information. Please try again later." = "Ocorreu um erro ao obter informações da atualização. Tente novamente mais tarde.";
"An error occurred while downloading the update. Please try again later." = "Ocorreu um erro ao baixar a atualização. Tente novamente mais tarde.";
"An error occurred while extracting the archive. Please try again later." = "Ocorreu um erro ao extrair o arquivo comprimido. Tente novamente mais tarde.";
"An error occurred while installing the update. Please try again later." = "Ocorreu um erro ao instalar a atualização. Tente novamente mais tarde.";
"An error occurred while parsing the update feed." = "Ocorreu um erro ao analisar o feed de atualização.";
"An error occurred while relaunching %1$@, but the new version will be available next time you run %1$@." = "Ocorreu um erro ao reabrir o app %1$@. A nova versão estará disponível da próxima vez que você abrir o app %1$@.";
"An important update to %@ is ready to install" = "Uma atualização importante do app %@ está pronta para ser instalada!";
/* the unit for bytes */
"B" = "B";
"Cancel" = "Cancelar";
"Cancel Update" = "Cancelar Atualização";
"Checking for updates..." = "Buscando atualizações…";
/* Take care not to overflow the status window. */
"Downloading update..." = "Baixando atualização…";
/* Take care not to overflow the status window. */
"Extracting update..." = "Extraindo atualização…";
/* the unit for gigabytes */
"GB" = "GB";
"Install and Relaunch" = "Instalar e Reabrir";
/* Take care not to overflow the status window. */
"Installing update..." = "Instalando atualização…";
/* the unit for kilobytes */
"KB" = "KB";
/* Alternative name for "Install" button if we have a paid update or other update
without a download but with a URL. */
"Learn More..." = "Saber Mais…";
/* the unit for megabytes */
"MB" = "MB";
/* OK button. */
"OK" = "OK";
/* Status message on progress window once download has finished. */
"Ready to Install" = "Pronto para Instalar";
/* Message that is optionally shown at startup to allow users to turn on/off update checks. */
"Should %1$@ automatically check for updates? You can always check for updates manually from the %1$@ menu." = "Deseja que o app %1$@ busque atualizações automaticamente? Você pode buscar atualizações manualmente, através do menu %1$@.";
"The update is improperly signed." = "A atualização está assinada incorretamente.";
"Update Error!" = "Erro de atualização!";
"Updating %@" = "Atualizando o app %@";
/* 'Error' message when the user checks for updates but is already current or the feed doesn't contain any updates. (not necessarily shown in UI) */
"You already have the newest version of %@." = "Você já possui a versão mais recente do app %@.";
/* Status message shown when the user checks for updates but is already current or the feed doesn't contain any updates. */
"You're up-to-date!" = "O app está atualizado!";
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On Monday, three Democratic presidential candidates—Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley—gave half-hour speeches at the National Council of La Raza’s annual convention in Kansas City.
While Clinton spoke with familiarity to an audience she’s long known, it was Sanders whose speech was the most riveting, drawing twice as many applause interruptions as Clinton's.
Sanders' speech to the nation's largest Latino civil rights organization was notable because he confronted the "stain of racism," his father’s immigrant experience and his impoverished upbringing, and he went into greater detail than Clinton about what federal government could and should do to create more dignity and economic security for individuals and families.
Many pundits have written that Sanders has a problem addressing audiences of color, because he comes from nearly all-white Vermont. But Sanders’ La Raza speech shows that he can deeply connect with Latino audiences. What follows is a transcript of excerpts from his remarks that prompted 45 applauses and a concluding standing ovation.
Excerpts from Sanders' La Raza Speech
These are tough times for our country. And it is absolutely essential that we involve more people in the political process, that we provide a voice for those people who have no voice, for those people who are in the shadows, and that we engage in serious debate on serious issues—and that is exactly what La Raza has been doing and will do. (applause)
I want to focus on three issues. I want to talk about the stain of racism in this country. I want to talk about the need for real immigration reform. (applause) And I want to talk about economic policies that address the grotesque levels of income and wealth inequality in America (applause) and the need to create an economy that works for all of us and not just a handful of billionaires. (applause)
Brothers and sisters, throughout history, for whatever reason — and I’m not a psychiatrist — racism has been a stain on human existence… This issue was raised, interestingly enough, just a few days ago when Pope Francis, one of the very great leaders in this world today, stated and I quote, “I humbly ask forgiveness. Not only for the offense of the church herself, but also for the crimes committed against the Native people during the so-called conquest of America.” End of quote. That’s Pope Francis. (applause)
Racism has plagued this country for centuries. We should be proud, however, that in recent decades, we have made significant progress, real progress, in overcoming racism and in defeating it; in creating a country where we judge people, as Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, not on the color of their skin. Not on the language they speak. Not on the country where they came from. But on their character and qualities as human beings. (applause)
We are making progress in the country and there will be no turning back. And let me be very clear in stating that no one—not Donald Trump, not anyone else—will be successful dividing us on race or our country of origin. (applause)
America becomes a greater nation, a stronger nation, when we stand together as one people and in a very loud and clear voice, we say no to all forms of racism and bigotry. (applause)
I know something about immigration, because my dad came to this country from Poland at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket, without much of an education, and without knowing the English language. Like immigrants before and since, he worked hard to give his family a better life in the United States. He never made much money. We lived in a three-and-a-half-room rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn, New York. But he worked hard. My mom worked hard. And they were able to create a situation where their two kids went to college. (applause)
When we talk about the Latino community, and in fact, when we talk about America, one critical piece that must be talked about is the need for comprehensive immigration reform. (applause)
Let us be frank. Today’s undocumented workers play an extraordinarily important role in our economy. Without these folks, it is likely that our agricultural system would collapse. (applause)
Undocumented workers are doing the extremely difficult work of harvesting our crops, building our homes, cooking our meals and caring for our children. They are part of the fabric of America. (applause)
Let me tell you my experience, one of my experiences, with undocumented workers. In 2007, I heard about horrendous exploitation in Immokalee, Florida, where undocumented workers grow tomatoes… I saw the conditions, of workers working horrendously long hours and very low wages; very bad working conditions and awful housing. And I’m happy to say that with people working together, we made some progress. Today workers there get better wages, better working conditions and better housing. (applause)
Eleven million people came to this country, who today are undocumented, so that they could feed their families, escape gang violence and desperate economic circumstances. Let me also be very clear, that people came to this country because they knew that there were jobs here. And if anyone thinks that employers—employers throughout this country—did not know that the workers that they were hiring were undocumented, they know nothing about what’s gone on in this country for 50 years. (applause)
Where do we go from here… I believe there should be a responsible path to citizenship so individuals can come out of the shadows (applause), people can walk the streets (applause) with safety, people can hold their heads high. (applause)
The [2013] Senate bill tried to accomplish this important goal, and the time is long overdue for the House of Representatives to take up comprehensive immigration reform. (applause)
The Senate bill contained the provisions of the Dream Act, which I strongly support, and which would offer the opportunity of permanent residency and eventual citizenship of young people who are brought to the United States as children. (applause)
It is my belief that we should recognize the young men and women who comprise the dreamers for what they are—American kids who deserve the right to legally be in the country they know as home. (applause)
This is not to say that I do not have significant criticisms of this long and complicated bill. I believe the pathway to citizenship was unnecessarily linked to border security treaties—measures that many believe were put in place so that the path to citizenship would be delayed or even denied for the millions of undocumented people here; and I want to change those provisions. (applause)
I also believe that the penalties and fines of the bill would be hard for the poor, essentially preventing them from accessing the path to legal residency and eventual citizenship. (applause)
To be meaningful, a pathway to citizenship needs to be achievable for the millions of workers at the low end of the economic class. These and other barriers of the bill, including the use of more than a decade that it would take to achieve citizenship, make it a flawed piece of legislation and needs to be improved. (applause)
Until we can pass comprehensive immigration reform, we must be aggressive in pursuing policies that are humane and sensible and that keep families together. (applause)
This includes taking measures that are currently available, including using the presidential power of executive order when it is appropriate. (applause)
While the Senate passed the Dream Act in its immigration bill, and the House has not acted, I think President Obama did exactly the right thing with his executive order for childhood arrivals. That was a good first step, but it should be expanded. Deferred action should include the parents of citizens (applause), the parents of legal permanent residents (applause) and the parents of dreamers. (applause)
We should be pursuing policies that unite families, not tear them apart. (applause)
Let me now touch on a broader issue that impacts all Americans, but especially lower-income people, whether Latino, African American, white, Native American, Asian or whatever. And here is the reality. The reality is that for the last 40 years, the great middle class of this country has been disappearing… And while millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, there is another reality that we have got to put on the table: and that is that almost all of the new wealth and income being created in America today, and in the last many years, has gone to the top 1 percent. And that’s wrong. (applause)
It is not acceptable that youth unemployment in this country has reached tragic proportions… For white kids, that number is 33 percent. For Hispanic kids, it is 36 percent. For African-American kids, it is 51 percent. That is unacceptable. And maybe, just maybe, instead of building more jails, and locking up more people (applause) …maybe, just maybe, we should be investing in jobs and education for our young people. (applause)
I want America to be known as the best-educated country in the world, not the country with more people in jail than any other country. (applause)
When we talk about the problems of America, it is not only jobs; it is income. We need to raise the minimum wage, which today is a starvation wage of $7.25 to $15 an hour, so that anyone who works (applause) in this country does not live in poverty. (applause)
We talk about the need to compete in a highly competitive global economy. If we are going to compete effectively, we need the best-educated workforce in the world. And today in America we have the shameful situation of hundreds of thousands of bright qualified young people who want to go to college, but can’t go to college, because their families do not have enough money. That is grossly unfair to those young people and grossly unfair, and dumb for the future of the American economy—that is why I have introduced legislation that would make public colleges and public universities tuition-free. (applause)
In my view, furthermore, to be a great country, our government has to start protecting working families and not just wealthy campaign contributors. (applause)
That means policies which end voter suppression. (applause)
There are politicians who are simply cowardly, are afraid to face the people because they know their ideas do not represent the majority. The only way they win is by creating situations that make it difficult for people to vote. I want to see us have the highest voter turnout in the world. I want to see us make it easier to vote, (applause) not harder for people to vote. (applause)
The United States is the only major industrialized country that does not guarantee medical and parental leave for its people. That’s wrong. When a woman has a baby, regardless of her income, she should be able to stay home with that baby (applause) and not be forced to go back to work. (applause)
We need to overturn this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision (applause) which allows billionaires to buy elections. (applause)
I voted for the Affordable Care Act, but it doesn’t go far enough. Every other major industrialized country guarantees healthcare to all of its people as a right, and so should we in the United States of America. (applause)
We are, in America today, the wealthiest country in the history of the world. But most people don’t know that because almost all of the wealth rests in the hands of the few. So what I would like you to do is to think big, not small. Think of a nation where every working parent has quality and affordable childcare. (applause) Think of a nation… where every person, regardless of income, can get all of the education that they need. (applause) Think of a nation where youth unemployment is not over 30 percent, but are in school or have training or have quality jobs. (applause)
Last but not least, think of a nation where every person in this country—no matter their race, no matter their country of origin, no matter their religion, no matter their disability, no matter their sexual orientation—that all come together, to create the greatest country that anyone has even seen; a country that works for all of our people, and we do it when we stand together, and we do not allow people to divide us, divide us, divide us. (applause)”
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Bowie Independent School District
The Bowie Independent School District is a public school district based in Bowie, Texas (USA). Located in Montague County, the district also serves the city of Sunset. Small portions of the district extend into Jack and Clay counties.
Finances
As of the 2010-2011 school year, the appraised valuation of property in the district was $603,249,000. The maintenance tax rate was $0.104 and the bond tax rate was $0.025 per $100 of appraised valuation.
Academic achievement
In 2011, the school district was rated "academically acceptable" by the Texas Education Agency. Forty-nine percent of districts in Texas in 2011 received the same rating. No state accountability ratings will be given to districts in 2012. A school district in Texas can receive one of four possible rankings from the Texas Education Agency: Exemplary (the highest possible ranking), Recognized, Academically Acceptable, and Academically Unacceptable (the lowest possible ranking).
Historical district TEA accountability ratings
2011: Academically Acceptable
2010: Recognized
2009: Academically Acceptable
2008: Academically Acceptable
2007: Academically Acceptable
2006: Academically Acceptable
2005: Academically Acceptable
2004: Academically Acceptable
Schools
In the 2011-2012 school year, the district operated four schools.
Bowie High (Grades 9-12)
Bowie Junior High (Grades 6-8)
Bowie Intermediate (Grades 3-5)
Bowie Elementary (Grades PK-2)
See also
List of school districts in Texas
List of high schools in Texas
References
External links
Bowie ISD
Category:School districts in Texas
Category:School districts in Montague County, Texas
Category:School districts in Jack County, Texas
Category:School districts in Clay County, Texas
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This is an argument Trump’s allies have made for weeks. “Case closed,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said nine days ago when asked about whether he would call former White House counsel Donald McGahn to testify. “It’s over, folks,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said immediately after the Mueller report was released. The White House even declared “case closed” before we saw the report. “I don’t think it is going to be damaging,” press secretary Sarah Sanders said of the report, after Attorney General William P. Barr’s letter summarized its top conclusions. “We consider this to be case closed.”
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That early declaration should show you just how much of a tactic this is. There are a whole host of reasons this claim is problematic — both procedurally and rhetorically.
The main reason is that Mueller expressly left this as a matter for others to decide. He decided not to render a traditional opinion on whether to accuse Trump of obstruction of justice, citing existing Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president. He also said he would have exonerated Trump on obstruction if he could, but added explicitly that the report “does not exonerate him.”
And while doing so, Mueller noted that impeachment is an alternative method for holding a president accountable — and also that a president isn’t immune from criminal prosecution after leaving office. “A possible remedy through impeachment for abuses of power would not substitute for potential criminal liability after a President leaves office,” Mueller wrote in a footnote. He explicitly declined to clear Trump and noted potential future actions that could be taken.
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The second reason is that there are plenty of unresolved questions. Even if you accept Graham’s argument that McGahn’s 30 hours of cooperation are contained in the report and that his testimony would be redundant, there are the 14 cases Mueller referred out, some of which are ongoing. There is the Southern District of New York’s investigation, which has implicated Trump in Michael Cohen’s criminal campaign finance violations. There are the questions about Trump’s finances and his still-unreleased tax returns, which Mueller didn’t deal with in his report. The New York Times reported that Trump and his siblings obtained their father’s wealth through, in some cases, “outright fraud.”
And there are of course Mueller’s newly revealed concerns about Barr’s handling of his report. As I wrote Monday, there are some key unresolved questions on which Mueller could provide some important clarity, even if he is circumspect in testifying, as many expect he would be. The last word from Mueller right now is that he believes Barr fed misinformation about his report and that the public was misunderstanding it. Perhaps he’s satisfied now that the full report is out and people can draw their own conclusions, but we don’t know that to be the case.
And just from a strictly rhetorical perspective, the “case closed” claim is pretty discordant. Trump spent much of his 2016 fomenting “Lock her up!” chants about Hillary Clinton, despite the FBI having announced explicitly that it wouldn’t charge her with a crime. And in that case, it was because of the evidence — not some Justice Department policy saying they couldn’t indict Clinton.
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The Mueller report also revealed that Trump, after taking office, tried at least three times to get the Justice Department to prosecute Clinton. So Trump wanted the Justice Department to prosecute someone whom it had explicitly declined to, but his White House and allies say a report that explicitly does not “exonerate” him is “case closed.”
The argument from there, I suppose, would be that Mueller may not have cleared Trump, but that Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein then concluded they wouldn’t accuse Trump. Even if you set aside that Trump recently appointed Barr, and Barr’s controversial handling of the matter, he was confirmed by the Senate as attorney general and does have authority over the probe. He’s welcome to make what conclusion he wanted to.
But even in his testimony last week, Barr made a point to emphasize that he hadn’t completely cleared Trump.
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“No, I didn’t exonerate,” Barr said. “I said that we did not believe that there was sufficient evidence to establish an obstruction, an offense which is the job of the Justice Department, and the job of the Justice Department is now over.”
Wait, you might be saying, so Barr said it was case closed? Not exactly. Here’s what came next.
“The report is now in the hands of the American people,” he said. “Everyone can decide for themselves. There’s an election in 18 months. That’s a very democratic process, but we’re out of it.”
Congress is part of that Democratic process, as the representatives of the American people. Congress also holds in its power the only remedy for holding a president accountable while he or she is in office. Exactly what course it should take is up for it and the people who elect it to decide. McConnell and the White House have decided it’s time to move on, and from a political standpoint that’s not surprising.
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Niepoczołowice railway station
Niepoczołowice is a non-operational PKP railway station in Niepoczołowice (Pomeranian Voivodeship), Poland.
Lines crossing the station
References
Niepoczołowice article at Polish stations database, URL accessed at 18 March 2006
Category:Railway stations in Pomeranian Voivodeship
Category:Disused railway stations in Pomeranian Voivodeship
Category:Wejherowo County
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Clinton backs space lab, congressional aides say
June 16, 1993|By Robert W. Stewart | Robert W. Stewart,Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has decided to push for construction of a sophisticated, orbiting space laboratory that would make use of much of the technology already developed for the controversial space station Freedom, congressional aides said yesterday.
Mr. Clinton all but announced his intentions at a news conference, taking pains to highlight the project's virtues as he spoke to reporters. The president promised a formal statement within a few days.
"I do think it's important for us to recognize that the space station offers us the potential of working with other nations and continuing our lead in a very important area, and having a significant technological impact," the president said.
During a Monday meeting with the top congressional backers of the project, Vice President Al Gore and White House Science Adviser John Gibbons strongly suggested that the president had decided to proceed with the program, sources told the Los Angeles Times.
"I think the crisis has passed about what the design will look like," said a top aide to one of those who was present. Among those who attended the meeting were Rep. George E. Brown Jr., a California Democrat who is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, the committee that oversees NASA and its programs; Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, the Maryland Democrat who chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA; and Rep. Louis Stokes, an Ohio Democrat who is Ms. Mikulski's counterpart in the House.
At the news conference, Mr. Clinton also embraced a call for dramatic changes in the way NASA manages its major projects, endorsing the findings of a 16-member panel of aerospace industry experts that reviewed the space station program.
Among other things, the experts called for streamlining space station management and cutting by 30 percent the number of NASA and private contractor employees assigned to the project.
Congressional sources predicted that Mr. Clinton will recommend some combination of two of the three options for continuing the space station program that were presented to the White House last week.
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Bloomington, IN - As No. 19 Indiana heads to the Big Ten Cross Country Championships this weekend in East Lansing, Mich., head coach Robert Chapman sat down with iuhoosiers.com to discuss the all-important month of November.
Now that the first of the big three meets (league, regional and national) is here this week, how does that impact this week's training? What is the difference between your team's training approach between two weeks from the race and week of the race?
RC: "What is unique is that the Regional and National races are 10,000m. Some teams like to taper and add speed to the training at the end of the season. Our philosophy has been to keep training on track for running 10,000m two times in nine days (at the Regional and Nationals). Our strength is our strength, so we need to stick with that."
If you had to pick one runner who could surprise at the Big Ten meet, who would that be and why?
RC: "I've been very pleased with the progression of our entire crew. They have done a great job so far this fall. While some of our guys were high profile guys in high school, a good portion of our crew are guys who have been grinding it our for four or five years. I feel we've been over-achieving to accomplish all that we have. I think it may suprise some people to see where Chad Andrews will likely finish, simply because he hasn't been front and center in races so far. He's always done a solid job of being prepared for the championship part of the season."
Obviously, a great performance at regionals earns your team an NCAA at-large bid. Thus, more emphasis may be placed on that meet than the Big Ten meet. What are the keys to maintaining this focus for three straight weeks?
RC: "While we never downplay the Big Ten Championships, we also have to keep perspective that the season doesn't end with the Big Ten meet either. It is a lot like basketball and the conference tourney versus the NCAA tourney. We want to go out and battle to finish as high as we can in the conference championships, but we also know that the "big dance" is in front of us as well."
How does the balance of Big Ten cross country compare from 2002 to 2003?
RC: "Well, right now, there are three teams ranked in the top seven in the nation. So we are without a doubt the deepest conference in the nation, by far. That's a strong statement, considering the Big Ten had seven teams out of the 31 at the NCAA Championships last year."
When the season starts in August, you have goals that you hope to attain by November. How does the current condition of the team compare to goals set nearly three months ago?
RC: "Fitness-wise, we are very strong. I have no worries whatsoever from a physical standpoint. This is the most experienced team, in terms of NCAA Championship experience, that Indiana University has had since 1980. So in terms of confidence, we are certainly prepared. In terms of achieving goals, I think a lot is going to depend on how hungry these guys are."
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Q:
rel and href match
http://jsfiddle.net/aprWP/
<a href="#numtag-1">One</a>
<a href="#numtag-2">Two</a>
<a href="#numtag-3">Three</a>
<div class="numtag-1">One</div>
<div class="numtag-2">Two</div>
<div class="numtag-3">Three</div>
.. on hover the appropriate div should toggle class 'active'.
Tried a lot of things but can't get it to work.
Thanks
A:
Using a combination of hover event and toggleClass:
$('a').hover(function() {
$('div.' + $(this).attr('href').substring(1)).toggleClass('active');
});
http://jsfiddle.net/aprWP/7/
Changed to use substring as I think that's a better way of doing it.
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Richard premiered Courtney Barnett's new single; spoke to Alison Wonderland about her new song and her continuing US success; plus hear new Khalid, Hein Cooper, Jai Wolf, Amber Mark, and more...
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Post navigation
Mounties Sweep Past Geoducks, 3-0
OLYMPIA, Wash. – Following a close start to the match, the Eastern Oregon Mountaineers put on the gas to sweep the Evergreen Geoducks, 25-18, 25-13, 25-15, in a Cascade Conference volleyball match on Friday evening at CRC Gymnasium in Olympia, Wash.
In the first set, Eastern Oregon (7-2, 1-0 CCC) and Evergreen (0-6, 0-1 CCC) kept it close as the Mounties only led by a pair midway through the set. EOU eventually pulled out ahead, using a 7-1 run to collect the 25-18 set one victory. The Mounties hit .367 in the first frame, connecting for 14 kills and three errors on 30 attacks. On the other side of the net, the Geoducks had their top hitting set of the match, putting down 12 kills with eight errors on 35 attacks for a clip of .114.
A run of nine straight points gave Eastern Oregon the early advantage in set two as the Geoducks couldn’t come back, allowing the Mounties to take a two-set lead with a 25-13 win. EOU hit .429 on the frame with 15 kills and three errors on 28 attacks. The Geoducks were in the negative, hitting -.036 with seven kills and eight errors on 28 total swings.
Another nine-point run put the Mounties in control of set three as the Geoducks had another poor-hitting frame. Evergreen hit just -.061 in the final set, putting down six kills with eight errors on 33 attacks. On the other side, EOU hit just .156 but their 11 kills and six errors on 32 attacks was enough to collect the 25-15 win and the match, three sets to none.
Evergreen was led by seven kills from Brittany Covert (Chino Hills, Calif./Northern Michigan Univ.). Merideth Gurr (Tacoma, Wash./Tacoma CC) led all players with 13 digs on the night while Sasha Nash (Salt Lake City, Utah/Skyline HS) led the Geoducks with nine assists on the match.
Eastern Oregon was led by a match-high 10 kills from Katie Keeney. Jessica Perron finished with 26 assists on the match while Alisha Crane had her hands in four blocks on the night. EOU outblocked the Geoducks six to four on the night.
Evergreen returns to the court on Saturday night when they play host to College of Idaho. Eastern Oregon continues their road trip as well on Saturday when they travel to Kirkland, Wash. to take on Northwest. Both matches are set to begin at 7 p.m.
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A successful re-trial after clozapine myopericarditis.
Clozapine-induced myopericarditis is a well-described adverse drug reaction. Clozapine is also the most efficacious agent in refractory schizophrenia. We report a case of a patient who was successfully re-trialled on clozapine two years after developing myopericarditis, after which multiple lines of alternative treatment failed. We propose a protocol for safely attempting a re-trial of clozapine in such cases.
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{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
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This current event introduces two concepts that warrant discussion: the commerce clause and nullification.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”1
The commerce clause has historically been viewed as both a grant of congressional authority and as a restriction on states’ powers to regulate. The “dormant” commerce clause refers to the prohibition, implied in the commerce clause, against states passing legislation that discriminates against or excessively burdens interstate commerce.2
While Congress is clearly given authority to prevent states from legislating trade barriers amongst each other, authority to regulate any further than that is arguable.
The meaning of the word “commerce” is a source of much of the controversy. The Constitution does not explicitly define the word. Some argue that it refers simply to trade or exchange, while others claim that the founders intended to describe more broadly commercial and social intercourse between citizens of different states. Thus, the interpretation of “commerce” affects the appropriate dividing line between federal and state power.2
That sums up the commerce clause, without getting too much into the arguments about the scope of authority.
An individual mandate is a requirement by a government that certain individual citizens purchase or otherwise obtain a good or service.3
In short: the Supreme Court is deciding, among other issues, whether the individual mandate to purchase health insurance is constitutional under the commerce clause. The decision should be made today, but the written decision will not be public until June.
This law was written in 2010, and the reason that it only took two years to get to the Supreme Court is likely political, since it usually takes much longer for a case to be selected for hearing by the court, if it is selected. At least twenty-six states oppose Obamacare, yet a federal court is deciding whether the citizens of these states must abide by this law?
The unelected, unaccountable, politically-connected lawyers which make up the Supreme Court have done an absolutely horrible job of upholding the Constitution. In fact, from 1937-1995 the Supreme Court didn’t rule one single congressional act to be outside of their constitutional limits. 60 years – they ruled absolutely nothing unconstitutional, and that included much of the New Deal and all of the Great Society. Since that time, overruling Congress has been a rare occurrence, at best.4
Is the Supreme Court the proper venue for this issue?
When the federal government claims the power to determine the extent of its own powers – unlimited government is already here.4
The legal answer lies in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.5
There is a remedy to the overreach of the federal government: nullification.
When a state nullifies a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or noneffective, within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as the state is concerned. 6
Essentially, nullification is a declaration by the state that the federal law in question is unconstitutional and will not be enforced. A court case may never even make it to the Supreme Court, and it’s difficult to get Congress to repeal statutes. However, nullification takes place at the state level, which is a much more accessible political arena.
Further:
In the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government” and “where powers are assumed [by the general government] which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy.” 6
James Madison, in his Virginia Resolution of 1798, asserted the core premise of all nullification laws– that state governments not only have the right to resist unconstitutional federal acts, but, in order to protect liberty, they are “duty bound to interpose,” or stand between, the federal government and the people of their state” 6
Finally, Obamacare is the perfect example of the involuntary nature of each branch of the federal government. The legislature writes the involuntary law, the judiciary upholds it, and the executive sends you to prison if you don’t follow it.
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PAMAM dendrimers as potential agents against fibrillation of alpha-synuclein, a Parkinson's disease-related protein.
The effect of PAMAM dendrimers (generations G3, G4 and G5) on the fibrillation of alpha-synuclein was examined by fluorescence and CD spectroscopy, TEM and SANS. PAMAM dendrimers inhibited fibrillation of alpha-synuclein and this effect increased both with generation number and PAMAM concentration. SANS showed structural changes in the formed aggregates of alpha-synuclein--from cylindrical to dense three-dimensional ones--as the PAMAM concentration increased, on account of the inhibitory effect. PAMAM also effectively promoted the breaking down of pre-existing fibrils of alpha-synuclein. In both processes--that is, inhibition and disassociation of fibrils--PAMAM redirected alpha-synuclein to an amorphous aggregation pathway.
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{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
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Influence of volatile compounds produced by yeasts predominant during processing of Coffea arabica in East Africa on growth and ochratoxin A (OTA) production by Aspergillus ochraceus.
The effects of volatile compounds produced during coffee processing by Pichia anomala, P. kluyveri and Hanseniaspora uvarum on growth of Aspergillus ochraceus and production of ochratoxin A (OTA) were studied. On malt extract agar (MEA) and on coffee agar (CA), exposure of A. ochraceus to the gaseous phase of malt yeast glucose peptone (MYGP) plates inoculated with P. anomala, P. kluyveri and H. uvarum inhibited fungal growth, with the two Pichia spp. showing the strongest effect. The main esters and alcohols produced by the three yeasts were ethyl acetate, isobutyl acetate, 2-phenyl ethyl acetate, ethyl propionate and isoamyl alcohol. The individual esters and alcohols were found to affect fungal growth. The most effective compound in inhibiting fungal growth was 2-phenyl ethyl acetate; which at 48 microg/l headspace completely inhibited growth of A. ochraceus. Exposure of A. ochraceus to the gaseous phase of MYGP plates inoculated with P. anomala, P. kluyveri and H. uvarum prevented production of OTA. On CA medium, only the headspace of P. anomala and P. kluyveri prevented OTA production. Furthermore, when A. ochraceus was exposed to the headspace of the individual volatile compounds, 2-phenyl ethyl acetate was the most effective in preventing OTA production. Prevention of OTA seems to be due to reduction of fungal biomass.
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{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
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Goldman Sachs strategists have cut their rating on global stocks to “underweight” over a three-month horizon, citing pricey valuations and poor earnings growth.
The bank’s gauge for how investors are feeling about stocks and other riskier assets also isn’t inspiring confidence, said Goldman strategists Christian Mueller-Glissman, Ian Wright and Peter Oppenheimer in a note dated Sunday.
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2018–19 Danish 1st Division
The 2018–19 Danish 1st Division season is the 23rd season of the Danish 1st Division league championship, governed by the Danish Football Association.
The division-champion will be promoted to the 2019–20 Danish Superliga, while the runners-up and the third placed team will face promotion playoffs. The teams in 11th and 12th places are relegated to the 2019–20 Danish 2nd Divisions.
Participants
FC Helsingør finished last in the 2017–18 Danish Superliga relegation play-off and were relegated to the 1st Division after only one season in the first tier. Silkeborg IF lost to Esbjerg fB and Lyngby Boldklub lost to Vendsyssel FF in the relegation play off and were relegated as well. Vejle Boldklub, Esbjerg fB and Vendsyssel FF were promoted to the 2018–19 Danish Superliga.
Brabrand IF and Skive IK were relegated to the 2018–19 Danish 2nd Divisions. Brabrand IF was relegated immediately after just one season at the second tier while Skive IK lasted four seasons in the league. Hvidovre IF and Næstved Boldklub won promotion from the 2017–18 Danish 2nd Divisions. Hvidovre will play at the 1st Division for the first time since 2013–14 season, where as Næstved won promotion after only one season's absence.
Stadia and locations
Personnel and sponsoring
Note: Flags indicate national team as has been defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players and Managers may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
Managerial changes
League table
Play-offs
Relegation play-offs
Matches
Horsens won 2–1 on aggregate.
Hobro won 2–1 on aggregate.
Promotion play-offs
Matches
Lyngby won 4–3 on aggregate and promoted to 2019–20 Danish Superliga
Hobro won 3–0 on aggregate and stayed in the Danish Superliga
Top goalscorers
Notes
References
External links
Danish FA
Category:2018–19 in Danish football
Danish 1st Division
Category:Danish 1st Division seasons
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{
"pile_set_name": "Wikipedia (en)"
}
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Testosterone Is High among Young Black Men with Little Education
Participation in the “honor culture” of poor black inner cities puts young men on constant alert for challenges to their reputations. Hypothetically, this vigilance raises their testosterone (T), which in turn facilitates dominance contests that may end violently. One prior study reports the predicted hormonal pattern including higher T among young black men with low education, compared to young white men with low education, but no race difference in T between young men who are better educated or in older men (Mazur, 1995). However, an attempt to find this pattern on another large sample failed to do so (Mazur, 2009). The present results, using the NHANES 2011–2012 data set, do replicate the predicted pattern among men. The pattern is not seen among teenage boys or among females.
Introduction
Honor Cultures
The high rate of violence in the history of the American South, relative to the North, has been attributed to the South’s “culture of violence” wherein Southern men, when perceiving insults to themselves or their families, are expected to defend their reputations or else lose face (Nisbett, 1993; Nisbett and Cohen, 1996). Apparently Southern men are inordinately sensitive to insult, reacting assertively – sometimes violently – to actions or speech that might not be construed as especially provocative elsewhere.
There may be a general hypersensitivity to insult in any subculture that is (or once was) organized around young men who are unconstrained by traditional community agents of social control, as often occurs in frontier communities, in gangs, among vagabonds or bohemians, and after breakdowns in the social fabric following wars or natural disasters. When young men place special emphasis on protecting their reputations, and they are not restrained from doing so, dominance contests become ubiquitous, the hallmark of male-to-male interaction (Thrasher, 1963; Sanchez-Jankowsky, 1991). This may partially account for the high incidence of violence among young black men in the U.S. In 2013, for example, the FBI reports that 38% of murderers were known to be black (race was unknown for 29% of perpetrators) and 51% of victims were black (The U.S. population was 13% black in 2010). Most perpetrators and victims are males under the age of 30.1
Elijah Anderson, preeminent student of street behavior in the inner cities of America, portrays the importance of dominance contests and their continual presence for poor young black men:
[M]ost youths have…internalized the code of the streets…, which chiefly [has] to do with interpersonal communication…, [including] facial expressions, gait, and verbal expressions – all of which are geared mainly to deterring aggression…
Even so, there are no guarantees against challenges, because there are always people looking for a fight to increase their share of respect – of “juice,” as it is sometimes called on the street. Moreover, if a person is assaulted, it is important, not only in the eyes of his opponent but in the eyes of his “running buddies,” for him to avenge himself. Otherwise, he risks being “tried” (challenged) or “moved on” by any number of others. To maintain his honor, he must show he is not someone to be “messed with” or “dissed.”
…The craving for respect that results gives people thin skins. Shows of deference by others can be highly soothing contributing to a sense of security, comfort, self-confidence, and self-respect….Hence one must be ever vigilant against the transgressions of others or even appearing as if transgressions will be tolerated. Among young people, whose sense of self-esteem is particularly vulnerable, there is an especially heightened concern with being disrespected. Many inner-city young men in particular crave respect to such a degree that they will risk their lives to attain and maintain it (Anderson, 1994, p. 88–99).
The question has been addressed in two large epidemiological studies. One, based on 4,462 male U.S. Army veterans, answered in the affirmative. Younger black men who were poorly educated – those veterans most likely to be participants in inner-city honor cultures – did as a group have very high T; among older men or well-educated men, race made no difference in hormone levels (Mazur, 1995). However, a second study by the same researcher, using a different sample of 1,637 men drawn from the U.S. population, failed to replicate. In that sample, T of young, poorly educated black men was unexceptional, thus contradicting the first study (Mazur, 2009). The present analysis attempts to resolve this difference. Do young black men with little education, those most likely participants in honor cultures, have inordinately high T?
Materials and Methods
The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a continuous program under the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, is designed to assess the health and nutritional status of American children and adults, combining interviews, physical examinations, and laboratory tests. The most recently available dataset, NHANES 2011–2012, is the first in this program to report T measurements.2 In 2011–2012, 9,338 persons selected from 30 study locations completed the interview and examination. The survey oversamples minority groups, then weights observations to be representative of the nation. Here observations are used without weighting. There are 2,841 non-Hispanic whites (30.4% of the sample) and 2,582 non-Hispanic blacks (27.7%), about equally divided by gender, spanning ages from under 1 year to over 80 years old.
Demographic variables include sex, race, age, level of education, and family income (also reported as the ratio of family income to poverty level). Education is coded differently for children (under age 20) than for adults, so they are analyzed separately. Racial categories used here are non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black.
No variable indicates subjects’ residential environment, so they cannot be placed in or out of the inner city. Here, the presumption is made that black inner-city males are concentrated among black men who have below median education, or ≤high school (versus some college). For analysis of children, low socioeconomic status (SES) is indicated by the ratio of family income to poverty level income, dichotomized at the median of 1.76.
Body mass index (BMI) is inversely related to T and therefore an important control variable. BMI is calculated as the subject’s weight (kg) divided by the square of height (m). For adults, a BMI from 18.5 to 25 is regarded as normal, and BMI over 25 as overweight. Marital status is another important control because T declines with marriage (Mazur and Michalek, 1998).
Serum T is reported for about 85% of subjects age six and older. Time of collection is unspecified. Numbers available for this analysis are, for whites, 922 men and 903 women (≥20 years old), plus 242 males and 213 females of ages 6–19, and for blacks, 584 men and 1,036 women, plus 289 males and 464 females of ages 6–19. Serum total T was assayed by isotope dilution liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, using stable isotope labeled internal standards and calibrators.3 Coefficients of variation are reported as <3%. In-house reference means (and ranges) are given as 432 ng/dL (122–1057) for men and 21.2 ng/dL (8.4–48.9) for women, although many values in the dataset fall above or below these ranges. One anomalously high T value of 2,544 ng/dL in a 60-year-old man, far above the next highest level, is discarded as a likely error, leaving the continuous range for T of adult males as 0.3–1,797 ng/dL. Because of concerns about the accuracy of extreme values, data were also analyzed for the T range 2.5–1,000 ng/dL, which eliminated twelve men (six black and six white) ranging in age from 33 to 72 years old. The continuous range for adult females is 0.3–379 ng/dL. The distribution for men has slight positive skew (=1.0). The distribution for women has highly positive skew (=9.6) so female values are transformed to natural logarithms for analysis, reducing skew to −0.2.
Results
Figure 1 shows mean male T by age (collapsed into 10-year age groups). There are four separate plots for black men with ≤high school or some college, and for white men with ≤high school or some college.4 (Plotted points are based on 38–180 subjects.) All plots show T declining with age, with the steepest decline among poorly educated black men. SE bars show considerable overlap among the four plots. However in the 20–29 age group, mean T among black men with ≤high school is 64 ng/dL higher than mean T among better-educated black men (p = 0.02, t-test, two tail), who are similar to whites. In the age group 40–49, black men with ≤high school again have high T compared to the other three plots (p = 0.04, t-test, two tail). Among men 60 years of age or older, whites with ≤high school have the lowest T (p = 0.001, t-test, two tail).5 Reanalysis limited to the T range 2.5–1,000 ng/dL did not affect results to the precision reported here.
T is known to vary inversely with BMI (i.e., fatter men have lower T), and to decrease after men marry (Mazur and Michalek, 1998). Leanness and marital status vary by age and race, so these effects must be controlled. To test differences within each age group, T was regressed on age, education (coded 1 for ≤high school, 0 for some college), BMI, marital status (1 if married, 0 if not), race (1 for black, 0 for white), and an interaction term for race*education (coded 1 for black with ≤high school, 0 otherwise).
Table 1 shows only the regression coefficients for which p ≤ 0.10. Age is a significant predictor only in the 60+ group (which has more age variation than other groups, some of its members more than 80 years old); T declines 6 ng/dL with each year older. Education per se is insignificant within every age group, while BMI is consistently important, an increase of one point lowering T by about 10 ng/dL. Marriage significantly lowers T among men in the middle age groups but not among those older or younger.
TABLE 1
Table 1. Regression coefficients for testosterone (ng/dL) as dependent variable, by age group.*
Race per se is significant only among men 40–50 years old, an age specificity without theoretical explanation. Most relevant for the honor culture hypothesis is the significant interaction of race*education among men 20–29 year old, indicating an increase of 91 ng/dL of T among these young black men with low education.
Does heightened T among young black men with low education begin before age 20? Teenagers have not had the time to advance their education beyond high school, so whether or not one enters college is no longer usable as a proxy for honor culture participation. A suitable alternative is family income (as a ratio of poverty level income), split at the median. Boys are divided into age groups 6–12 years old and 13–19. Sorting these by race, and again by high or low family income, gives groupings with 39–92 subjects. Among mostly prepubescent boys (ages 6–12), T is low, about 35–40 ng/dL, with no differences apparent by race or family income. In teenagers, 13–19 years old, T levels have climbed to around 400 ng/dL, again with no apparent difference by race or family income. If the honor culture heightens T during the late teens, this dataset has insufficient power to detect it.
Honor cultures are cast as male affairs, but with T data in hand for both sexes, it is worth exploring whether or not a similar pattern exists among women. Mean T was calculated as a function of age for the four combinations of race and education used in Table 1 but now for women. All plots show T declining with age, from about 35 ng/dL in the 20–29 age group to about 20 ng/dL among women 60 years and older. The four plots essentially overlap without discernible differences among them. Given the high skew of T among adult females, both raw and ln-transformed values were analyzed with similar results. There is no indication of inordinately high T among young black women with low education.
Discussion
In the NHANES 2011–2012 sample, among young men with no education beyond high school, mean T of blacks is nearly 100 ng/dL higher than mean T of whites. Among older men or better-educated men, race made little difference in hormone levels. This specific pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that young men’s participation in the honor culture of poor black neighborhoods has the effect of elevating T. The finding clarifies an inconsistency between an early study that reported the identical pattern (Mazur, 1995), while a later study failed to find it (Mazur, 2009). When NHANES 2013–2014 becomes available, the test may be run again.
None of these studies were able to sort poorly educated young black men into residential types, whether inner city neighborhoods, suburbs, or rural areas. We cannot tell if their elevated T is a distinctly inner city phenomenon or occurs as well outside these neighborhoods. However, we can infer some additional demographic characteristics of the lowly educated young black men in the NHANES sample by turning to the General Social Surveys (GSS), which since 1972 has annually or biennially sampled the adult U.S. population.6 As of 2014, there were 5,305 men between the ages of 20 and 29 in the cumulative GSS. Of these, a slight majority of black men live inside cities (excluding suburbs) of 50,000 or more population (51% of blacks with no more than high school education, 56% of those better educated) compared to 30% of white men, irrespective of education. Only 46% of the less-educated young black men report having lived with both their mother and father at age 16, compared with 61% of better-educated black men, 72% of less-educated white men, and 81% of better-educated white men. Fifty-eight percent of lowly educated young black men reported being fully employed, compared to 70% of better educated blacks, 61% of lowly educated whites, and 73% of better educated whites. While there is no way to specifically place any of these men in an “honor culture,” the demographic characteristics of America’s young lowly educated black men place them in living situations where honor cultures are reported to occur, and they would be concentrated among the young lowly educated black men of the NHANES sample.
A man who has a recent rise in T, perhaps from a prior victory or a symbolic elevation in status, may be unusually assertive, challenging others in contests for dominance. Theoretically, the winner experiences rising T as a result of his victory, which should sustain or increase his assertiveness and his display of dominant signs such as erect posture, sauntering or striding gait, and direct eye contact with others. Thus bolstered, the dominant actor may seek out new challenges and is primed to win them.
In everyday life, dominance contests are based on subtle cues, not on causing or even threatening physical harm to one’s adversary. But occasionally dominance contests escalate to a violent stage not originally intended or foreseen. The most common type of criminal homicide is what criminologist Jack Katz (1988) calls “the impassioned killing” of someone for what the killer regards as a good moralistic reason, perhaps the defense of his family, his property, or his good name. These are precisely the kinds of killings that might result from a dominance contest that escalated beyond the usual bounds of non-violence.
The literature on T and dominance has for years debated the issue of sex differences. Males produce far higher levels of T than females, their relevant organs are different, and T plays different roles in the development of each sex from the embryonic stage onward. Nonetheless, it remains uncertain whether the relationship between T and dominance is primarily a male mechanism or works in females too (e.g., Carré et al., 2013; Edwards and Castro, 2013). In the present study, at least, the sexes differ because the very high T seen among young black men with low education does not occur among young black women with low education.
The biosocial model sketched here raises issues of scientific validity and policy ethics. The link between T and dominance has primarily correlational support and may be causally inaccurate. Any parsing of biomarkers by race and social class must be sensitive to the potential for invidious comparisons of groups. If high T does facilitate the high violence rate among young black men, there would be a troubling policy question of what, if anything, to do about it. Any notion of a medical or pharmaceutical fix, rather like prescribing Ritalin for hyperactivity, would reek of race-based chemical castration and should be regarded as outside the pale. However, social interventions might be workable and ethically acceptable. In one program, kindergarten boys were randomly assigned to a 10-year intervention or to a control group. The intervention attempted to develop social competencies and classroom performance, as well as training for parents to manage their child’s behavior. Years later, at a mean age of 26 years, participants responded to laboratory provocations. Results indicated that relative to control participants, men from the intervention demonstrated reduced aggression and T reactivity to social provocations (though not reduced basal T). Moreover, reduced T reactivity mediated the effect of intervention on aggressive behavior (Carré et al., 2014).
Author Contributions
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and approved it for publication.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Footnotes
^For each age group, percentages of white and black men with ≤high school are, in their 20s, 28 and 42%; in their 30s, 36 and 49%; in their 40s, 47 and 51%; in their 50s, 31 and 49%, in ages 60+, 43 and 63%.
^Testing the three-way interaction of race, age, and education in an ANOVA format is problematic if the effect is occurring only in the youngest men. Nonetheless, I have made the calculations (with age continuous and centered on zero). The full model, including main effects, three two-way interactions, and one three-way interaction, produces insignificant coefficients. The reason is high multicollinearity between the three-way factor and two of the two-way factors (r = 0.7). Running a model with main effects and the three-way interaction (i.e., no two-way interactions) gives a significant age*education*race coefficient (p = 0.03).
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Mindgame (play)
Mindgame by Anthony Horowitz is a psychological thriller play set in a mental hospital. The play was first performed in 1999 in Colchester before transferring to the West End. It was published by Oberon Books in 2000.
Plot
Mark Styler, a writer of "true crime" stories arrives at the Fairfields experimental hospital for the criminally insane, with the hope of interviewing serial killer Easterman for a new book. He meets Dr. Farquhar, the hospital director, however things don't seem quite right. The doctor is reluctant to let Styler see Easterman, and encourages Styler to leave. Styler, however refuses with the excuse of a long car journey. In the end, he stays and Farquhar offers him dinner. His assistant Nurse Plimpton seems frightened of something, and is anxious. She tries to give a note to Styler, but Farquhar burns it in the bin. She reluctantly makes a pot of tea and liver sandwiches for Styler. After she leaves, the two discuss the book further, but Styler's real feelings about Easterman are revealed. He is desperate to see Easterman, and suggests that he wore a strait-jacket to keep him from damaging anything. Farquhar, seemingly annoyed at this, retrieves a strait jacket from a closet and offers to put it on Styler to show what it is like, and he reluctantly agrees. Once Styler is strapped in, Farquhar taunts him about being mad, and threatens him with a scalpel, then Nurse Plimpton returns, and she knocks Farquhar unconscious with a wine bottle. She explains that Farquhar is in fact Easterman, who killed most of the staff during a "psychiatric drama" session. Nurse Plimpton is in fact Doctor Carol Ennis. She cannot undo the strait jacket straps, and as she bends down to get the scalpel from Easterman, he awakens and grabs her, then stabs her behind a curtain. When Easterman and Styler begin to talk, it turns out the two men used to be neighbours, and Styler admired Easterman, perhaps even loved him. It appears Styler's motives for visiting are not as they appeared to be. Doctor Ennis suddenly awakens, and cries out for help; Easterman straps her to a chair and after removing the jacket, asks Styler to kill her. Styler is tricked into thinking he is Easterman, and they think up various methods, but in the end Styler suffocates her with a carrier bag. Once it is done, he feels guilt but Ennis awakes and now assumes the role of Doctor Farquhar. She and Farquhar, who is now Carol, completely change, and Styler is told he is Easterman and Styler was just his assumed name. He tries to prove them wrong, however his BMW is gone, and the letter he sent to Farquhar is blank. In the end, Styler is forced to believe he is Easterman, however it is never explicitly revealed to the audience who is actually who.
Performances
Mindgame premiered at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester on 2 September 1999, before transferring to the Vaudeville Theatre in London's West End in 2000. That production was directed by Richard Baron. On 9 November 2008, the play premiered Off Broadway in New York City starring Keith Carradine as Dr. Farquhar and directed by Ken Russell, who made his New York City directorial debut with the production. The production closed on 28 December 2008. Another run of performances took place at the Ambassadors Theatre in London in 2018, following a UK tour.
Characters
Seen
Mark Styler, a writer of true crime stories, who also wrote in memory of his mother. He comes to Fairfields hoping to interview a serial killer for a new book.
Doctor Farquhar, the director of the hospital. He is relatively new to the hospital, and is trying to turn it around.
Nurse Paisley, Farquhar's nurse.
Unseen
Borson, a security guard.
Victoria Barlow, Styler's mother.
Easterman, a notorious serial killer who Styler wants to investigate.
References
Mindgame by Anthony Horowitz
Albemarle - Archive
Anthony Horowitz - Work
Mindgame's Plot Twists Will Twist Your Mind
External links
Mindgame the play site
New York Times Theater Review by Christopher Isherwood, 9 November 2008
Category:1999 plays
Category:British plays
Category:Thriller plays
Category:Works by Anthony Horowitz
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French ship Soleil-Royal (1692)
The Soleil Royal (Regal Sun) was a First Rank ship of the line of the French Royal Navy.
This ship was originally planned to be a 2nd Rank two-decker to be built at Brest, but - following the loss of fifteen major French warships by Anglo-Dutch attacks at Cherbourg and La Hogue during the first few days of June, 1692 (N.S.) - she was ordered in the same week to be built instead as a First Rank three-decker of 104 guns. On 21 June she was given the name Foudroyant to replace the previous ship bearing that name (destroyed at La Hogue). She was designed by Étienne Hubac and laid down the same month at Brest Dockyard, and launched on 24 December 1692.
Two more three-deckers were ordered and begun at Brest during June (as Merveilleux) and August 1692 (as Terrible, and a further three-decker was ordered there on 20 January 1693, which Louis XIV ordered should bear the name Soleil Royal to replace the previous ship bearing that name (destroyed at Cherbourg). All three ships were to be designed and built by Blaise Pangalo. However, Étienne Hubac begged the King that that name should be given to the ship he was building instead, because the previous Soleil Royal had been built by his own father, Laurent Hubac, and - as he himself had rebuilt that ship from the keel up at Brest in 1689 - he still possessed the moulds for that ship. Moreover, he pointed out to the King that his own ship would be some 4 feet longer and some 200 tons larger than Pangalo's new ship, so would be more deserving of the name that honoured Louis XIV himself. On 1 March 1693, the King agreed to Hubac's proposal and the names of the two ships were exchanged. Hubac's ship was thus completed under the name Soleil Royal in April 1693 and brought into service.
The new ship took part in the Battle of Lagos on 28 June 1693, and subsequently in the Battle of Vélez-Málaga on 24 August 1704, where she was the flagship of Lieut-Général Joseph Andrault, Marquis de Langeron. She was scuttled in Toulon on Louis's orders in July 1707 to avoid being set alight by the bombardment by the English fleet. She was later put back afloat, but in October 1713 she was judged unfit for service, and was taken to pieces during 1714.
References
Nomenclature des Vaisseaux du Roi-Soleil de 1661 a 1715. Alain Demerliac (Editions Omega, Nice – various dates).
The Sun King's Vessels (2015) - Jean-Claude Lemineur; English translation by François Fougerat. Editions ANCRE.
Winfield, Rif and Roberts, Stephen (2017) French Warships in the Age of Sail 1626-1786: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth Publishing. .
Category:Ships of the line of the French Navy
Category:1690s ships
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Sign up to our free newsletter for the top North Wales stories sent straight to your e-mail Sign up now! Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email
A cycle path which may be easier to follow after a couple of drinks has caught the attention of a world record-breaking cyclist.
Former professional cyclist Jens Voigt, 43, was left almost speechless when he saw a picture of one of Colwyn Bay’s less impressive contributions to the Wales Cycle Path - the zig-zagging section on the promenade.
German superstar Voigt, who broke the one-hour cycling world record in Switzerland last year, posted the picture on his Facebook page with the hashtag “wow”.
He cycled 51.115km in an hour to break the record in September.
(Image: Steve Lewis)
Voigt’s post on Colwyn Bay’s unusual cycle path has been “liked” more than 6,500 times and shared almost 1,000 times.
As the photograph on his Facebook page shows, the path was painted in a distinctive zig-zag pattern to avoid lampposts on the prom.
As our more recent photo shows, the lampposts have now been removed but the zig-zag path remains.
Those who wrote on the German cycling legend’s Facebook page claimed it’s not just in Wales that you get such cycleways.
According to one poster called Kunigunde Müller, there is a similar path in Karlsrühe in Germany.
Georg Michael said Colwyn Bay’s cycle lane looked like it had been designed for the drunken cyclist.
Voigt is currently in New York and was unavailable for further comment.
Conwy council and Sustrans, who look after the cycle paths, said: "The cycle lane used to weave in and out around lighting columns on the seaward side of the promenade.
"These lighting columns have now been moved to the other side of the road to reduce the corrosion that was occurring due to seawater spray.
"We’re currently drawing up plans to rationalise and straighten the lane markings now that the lighting columns have been relocated."
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for insulating elements and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for simultaneously insulating a plurality of electrically conductive elements to achieve a more reliable bonded flat electrical cable in a more economical manner, for facilitating exposure of the electrically conductive elements to allow electrical contact to be made, and for bonding flexible electrical circuits.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Electrical cable is simple a plurality of electrically conductive elements aligned parallel one another in a predetermined spacing encapsulated (except for the ends of the cable) with synthetic resin electrical insulative material. Physically, the cable appears as a thin flexible strip of synthetic resin having small embedded metallic wires.
Efforts to make electrical cable less expensively, quicker, and more reliable have spawn many methods and apparatus exemplified by the prior art. One such method, sometimes referred to as the hot-roll method, comprises locating two grooved rollers closely adjacent one another, heating the rollers to a temperature to cause fusion of the synthetic resin insulative material used and passing a plurality of conductive elements sandwiched between insulative strips to achieve a bonded electrical cable. Another method, such as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 3,082,292 to R. W. Gore, comprises moving the sandwich of electrical wire and insulator between two grooved rollers and then passing the formed but unbonded cable to an oven to achieve bonding. Yet, another method as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 3,531,045 to L. L. Emmel et al., commonly referred to as the chill-roll process, comprises passing the layered electrically conductive elements and insulative material through a heating device to heat the entire unbonded cable to well over the temperature necessary for bonding and then passing the cable through two grooved rollers which are at a temperature below that of bonding.
Each of the prior art processes provided an unreliable bond; that is, fusion of the abutting surfaces of the insulative material could not be reliably accomplished without causing substantial difficulties with other portions of the cable. For example, some of the methods required heating to a substantially higher temperature than necessary to cause fusion to compensate for heat loss before maximum pressure is brought to bear to cause bonding; this excessive heat frequently oxidized the electrically conductive elements thereby making future electrical contact difficult. Excessive heat creates the generation of excessive amounts of gas causing gas bubbles in the cable. Still another problem related to internal stresses formed in the insulative material during the insulative material's manufacture. When heated, the areas, representing overly stressed and normally stressed regions, expand at different rates causing wrinkles in the insulative cover. Removing wrinkles requires critical machine adjustments and excessive machine tension applied to the insulative material during the cable-making process. Upon cutting such a cable for use, the insulative material tends to recede from the conductive elements leaving the ends of the conductive elements undesirably exposed. A further problem with overheating occurs after pressure has been released; if the cable is still above fusion temperature, there is a tendency for the insulative material to deform to its original flat shape and unbond. One solution to the latter problem is to use more adhesive material to retard undesirable deformation. However, this results in a cable which is substantially thicker than need be and which concurrently increases material expenses.
Another major difficulty facing the electrical cable industry and its customers is quickly, economically and reliably exposing the electrically conductive elements of a bonded cable to allow electrical contact to be made. Present methods include grinding away the insulative material in order to expose the conductive elements; this frequently causes damage to the conductive elements since it is difficult to accurately control the grinder. Another method includes the application of heat to the insulative material to allow its separation from the conductive elements; this causes deformation of the cable, oxidizes the conductive elements and enhances the chance of cable delamination. Neither of the above methods are suited for fully automatic operation since both methods disturb the positioning of the conductive elements which is critical for automatic connection to another electrical element such as an electrical connector having multiple electrical contact positions. For example, a three inch wide cable may easily contain sixty electrically conductive wires in alignment, each wire parallel to the others. Position tolerances are .+-. 0.0005 inches. Grinding heating or cutting through insulation which may be 0.005 inches is exceedingly delicate and difficult.
Still another problem faces the flexible circuit industry. A flexible circuit may be defined as a specifically designed layer of electrically conductive material bonded between two layers of insulative material. Insuring a reliable bond between the two insulative layers and achieving this bond in a relatively short time span has always eluded solution.
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Within the field of networking and internetworking, communications and information traffic continues to grow. Increases to computer processing speeds and enhanced transmission mediums such as optical fiber and Internet-capable cellular phones further add to the amount of potential network traffic. In parallel, increased network traffic corresponds to still further increases in the variety of information moving through the network. Businesses are interconnecting more with each other, with customers, with vendors, with government agencies, and with the public. Two major concerns within such an increasingly busy network are managing the movement of such traffic and ensuring the integrity of information content in terms of connectivity and security. Previous solutions to protecting information assets has included more secure computers and software with virus detection and prevention, firewalls, host and network intrusion detection, encryption, secure host configurations. Such systems, however, suffer from continuous software-patch management, access control and review, penetration testing, and vulnerability assessments. This is a labor intensive and expensive manner of ensuring adequate and timely connectivity and security.
As an evolving alternative to piecemeal approaches to network security, another solution to this growing challenge of includes unified threat management (UTM). UTM de-emphasizes threat avoidance and instead focuses on threat management. Threats to a network are readily apparent outside of almost any firewall. These include a continual stream of low-level network attacks, peppered from time to time with serious break-in attempts by computer hackers and malicious code including virus-infected E-mails. worms, spam, and spyware. UTM devices are typically defined as security appliance products that unify and integrate multiple security features integrated onto a single hardware platform. Further, such UTM devices often include network firewall capabilities, network intrusion detection and prevention, and gateway anti-virus functionality.
Larger enterprises and service providers are typically suitable users for UTM devices due to the centralized nature of such UTM devices. Currently the solution of security and connectivity is addressed by deploying dedicated separate devices, each dedicated to either switching or security. While this is a potential way to solve the problem of implementing a secured network infrastructure, it increases network complexity and administrative overhead. There are also situations when critical traffic required by the security device to determine if network attacks are occurring is “absorbed” by the switch minimizing the effectiveness of the security device.
One example of such a known network 100 is shown by way of FIG. 1 where several users 12 are networked to the Internet via a security device 10 (e.g., a UTM device). Connectivity within such a known network 100 is accomplished via a switch 11 (e.g., a layer 2 router or the like). While such systems can offer cost-effective coordination between organizations and between technologies by streamlining administration and interoperability, certain bundling of key information-security functions and simplified administration remain obstacles to effective unified threat management. Moreover, the rise in blended threats to networking requires a greater breadth of integrated functionality and deployment flexibility. It is, therefore, desirable to provide improved network connectivity and security through integrated security, administration, and networking functions.
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Griffin gives Apple's Macbook its missing Magsafe plug
Keepin' it real fake: the iPad Smart Cover done wrong (video)
Let's be honest, the only time you're likely to consider Apple's prices for own-brand peripherals reasonable is when someone else is paying for them. It's not unusual, therefore, for folks to look to complement their walled Apple garden with a few well selected accessories from the grey market. Such as this here Smart Cover knockoff, which saves you a whopping six bucks off the Apple price at only $33, comes with detachable (no user assistance required) hinge elements, and has a special pet-repelling odor as an added extra. Yes, it's pretty terrible and self-destructs the moment you look at it. And, naturally, it's available to watch on video right after the break.
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Q:
(L'Étranger de Camus) The usage of "se" with "laisser + faire"
This question is on "se" in the last sentence of the following quote from L'Étranger by Camus.
Nous nous sommes mis en marche. C’est à ce moment que je me suis aperçu que Pérez claudiquait légèrement. La voiture, peu à peu, prenait de la vitesse et le vieillard perdait du terrain. L’un des hommes qui entouraient la voiture s’était laissé dépasser aussi et marchait maintenant à mon niveau.
From English translations, I understood that one of the men had fallen behind and got level with the narrator.
Questions
(1) Should I understand that "se" refers to the man who fell behind. That is, should I understand the sentence to mean that he "had allowed the passing of himself"?
(2) Should I understand that the implicit subject (agent) of "dépasser" is the car (la voiture) and anything else in the procession between the car and the narrator (moi)?
(3) If we replace "se" with "le," would that be ungrammatical?
My motivation for question (3) comes from considering English sentences like, "He let himself be passed" but "He let her pass him." I think my (English-speaking) mind wants to assimilate "se dépasser" in the quote to "her passing him" because "se" occupies a position like "him" (in being the object of "dépasser") even though "se dépasser" does not have an explicit agent (like "her" in "her passing him").
A:
You are perfectly right about (1) and (2).
To write a similar sentence in active voice you'd use:
Il les avait laissé le dépasser. (He let them pass him.)
“Les” stands for “them” (alternatively you could use “la” for “la voiture”). Le stands for “him” but since “he” and “him” are now respectively the subject of “laisser” and the object of “dépasser” there is no need for a reflexive pronoun. French and English constructions are very similar in this respect.
Note: if you omit the le in the active statement, as your replacement suggested, the reader would be lost as it strongly suggests that the passing/overtaking applies to a third party. In French, the le that stands for the previous subject is generally made explicit. It could be omitted, but only if the situation is very clear to the reader already and the act of passing/overtaking itself is significantly more important than to whom it applies. Also, in any case, if you don't use a reflexive pronoun the auxiliary should be avoir.
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Prostaglandin E2 inhibits vasotocin-induced osmotic water permeability in the frog urinary bladder by EP1-receptor-mediated activation of NO/cGMP pathway.
PGE(2) is a well-known inhibitor of the antidiuretic hormone-induced increase of osmotic water permeability (OWP) in different osmoregulatory epithelia; however, the mechanisms underlying this effect of PGE(2) are not completely understood. Here, we report that, in the frog Rana temporaria urinary bladder, EP(1)-receptor-mediated inhibition of arginine-vasotocin (AVT)-induced OWP by PGE(2) is attributed to increased generation of nitric oxide (NO) in epithelial cells. It was shown that the inhibitory effect of 17-phenyl-trinor-PGE(2) (17-ph-PGE(2)), an EP(1) agonist, on AVT-induced OWP was significantly reduced in the presence of 7-nitroindazole (7-NI), a neuronal NO synthase (nNOS) inhibitor. NO synthase (NOS) activity in both lysed and intact epithelial cells measured as a rate of conversion of l-[(3)H]arginine to l-[(3)H]citrulline was Ca(2+) dependent and inhibited by 7-NI. PGE(2) and 17-ph-PGE(2), but not M&B-28767 (EP(3) agonist) or butaprost (EP(2) agonist), stimulated NOS activity in epithelial cells. The above effect of PGE(2) was abolished in the presence of SC-19220, an EP(1) antagonist. 7-NI reduced the stimulatory effect of 17-ph-PGE(2) on NOS activity. 17-ph-PGE(2) increased intracellular Ca(2+) concentration and cGMP in epithelial cells. Western blot analysis revealed an nNOS expression in epithelial cells. These results show that the inhibitory effect of PGE(2) on AVT-induced OWP in the frog urinary bladder is based at least partly on EP(1)-receptor-mediated activation of the NO/cGMP pathway, suggesting a novel cross talk between AVT, PGE(2), and nNOS that may be important in the regulation of water transport.
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Q:
Android ime actionGo doesn't work on certain devices
ime actionGo simply won't work on certain devices, like the HTC Evo 4G. It works on Motorola Atrix and Droid X.
Here is the code:
<EditText
android:id="@+id/password"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="40dp"
android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
android:hint="@string/password_hint"
android:password="true"
android:inputType="textPassword"
android:autoText="false"
android:imeOptions="actionGo"/>
TextView.OnEditorActionListener listener = new TextView.OnEditorActionListener()
{
public boolean onEditorAction(TextView exampleView, int actionId, KeyEvent event)
{
if(actionId == EditorInfo.IME_ACTION_GO)
{
loginValidation();
}
return true;
}};
password.setOnEditorActionListener(listener);
A:
This seems to be a bug. Different manufacturers make a customized keyboard for their phone which may not completely behave as the android standard keyboard. This issue has been raised before. Most people overcome this issue by either overiding the onKey event or using a TextWatcher class. A bug has been filed about this
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2882
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Jinnah Medical and Dental College bid farewell to the Final Year Graduates by organizing a Graduation Dinner on Wednesday, 27th February 2019 at the College.
27-Feb-19
BDS ORIENTATION PROGRAM 2019
JMDC welcomed the BDS Batch of 21 - 2019 on Campus to become a part of a recognized Center of Excellence for a remarkable journey of acquiring education and experiencing events ahead.
22-Feb-19
DENTAL OUTREACH VISIT AT NJV HIGH SCHOOL
The Students of BDS Program visited the Narayan Jagannath Vaidya High School on Wednesday, 20th February 2019. A healthy and interactive session was held in which the Doctors and Children both showcased and learnt happy and hygienic practices.
20-Feb-19
CRICKET TOURNAMENT AT JMCH
An exciting cricket match was held in between the Faculty and Students on Saturday, 16th February 2019 at JMCH.
16-Feb-19
ANNUAL RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM 2019
Final year undergraduates presented their research projects under the supervision of our honorable guest Prof. Dr. H.R Ahmed accompanied by the Chairman and other Senior Faculty at the Research Symposium on Thursday, 14th February 2019.
The best ones were acknowledged for their outstanding efforts made throughout their educational tenures.
14-Feb-19
BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH CENTRE INAUGURATION 2019
The Biomedical Research Center was inaugurated on 14th February 2019 by Prof. Dr. H.R Ahmed accompanied by the Chairman and other Senior Faculty. The Centre is highly equipped providing with the latest facilities.
14-Feb-19
BLOOD DONATION DRIVE 2019
Blood Donation Drive was celebrated on 14 February 2019 in order to spread the awareness for the need to donate blood and thank the donors for their selfless work. The Faculty, Staff, Students and Outsiders actively participated in the event. Saylani Welfare Trust on board with us for which we are very thankful to them.
14-Feb-19
MBBS ORIENTATION PROGRAM 2019
JMDC welcomed the MBBS Batch of 22 - 2019 to become a part of a recognized center of excellence for a remarkable journey of acquiring education and experiencing events ahead.
07-Feb-19
IHSR INAUGURATION CEREMONY
The Inauguration ceremony of “Institute of Historical & Social Research (IHSR)” was conducted at JMDC Auditorium on Monday, January 28, 2019 under the supervision of Dr. Syed Jaffar and Dr. Syed Tariq Sohail (Chairman, JMDC). Dr. I. A. Rehman, Dr. Mubarak Ali and Mr. Mehmood Shaam were the Chief Guests for the ceremony.
28-Jan-19
CONVOCATION 2019
Our great students successfully graduated, ready to serve the community and be a part of saving lives. The Graduation Ceremony was held at the Global Marquees on 29th January 2019.
26-Jan-19
DPT ORIENTATION 2019
Sohail University welcomed the Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) Batch to become a part of a recognized centre of excellence for a remarkable journey of acquiring education and experiencing events ahead.
01-Jan-19
JMCH RENOVATED EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT
The Management of S.M.Sohail Trust is committed to provide specialized quality services for patients of Korangi Industrial Area. Newly renovated Emergency Department comprising of full equipped 10 beds, Medical Officers and Nurses for the management of any acute incidents was established.
20-Dec-18
BMJ AWARDS SOUTH ASIA 2018 - FACULTY HONORS
Dr. Zainab Hasan. Assistant Professor, Department of Community Medicine, Jinnah Medical and Dental College received the prestigious, BMJ South Asia award for “Best Post Graduate Thesis” on December 20, 2018 at Chennai, India.
20-Dec-18
HAMZA ALAVI DISTINGUISHED LECTURE
The 17th Hamza Alavi Distinguished Lecture organized by the Hamza Alavi Foundation and Irtiqa Institute of Social Sciences in collaboration with Jinnah Medical and Dental College was held at the Zaki Hasan Auditorium, Medicare Cardiac & General Hospital, on December 15, 2018, An eminent scholar and author of several books on philosophy and Marxism, Ashfaq Saleem Mirza, Safia Bano, a Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Karachi, Dr. Kamran Azdar Ali, Dean of Faculty of MGHSSS at the Lahore University of Management Sciences and Dr. Riaz Shaikh, Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences at Szabist, examined in depth the concept of nation and nationalism in Marxism. The discussion was moderated by Kaleem Durrani, General Secretary of Irtiqa. Dr. Huma Ghaffar, Irtiqa’s Chairperson gave the vote of thanks.
The two educational activities for the Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics were carried out Jinnah Medical and Dental College on 12-13 November 2018, under title of “Clinical aspects of Safe transfusion”. Dr. Mahadev Harani, Dr. Maria Ali and Dr. Sidrah from Patel Hospital, conducted the lecture based interactive sessions pertaining to safe and standard transfusion practices
13-Nov-18
EQAS POSTER PRESENTATION
Two research papers of Dr. Shireen Mansoor, Assistant Professor, Chemical Pathologist, from Pathology Department were accepted for presentation in the 41st Annual Conference of Pakistan Association of Pathologists and 6th Joint International Conference of Societies of Pathology held from 9th of November to 10th of November 2018 at Pearl Continental Hotel Rawalpindi / Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Rawalpindi. The topics for platform /oral presentation was on BMI and other life-style associated risk factors among apparently healthy private medical college student and the second topic is on the role of EQAS in order to show the performance of clinical laboratory. This conference offered a unique opportunity for clinicians and experts all over world to contribute their research and knowledge.
10-Nov-18
ACADEMIC COUNCIL
Academic Council meeting of Sohail University and Jinnah Medical and Dental College were held on October 31,2018 to discuss the approval of the composition of the Academic Council as per Sohail University Act 2017, and approval of Doctor of Physical Therapy Program and its curriculum.
31-Oct-18
DIABETIC RETINOPATHY SCREENING CAMP
Traz-Life in collaboration with Medicare Hospital arranged free Diabetic Eye Screening Camp for two days in October. Thirty patients were screened and those who found to have changes in retina were referred to appropriate treatment.
31-Oct-18
KARL MARX’S 200TH BIRTH ANNIVERSARY
Ten eminent scholars from India and Pakistan participated and presented their papers on "Marx and Post Marxim" at Jinnah Medical and Dental College on October 27th, 2018. “We must keep the process of scholarly thinking going in order to understand the system, because systems come and go but scholarship moves on”. This was said by renowned historian Dr. Mubarak Ali while formally opening a conference organized by the Tareekh Foundation Trust at the Jinnah Medical and Dental College to mark philosopher, economist and political theorist Karl Marx’s 200th birth anniversary. Prof. Dr. Jaffer Ahmed, read out a paper on how Marx looked at literature. He said the philosopher had a distinct place in history when it came to ideas and thoughts.
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The post-NSAID era: what to use now for the pharmacologic treatment of pain and inflammation in osteoarthritis.
Traditionally, clinicians have relied heavily on the use of NSAIDs to treat the pain of osteoarthritis, as numerous studies have proven these agents effective. However, controversy has arisen regarding their use as first-line therapy, due to increasing awareness of their cardiovascular risks. One of these agents, rofecoxib, was withdrawn from the market in 2004 due to these concerns. Since that time, numerous studies have illustrated that many of the NSAIDs, both the selective cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors and the traditional non-selective agents, may confer similar risks of cardiovascular toxicity. Although these agents may still be useful in many patients, concerns over side effects have begun to limit their use, and patients and clinicians are reaching for alternate agents. This review highlights the evidence behind the effectiveness of other, non-NSAID pharmacologic options in the treatment of pain and inflammation in osteoarthritis.
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Luigi
is a fictional character featured in video games and related media released by Nintendo. Created by prominent game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, Luigi is portrayed as the slightly younger but taller brother of Nintendo's mascot Mario, and appears in many games throughout the Mario franchise, often as a sidekick to his older brother.
Luigi first appeared in the 1983 Game & Watch game Mario Bros. as the character controlled by the second player, and retained this role in the Mario Bros. arcade game, Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and other titles. The first game where he was available as a primary character was Super Mario Bros. 2. In more recent appearances, Luigi's role became increasingly restricted to spinoffs such as the Mario Party and Mario Kart series, though he has been featured in a starring role on seven occasions: first in the 1990 LCD wrist watch game Luigi's Hammer Toss, in Mario is Missing, in Luigi's Mansion for the GameCube in 2001, in Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013, in Dr. Luigi and New Super Luigi U for the Wii U in 2013, in Luigi's Mansion Arcade in 2015 for arcades and Luigi's Mansion 3 for Nintendo Switch in 2019. In all seven of these games, he is called upon to act as the hero because usually Mario, the usual hero within the franchise, is in need of rescue. Luigi has also appeared in every episode of the three DiC TV series based on the NES and Super NES games.
Originally developed as a palette swap of Mario with a green color scheme instead of red, Luigi has since developed a personality and style of his own. As his role in the Mario series progressed, Luigi evolved into a physically distinct character, taller and thinner than his brother. Nintendo called the period of March 2013 to March 2014 "The Year of Luigi" to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the character's existence. Correspondingly, games released in 2013 emphasised Luigi, such as Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, Dr. Luigi, and the level pack New Super Luigi U for New Super Mario Bros U. An unlockable Luigi-themed version of Mario Bros. titled Luigi Bros. was also included with Super Mario 3D World.
Concept and creation
The events leading to Luigi's creation began in 1982, during the development of Donkey Kong, where the Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto had created Mario (then known as "Jumpman") hoping that he would be able to recast the character in a variety of roles in future games. Miyamoto had been inspired by the game Joust to create a game with a simultaneous two-player mode, which led to his development of the game Mario Bros. in 1983, with Luigi filling the role of Mario's brother as the second playable character. Luigi's name is said to have been inspired by a pizza parlor near Nintendo of America's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, called "Mario & Luigi's". Miyamoto observed that the word ruiji means "similar" in the Japanese language, and that Luigi was designed to have the same size, shape and gameplay of Mario.
While Mario was originally portrayed as a carpenter in Donkey Kong, the duo of Mario and Luigi in Mario Bros. were styled as Italian plumbers by Miyamoto, on the suggestion of a colleague. Software constraints of the time—similar to those that gave Mario his distinctive look in Donkey Kong—meant Luigi's first appearance was restricted to a simple palette swap of Mario designed to represent the second player. Graphically and in terms of gameplay, the characters were completely identical, except for their color schemes; the green color scheme adopted for Luigi would remain one of his defining physical characteristics in subsequent releases.
After the success of Mario Bros., Luigi was introduced to a wider audience in 1985 with the release of the console game Super Mario Bros. Once again his role was restricted to a palette swap of Mario, functioning as the second-player in a similar fashion to Mario Bros.. The later Japan-only version of Super Mario Bros. 2 in 1986 (later released in the west as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels) marked the beginning of Luigi's development toward becoming a more distinguished character. As with his previous appearances, Luigi remained a palette swap of Mario; however, his movement was no longer identical. Luigi could now jump higher and farther than his brother, at the expense of movement response and precision.
While this version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was released in Japan, it was deemed to be too difficult for American audiences at the time. In 1988, consequently, an alternative release was developed to serve as Super Mario Bros. 2 for western players (and later released in Japan as Super Mario USA); this version would play a key role in shaping Luigi's current appearance. The game was a conversion of Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic, with the graphics altered to represent characters and scenes from the Mario franchise. In this release, the character of "Mama", who had the highest jump among the original cast, served as the template for Luigi, resulting in his taller, thinner look, combined with his Marioesque outfit and ubiquitous green color scheme. There were earlier appearances of Luigi being taller than Mario: in the 1988 Famicom Disk System game Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally and earlier, in a very rare 1986 anime Super Mario Bros.: Peach-Hime Kyushutsu Dai Sakusen! (though in the anime he wore a yellow shirt and the color of his hat and overalls were blue). Promotional artwork for Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World depicts Luigi with this new look; but the actual games would not adapt this different character design in-game until the 1992 game Super Mario Kart. Luigi's distinctive appearance from the Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic-inspired version of Super Mario Bros. 2 has been used ever since, even for remakes of games in which he was originally a palette swap.
Actor portrayal
Much like his appearance, Luigi's vocal portrayal has fluctuated over the years. In Mario Kart 64, which voiced many characters for the first time, some characters, including Luigi, had two different voices according to the region of the game: North American and European versions feature a low-pitched voice for Luigi, provided by Charles Martinet, who also voices Mario, Wario, Waluigi, and Toadsworth, whereas the Japanese version uses a high-pitched, falsetto voice, provided by (then French translator at Nintendo) Julien Bardakoff. All versions of Mario Party feature Bardakoff's high-pitched clips from Mario Kart 64. Luigi retained this higher voice in Mario Party 2. In Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, and Mario Party 3, his voice returned to a lower state. Since then, with the exceptions of Mario Kart: Super Circuit and Super Smash Bros. Melee, Luigi has consistently had a medium-pitched voice. In Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Luigi's voice was the same high voice from the Japanese Mario Kart 64. In Super Smash Bros. and Super Smash Bros. Melee, Luigi's voice is made up of clips from Mario's voice taken from Super Mario 64, with raised pitches. In Super Smash Bros. Brawl and subsequent instalments in the Super Smash Bros. series, he has his own voice (which is medium-pitched) instead of a pitched-up version of Mario's.
Characteristics
Luigi is portrayed as the taller, younger brother of Mario, and he is usually seen dressed in a green shirt with dark blue overalls. Although Luigi is a plumber, like his brother, other facets of his personality vary from game to game. Luigi always seems nervous and timid but is good-natured and not as quick to anger as his more famous brother. A baby version of the character named Baby Luigi debuted in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, who is held captive by Kamek. He also appeared in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time as a playable character along with Baby Mario. He is voiced by Charles Martinet, just like his adult self.
While it has not been made official, Daisy may be Luigi's romantic interest. They were a romantic couple in the Super Mario Bros. film and in Mario Kart Wii they are seen in statue dancing together. She was his caddy in NES Open Tournament Golf as Peach was to Mario. Also on Daisy's trophy in Super Smash Bros. Melee, it says that she is possibly Luigi's answer to Mario's Peach.
Surname
Nintendo did not initially give Luigi a surname. The first notable use of "Luigi Mario" was in the 1993 live-action film adaptation. In September 2015, at the Super Mario Bros. 30th Anniversary festival, Miyamoto stated that Mario's full name was Mario Mario. Consequently, this indirectly confirms Luigi's full name as Luigi Mario.
Appearances
Luigi's first appearance was in the 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. as the character controlled by the second player. He retained this role in Wrecking Crew. He later appeared in Super Mario Bros. for the NES, and again in Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Super Mario World. Super Mario Bros. 2 introduced Luigi as the taller of the two brothers, as well as the better jumper. Super Mario Bros. 3, and Super Mario World returned to featuring Luigi as a reskinned Mario. He made a minor appearance in his baby form in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Luigi was conspicuously absent in Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine. However, the Nintendo DS remake of Super Mario 64 features him as a playable character alongside Mario, Yoshi, and Wario. He received his own starring role in the GameCube game Luigi's Mansion, where he wins a mansion from a contest he never entered, and saves Mario from King Boo. Luigi's Mansion has cultivated such a cult following that Nintendo made a sequel to the game nearly a decade after the original game's release date. The sequel is called Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon and is playable on the Nintendo 3DS. He reprised his role in the third game, Luigi's Mansion 3, on Nintendo Switch.
Luigi has been associated with the more difficult second acts of multiple Super Mario games. These include The Lost Levels, Super Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Luigi U and the new game plus in Super Mario 3D Land, which offer more challenging elaborations on their respective predecessors and allow the player to use Luigi as the main character, in whom reduced friction and higher jumping is consistent in all of these games. Luigi became playable in the Nintendo DS game New Super Mario Bros. as a hidden character, and as a hidden character in the Wii game Super Mario Galaxy. In its sequel, Super Mario Galaxy 2, the player can switch out for Luigi throughout the game. He also appears as a playable character in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, where four players can play at once cooperatively as Mario, Luigi, and two Toads. He also appears in Super Mario 3D Land as a playable character as well as New Super Mario Bros. 2 and New Super Mario Bros. U, the latter having a DLC mode, where he is the main character, called New Super Luigi U. It has levels altered to his specific play abilities, including higher jumping. The DLC is also available as a standalone retail version. Luigi also appeared in Super Mario 3D World along with his brother, Peach, Rosalina and Toad.
Luigi appears in many of the Mario spin-offs, including Mario Kart, Mario Party, and all of the Mario sports titles. He also appears in all five instalments of the Super Smash Bros. series; in the first three instalments, he is an unlockable character.
Luigi has appeared in every Mario role-playing game. While he originally made a cameo appearance in the end credits of Super Mario RPG, he appears more prominently in the Paper Mario series. He is a non-playable character in the original Paper Mario. In the sequel Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, he appears yet again as a non-playable character, going on a separate adventure from Mario's. Super Paper Mario features him as a playable character after he is initially brainwashed into working for the antagonist under the name "Mr. L." The Mario & Luigi series features Luigi as a main protagonist; the events of the games focus on him and his brother Mario. He has appeared in all five Mario & Luigi games.
Other media
Luigi made his animated debut in the 1986 film Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Save Princess Peach!. In the film, he was voiced by Yū Mizushima and had a different color scheme than he has today, sporting a blue cap, blue overalls, and a yellow shirt. This was because he was not yet given a consistent color scheme. In the film, Luigi was very greedy and even left Mario at one point to look for coins. He was also a little more serious than his brother Mario, who constantly would daydream about Princess Peach, although he is not as brave as Mario.
Luigi later made an appearance in the third of a trilogy of OVAs entitled Amada Anime Series: Super Mario Bros. released in 1989, in which the Mario characters acted out the story of Snow White. He appears at the end of the video to save Mario and Peach from the Wicked Queen, portrayed by Koopa.
Luigi regularly appeared in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, airing from 1989 to 1990, which cast Danny Wells as both his live-action portrayal and voice. Like his brother, Luigi's voice actor changed in later cartoons, in his case to Tony Rosato. Even though he was not the starring character in the show, Luigi appeared in all 91 episodes of the three DiC Mario cartoons, in one of which his brother himself did not appear ("Life's Ruff" from The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3).
Luigi played a different role in the Super Mario Bros. film, where he was portrayed by John Leguizamo. He is depicted as a more easy-going character in contrast to the cynical Mario, portrayed by Bob Hoskins. In the film, Luigi is not Mario's twin, but is much younger to the point that Mario is said to have been like a surrogate father to him since their parents' deaths, and his romantic relationship with Daisy is one of the film's main plot elements.
Luigi has also appeared in several Robot Chicken sketches, always alongside Mario. In one sketch, he and Mario accidentally appear in Vice City, from the Grand Theft Auto series, while another features them competing in a Cannonball Run-styled car race.
In 2015, game designer Josh Millard released Ennuigi which relates the story of Luigi's inability to come to terms with the lack of narrative in the original Super Mario Bros. Reception regarding Luigi's character in Ennuigi ranged from "depressed," "laconic," "perpetually miserable," to "an angsty teenager who just finished writing a book report about Albert Camus' The Stranger." In a Reddit thread, Millard commented "I [...] think it's a pretty weird implied narrative once you step back and look at it, and enjoyed funneling some thoughts about all that into a recharacterization of Luigi as a guy who's as legitimately confused and distressed by his strange life as you'd expect a person to be once removed from the bubble of cartoony context of the franchise."
Year of Luigi
On March 19, 2013, Nintendo began the Year of Luigi. This included a year of Luigi-themed games like Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Dr. Luigi, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, and New Super Luigi U. A Luigi's Mansion statue was released on Club Nintendo. On March 19, 2014, the Year of Luigi ended.
Month of Luigi
On October 4, 2019, Nintendo declared that the entire month of October would be the Month of Luigi. This was done to celebrate Luigi's Mansion 3, which was released on October 31, 2019. The Month of Luigi ended on November 1, 2019.
Reception
Since his appearance in Super Mario Bros., Luigi has received highly positive reception. Nintendo Power listed Luigi as their fifth favourite hero, citing his dependability while describing him as being an underdog. They also listed him as having one of the best mustaches. GameDaily listed the "neglected guy" as one of their top 25 video game archetypes, citing Luigi as an example and stating that he lacks the charisma of his older brother Mario and that he should get another starring role. They also listed Luigi's Poltergust 3000 from Luigi's Mansion as one of the top 25 Nintendo gimmicks. UGO Networks ranked Luigi at No. 16 on their "25 Most Memorable Italians in Video Games" list, ranking him over Mario himself.
Luigi has been featured in many "Top Sidekicks" lists. Machinima placed Luigi as the best sidekick on gaming on their "Top 10 Sidekicks in Gaming" list. He was also listed as the best sidekick in video games by Maximum PC. IGN ranked him second on their top 10 list, commenting "No pair illustrates brotherly love like Mario and Luigi". Luigi is also ranked second on ScrewAttack's top 10 list, where they comment that even though he does everything Mario does, he gets none of the glory. WhatCulture listed him at No. 5 on their top 20 list, adding that a Mario game does not seem like a Mario game without Luigi. Maxim listed Luigi as the second most underrated sidekick, behind Waylon Smithers.
References
External links
Luigi on Super Mario Wiki
Category:Characters created by Shigeru Miyamoto
Category:Fictional American people of European descent in video games
Category:Fictional American people of Italian descent
Category:Fictional characters from New York City
Category:Fictional ghost hunters
Category:Fictional Italian people in video games
Category:Fictional plumbers
Category:Fictional male sportspeople
Category:Fictional twins
Category:Twin characters in video games
Category:Fictional victims of kidnapping
Category:Male characters in video games
Category:Mario characters
Category:Nintendo protagonists
Category:Super Smash Bros. fighters
Category:Video game characters in comics
Category:Video game characters in film
Category:Video game characters in television
Category:Video game characters introduced in 1983
Category:Video game characters with fire or heat abilities
Category:Video game secret characters
Category:Video game sidekicks
Category:Fictional characters who became a protagonist in a spin-off
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The Conflicting Assessments of the Trends in Combat in Afghanistan: 2014-2018
The fighting in Ghazni has highlighted the fact that the U.S. has now entered its seventeenth year of war in Afghanistan and that there is no clear end to the war in sight. At present, there seems to be little prospect that a combination of Afghan government, U.S., and allied forces can defeat the Taliban and other insurgent and terrorist forces, or will be defeated by them. The conflict has become a war of attrition which can drag on indefinitely and can only be ended through some form of peace negotiation, U.S. withdrawal, or the collapse of either the Afghan government or threat forces – a transition from a war of attrition to a war of exhaustion by one side.
The survey draws heavily on official sources like the Department of Defense, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), and the Lead Inspector General. It also, however, draws heavily on UN casualty reporting, different media reports, and the work of the FDD Long War Journal (LWJ) and Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
This focus on trends in combat and control means it does not cover force developments, or the shifts in the strategy on each side, versus their effects. It also omits the trends in the civil side of the conflict. What it does do, however, is provide a picture of the conflicting ways in which U.S., UN, Afghan, allied, media, and NGO sources have appraised the ebb and flow of conflict over time, and the different views of government versus Taliban control of the country.
The patterns revealed do not provide dramatic new insights into the course of the war or the events to date in 2018. A war of attrition is a war of attrition. They do warn, however, that the U.S. sometimes failed to properly assess the war, and that no current official assessment of the war provides a full or reliable picture as to the current situation and level of control by the Taliban and Afghan government.
In fairness, a significant degree of uncertainty is inevitable, particularly when U.S. military and civilians have a much smaller presence at the district level and access to human sources. The new “conditions-based” strategy announced by President Trump is still in the process of being implemented and its full effects will not be apparent until 2019-2020. Much will then depend on whether Afghanistan can conduct a successful election and create a more effective and unified government.
Nevertheless, the survey does raise serious questions about the combat metrics the United States and its allies have used throughout the war, and the degree that these have been consciously or unconsciously politicized to overstate success or support efforts at withdrawal. The analysis helps illustrate these issues by grouping the data into various time clusters to provide easier comparisons. It also provides summaries of the competing narratives used to explain each metric to help explain what are sometimes major differences in the trends portrayed by given sources.
It does not, however, attempt to reconcile the differences that emerge between sources, or make an independent assessment of these difference. This is left to the reader. Anyone familiar with the conflict will be aware of the extent to which the metrics provide in a given period did – or did not – fully present a valid picture of the war. Anyone who participated in the policies shaping the war over time will be aware of cases where official sources chose metrics that exaggerated success, did not address the deep divisions and lack of effective governance on the part of the Afghan government, and/or emphasized favorable tactical outcomes rather than seriously addressed the trends in insurgent influence
There are several other aspects of data provided in this survey that the reader should be aware of:
The threat trend and map data do not distinguish between the Taliban and other hostile movements.
The graphics and reporting that highlighted the impact of the war on the on the civil side of the fighting, and the effectiveness of the Afghan central government and aid efforts, were largely cancelled after 2011, evidently because the maps and graphics did not reflect the planned level of progress.
No attempt has been made since 2012 to map the actual level of central government control of given districts provinces. A lack of Taliban control does not mean that the central government has control vs. a war lord, powerbroker, or major narco trafficking operation.
In some cases, districts seem to be assessed as under government control even when there is serious violence, or when government control is limited at best outside the District capital or a major population center.
The UN casualty data often presents a different picture in detail of the level of rising violence and risk, and leaked UN maps of areas the level of risk to aid and humanitarian operations seem to show larger areas of risk than the official maps of government vs. Taliban/threat control.
In many cases, the original source never fully defined key terms, indicated the methodology used, or described the level of uncertainty in the information provided.
Most trend charts, maps, and graphs compare the outcome of tactical clashes, or provide sweeping comparisons of control. They do not attempt to address the deep limitations and division the Afghan government control, by District, properly map insurgent influence, or attempt to map the relative level of government and insurgent influence and control.
The U.S. and Afghan official data on government or threat control seem to sometimes count districts as under government control that are actually under the control of various power brokers and warlords, or where the government has only a limited presence in the district capital.
The survey data on Afghan public opinion seem to reflect different views of security and government control from the maps and charts showing disputed areas.
The combat maps take no account of the growth of narcotics production and its impact on control and security.
No data are provided on the trends and location of ethnic and sectarian violence.
The impact of sanctuaries and movements in Pakistan is not reported. Neither is the rising role of Iran and Russia.
There has been an improvement in official reporting since the U.S. shifted from a withdrawal-based strategy to a conditions-based commitment to stay. However, such improvements have come largely in the form of official contributions to reporting from outside the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense’s 1225 reports on the war – Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan – have been cut back over time.
Some of the best explanations of the war that have been provided by U.S. commanders or in command briefings provided by the U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) and the Resolute Support Mission. These briefings often involve maps and graphics, but the Department of Defense only provides transcripts, and does not disseminate this material. Other useful data has come in the form of testimony by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but again without public metrics.
As a result, it is the maps, graphics, and data from the United Nations, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, independent assessments by the Long War Journal, and more recently from the Lead Inspector General that provide the most detailed view of the fighting.
Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He has served as a consultant on Afghanistan to the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of State.
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Despite failing to get into gear, France recorded a dominant, bonus point win over Romania after fielding a second string side
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Dario Argento's World of Horror
Il Mondo dell'orrore di Dario Argento (Dario Argento's World of Horror) is a 1985 Italian documentary film that chronicles the career of Italian horror and suspense film director Dario Argento. It was the directorial debut of Michele Soavi, who later went on to direct the cult classic Dellamorte Dellamore in 1994.
The documentary features candid interviews with Argento and various stars from films he has directed, as well as extensive clips and behind-the-scenes footage of his films. The film includes segments focused on subjects as the soundtrack work, coloring and color filtering, and camerawork in Suspiria, the soundtrack for Inferno, the camerawork and insect effects in Phenomena, Tom Savini's make-up work in Dawn of the Dead, and the special effects, make-up and robotics in Dèmoni as well as interviews with Argento on a variety of esoteric subjects. Because most of Argento's films were only available in heavily edited form at the time, Dario Argento's World of Horror was sought after by many fans of the director's work because it contained numerous clips of footage removed from the released films, most notably the opening double murder sequence from Suspiria.
External links
Category:1985 films
Category:Films directed by Michele Soavi
Category:Documentary films about film directors and producers
Category:Italian films
Category:Directorial debut films
Category:Documentary films about horror
Category:Dario Argento
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Methodological requirements for clinical trials in refractory epilepsies--our experience with zonisamide.
1. The guidelines for clinical evaluation of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), proposed by the International League Against Epilepsy in 1989, were scrutinized through our clinical experiences with zonisamide. 2. Seizure type, seizure frequency, number of concomitant AEDs, and type of epilepsy were found to be essential factors in quantitatively determining the efficacy of a new drug. 3. The majority of patients selected according to the guidelines consist inevitably of those with complex partial seizures with or without secondary generalization. Consequently, the efficacy of new AEDs is evaluated mainly in patients with partial seizures, and it is difficult to evaluate their efficacy in those with refractory generalized seizures, either convulsive or nonconvulsive. 4. In order to avoid such predilection, patients with various types of generalized seizures who are taking one or two conventional AEDs should account for 30 to 40% of the total patient population selected for clinical drug trials.
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Plugari
Plugari is a commune in Iași County, Romania. It is composed of three villages: Borosoaia, Onești and Plugari.
References
Category:Communes in Iași County
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Q:
Changing font name
in vb.net ,I have a rich text box for write text and a combo box for font names.
i added fonts to combo box with this code:
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
Dim ff As FontFamily
For Each ff In System.Drawing.FontFamily.Families
FontName.Items.Add(ff.Name)
Next
End Sub
But i don't know, how to change the font name of the rich text box.
A:
You have to use the code below:
RichTextBox1.Font = New Font("Font Name", size)
Adapt it to your specific conditions: replace RichTextBox1 with your RichTextBox, "Font Name" with the given item of your ComboBox FontName, size with the size you want (it might be the current one, that is, RichTextBox1.Font.Size).
A:
RichTextBox.Font = New Font(FontName.Text, 10, FontStyle.Regular)
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81 Cal.App.2d 131 (1947)
A. M. FALKENSTEIN et al., Appellants,
v.
HULDA M. POPPER, Respondent.
Civ. No. 13412.
California Court of Appeals. First Dist., Div. One.
July 31, 1947.
Terence J. Boyle for Appellants.
Franklyn M. O'Brien for Respondent.
BRAY, J.
The trial court granted defendant's motion for judgment on the pleadings in an action for specific performance of an option to purchase, on the ground that the complaint did not state a cause of action.
On April 25, 1942, the parties entered into a five-year lease of certain business property in San Francisco. The only part of the lease pertinent to this appeal is paragraph 23, subdivisions (a) and (b): "Lessor hereby gives to Lessee an opportunity to purchase the real property and improvements known as No. 4116 Geary Boulevard Street, in the City and County of San Francisco, State of California, at and for the agreed price of Eight thousand, five hundred (8,500.00) Dollars, lawful money of the United States, upon the following terms and conditions, to-wit:"
"(a) For the period of two (2) years, Lessee shall have the exclusive option to purchase said property for said price; said option shall expire May 1, 1944."
"(b) For the remaining period of said term, to-wit, three (3) years, Lessee shall be given the first opportunity to purchase said property for said price, and in the event that Lessee shall not avail himself of said opportunity and shall not desire to purchase said property, Lessor shall then be free to sell said property to any other person for any price agreeable to her." (Emphasis added.)
Subdivision (a) is not involved on this appeal (except as it relates to the construction to be given subdivision (b)), as the plaintiffs did not demand a conveyance of the property until February 8, 1946, almost two years after the expiration date given in subdivision (a).
Plaintiffs contend that subdivision (b) is ambiguous and therefore the court should not have granted judgment on the pleadings but should have permitted the introduction of evidence to explain the alleged ambiguity. The court held that subdivision (b) is not ambiguous, and shows on its face that it grants an option to plaintiffs to purchase only in the event that defendant desires to sell. The complaint *133 contains no allegation that defendant desires to sell. The theory of the complaint is that plaintiffs had an exclusive option to purchase under subdivision (b).
[1] A study of all of the provisions of paragraph 23 shows that the court was clearly right. Plaintiffs, to sustain their contention, completely ignore the relationship of subdivision (a) to subdivision (b)--"we claim we are in the same position now as we were during the first two years." In construing the agreement here, the court must give some meaning to subdivision (a) in its relation to subdivision (b), for if the parties intended that the plaintiffs were to have an exclusive option to purchase for the entire five-year term of the lease there would have been no reason for subdivision (a), which expressly gives an "exclusive option to purchase" for only two years. It is obvious that after giving the limited exclusive option in subdivision (a), the lessee in subdivision (b) was given the first opportunity to purchase in the event that during the balance of the leased term, the lessor decided to sell.
Plaintiffs rely upon certain cases construing words similar to "opportunity" and "first opportunity" used here. In none of the cases was there a situation where there was involved, as here, two clauses in an option to purchase, and hence the cases are not in point. Moreover, the cited cases follow the minority rule on this subject. These cases are: Tantum v. Keller (1924), 95 N.J.Eq. 466 [123 A. 299], where the court construed "first privilege ... to purchase ... at any time" as an exclusive option. In R. I. Realty Co. v. Terrell (1930), 254 N.Y. 121 [172 N.E. 262], the Tantum case was noted as following the minority rule. Schroeder v. Gemeinder (1875), 10 Nev. 355, in considering a similar phrasing to the Tantum case, followed its rule. In De Rutte v. Muldrow (1860), 16 Cal. 505, "the privilege of purchasing ... during the continuance of this lease ... in preference to any other persons" was held to grant an unconditional right to buy. In Wells v. Fisher (1923), 205 App.Div. 212 [199 N.Y.S. 594], the provision read: "... the first privilege of purchasing ... on the 1st day of October of any year during the term. ..." This case was expressly disapproved in R. I. Realty Co. v. Terrell, supra, as was the case of Stetler v. North Branch Transit Co. (1917), 258 Pa. 299 [101 A. 980], where the provision was "if at the expiration *134 of this lease [the lessees] ... shall desire to re- lease ... they shall have the first privilege of re-leasing." Plaintiff there contended that the words "first privilege" meant that at the end of the term, the lessee had only a first right to re-lease, provided the lessor was willing at that time to lease to anyone. In holding that it was an absolute right in the lessee, the court stated as follows: "The court below, however, held that it was apparent from the provisions of the lease that the parties contemplated the use of the land for a park for the entertainment of the public, and that considerable expenditure for improvements would be necessary. Under these circumstances, when the lease was executed, the parties evidently felt that a renewal or extension would probably be desired, otherwise the clause in question would not have been inserted. It was clearly intended for the benefit of the lessee, and it should be so construed as to preserve that benefit, if it be possible to do so. But as the court below well says: 'If the plaintiff's theory as to the meaning of the paragraph is to be accepted, it would, so far as the lessee is concerned, become wholly meaningless, and might as well have been omitted.' " (p. 981 [101 A.])
Plaintiffs contend that the reasoning in the last sentence above quoted should be applied in the instant case. However, applying that language here, if the plaintiff's theory that subdivision (b) granted them the same exclusive option as did subdivision (a) is to be accepted, subdivision (a) would "become wholly meaningless, and might as well have been omitted."
In Butt v. Maier & Zobelein Brewery (1907), 6 Cal.App. 581 [92 P. 652], the provision was far removed from that under consideration here. After providing in clause 1 that the lessor at the end of the period of a lease could terminate it upon payment to the lessee of the cost of improvements made by the latter, the agreement, in clause 2, continued as follows: "At the expiration of this lease the said second party shall have the prior right to lease the same, said premises, for a further term of five years, for the rental sum of" etc., fixing terms of payment. It further provided that should the lessee avail itself of the renewal, the lessor, at the end of the second five-year term, could take the property back without paying for improvements. Obviously, the word "prior" as used therein does not qualify the right of renewal, but it is used with entirely different language than *135 is the word "first" in the provision here in question. "Prior" as used, could only mean that the lessee could defeat the termination of the lease after the first five-year period provided for in clause 1, by exercising the right of renewal provided for in the second clause, and should he so choose, his rights under the latter clause would be prior to, and nullify, the rights of the lessor under the former clause.
In none of the cases cited by plaintiffs did the option clause vary the conditions of purchase at stated periods, as in our case where the conditions for the first two years are in definite contrast with the conditions for the balance of the term.
Moreover, the weight of authority holds that the use of such words as "first privilege," "first right," etc., does not give the lessee an absolute right to purchase or renew a lease. In R. I. Realty Co. v. Terrell, supra, (172 N.E. 262), the clause in a lease of real property read: "Said party of the second part is given first privilege to buy said property" for a stated sum. The lessee elected to purchase and the lessor refused to convey. The contentions of the parties were identical with those of the instant case, the lessee claiming an absolute right to purchase and the lessor claiming that this right was dependent upon his willingness to sell, in which case the former would have prior right over other prospective buyers. The court held that the clause did not give the lessee a valid option requiring the lessor to convey at any time during the term of the lease upon demand and payment by the lessee, but rather that the right to purchase depended upon the lessor's desire to sell at the price named, in which event the lessee would have the "first privilege" to buy. The interpretation of the words is as follows: "In construing the clause in question, the court is required to give some meaning to all the words used. To construe the clause in accordance with the contention of the respondent (lessee) would require that the word 'first' be eliminated. With that word eliminated, the privilege to buy would be absolute and enforceable. (Sandberg v. Reilly, 223 App.Div. 57, 227 N.Y.S. 418, affirmed 250 N.Y. 547, 166 N.E. 319.) Therefore, it must have been used to prevent the agreement from constituting an absolute option to sell. The phrase 'first privilege to buy' and the words 'privilege to buy' have an entirely different meaning; one is conditional and the *136 other absolute." The court further pointed out and disapproved of Wells v. Fisher, supra, as being the only New York case holding to the contrary. The Stetler and Tantum cases, supra, were also noted as contrary decisions in other jurisdictions. The court cited and followed the rule of numerous New York decisions to the same effect as that rendered therein.
In Buddenberg v. Welch (1933), 97 Ind.App. 87 [185 N.E. 865], the lease provision read that the lessor granted to the lessee "the first and prior right and option to re-lease said premises for an additional term of five (5) years from the expiration of this lease" on the same terms. After quoting from Blythe v. Gibbons, 141 Ind. 332 [35 N.E. 557], to the effect that in the interpretation of agreements first resort is to the natural significance of the words employed, and if such words embody a definite meaning, without contradiction or absurdity, there is no room for construction, that meaning controls, and neither the courts nor legislatures can detract therefrom, the opinion continues: "Applying this principle of construction, we hold that the words 'first and prior' mean that if the lessor decides to re-lease the premises for a further term, the lessee shall have a first and prior option to re-lease the same. To give this language any other interpretation would do violence to the common rules of construction of written instruments. We cannot say that the parties to this lease put the words 'first and prior' into this lease, intending that they mean nothing. If the lessor had intended to give the lessee the right at his option to re-lease said premises, he would have positively said so; and he would not have used the words 'first and prior,' for there would have been no necessity for such language. Ordinary usage of the English language would not permit any other interpretation. We are sustained in this view by the greater weight of authorities."
A clause providing that the lessee should have the "first right to re- lease" for a further term of three years on the same conditions and terms was held not to give an absolute right to re-lease, but merely a preferential right in the event lessors desired to lease. (Coverdale Co. v. Littlefield, 240 Mass. 129 [133 N.E. 565].) To the same effect is Landowners Co. v. Pendry (1940), 151 Kan. 674 [100 P.2d 632, 127 A.L.R. 890], where the lease provided: "The parties of the second part shall have the right to the first option in case *137 they may desire to continue to occupy said premises under a new lease after the expiration of the present term." In Hill v. Prior, 79 N.H. 188 [106 A. 641], the lessor agreed to give the lessee at the expiration of the lease "the first right to a further lease." This was held to give the lessee only the right to a further lease if the lessor should desire to lease the property. To the same effect, as to "first privilege of renewal," Holloway v. Schmidt, 33 Misc. 747 [67 N.Y.S. 169]; Walsh v. Ft. Schuyler Brewing Co., 83 Misc. 488 [146 N.Y.S. 160].
The provisions of subdivision (b) are clear and unambiguous. To hold otherwise, or that they have the exact meaning of the provisions of subdivision (a), would make subdivision (a) meaningless. Subdivision (a) gives an absolute option to purchase for the first two years of the term, while subdivision (b) gives a qualified right or "first opportunity" to purchase for the balance of the term, the latter right being subject to the lessor's determination of whether or not she desires to sell.
As the paragraph in question is not ambiguous, the rules of construction in the cited sections of the Civil Code, 1636, 1641, 1647, 1654, and 1649, and section 1860 of the Code of Civil Procedure, are not applicable. "The meaning of plain and ordinary words in common use is a question of law for the court." (13 C.J. 788.) "For the purpose of ascertaining the intention of the parties to a contract, if otherwise doubtful, the rules given in this chapter are to be applied." (Civ. Code, 1637.) "The language of a contract is to govern its interpretation, if the language is clear and explicit, and does not involve an absurdity." (Civ. Code, 1638.)
[2] We do not find it necessary to decide whether oral evidence is admissible to create an ambiguity in a contract which, as here, appears to be unambiguous. (See majority, concurring and dissenting opinions in Universal Sales Corp. v. California Press Mfg. Co., 20 Cal.2d 751 [128 P.2d 665]; Estate of Rule, 25 Cal.2d 1 [152 P.2d 1003, 155 A.L.R. 1319].) Whatever the proper rule may be, it would seem to be quite clear that, where the contract is clear and unambiguous, before the party who claims the parties intended something different from what the words would seem to mean, can introduce parol evidence, he must put the fact of such intent into issue. In the present case the plaintiff simply pleaded the terms of the contract, and did not plead any intention different from the *138 express terms of the lease, nor that parol evidence was available to show an intent contrary to its clear meaning. The reporter's transcript contains the argument on the motion for judgment on the pleadings. It contains no offer of proof nor any reference to any available parol evidence. No contention is made in the briefs on appeal that plaintiff has available any parol evidence that would show that the parties intended something different from what the clear words of the contract appear to mean. This being so, it is quite clear that, under the circumstances of this case, the question of interpretation was one of law, and that the trial court properly interpreted the contract on the motion for judgment on the pleadings.
The judgment appealed from is affirmed.
Peters, P. J., and Ogden, J. pro tem., concurred.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "FreeLaw"
}
|
[Perfluorinated Compounds in Snow from Downtown Hangzhou, China].
Snow samples were collected from the snow event on January 20-22, 2016 from 11 sites in downtown Hangzhou to explore the occurrence of sixteen perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) in the atmosphere. All samples were prepared by solid-phase extraction with Oasis WAX cartridges and analyzed using ultra performance liquid chromatography interfaced with tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). The results showed that seven medium- and short-chain PFCs including C4 and C8 perfluorinated sulfonates (PFSAs) and C4-C6, C8, and C9 perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFCAs) were detected in the snow samples. Total PFC concentrations ranged from 2.85 to 35.1 ng·L-1, whereas perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) dominated, with ranges of 2.15-23.0 ng·L-1, and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) was detected at lower levels, ranging from 0 to 0.46 ng·L-1. As compared to the results from other studies, the PFOA concentrations of the study region were at mid-level and the PFOS concentrations were relatively low. The spatial distribution of PFCs varied, and the pollutant concentrations of the snow samples from the sampling sites located in the urban areas were higher than those in the rural areas. The greatest total PFC concentrations were detected in Fuyang, whereas the lowest concentrations were detected in Jiande and Chun'an. In this study, the high concentrations of PFCs dominated by PFOA that were measured in the Hangzhou snow samples emphasize the importance of atmospheric wet deposition as one of the sources of PFC contamination in this ecological system and should be addressed. The occurrence of PFCs in the air, indicated by their presence in the snow, suggests that the atmospheric environment may be an important contributor in human and ecological exposure to PFCs by local residents.
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{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
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Breastfeeding duration is a risk factor for atopic eczema.
The results of numerous studies on the influence of breastfeeding in the prevention of atopic disorders are often contradictory. One of the most important problems is confounding by other lifestyle factors. The aim of the present study was to analyse the effect of any breastfeeding duration on the prevalence of atopic eczema in the first seven years of life taking into account other risk factors. In an observational birth cohort study 1314 infants born in 1990 were followed-up for seven years. At 3, 6, 12, 18, 24 months and every year thereafter, parents were interviewed and filled in questionnaires, children were examined and blood was taken for in vitro allergy tests. Generalized Estimation Equations (GEE)-models were used to model risk factors for the prevalence of atopic eczema and for confounder adjustment Breastfeeding was carried out for longer if at least one parent had eczema, the mother was older, did not smoke in pregnancy, and the family had a high social status. The prevalence of atopic eczema in the first seven years increased with each year of age (OR 1.05; 95% CI 1.01-1.09 for each year), with each additional month of breastfeeding (1.03; 1.00-1.06 for each additional month), with a history of parental atopic eczema (2.06; 1.38-3.08), and if other atopic signs and symptoms appeared, especially specific sensitization (1.53; 1.25-1.88), and asthma (1.41; 1.07-1.85). Although breastfeeding should be recommended for all infants, it does not prevent eczema in children with a genetic risk. Parental eczema is the major risk factor for eczema. But in this study, each month of breastfeeding also increased the risk.
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{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
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Parasitofauna of the nine-spined stickleback from the Gulf of Gdańsk and the mouth of Dead Vistula.
Four species, one subspecies and one parasite marked to the genus were collected from the nine-spined stickleback Pungitius pungitius L. from the Gulf of Gdańsk and the mouth of Dead Vistula. Nine-spined stickleback was noted as a new host in Polish coastal water for five parasites: Glugea anomala (Microsporidia), Diplostomum spathaceum (Digenea-metacercariae) and Apatemon sp. (Digenea-incysted metacercariae), Hysterothylacium aduncum (Nematoda-third stage larvae) and Thersitina gasterostci (Copepoda). Earlier in this area have been obserwd only ciliates Tnchodina domerguei.
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{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
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Metal binding ability of hypermodified nucleosides of t-RNA. Potentiometric and spectroscopic studies on the metal complexes of N-[(9-beta-D-ribofuranosylpurin-6-yl)-carbamoyl] threonine.
Copper(II), nickel(II), zinc(II), manganese(II), and magnesium(II) complexes of t6A (N-[9-beta-D-ribofuranosylpurin-6-yl)carbamoyl] threonine and t6Ade (N6(threoninocarbonyl)adenine) were studied by potentiometric and spectroscopic methods. It was found that t6Ade has three dissociable protons in the accessible pH range (N1 and N9 of purine and carboxylate), while only two pK values are characteristic of t6A. Magnesium(II) and manganese(II) do not interact effectively with these ligands, but copper(II) and nickel(II) ions form very stable complexes with the coordination of purine N1, deprotonated amide nitrogen, and carboxylate oxygen donors.
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{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
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Genetic variation of metabolite and hormone concentration in UK Holstein-Friesian calves and the genetic relationship with economically important traits.
The decline of dairy cattle fertility worldwide remains a major concern, with conception rates to first service commonly below 40%. The length and severity of negative energy balance postpartum are unfavorably correlated with fertility, suggesting that the length and severity of negative energy balance and fertility are linked via several hormones or metabolites. These compounds therefore have the potential to predict fertility at a genetic level. The addition of a predictor trait for fertility into present fertility indices would accelerate genetic gain, particularly if it was expressed before adulthood. The objective of this work was to estimate the genetic variation in several metabolites and hormones in calves, and to determine their genetic relationships with fertility and production through sire predicted transmitting abilities (PTA; sires of calves sampled). Circulating concentrations of free fatty acids (FFA), glucose, growth hormone (GH), insulin, and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) in male and female UK Holstein-Friesian dairy calves (average age +/- SD; 126 +/- 12.7 d) were analyzed during 2 studies: data set 1 (n = 496 females; 1996-2001; 7 commercial dairy herds) and data set 2 (n = 326 females, n = 256 males; 2002-2006; multiple ovulation and embryo transfer breeding scheme). Univariate mixed models were fitted to the data using ASREML. Basal concentrations of FFA, glucose, GH, insulin and total IGF-1 were all moderately heritable in both sexes (heritability range +/- SE; 0.09 +/- 0.05 to 0.66 +/- 0.14). The sire PTA for protein percentage had significant regression coefficients and approximate genetic correlations with FFA and insulin, and the sire PTA for calving interval had significant regression coefficients and approximate genetic correlations with GH. Additive genetic variance seems responsible for a moderate proportion of the phenotypic variation in important metabolites and regulatory hormones in male and female UK Holstein-Friesian dairy calves, therefore supporting further investigation into their use as juvenile predictors for fertility in the mature female.
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{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
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---
abstract: 'We present a new method for simulating Markovian jump processes with time-dependent transitions rates, which avoids the transformation of random numbers by inverting time integrals over the rates. It relies on constructing a sequence of random time points from a homogeneous Poisson process, where the system under investigation attempts to change its state with certain probabilities. With respect to the underlying master equation the method corresponds to an exact formal solution in terms of a Dyson series. Different algorithms can be derived from the method and their power is demonstrated for a set of interacting two-level systems that are periodically driven by an external field.'
author:
- 'Viktor Holubec$^{1}$'
- Petr Chvosta$^1$
- 'Mario Einax$^{2}$'
- 'Philipp Maass$^{2}$'
title: 'Attempt-time Monte Carlo: an alternative for simulation of stochastic jump processes with time-dependent transition rates'
---
Introduction {#sec:1}
============
Stochastic jump processes with time-dependent transition rates are of general importance for many applications in physics and chemistry, in particular for describing the kinetics of chemical reactions [@Gibson/Bruck:2000; @Anderson:2007; @Astumian:2007] and the non-equilibrium dynamics of driven systems in statistical mechanics [@Crooks:1999; @Seifert:2005; @Esposito/VandenBroeck:2010]. With respect to applications in interdisciplinary fields they play an important role in connection with queuing theories.
In general a system with $N$ states is considered that at random time instants performs transitions from one state to another. In case of a Markovian jump dynamics the probability for the system to change its state in the time interval $[t,t+\Delta t[$ is independent of the history and given by $w_{ij}(t)\Delta t+ o(\Delta t)$, where $j$ and $i\ne j$ are the initial and target state, respectively, and $w_{ij}(t)$ the corresponding transition rate at time $t$ ($w_{jj}(t)=0$). This implies that, if the systems is in the state $j$ at time $t_0$, it will stay in this state until a time $t>t_0$ with probability $\phi_j(t,t_0)=\exp[-\int_{t_0}^t d\tau\,w_j^{\rm
tot}(\tau)]$, where $w_j^{\rm tot}(\tau)=\sum_i w_{ij}(\tau)$ is the total escape rate from state $j$ at time $\tau$. The probability to perform a transition to the target state $i$ in the time interval $[t,t+dt[$ then is $w_{ij}(t)\phi_j(t,t_0)dt$, i. e.$$\psi_{ij}(t,t_0)=
w_{ij}(t)\exp\left[-\int_{t_0}^td\tau\,w_j^{\rm tot}(\tau)\right]
\label{eq:psi}$$ is the probability density for the first transition to state $i$ to occur at time $t$ after the system was in state $j$ at time $t_0$. Any algorithm that evolves the system according to Eq. (\[eq:psi\]) generates stochastic trajectories with the correct path probabilities.
The first algorithm of this kind was developed by Gillespie [@Gillespie:1978] in generalization of the continuous-time Monte-Carlo algorithm introduced by Bortz *et al.* [@Bortz/etal:1975] for time-independent rates. We call it the reaction time algorithm (RTA) in the following. The RTA consists of drawing a random time $t$ from the first transition time probability density $\psi_j^{\rm tot}(t,t_0)=\sum_i \psi_{ij}(t,t_0) =w_j^{\rm tot}\phi_j(t,t_0)=-\partial_t \phi_j(t,t_0)$ to any other state $i\ne j$, and a subsequent random selection of the target state $i$ with probability $w_{ij}(t)/w_j^{\rm tot}(t)$. In practice these two steps can be performed by generating two uncorrelated and uniformly distributed random numbers $r_1$, $r_2$ in the unit interval $[0,1[$ with some random number generator, where the first is used to specify the transition time $t$ via $$W_j(t,t_0)=\int_{t_0}^t d\tau w_j^{\rm tot}(\tau)=-\log(1-r_1)
\label{eq:t-selection}$$ and the second is used to select the target state $i$ by requiring $$\sum_{k=1}^{i-1}\frac{w_{kj}(t)}{w_j^{\rm tot}(t)}
\le r_2 < \sum_{k=1}^i\frac{w_{kj}(t)}{w_j^{\rm tot}(t)}
\label{eq:target-selection}$$ Both steps, however, lead to some unpleasant problems in the practical realization.
The first step according to Eq. (\[eq:t-selection\]) requires the calculation of $W_j(t,t_0)$ and the determination of its inverse $\tilde W_j(.,t_0)$ with respect to $t$ in order to obtain the transition time $t=\tilde W_j(-\log(1-r_1),t_0)$. While this is always possible, since $w_j^{\rm tot}>0$ and accordingly $W_j(t,t_0)$ is a monotonously increasing function of $t$, it can be CPU time consuming in case $W_j(t,t_0)$ cannot be explicitly given in an analytical form and one needs to implement a root finding procedure.
The second step according to Eq. (\[eq:target-selection\]) can be cumbersome in case there are many states ($N$ large) and a systematic grouping of the $w_{ij}(t)$ to only a few classes is not possible. This situation in particular applies to many-particle systems, where $N$ typically grows exponentially with the number of particles, and the interactions (or a coupling to spatially inhomogeneous time-dependent external fields) can lead to a large number of different transitions rates. Moreover, even for systems with simple interactions (as, for example, Ising spin systems), where a grouping is in principle possible, the subdivision of the unit interval underlying Eq. (\[eq:target-selection\]) cannot be strongly simplified for time-dependent rates.
A way to circumvent Eq. (\[eq:target-selection\]) is the use of the First Reaction Time Algorithm (FRTA) for time dependent rates [@Jansen:1995], or modifications of it [@Anderson:2007]. In the FRTA one draws random first transition times $t_k$ from the probability densities $\psi_{kj}(t_k,t_0)
=w_{kj}(t_k)\exp[-\int_{t_0}^{t_k} d\tau\,w_{kj}(\tau)]$ for the individual transitions to each of the target states $k$ and performs the transition $i$ with the smallest $t_i=\min_k\{t_k\}$ at time $t_i$. This is statistically equivalent to the RTA, since for the given initial state $j$, the possible transitions to all target states are independent of each other. In short-range interacting systems, in particular, many of the random times $t_k$ can be kept for determining the next transition following $i$. In fact, all transitions from the new state $i$ to target states $k$ can be kept for which $w_{ki}(\tau)=w_{kj}(\tau)$ for $\tau>t$ (see Ref. [@Einax/Maass:2009] for details). However, the random times $t_k$ need to be drawn from $\psi_{kj}(t_k,t_0)$ and this unfortunately involves the same problems as discussed above in connection with Eq. (\[eq:t-selection\]).
Algorithms {#sec:2}
==========
We now present a new “attempt time algorithm” (ATA) that allows one to avoid the problems associated with the generation of the transition time in Eq. (\[eq:t-selection\]). Starting with the system in state $j$ at time $t_0$ as before, one first considers a large time interval $T$ and determines a number $\mu_j^{\rm tot}$ satisfying $$\mu_j^{\rm tot}\ge \max_{t_0\le\tau\le t_0+T}\{w_j^{\rm tot}(\tau)\}\,\,.
\label{eq:mutot}$$ In general this can by done easily, since $w_j^{\rm tot}(\tau)$ is a known function. In particular for bounded transition rates it poses no difficulty, as, for example, in the case of Glauber rates or a periodic external driving, where $T$ could be chosen as the time period. If an unlimited growth of $w_j^{\rm tot}$ with time were present (an unphysical situation for long times), $T$ can be chosen self-consistently by requiring that the time $t$ for the next transition to another state $i\ne j$ (see below) must be smaller than $t_0+T$.
Next an attempt time interval $\Delta t_1$ is drawn from the exponential density $F_j(\Delta t_1)=\mu_j^{\rm tot} \exp(-\mu_j^{\rm
tot}\Delta t_1)$ and the resulting attempt transition time $t_1=t_0+\Delta t_1$ is rejected with probability $p_j^{\rm
rej}(t_1)=1-w_j^{\rm tot}(t_1)/\mu_j^{\rm tot}$. If it is rejected, a further attempt time interval $\Delta t_2$ is drawn from $F_j(\Delta
t_2)$, corresponding to an attempt transition time $t_2=t_1+\Delta
t_2$, and so on until an attempt time $t<t_0+T$ is eventually accepted. Then a transition to a target state $i$ is performed at time $t$ with probability $w_{ij}(t)/w_j^{\rm tot}(t)$, using the target state selection of Eq. (\[eq:target-selection\]).
In order to show that this method yields the correct first transition probability density $\psi_{ij}(t,t_0)$ from Eq. (\[eq:psi\]), let us first consider a sequence, where exactly $n\ge0$ attempts at some times $t_1<\ldots<t_n$ are rejected and then the $(n+1)$th attempt leads to a transition to the target state $i$ in the time interval $[t,t+dt[$. The corresponding probability density $\psi_{ij}^{(n)}(t,t_0)$ is given by $$\begin{aligned}
\label{eq:ata-proof-1}
\psi_{ij}^{(n)}&(t,t_0)=
\int_{t_0}^t dt_n\int_{t_0}^{t_{n-1}} dt_{n-1}\ldots\int_{t_0}^{t_{2}} dt_1
\frac{w_{ij}(t)}{w_j^{\rm tot}(t)} \nonumber \\
&\hspace*{-2em} \times \left[1-p_j^{\rm rej}(t)\right]F_j(t-t_n)
\prod_{m=1}^n p_j^{\rm rej}(t_m)F_j(t_m-t_{m-1}) \\
&=\frac{w_{ij}(t)e^{-\mu_j^{\rm tot}(t-t_0)}}{n!}
\left[\int_{t_0}^td\tau\,\mu_j^{\rm tot}p_j^{{\rm rej}}(\tau)\right]^n\nonumber\\
&=\frac{w_{ij}(t)e^{-\mu_j^{\rm tot}(t-t_0)}}{n!}
\left[\mu_j^{\rm tot}(t-t_0)-\int_{t_0}^td\tau\,w_j^{\rm tot}(\tau)\right]^n.
\nonumber\end{aligned}$$ Summing over all possible $n$ hence yields $$\psi_j(t,t_0)=\sum_{n=0}^\infty\psi_{ij}^{(n)}(t,t_0)=
w_{ij}(t)\exp\left[-\int_{t_0}^td\tau\,w_j^{\rm tot}(\tau)\right]
\label{eq:ata-proof-2}$$ from Eq. (\[eq:psi\]).
It is clear that for avoiding the root finding of Eq. (\[eq:t-selection\]) by use of the ATA, one has to pay the price for introducing rejections. If the typical number of rejections can be kept small and an explicit analytical expression for $t$ cannot be derived from Eq. (\[eq:t-selection\]), the ATA should become favorable in comparison to the RTA. Moreover, the ATA can be implemented in a software routine independent of the special form of the $w_{ij}(\tau)$ for applicants who are not interested to invest special thoughts on how to solve Eq. (\[eq:t-selection\]).
One may object that the ATA still entails the problem connected with the cumbersome target state selection by Eq. (\[eq:target-selection\]). However, as the RTA has the first reaction variant FRTA, the ATA has a first attempt variant. In this first attempt time algorithm (FATA) one first determines, instead of $\mu_j^{\rm tot}$ from Eq. (\[eq:mutot\]), upper bounds for the individual transitions to all target states $k\ne j$ ($\mu_{jj}=0$), $$\mu_{kj}\ge\max_{t_0\le\tau\le t_0+T}\{w_{kj}(\tau)\}\,\,.
\label{eq:mukj}$$ Thereon random time intervals $\Delta t_k$ are drawn from $F_{kj}(\Delta t_k)=\mu_{kj}\exp(-\mu_{kj}\Delta t_k)$, yielding corresponding attempt transition times $t_k^{(1)}=t_0+\Delta t_k$. The transition to the target state $k'$ with the minimal $t_{k'}^{(1)}=\min_k\{t_k^{(1)}\}=t_1$ is attempted and rejected with probability $p_{k'k}^{\rm rej}(t_{k'}^{(1)})=1-w_{k'k}(t_{k'}^{(1)})/\mu_{k'k}$. If it is rejected, a further time interval $\Delta t_{k'}^{(2)}$ is drawn from $F_{k'j}(\Delta t_{k'}^{(2)})$, yielding $t_{k'}^{(2)}=t_{k'}^{(1)}+\Delta t_{k'}^{(2)}$, while the other attempt transition times are kept, $t_k^{(2)}=t_k^{(1)}$ for $k\ne k'$ (it is not necessary to draw new time intervals for these target states due to the absence of memory in the Poisson process). The target state $k''$ with the new minimal $t_{k''}^{(2)}=\min_k\{t_k^{(2)}\}=t_2$ is then attempted and so on until eventually a transition to a target state $i$ is accepted at a time $t<t_0+T$. The determination of the minimal times can be done effectively by keeping an ordered stack of the attempt times. Furthermore, as in the FRTA, one can, after a successful transition to a target state $i$ at time $t$, keep the (last updated) attempt times $t_k$ for all target states that are not affected by this transition (i. e. for which $w_{ki}(\tau)=w_{kj}(\tau)$ for $\tau\ge t$). Overall one can view the procedure implied by the FATA as that each state $k$ has a next attempt time $t_k$ (with $t_j=\infty$ if the system is in state $j$) and that the next attempt is made to the target state with the minimal $t_k$. After each attempt, updates of some of the $t_k$ are made as described above in dependence of whether the attempt was rejected or accepted.
In order to prove that the FATA gives the $\psi_j(t,t_0)$ from Eq. (\[eq:psi\]), we show that the probability densities $\chi_{ij}(t,t_n)=[w_{ij}(t)/w_j^{\rm tot}(t)](1-p_j^{\rm
rej}(t))F_j(t-t_n)=w_{ij}(t)\exp[-\mu_j^{\rm tot}(t-t_n)]$ and $\eta_j(t_m,t_{m-1})= p_j^{\rm rej}(t_m)F_j(t_m-t_{m-1})=[\mu_j^{\rm
tot}-w_j^{\rm tot}] \exp[-\mu_j^{\rm tot}(t_m-t_{m-1})]$ appearing in Eq. (\[eq:ata-proof-1\]) are generated, if we set $\mu_j^{\rm
tot}=\sum_k \mu_{kj}$ (note that Eq. (\[eq:mutot\]) is automatically satisfied by this choice). These probability densities have the following meaning: $\chi_{ij}(t,t_n)dt$ is the probability that, if the system is in state $j$ at time $t_n$, the next attempt to a target state occurs in the time interval $[t,t+dt[$, the attempt is accepted, and it changes the state from $j$ to $i$; $\eta_j(t_m,t_{m-1})dt_m$ is the probability that, after the attempt time $t_m$, the next attempt occurs in $[t_m,t_m+dt_m[$ with $t_m>t_{m-1}$ and is rejected.
In the FATA the probability $\kappa_{lj}(t_m,t_{m-1})dt_m$ that, when starting at time $t_{m-1}$, the next attempt is occurring in $[t_m,t_m+dt_m[$ to a target state $l$ is given by $$\begin{aligned}
\kappa_{lj}(t_m,t_{m-1})&=
\mu_{lj}\exp[-\mu_{lj}(t_m-t_{m-1})]\nonumber \\
& \hspace*{0.3cm} \times \prod_{k\ne l} \int_{t_m-t_{m-1}}^\infty
d\tau\,\mu_{kj}\exp(-\mu_{kj}\tau)\nonumber\\
&=\mu_{lj}\exp[-\mu_j^{\rm tot}(t_m-t_{m-1})]\,\,.
\label{eq:kappa}\end{aligned}$$ The product ensures that $t_m$ is the minimal time (the lower bound in the integral can be set equal to $(t_m-t_{m-1})$ for all $k\ne l$ due to the absence of memory in the Poisson process). The probability that this attempted transition is rejected is $p_{lj}^{\rm
rej}(t_m)=1-w_{lj}(t_m)/\mu_{lj}$ and accordingly, by summing over all target states $l$, we obtain $$\begin{aligned}
\eta_j(t_m,t_{m-1})&=\sum_l p_{lj}^{\rm
rej}(t_m)\mu_{lj}\exp[-\mu_j^{\rm tot})(t_m-t_{m-1})]\nonumber\\
&=[\mu_j^{\rm tot}-w_j^{\rm tot}(t_m)]\exp[-\mu_j^{\rm tot}(t_m-t_{m-1})]
\label{eq:eta}\end{aligned}$$ in agreement with the expression appearing in Eq. (\[eq:ata-proof-1\]). Furthermore, when starting from time $t_n$, the probability density $\chi_{ij}(t,t_n)$ referring to the joint probability that the next attempted transition occurs in $[t,t+dt[$ to state $i$ and is accepted is given by $$\chi_{ij}(t,t_n)=\frac{w_ {ij}(t)}{\mu_{ij}}\kappa_{ij}(t,t_n)=
w_{ij}(t)\exp[-\mu_j^{\rm tot}(t-t_{n})]\,\,.
\label{eq:chi}$$ Hence one recovers the decomposition in Eq. (\[eq:ata-proof-1\]) with $\mu_j^{\rm tot}=\sum_k \mu_{kj}$.
Before discussing an example, it is instructive to see how the ATA (and RTA) can be associated with a solution of the underlying master equation $$\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\,\mathbb{G}(t,t')=-\mathbb{M}(t)\,
\mathbb{G}(t,t')\,\,,\qquad\mathbb{G}(t',t')=\mathbb{I}
\label{eq:master}$$ where $\mathbb{G}(t,t')$ is the matrix of transition probabilities $G_{ij}(t,t')$ for the system to be in state $i$ at time $t$ if it was in state $j$ at time $t'\le t$, and $\mathbb{M}(t)$ is the transition rate matrix with elements $M_{ij}(t)=-w_{ij}(t)$ for $i\ne j$ and $M_{jj}(t)=-\sum_{i\ne j} M_{ij}(t)=w_j^{\rm tot}(t)$. Let us decompose $\mathbb{M}(t)$ as $\mathbb{M}(t)=\mathbb{D}+\mathbb{A}(t)$, where $\mathbb{D}=\mathrm{diag}\left\{ \mu_1^{\rm
tot},\ldots,\mu_N^{\rm tot}\right\}$. If $\mathbb{A}(t)$ were missing, the solution of the master equation (\[eq:master\]) would be $\mathbb{G}_0(t,t')= \mathrm{diag}\left\{\exp(-\mu_1^{\rm
tot}(t-t'), \ldots,\exp(-\mu_N^{\rm tot}(t-t')\right\}$. Hence, when introducing $\tilde{\mathbb{A}}(t,t')=\mathbb{G}_0^{-1}(t,t')\mathbb{A}(t)
\mathbb{G}_0(t,t')=\mathbb{G}_0(t',t)\mathbb{A}(t) \mathbb{G}_0(t,t')$ in the “interaction picture”, the solution of the master equation can be written as $$\begin{aligned}
\mathbb{G}(t,t')&=\mathbb{G}_0(t,t')\left[
\mathbb{I} +\int_{t'}^t dt_1 \tilde{\mathbb{A}}(t_1,t') \right. \nonumber \\
& \hspace*{0.3cm} + \left.\int_{t'}^t dt_2 \int_{t'}^{t_2} dt_1
\tilde{\mathbb{A}}(t_2,t')
\tilde{\mathbb{A}}(t_1,t')+\ldots\right]
\label{eq:master-solution-1}\end{aligned}$$ Inserting $\mathbb{I}=\mathbb{D}^{-1}\mathbb{D}$ after each matrix $\tilde{\mathbb{A}}$, one arrives at $$\begin{aligned}
&\mathbb{G}(t,t')=\mathbb{G}_0(t,t')
+\int_{t'}^t dt_1 \mathbb{G}_0(t,t_1)\mathbb{B}(t_1)F_0(t_1,t') \nonumber \\
&{}+\int_{t'}^t dt_2 \int_{t'}^{t_2} dt_1
\mathbb{G}_0(t,t_2)\mathbb{B}(t_2)\mathbb{F}_0(t_2,t_1)
\mathbb{B}(t_1)\mathbb{F}_0(t_1,t') \nonumber \\ &+\ldots
\label{eq:master-solution-2}\end{aligned}$$ where $\mathbb{F}_0(t,t')=\mathbb{D}\,\mathbb{G}_0(t,t')=
\mathrm{diag}\{\mu_1^{\rm tot}\exp[-\mu_1^{\rm tot}(t-t')]
,\ldots,$ $\mu_N^{\rm tot}\exp[-\mu_N^{\rm tot}(t-t')]\}$, and $\mathbb{B}(t)=\mathbb{A}(t)\mathbb{D}^{-1}$ has the matrix elements $B_{ij}(t)=-w_{ij}(t)/\mu_j^{\rm tot}$ for $i\ne j$ and $B_{jj}(t)=1-w_j^{\rm tot}(t)/\mu_j^{\rm tot}$.
Equation (\[eq:master-solution-2\]) resembles the ATA: The transition probabilities $G_{ij}(t,t')$ are decomposed into paths with an arbitrary number $n=0,1,2,\ldots$ of “Poisson points”, where transitions are attempted. The times between successive attempted transitions are exponentially distributed according to the matrix elements of $\mathbb{F}_0$ and the attempted transitions are accepted or rejected according to the probabilities encoded in the diagonal and non-diagonal elements of the $\mathbb{B}$ matrix, respectively. The $\mathbb{G}_0$ entering Eq. (\[eq:master-solution-2\]) takes care that after the last attempt in a path with exactly $n$ attempted transitions no further attempt occurs and the system remains in the target state $i$. The RTA can be associated with an analogous formal solution of the master equation if one replaces $\mathbb{G}_0(t,t')$ by $\mathbb{G}_0^{\rm RTA}(t,t')=
\mathrm{diag}\left\{ w_1^{\rm tot}(t)\exp[-\int_{t'}^td\tau\,w_1^{\rm tot}(\tau)]
,\ldots,\right.$ $\left.
w_N^{\rm tot}(t)\exp[-\int_{t'}^td\tau\,w_N^{\rm tot}(\tau)]\right\}$ and $\mathbb{B}(t)$ by $\mathbb{B^{\rm RTA}}(t)$ with elements $B_{ij}^{\rm RTA}(t)=(1-\delta_{ij})w_{ij}(t)/w_j^{\rm tot}(t)$ (the diagonal elements are zero since the RTA is rejection-free).
Example {#sec:example}
=======
Let us now demonstrate the implementation of the FATA in an example. To this end we consider three mutually coupled two-level systems that are periodically driven. For an arbitrary given $i$, $i=1,2,3$, the state $|\,i,\pm\,\rangle$ has the energy $\pm E(t)$. The occupancy of the state $|\,i,\pm\,\rangle$ is specified by the occupation number $n_i=\pm 1$. For example, if $n_i=-1$, the $i$-th two level system resides in the state $|\,i,-\,\rangle$ and it possesses the energy $-E(t)$. The coupling is described by the (positive) interaction parameter $V$. The total energy of the three coupled two-level systems is given by the expression $$H(\mathbf{n},t)=V(n_1n_2+n_1n_3+n_2n_3)+E(t)\sum_{i=1}^{3}n_{i}\,\,,
\label{eq:h}$$ where $\mathbf{n}=(n_{1},n_{2},n_{3})$ specifies the microstate of the compound system. The periodic driving is considered to change energies of the individual two-level systems as $$E(t)=\frac{\Delta E}{2}\,\sin(\omega t)\,,
\label{eq:e}$$ where $\Delta E>0$ is the amplitude of modulation and $\omega$ its frequency. Due to contact of the compound system with a heat reservoir at temperature $T$, transitions between its microstates occur. Assume that in the initial state $\mathbf{m}$ one and only one occupation number differs from the corresponding occupation number in the final state $\mathbf{n}$. Then instantaneous value of the detailed-balanced Glauber jump rates connecting these two states reads $$\begin{aligned}
w(\mathbf{m}\rightarrow\mathbf{n},t)=
\frac{\nu}{1+\exp\left\{\beta\left[H(\mathbf{n},t)-H(\mathbf{m},t)\right]\right\}}\,\,.
\label{eq:w}\end{aligned}$$ The other pairs of microstates are not connected, that is, the transition rates between them vanish. In the above expression, $\nu$ designates an attempt frequency, and $\beta$ is the inverse temperature. In the following we will use $k_{\rm B}T$ as our energy unit and $\nu^{-1}$ as our time unit.
![Work distributions $p(w)$ as obtained from the FATA for $\Delta E=V=5$ and $\omega=0.1$ (squares, green color), 1 (circles, blue color), and $\omega=10$ (stars, red color).[]{data-label="fig:fig1"}](fig1.eps){width="45.00000%"}
In current research of non-equilibrium systems, in particular of processes in small molecular systems, the investigation of distributions of microscopic work receives much attention. Among others, this is largely motivated by questions concerning the optimization of processes, and by the connection of the work distributions to fluctuation theorems. These theorems allow one to obtain equilibrium thermodynamic quantities from the study of non-equilibrium processes and they are useful for getting a deeper insight into the manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics. At the same time, the analytical expressions for the work distribution are rarely attainable (one exception is reported in [@Chvosta:2007]). It is therefore interesting to see how the FATA can be employed for studies in this research field. To be specific, we focus on the stationary state and calculate work distributions within one period of the external driving. For these distributions we check the detailed fluctuation theorem of Crooks [@Crooks:1999], as generalized by Hatano and Sasa [@Hatano/Sasa:2001] to steady states (for a nice summary of different forms of detailed and integral fluctuation theorems, see [@Esposito/VandenBroeck:2010]).
In our model, due to the possibility of thermally activated transitions between the eight microstates, the state vector $\mathbf{n}$ must be understood as a stochastic process. We designate it as $\mathbf{n}(t)$, and let $\mathbf{n}^{{\rm tr}}(t)$ denotes its arbitrary fixed realization. The instantaneous energy of the compound system along this realization is then $H(\mathbf{n}^{{\rm tr}}(t),t)$. The work done on the system during the $m$th period $[m\tau,(m+1)\tau]$, $\tau=2\pi/\omega$, if the system evolves along the realization in question, is given by $$\begin{aligned}
w^{{\rm tr}}_{m}&=\int_{m\tau}^{(m+1)\tau}dt\,\frac{\partial}{\partial t}H(\mathbf{n}^{{\rm tr}}(t),t)
\nonumber\\
&=
\frac{\omega\Delta E}{2}\sum_{i=1}^3\int_{m\tau}^{(m+1)\tau}dt\, n^{{\rm tr}}_{i}(t)\cos(\omega t)\,\,.
\label{eq:work}\end{aligned}$$ In the stationary limit $m\to\infty$ ($m\gg1$) we can drop the index $m$. According to the detailed fluctuation theorem, the work distribution $p(w)$ should, in our case (time-symmetric situation with respect to the initial microstate distribution for starting forward and backward paths), obey the relation $p(w)\exp(-w)=p(-w)$.
Figure \[fig:fig1\] shows the results for $p(w)$ obtained from the FATA for $\Delta E=V=5$, and three different frequencies $\omega=0.1$, 1, and 10. First, we let the system evolve during the $N_{{\rm ini}}=1$ ($\omega=0.1$), $N_{{\rm ini}}=3$ ($\omega=1$), $N_{{\rm ini}}=9$ ($\omega=10$) periods to reach the stationary state. Subsequently, the work values $w^{{\rm tr}}$ according to Eq. (\[eq:work\]) were sampled over $N=10^{4}$ ($\omega=0.1$), $N=10^{5}$ ($\omega=1$), and $N=10^{5}$ ($\omega=10$) periods.
With decreasing $\omega$, the maxima of the work distributions in Fig. \[fig:fig1\] shift toward $w=0$, and $\delta$-singularities, marked by the vertical lines, receive less weight. These $\delta-$singularities are associated with stochastic trajectories of the system, where no transitions occur within a period of the driving. For $\omega=0.1$, $p(w)$ is already close to the Gaussian fluctuation regime.
In Fig. \[fig:fig2\] we show that the work distributions from Fig. \[fig:fig1\] indeed fulfill the detailed fluctuation theorem. This demonstrates that the FATA successfully generates system trajectories with the correct statistics of the stochastic process.
![Check of the detailed fluctuation theorem $p(w)\exp(-w)=p(-w)$ for the work distributions shown in Fig. \[fig:fig1\]. The same symbols/colors are used for the three different frequencies as in Fig. \[fig:fig1\].[]{data-label="fig:fig2"}](fig2.eps){width="45.00000%"}
Summary {#sec:summary}
=======
In summary, we have presented new simulation algorithms for Markovian jump processes with time-dependent transition rates, which avoid the often cumbersome or unhandy calculation of inverse functions. The ATA and FATA rely on the construction of a series of Poisson points, where transitions are attempted and rejected with certain probabilities. As a consequence, both algorithms are easy to implement, and their efficiency will be good as long as the number of rejections can be kept small. For complex interacting systems, the FATA has the same merits as the FRTA with respect to the FRA. Both the ATA and FATA generate exact realizations of the stochastic process. Their connection to perturbative solutions of the underlying master equation may allow one to include in future work also non-Markovian features of a stochastic dynamics by letting the rejection probabilities to depend on the history [@Chvosta:1999]. Compared to the RTA and FRTA, the new algorithms should in particular be favorable, when considering periodically driven systems with interactions. Such systems are of much current interest in the study of non-equilibrium stationary states and we thus hope that our findings will help to investigate them more conveniently and efficiently.
Support of this work by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic (project No. MSM 0021620835), by the Grant Agency of the Charles University (grant No. 143610) and by the project SVV - 2010 - 261 301 of the Charles University in Prague is gratefully acknowledged.
[99]{}
Gibson, M. A. Bruck, J., *J. Phys. Chem. A*, **104** (2000) 1876.
Anderson, D. F., *J. Chem. Phys.*, **127** (2007) 214107.
Astumian, R. D., *Procl. Natl. Acad. Sci.*, **104** (2007) 19715.
Crooks, G. E., *Phys. Rev. E*, **60** (1999) 2721; *ibid.*, **61** (2000) 2361.
Seifert, U., *Phys. Rev. Lett.*, **95** (2005) 040602.
Esposito, M. Van den Broeck, C., *Phys. Rev. Lett.*, **104** (2010) 090601.
Gillespie, D. T. *J. Comput. Phys.*, **28** (1978) 395.
Bortz, A. B., Karlos, M. H. Lebowitz J. L., *J. Comp. Phys.*, **17** (1975) 10.
Jansen, A. P. J., *Comp. Phys. Comm.*, **86** (1995) 1.
Einax, M. Maass, P., *Phys. Rev. E*, **80** (2009) 020101(R).
Hatano, T. Sasa, S. I., *Phys. Rev. Lett.* **86** (2001) 3463.
Chvosta, P., Reineker, P. Schulz, M., *Phys. Rev. E*, **75** (2007) 041124.
Chvosta, P. Reineker, P., *Physica A* **268** (1999) 103.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "ArXiv"
}
|
/*
* Copyright (c) Contributors, http://opensimulator.org/
* See CONTRIBUTORS.TXT for a full list of copyright holders.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
* * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
* documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* * Neither the name of the OpenSimulator Project nor the
* names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
* derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
*
* THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE DEVELOPERS ``AS IS'' AND ANY
* EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
* WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
* DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
* DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
* (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
* LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
* ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
* (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
* SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
*/
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using OpenMetaverse;
using Mono.Addins;
using OpenSim.Region.Framework.Interfaces;
namespace OpenSim.Region.CoreModules.World.Wind.Plugins
{
[Extension(Path = "/OpenSim/WindModule", NodeName = "WindModel", Id = "SimpleRandomWind")]
class SimpleRandomWind : Mono.Addins.TypeExtensionNode, IWindModelPlugin
{
private Vector2[] m_windSpeeds = new Vector2[16 * 16];
private float m_strength = 1.0f;
private Random m_rndnums = new Random(Environment.TickCount);
#region IPlugin Members
public string Version
{
get { return "1.0.0.0"; }
}
public string Name
{
get { return "SimpleRandomWind"; }
}
public void Initialise()
{
}
#endregion
#region IDisposable Members
public void Dispose()
{
m_windSpeeds = null;
}
#endregion
#region IWindModelPlugin Members
public void WindConfig(OpenSim.Region.Framework.Scenes.Scene scene, Nini.Config.IConfig windConfig)
{
if (windConfig != null)
{
if (windConfig.Contains("strength"))
{
m_strength = windConfig.GetFloat("strength", 1.0F);
}
}
}
public bool WindUpdate(uint frame)
{
//Make sure our object is valid (we haven't been disposed of yet)
if (m_windSpeeds == null)
return false;
for (int y = 0; y < 16; y++)
{
for (int x = 0; x < 16; x++)
{
m_windSpeeds[y * 16 + x].X = (float)(m_rndnums.NextDouble() * 2d - 1d); // -1 to 1
m_windSpeeds[y * 16 + x].Y = (float)(m_rndnums.NextDouble() * 2d - 1d); // -1 to 1
m_windSpeeds[y * 16 + x].X *= m_strength;
m_windSpeeds[y * 16 + x].Y *= m_strength;
}
}
return true;
}
public Vector3 WindSpeed(float fX, float fY, float fZ)
{
Vector3 windVector = new Vector3(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);
int x = (int)fX / 16;
int y = (int)fY / 16;
if (x < 0) x = 0;
if (x > 15) x = 15;
if (y < 0) y = 0;
if (y > 15) y = 15;
if (m_windSpeeds != null)
{
windVector.X = m_windSpeeds[y * 16 + x].X;
windVector.Y = m_windSpeeds[y * 16 + x].Y;
}
return windVector;
}
public Vector2[] WindLLClientArray()
{
return m_windSpeeds;
}
public string Description
{
get
{
return "Provides a simple wind model that creates random wind of a given strength in 16m x 16m patches.";
}
}
public System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary<string, string> WindParams()
{
Dictionary<string, string> Params = new Dictionary<string, string>();
Params.Add("strength", "wind strength");
return Params;
}
public void WindParamSet(string param, float value)
{
switch (param)
{
case "strength":
m_strength = value;
break;
}
}
public float WindParamGet(string param)
{
switch (param)
{
case "strength":
return m_strength;
default:
throw new Exception(String.Format("Unknown {0} parameter {1}", this.Name, param));
}
}
#endregion
}
}
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Github"
}
|
The use of gastric ultrasonography in the evaluation of a new antiflatulent preparation in human volunteers.
A method is described for inducing experimental aerogastria (flatulence) in human volunteers by the ingestion of "whipped" egg-white. Abdominal ultrasonography was used to measure the distension of the stomach and its interference with the visualization of organs such as gall bladder, pancreas and left kidney lying behind the stomach. A double-blind crossover comparison of Flatoril, a mixture of dimethicone (200 mg) and clebopride (0.5 mg) against placebo clearly demonstrated the superior antifoaming activity of the former both in terms of reduced gastric distension and of improved visualization of organs otherwise hidden by the foam-filled stomach.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
|
Ayodhya case hearing in Supreme Court draws to a close. A look at key arguments
india
Updated: Oct 16, 2019 11:38 IST
As the 40-day daily hearing in the 70-year-old Ayodhya title dispute draws to close, all eyes are on the five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi that is expected to pronounce a verdict by November 17.
The bench is hearing 14 appeals filed in the apex court against the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgment, delivered in four civil suits, that the 2.77-acre land in Ayodhya be partitioned equally among the three parties -- the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla
In September, the apex court had set October 18 deadline to wrap up hearing followed by moulding of relief in the Ayodhya dispute and accordingly developed a schedule after having consultation with lawyers from both sides. In October, the apex court revised the deadline to October 17.
Here is a look at the key arguments in the case:
KEY ARGUMENTS BY HINDU LITIGANTS
# ‘Ram janmasthan is a juridical person, janmasthan has become a personification of the deity and hence, an object of worship. It is believed that the God’s spirit lives in the janmasthan.
# Faith is itself evidence that the janmasthan is where Lord Ram was born.
# Entire disputed land at Ayodhya was Lord Ram’s janmasthan or birthplace by faith and belonged to him and was indivisible.
# Ramjanmabhoomi’s divinity was not lost even after a mosque was constructed over it. The temple’s sanctity remains even if it is destroyed
# Even if because Muslims may have offered prayers at the disputed Ayodhya site it does not give them the right to lay claim over it. “Just as prayers being offered on a street (by Muslims) doesn’t mean claim can be laid to its ownership. This place was never considered a mosque.”
# Citing photographic evidence, the side argued that images of human beings and animals can be seen inside the Babri structure, which discount the claim that that it is a mosque. Images are contrary to Islamic belief. Muslims do not have image in their place of worship, whether of a human being or animals.
# The Archaeological Survey of India’s (ASI’s) report of 2003 says that there was a temple at the disputed site and keeping the faith and belief of people in mind and preponderance of probability the place was a temple.
# Hindus’ right to worship is an unfettered right and it flows from centuries. It should be protected
# Nirmohi Akahara claims Shebaiti rights (as agent of the deity) in relation to deity of Lord Ram
# Argumensts based on documentary evidence, which claimed that though a structure in the form of masjid did exist, the ownership and possession of the structure (including the mosque) was with the Akhara.
# Nirmohi Akhara managed the land and till 1941, revenue records show continuous possession in the name of Akhara.
# Quran, the central religious text of Islam, does not permit the building of the mosque on disputed land.
# Babur did not get the mosque constructed nor he was the owner of the disputed land, hence the Sunni Waqf Board did not have any claim in the case.
KEY ARGUMENTS BY MUSLIM PARTIES
# ASI report is inconclusive on the issue whether any temple/structure was demolished and mosque constructed on the disputed site. ASI report should not be given any evidentiary value.
# ASI report is unsigned and it is unknown as to who has done the final analysis of the report and prepared the report.
# Earlier, Hindus were worshipping at the Ram Chabutara, in the outer courtyard.
# On the intervening night of December 22-23, 1949, the idol was shifted from Ram Chabutara (in the outer courtyard) to Central Dome (in the inner courtyard).
# No averment that the central dome was the birth place.
# Property in suit is not the birth place of Lord Ram and is a mosque called Babri Masjid constructed during the reign of Babur
# there is no evidence of Hindus praying inside the central dome and it was the Ram Chabutara in the outer courtyard, which they believed was where Ram was born and it was here that the idols were kept and worshipped.
# Idols were kept under the central dome for the first time in 1949
# The inclusion of Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas as petitioner is a special purpose vehicle to get rid of the past temple and build a grand temple for the future by and through the Nyas and to get rid of the shebait and put the management of the temple in the socio-political hands of the Sangh Parivar.
# Mere parikrama does not establish title. Parikrama is a form of practice not claim of ownership or domain as in ashwamedha.
# Travellers’ accounts and gazettes show intermittent belief but not a janmabhoomi. Virtually all gazetteers affirm the physical existence of the mosque, none confirms janmanbhoomi as an area. This is a later invention.
# The entire argument was based on belief from scattered sources such as travellers’ accounts and gazetteers which have been found to be inconsistent and inconclusive.
# Do not go into the legitimacy of the actions of past rulers and rewrite history, as it will open up Pandora’s Box. If Babur gets involved, Ashoka’s action will also be judged.
# The Hindus have based their rights on only illegal acts, criminal trespass in the mosque, desecration of the mosque on December 22/23, 1949 and demolition of the mosque on December 6,1992.
HINDUS HAVE TRIED TO PROVE :
# that a temple was built centuries ago possibly by Emperor Vikramaditya and rebuilt around 11th Century.
# the temple was destroyed by Babur in 1526 or possibly by Aurangzeb in the 17th Century.
# Sanskrit texts (i.e Sjanda Purana and later additions, travellers stories and gazettes show people have a belief that Ayodhya was the birth place of Lord Ram.
# Islamic texts on the mosque are in violation of the koran and Hadith.
# Witness evidence shows that belief has existed for centuries that Ayodhya is the birth place of Lord Ram.
# ASI report shows existence of a temple and its subsequent destruction.
MUSLIMS CASE RELIED ON:
# Mosque has been present at the disputed site since 1528.
# Physical existence of the mosque which was attacked in 1855, 1934, trespassed in 1949 and destroyed in 1949.
# British government recognised the grant given by Babur and continued by nawabs.
# Various documents of the 1885 suit recognised the existence of mosque
# Muslims were in possession of the place throughout and offered prayers till December 22/23 1949.
#ASI report does not conclude that a temple structure was demolished and a mosque constructed at the disputed site. ASI report at the best can be taken as only an expert opinion.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
/*
* Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
* or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
* distributed with this work for additional information
* regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
* to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
* "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
* with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
*
* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
*
* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
* software distributed under the License is distributed on an
* "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
* KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the
* specific language governing permissions and limitations
* under the License.
*/
package org.apache.brooklyn.util.core.internal.ssh.sshj;
import static com.google.common.base.Objects.equal;
import static com.google.common.base.Preconditions.checkNotNull;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import net.schmizz.sshj.SSHClient;
import net.schmizz.sshj.transport.verification.PromiscuousVerifier;
import net.schmizz.sshj.userauth.keyprovider.OpenSSHKeyFile;
import net.schmizz.sshj.userauth.password.PasswordUtils;
import org.apache.brooklyn.util.core.internal.ssh.SshAbstractTool.SshAction;
import org.apache.brooklyn.util.groovy.GroovyJavaMethods;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
import com.google.common.base.Objects;
import com.google.common.net.HostAndPort;
/** based on code from jclouds */
public class SshjClientConnection implements SshAction<SSHClient> {
private static final Logger LOG = LoggerFactory.getLogger(SshjClientConnection.class);
public static Builder builder() {
return new Builder();
}
public static class Builder {
protected HostAndPort hostAndPort;
protected String username;
protected String password;
protected String privateKeyPassphrase;
protected String privateKeyData;
protected File privateKeyFile;
protected long connectTimeout;
protected long sessionTimeout;
protected boolean strictHostKeyChecking;
public Builder hostAndPort(HostAndPort hostAndPort) {
this.hostAndPort = hostAndPort;
return this;
}
public Builder username(String username) {
this.username = username;
return this;
}
public Builder password(String val) {
this.password = val;
return this;
}
/** @deprecated use privateKeyData */
public Builder privateKey(String val) {
this.privateKeyData = val;
return this;
}
public Builder privateKeyPassphrase(String val) {
this.privateKeyPassphrase = val;
return this;
}
public Builder privateKeyData(String val) {
this.privateKeyData = val;
return this;
}
public Builder privateKeyFile(File val) {
this.privateKeyFile = val;
return this;
}
public Builder strictHostKeyChecking(boolean val) {
this.strictHostKeyChecking = val;
return this;
}
public Builder connectTimeout(long connectTimeout) {
this.connectTimeout = connectTimeout;
return this;
}
public Builder sessionTimeout(long sessionTimeout) {
this.sessionTimeout = sessionTimeout;
return this;
}
public SshjClientConnection build() {
return new SshjClientConnection(this);
}
protected static Builder fromSSHClientConnection(SshjClientConnection in) {
return new Builder().hostAndPort(in.getHostAndPort()).connectTimeout(in.getConnectTimeout()).sessionTimeout(
in.getSessionTimeout()).username(in.username).password(in.password).privateKey(in.privateKeyData).privateKeyFile(in.privateKeyFile);
}
}
private final HostAndPort hostAndPort;
private final String username;
private final String password;
private final String privateKeyPassphrase;
private final String privateKeyData;
private final File privateKeyFile;
private final boolean strictHostKeyChecking;
private final int connectTimeout;
private final int sessionTimeout;
SSHClient ssh;
private SshjClientConnection(Builder builder) {
this.hostAndPort = checkNotNull(builder.hostAndPort);
this.username = builder.username;
this.password = builder.password;
this.privateKeyPassphrase = builder.privateKeyPassphrase;
this.privateKeyData = builder.privateKeyData;
this.privateKeyFile = builder.privateKeyFile;
this.strictHostKeyChecking = builder.strictHostKeyChecking;
this.connectTimeout = checkInt("connectTimeout", builder.connectTimeout, Integer.MAX_VALUE);
this.sessionTimeout = checkInt("sessionTimeout", builder.sessionTimeout, Integer.MAX_VALUE);
}
static Integer checkInt(String context, long value, Integer ifTooLarge) {
if (value > Integer.MAX_VALUE) {
LOG.warn("Value '"+value+"' for "+context+" too large in SshjClientConnection; using "+value);
return ifTooLarge;
}
return (int)value;
}
public boolean isConnected() {
return ssh != null && ssh.isConnected();
}
public boolean isAuthenticated() {
return ssh != null && ssh.isAuthenticated();
}
@Override
public void clear() {
if (ssh != null && ssh.isConnected()) {
try {
if (LOG.isTraceEnabled()) LOG.trace("Disconnecting SshjClientConnection {} ({})", this, System.identityHashCode(this));
ssh.disconnect();
} catch (IOException e) {
if (LOG.isDebugEnabled()) LOG.debug("<< exception disconnecting from {}: {}", e, e.getMessage());
}
}
ssh = null;
}
@Override
public SSHClient create() throws Exception {
if (LOG.isTraceEnabled()) LOG.trace("Connecting SshjClientConnection {} ({})", this, System.identityHashCode(this));
ssh = new net.schmizz.sshj.SSHClient();
if (!strictHostKeyChecking) {
ssh.addHostKeyVerifier(new PromiscuousVerifier());
}
if (connectTimeout != 0) {
ssh.setConnectTimeout(connectTimeout);
}
if (sessionTimeout != 0) {
ssh.setTimeout(sessionTimeout);
}
ssh.connect(hostAndPort.getHostText(), hostAndPort.getPortOrDefault(22));
if (password != null) {
ssh.authPassword(username, password);
} else if (privateKeyData != null) {
OpenSSHKeyFile key = new OpenSSHKeyFile();
key.init(privateKeyData, null,
GroovyJavaMethods.truth(privateKeyPassphrase) ?
PasswordUtils.createOneOff(privateKeyPassphrase.toCharArray())
: null);
ssh.authPublickey(username, key);
} else if (privateKeyFile != null) {
OpenSSHKeyFile key = new OpenSSHKeyFile();
key.init(privateKeyFile,
GroovyJavaMethods.truth(privateKeyPassphrase) ?
PasswordUtils.createOneOff(privateKeyPassphrase.toCharArray())
: null);
ssh.authPublickey(username, key);
} else {
// Accept defaults (in ~/.ssh)
ssh.authPublickey(username);
}
return ssh;
}
/**
* @return host and port, where port if not present defaults to {@code 22}
*/
public HostAndPort getHostAndPort() {
return hostAndPort;
}
/**
* @return username used in this ssh
*/
public String getUsername() {
return username;
}
/**
*
* @return how long to wait for the initial connection to be made
*/
public int getConnectTimeout() {
return connectTimeout;
}
/**
*
* @return how long to keep the ssh open, or {@code 0} for indefinitely
*/
public int getSessionTimeout() {
return sessionTimeout;
}
/**
*
* @return the current ssh or {@code null} if not connected
*/
public SSHClient getSSHClient() {
return ssh;
}
@Override
public boolean equals(Object o) {
if (this == o)
return true;
if (o == null || getClass() != o.getClass())
return false;
SshjClientConnection that = SshjClientConnection.class.cast(o);
return equal(this.hostAndPort, that.hostAndPort) && equal(this.username, that.username)
&& equal(this.password, that.password) && equal(this.privateKeyData, that.privateKeyData)
&& equal(this.privateKeyFile, that.privateKeyFile) && equal(this.ssh, that.ssh);
}
@Override
public int hashCode() {
return Objects.hashCode(hostAndPort, username, password, privateKeyData, ssh);
}
@Override
public String toString() {
return Objects.toStringHelper("")
.add("hostAndPort", hostAndPort)
.add("user", username)
.add("ssh", ssh != null ? ssh.hashCode() : null)
.add("password", (password != null ? "xxxxxx" : null))
.add("privateKeyFile", privateKeyFile)
.add("privateKey", (privateKeyData != null ? "xxxxxx" : null))
.add("connectTimeout", connectTimeout)
.add("sessionTimeout", sessionTimeout).toString();
}
}
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Github"
}
|
Tag Archives: executives
Microsoft has an event scheduled in San Francisco on March 27th. According to sources familiar with the matter, Microsoft will be announcing a version of Microsoft Office for Apple’s iPad.
Office is currently available on i...
Dick Costolo, Twitter’s CEO, will be taking a trip to China and visiting with a wide variety of people, including students, academics and government officials as well.
Despite the fact that this is being called a “pers...
Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s chief executive, wants the style of their ads to be more in line with those in magazines like Vogue. She believes that in fashion magazines like InStyle and Vogue they have achieved the perfect balanc...
David Marcus, who is the president of PayPal, is apparently very unhappy with his employees for not using PayPal.
Marcus sent his employees at the San Jose, California headquarters, and told them how unhappy he was with employees...
You’ve probably already heard the big news that Microsoft has chosen their next CEO. Satya Nadella, who is known for spearheading the company’s enterprise and cloud businesses, is the successor to Steve Ballmer, who w...
Apparently Bill Gates will be stepping down from his role as chairman, and instead focus more of his attention on products.
It is likely that his role will be more of an adviser than anything else, since he will probably be worki...
The search for Microsoft’s new CEO continues, but once it’s over, it may mark the exit for Steve Ballmer from Microsoft’s board as well.
According to a report from Recode, it seems that not only will Ballmer lea...
Henrique De Castro has been fired from Yahoo after only working there for fifteen months. It’s doubtful that he’s unhappy about being fired because he has received a payout of $109 million.
Castro, who was Yahoo’...
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
5/29/07
We woke up Monday morning, and since Gracie does not have much of an opinion yet, we decided to let the boys decide what we would do since dad did not have to go in to work. We gave them a few options, but the boys decided they wanted to go slip n sliding. So we spent the entire day sitting around the backyard soaking up the sun just hanging out. Most of us were acclimated to the sun and absorbed the rays pretty well, but to put it simply, Dane just burned! I guess sitting behind a desk really makes your skin sensitive. After nearly 5 hours of playing in the sun, we had the Essley families over for a hamburger cookout and movie. Dane borrowed his dad’s projector and we watched “A Night at the Museum” projected on to the wall of the house. It was better than a drive in and so much fun. If anyone’s interested we should all get together some time and have a movie night. The day was just perfect, nothing better than getting to spend quality time as a family and just make memories. We hope everyone had a great Memorial Day.
The Boys
Gracie, Wyatt, Mom, & Jesse
Coming Down
My Boys - After going down the slide they would jump in the waiting pool to get worm
The kids drove "Girl" (thats what they call thier car) all over the back yard to dry off and get worm
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
Q:
How to get a picture drawn in canvas using drawImage ()?
I'm trying to write a function that lets a user download an image drawn in a canvas.
Here's the code:
canvas.html:
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="canvas.js"> </script>
</head>
<body onload="="draw()">
<button type="button" onClick="saveImage()"> save image</button>
<canvas width="1600" height="1440" id="canvas"></canvas>
</body>
</html>
canvas.js
function draw() {
var canvas = document.getElementById('canvas');
var ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');
ctx.fillRect(550, 150, 300, 300);
ctx.fill();
ctx.moveTo(722, 380);
ctx.arc(380,380,350,0,2*Math.PI);
ctx.lineWidth=15;
ctx.strokeStyle="blue";
ctx.stroke();
}
function download_image() {
var _image = canvas.toDataURL("image/png").replace("image/png", "image/octet-stream");
window.location.href = _image;
alert("start")
}
The code works - provided the image is drawn "normally" / as above - and not loaded with the drawImage() function.
As soon as I change the canvas.js file to:
function draw() {
var canvas = document.getElementById('canvas');
var ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');
var img2= new Image();
img2.onload=function() {
ctx.drawImage(img2, 0, 50);
}
img2.src="./smile.png";
}
function saveImage() {
var _image = canvas.toDataURL("image/png").replace("image/png", "image/octet-stream");
// tu sobie pobieramy adres URL i konwertuje na 'octet-stream'
window.location.href = _image;
alert("start");
}
Unfortunately, nothing happens. No alert pops up. The console shows the following error: "Uncaught TypeError: Can not read property 'toDataURL' of undefined
at saveImage (canvas.js: 17)
at HTMLButtonElement.onclick "
How to fix it? Can I download a picture drawn with drawImage()? How?
A:
/**
* Ken Fyrstenberg Nilsen
* Abidas Software
*/
var canvas = document.getElementById('canvas'),
ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');
/**
* Demonstrates how to download a canvas an image with a single
* direct click on a link.
*/
function doCanvas() {
/* draw something */
ctx.fillStyle = '#f90';
ctx.fillRect(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);
ctx.fillStyle = '#fff';
ctx.font = '60px sans-serif';
ctx.fillText('Code Project', 10, canvas.height / 2 - 15);
ctx.font = '26px sans-serif';
ctx.fillText('Click link below to save this as image', 15, canvas.height / 2 + 35);
}
/**
* This is the function that will take care of image extracting and
* setting proper filename for the download.
* IMPORTANT: Call it from within a onclick event.
*/
function downloadCanvas(link, canvasId, filename) {
link.href = document.getElementById(canvasId).toDataURL();
link.download = filename;
}
/**
* The event handler for the link's onclick event. We give THIS as a
* parameter (=the link element), ID of the canvas and a filename.
*/
document.getElementById('download').addEventListener('click', function() {
downloadCanvas(this, 'canvas', 'test.png');
}, false);
/**
* Draw something to canvas
*/
doCanvas();
body {
background-color:#555557;
padding:0;
margin:0;
overflow:hidden;
font-family:sans-serif;
-webkit-user-select: none;
-khtml-user-select: none;
-moz-user-select: none;
-ms-user-select: none;
user-select: none;
}
canvas {
border:1px solid #000;
float:left;
clear:both;
}
#download {
float:left;
cursor:pointer;
color:#ccc;
padding:3px;
}
#download:hover {
color:#fff;
}
/*
div, input {
font-size:16px;
font-family:sans-serif;
border:1px solid #000;
border-radius: 5px;
float:left;
padding:5px;
width:50px;
margin:1px 1px;
background-color:#bbb;
}
input[type='text'] {
font-size:16px;
font-weight:bold;
width:70px;
text-align:center;
background-color:#fff;
padding-bottom:4px;
}
input[type='button'] {
font-size:16px;
font-weight:bold;
width:110px;
text-align:center;
background-color:#333;
color:#eee;
padding-bottom:4px;
}
input[type='button']:hover {
background-color:#fff463;
color:#000;
}
input[type='range'] {
width:100px;
margin:0 0 0 10px;
}
*/
<canvas width="500" height="300" id="canvas">Sorry, no canvas available</canvas>
<a id="download">Download as image</a>
found a solution here:
http://jsfiddle.net/wboykinm/fL0q2uce/
function downloadCanvas(link, canvasId, filename) {
link.href = document.getElementById(canvasId).toDataURL();
link.download = filename;
}
|
{
"pile_set_name": "StackExchange"
}
|
/*****************************************************************************
* *
* This file is part of the BeanShell Java Scripting distribution. *
* Documentation and updates may be found at http://www.beanshell.org/ *
* *
* Sun Public License Notice: *
* *
* The contents of this file are subject to the Sun Public License Version *
* 1.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with *
* the License. A copy of the License is available at http://www.sun.com *
* *
* The Original Code is BeanShell. The Initial Developer of the Original *
* Code is Pat Niemeyer. Portions created by Pat Niemeyer are Copyright *
* (C) 2000. All Rights Reserved. *
* *
* GNU Public License Notice: *
* *
* Alternatively, the contents of this file may be used under the terms of *
* the GNU Lesser General Public License (the "LGPL"), in which case the *
* provisions of LGPL are applicable instead of those above. If you wish to *
* allow use of your version of this file only under the terms of the LGPL *
* and not to allow others to use your version of this file under the SPL, *
* indicate your decision by deleting the provisions above and replace *
* them with the notice and other provisions required by the LGPL. If you *
* do not delete the provisions above, a recipient may use your version of *
* this file under either the SPL or the LGPL. *
* *
* Patrick Niemeyer (pat@pat.net) *
* Author of Learning Java, O'Reilly & Associates *
* http://www.pat.net/~pat/ *
* *
*****************************************************************************/
package bsh;
class BSHTypedVariableDeclaration extends SimpleNode
{
public Modifiers modifiers;
BSHTypedVariableDeclaration(int id) { super(id); }
private BSHType getTypeNode() {
return ((BSHType)jjtGetChild(0));
}
Class evalType( CallStack callstack, Interpreter interpreter )
throws EvalError
{
BSHType typeNode = getTypeNode();
return typeNode.getType( callstack, interpreter );
}
BSHVariableDeclarator [] getDeclarators()
{
int n = jjtGetNumChildren();
int start=1;
BSHVariableDeclarator [] bvda = new BSHVariableDeclarator[ n-start ];
for (int i = start; i < n; i++)
{
bvda[i-start] = (BSHVariableDeclarator)jjtGetChild(i);
}
return bvda;
}
/**
evaluate the type and one or more variable declarators, e.g.:
int a, b=5, c;
*/
public Object eval( CallStack callstack, Interpreter interpreter)
throws EvalError
{
try {
NameSpace namespace = callstack.top();
BSHType typeNode = getTypeNode();
Class type = typeNode.getType( callstack, interpreter );
BSHVariableDeclarator [] bvda = getDeclarators();
for (int i = 0; i < bvda.length; i++)
{
BSHVariableDeclarator dec = bvda[i];
// Type node is passed down the chain for array initializers
// which need it under some circumstances
Object value = dec.eval( typeNode, callstack, interpreter);
try {
namespace.setTypedVariable(
dec.name, type, value, modifiers );
} catch ( UtilEvalError e ) {
throw e.toEvalError( this, callstack );
}
}
} catch ( EvalError e ) {
e.reThrow( "Typed variable declaration" );
}
return Primitive.VOID;
}
public String getTypeDescriptor(
CallStack callstack, Interpreter interpreter, String defaultPackage )
{
return getTypeNode().getTypeDescriptor(
callstack, interpreter, defaultPackage );
}
}
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Github"
}
|
After enduring more than a year of rumors and studio delays, some “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” devotees may be appeased by Paramount’s fairly faithful film reboot of their beloved reptilian superheroes. But more are likely to be disappointed to discover that the talking Turtles have been reduced to sidekicks to the actual focus of this film: summer-movie sexpot Megan Fox.
The film opens with an engaging, animated prologue that retells the legend of the sewer-dwelling, genetically modified turtles and their rat sensei, Splinter (voice of Tony Shalhoub), and explains how above ground, New York City faces its biggest threat in the form of ruthless villain Shredder (Tohoru Masamune) and his menacing Foot Clan. Then it switches to 20 minutes of Fox, who as television news reporter April O’Neil desperately tries to convince her incredulous boss (Whoopi Goldberg) she’s got proof of vigilantes battling Shredder’s goons.
When April finally has her first full run-in with the mysterious crime fighters, she faints, but not before she hears the Turtles call out their Renaissance names (Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo) and squeak, “She’s so hot! I can feel my shell is tightening!”
And that’s part of the problem with the movie. Although the character of April was attractive in earlier “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” iterations, it’s disappointing (if predictable) that she’s overly sexualized in this installment. Mikey (Noel Fisher), he of the aroused carapace, is supposed to be smitten, but must he talk only about her hotness? Meanwhile, April’s loyal cameraman, Vern (Will Arnett), is perpetually ogling her body — even in moments of extreme peril. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by such fare from producer Michael Bay, but the character — not to mention young viewers of this Nickelodeon co-production — deserve better.
The film’s insistent focus on April extends to overly convenient plot points that tie her to the Turtles before their super-sized transformation. Those implausible connections lead April to reveal the existence of the Turtles to shady scientist Eric Sachs (William Fichtner, lacking only a mustache to twirl), the very man responsible for their mutation.
When the film moves past Fox to focus on the Turtles, the heroes in a half shell are undeniably impressive in ninja mode. Director Jonathan Liebesman (“Wrath of the Titans” and “Battle: Los Angeles”) knows how to highlight ILM’s performance-capture technology, which makes the Turtles’ movements so realistic. Liebesman lets the Turtles — Leo (voiced by Johnny Knoxville but played by Pete Ploszek), Donnie (Jeremy Howard), Rapha (Alan Ritchson) and Mikey — shine as they kick, jump and parry in various large-scale action sequences. And the Turtles themselves are charming enough, even though there’s not much time invested in their personalities beyond the obvious broad strokes: Leo’s the focused leader, Donnie’s the tech genius, Rapha’s the hothead and Mikey’s the funny one who gets to shout “Cowabunga!”
Unfortunately, even during crowd-pleasing thrills, the comic relief once again circles back to the script’s favorite topic: April’s sex appeal. “Yes, that’s good,” Vern says, leering as she attempts a daredevil pose in a moving car. Perhaps the lingering shots of Fox will help young men in the audience overlook the continuity errors and sillier plot details. At one point, Sachs menacingly commands a henchman, “We’ll drain out every drop of blood, even if it kills him.” Why, yes, billionaire geneticist, that would kill him.
Considering that two sequels are in the works, it’s clear the filmmakers believe tweens and teens won’t care about the movie’s deficits and will just concentrate on the fun of wisecracking, weapon-wielding turtles (and, naturally, Fox’s hotness). And while this reboot is fun, it’s also forgettable and occasionally infuriating. 0
Chen is a freelance writer.
★ ★
PG-13. At area theaters. Contains sci-fi action violence. 101 minutes.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
A few days ago I got a bite from a school I send my resume to about 3 times a year.
The school always ignores my resume but I always send another every few months.
Anyway, they got back to me this time.
I was shocked and excited.
Then...
I came across some alarming information on a British site about safety in Russia.
Safety is something that is not talked about much on Daves ESL but I need to talk about it now.
I almost hear nothing of Russia ever, not good or bad.
Does anyone living in Russia notice or hear of terrorism in the location of Moscow or anywhere else in the country?
Things that concerned me most were car bombings and other terrorism activities taking place in Russia.
According to a British site:
terrorism activities tend to focus on airports and other expat locations in Moscow to name but one.
Do you find this to be so?
What is the current situation in Russia concerning terrorism and safety in general?
My husband and I are both getting older.
I think if I were by myself I would not care as much.
But, at this point of our lives the list of things most important to us (with number 1 being most important) would look like this:
1. Safe city
2. interesting location
3. paid on time
4. pay rate
Last edited by chica88 on Wed Feb 13, 2013 1:35 am; edited 4 times in total
Where exactly is the school? I never had any safety issues in Russia or the Ukraine but I wasn't in Chechnya. The only problems I had was with a pickpocket on the subway, gold digging Slavic women and standard Russian surliness, none physically dangerous.
I've been teaching ESL strictly in Moscow for nearly 5 years and I can say overall I have not witnessed first-hand or been on the receiving end of any kind of violent criminal or terrorist act. Knocking on wood of course. But I was here for the last couple of most recent terrorist attacks.
Quote:
the terrorism activities tend to focus on airports and other expat locations in Moscow to name a few.
Do you find this to be so?
While it was an extremely horrible and saddening time for all people living here in Moscow, it doesn't seem and I don't think terrorists are or have been targeting "expat" locations here. As far as major hubs of transport, that is a different question and are typically common targets in our new age of terrorist warfare.
I haven't heard of any car bombings here or in the Moscow regions...potentially may happen in the southern regions of Russia..i.e., Dagestan.
Overall, I can say I have felt myself safe. I am by no means a night owl and I'm married, so I tend to keep to myself and we do sometimes go out for meals in the center and all is fine. You have probably heard it a lot, but just always keep aware of your surroundings and always remain vigilant, as in any large city.
On a slightly other note, as far as the police go, I would not look to them for dutiful assistance in nearly any case. They are a corrupt bunch and largely useless, maybe good at breaking up large groups of citizen protesters or harassing and shaking down "brown" people.
Anyways, best of luck to you and don't let this particular "travel warning" to scare you off from Russia, at least Moscow. There are tons of opportunities, many more once you are on the ground and it's quite an interesting place![/quote]
The peace-loving peoples of our glorious Motherland are not at all surprised by these slanderous attacks from the decadent Piggies in Londongrad. Pay them no heed, for they are simply lacking in any spirit of adventure, any soul! They are consumed with jealousy because our bonds of Slavic sympathy hold our Union firm - which stands in stark contrast to the imminent collapse of the UK.
Agree with everything the other posters have said. Basic precautions, an absence of very bad luck, the exercise of basic common sense - these will all stand you in good stead in Moscow, as elsewhere.
Where exactly is the school? I never had any safety issues in Russia or the Ukraine but I wasn't in Chechnya. The only problems I had was with a pickpocket on the subway, gold digging Slavic women and standard Russian surliness, none physically dangerous.
I knew a gold-digging Czech woman who was physically dangerous - she tried to run me over in a Skoda.
Where exactly is the school? I never had any safety issues in Russia or the Ukraine but I wasn't in Chechnya. The only problems I had was with a pickpocket on the subway, gold digging Slavic women and standard Russian surliness, none physically dangerous.
Thank you all for your comments.
The British report came a little out of left field and I didn't know what to think of it.
Again, I have not heard of such issues in Russia lately or in past years.
As a side note:
I looked on the US Department of State site and it was the exact same information as the British site.
Same wording and everything.
bharrel - I am curious, did you look at the British report I put a link to in my post?
What do you think of the safety problems spots they have listed?
Dear Chica88,
I did look at the advisory. I have been gone from Eastern Europe for 4 years now, so I am not really knowledgeable, if I ever was. Someone living there now would know better. But if you are really concerned, I wouldn't go to the red or orange areas. Being constantly fearful is a terrible feeling and you likely wouldn't enjoy yourself. Why not find a school in the green zone on the map?
Most all of the people I know about who ever got into trouble overseas were either drunk or on drugs or hanging around with the wrong crowd. Russia can be a bit intense sometimes, but in retrospect, I created most of my own fears.
The Russians do worry about terrorism and it does exist. However, the residents of London are about as likely to get blown up. So yes, the threat exists but no it isn't any greater than other parts of the world. In my opinion.
I've lived in Russia for about 4 years, and I've never (knock on wood) had any problems with violent crime. And unless you're going to some infamously rough area of Russia (like Dagestan or Chechnya), it's just as safe as any area of the western world. Don't believe the hype! There is the usual petty theft that occurs, but with enough common sense, that's easy to prevent.
Oh yeah, common sense goes a long way. Heed any advice about bad parts of the city, and don't walk around alone at night in dark places. You need to be especially careful about alcohol, because the overwhelming majority of crimes I've heard of happened because the victim was wasted and therefore an easy target.
The country itself is much more dangerous than the people: bad roads, even worse drivers, and wily stray dogs will be the main nuisance in your daily life.
I live in Stavropol, which is reputed to be pretty dangerous. I have lived here for 3 years and have never had any problems. We have had some action. There was a bombing in 2010 and two people were killed as I recall. There have been altercations between Russians and Caucasians from time to time, but I have always felt safe.
I wouldn't let the travel advisory deter you. As someone stated above, you probably have the same chance of being a victim of terrorism in London as in Russia. If you are concerned, stay away from the Caucasus. Russia is a big country. What about Vladivostok? Siberia? The Urals?
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Ontario's Liberal government will introduce legislation tomorrow to implement a provincewide ban on the cosmetic use of pesticides, keeping one of their key election promises from last year.
Premier Dalton McGuinty promised the pesticide ban during last fall's election campaign after intensive lobbying from environmental activists and health professionals.
McGuinty and Environment Minister John Gerretsen will visit a private home in Toronto tomorrow – Earth Day – to announce the ban on the cosmetic use of pesticides on lawns.
Gerretsen was reluctant to reveal any details today, but said members of the public who visited the ministry's website overwhelmingly supported the ban.
"We always said it was a priority when we came out with our platform last year, and it's had tremendous support around the province from what we've received as far as the environmental registry is concerned," Gerretsen said. "Ninety per cent of the people that responded to it responded in a favourable way."
The provincewide ban is aimed at replacing a patchwork of local pesticide bylaws, but Ontario farmers will be exempt. There's no word yet if the province also plans to exempt golf courses from the ban.
The Conservatives and New Democrats said today they would likely support the legislation, but they first want to make sure the ban will actually help the environment and isn't just a public relations move by the Liberal government.
"I think our inclination is to probably support it, but at the same time we want to hear from the folks who are experts in this area, and whether they think it's all politics or whether there is going to be some meaningful benefit to the environment," said Opposition Leader Bob Runciman.
"We've seen a lot of initiatives from this government that don't have a lot of substance but look good and tend to make headlines, and this is maybe another one."
NDP environmental critic Peter Tabuns said he wants a ban that includes real penalties for people who continue to use pesticides for cosmetic purposes.
"If they bring forward legislation that has teeth in it, that's useful, then obviously we're going to be inclined to support it," Tabuns said. "But we don't know what they're bringing forward. We don't know if it's going to be useful or just simply fluff."
The Ontario College of Family Physicians has said the long-term effects of exposure to pesticides can be devastating, especially to pregnant women and children, leading to learning disabilities, birth defects and miscarriages.
The Canadian Cancer Society, the David Suzuki Foundation, Environmental Defence and the Ontario Medical Association have all urged Ontario to follow Quebec's lead and pass the ban on pesticides.
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Q:
Using Scala 2.10 `to` to convert a List to a SortedMap
I am trying to convert a scala.collection.immutable.List of pairs to a scala.collection.immutable.SortedMap using the new to method from Scala 2.10, but I get a compile-time error:
scala> List((1, "Fred"), (2, "Barney")).to[scala.collection.immutable.SortedMap]
<console>:10: error: scala.collection.immutable.SortedMap takes two type parameters, expected: one
List((1, "Fred"), (2, "Barney")).to[SortedMap]
^
Can this be done using the to method? Am I missing an intermediate method call?
A:
I had a similar question some time ago and came up with this:
SortedMap( list: _*)
So you can do it like :
val map = SortedMap( List((1, "Fred"), (2, "Barney")): _*)
The _* means you take the Seqs elements instead of the Seq itself as parameter.
A:
@gourlaysama already explained why it does not compile, and @Chirlo provided the simplest (and recommended) work around: SortedMap( list: _*).
I'd like to propose an alternative:
import collection.Traversable
import collection.generic.CanBuildFrom
implicit class RichPairTraversable[A,B]( t: Traversable[(A,B)] ) {
def toPairCol[Col[A,B]](implicit cbf: CanBuildFrom[Nothing, (A,B), Col[A, B]]): Col[A, B] = {
val b = cbf()
b.sizeHint(t)
b ++= t
b.result
}
}
Some test in the REPL:
scala> List((1, "Fred"), (2, "Barney")).toPairCol[scala.collection.immutable.SortedMap]
res0: scala.collection.immutable.SortedMap[Int,String] = Map(1 -> Fred, 2 -> Barney)
scala> List((1, "Fred"), (2, "Barney")).toPairCol[scala.collection.immutable.HashMap]
res1: scala.collection.immutable.HashMap[Int,String] = Map(1 -> Fred, 2 -> Barney)
Now, I will probably not use it in production, given that doing SortedMap( list: _* ) is not that
hard and requires no magic.
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/// @ref gtx_transform
namespace glm
{
template<typename T, qualifier Q>
GLM_FUNC_QUALIFIER mat<4, 4, T, Q> translate(vec<3, T, Q> const& v)
{
return translate(mat<4, 4, T, Q>(static_cast<T>(1)), v);
}
template<typename T, qualifier Q>
GLM_FUNC_QUALIFIER mat<4, 4, T, Q> rotate(T angle, vec<3, T, Q> const& v)
{
return rotate(mat<4, 4, T, Q>(static_cast<T>(1)), angle, v);
}
template<typename T, qualifier Q>
GLM_FUNC_QUALIFIER mat<4, 4, T, Q> scale(vec<3, T, Q> const& v)
{
return scale(mat<4, 4, T, Q>(static_cast<T>(1)), v);
}
}//namespace glm
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{
"pile_set_name": "Github"
}
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TRAVEL INFORMATION
AIRPORT INFORMATION:
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is located approximately 7 miles or 15 minutes from the Gaylord Texan. The airport is served by: Air Canada, Alaska, American, Delta, Frontier, jetBlue, Spirit, Sun Country Airlines, and United.
Dallas Love Field is located 20 miles or 30 minutes (depending on traffic) from the Gaylord Texan. The airport is served by Delta, Southwest, United, and Virgin America airlines.
AMTRAK:
The Grapevine Texan is located 13 miles from the West Irving Rail Station, which is serviced by DART and the Trinity Railway Express (TRE). Alternatively, the Gaylord Texan is located approximately 24 miles from Union Station in Dallas, providing service on Amtrak's Texas Eagle route and also the Trinity Railway Express (TRE).
SuperShuttle offers shared-ride van service from DFW for $16 one-way; $30 round trip, and from Dallas Love Field it is $23 one-way; $44 round trip.
The Gaylord Texan provides shared transportation service for return trips to DFW Airport, every 30 minutes, from 5:00am - 2:00pm daily, for a $15 fee per person. Click here for more details on Gaylord Texan Transportation Services.
WEATHER:
Grapevine area weather in early April has average high of 77 degrees, and an average low of 55 degrees. Click here for current weather conditions.
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{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
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Q:
AC power adapter wattage and type cannot be determined - battery won't charge
I am currently living in Japan but using a Dell XPS 13 bought in the U.S but with a Swedish charger, I thus have to use a power converter in order to fit my charger into the Japanese plugs. In the beginning I had no problems with this at all, but then suddenly this message was displayed when I turned on the laptop(which got Ubuntu 16.04 installed):
Warning Message
I was not allowed to post images so I'll write down the text here instead:
"Alert! The AC power adapter wattage and type cannot be determined. The battery may not charge. The system will adjust the performance to match the power available."
I can hit F1 and start the laptop anyway and it runs fine as long as the power plug is connected, but the battery won't charge at all. The strange thing is that this happened the first time a couple of weeks ago but then suddenly it disappeared for a while and the battery would charge just fine. Then it returned and now it's been like this for over a week. I haven't been able to find any information regarding this online and I have tried two different power converters with the same result.
Any ideas how this can be fixed?
A:
The warning signal was from BIOS and had nothing to do with Ubuntu. Turns out there was something wrong with my charger making it unable to charge the battery. Replacing the charger with a new one fixed the problem and the battery now charges as it should.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "StackExchange"
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A Campbell Newman billboard in Ashgrove has been declared legally parked, but that hasn't stopped vandals leaving a political message of their own.
The trailer, bearing a picture of the Premier with the slogan "Keep Ashgrove and Qld strong", was parked along Settlement Road at The Gap several days ago.
By Wednesday morning, the phrase "Ashgrove hates U" had been spray-painted across it.
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by LetsRun.com
July 21, 2017
Ajee Wilson went to Herculis meet – the IAAF Diamond League track and field meet in Monaco – looking for the American record and she left with it as she ran a huge personal best of 1:55.61 to knock more than two full seconds off her previous best (1:57.67) and destroy Jearl Miles-Clark‘s American record of 1:56.40 which had stood since 1999.
Wilson’s incredible run wasn’t good enough to get her a victory or a runner-up finish but she did put a scare into the Olympic gold and silver medallists. The Olympic champ Caster Semenya closed in 28.55 to win in a world-leading and new personal best of 1:55.27 (.01 faster than what she ran to win gold in Rio; her time was also a DL record) as Rio silver medallist Francine Niyonsaba broke 1:56 for the first time to grab second in 1:55.47 (previous best 1:56.24).
The top three weren’t the only ones to run fast as the top 7 finishers in the race ran at least a seasonal best. Sifan Hassan, the 2017 world leader in the 1500, showed she’s going to be tough to beat in London as she was fourth in a huge pb of 1:56.81 (previous best 1:58.13). Canada’s Melissa Bishop ran one-hundredth of a second faster than what she did to grab fourth in Rio, 1:57.01 (a new Canadian record), and that only placed her fifth today as Lynsey Sharp (1:58.01) and Brenda Martinez (1:58.43) ran seasonal bests to get sixth and seventh.
The Race
Article continues below player
Semenya had said she wanted to run fast and asked for a 55-second first lap and that’s exactly what the rabbit, American Laura Roesler, delivered (55.37) but Semenya was nowhere close to her. Semenya was the first racer but her split was just under 57 (56.7) and she was followed closely by Niyonsaba (56.9) and Wilson (57.3) with the Olympic third and fourth placers Margaret Wambui and Bishop just behind Wilson.
Semenya, who was right with Roesler for most of the first 200, backed off the pace even more on the third 200 which she’d run in just 30 flat. As a result, between 500 and 600, Niyonsaba had pulled up nearly even with Semenya with Wilson just behind Niyonsaba as the three ran nearly three abreast.
As they rounded the final turn, it was a four-person race between Semenya, Niyonsaba, Wilson and Bishop, who had stayed on the inside throughout. Coming off the final turn, Semenya, Niyonsaba and Wilson were three abreast once again. Who would take it?
For 50 meters nothing separated them, but then Semenya did what she has consistently done over the last few years and gradually pulled away. This time she didn’t pull away until the final 50 but in the end she got the job done and extended her unbeaten streak in the 800 to 26 races, counting prelims.
Semenya admitted she was surprised the others gave her such a fight.
“I showed my strength, it was a hard fight until the end. The girls surprised me how good they ran. The pace was ok for me I wanted to go around 56. But I did some small technical mistakes which slowed me down. I knew I should not allow Nyionsaba take the lead. My coach back home Jean Verster will be amazed. I think I can run really really fast we are training for that,” said Semenya. “Now we still must decide, maybe tonight what I will do in London, if only 800 or also 400 or 1500. Main thing is to stay healthy and then a top result will come.”
As for Wilson, she said she’ll head back to the US for a few weeks to get ready for Worlds.
“US Record? Waouh! I hadn’t seen the time yet! It felt so good to be competitive again, it was great! Now going home in Philadelphia to prepare for London,” said Wilson to race organizers after it was over.
Results
Race video:
Quick Thought: Semenya’s win streak continues but only after a fight
The women’s 800 is going to be a very interesting event to watch in London. Semenya has won 26 races in a row counting prelims but two of her last three wins have been very tight. At the Pre Classic in May, she won over Margaret Wambui, who was last in 2:02.13 today, by just .10. Today she won by .20.
None of Semenya’s victories in 2016 were that narrow. After the Olympics, she beat Niyonsaba by .32 in Zurich but her two closest pre-Olympic victories were won by .88 and .91 of a second.
Quick Thought: History repeats itself
The parallels between Wilson’s record today and Miles-Clark’s in 1999 are numerous. Both races were run in Europe (Miles-Clark’s AR came in Zurich) and both came when the American finished third in the race about 1/3rd of a second behind the winner in a race where the top 4 all broke 1:57. Miles-Clark lost by .36 – Wilson by .34.
American fans will hope history doesn’t continue to repeat itself at Worlds. At the 1999 Worlds, Miles-Clark was 4th.
1999 Zurich Top 4
1. Maria Mutola MOZ 1:56.04.
2. Svetlana Masterkova RUS 1:56.37
3. Jearl Miles-Clark 1:56.40
4. Ludmila Formanova CZE 1:56.50
Quick Thought: Good news and bad news for Ajee Wilson
The good news for Ajee Wilson: she ran the race of her life tonight and was rewarded with an American record that will likely stand for some time (unless the 23-year-old Wilson lowers it herself). The bad news: it was only good enough for third place. In an alternate reality where the Court of Arbitration for Sport doesn’t overturn the hyperandrogenism guidelines in 2015, we’re talking about Wilson as the clear favorite for gold at Worlds and one of the greatest 800 talents of her generation. The fact remains that, other than Margaret Wambui, no one else has beaten Niyonsaba or Semenya since the start of 2016.
Still, Wilson’s run tonight was spectacular and by pushing Niyonsaba and Semenya to the line, she will have hope that not just a medal, but a gold medal, is possible in London.
Quick Thought: Down goes Wambui
Entering tonight’s meet, Semenya, Niyonsaba and Wambui were undefeated against the rest of the world since the start of the 2016 outdoor season. That streak finally came to an end in Monaco, though it took a real stinker from Wambui (last in 2:02.13) for it to happen.
Talk about the meet and race on our fan forum:
|
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U.S. Pat. No. 4,244,951 discloses a series of 6'-acylaminopenicillanoyloxymethyl penicillanate 1,1-dioxides of the formula I: ##STR1## wherein R.sup.1 represents certain acyl groups, said compounds of formula I being of value as antibacterial agents.
One method disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,244,951 for the preparation of said antibacterial agents of formula I comprises acylation of the corresponding compound of formula I, wherein R.sup.1 is hydrogen (6'-aminopenicillanoyloxymethyl penicillanate 1,1-dioxide). In turn, it is disclosed that 6'-aminopenicillanoyloxymethyl penicillanate 1,1-dioxide can be prepared by coupling a salt of a 6-(protected-amino)penicillanic acid compound of the formula ##STR2## wherein Z is an amino protecting group and M is a carboxylate salt forming cation, with a compound of the formula ##STR3## wherein X is a good leaving group, followed by removal of the protecting group. Groups which are disclosed as being useful for the group Z are the benzyloxycarbonyl group, the 4-nitrobenzyloxycarbonyl group and the 2,2,2-trichloroethoxycarbonyl group.
However, it has now been discovered that the aforesaid process for the preparation of the compound of the formula I, wherein R.sup.1 is hydrogen, can be improved by using certain alternate groups for protection of the 6-amino group in the 6-aminopenicillanic acid, i.e. the group Z. Specifically, said process for the preparation of the compound of formula I, wherein R.sup.1 is hydrogen, can be improved by using for Z certain groups obtained by reacting 6-aminopenicillanic acid with certain beta-dicarbonyl compounds.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide an improved process for the preparation of the compound of the formula I, wherein R.sup.1 is hydrogen, which uses certain alternate protecting groups.
|
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"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Background {#Sec1}
==========
A terrorist attack may cause serious mental and physical health problems, and reliable estimates of subsequent morbidity and treatment needs are essential to develop an effective public health response \[[@CR1]\]. However, the unpredictable and chaotic circumstances of a terrorist attack make it difficult to conduct methodologically solid research. Previous post-disaster studies have often lacked a clear definition of the study population and not reported a participation rate \[[@CR2], [@CR3]\]. In addition, longitudinal studies have commonly failed to describe the characteristics of attrition \[[@CR4]\]. Therefore, little is known regarding research participation among individuals who survive terrorism. Typically, research respondents have a higher socioeconomic status and better health than non-respondents do \[[@CR5], [@CR6]\]. Terror-related experiences may also influence the willingness to participate in research \[[@CR4], [@CR7]\]. On the one hand, the most severely affected survivors might be less likely to participate because of impaired function or fear of being reminded of the attack. On the other hand, such survivors might be more motivated to participate to increase our understanding of the adverse effects of terrorism. More knowledge is required regarding research participation after acts of terrorism to interpret the results properly and strengthen future study methods.
This article covers participation in two waves of an open cohort study of survivors of the Utøya attack and their parents. On July 22, 2011, a solitary perpetrator executed two terrorist attacks in Norway. After detonating a bomb in the Oslo Government Quarter, he committed a shooting massacre at the summer camp of the Norwegian Labour Party's youth organisation on the Utøya islet. Overall, 564 persons were isolated on the islet during a 1.5-hour-long shooting; 69 were killed, and many were injured or risked drowning trying to escape by swimming. The shooting is considered a severe trauma because the victims were young, designated targets, and many were killed or injured or lost close ones \[[@CR8], [@CR9]\].
The aim of this study was to gain insight into research participation among survivors of terrorism and thereby advance disaster research methodology. Our specific objectives were to (a) identify the factors associated with participation in an open cohort study on survivors of the Utøya attack and (b) assess the characteristics of the survivors based on parental participation in a complementary study on the survivors' parents.
Methods {#Sec2}
=======
Overall, 495 survivors who had been on the Utøya islet during the shooting were identified from police records. The survivors resided in rural and urban municipalities across all Norwegian counties. The recruitment consisted of three stages: (1) a postal invitation, (2) a telephone call, and (3) an interview with those who received the call and agreed to participate. Postal study invitations were sent to 490 survivors. In the invitation letter, the survivors received information about the aims of the study, the study procedures, and an overview of the content and duration of the interview. Furthermore, they were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any time, and the letter provided contact information in case they had questions regarding the study or did not want to be contacted by phone. Four survivors aged \<13 years and one survivor who lived abroad were excluded. The four survivors under 13 years of age were excluded because of their young age and the fact that they were mainly children accompanying leaders/guards. Moreover, the interview questionnaires were designed for adolescents and young adults. The study had an open cohort design in which all of the eligible survivors were invited to both waves. Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were performed at 4--5 months (wave 1) and 14--15 months (wave 2) after the shooting. The interviews included open-ended questions on several themes; such as their experiences during the shooting, the police interrogation, the trial, the return to school, and their use of social media, in addition to a wide range of topics assessed with closed-ended questions \[[@CR10]\]. The respondents could choose between being interviewed at home or being interviewed at a location arranged by the interviewer. When the interview was completed, the respondents completed a questionnaire. If a respondent was unable to respond to the interview in Norwegian or English, it was proposed to perform the interview using an interpreter. The parents of 482 survivors aged 13--32 years were eligible for participation in a parallel study focusing on the reactions and experiences of the survivors' parents. The current study assessed survivor reports only. A separate postal invitation addressed to parents/guardians of the survivor was sent to the addresses of the survivors. Next, the survivors were asked for the contact information of their parents during a telephone call. Parents of survivors born 1992 or later were eligible to participate by interview. Due to limited resources, parents of survivors born before 1992 were invited to participate by postal questionnaire. Reminders were sent to parents who did not answer the questionnaire on the first request.
Variables {#Sec3}
---------
Our sociodemographic data included age, gender, country of origin, and whether the survivors lived with their parents, had divorced parents, were financially disadvantaged or resided in a peripheral municipality. Age was measured at the time of the attack as a continuous variable in years with one decimal. Non-Norwegian origin was defined as having both parents born abroad. Survivors were asked how they perceived their parents' (those who lived with parents) or their own (those who did not live with parents) financial well-being compared with that of others. There were five response alternatives, which were dichotomized into financially disadvantaged (i.e., much or somewhat poorer) or not (i.e., similar, somewhat better, and much better). Peripheral residence described the location of the survivor's home municipality at wave 1 in relation to communities of a certain size, in accordance with Statistics Norway's centrality classification \[[@CR11]\]. Municipalities located more than 45 min travelling time from communities with at least 15,000 inhabitants were classified as peripheral. We obtained information for all survivors on age, gender and place of residence from police records and on admittance to somatic hospitals directly after the attack from hospital records. The terror exposure assessment was explicitly designed to cover 13 potentially traumatic events experienced during the attack and has been demonstrated to be independently associated with mental health problems \[[@CR12]\]. In the analyses, the mean sum score was applied. Posttraumatic stress reactions in the past month were assessed using the University of California at Los Angeles Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Reaction Index (UCLA PTSD-RI) \[[@CR13]\]. The total score includes 17 items that conform to the 17 DSM--IV symptoms of PTSD rated on a 5-point Likert scale that ranges from 0 (never) to 4 (most of the time) \[[@CR14]\]. Three items have two alternative wordings that are valued by the item with the highest score. The mean scores of the 17 items were used in the analyses. Cronbach's alpha was 0.89 (wave 1 and 2).
Symptoms of anxiety and depression were measured with the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-8 (SCL-8), which is a short version of the SCL-25 \[[@CR15]\]. It measures symptoms of depression/anxiety that occurred during the preceding 2 weeks using eight items scored on a scale from 1 (not bothered) to 4 (very much bothered). The mean score was applied in the analyses, and Cronbach's alphas were 0.86 (wave 1) and 0.90 (wave 2). The short versions of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist have displayed high psychometric qualities in population-based studies \[[@CR16]\]. Somatic symptoms that occurred during the preceding 2 weeks were assessed using a short version of the Children's Somatic Symptoms Inventory (CSSI-8) \[[@CR17]\]. The eight items assessed pain in the stomach, head, lower back, and arms/legs; faintness/dizziness; rapid heartbeat; nausea/stomach problems; and weakness. Each item was scored on a scale from 1 (not bothered) to 4 (very much bothered). The mean score was used in the analyses. Cronbach's alphas were 0.77 (wave 1) and 0.78 (wave 2). Self-perceived social support was appraised using seven items from the Duke University of North Carolina Functional Social Support Questionnaire (FSSQ-7) and scored on a scale from 1 (much less than I would like) to 5 (as much as I would like) \[[@CR18]\]. Mental health service (MHS) utilization was measured with a question on contact with specialized mental health services (yes/no). Wave 1 covered MHS utilization since the attack until wave 1 (ca. 0--5 months post-disaster). Wave 2 covered utilization from January 1, 2012, until wave 2 (ca. 5--15 months post-disaster).
Ethics {#Sec4}
------
Participants aged 16 years or older provided written informed consent. Written parental consent was required before survivors younger than 16 years old could participate in the study, as stipulated by Norwegian law. The interviewers were health practitioners who had received training in conducting research interviews of traumatised persons at a one-day seminar. The interviewers were instructed to offer help with contacting suitable services if they identified unmet needs. They worked in teams of two, and after each survey wave, they were invited to a one-day meeting to share experiences. In addition, a telephone line was provided for the interviewers where they could discuss the challenges that they encountered during the interviews and receive support. Most interviews were conducted at the homes of the respondents. If not, all travel expenses were covered. The participants did not otherwise receive financial compensation for study participation. After each survey wave, a brief summary of the initial results was sent to the respondents before the findings were published or reported to the media. The study was commissioned by the Norwegian Directorate of Health, and performed by the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies (NKVTS). The study was approved by the Regional Committees for Medical and Health Research Ethics South East and North in Norway, and the Norwegian police granted permission to access a list of the survivors' names.
Statistics {#Sec5}
----------
Pearson's Chi squared tests (categorical variables) and independent t tests (continuous variables) were used to compare survivors by participation as follows. The exact test was used if the expected count was less than five for categorical variables. Survivors who participated in ≥1 waves were compared with non-participants (Table [1](#Tab1){ref-type="table"}). Survivors who participated in two waves were compared with participants in one wave only (Table [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"}). Survivors with parental participation were compared with survivors without parental participation (Table [3](#Tab3){ref-type="table"}). The reported percentages were based on the total number of answers for each item. We applied a two-sided statistical significance level of 0.05. The analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS version 20.0.Table 1Characteristics of survivors according to participation in ≥1 study waves (n = 490)Characteristics of survivorsNon-participants (n = 135)Participants (n = 355)p valuen/mean(%/sd)n/mean(%/sd)Mean age in years19.0(3.9)19.3(4.6)0.473Male gender83(61.5)184(51.8)0.055Residing in peripheral municipality24(17.8)50(14.3)0.338Hospitalized8(5.9)28(7.9)0.457Any parental participation27(20.0)304(85.6)\<0.001Maternal participation22(16.3)289(81.4)\<0.001Paternal participation15(11.1)228(64.2)\<0.001Table 2Characteristics of survivors according to participation in one or both survey wavesCharacteristicsWave 1Wave 2Participated in wave 1 and 2 (n = 255)Participated in wave 1 only (n = 70)p valueParticipated in wave 1 and 2 (n = 255)Participated in wave 2 only (n = 30)p valuen/mean(%/sd)n/mean(%/sd)n/mean(%/sd)n/mean(%/sd)Mean age at attack (years)19.4(4.3)19.3(5.7)0.88719.4(4.3)18.8(4.1)0.444Male gender139(54.5)33(47.1)0.274139(54.5)12(40.0)0.132Non-norwegian origin25(9.9)14(20.3)0.01925(9.9)2(7.4)0.757Financially disadvantaged51(20.5)17(25.4)0.38751(20.5)6(21.4)0.906Living with parent(s)154(61.1)48(70.6)0.151118(47.0)13(44.8)0.823Divorced parents96(38.9)30(44.8)0.38196(38.7)13(44.8)0.523Youth Labour Party member234(94.4)61(87.1)0.040234(94.4)27(96.4)0.723Sibling(s) in the study27(10.6)5(7.1)0.39127(10.6)2(6.7)0.561Hospitalized19(7.5)5(7.1)0.93019(7.5)4(13.3)0.281Terror exposure (mean 0--13)8.28(2.24)9.32(1.91)\<0.0018.28(2.24)9.05(2.00)0.103Posttraumatic stress (mean PTSD-RI)1.53(0.72)1.67(0.68)0.1641.21(0.67)1.60(0.77)0.003Anxiety/depression symptoms (mean SCL-8)2.05(0.66)2.16(0.64)0.2041.77(0.62)2.11(0.86)0.043Somatic symptoms (mean CSSI-8)1.72(0.54)1.73(0.53)0.9441.62(0.48)1.90(0.67)0.033Social support (mean FSSQ-7)4.56(0.57)4.56(0.59)0.9514.56(0.60)4.53(0.61)0.753Mental health service utilization180(72.0)54(77.1)0.391169(67.3)23(79.3)0.188Wave 1 (n = 325) was performed 4--5 months after the attack; wave 2 (n = 285) was performed 14--15 months after the attackTable 3Survivor characteristics by maternal and paternal participation among survivors aged 13--32 years who participated in wave 1 or 2 (n = 348)Survivor characteristicsPaternal participationMaternal participationAny parental participationYes (n = 228)No (n = 120)p valueYes (n = 289)No (n = 59)p valueYes (n = 304)No (n = 44)p valuen/mean(%/sd)n/mean(%/sd)n/mean(%/sd)n/mean(%/sd)n/mean(%/sd)n/mean(%/sd)Mean age in years18.72(2.74)19.17(3.85)0.26318.62(2.84)20.15(4.24)0.01018.59(2.82)20.82(4.54)0.003Male gender118(51.8)63(52.5)0.895148(51.2)33(55.9)0.508154(50.7)27(61.4)0.184Non-norwegian origin14(6.1)25(21.7)\<0.00119(6.6)20(37.0)\<0.00123(7.6)16(41.0)\<0.001Financially disadvantaged42(19.2)29(24.6)0.24656(20.0)15(26.3)0.28659(20.1)12(27.9)0.239Divorced parents (wave 1)72(34.0)53(54.6)0.001112(42.4)13(28.9)0.087116(41.9)9(28.1)0.133Living with ≥ 1 parents (wave 1)138(65.7)64(61.5)0.467179(67.3)23(47.9)0.010188(67.4)14(40.0)0.001Sibling(s) in the study29(12.7)5(4.2)0.01131(10.7)3(5.1)0.18334(11.2)0(0.0)0.025Hospitalized17(7.5)11(9.2)0.57725(8.7)3(5.1)0.44227(8.9)1(2.3)0.152Terror exposure (mean 0--13)8.53(2.22)8.62(2.21)0.7248.52(2.16)8.74(2.50)0.5108.53(2.17)8.74(2.54)0.580Mental health service utilizationWave 1152(71.7)76(74.5)0.601190(71.7)38(77.6)0.399200(71.9)28(77.8)0.460Wave 2119(65.0)67(73.6)0.151155(66.5)31(75.6)0.251162(66.9)24(75.0)0.359Posttraumatic stress reactions (mean PTSD-RI)Wave 11.53(0.68)1.64(0.78)0.2021.51(0.70)1.86(0.71)0.0011.53(0.71)1.82(0.71)0.023Wave 21.21(0.66)1.33(0.74)0.1741.18(0.67)1.60(0.71)\<0.0011.20(0.67)1.60(0.74)0.002Anxiety/depression symptoms (mean SCL-8)Wave 12.04(0.63)2.13(0.71)0.2592.03(0.66)2.28(0.62)0.0152.04(0.66)2.26(0.63)0.067Wave 21.79(0.64)1.83(0.70)0.6091.74(0.63)2.12(0.71)\<0.0011.77(0.65)2.06(0.69)0.015Somatic symptoms (mean CSSI-8)Wave 11.67(0.51)1.82(0.58)0.0161.69(0.54)1.89(0.54)0.0171.70(0.54)1.87(0.53)0.075Wave 21.60(0.50)1.72(0.53)0.0691.61(0.51)1.81(0.51)0.0151.62(0.51)1.80(0.52)0.050Social support (mean FSSQ-7)Wave 14.65(0.45)4.37(0.75)0.0014.63(0.52)4.18(0.73)\<0.0014.61(0.53)4.16(0.76)0.001Wave 24.62(0.49)4.43(0.76)0.0354.60(0.55)4.33(0.80)0.0404.59(0.55)4.34(0.87)0.123
Results {#Sec6}
=======
Altogether, 355 of 490 (72.4 %) survivors participated in the study, including 325 (66.3 %) in wave 1 and 285 (58.2 %) in wave 2. In wave 1, three survivors opted out when they received the invitation letter by sending a text message to the research team. In addition, 29 survivors could not be reached by telephone. In wave 2, seven survivors opted out before they were called, and 43 could not be reached by telephone. In wave 1, survivors were interviewed from 2 November 2011 to 5 March 2012, including \>95 % in November and December. In wave 2, the survivors were interviewed from 13 September 2012 to 5 February 2013, including 90 % during the first 2 months. Figure [1](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"} illustrates the survivor participation and parental participation by study wave. Overall, 255 (52.0 %) survivors participated in both waves: 70 (14.3 %) in wave 1 only and 30 (6.1 %) in wave 2 only. In total, 331 of 482 (68.7 %) survivors who were eligible for parental inclusion had ≥1 parents in the parental study, including 304 participating and 27 non-participating survivors. Therefore, we obtained data from either the survivor or the parents for 382 (78.0 %) survivors. There were 223 survivors with both maternal and paternal participation, 88 with only maternal participation, and 20 with only paternal participation. Altogether, 531 caregivers participated in ≥1 waves: 299 female (291 mothers, six stepmothers/foster mothers and two other female relatives) and 232 male caregivers (216 fathers and 16 stepfathers/foster fathers). Five survivors were represented by two female caregivers, i.e., a mother and a stepmother (n = 3) or other female relative (n = 2), and four survivors were represented by two male caregivers, i.e., a father and a stepfather. Because we examined parental participation, we excluded the two other female relatives.Fig. 1Flow chart of the study participation among survivors of the Utøya shooting (on the *left*) and survivors with parental participation (on the *right*). In total, 355 of the 490 (72 %) invited survivors participated in one or both study waves, and 331 of the 482 (69 %) survivors aged \<33 years had ≥1 parent(s) who participated in the study
Non-participating survivors did not significantly differ from those who participated in ≥1 waves with respect to age, gender, hospitalization or geographical region of residence, although a nearly significantly (p = 0.055) larger proportion of participants were female (Table [1](#Tab1){ref-type="table"}). Compared with survivors who participated in both waves, those who only participated in wave 1 were more likely to be non-Norwegian, non-members of the youth Labour Party and to report higher levels of terror exposure. Those who only participated in wave 2 reported more posttraumatic stress reactions, anxiety/depression symptoms, and somatic symptoms (Table [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"}).
Table [3](#Tab3){ref-type="table"} presents factors associated with parental participation among the participating survivors. Altogether, 304 of 348 (87.4 %) participating survivors who were eligible for parental inclusion had ≥1 parents in the study: 289 with maternal and 228 with paternal participation. They represented 286 families: 270 families with one, 14 families with two, and two families with three participating survivors (i.e., siblings). Parental non-participation was associated with the following survivor characteristics: higher age; non-Norwegian origin; not living with parents; not having siblings in the study; and more posttraumatic stress reactions, anxiety/depression symptoms, somatic symptoms, and less social support. The same associations applied for maternal non-participation, except for not having siblings in the study. Paternal non-participation was associated with non-Norwegian origin, divorced parents, not having siblings in the study, somatic symptoms and less social support. Additionally, survivors with paternal non-participation in wave 1 were more likely to have higher levels of posttraumatic stress and anxiety/depression symptoms in wave 2. Moreover, survivors without maternal or paternal participation in wave 1 were more likely to use mental health services in wave 2 (Additional file [1](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}: Appendix 1, Additional file [2](#MOESM2){ref-type="media"}: Appendix 2). A supplementary analysis of only survivors without siblings in the study (n = 314) yielded a similar pattern of associations. No maternal participation in wave 1 was associated with a loss of follow-up: 40 (16.0 %) of the survivors who participated in both waves had no maternal participation in the first wave versus 19 (27.5 %) of those who only participated in wave 1. No such associations were found with respect to paternal or any parental participation.
Discussion {#Sec7}
==========
The Utøya attack was a severe trauma that resulted in high levels of posttraumatic distress and extensive health-care utilization among survivors \[[@CR12], [@CR19]\]. After the attack, the survivors were geographically dispersed, and many soon relocated to start their studies. Despite these potentially unfavourable research conditions, nearly three of every four survivors participated in at least one survey wave. Therefore, satisfactory response rates can be obtained in studies launched after terrorism incidents. Longitudinal studies are essential to increase our understanding of how terrorism affects survivor health over time. However, our findings indicate that survivors who participate longitudinally differ from those who only participate once. Compared with survivors who participated in both survey waves, those who were lost to follow-up after wave 1 were more likely to be non-Norwegian and non-members of the political youth organization and to report higher levels of exposure. In contrast, the survivors who entered the study at wave 2 reported more posttraumatic stress reactions, symptoms of anxiety/depression and somatic symptoms. Therefore, the exclusion of survivors who do not participate longitudinally might increase the likelihood of selection bias. This would most likely lead to an underestimation of the impact of the disaster, since the levels of exposure and symptoms were higher among survivors who did not participate in both waves. This possibility can be counteracted by collecting longitudinal register-based data on, e.g., socioeconomics and health-care utilization for all participants. If possible, one should therefore consider requesting consent for data linkage when participants join the study. Another approach to account for attrition is the use of statistical methods, such as multiple imputation \[[@CR20]\].
Former longitudinal post-disaster studies have generally consisted of closed cohorts, in which only subjects who participated in the first assessment were invited to participate in ensuing assessments. The open cohort design of our study enabled survivors to join the study at wave 2 despite initial non-participation. This approach might have improved the response rate among survivors who were unable to participate directly after the event. The elevated symptom levels of survivors who entered our study at wave 2 might indicate that an open cohort design facilitates the inclusion of survivors who may have been unable to participate initially because of adverse health consequences (Table [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"}). Therefore, an open cohort might yield a more representative sample. However, survivors who participated in wave 1 may also have been more likely to receive care than non-participants if the interviewers identified unmet needs, which may have contributed to lower symptom levels in the survivors who participated in wave 1.
Our study supports previous findings that indicate lower response rates among immigrant survivors \[[@CR4], [@CR5]\]. These survivors were more likely to be lost to follow-up and less likely to have parents who participated in the study. These results suggest that additional attention should be paid to the recruitment of immigrants. A longitudinal study on survivors of a fireworks disaster in the Netherlands also found that the overall response rate was lower among immigrants \[[@CR4]\]. Additionally, the response patterns differed between immigrants and native Dutch survivors. Whereas health problems were associated with higher response among immigrant survivors, health problems were associated with lower response among non-immigrants. Therefore, the risk of selection bias might be higher for findings related to immigrant status and should be considered in the interpretation of findings.
Although the results vary between studies, research respondents typically have higher socioeconomic status and better health than non-respondents \[[@CR5], [@CR21], [@CR22]\]. We did not find significant differences between participants and non-participants with respect to age, gender, centrality of residence, or hospitalization (Table [1](#Tab1){ref-type="table"}). However, for non-participants, we lacked information regarding the factors that differed between survivors who participated in both waves and one wave only (Table [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"}). Therefore, it remains uncertain whether non-participants differed from participants with respect to ethnicity, terror exposure and health characteristics.
Findings on factors associated with research participation among disaster survivors are conflicting. In certain post-disaster studies, non-participation has been associated with sociodemographic factors (such as being male, unmarried, and having low income) and health-related factors (such as symptoms of PTSD and depression) \[[@CR23], [@CR24]\]. Other studies have not found such associations \[[@CR25], [@CR26]\]. The results on exposure are also inconsistent. One study found that exposure was related to attrition \[[@CR27]\], whereas another found that a threat to life was associated with follow-up participation \[[@CR28]\].
Factors associated with research participation might also differ by groups of survivors and study method. Because the survivors in our study were confined to an islet during the attack, they may have been easier to identify than survivors of disasters without distinct geographical boundaries. Additionally, most of the survivors were young members of the same political youth party. This shared affiliation might have facilitated the dissemination of study information and motivated the survivors to participate. In fact, members were more likely to participate in both waves than non-members (Table [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"}). It is also possible that the survivors of the Utøya attack, who were mostly politically active youth, were socioeconomically more homogenous than a random population-based sample, which might have contributed to the absence of sociodemographic differences with respect to participation except ethnicity. The interview experience of the participants during wave 1 might also have influenced subsequent participation. We lacked information regarding how the respondents experienced the interview. However, it has been demonstrated that a negative experience of an interview is associated with attrition \[[@CR21]\].
Our study was based on in-depth interviews performed across the entire country and was consequently highly demanding of resources. In addition to the research data that were collected, the health practitioners received up-to-date information on treating trauma, and the researchers gained insight into the challenges that health practitioners face when they met survivors. This integration of research and clinical practice might strengthen the understanding of trauma among clinicians and researchers, and be valuable in future research. Although our study may not be generalizable to low-resource settings, the integration of research and trauma education could be particularly important in low-income countries, where the risk of disasters is highest and there is often a lack of trained personnel \[[@CR29]\].
Population-based health studies on adolescents and young adults evince an overrepresentation of youth raised by two parents and from families with high income and education \[[@CR30]\]. We did not find significant differences between the survivors who participated in both waves and those who participated in only one wave with respect to divorced parents or self-perceived financial status. However, we lacked such information for non-participants.
Regarding parental participation, findings from family studies indicate that fewer fathers than mothers participate in research \[[@CR31]\]. This finding agrees with our results. However, in our study, the difference was less pronounced, which might reflect that Norway is a country with relatively high gender equality. Thus, fathers might be more involved in the upbringing of their children compared with countries with less gender equality. Alternative explanations might be that fathers are more inclined to participate after catastrophic events than in everyday settings or that our study method was more successful in reaching fathers, e.g., flexibility with respect to the interview time and location. Parental non-participation was associated with non-Norwegian ethnicity, somatic symptoms and less social support. Otherwise, factors associated with maternal and paternal participation diverged (Table [3](#Tab3){ref-type="table"}). Paternal non-participation was associated with having divorced parents and not having siblings in the study, whereas maternal non-participation was associated with higher age, not living with parents, and higher levels of posttraumatic stress reactions and anxiety/depressions symptoms. Therefore, it is important to consider potential differential selection of mothers and father in the interpretation of parental data. For instance, a divorce might influence the health of both youth and their parents. Survivors were less likely to have participating fathers if the parents were divorced, whereas a nearly significantly larger proportion of survivors with participating mothers had divorced parents. Prior research that involved parents also indicated that well-functioning fathers with high socioeconomic status tend to be overrepresented \[[@CR31]\]. We obtained parent contact information from the survivors. Therefore, whether a parent was invited to participate in the study may have depended on the survivor. Thus, non-response among parents could reflect a weaker parent-offspring relationship.
Non-participation does not necessarily result in bias. However, the estimated associations may be biased if non-participation is related to the severity of the outcome and/or the exposure under study \[[@CR32]\]. Therefore, non-response and attrition should be comprehensively assessed because they might threaten the validity of a study.
Strengths and limitations {#Sec8}
-------------------------
This study provides new data with respect to non-participation that can be valuable for planning and interpreting related research. The open cohort design yielded new information regarding survivors who did not participate in the first survey wave conducted soon after the attack but joined the study later. In previous studies, which generally use closed cohorts, these survivors would have been non-participants. Prior post-disaster studies have also commonly lacked a clear definition of the study population, whereas our study population was clearly defined by the geographical constriction of the island. Past studies on children and adolescents have often only collected data from parents and included only one parent, typically the mother \[[@CR3]\]. We obtained data from adolescents and parents, who represented directly (i.e., were present during the attack) and indirectly (i.e., had children who were at risk of being killed during the attack) exposed samples, respectively. In addition, our study included maternal and paternal reports for most of the survivors. Moreover, the study included in-depth interviews with little missing data.
The study also had several limitations. The study did not provide active intervention or treatment. However if unmet needs were revealed during wave 1, the interviewers were recommended to assist the participants in acquiring suitable care. Therefore, wave 1 participants may have been more likely to receive timely support than non-participants because of study participation, which may have contributed to the lower levels of symptoms in survivors who participated in both waves compared with those who only participated in wave 2. Furthermore, in the preparation of the study, we endeavored to design the questionnaires to suit both adolescents and young adults. Nevertheless, the age range of survivors might have led to variation in the ability to respond to the questionnaire. In addition, we do not know how many parents were invited to participate because their contact information was acquired from the survivors. This fact could have increased the likelihood of selection bias with respect to parental participation. There might also have been variation in the efforts of the interviewers to acquire contact information for both parents. In the instructions to the interviewers, the wording on parental invitation for survivors aged less than 16 years differed slightly from that for those aged ≥16 years. The interviewers were requested to ask survivors under 16 years old for the telephone number of one of the parents to request consent for their offspring's participation. In contrast, they were requested to ask those aged ≥16 years for contact information for both parents. This approach might explain why only half of the survivors under 16 years old had at least two parents in the study, whereas two-thirds of survivors aged ≥16 years had two or more parents in the study (data not shown). Because there were only 29 survivors aged \<16 years in our study, this circumstance is unlikely to have substantially affected the results. We had little data on non-participants and lacked information regarding ethnicity, exposure, and symptoms among non-participants. These factors were associated with loss of follow-up or initial non-participation, and we cannot determine whether the same associations applied for non-participation in both waves. Additionally, the study was based on self-reports and lacked pre-disaster data. Finally, our analysis might have failed to detect significant differences because of a relatively small sample size (i.e., type II error) (Additional file [3](#MOESM3){ref-type="media"}).
Conclusions {#Sec9}
===========
Compared with survivors who participated longitudinally, those survivors who were lost to follow-up after wave 1 were more likely to be non-Norwegian and report higher exposure. In contrast, those survivors who entered the study at wave 2 reported more posttraumatic stress, anxiety/depression, and somatic symptoms. Therefore, it is beneficial to avoid exclusion of participants who do not participate longitudinally, for instance, by collecting longitudinal data through a linkage to registers. In addition, an open cohort design that enables survivors to join the study in a later stage despite initial non-participation might improve the response rate among survivors with increased symptoms levels and yield a more representative sample. Finally, the factors associated with maternal and paternal participation differed. Parental non-participation was associated with non-Norwegian origin, somatic symptoms and less social support. Additionally, paternal non-participation was associated with having divorced parents, and maternal non-participation was associated with higher age, not living with parents, more posttraumatic stress and anxiety/depression symptoms. Consequently, it is important to consider a potential differential sample selection of mothers and fathers in the analysis and interpretation of the parental data.
Additional files {#Sec10}
================
10.1186/s13104-016-1873-1 Survivor characteristics by maternal and paternal participation in wave 1 among survivors aged 13--32 years who participated in wave 1 or 2 (n = 348).10.1186/s13104-016-1873-1 Survivor characteristics by maternal and paternal participation in wave 2 among survivors aged 13--32 years who participated in wave 1 or 2 (n = 348).10.1186/s13104-016-1873-1 STROBE checklist.
LES contributed to the design and data analyses and wrote the manuscript. GD was the study's project leader and contributed to drafting the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Acknowledgements {#FPar1}
================
We sincerely thank all of the participants. The study received funding from the Norwegian Health Directorate and the Research Council of Norway.
Competing interests {#FPar2}
===================
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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Q:
Adding a Javascript Array To a Numbered List
I have a predefined array list that I need to be formatted into a numbered list in HTML. I'm very new to html with javascript and am having a hard time with dom manipulation
here is my js code var fruits = ['Apples', 'Oranges', 'Pears', 'Grapes', 'Pineapples', 'Mangos'];
here is my html
<div id="fruits">
</div>
<h3>Fruits</h3>
`
its very bare bones and that's simply because I have no idea where to start.
A:
You can use DOM like below. This code loops through your array, and adds each element to an ordered list.
var fruits = ['Apples', 'Oranges', 'Pears', 'Grapes', 'Pineapples', 'Mangos'];
var listOfFruits = [];
var list = document.getElementById("list");
fruits.forEach(function(element) {
listOfFruits.push("<li>" + element + "</li>");
});
list.innerHTML = listOfFruits.join('');
<ol id="list"></ol>
Or you can use jQuery like below. This code loops through your array and appends a <li> to your html.
var fruits = ['Apples', 'Oranges', 'Pears', 'Grapes', 'Pineapples', 'Mangos'];
var listOfFruits = [];
fruits.forEach(function(element) {
listOfFruits.push("<li>" + element + "</li>");
});
$("#list").html(listOfFruits.join(''));
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<ol id="list"></ol>
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"pile_set_name": "StackExchange"
}
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Tactical Navigation
Navigation
Open forums set for financial aid director finalists
CARBONDALE, Ill. -- The three finalists for the position of Director of Financial Aid at Southern Illinois University Carbondale will make presentations during open forums on Thursday, April 28.
Finalists for the position include Paula Clendenen, Terri R. Harfst and Cleo Yvonne Morris. All open forum sessions will be in the John C. Guyon Auditorium in Morris Library and members of the campus community are welcome to attend.
Clendenen’s forum will be 11 a.m. to noon. Clendenen, of Carterville, has more than 27 years of experience in the financial aid office at SIUC, where she is currently associate director of Financial Aid Services and Fiscal Manangement. In her current position, Clendenen has handled all staff management responsibilities for financial aid services to students, managed the satisfactory progress appeal process, managed and served as liaison for the student alternative loan program and assisted with various aspects of the financial aid processes,compliance and programs. She has taken a lead role in developing, testing and implementing the new Banner system and related aspects.
Originally employed in the office as a financial aid adviser in August 1982, Clendenen has also served as financial aid coordinator, assistant director of financial aid, assistant director of special projects/summer processing and assistant director of fiscal management/special projects.
She is a double alumna of SIUC with a master’s in workforce education and development and a bachelor’s in education, training and development. She also holds an associate degree in accounting from John A. Logan College. Clendenen has been involved in a variety of committees and organizations at the University and in the community, including the University’s Distance Education Initiative Group and the Banner Implementation Core Team.
The forum for Harfst will be 1-2 p.m. Harfst, of Carterville, has served as the University’s interim director of the financial aid office since October 2010. She has supervised financial aid services for students, provided office leadership with $4 million in fiscal authority and assisted in preparing reports for government agencies and college administration as well as collaborating with other SIUC administrators, deans, department heads and others.
Harfst offers two decades of experience in admissions, financial aid and enrollment management, including holding the position of academic scholarship coordinator for enrollment management, financial aid office and new student admissions from June 1996 until now. She was also interim director of the financial aid office for several months in 2008 and previously served as university tuition waiver coordinator, admission counselor for new student admissions, and marketing assistant for the office of intramural-recreational sports.
Harfst earned her bachelor’s degree in speech communication at SIUC. Her campus service efforts are numerous, including serving on the Lead SI committee since 2007, the Inspiring Women Gala Committee since 2003 and on the Strategic Enrollment Planning Committee.
The forum for Morris will be 9-10 a.m. From Mulkeytown, Morris is a senior financial aid coordinator for the ITT Technical Institute in Arnold, Mo. Holding this position since September 2002, she manages accounts receivables for student accounts, helps develop student enrollment strategies, manages personnel and assists in preparing student financial aid packages. She works with students and other units of the institute to keep abreast of the always-changing area of federal and private student loans and financial assistance.
Morris completed her MBA at the ITT Technical Institute in Carmel, Ind., in 2010 and also holds a bachelor’s in business administration/financial accounting and an associate degree in software application and programming, both from ITT Technical Institute locations in Indianapolis and Newburgh, Ind., respectively.
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on the easel
just when I thought I was entering a drought, I just found out I'de sold another 2 paintings from display at Ekhidna Wines, one of which was this abstract piece. so another big shout out to Ekhidna Wines for graciously allowing me to display my paintings - it has been a huge success and I would not have sold as many paintings as I have without their support.
i've also just put up my next display at Ekhidna, titled "Colourfield". some smaller (30x30cm) pieces to brighten up that little corner or room (and only $20 each), so if you're interested in any of the below paintings, why not pop down to Ekhidna Wines, Foggo Road, McLaren Vale to take a look. (ps: if you can't get down there, but are interested in any of the pieces, feel free to contact me to make other arrangements). So enjoy the wine and enjoy the art....
Leave a Reply.
Author
Hi, I'm Madeleine Elkin, a home based arts and crafts hobbiest, who's starting to spread her wings into the art world. Hope you enjoy being kept up to date with the trials and tribulations I encounter along the way, together with news on up coming events.
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\___/\_,_/_/_/_/\__/_/ /_/\___/_//_/_/\_\\__/\_, /___/\__/_/ /_/ .__/\__/
/___/ /_/
See Copyright Notice in gmMachine.h
*/
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#include "gmFunctionObject.h"
#include "gmMachine.h"
gmFunctionObject::gmFunctionObject()
{
m_cFunction = NULL;
m_cUserData = NULL;
m_debugInfo = NULL;
m_byteCode = NULL;
m_byteCodeLength = 0;
m_maxStackSize = 1; // return value
m_numLocals = 0;
m_numParams = 0;
m_numParamsLocals = 0;
m_numReferences = 0;
m_references = NULL;
}
void gmFunctionObject::Destruct(gmMachine * a_machine)
{
if(m_references)
{
a_machine->Sys_Free(m_references);
m_references = NULL;
}
if(m_byteCode)
{
a_machine->Sys_Free(m_byteCode);
m_byteCode = NULL;
}
if(m_debugInfo)
{
if(m_debugInfo->m_debugName) { a_machine->Sys_Free(m_debugInfo->m_debugName); }
if(m_debugInfo->m_lineInfo) { a_machine->Sys_Free(m_debugInfo->m_lineInfo); }
if(m_debugInfo->m_symbols)
{
int i;
for(i = 0; i < m_numParamsLocals; ++i)
{
a_machine->Sys_Free(m_debugInfo->m_symbols[i]);
}
a_machine->Sys_Free(m_debugInfo->m_symbols);
}
a_machine->Sys_Free(m_debugInfo);
m_debugInfo = NULL;
}
#if GM_USE_INCGC
a_machine->DestructDeleteObject(this);
#endif //GM_USE_INCGC
}
#if GM_USE_INCGC
bool gmFunctionObject::Trace(gmMachine * a_machine, gmGarbageCollector* a_gc, const int a_workLeftToGo, int& a_workDone)
{
int i;
for(i = 0; i < m_numReferences; ++i)
{
gmObject * object = a_machine->GetObject(m_references[i]);
a_gc->GetNextObject(object);
++a_workDone;
}
++a_workDone;
return true;
}
#else //GM_USE_INCGC
void gmFunctionObject::Mark(gmMachine * a_machine, gmuint32 a_mark)
{
if(m_mark != GM_MARK_PERSIST) m_mark = a_mark;
int i;
for(i = 0; i < m_numReferences; ++i)
{
gmObject * object = a_machine->GetObject(m_references[i]);
if(object->NeedsMark(a_mark)) object->Mark(a_machine, a_mark);
}
}
#endif //GM_USE_INCGC
bool gmFunctionObject::Init(gmMachine * a_machine, bool a_debug, gmFunctionInfo &a_info, gmuint32 a_sourceId)
{
// byte code
if(a_info.m_byteCodeLength)
{
m_byteCode = (gmuint8 *) a_machine->Sys_Alloc(a_info.m_byteCodeLength);
memcpy(m_byteCode, a_info.m_byteCode, a_info.m_byteCodeLength);
m_byteCodeLength = a_info.m_byteCodeLength;
}
else
{
m_byteCode = NULL;
m_byteCodeLength = 0;
}
// stack info
m_maxStackSize = a_info.m_maxStackSize;
m_numLocals = a_info.m_numLocals;
m_numParams = a_info.m_numParams;
m_numParamsLocals = a_info.m_numParams + a_info.m_numLocals;
// references
m_numReferences = 0;
m_references = NULL;
if(m_byteCode)
{
// find the objects this function references by iterating over the byte code and collecting them.
// we could perform this step in the compilation phase if we don't want to iterate over the byte code.
gmptr * references = (gmptr *) GM_NEW( char[a_info.m_byteCodeLength] );
union
{
const gmuint8 * instruction;
const gmuint32 * instruction32;
};
instruction = (const gmuint8 *) m_byteCode;
const gmuint8 * end = instruction + m_byteCodeLength;
for(;instruction < end;)
{
switch(*(instruction32++))
{
case BC_GETDOT :
case BC_SETDOT :
case BC_BRA :
case BC_BRZ :
case BC_BRNZ :
case BC_BRZK :
case BC_BRNZK :
case BC_FOREACH :
case BC_GETGLOBAL :
case BC_SETGLOBAL :
case BC_GETTHIS :
case BC_SETTHIS : instruction += sizeof(gmptr); break;
case BC_PUSHINT : instruction += sizeof(gmint); break;
case BC_PUSHFP : instruction += sizeof(gmfloat); break;
case BC_CALL :
case BC_GETLOCAL :
case BC_SETLOCAL : instruction += sizeof(gmuint32); break;
case BC_PUSHSTR :
case BC_PUSHFN :
{
// if the reference does not already exist, add it.
gmptr reference = *((gmptr *) instruction);
instruction += sizeof(gmptr);
int i;
for(i = 0; i < m_numReferences; ++i)
{
if(references[i] == reference) break;
}
if(i == m_numReferences) references[m_numReferences++] = reference;
break;
}
default : break;
}
}
if(m_numReferences > 0)
{
m_references = (gmptr *) a_machine->Sys_Alloc(sizeof(gmptr) * m_numReferences);
memcpy(m_references, references, sizeof(gmptr) * m_numReferences);
}
delete [] (char*) references;
}
// debug info
m_debugInfo = NULL;
if(a_debug)
{
m_debugInfo = (gmFunctionObjectDebugInfo *) a_machine->Sys_Alloc(sizeof(gmFunctionObjectDebugInfo));
memset(m_debugInfo, 0, sizeof(gmFunctionObjectDebugInfo));
// source code id
m_debugInfo->m_sourceId = a_sourceId;
// debug name
if(a_info.m_debugName)
{
int len = (int)strlen(a_info.m_debugName) + 1;
m_debugInfo->m_debugName = (char *) a_machine->Sys_Alloc(len);
memcpy(m_debugInfo->m_debugName, a_info.m_debugName, len);
}
// symbols
if(a_info.m_symbols)
{
m_debugInfo->m_symbols = (char **) a_machine->Sys_Alloc(sizeof(char *) * m_numParamsLocals);
int i;
for(i = 0; i < m_numParamsLocals; ++i)
{
int len = (int)strlen(a_info.m_symbols[i]) + 1;
m_debugInfo->m_symbols[i] = (char *) a_machine->Sys_Alloc(len);
memcpy(m_debugInfo->m_symbols[i], a_info.m_symbols[i], len);
}
}
// line number debugging.
if(a_info.m_lineInfo)
{
// alloc and copy
m_debugInfo->m_lineInfo = (gmLineInfo *) a_machine->Sys_Alloc(sizeof(gmLineInfo) * a_info.m_lineInfoCount);
memcpy(m_debugInfo->m_lineInfo, a_info.m_lineInfo, sizeof(gmLineInfo) * a_info.m_lineInfoCount);
m_debugInfo->m_lineInfoCount = a_info.m_lineInfoCount;
}
}
return true;
}
int gmFunctionObject::GetLine(int a_address) const
{
if(m_debugInfo && m_debugInfo->m_lineInfo)
{
int i;
for(i = 0; i < m_debugInfo->m_lineInfoCount; ++i)
{
if(a_address < m_debugInfo->m_lineInfo[i].m_address)
{
// return entry before
if(i > 0) --i;
return m_debugInfo->m_lineInfo[i].m_lineNumber;
}
}
return m_debugInfo->m_lineInfo[i - 1].m_lineNumber;
}
return 0;
}
const void * gmFunctionObject::GetInstructionAtLine(int a_line) const
{
if(m_debugInfo && m_debugInfo->m_lineInfo && m_byteCode)
{
// serach for the first address using this line.
int i;
for(i = 0; i < m_debugInfo->m_lineInfoCount; ++i)
{
if(m_debugInfo->m_lineInfo[i].m_lineNumber == a_line)
{
return (void *) ((char *) m_byteCode + m_debugInfo->m_lineInfo[i].m_address);
}
}
}
return NULL;
}
gmuint32 gmFunctionObject::GetSourceId() const
{
if(m_debugInfo)
{
return m_debugInfo->m_sourceId;
}
return 0;
}
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Github"
}
|
Releases Of September In Brief (Vol. II)
The debut album from Irish retro-rock/revival band The Strypes is a much welcome injection of raw Beatles inflected rhythm and blues rock and roll with a nod towards the punk sensibility of bands like The Saints. Really, it was a pleasure to be hit with this unexpected burst of fun and energy in a year that seems to be taking itself altogether too seriously.
The guitars are loud and grungy with a solid base of blues competence, the vocals are full of force even if they don’t wow, and the drums and bass throb and pound with such sex and charisma that it’s hard not to fall straight into the chasm of groove. It’s just as musically exciting as it is catchy, which means that I don’t have to be annoyed at having these tracks stuck in my head for the next couple of weeks.
Finally a band that doesn’t mind playing rock music. Positively charming, would recommend.
NOTE: I must revisit this one and put a full review together.
RATING: ****/5
NOTABLE CUTS: Mystery Man/ She’s So Fine/ Can’t Judge A Book By Looking At The Cover/ Hometown Girls/ Heart Of The City
TRASH: What A Shame (not actually bad, but doesn’t really meet the bar of the other cuts)
Loud Like Love – Placebo
Released 16th September on Universal
Alternative/ Rock
Well, the boys from Placebo are back with yet another album that sounds a whole lot like all of the others. Perhaps there’s a little more good humour and self-awareness on this one than previous, but there’s still Brain Molko’s waist-deep wallowing in self-pity and angst ridden teenage poetry to deal with.
Most of the beats work well and a few of the tracks have a good solid base of rock and roll fun, but apart from the occasional bite of irony and wit the lyrics drag this record down into a melodramatic tedium.
RATING: ***/5
NOTABLE CUTS: Too Many Friends/ Rob The Bank/ Purify
TRASH: A Million Little Pieces/ The Beginning Of The End/ Bosco/ Exit Wounds
8:18 – The Devil Wears Prada
Released 17th September on Roadruner
Metal
The fifth studio album from ridiculously named American metal band The Devil Wears Prada is nicely head-banging oriented piece of work. All of the tracks are a reasonable length (rare for a metal album) and they have a nice mixture of riffs scattered throughout the cuts to keep everything from running to obviously into monotony. I would have liked these solid riffs to brought to the fore more often however, as the band tends to favour the oppressive wall of noise technique for their guitar lines a little too often my tastes.
On the downside the vocals (while usually powerful) sometimes dissolve into the painful squawk of a parrot with throat cancer and the electronic studio effects (while sometimes used to great benefit) more often than not became laughably obvious and cheesy. Also the lyrics, when intelligible, are just obnoxious.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
A general theory of chemical cytotoxicity based on a molecular model of the living cell, the Bhopalator.
To define the molecular processes underlying toxicological manifestations experimentally measured on the cellular level, it is essential to have available a molecular model of the living cell itself. The Bhopalator is a molecular model of the living cell formulated by integrating the three major branches of biology within a coherent theoretical framework - the Watson-Crick molecular genetics, the conformon theory of enzymic catalysis, and the theory of dissipative structures developed by I. Prigogine. According to this model, the living cell is a self-moving, self-thinking and self-reproducing machine (automaton) that receives information and energy from its environment, processes them according to the genetic programs stored in DNA, and generates output signals to environment in order to realize teleonomically designed functions. The Bhopalator suggests a set of general statements useful in toxicological research, and these statements have been utilized to provide possible answers to several fundamental questions raised by recent experimental findings on chemically-induced cell injury and death.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
|
Friday March 157 pm & 9 pm
Thursday March 148:30pm
TICKETS $15
What you want? If what you want is puppets + music, then baby, we’ve got it. It’s Puppet Playlist #29: Aretha Franklin.
Every few months, we invite a group of talented puppeteers and musicians to create original works of puppetry and exciting reinterpretations of music based on a particular musical theme (voted on by the audience at the previous show).
Have some R-E-S-P-E-C-T for yourself and reserve your seats early to avoid waiting in the standby line.
Since the first show in 2009, Puppet Playlist has played to often sold-out audiences. Previous performers (and their work) have been seen all over New York and throughout the world, on, off- and off-off-Broadway, Shakespeare in the Park, the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center, with Jim Henson Productions, Sesame Street, and The Muppets.
Puppet Playlist is a presentation of Sinking Ship Productions and The Tank, and is made possible in part by generous funding from the Puppet Slam Network.
Graphic by Jocelyn Mackenzie
We’re redesigning our Playlist website! If you’re looking for info on how to perform, past shows, etc., feel free to email us while the site is under construction.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
Neurons of the periaqueductal gray matter as revealed by Golgi study.
Neurons of the periaqueductal gray matter of the normal adult cat are classified into seven general types, Ia, Ib, II, IIIa, IIIb, IIIc, and IIId, based on the Golgi-Cox impregnated materials. Types Ia and Ib are spindle shaped bipolar neurons with one straight dendritic process forming varicosities and short stemmed spines. Type Ia is small in size and Ib is larger. The axon of each neuron emerges from another pole and projects beyond the PAG region. Occasionally it may share the origin with a dendrite or a tuft of dendrites. Type II, triangular shaped, had an apical dendrite that traverses a long distance within the PAG and an axon emerging from the basal portion and projecting beyond the PAG. Type IIIa, b, c, and d are pleomorphic multipolar neurons. Type IIIa has a rhomboid-shaped soma and dichotomically branching dendrites. Type IIIb has a spheroidal soma and short axons that terminate within the PAG. Type IIIc has a piriform soma and spiny dendrites that ramify perfusely and an axon which terminates within the PAG. Type IIId has the largest soma of all these neurons and the structure resembles an undifferentiated motor neuron of the CNS. Axons of the types IIIa and IIId are projecting in nature. Type Ia is found exclusively in the area immediately surrounding the aqueduct, the nucleus medialis. Types IIIc and IIId are found exclusively in the lateral region of the PAG which corresponds to the nucleus lateralis while the remaining cell types are found mostly in nuclei lateralis and dorsalis.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
|
Joe Biden spoke on the US elections and warned about xenophobia during his Australia visit. (File Photo)
The "better angels in America will prevail" in the upcoming presidential elections, Vice President Joe Biden said as he warned about xenophobia during a visit to Australia.Biden said both the US and Australia were dealing with the legacies of racism and exclusion but would inexorably move forward."Don't worry about our election. The better angels in America will prevail," he assured Australians in Sydney at the end of his three-day visit."So at a time like this, when the forces of xenophobia and nationalism and demagoguery are once again being trumpeted around the world, including in my own country... we have to remember who we are as Australians and Americans and reflect our best selves back to the world."His comments came as Donald Trump was formally chosen by Republicans as the party's presidential nominee, despite relentless controversy over his campaign rhetoric.Trump has sparked international concerns with his call to build a wall on the US border with Mexico to keep out illegal migrants, for a ban on Muslim immigration, and for his suggestion that Japan and South Korea should develop nuclear weapons.Biden's trip Down Under also came days after an international tribunal ruled against China's claims in the South China Sea, and the vice-president sought to reassure the staunch American ally that the US would maintain a "laser focus" on the Asia Pacific region."I made the point, I've said to (Chinese) President Xi (Jinping) directly what I said to (Australian Prime Minister Malcolm) Turnbull yesterday, our resolve to play a part in shaping the future of this dynamic region is real," Biden added."We are not going anywhere. And that's vital because our presence in the region... is essential to maintaining peace and stability, without which the economic growth and prosperity I believe would falter."The US administration has called on China to respect international rules as Beijing asserts sovereignty over almost all of the strategically vital South China Sea, despite rival claims from its Southeast Asian neighbours.Biden next visits New Zealand, where he is due to meet with Prime Minister John Key for talks in Auckland.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Q:
Search recursively for all files with a .sql extension and pass them to mysql as argument
Given:
Directory tree that contains files with .sql extension.
Requred
Find them all recursively and pass found files one by one to mysql client as:
mysql < ./dir/subdir/subsubdir/schema.sql
My feeble attempt
find . -name '*.sql' | xargs mysql
Results in:
ERROR 1049 (42000): Unknown database './dir/subdir/subsubdir/schema.sql'
Question
How to do it right?
Thanks!
A:
I believe this will work
find . -type f -name '*.sql' -exec bash -c 'cat '{}' | mysql' \;
Basically the above finds all files ending in .sql (I put the -type f in there just in case there are any directories that end in .sql). For each file found, find runs the exec command. The exec runs a bash sub-shell that cats the file and pipes that to the mysql program.
Hope this helps.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "StackExchange"
}
|
Interview w/ Debut Urban Fiction Author, Kashinda Marche
I’ve been accepting books for review lately that do not quite fit the theme here on the blog, some have been hits and some have been misses for me but it’s been interesting expanding my horizons like I have been! The Triumph In Me by Kashinda Marche was a quick and gripping read that honestly may never have picked up had the author not reached out to me! Definitely a hit <3 Kashinda has been amazing, the book was fantastic, and now I am more inclined to reach for various sub-genres of fiction on the shelves including this newly discovered "urban fiction!" Kashinda is being a wonderful sport and joining us on the blog today to answer some questions about her writing, and provide a bit of insight into the takeaway from her debut novel.
If you’d like to know more about her novel, The Triumph In Me, you can read the synopsis as well as my review here!
Q&A with debut author, Kashinda Marche!
TRB BOOK BLOG: Hi Kashinda! Thank you so much for your willingness to participate in this interview, as well as for submitting your debut novel, The Triumph In Me, for review! The story is so compelling, and full of emotional rebellion and redemption. What was it that inspired you to write such a harrowing story of love, life, and the struggles of?
KASHINDA: To be honest, the inspiration stemmed from my 22 year old daughter. She is blossoming into an amazing young woman, and I have witnessed her exercise her independence through successfully pursuing her acting career, gaining financial stability, and very soon the completion of four years of undergrad. However, what many people don’t know is, in the midst of it all, she has watched me struggle and suffer through my pain from the different illnesses that have chosen to attack my body. So, I wanted to show my child that no matter what, you live to fight another day and share it with others to motivate them. This book is a tangible piece of work that displays that for her because life only gets more difficult but it is our strength and faith that will continue to propel us.
TRB BOOK BLOG: The story is told in first person narrative by Tharisse, who struggles with both physical and mental illnesses that challenge her in every aspect of her life. Being able to understand her thinking in many of the situations she faces make this such an emotional story, and it really brings us closer to the character. Was it challenging for you to write about such difficult topics?
“My sole mission was for every reader to realize, they too, have a triumph in them.”
KASHINDA: It was very challenging to convert my thoughts on a page, especially because of the content. I think it was the honesty of it all, I learned the true meaning of “the truth hurts.” While no aspect of The Triumph in Me is factual to my own life events, the universal emotions and feelings of pain, confusion, and defeat are. My novella caused me to take a good look in the mirror and challenge some of my own demons. I believe that human beings all live diverse lifestyles from one another however, life makes everyone feel a particular way and while it’s an emotional roller coaster that’s what connects us. For me, the challenge was worthwhile because my sole mission was for every reader to realize, they too, have a triumph in them.
TRB BOOK BLOG: You yourself have also experienced some incredible challenges in life, would you say that writing The Triumph In Mewas somewhat of a healing process for you?
KASHINDA: When I wrote this story, I thought I was just developing an interesting plot with numerous climaxes; however with every chapter I felt a cathartic moment. It healed me to the extent of learning my true potential, my self-worth. I wrote a book, people are reading it, not only in the US, but internationally. I didn’t think something like that was ever possible for ‘little old me,’ but I am so glad I was wrong. I look at how I live my life and how I view myself with a different lens now. This book healed me of all the negativity I was flooding my mind with, so you have to understand when you are negative that isn’t healthy. I realized I was living my life with an unhealthy mindset, like Tharisse, but when it is normal to you for so long you just don’t know that there is something wrong. The Triumph in Me healed of all of that for me. Negativity is a “no no” for me, but I am human so I still have my moments. Who doesn’t? But the wise will always say, “Moderation is key” and “He is Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”
TRB BOOK BLOG: This story is so inspiring, do you have any advice or words of wisdom for people going through difficult times in life?
KASHINDA: Yes! My advice would be to read The Triumph in Me by Kashinda T. Marche. Just kidding, (haha). But on a serious note, I would say that when life gets tough, go find a mirror and take a hard look. You are enough, you have made it this far. With each day, there is growth, even if it is minuscule, it’s there. Growth is positivity in itself, and with each day you are granted, ask yourself, “What are you going to do with it?” and I would just make sure the answer you choose not only makes you smile, but makes those around you smile too.
TRB BOOK BLOG: Thank you so much for taking the time to be here today! When reading this book, I found myself contemplating the things that I hold most dear in my life and how thankful I am for the blessings that I’ve been given. I think sometimes I forget to do that! Everyone interprets things differently, so I’d like to know from you – What is the main thing that you want your readers to take away from the story?
“I challenge my readers to do something with the strength that is sometimes so embedded, we forget it’s there.”
KASHINDA: One of the things that I want readers to take away from this book is that Tharisse is a fictional character who is a representation of all the folks out there that feel like they are just that, the folks out there! But through every challenge she overcame, and every experience she faced, Tharisse stood 100 feet tall; even when she felt she was so small – damn near invisible. The main takeaway is having strength, and I challenge my readers to do something with the strength that is sometimes so embedded, we forget it’s there. The Triumph in Me is meant to remind my audiences that it’s there, it never left. I chose to use mine, by sharing this story with whoever wants to read or hear it. What will you do with yours?
Kashinda T. Marche was born and raised in urban New Jersey; she is a mother of one daughter. Kashinda’s writing is genuine as it pours from her heart. Her way with words will leave you full of empowerment with a sense of aspiration. She has learned throughout her continuing journey of self-discovery just how vital a spiritual relationship can be. She has faced many difficult health challenges in life such as mental illness and a decline in her physical mobility. Kashinda is also the survivor of four brain surgeries occurring within a five year span. Kashinda T. Marche is a true model of championship. Despite battling these challenges, she still manages to share her gift of creative writing with the world. In this title “The Triumph In Me,” Kashinda delivers a message of inspiration. She exemplifies how to turn your troubles into triumphs by courageously broadening your perception of life. Kashinda hopes to reach as many souls out there who may also be trapped in their darkness as she once was.
Have you read any interesting fiction titles that were out of your immediate comfort zone? What were they and what sub-genre do they adhere to? What did you like about it that was different than what you’d normally read? Tell us in the comments below!
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
---
abstract: 'Motivated by the recent experiments on periodically modulated, two dimensional electron systems placed in large transversal magnetic fields, we investigate the interplay between the effects of disorder and periodic potentials in the integer quantum Hall regime. In particular, we study the case where disorder is larger than the periodic modulation, but both are small enough that Landau level mixing is negligible. In this limit, the self-consistent Born approximation is inadequate. We carry extensive numerical calculations to understand the relevant physics in the lowest Landau level, such as the spectrum and nature (localized or extended) of the wave functions. Based on our results, we propose a qualitative explanation of the new features uncovered recently in transport measurements.'
author:
- Chenggang Zhou
- Mona Berciu
- 'R. N. Bhatt'
title: Effects of large disorder on the Hofstadter butterfly
---
Introduction {#sec1}
============
Two-dimensional electron systems (2DES) placed in a uniform perpendicular magnetic field exhibit a rich variety of phenomena, such as the integer[@IQHE] and fractional[@FQHE] quantum Hall effects. [@Springer] Another well-studied problem is that of a 2DES in a uniform perpendicular magnetic field subjected to a periodic potential. Even before the discovery of the quantum Hall effects, Hofstadter[@Hofst] showed that in this case, the electronic bands split into a remarkable fractal structure of subbands and gaps, the so-called Hofstadter butterfly. Two “asymptotic” regimes are usually considered: (i) if the magnitude of the periodic potential is very large compared to the cyclotron energy and the Zeeman splitting, then one can use lattice models to describe the hopping of electrons between Wannier-like states localized at the minima of the periodic potential, whereas (ii) if the magnitude of the periodic potential is small compared to the cyclotron energy, the periodic potential lifts the degeneracy of each Landau level. In both cases, the resulting butterfly structure is a function only of the ratio between the flux $\phi=B{\cal A}$ of the magnetic field through the unit cell of the periodic lattice, and the elementary magnetic flux $\phi_0=hc/e$. Remarkably, if $\phi/\phi_0$ of the first asymptotic case is equal to $\phi_0/\phi$ of the second case, their electronic structures are solutions of the same Harper’s equation.[@equiv] If the periodic potential is comparable to the cyclotron energy, Landau level mixing must be taken into account; although Landau levels still split into subbands, the structure is no longer universal, but depends also on the ratio of the periodic potential amplitude and the cyclotron energy.[@germans]
Experimentally, the case with a small periodic modulation can be realized more easily. This is because the periodic potential is usually imprinted at some distance from the 2DES layer; as a result, its magnitude in the 2DES is considerably attenuated. The interesting cases to study experimentally also correspond to small values of $\phi/\phi_0$ (of order unity), where the butterfly structure shows a small number of subbands separated by large gaps, and should therefore be easier to identify. Periodic modulations have been created using lithography[@Holland; @Weimann; @Weiss] and holographic illumination. [@Wulf] The lattice constants of the resulting square lattices are of order 100 nm. As a result, the condition $\phi/\phi_0 \approx 2$ (for instance) is satisfied for $B\approx 0.8$ T. This is a very low value, in the Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) regime, not the high-$B$ quantum regime. Significant Landau level mixing and complications from the fact that the Fermi level is inside one of the higher Landau levels for such small $B$-values make the identification of the Hofstadter structure difficult.
Recently, a new method for lateral periodic modulation has been developed using a self-organized ordered phase of a diblock copolymer deposited on a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure.[@Sorin] The polymer spheres create a 2D triangular lattice with a lattice constant of about 39 nm. The corresponding unit cell area is almost an order of magnitude smaller than those achieved in previous experiments, implying that the condition $\phi/\phi_0 \approx 2$ is now satisfied for very strong magnetic fields, $B\approx 6$ T. At such high magnetic fields the system is in the strong quantum regime, and Landau level mixing can be safely ignored. For the experimental 2DES electron concentrations, the Fermi level is in the spin-down lowest Landau level.[@Sorin] As a result, this experimental setup appears more promising for the successful observation of the butterfly.
Nevertheless, one must take into account the disorder which is present in the system (without disorder, there is no integer Quantum Hall Effect – IQHE – to begin with). If the disorder is very small compared to the periodic potential amplitude, one expects that the subbands of the Hofstadter structure are “smeared” on a scale $\hbar/\tau$, where $\tau$ is the scattering time, and $\tau \rightarrow \infty$ as disorder becomes vanishingly small. As a result, the larger gaps in the Hofstadter structure should remain open at the positions predicted in the absence of disorder, and one expects a series of minima in the longitudinal conductivity as the Fermi level traverses such gaps. The experiment indeed shows a very non-trivial modification of the longitudinal resistivity, with many peaks and valleys appearing in what is (in the absence of the periodic modulation) a smooth Lorentz-like peak.[@Sorin] However, the position of the minima in $\rho_{xx}$ do not track the positions of the main gaps in the corresponding Hofstadter butterfly structure. Instead, the data suggests that in this experimental setup, disorder is not small, but rather large compared to the estimated amplitude of the periodic potential. This is not a consequence of poor samples, since these 2DES have high mobilities. It is due to the fact that the periodic modulation is considerably attenuated in the 2DES, leading to a small energy scale for the Hofstadter butterfly spectrum as compared to $\hbar/\tau$. As a result, the Hofstadter structure predicted in the absence of disorder is of little use for interpreting the experimental data. One might expect that in this case the periodic potential should have basically no effect on the disorder-broadened Landau level. This is indeed true for the strongly localized states at the top and bottom of the Landau level. However, states in the center of the Landau level extend over many unit cells of the periodic potential, and, as we demonstrate in the following, are non-trivially modified by its presence.
In this paper, we investigate numerically the behavior of a 2DES subject to a perpendicular magnetic field, a periodic potential and a disorder potential, under conditions applicable to the experimental system. The effective electron mass in GaAs is $0.067m_e$ while the magnetic fields of interest are on the order of 10 T. Under these conditions, the cyclotron energy $\hbar \omega_c$, of the order of 200 K, is the largest energy scale in the problem. The Zeeman energy $g^*\mu_B B$ for these fields is roughly 3 K, but electron interaction effects lead to a considerable enhancement of the spin splitting between the (spin polarized) Landau levels, which has been measured to be 20 K.[@Sorin2] The amplitude of the periodic potential’s largest Fourier components is estimated to be of the order of 1 K, and the scattering rate from the known zero field mobility is estimated to be $\hbar/\tau \sim 8$ K. [@Chaikin] As a result of this ordering of energy scales, we neglect Landau level inter-mixing and study non-perturbatively the combined effects of a periodic and a large smooth disorder potential on the electronic structure of the lowest Landau level. Previously, the effects of small disorder on a Hofstadter butterfly have been perturbatively investigated using the self-consistent Born approximation (SCBA), [@MacDonald] and the combined effect of white-noise disorder and periodic modulation on Hall resistance was studied following the scaling theory of IQHE.[@Huckestein] Our results reveal details of the electronic structure not investigated previously.
The two-lead geometry we consider is schematically shown in Fig. \[fig1\]: the finite 2DES is assumed to have periodic boundary conditions in the $y$-direction (along which the Hall currents flow), and is connected to metallic leads at the $x=-L_x/2$ and $x=+L_x/2$ edges. In particular, in this paper we study the effects of the periodic potential on the extended states carrying longitudinal currents between the two leads, and identify a number of interesting properties, in qualitative agreement with simple arguments provided by a semi-classical picture. Our main conclusion is that while the beautiful Hofstadter structure is destroyed by large disorder, the system still exhibits very interesting and non-trivial physics.
![ The two-lead geometry considered: the finite-size 2DES has periodic boundary conditions in the $y$-direction, and is attached to metallic leads at the $x=\pm L_x/2$ ends. []{data-label="fig1"}](Fig1.eps){width="0.9\FigWidth"}
The paper is organized as follows: in Section \[sec2\] we briefly review the computation of the Hofstadter structure for a small-amplitude periodic potential. In Section \[sec3\] we describe the type of disorder potentials considered. Section \[sec4\] describes the numerical methods used to analyze the spectrum and the nature of the electronic states, with both semi-classical and fully quantum-mechanical formalisms. Results are presented in Section \[sec5\], while Section \[sec6\] contains discussions and a summary of our conclusions.
Periodic Potential {#sec2}
==================
To clarify our notation, we briefly review the problem of a free electron of charge $-e$ moving in a 2D plane (from now on, the $xy$-plane, of dimension $L_x \times L_y$) in a magnetic field ${{\bf B}}=B{{\bf e}}_z$ perpendicular to the plane, as described by $${\cal H} = { 1 \over 2m} \left({{\bf p}}+{e \over c}{{\bf A}}\right)^2 -
{1 \over 2} g\mu_B\vec{\sigma}\cdot {{\bf B}}$$ In the Landau gauge ${{\bf A}} = (0, Bx,0)$, the eigenfunctions of the Schrödinger equation ${\cal H}|n,k_y,\sigma\rangle=
E_{n,\sigma}|n,k_y,\sigma\rangle$ are: $${ \label{2.1} } \langle {{\bf r}} | n, k_y, \sigma \rangle = { e^{-ik_yy}
\over \sqrt{L_y}} e^{-{1 \over 2}\left( {x \over l} - lk_y\right)^2 }
{ H_n\left({x \over l} - lk_y\right) \over
\sqrt{2^nn!\sqrt{\pi}l}}\chi_\sigma,$$ with eigenenergies $${ \label{2.2} } E_{n,\sigma} = \hbar\omega_c\left( n + { 1 \over2
}\right) - {1 \over2} g \mu_B B\sigma.$$ Here $l= \sqrt{ \hbar c/ eB}$ is the magnetic length, $\omega_c ={eB/
mc}$ is the cyclotron frequency, $H_n(x)$ are the Hermite polynomials and $\chi_{+1}^T =(1\; 0)$, respectively $\chi_{-1}^T
=(0\; 1)$ are the eigenspinors of $\sigma_z$: $\sigma_z \chi_\sigma
=\sigma \chi_\sigma$.
The degeneracy of a Landau level is given by the number of distinct $k_y$ values allowed. Imposing cyclic boundary conditions in the $y$-direction, we find $${ \label{2.3} } k_y = { 2\pi \over L_y} j,$$ where $j$ is an integer. The allowed values for $j$ are found from the condition that the electron wave-functions, which are centered at positions $x_j = l^2 k_y = l^2 2\pi j/L_y $ \[see Eq. (\[2.1\])\] are within the boundary along the $x$-axis, i. e. $-L_x/2 < x_j \le
L_x/2$. It follows that the degeneracy of each Landau level is $N = L_xL_y B/ \phi_0$, with $\phi_0 = hc/e$.
Consider now the addition of a periodic potential, with a lattice defined by two non-collinear vectors ${{\bf a}}_1$ and $ {{\bf a}}_2$, such that $V({{\bf r}}) = V({{\bf r}} + n {{\bf a}}_1 + m{{\bf a}}_2)$ for any $n, m \in {\cal Z}$. The periodic potential has non-vanishing Fourier components only at the reciprocal lattice vectors ${{\bf g}} = h {{\bf g}}_1 +
k {{\bf g}}_2$, where ${{\bf g}}_i\cdot{{\bf a}}_j = 2 \pi \delta_{ij}$ and $h,k$ are integers. Thus: $${ \label{2.4} } V({{\bf r}}) = \sum_{{{\bf g}}} V_{{{\bf g}}} e^{i{{\bf
r\cdot g}}}.$$ Further, since $V({{\bf r}})$ is real, it follows that $V_{{{\bf g}}} =
V^*_{-{{\bf g}}}$.
In the absence of Landau level mixing, the Hofstadter spectrum for both square[@Hofst] $${ \label{2.6} } V_s(x,y) = 2A\left[ \cos{2 \pi \over a}x +\cos{2 \pi
\over a}y \right],$$ and triangular[@Wannier] $$V_t(x,y) = -2A\left[\cos {4 \pi \over \sqrt{3}a}x + \cos {2 \pi
\over \sqrt{3}a}\left(x -y \sqrt{3} \right) \right.$$ $${ \label{2.7} } \left. + \cos {2 \pi \over \sqrt{3}a}\left(x +y
\sqrt{3} \right)\right]$$ periodic potentials, with nonzero Fourier components only for [*the shortest reciprocal lattice vectors*]{}, have been studied extensively in the literature.[@Hofst; @Wannier; @Geisel; @Gerhardts] The parameter defining the spectrum is the ratio between the flux $\phi={{{\bf B}}}\cdot({{\bf a}}_1 \times {{\bf a}}_2)$ of the magnetic field through a unit cell and the elementary flux $\phi_0$. For $\phi/\phi_0=q/p$, where $p$ and $q$ are mutually prime integers, the original Landau level is split into $q$ sub-bands.
We would like to emphasize a qualitative difference between the two types of potentials: the square potential in Eq. (\[2.6\]) is particle-hole symmetric, since $V_s(x,y) = -V_s(x+{a\over 2},y+{a \over 2})$. As a result, the sign of its amplitude is irrelevant. On the other hand, the triangular potential does not have this symmetry. With the sign chosen in Eq. (\[2.7\]) and $A>0$, $V_t$ has deep local minima at the sites of the triangular lattice, whereas the maxima are relatively flat and located on a (displaced) honeycomb lattice. As a result, the sign of $V_t$ is highly relevant. The second fact that must be mentioned is that the choice made in Eqs. (\[2.6\]) and (\[2.7\]) is rather simple, since it aligns the periodic potential with the edges of the sample in a very specific way. In general, however, one could consider the case where the periodic lattice is rotated by some finite angle with respect to the sample edges; study of such cases will be discussed in future work. Finally, it may seem that this choice of periodic potentials is very restrictive also because only the shortest lattice vectors have been kept in the Fourier expansion. In fact, the methods we employ can be directly used for potentials with more Fourier components, but their inclusion leads to no new physics.
Disorder Potential {#sec3}
==================
Real samples always have disorder. The current consensus is that high-quality GaAs/AlGaAs samples exhibit a slowly varying, smooth disorder potential. In a semi-classical picture, the allowed electron trajectories in the presence of such disorder follow its equipotential lines.[@Springer; @Trugman] Closed trajectories imply localized electron states, while extended trajectories connecting opposite edges of the sample are essential for current transport through the sample (for more details, see Sec. \[classical\]).
In typical experimental setups,[@Sorin] dopant Si impurities with a concentration of $\sim10^{13}$ cm$^{-2}$ are introduced in a thin layer of 6 nm in thickness, located 20 nm above the GaAs/AlGaAs interface. Typically, up to 10% of the Si atoms are ionized. A small fraction of the ionized electrons migrate to the GaAs/AlGaAs interface where they form the 2D electron gas. The electrostatic potential created by the ionized impurities left behind is the major source of disorder in the 2DES layer. On the length-scale we are interested in, there are $10^4$ to $10^5$ such ionized Si impurities per $\mu
m^2$. The resulting disorder potential must be viewed as a collective effect of the density fluctuation of the ionized impurities[@Nixon] rather than a simple summation of the Coulomb potential of a few impurities. The electrostatic potential from Si impurities is compensated and partially screened by other mobile negative charges in the system such as, for example, the surface screening effect by mirror charges considered by Nixon and Davies.[@Nixon] An exact treatment of this problem is difficult, since one should consider the spatial correlation of the ionized impurities. [@Stopa; @DasSarma] One model used to describe such disorder consists of randomly placed Gaussian scatterers.[@Ando] This model captures the main feature of a smooth disorder potential and supports classical trajectories on equipotential contours, but it has no natural energy/length scales associated with it. As a result, here we choose to also investigate a different model of the disorder, which incorporates the smooth character of the Coulomb potential in real space.
We generate a realization of the disorder potential in the following way: positive and negative charges, corresponding to a total concentration of $10^{3}\,\mu m^{-3}$ are randomly distributed within a volume $[-L_x/2,L_x/2]\times[-L_y/2,L_y/2]\times[20\mbox{nm}+d,26\mbox{nm}+d]$ above the electron gas which is located in the $z=0$ plane. Here, we choose $d=4$ nm as an extra spacer since the electronic wave-functions are centered about 3-5 nm below the GaAs/AlGaAs interface. Since we are not simulating single impurities but density fluctuations, these charges are not required to be elementary charges. Instead, we use a uniform distribution in the range $[-e,e]$ for convenience (a Gaussian distribution would also be a valid choice), and sum up all Coulomb potentials from these charges, using the static dielectric constant in GaAs $\epsilon = 12.91$.[@Ralph] The resulting disorder potential has energy and length scales characteristic of the real samples. Typical contours for such potentials are shown in Sec. \[sec5\].
In an infinite system, in the quantum Hall regime, the existence of quantum Hall steps implies the existence of critical energies at which the localization length diverges.[@Halperin] This is the quantum analog of the two dimensional percolation problem in a smooth random landscape, for which there exists a single critical energy.[@Trugman] In the case of potentials with electron-hole symmetry $\left<V({{{\bf r}}})\right>=0$, the critical energy lies in the middle of the band ($E_c=0$), leading to percolating path at half filling. For a finite mesoscopic sample, however, not only does the percolating path (critical energy) $E_c$ deviate from this value, but in samples without a periodic boundary condition one need not have a percolating path traversing the system in the desired direction. This arises from the fluctuations near the edge of a mesoscopic system with free boundary conditions.
We circumvent such a possibility by adding an extra smooth potential $V'(x,y)$ to the impurity-induced disorder potential $V_i(x,y)$, such that the total potential $V = V_i + V'$ is zero on the opposite edges $ x= \pm L_x/2$ of the sample where the metallic leads are attached. The supplementary contribution $V'(x,y)$ can be thought of as simulating the effect of the leads on the disorder potential, since the metallic leads hold the potential on each edge constant by accumulating extra charges near the interface. Therefore, physically we expect that the extra potential $V'$ decays exponentially over the screening length $\lambda$ inside the sample. This implies: $$V'(x,y) = -{V_i\left(-{L_x/2},y\right)+V_i(L_x/2, y) \over 2 }
{\cosh(x/\lambda)\over \cosh(L_x /2\lambda)}$$ $$+{V_i(-L_x/2,y)-V_i(L_x/2,y) \over 2 }
{\sinh(x/\lambda)\over\sinh(L_x /2\lambda)}$$ where $\lambda$ is taken to be $100$ nm in our calculation.
![Averaged Fourier amplitudes of two types of disorder potential as a function of wavevector $q = |{{{\bf q}}}|$. For both Coulomb and Gaussian model, $V(q)^2$ is averaged over 116 disorder realizations. The relation between $V(q)$ and $V({{\bf r}})$ and relevant parameters are discussed in the text. The standard deviation, $(L_xL_y)^{-1} \left<\int d{{\bf r}} V^2({{\bf r}})\right>$ for the Coulomb model is $3.2\times10^{-7}$eV$^2$, and $2.1\times10^{-7}$eV$^2$ for the Gaussian model.[]{data-label="fig1.5"}](Fig2.eps){width="\FigWidth"}
In Fig. \[fig1.5\], we plot the average of Fourier transform of the magnitude of the random potential $\sqrt{\left< |V(q)|^2\right>}$ versus $q = |{{{\bf q}}}|$ for the Coulomb model and the Gaussian model. The Gaussian model is generated by adding 100 randomly placed Gaussian scatterers on an area of $3\mu m \times 3\mu m$, each contributing $A_d
e^{-r^2/d^2}$, where $A_d$ is uniformly distributed in $[-2,2]$ meV, and $d$ is uniformly distributed in $[0,0.2]$ $\mu$m. $V({{\bf q}})$ is related to $V({{\bf r}})$ by $V({{\bf r}}) = \sum_{{{\bf q}}} V({{\bf q}}) e^{i{{{\bf q}} \cdot r}}$, where the summation is over all the wavevectors involved in the fast Fourier transformation. The Gaussian model has an arbitrary energy scale which is fixed by the maximum value of the distribution $A_m$. Here $A_m = 2$ meV. As can be seen, $V(q)$ of both models are decreasing functions of $q$. The trends of decay are exponential at large $q$. At small $q$, the two models behave differently. Despite the difference, both models lead to the same qualitative results, although, as expected, minor quantitative differences are present. This shows that the physics we uncover is independent of the particular type of slowly-varying disorder potential considered, and therefore should be relevant for the real samples.
Numerical Calculations {#sec4}
======================
In this section we discuss the numerical methods we use, including derivations of some relevant formulas. As already stated, we focus on the case where the amplitudes of the periodic and disorder potentials are very small compared to the cyclotron energy and the Zeeman splitting, and therefore inter-level mixing is ignored.
Semi-classical treatment {#classical}
------------------------
The semi-classical approach is valid[@Trugman] for the integer quantum Hall effect in the presence of a slowly varying, smooth disorder potential and large magnetic fields (such as we consider), so that the magnetic length $l$ which determines the spatial extent of the electron wave-functions is much smaller than the length scale of variation of the smooth disorder potential, $|\nabla V({{\bf r}})| \ll
\hbar\omega_c/l$. Then, semi-classically the electron moves along the equipotential contours of the disorder potential $V({{\bf r}})$, in the direction parallel to $\nabla V({{\bf r}}) \times {{\bf B}} $. Since the kinetic energy is quenched in the lowest Landau level, the total energy of the electron simply equals the value of the disorder potential on the equipotential line on which its trajectory is located. As a result, the density of states in the semi-classical approach is directly given by the probability distribution for the disorder potential, which can be calculated by randomly sampling the potential energy and plotting a histogram of the obtained values.[@Trugman; @note1]
In Sec. \[sec5\] we compare the results obtained within this semi-classical approach with fully quantum mechanical results. As expected, the agreement is good if only the disorder potential is present. However, if the periodic modulation is also included, the lattice constant $a$ provides a new length-scale which is comparable to the magnetic length $l$, and the semi-classical picture breaks down. Quantum mechanical calculations are absolutely necessary to quantitatively treat this case.
Quantum Mechanical Treatment
----------------------------
As shown in Sec. \[sec2\], for a finite sample of size $L_x
\times L_y$ at a given magnetic field $B$, the degeneracy of the unperturbed Landau level is $N = L_xL_yB/\phi_0 = L_xL_y/(2\pi
l^2)$. Since the disorder varies very slowly, we need to consider systems with $L_x,L_y \gg l$ to properly account for its effects. As a result, the number of states in a Landau level can be as large as $10^4$ in our calculations. Storage of the Hamiltonian as a dense matrix requires considerable amount of computer memory and its direct diagonalization is prohibitively time-consuming. Sparse matrix diagonalization techniques could be employed, but they are less efficient when all eigenvectors are needed, and also have some stability issues.
Here we introduce the numerical methods we use to compute densities of states and infer the nature (localized or extended) as well as the spatial distribution of the wave-functions, while avoiding direct diagonalization.
### Matrix elements
Since inter-level mixing is ignored, the Hilbert subspaces corresponding to different spin-polarized Landau levels do not hybridize. Each Hilbert subspace $(n,\sigma)$ has a basis described by Eq. (\[2.1\]), containing $N$ orthonormal vectors indexed by different $k_y$ values.
In order to compute matrix elements of the total Hamiltonian in such a basis, we use the following identity derived in Ref. (notice their different sign convention for $k_y$. If $\sigma\ne \sigma'$, the overlap is zero): $${ \label{2.5} } {\left< n', k'_y \right|} e^{i{{\bf q\cdot r}}}{\left|n,k_y \right>} =
\delta_{k'_y,k_y-q_y} {\cal L}_{n',n}({{\bf q}}) e^{{il^2\over
2}q_x(k'_y+k_y)},$$ where $$\begin{aligned}
{\cal L}_{n',n} ({{\bf q}}) = \left(m! \over M! \right)^{1 \over
2}i^{|n'-n|}\left[ q_x+iq_y \over
\sqrt{q_x^2+q_y^2}\right]^{n-n'} && \\ \times e^{-{1 \over 2}
Q}Q^{{1 \over 2}|n'-n|}L_m^{(|n'-n|)}(Q), &&\end{aligned}$$ with $Q = {1 \over 2}l^2(q_x^2+q_y^2)$, $m$ and $M$ the minimum and the maximum of $n'$ and $n$ respectively, and $L^{(|n'-n|)}_m(Q)$ the associated Laguerre polynomial. When band-mixing is neglected $n = n'$ and ${\cal L}_{n,n} ({{\bf q}}) = e^{-{1 \over 2}Q} L_n(Q)$. For the first Landau level, $L_0(x) =1$.
Eq. (\[2.5\]) gives us the matrix elements for the square \[Eq. (\[2.6\])\] or triangular \[Eq. (\[2.7\])\] periodic potentials. In either case, there are Fourier components corresponding to $q_y=\pm 2\pi/a$ and $q_y=0$. Since only basis vectors for which the difference $k_y-k_y'=q_y$ give non-vanishing matrix elements, we must choose the length $L_y$ of the sample to be a multiple integer of $a$, the lattice constant.
The matrix elements of the disorder potential are computed in a similar way. We use a grid of dimension $N_x\times N_y$ to cover the sample and generate the values of the disorder potential on this grid. Then, fast Fourier transform (FFT)[@FFT] is used to find the long wavelength components of the disorder potential corresponding to the allowed values $q_{x,y}=0,\pm{2\pi\over L_{x,y}}, ..., \pm
\left[{N_{x,y}\over 2}\right]{ 2\pi\over L_{x,y}}$ (proper care is taken to define Fourier components so that $V_{{{\bf q}}} = V^*_{-{{\bf q}}}$). The matrix elements of this discretized disorder potential are then computed using Eq. (\[2.5\]). In principle, finer grids (increased values for $N_x$ and $N_y$) will improve accuracy. However, they also result in longer computation times, since they add extra matrix elements in the sparse matrix, corresponding to large wave-vectors. We have verified that a grid size of dimension $N_x=N_y=72$ is already large enough to accurately capture the landscape of a $3\mu m \times 3\mu m$ sample and the computed quantities have already converged, with larger grids leading to hardly noticeable changes. This procedure is also justified on a physical basis. First, the neglected large wave-vector components describe very short-range spatial features, which are probably not very accurately captured by our disorder models to begin with, and which are certainly not believed to influence the basic physics. Secondly, this procedure insures that the actual disorder potential we use is periodic in the $y$-direction, since each Fourier component retained has this property. This is consistent with our use of a basis of wave-functions which are periodic along $y$.
The matrix elements of the Hamiltonian within a given Landau level $(n,\sigma)$ are then $\langle n, k_y,\sigma | {\cal H} | n,
k'_y,\sigma\rangle= E_{n,\sigma} + \langle n, k_y | {\cal V} | n,
k'_y\rangle$, where $E_{n,\sigma}$ are given by Eq. (\[2.2\]) and the matrix elements of both the periodic and the disorder part of the potential ${\cal V}$ are computed as already discussed. This produces a sparse matrix, which is stored efficiently in a column compressed format.
### Densities of States and Filling Factors {#subs2}
A quantity that can be computed without direct diagonalization is the filling factor $\nu_{n,\sigma}(E_F)$ as a function of Fermi energy. The filling factor is defined as: $${ \label{4.6} } \nu_{n,\sigma}(E_F) = { 1 \over N} \sum_{\alpha}
\Theta(E_F- E_{n,\alpha,\sigma}),$$ where $\Theta(x)$ is the Heaviside function and $N$ is the total number of states in the $(n,\sigma)$ Landau level. (Since we neglect Landau-level mixing, we can define this quantity for individual levels.) The filling factor tells us what fraction of the states in the given Landau level are occupied at $T=0$, for a given value of the Fermi energy. This corresponds to the average filling factor measured in experiment and is also proportional to the integrated total (as opposed to local) density of states.
The filling factor is straightforward to compute if the eigenenergies $E_{n,\alpha,\sigma}$ are known. However, we want to avoid the time-consuming task of numerical brute force diagonalization. The strategy we follow is a generalization to Hermitian matrices of the method used in Ref. . We restate the problem in the following way: assume we have a Hermitian matrix of size $N \times N$ (no Landau level mixing), given by the matrix elements of $M = {\cal
H} - E_F {\bf 1} $ in the basis $|n, k_y, \sigma\rangle$ (${\bf 1}$ is the unit matrix). Then, $\nu_{n,\sigma}(E_F)$ is proportional to the number of negative eigenvalues of the matrix $M$. We now generate the quadratic form ${\cal M} = \sum_{i,j = 1}^{N} \zeta_i \zeta_j^*
M_{ij}$, and transform it into its standard form ${\cal M} = \sum_{i=
1}^{N} d_i|\chi_i|^2$ using the Jacobian method described below. Here, $d_i$’s are all real numbers, and the $\chi_i$’s are linear combinations of the $\zeta_i$’s. This is a similarity transformation which retains the signature of the matrix. As a result, even though the numbers $d_i$ are not eigenvalues of $M$, the number of negative eigenvalues equals the number of negative $d_i$ values. It follows that $\nu_{n,\sigma}(E_F)$ is obtained by simply counting the number of negative $d_i$ values for the given $E_F$.
The Jacobian method is iterative in nature. First, all terms containing $\zeta_1$ and $\zeta_1^*$ are collected and the needed complementary terms are added to form the first total square $d_1|\chi_1|^2$, so that $\zeta_1$ and $\zeta_1^*$ are eliminated from the rest of the quadratic form ${\cal M}$. The procedure is then repeated for all $\zeta_2$ and $\zeta_2^*$ terms (producing $d_2$) etc., until all $N$ values $d_i$ are found. Computationally, this can be done by scanning the lower or upper triangle of the Hermitian matrix $M$ only once. The total number of operations is proportional to the number of nonzero elements of the matrix, meaning that for a dense matrix it scales with $N^2$ (sparse matrices require much fewer operations). As a result, this procedure is much faster than brute force diagonalization which scales with $N^3$ (for us, $N\sim 10^4$). The filling factor $\nu_{n,\sigma}(E)$ is a sum of step-like functions, with steps located at the eigenvalues. By scanning $E$ and identifying the position of these steps we can also find the true eigenvalues $E_{n,\alpha,\sigma}$, with the desired accuracy. Finally, the total density of states is given by $ \rho_{n\sigma}(E) = d \nu_{n,\sigma}(E)/dE$.
### Green’s functions: extended vs. localized states {#subs3}
The advanced/retarded Green’s functions are the solutions of the operator equation $${ \label{4.1} } \left(\hbar\omega - {\cal H} \pm i \delta\right) {\hat
G}^{R,A}(\omega) = {\bf 1},$$ where $\delta \rightarrow 0^{+}$. (In practice we use a set of small positive numbers, and use the dependence on $\delta$ to obtain results.) If the exact eigenstates and eigenvalues of the total Hamiltonian ${\cal H}$ are known, ${\cal H} | n, \alpha, \sigma\rangle
= E_{n,\alpha,\sigma} | n, \alpha, \sigma\rangle, $ (no Landau level mixing), it follows: $${ \label{4.2} } {\hat G}^{R,A}(\omega) = \sum_{n,\alpha,\sigma}^{}{ |
n,\alpha,\sigma\rangle\langle n, \alpha, \sigma| \over \hbar\omega -
E_{n,\alpha,\sigma} \pm i\delta} = \sum_{n,\sigma}^{} {\hat
G}^{R,A}_{n,\sigma}(\omega).$$ The exact eigenstates can be expanded in terms of the basis states $|n, k_y,\sigma\rangle$ as $${ \label{4.3} } | n, \alpha, \sigma\rangle = \sum_{k_y}
c_{n,\alpha}(k_y) |n, k_y,\sigma\rangle.$$ Since the states $|n, k_y,\sigma\rangle$ are localized near $x=k_yl^2$ \[see Eq. (\[2.1\])\], the coefficients $c_{n,\alpha}(k_y)$ describe the probability amplitude for an electron in the state $| n,
\alpha, \sigma\rangle$. Knowledge of these coefficients allows us to infer whether such states are extended or localized in the $x$-direction, i.e. whether they can carry currents between the leads.
However, as already stated, we wish to avoid direct diagonalization. We can still infer whether the Hamiltonian has extended or localized wave-functions near a given energy $\hbar\omega$ in the following way. We introduce the matrix elements: $$G^{R,A}_{n,\sigma}(k_y, k'_y; \omega) = \langle n, k_y,\sigma |
{\hat G}^{R,A}(\omega) | n, k'_y,\sigma\rangle$$ $${ \label{4.4} } = \sum_{\alpha}^{} { c_{n,\alpha}(k_y)
c^*_{n,\alpha}(k'_y) \over \hbar\omega - E_{n,\alpha,\sigma} \pm
i\delta}.$$ If Landau level mixing is neglected, Eq. (\[4.1\]) can be rewritten in the basis $|n, k_y,\sigma\rangle$ as: $$\sum_{k''_y}^{} \left[(\hbar\omega \pm i\delta) \delta_{k_y,k''_y}
- \langle n, k_y,\sigma | {\cal H} | n, k''_y,\sigma\rangle \right]$$ $${ \label{4.5} } \times G^{R,A}_{n,\sigma} (k''_y,k'_y;
\omega)=\delta_{k_y,k'_y}.$$
We use the popular numerical library SuperLU,[@SuperLU] based on LU decomposition and Gaussian reduction algorithm for sparse matrices, to solve these linear equations. Consider now the matrix element $
G^{R,A}_{n,\sigma}(k_{\min},k_{\max}; \omega) $ corresponding to the smallest $k_y=k_{\min}$ and the largest $k_y=k_{\max}$ values. If all wave-functions with energies close to $\hbar\omega$ are localized in the $x$-direction, it follows that $|G^{R,A}_{n,\sigma}(k_{\min},k_{\max}; \omega)| $ is a very small number, of the order $e^{-L_x/\xi(\omega)}$, where $\xi(\omega)$ is the localization length at the given energy. On the other hand, we expect to see a sharp peak in the value of $|G^{R,A}_{n,\sigma}(k_{\min},k_{\max}; \omega)| $ if $\hbar\omega$ is in the vicinity of an extended state eigenvalue, since \[see Eqs. (\[4.3\],\[4.4\])\] both $c_{n,\alpha}(k_{\min})$ and $c_{n,\alpha}(k_{\max})$ are non-vanishing for an extended wave-function with significant weight near both the $-L_x/2$ and the $L_x/2$ edges. Moreover, the height of this peak scales like $1/\delta$, so by varying $\delta$ we can easily locate the energies of the extended states.
### Green’s functions: local densities of states {#subs4}
We can also use Green’s functions techniques to image the local density of states at a given energy $E$. By definition (and neglecting Landau level mixing), the local density of states in the level $(n,\sigma)$ is: $$\rho_{n,\sigma}({{\bf r}};E) = \sum_{\alpha}^{} |\langle {{\bf r}}| n,
\alpha, \sigma\rangle |^2 \delta\left(E-E_{n,\alpha,\sigma}\right)$$ $${ \label{5.1} } = { 1 \over \pi} \mbox{Im}\langle {{\bf r}}| {\hat
G}^{A}_{n,\sigma}(E)|{{\bf r}}\rangle,$$ where the second equality follows from Eq. (\[4.2\]). This function traces the contours of probability $|\phi_{n,\alpha,\sigma}({{\bf r}})|^2$ for electrons with the given energy $E$. Its direct computation, however, is difficult and very time-consuming.
For the rest of this subsection, the discussion is restricted to the Lowest Landau level $n=0$ (the value of $\sigma$ is irrelevant). We know that in the lowest Landau level, electronic wave-functions cannot be localized in any direction over a length-scale shorter that the magnetic length $l$. As a result, it suffices to compute a projected local density of states on a grid with $l\times l$ (or larger) spacings. The projection is made on maximally localized wave-function, defined as follows. Let ${{\bf r}}_0=(x_0,y_0)$ be a point on the grid. We associate it with a vector: $${ \label{5.2} } |x_0, y_0\rangle = \sum_{k_y}^{} |k_y\rangle \langle
k_y| x_0,y_0\rangle,$$ where we use the simplified notation $|k_y\rangle \equiv
|n=0,k_y,\sigma\rangle$ for the basis states of the first Landau level (see Eq. (\[2.1\])) and we take $${ \label{5.3} } \langle k_y| x_0,y_0\rangle = \sqrt{{2l\pi^{1 \over2}}
\over L_y} e^{-{x_0^2 \over 2l^2} - {k_y^2l^2\over 2} +
k_y(x_0+iy_0)}.$$ It is then straightforward to show that $${ \label{5.4} } \langle {{\bf r}}| x_0, y_0\rangle = { 1\over \sqrt{2\pi}l}
e^{- {(x-x_0)^2 \over 4l^2 } - {(y-y_0)^2 \over 4l^2 }}e^{-{i \over
2l^2}(x+x_0)(y-y_0)}.$$ In other words, $|x_0,y_0\rangle$ is an eigenstate of the first Landau level strongly peaked at ${{\bf r}}= {{\bf r}}_0$. (The phase factor is due to the proper magnetic translation). We then define the projected density of states \[compare with Eq. (\[5.1\])\]: $${ \label{5.5} } \rho_P (x_0,y_0; E) = { 1 \over \pi} \mbox{Im} \langle
x_0,y_0|\hat{G}^{A}(E)|x_0,y_0\rangle,$$ and use it to study the spatial distribution of the electron wave-functions at different energies. Strictly speaking, the local density of states defined in Eq. (\[5.1\]) cannot be projected exactly on the lowest Landau level, because the lowest Landau level does not support a $\delta$-function ($\langle {{\bf r}}| n,k_y,\sigma\rangle \ne
0$, $\forall n$). However, the coherent states $|x_0,y_0\rangle$ we select are the maximally spatially-localized wave functions in the lowest Landau level, and have the added advantage that they can be easily stored as sparse vectors, because of their Gaussian profiles \[see Eq. (\[5.3\])\]. Moreover, in the limit $l \rightarrow 0$ ($B
\rightarrow \infty$) where $|\langle{{\bf r}} | x_0,
y_0\rangle|\rightarrow \delta(x-x_0)\delta(y-y_0)$, the projected density of states $\rho_P(x_0,y_0; E)\rightarrow
\rho_{0,\sigma}({{\bf r}}; E)$. Therefore, for the large $B$ values that we consider here, the projected density of states $\rho_P$ should provide a faithful copy of the local density of states.
We compute the projected local density of states following the method of Ref. . Let ${{\bf u}}_0$ be the vector with elements $\langle k_y| x_0, y_0\rangle$ obtained from the representation of $|x_0,y_0\rangle$ in the $|k_y\rangle$ basis \[see Eq. (\[5.2\])\], and let $H$ be the matrix of the Hamiltonian ${\cal
H}$ in the $|k_y\rangle$ basis. We generate the series of orthonormal vectors ${{\bf u}}_0, {{\bf u}}_1, ...$ using: $$\begin{aligned}
{{\bf v}}_1 &=& H {{\bf u}}_0 ,\\ a_0 &=& {{\bf u}}_0^\dagger
{{\bf v}}_1 ,\\ {{\bf u}}_1 &=& { {{\bf v}}_1 - a_0{{\bf u}}_1
\over \sqrt{{{\bf v}}_1^\dagger {{\bf v}}_1-a_0^2}},\end{aligned}$$ and for $n \ge 2$, $$\begin{aligned}
{{\bf v_n}} &=& H {{\bf u}}_{n-1} ,\\ a_{n-1} &=&
{{\bf u}}_{n-1}^\dagger {{\bf v_n}} ,\\ b_{n-2} &=&
{{\bf u}}_{n-2}^\dagger {{\bf v_n}} ,\\ {{\bf u}}_n &=&
{{{\bf v}}_n - a_{n-1} {{\bf u}}_{n-1} - b_{n-2}{{\bf u}}_{n-2}
\over \sqrt{{{\bf v}}_n^\dagger {{\bf v}}_n - a_{n-1}^2 -
b_{n-2}^2 }}.\end{aligned}$$ The numbers $a_n$ and $b_n$ can be shown to be real. We do not have a “terminator”[@Haydock] to end this recursive series. Instead, our procedure ends when the orthonormal set of vectors ${{\bf u}}_0, {{\bf u}}_1, ...$ exhausts a subspace of the lowest Landau level containing all states coupled through the disorder and/or periodic potential to the state $|x_0,y_0\rangle$ (i.e., all states that contribute to the projected DOS at this point). In the presence of disorder, this usually includes the entire lowest Landau level.
Then, the projected density of states is given by Eq. (\[5.5\]), where the matrix element of the Green’s function is the continued fraction: $$\langle x_0,y_0|G^A(E)|x_0,y_0\rangle=$$ $${ \label{5.6} } \left[E-i\delta-a_0 -b_0^2\left[E-i\delta - a_1
-b_1^2\left[ \ldots\right]^{-1} \right]^{-1} \right]^{-1}$$ Because the Hamiltonian is a sparse matrix, the generation of these orthonormal sets and computation of $\rho_p(E)$ for all the grid points is a relatively fast procedure. Moreover, this computation is ideally suited for parallelization, with different grid points assigned to different CPUs.
Numerical Results {#sec5}
=================
In this section we present numerical results obtained using these methods. We have analyzed over 20 different disorder realizations for samples of different sizes, and all exhibit the same qualitative physics. Here, we show results for several typical samples. The lattice constant is always $a=39$ nm if periodic potential is present, as defined by the experimental system.[@Sorin]
![\[fig2\] Profile of the disorder potential obtained from our Coulomb model on a $3.11\mu$m$\times 2.96\mu$m sample, without (upper panel) and with (lower panel) the $V'({{\bf r}})$ correction at the $x=\pm L_x/2$ edges. The disorder potential varies between $-3$ meV and 3 meV, on a spatial length-scale much larger than $l=12.03$ nm. The critical region containing extended states is in the vicinity of $E=0.06$ meV. The contours are shown for $E=$0.0575 meV (dashed), 0.17 meV (thick solid) and 0.31 meV (thin solid). These energy values correspond to classical filling factors $\nu$=0.47, 0.58 and 0.68 in the upper panel and $\nu$=0.45, 0.56, 0.66 in the lower panel. The difference is due to the supplementary smooth potential $V'$.](Fig3a_s.eps "fig:"){width="\FigWidth"} ![\[fig2\] Profile of the disorder potential obtained from our Coulomb model on a $3.11\mu$m$\times 2.96\mu$m sample, without (upper panel) and with (lower panel) the $V'({{\bf r}})$ correction at the $x=\pm L_x/2$ edges. The disorder potential varies between $-3$ meV and 3 meV, on a spatial length-scale much larger than $l=12.03$ nm. The critical region containing extended states is in the vicinity of $E=0.06$ meV. The contours are shown for $E=$0.0575 meV (dashed), 0.17 meV (thick solid) and 0.31 meV (thin solid). These energy values correspond to classical filling factors $\nu$=0.47, 0.58 and 0.68 in the upper panel and $\nu$=0.45, 0.56, 0.66 in the lower panel. The difference is due to the supplementary smooth potential $V'$.](Fig3b_s.eps "fig:"){width="\FigWidth"}
![ Semi-classical (dashed line) and quantum (solid line) filling factors for the disorder potential shown in Fig. \[fig2\], but different amplitudes of the triangular periodic potential (a) $A$=0; (b) $A$=0.05meV; (c) $A$=0.5meV and (d) $A$=5 meV. As expected, agreement exists only in the limit $A \rightarrow
0$. []{data-label="fig3"}](Fig4.ps){width="\FigWidth"}
![ Semi-classical (dashed line) and quantum (full line) density of states calculated from corresponding filling factors in Fig. \[fig3\]. We show only the center of the disorder-broadened lowest Landau level, where the density of states is large. []{data-label="fig4"}](Fig5.ps){width="\FigWidth"}
For the first sample, we consider $\phi/\phi_0=3/2$ ($B =
4.71$ T). The magnetic length is $l= 12.03$ nm, and we choose a sample size $L_x=3.11\mu$m and $L_y= 76a=2.964\mu$m. With these choices, the Landau level contains $N=10108$ states. The disorder potential obtained with our scheme described in Sec. \[sec3\] is shown in Fig. \[fig2\], both with and without the correction $V'({{\bf r}})$. An extended equipotential line appears, as expected, at $\nu \approx 0.5$.
In Figs. \[fig3\] and \[fig4\] we plot the filling factor $\nu(E)$ and the corresponding total density of states $\rho(E)$ as a function of $E$ (computation details were given in Sec. \[subs2\]). These quantities are obtained in the semi-classical limit (dashed line) and with the full, quantum-mechanical treatment (solid line). Results are shown for 4 different cases: (a) only disorder potential and (b, c, d) disorder plus a triangular periodic potential with amplitudes $A=0.05$, 0.5 and 5 meV, respectively. We only plot a relatively small energy interval where the DOS is significant, and ignore the asymptotic regions with long tails of localized states.
While the agreement between the semi-classical and quantum-mechanical treatment is excellent in the limit $A\rightarrow 0$, the two methods give more and more different results as the periodic potential amplitude is increased. As already explained, this is a consequence of the fact that the magnetic length $l$ is comparable to the lattice constant $a$, leading to a failure of the semi-classical treatment when this extra length-scale is introduced. In particular, in the case with the largest periodic potential \[panel (d) of Figs. \[fig3\] and \[fig4\]\] we can clearly see the appearance of the 3 subbands expected for the Hofstadter butterfly at $\phi/\phi_0=3/2$, although the disorder leads to broadened and smooth peaks, and partially fills-in the gap between the lower two subbands. This picture \[panel (d)\] is quite similar to the density of states that Ref. calculated using the self-consistent Born approximation. This is expected since the SCBA approach is valid in the limit of strong periodic potential with weak disorder. However, the SCBA approach is not appropriate in the limit of moderate or strong disorder, where the higher order terms neglected in SCBA are no longer small. For disorder varying on a much longer length-scale than the periodic potential, one still expects that [*locally*]{}, on relative flat regions of disorder, the system exhibits the Hofstadter-type spectrum. However, these spectra are shifted with respect to one another by the different local disorder values. If disorder variations are small, then the total spectrum shows somewhat shifted subbands with partially filled-in gaps, but overall the Hofstadter structure is still recognizable. On the other hand, for moderate and large disorder, the detailed structure of the local density of states from various flat regions are hidden in the total density of states. All one sees are some broadened, weak peaks and gaps superimposed on a broad, continuous density of states.
We now analyze the nature of the electronic states for these configurations. We start with the case which has only disorder. In Fig. \[fig5\] we plot $|G^R(k_{\min},k_{\max};E)|^2$ as a function of the energy $E$, for different values of $\delta$ (computation details were given in Sec. \[subs3\]). As already discussed, extended states are indicated by large values of this quantity, as well as a strong (roughly $1/\delta^2$) dependence on the value of the small parameter $\delta$.
Figure \[fig5\] reveals that as $\delta$ is reduced, resonant behavior appears in a narrow energy interval $E= 0.02-0.36$ meV. Panel (a) shows that results corresponding to $\delta = 10^{-7}$ eV and $\delta = 10^{-8}$ eV indeed differ by roughly 2 orders of magnitude, with $\delta = 10^{-8}$ eV showing sharper resonance peaks. The difference between results for $\delta = 10^{-8}$ eV and $\delta
=10^{-9}$ eV shown in panel (b), is no longer so definite. The reason is simply that for such small $\delta$, the denominator in the Green’s function expression is usually limited by $|E-E_{n,\alpha,\sigma}|$ and not by $\delta$ \[see Eq. (\[4.4\])\], and the dependence on $\delta$ is minimal. Only if $E$ is such that $|E-E_{n,\alpha,\sigma}| <\delta$ can we expect to see a $\delta$ dependence, and indeed this is observed at some energies. Finally, in panel (c) we show the comparison with a larger energy interval. The value of the Green’s function decreases exponentially fast on both sides of the critical region, indicating strongly localized states. Here, data for $\delta = 10^{-6}$ eV is a smooth curve, whose magnitude is much less than that of the other three values even for localized states. This is due to the fact that this $\delta$ is larger than typical level spacings. As a result, several levels contribute significantly to Green’s function at each $E$ value, and the destructive interference of the random phases of different eigenfunctions lead to the supplementary $\delta$-dependence. We conclude that the disorder potential has a critical energy regime of approximately $0.3$ meV width, covering less than 5% (in energy) and 20% (in number of states) of the disorder-broadened band with total width $\sim 6$ meV. The position of the critical energy interval is in agreement with the semi-classical results which suggest an extended state in the vicinity of $E=0.06$meV. By comparison with Fig. \[fig3\], we can also see that this critical regime corresponds to a roughly half-filled band, in agreement with the experiment.
The effect of an additional triangular periodic potential is shown in Fig. \[fig6\], where we plot the same quantity shown in Fig. \[fig5\] for a fixed $\delta = 10^{-7}$ eV and different amplitudes $A=0$, 0.05, 0.5 and 5 meV, respectively. These results correspond to a different Coulomb disorder potential (not shown), as can be seen from the different location of its extended states. Here we see how the narrow critical interval of extended states grows gradually as the amplitude of periodic potential is increased and finally exhibits the three well-separated extended subbands expected for $\phi/\phi_0 = 3/2$ in the limit of vanishing disorder. The three subbands can already be resolved for the moderate case $A = 0.5~$meV, although they are very wide and exhibit significant overlap.
![ Semi-log plot of the amplitude of Green’s function matrix element between the two edge states near $x=\pm L_x/2$, as a function of energy. Only the disorder potential of Fig. \[fig2\] is present. (a) comparison between $\delta=10^{-7}$ and $\delta=10^{-8}$ results; (b) comparison between $\delta=10^{-8}$ and $\delta=10^{-9}$ results; (c) comparison between results corresponding to $\delta =\delta=10^{-6},10^{-7},10^{-8}$ and $10^{-9}$. (the last three curves are indistinguishable to the eye on this scale.) All $\delta$ values are in eV units. []{data-label="fig5"}](Fig6_s.eps){width="\FigWidth"}
![ The effect of a triangular periodic potential on the critical energy regime. The disorder potential used here (not shown) supports a narrow interval of extended states centered at about $-0.6$ meV. As the amplitude $A$ of the periodic potential increases, the range of extended states increases dramatically. The left panel shows results for disorder-only and two relatively weak periodic potentials, while the right panel shows two larger periodic potentials where the three-subband structure expected for $\phi/\phi_0 = 3/2$ is clearly seen.[]{data-label="fig6"}](Fig7_s.eps){width="\FigWidth"}
Qualitatively similar behavior is obtained if we use the Gaussian scatterers model for disorder. A typical realization of this disorder is shown in Fig. \[fig7bis\]. Results for the Green’s function’s values with such disorder are shown in Fig. \[fig7\], for cases with pure disorder, and also cases with either a triangular or a square periodic potential. The magnetic field has been doubled, such that $\phi/\phi_0=3$. Similar to the case shown in Fig. \[fig6\], the periodic potential leads to a widening of the critical regime. For large periodic potentials, the expected Hofstadter-like three-subband structure emerges again. We conclude that Coulomb and Gaussian disorder models show qualitatively similar behavior.
![A disorder potential of Gaussian type on a roughly $3\mu m
\times 3\mu m$ square. The three lines are equipotential contours close to the critical regime, with energies of -0.1 meV (dashed), 0 meV (thick solid) and 0.1 meV (thin solid). Cyclic boundary condition are applied in the $y$ direction.[]{data-label="fig7bis"}](Fig8_s.eps){width="\FigWidth"}
![ Green’s functions for a sample with Gaussian disorder and various periodic potentials. The calculation included 20216 states with $\phi/\phi_0=3$. Similar to results shown in Fig. \[fig7\], we see that the periodic potentials widen the critical region.[]{data-label="fig7"}](Fig9.eps){width="\FigWidth"}
We now analyze the projected local density of states $\rho_P(E)$ discussed in Sec. \[subs4\], in order to understand the reason for this substantial widening of the critical region by even small periodic potentials. We consider a smaller sample, of size approximately $1.6\mu$m$\times1.6\mu$m, and compute the projected density of states for 500 equally-spaced energy values, on a $60\times60$ square grid and for a value $\delta = 10^{-8}$ eV. This $\delta$ value is comparable or smaller than the level spacing, so we expect to see sharp resonances from the contribution of individual eigenfunctions as we scan the energy spectrum. Each computation generates a large amount of data (roughly 24M), corresponding to the 500 plots of the local density of states at the 500 values of $E$. Since we cannot show all this data, we select a couple of representative cases and some statistical data to interpret the overall results.
Figures \[fig9\] and \[fig10\] show some of our typical results. The two figures are calculated for the same Coulomb-disorder potential, for values of $E=-0.504$ meV (at the bottom of the band) and $E=-0.124$ meV (close to, but below the band center) respectively. Each figure contains four panels, panel (a) shows the profile of the disorder potential as well as an equipotential line (solid black) corresponding to the value $E$ considered; the other three panels show the projected density of states $\rho_P(E)$ for (b) pure disorder; (c) disorder plus triangular periodic potential with $A=0.1$ meV; (d) disorder plus square periodic potential with $A=0.1$ meV. In Fig. \[fig9\], this equipotential line (which traces the semi-classical trajectory of electrons with the same energy $E$)
![ (color online) Projected local density of states $\rho_P({{\bf r}};E)$ for $E=-0.504$ meV. Panel (a) shows the profile of the disorder potential, and the equipotential contour (black line) corresponding to $E=-0.504$ eV. The other three panels show $\rho_P({{\bf r}};E)$ for (b) disorder only; (c) disorder plus triangular periodic potential with $A = 0.1$ meV; (d) disorder plus square periodic potential with $A =
0.1$ meV. The width and length of the sample are both $1.6\,\mu$m, and $\phi/\phi_0=3/2$. Increased brightness corresponds to larger values.[]{data-label="fig9"}](Fig10_s.eps){width="\FigWidth"}
surrounds local minima of the disorder potential, suggesting localized electron states at such low energies. Indeed, this is what panels (b), (c) and (d) show. The projected density of states $\rho_P(E)$ is large (bright color) at the positions where electrons of energy $E$ are found with large probabilities. For pure disorder, we observe only closed trajectories (localized states), whose shape is in excellent agreement with the semi-classical trajectory, as expected. If a moderate periodic potential is added, the wave-functions spread over a larger area, and nearby contours sometimes merge together. Instead of sharp lines, as seen in panel (b), the contours now show clear evidence of interference effects of the wave-functions on the periodic potential decorating the electron reservoirs. Some periodic modulations can also be observed in the background of panels (c) and (d), especially for the square potential. These are [*not* ]{} the direct oscillations of the periodic potentials, since the grid we use to compute these figures has a linear size equal to $7/10$ of the period $a=39$ nm of the periodic potential. Capturing detailed behavior inside each unit cell would require a much smaller grid, which is not only time consuming, but also violates the requirement that the grid size be of order $l$ or larger.
Figure \[fig10\] for an energy close to the band center, shows the same characteristics. For pure disorder, the electrons at this energy trace a sharp contour very similar
![ (color online) The same as in Fig. \[fig9\], but for an energy $E=-0.124$ meV close to the band center. []{data-label="fig10"}](Fig11_s.eps){width="\FigWidth"}
to the corresponding equipotential line shown in panel (a). Electrons are still not delocalized, since this contour does not connect either pair of opposite edges. However, addition of the periodic potential now leads to extended states for both types of periodic potentials \[(c) and (d)\] at roughly $E=-0.124$ meV, demonstrating the widening of the critical region with the addition of a periodic potential.
Physically, one can understand this spread of the wave function in the presence of the periodic potential using the semi-classical picture.[@Sorin] If only a smooth disorder potential is present, the equipotential at any energy $E$ must be a smooth, continuous line. However, if a periodic potential with minima $-V_m$ and maxima $V_M$ is superimposed over disorder, the new equipotential line now breaks into a series of small “bubbles” surrounding the disorder-only contour. This happens throughout the area defined by the equipotentials $E-V_M$ and $E+V_m$ of the disorder potential, since the addition of the periodic potential leads new regions in this area to have a total energy $E$. Quantum mechanically, we expect some tunneling inside this wider area and this is indeed what we observe in Figs. \[fig9\] and \[fig10\]. This mechanism suggests [*enhanced delocalization* ]{} on both sides of the critical region as localized wave functions spread out over larger areas, as well as a widening of the critical region itself, in agreement with our numerical results.
This spreading of the wave functions in the presence of the periodic potential can also be characterized by counting, at a given energy $E$, the number of grid points ${{\bf r}}$ which have a value $\rho_P({{\bf r}}; E) > \rho_c$, where $\rho_c$ is some threshold value. For sufficiently large $\rho_c$, this procedure counts grid points where electrons with energy $E$ are found with large probabilities, thus, in effect it characterizes the “spatial extent” of the wave functions.
The results of such counting are shown in Fig. \[fig11\] for 500 energy values corresponding to the disorder potential analyzed in Figs. \[fig9\] and \[fig10\]. There are a total of $60\times60=3600$ grid points on the sample. For the case of pure disorder (black line) we see that the largest values are found at energies just below 0, where the extended states (the critical region) are found for this particular realization of disorder. Because it is a smooth, sharp line, even the most extended trajectory has significant probabilities at only about 10% of the grid sites. For both higher and lower energies, this number decreases very fast, indicating wave functions localized more and more about maxima or minima of the disorder potential, as expected. Addition of a small periodic potential increases this number substantially, clearly showing the supplementary spreading of the wave functions in the presence of the periodic potential.
Figure \[fig11\] shows this effect for three types of periodic potential: triangular lattices with $A > 0$ and $A<0$ (upper panel), and square lattice in the lower panel. All three cases show significant enhancement, as compared to the pure disorder case. In addition, we see that while the square potential gives a fairly symmetrical enhancement, the triangular potential does not, with curves for $\pm A$ not overlapping. This is a consequence of the asymmetric shape of the periodic potential, which has different values for its minima and maxima $|V_m|\ne |V_M|$, as well as different arrangements for the points where minima/maxima appear (triangular lattice vs. honeycomb lattice). Fig. \[fig11\] clearly shows that $A >0$ favors increased delocalization below the critical energy regime, while $A <0$ favors increased delocalization above it.
The reason for this different response to the two signs of the triangular potential can be nicely explained within the semi-classical framework. In Fig. \[fig12\] we show the equipotential lines corresponding to filling factors $\nu=0.3$ (well below critical region) and $\nu=0.7$ (well above the critical region) for a realization of Coulomb disorder (not shown) plus a triangular potential with $A>0$. Areas with energy below the equipotential value are shaded. In this case we can clearly see that instead of the continuous, smooth trajectory expected for disorder-only cases, there are also extra “bubbles” regions connecting the areas between such contours. Since the choice $A>0$ leads to deep minima at $-V_m=-6A$ with triangular arrangement and relatively flat maxima at $+V_M=3A$ with honeycomb arrangement \[see Eq. (\[2.7\])\], it follows that the triangular (honeycomb) “bubbles” region appear roughly in the area bounded by the equipotentials $E$ and $E+V_m$ (respectively, $E-V_M$ and $E$) of the pure disorder potential. At low filling factors, the pure disorder $E$ equipotential is a collection of closed contours surrounding local minima \[see panel (d) of Fig. \[fig9\] for an illustration\]. It follows that for the choice $V_m > V_M$, the more extended region with triangular “bubbles” will be found outside these “islands” and will lead to a spread of the wave function over considerably larger areas, as indeed seen in the upper panel of Fig. \[fig12\]. On the other hand, at large filling factors the disorder-only contours are “islands” surrounding the maxima of the disorder potential. In this case, contours between $E$ and $E+V_m$ are inside the $E$ contour, so the triangular “bubbles” region does not help to connect various “islands” as before. The honeycomb “bubbles” regions does this, but because $V_M < V_m$ the extension of the wave function between “islands” is significantly smaller in this case.
In the quantum-mechanical case one expects interference (due to tunneling) effects between the small “bubbles” regions, and therefore a wave function which is extended over their entire area, as indeed we observe to be the case in Figs. \[fig9\] and \[fig10\]. In other words, one expects that a triangular potential with $A>0$ will lead to considerable increase of the localization length, and respectively widening of the critical energy region, at filling factors below one-half, whereas $A<0$ will favor delocalization at filling factors above one-half, as seen in Fig. \[fig11\]. This asymmetry is therefore clearly a consequence of the asymmetry of the triangular potential, and is absent for a square potential with only lowest order Fourier coefficients, which possesses electron-hole symmetry. This should have clear implications for the transport properties of the system.
Summary and Conclusions {#sec6}
=======================
In this study we have investigated the effects of moderate-to-large smooth disorder on the Hofstadter butterfly expected for 2DES in a perpendicular magnetic field and a pure periodic modulation. The parameters of our study are chosen so as to be suitable for the interpretation of recent experiments on a two dimensional electron system in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure with periodic modulation provided by a diblock copolymer, [@Sorin] The experiment shows that (i) the longitudinal resistance $R_{xx}$ is still peaked approximately at half filling; (ii) there are many reproducible oscillations in $R_{xx}$, indicating non-trivial electronic structures in the patterned sample; (iii) the distribution of these oscillatory features is asymmetric, with most of them appearing on the high magnetic fields (i.e. low filling factors $\nu < 0.5$) side of the peak of $R_{xx}$; and (iv) the temperature dependence of $R_{xx}$ indicates that the asymmetric off-peak resistance is thermally excited, whereas the central $R_{xx}$ peak (close to half filling) has metallic behavior.
These observations cannot be explained on the basis of the Hofstadter structure.[@Sorin] This is not surprising, since one expects that large disorder will modify this structure considerably. Effects of small disorder on the Hofstadter butterfly had been investigated previously using SCBA,[@MacDonald] but this basically perturbational approach is not appropriate for the case of moderate-to-large smooth disorder. Instead, we identify and use a number of techniques which give the exact solution (if electron-electron interactions, as well as inelastic scattering are neglected) while avoiding brute force numerical diagonalizations.
Our results demonstrate that while the Hofstadter butterfly is destroyed by large disorder, the effects of the periodic potential are non-trivial for states near the critical regime. Firstly, they lead to a significant increase in localization lengths of the localized states at mesoscopic ($\mu m$) length scale and induce an effective widening of the critical regime near the critical regime. This is achieved through a spreading of the electron wave-function on the flat regions of the slowly varying disorder potential, where their behavior is dominated by the periodic modulation. This regime shows an interesting transition between the pure disorder and the pure periodic potential cases. In the case of pure disorder, the semi-classical approach tells us that at finite filling factors, some areas of the sample are fully occupied by electrons with the maximum possible density of $1/(2\pi l^2)$ (these are the areas where the disorder potential has minima) whereas other areas are fully devoid of electrons (areas where the potential has maxima) and the boundary between such regions is very sharp. On the other hand, for a pure periodic modulation all wave functions have translational invariance with the proper symmetry, and therefore electron densities are uniform over the entire sample (up to small periodic modulations inside each unit cell).
When both types of potential are present, with disorder being dominant, our results show [*three*]{} types of areas. There are regions which are fully occupied and regions which are completely devoid of electrons, as in the case of pure disorder. However, the periodic potential leads to a widening of the boundary between the two, where the wave functions interact with several oscillations of the periodic modulation and therefore have some partial local filling. As the critical regime containing wave functions percolating throughout the sample is approached, this spreading of the wave function becomes dominant in establishing the transport properties of the system.
An equivalent way to say this is that the main effect of the periodic potential is to provide bridging between the fully-occupied electron “puddles” created by the disorder potential. Since the connecting areas are relatively flat, the local wave functions respond to the local periodic potential, and therefore locally have a Hofstadter-butterfly like structure. If the partial filling factor in such a region is inside the gap of the local Hofstadter butterfly structure, one expects no transport through this local area. This should result in a dip in the longitudinal transport, since in such cases the periodic potential will not transport electrons from one “puddle” to another one. By contrast, if the local filling factor in such a region is inside a subband of a local Hofstadter structure, this area will establish a link between different “puddles” and thus help enhance the transport through the sample. Transport in this regime should show strong thermal activated behavior, in contrast to metallic transport in the critical regime where the wave functions connect opposite edges of the sample.
As a result, one expects a series of local minima and maxima in the longitudinal resistivity on either side of the central peak induced by the extended states (critical regime). Furthermore, for an asymmetric triangular potential, this response should be strongly asymmetric, with the effect most visible on one side of the central peak. (One must keep in mind that since tunneling leads to exponential dependencies, even small differences in the extent of the wave functions can have rather large effects on $\rho_{xx}$). Such an asymmetry should also be present in longitudinal conductance of finite but low temperature, e. g. in the hopping regime which is sensitively dependent on the nature of the localized wavefunctions, as is indeed seen experimentally.[@Sorin]
To summarize, our qualitative explanation for the various experimental features are as follows:
\(i) The $R_{xx}$ peak is roughly at the center of the band because the weak periodic potential cannot establish a Hofstadter-like structure over the whole band. Instead, low and high $\nu$ states are strongly localized and do not transport longitudinal currents.
\(ii) New extended states induced by the periodic potential are responsible for the reproducible peaks and valleys appearing in $R_{xx}$.
\(iii) The periodic potential also leads to the expansion of localized wave functions, which contribute to the thermally activated conduction at lower filling factors. The detailed structure of the wave functions gives rise to the oscillations of the off-peak $R_{xx}$, similar to conductance fluctuations.[@Shayegan] Finally,
\(iv) the asymmetry in $R_{xx}$ is a manifestation of the asymmetry of the triangular potential, which has a stronger effect at low filling factors than at high filling factors for $A>0$. We predict that this asymmetry should be absent for a symmetric square periodic potential.
The weak point in our calculation is that we are unable to accurately model the potential in the real samples, because various screening effects have not been properly taken into account. Also, we have no quantitative information about the magnitude of the periodic potential in the 2DES layer, because of the additional strain[@Larkin] contribution induced by the periodic decoration. As a result, we only claim qualitative agreement with the experiment, although our investigations show the same type of behavior for various types of disorder potentials and various (small-to-moderate) strengths of the periodic potential. The most direct check of this work would be an experimental demonstration that thermally activated conduction appears symmetrically on both sides of the $R_{xx}$ peak for a periodic potential with square symmetry and primarily lowest Fourier coefficients.
Limited computer resources restrict our calculations to samples no larger than $3 \mu$m$ \times 3 \mu $m, while the sample used in experiment has a size of $20 \mu$m$ \times 20\mu$m. From a theoretical point of view, it is interesting to ask what is the thermodynamic limit. For pure disorder, it is believed that in this limit the typical size of wavefunction diverges at a single critical energy. Since we cannot pursue size-dependent analysis for samples larger than $3 \mu$m$ \times 3 \mu $m, we do not know whether the small periodic potential will lead to a finite size critical regime in the thermodynamic limit, although this seems likely. From an experimental point of view, the interesting question is whether the Hofstadter structure can be observed at all. Our studies suggest that this may be possible for small mesoscopic samples, where the slowly-varying disorder has less effect. Alternatively, one must find a way to boost the strength of the periodic modulations inside the 2DES.
Acknowledgements {#acknowledgements .unnumbered}
================
We thank Sorin Melinte, Mansour Shayegan, Paul M. Chaikin and Mingshaw W. Wu for valuable discussions. We also thank Prof. Li Kai’s group in Computer Science Department of Princeton University for sharing their computer cluster with us. This research was supported by NSF grant DMR-213706 (C.Z. and R.N.B.) and NSERC (M.B.). M.B. and R.N.B. also acknowledge the hospitality of the Aspen Center for Physics, where parts of this work were carried out.
[99]{}
K. von Klitzing, G. Dora and M. Pepper, Phys. Rev. Lett. [**45**]{}, 494 (1980).
D. C. Tsui, H. L. St$\ddot o$rmer, and A. C. Gossard, Phys. Rev. Lett. [**48**]{}, 1559 (1982).
For a review, see [*“The Quantum Hall Effect”*]{}, edited by R.E. Prange and S.M. Girvin, Graduate Texts in Contemporary Physics (Springer-Verlag, New York, 1987).
D. R. Hofstadter, Phys. Rev. B [**14**]{}, 2239 (1976).
Dieter Langbein, Phys. Rev. [**180**]{}, 633 (1969); the electronic structure in the asymptotic cases is periodic in $\phi/\phi_0$ or $\phi_0/\phi$, and the equality is meant modulo this periodicity.
D. Springsguth, R. Ketzmerick, and T. Geisel, Phys. Rev. B [**56**]{}, 2036 (1997).
T. Schlösser, K. Ensslin, J. P. Kottahaus and M. Holland, Europhys. Lett. [**33**]{}, 683 (1996).
D. Weiss, M. L. Roukes, A. Menschig, P. Grambow, K. von Klitzing and G. Weimann, Phys. Rev. Lett. [**66**]{}, 2790 (1991).
C. Albrecht, J. H. Smet, K. von Klitzing, D. Weiss, V. Umansky and H. Schweizer, Phys. Rev. Lett. [**86**]{}, 147 (2001).
Rolf R. Gerhardts, Dieter Weiss and Ulrich Wulf, Phys. Rev. B [**43**]{}, 5192 (1991).
S. Melinte, M. Berciu, C. Zhou, E. Tutuc, S. J. Papadakis, C. Harisson, E. P. De Poortere, M. Wu, P. M. Chaikin, M. Shayegan, R. N. Bhatt and R. A. Register, to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. (cond-mat/0311400).
S. Melinte, E. Grivei, V. Bayot, and M. Shayegan, Phys. Rev. Lett. [**82**]{}, 2764 (1999), and references therein.
P. Chaikin (private communication).
U. Wulf and A. H. MacDonald, Phys. Rev. B [**47**]{}, 6566 (1993).
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D. Pfannkuche and R. R. Gerhardts, Phys. Rev. B [**46**]{}, 12606 (1992).
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John A. Nixon and John H. Davies, Phys. Rev. B [**41**]{}, 7929 (1990).
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Allowed trajectories are such that the total flux through the area enclosed by the trajectory is an integer number of elementary fluxes $\phi_0$. This can be understood in the spirit of the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization rule, since it ensures constructive interference of the wave function around the contour. Except for the most localized states, found at the bottom and the top of the band, all other localized states are such that they enclose large numbers of magnetic fluxes. Imposing the exact quantization condition (which is numerically time consuming) leads to a negligible change in the value of the allowed equipotential value with respect to a randomly chosen value. Since such small changes do not influence the shape of the density of states, we ignore imposing this quantization condition in obtaining the semi-classical densities of states.
we use the package FFTW2.1.3 available on-line at http://www.fftw.org.
Chenggang Zhou and R. N. Bhatt, Phys. Rev. B [**68**]{}, 045101 (2003).
Xiaoye S. Li, M. Baertschy, T. N. Rescigno, W. A. Issacs and C. W. McCurdy, Phys. Rev. A [**63**]{}, 022712 (2001). Details regarding the software also available at http://www.nersc.gov/ xiaoye/SuperLU.
Roger Haydock, Phys. Rev. B [**61**]{}, 7953 (2000).
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|
{
"pile_set_name": "ArXiv"
}
|
Women speaking out about the men who have sexually assaulted, abused or harassed them will take to the national stage on Wednesday where organizers and past victims will call for Sen. Al Franken (D-MI) and Reps. John Conyers (D-MI) and Joe Barton (R-TX) to resign.
All three lawmakers have been accused of sexual misconduct, including unwanted sexual advances and groping, and, in Barton’s case, texting explicit messages and a photo of himself naked.
Some of the women who will be at the National Press Club in D.C. have been speaking out for years about former president Bill Clinton assaulting or abusing them, including Juanita Broaddrick (who said Clinton raped her), Paula Jones (whose suit against Clinton for sexual harassment was settled before a trial) and Leslie Millwee, (who said she was stalked and assaulted three times by Bill Clinton while she was a TV reporter in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Melanie Morgan, a radio talk show host and co-founder of Media Equalizer, which organized the Media Equality Project and Wednesday’s event, will share her experience with Franken.
Morgan told Breitbart News that she met Franken in 2000 at a roundtable discussion about the federal budget. She said he got in her face several times and then, after getting her phone number from a producer of the event, Franken called here repeatedly.
“I felt very threatened, very intimidated by his behavior,” said Morgan, who finally stopped the harassment after she told Franken she was going to contact the police.
“He completely freaked me out,” Morgan said. And that’s also what resonated with her after hearing radio talk show host Leann Tweeden’s story about Franken groping her when she was sleeping and force kissing her while they were taking part in a USO trip abroad.
“I knew in that moment that her story was true,” Morgan said.
https://twitter.com/MelMorgan1350/status/935221070944124929
“Dozens of women and other victims of sexual harassment are joining together this Wednesday with this message: #ShowUsTheList of representatives or staffers who received taxpayer-funded pay-outs,” the press release announcing the protest and press conference said.
The Media Equality Project wants to confront these abusers and hold them accountable.
“We believe that this effort should be in a spirit of bi-partisanship in order to end sexual harassment on Capitol Hill and across the country,” the press release said.
And yet, according to Morgan, efforts to get the women in Congress who have spoken out again sexual misconduct and harassment on Capitol Hill have not responded to the invitation to join the event on Wednesday.
Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, (D-NY), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), and Reps. Jackie Speier, (D-CA) Kathleen Rice (D-NY), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA) and Melanie Sloan, head of the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility, were invited.
As of Tuesday morning, none had agreed to attend the event.
“If they are serious about ending sexual assault and other degradation of women then they should stand with us,” Morgan said.
Other speakers include radio talk show host Blanquita Cullum and Alveda King, niece of the late Martin Luther King Jr.
“Our message is clear: Senator Franken, Congressmen Conyers, and Barton must resign now! And Congress must end taxpayer-funded payouts to harassment victims in an effort to silence their voices and complaints,” the press release said.
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{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
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Martedì 20 febbraio 2018 - 07:40
Il procuratore Mueller indaga sul genero di Trump per i contatti con la Cina
Stampa Usa: nuovo filone d'inchiesta dopo quello russo
Roma, 20 feb. (askanews) – Il procuratore speciale Robert Mueller, incaricato di indagare sulle interferenze russe nelle elezioni presidenziali americane, sta indagando anche sugli sforzi di Jared Kushner, genero del presidente Usa Donald Trump, per attirare capitali stranieri, in particolare dalla Russia e dalla Cina, nella sua azienda immobiliare, durante il periodo di transizione presidenziale: lo riferiscono oggi i media statunitensi.
L’indagine di Mueller, fino a questo momento, si era focalizzata sui contatti in Russia del consigliere speciale e genero di Donald Trump, e sui legami di Kushner con l’ex consigliere Michael Flynn, caduto in disgrazia.
Il team di Mueller sta esaminando ora i colloqui di Jared Kushner svoltisi durante il periodo di transizione presidenziale per ottenere capitali per l’immobile che ospita uffici nella Fifth Avenue di New York, di proprietà della sua società Kushner Companies, in difficoltà finanziarie, spiega la Cnn, citando fonti vicine all’inchiesta. Secondo l’emittente, gli inquirenti del procuratore speciale non hanno ancora contattato la società di Kushner, e le ragioni dell’attenzione prestata agli investitori stranieri non sono chiare.
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{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
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divided by 2478?
2475
What is the remainder when 88602 is divided by 6884?
5994
Calculate the remainder when 308477 is divided by 2571.
2528
Calculate the remainder when 579506173 is divided by 2048.
2045
What is the remainder when 2083802 is divided by 1303?
305
Calculate the remainder when 6399321 is divided by 370.
171
Calculate the remainder when 831188 is divided by 831177.
11
Calculate the remainder when 491479 is divided by 3731.
2718
Calculate the remainder when 338510665 is divided by 33.
31
What is the remainder when 1829036 is divided by 7987?
13
What is the remainder when 14766091 is divided by 3691519?
15
What is the remainder when 20985252 is divided by 20985242?
10
Calculate the remainder when 8880 is divided by 1252.
116
What is the remainder when 3149122 is divided by 85111?
15
Calculate the remainder when 22356 is divided by 10352.
1652
Calculate the remainder when 21902 is divided by 522.
500
What is the remainder when 2700029 is divided by 21?
17
What is the remainder when 181268 is divided by 2160?
1988
Calculate the remainder when 37762469 is divided by 164.
157
Calculate the remainder when 7358965 is divided by 919869.
13
What is the remainder when 568775 is divided by 523?
274
What is the remainder when 143186 is divided by 800?
786
What is the remainder when 71884 is divided by 16757?
4856
What is the remainder when 399421125 is divided by 64579?
10
What is the remainder when 756845 is divided by 2259?
80
Calculate the remainder when 35945986 is divided by 11.
10
Calculate the remainder when 107987314 is divided by 58.
14
Calculate the remainder when 495188 is divided by 164809.
761
Calculate the remainder when 9704512 is divided by 13.
12
What is the remainder when 481253 is divided by 6590?
183
What is the remainder when 5893447 is divided by 1473355?
27
Calculate the remainder when 446339 is divided by 218.
93
Calculate the remainder when 507697 is divided by 126760.
657
Calculate the remainder when 687709 is divided by 22177.
222
What is the remainder when 19891 is divided by 1865?
1241
What is the remainder when 1088401 is divided by 6760?
41
Calculate the remainder when 161481 is divided by 417.
102
What is the remainder when 10222019 is divided by 927?
917
Calculate the remainder when 25306 is divided by 2523.
76
What is the remainder when 27430926 is divided by 1531?
1530
Calculate the remainder when 5867401 is divided by 1955767.
100
What is the remainder when 570138 is divided by 113668?
1798
What is the remainder when 29459496 is divided by 147?
108
What is the remainder when 12589695 is divided by 4196545?
60
Calculate the remainder when 266388 is divided by 19026.
24
What is the remainder when 30016 is divided by 7836?
6508
What is the remainder when 61323758 is divided by 85?
83
Calculate the remainder when 121050146 is divided by 690.
686
Calculate the remainder when 107961 is divided by 312.
9
What is the remainder when 8360448 is divided by 2677?
177
What is the remainder when 124016 is divided by 1051?
1049
Calculate the remainder when 4368 is divided by 270.
48
What is the remainder when 1524140 is divided by 35?
30
What is the remainder when 2529906 is divided by 316236?
18
Calculate the remainder when 45621904 is divided by 11405473.
12
Calculate the remainder when 4981621 is divided by 8817.
16
Calculate the remainder when 289280 is divided by 95642.
2354
What is the remainder when 1469304 is divided by 128?
120
Calculate the remainder when 1471021 is divided by 294021.
916
Calculate the remainder when 175272943 is divided by 2195.
2193
What is the remainder when 228702 is divided by 3323?
2738
Calculate the remainder when 16163 is divided by 1028.
743
Calculate the remainder when 82924819 is divided by 220.
219
What is the remainder when 7356309 is divided by 420?
9
Calculate the remainder when 564499 is divided by 115.
79
What is the remainder when 1928142 is divided by 752?
14
Calculate the remainder when 1357687 is divided by 3.
1
Calculate the remainder when 1143508800 is divided by 58.
56
Calculate the remainder when 6587091 is divided by 345.
6
What is the remainder when 30596 is divided by 10184?
44
Calculate the remainder when 917407 is divided by 5.
2
Calculate the remainder when 1012570 is divided by 586.
548
What is the remainder when 17190748 is divided by 5653?
5628
Calculate the remainder when 371658 is divided by 615.
198
Calculate the remainder when 488366 is divided by 6127.
4333
Calculate the remainder when 136229 is divided by 12378.
71
What is the remainder when 102470539 is divided by 12917?
12895
Calculate the remainder when 2791401 is divided by 1596.
1593
Calculate the remainder when 46131965 is divided by 2391.
11
Calculate the remainder when 7214030 is divided by 5667.
5606
Calculate the remainder when 15688696 is divided by 3922171.
12
What is the remainder when 314986037 is divided by 155?
152
Calculate the remainder when 6143663 is divided by 1534.
1527
What is the remainder when 1872988 is divided by 200?
188
What is the remainder when 78215184 is divided by 7?
5
Calculate the remainder when 64285 is divided by 1214.
1157
What is the remainder when 19326738 is divided by 492?
486
What is the remainder when 4738535 is divided by 792?
791
Calculate the remainder when 12389218 is divided by 53.
44
Calculate the remainder when 520302 is divided by 30606.
0
Calculate the remainder when 7253482 is divided by 307.
300
What is the remainder when 23237270 is divided by 82990?
70
What is the remainder when 40188 is divided by 5582?
1114
What is the remainder when 256063 is divided by 19598?
1289
What is the remainder when 75354 is divided by 25106?
36
Calculate the remainder when 127236 is divided by 318.
36
What is the remainder when 140374 is divided by 15583?
127
What is the remainder when 68521 is divided by 808?
649
What is the remainder when 12646 is divided by 4792?
3062
Calculate the remainder when 12198033 is divided by 31277.
3
What is the remainder when 35635354 is divided by 276243?
7
What is the remainder when 440715422 is divided by 25?
22
What is the remainder when 8288082 is divided by 39655?
187
Calculate the remainder when 23249 is divided by 332.
9
Calculate the remainder when 3447555 is divided by 137902.
5
Calculate the remainder when 450929 is divided by 23723.
192
What is the remainder when 55604 is divided by 287?
213
What is the remainder when 32479 is divided by 32206?
273
What is the remainder when 44378 is divided by 805?
103
Calculate the remainder when 396267 is divided by 605.
597
What is the remainder when 33718943 is divided by 150?
143
What is the remainder when 9882814 is divided by 352955?
74
Calculate the remainder when 205091 is divided by 6419.
6102
What is the remainder when 15632608 is divided by 1302717?
4
Calculate the remainder when 3024731 is divided by 85.
6
Calculate the remainder when 18829634 is divided by 2689947.
5
What is the remainder when 3369622 is divided by 76582?
14
What is the remainder when 51576 is divided by 1792?
1400
Calculate the remainder when 14542903 is divided by 3.
1
Calculate the remainder when 99004 is divided by 5139.
1363
What is the remainder when 990575 is divided by 216?
215
Calculate the remainder when 10567619 is divided by 21970.
49
Calculate the remainder when 31408724 is divided by 31408720.
4
What is the remainder when 494628 is divided by 5682?
294
Calculate the remainder when 1346934 is divided by 46.
8
What is the remainder when 315624 is divided by 931?
15
What is the remainder when 2169292 is divided by 57?
43
What is the remainder when 272876 is divided by 62?
14
What is the remainder when 21403233 is divided by 4267?
4228
Calculate the remainder when 302750 is divided by 4519.
4496
What is the remainder when 1553226 is divided by 13505?
151
Calculate the remainder when 597490 is divided by 177.
115
Calculate the remainder when 1846203 is divided by 230732.
347
Calculate the remainder when 7101 is divided by 972.
297
What is the remainder when 139726 is divided by 324?
82
What is the remainder when 13237622 is divided by 5?
2
Calculate the remainder when 1647492 is divided by 254.
48
Calculate the remainder when 173219 is divided by 21472.
1443
Calculate the remainder when 11513 is d
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{
"pile_set_name": "DM Mathematics"
}
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The isolated RNase H domain of murine leukemia virus reverse transcriptase. Retention of activity with concomitant loss of specificity.
Retroviral RNases H are similar in sequence and structure to Escherichia coli RNase HI and yet have differences in substrate specificities, metal ion requirements, and specific activities. Separation of reverse transcriptase (RT) into polymerase and RNase H domains yields an active RNase H from murine leukemia virus (MuLV) but an inactive human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) RNase H. The "handle region" present in E. coli RNase HI but absent in HIV RNase H contributes to the binding to its substrate and when inserted into HIV RNase H results in an active enzyme retaining some degree of specificity. Here, we show MuLV protein containing the C-terminal 175 amino acids with its own handle region or that of E. coli RNase HI has the same specific activity as the RNase H of RT, retains a preference for Mn2+ as the cation required for activity, and has association rate (KA) 10% that of E. coli RNase HI. However, with model substrates, specificities for removal of the tRNAPro primer and polypurine tract stability are lost, indicating specificity of RNase H of MuLV requires the remainder of the RT. Differences in KA, while significant, appear insufficient to account for the differences in specific activities of the bacterial and viral RNases H.
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{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
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X-Wing is a terrific tournament-game, fast-paced and well-balanced for competitive events, but to take a break from the competitive 100 vs 100 tournament scenario we’ve been playing, some of our local players and I decided to do try something a little different:
A 2 vs 2 battle over the surface of the planet Hoth. Here’s a brief battle report and some photos from the game that I hope will inspire other people to try different sizes and formats.
This 4 player, 200 v 200 game was played on a 4×4 board, which gives a playing area considerably larger than 3×3. We increased the obstacle count to 9, ranging from AT-Asteroids to Taun-Taun-Debris. The game looked great, played to conclusion in less than 2 hours, and frankly everyone had a great time.
Leela and Matt’s Rebels
Han Solo YT-1300
Jake Farell A-Wing
Green Squadron A-Wing
Chewbacca YT-1300
Corran Horn Ewing – R2D2 Engine Upgrade Predator
(That’s an E-Wing that clocks in at 46 points, a remarkable price for a 5 HP fighter, but IMHO one of the few that can justify that sort of price tag).
Innocent and Doobleg’s Empire
Shuttle – Darth Vader
Phantom – Echo
Phantom – Whisper
Shuttle – Colonel Jendon, Heavy Laser Cannon
(At the start of the Combat phase, you may assign 1 of your blue target lock tokens to a friendly ship at Range 1 if it does not have a blue target lock token.)
3 Tie Bombers
Tie Bomber – Captain Jonus
(When another friendly ship at Range 1 attacks with a secondary weapon, it may reroll up to 2 attack dice)
The centre of the rebel base is held by Chewie in the Century Hawk YT-1300 and Corran Horn in a Snowspeeder (it just felt more appropriate for this game!)
The Empire’s Heavy Laser Cannon shuttle starts towards the hidden Rebel Base, flanked by tie bombers and lead by Vessery.
The rebels attempt a refused flank deployment, not having the numbers to spread out to meet the Imperials one-for-one.
Chewie cuts across the centre. Stage one of the Imperial’s plan commences, as Jendon is able to assign Target Locks at any range and distribute them to his allies. This means that as the Rebels approach, Chewbacca’s YT is getting lit up with Locks that will guide missiles into his craft.
The rebels skirt around the AT-Asteroids but can’t afford to delay the battle by too much – the Imperials advantage grows with every long-range Target lock placed.
Tie Bombers glide up the field, before making a sharp turn towards their prey.
A Green Squadron pilot curves gracefully around the Taun Tauns below.
The Empire orders an Advance, and the battle is rapidly compressed into one third of the board as all pilots jockey for shots in this target-rich environment.
Corran Horn’s Snowspeeder engages a shuttle head-on, ignoring the two almost untouchable phantoms in the distance in order to score more certain hits. The Shuttle took 3 damage, giving one in return.
Ships roar over the ice, lasers blasting.
The Phantoms open fire with their vicious 4-shot guns, while the Bombers engage from the flank, angling in towards the Wookie.
Chewbacca screams into a hard turn, finishing his move mere millimetres from the enemy but still managing to get his action. He is festooned with Locks though, and about to come under massive firepower.
All hell breaks loose, Han solo rushing to Chewie’s support and firing into a phantom as Corran dives through the gap. Corran had double-tapped in the last round, and used this one to recharge a shield.
Chewie managed to take out a bomber but under the firepower of almost the entire Imperial invasion force was shot down himself. The target-locked missiles and rerolls from Jendon made sure that even 5 shields and 8 hull couldn’t last forever.
An A-Wing managed to put 2 hits on an otherwise untouched Imperial Shuttle. Alert to even the smallest weakness, Corran swooped in, hit it 4 times and then another 4 in the end phase for a remarkable 8 damage to take it out in a single turn.
Bombers duel the snowspeeder as it tries to regain shields.
A combination of bomber phantom firepower and Darth Vader take out an A-Wing.
Corran takes out another bomber – cementing his position as Man of the Match.
The Rebel defenders have now been reduced to Han Solo, Corran Horn and an Awing, but it is the Imperials who are closer to breaking under pressure. Han comes under fire as he manages to strip a couple hull from a bomber, before he and Corran finish it and its comrade off. A this point, Leela had managed to keep her Han Solo’s hull intact and my Corran Horn had managed to finish the game on full health and shield despite taking about 8 hits during it. Thanks R2!
A Rebel Victory, Hoth is saved!
This frenetic battle was a tremendous amount of fun, as witnessed by the fact that we immediately played another 2v2 Battle for Hoth (come on, this is what Sundays are made for!). I’d highly recommend trying out larger scale games with multiple players to any X-Wing players; it definitely does not require the addition of the larger ships to make a 200 vs 200 point battle possible.
Give it a try!
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
<h1>Ajax Kullanımı</h1>
React ile istediğiniz herhangi bir AJAX kütüphanesini kullanabilirsiniz.
Popüler olanlar <a href="https://github.com/axios/axios">Axios</a>, <a href="https://api.jquery.com/jQuery.ajax/">jQuery AJAX</a> ve tarayıcıda yerleşik olarak bulunan <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Fetch_API">window.fetch</a>.
<h2>Lifecycleda AJAX isteğini nerede yapmalıyım?</h2>
AJAX isteklerini `componentDidMount` fonksiyonunda kullanmalısınız. AJAX isteğinden gelen veriyi `setState` yardımıyla state'e atarak componentin içerisinde kullanabilirsiniz.
Aşağıdaki component, `state`i doldurmak için `componentDidMount`ta bir AJAX çağrısının nasıl yapılacağını gösterir:
```js
{
items: [
{ id: 1, name: "Apples", price: "$2" },
{ id: 2, name: "Peaches", price: "$5" }
];
}
```
```js
class MyComponent extends React.Component {
constructor(props) {
super(props);
this.state = {
error: null,
isLoaded: false,
items: []
};
}
componentDidMount() {
//AJAX isteğini burada başlatıyoruz.
fetch("https://api.example.com/items")
.then(res => res.json())
.then(
result => {
//AJAX'tan gelen veri ile state'imizi güncelliyoruz.
this.setState({
isLoaded: true,
items: result.items
});
},
error => {
this.setState({
isLoaded: true,
error
});
}
);
}
render() {
const { error, isLoaded, items } = this.state;
if (error) {
return <div>Error: {error.message}</div>;
} else if (!isLoaded) {
return <div>Yükleniyor...</div>;
} else {
return (
<ul>
{items.map(item => (
<li key={item.name}>
{item.name} {item.price}
</li>
))}
</ul>
);
}
}
}
```
<a href="https://omergulcicek.github.io/react/gelismis-kilavuzlar/react-hook">Sıradaki Eğitim: React Hook</a>
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Github"
}
|
"All I ever wanted was for Juli Baker to leave me alone." "It all began in the summer of 1957, before the start of second grade." " Here we are." " Ha, ha." " What do you guys think?" " I like this place." " It's cool." " Uh, what color is my room?" "Just you wait." " Let's see what's inside." " Hey, come on, buddy Bryce." "Why don't, uh, you and I go help unload the van.... ...and the womenfolk here can get in the kitchen and start setting up." "Okay, Dad." "For me, it was the beginning of what would be more than half a decade of strategic avoidance and social discomfort." " Hi, I'm Juli Baker." " Hey, hey, what are you doing?" "Don't you want some help?" "No." "There's some valuable things in there." " How about this one?" " No, no, no." "Run home." "Your mother's probably wondering where you are." "Oh, no, my mom knows where I am." "She said it's fine." "It didn't take long to realize this girl could not take a hint." " It's crowded in here with three people." " I don't mind." " Of any kind." " You wanna push this one together?" "Bryce, isn't it time for you to go help your mother?" "Huh?" "Oh, yeah." "I mean, nothing would stop her." "I was about to tell her to get lost when the weirdest thing happened." "I couldn't believe it." "There I was holding hands with this strange girl." " How did I get into this mess?" " Well, hello." " I see you've met my son." " Uh-huh." "Finally, I did the only manly thing available when you're 7 years old." "However, my troubles were far from over." "The minute I walked into Miss Yelson's classroom..." "Bryce?" "You're here." "...it was clear:" "School would not be a sanctuary." "Hey, Bryce, where's your girlfriend?" "I was branded for life." "Hey, Bryce, why don't you ask her to marry you?" "Bryce and Juli sitting in a tree" "K-l-S-S-l-N-G" "My first year in town was a disaster." "Look at them." "And the next three weren't much better." "But finally, in the sixth grade, I took action." "I hatched the plan." "Sherry." "Sherry, wait up." "Hi, Bryce." "Heh." "I asked out Sherry Stalls." "I was wondering if you wanted to go..." "To full appreciate the brilliance of this plan you have to understand that Juli hated Sherry Stalls though I never understood why." "Sherry was nice, friendly and she had a lot of hair." "At first, my mother wouldn't let me get my ears pierced, but I begged..." "The idea was that Sherry would eat with me maybe we'd walk around together, and hopefully Juli would lose interest." "But I still can't get the hoops till I'm 16." "Oh, that's a shame." "So Melanie wanted to get her ears pierced, but of course her mother said no." "So she threw a fit and smashed her Johnny Mathis Greatest Hits album and she got grounded, so now she can't come to my pajama sleepover party." "Things were unfolding quite nicely." "What are you doing for your science project?" "That is, until my supposed best friend, Garrett Einbinder took an interest in Sherry himself." "I was thinking of showing how split ends react with different hair conditioners." "That's fascinating." "Loyalty gave way to desire and Garrett, the turncoat told Sherry what I was up to." "Jerk." "She didn't take it well." "Word got back to Juli, and pretty soon she started up with the goo-goo eyes again." "Only this time it was worse." "She started sniffing me." "That's right, sniffing me." "What was that all about?" "My only consolation was that next year would be different." "Junior high, bigger school." "Maybe we'd be in different classes and it would finally, finally be over." "The first day I met Bryce Loski, I flipped." "It was those eyes, something in those dazzling eyes." "You wanna push this one together?" "His family had just moved into the neighborhood and I'd gone over to help them." "I'd been in the van all of two minutes when his dad sent him off to help his mom." "I could see he didn't wanna go." "So I chased after him to see if we could play a little before he got trapped inside." "The next thing I know, he's holding my hand and looking right into my eyes." "My heart stopped." "Was this it?" "Would this be my first kiss?" " But then his mother came out." " Well, hello." "And he was so embarrassed, his cheeks turned completely red." "I went to bed that night thinking of the kiss that might have been." "I mean, it was clear he had feelings for me, but he was just too shy to show them." "My mother said boys were like that." " So I decided to help him out." " Bryce?" "You're here." "I would give him plenty of opportunity to get over his shyness." "By the sixth grade, I'd learned to control myself." "Then Sherry Stalls entered the picture." "Sherry Stalls was nothing but a whiny, gossipy, backstabbing flirt." "All hair and no substance." "And there she was holding hands with Bryce." "My Bryce." "The one who was walking around with my first kiss." "My solution was to ignore her." "I knew a boy of Bryce's caliber would eventually see through a shallow conniver like Sherry Stalls." "It took all of a week." "They broke up at recess." "She didn't take it well." "Now that Bryce was out of Sherry's evil clutches, he started being nicer to me." " Hi, Juli." " Hi, Bryce." "He was so shy and so cute and his hair, it smelled like watermelon." "I couldn't get enough of it." "I spent the whole year secretly sniffing watermelon and wondering if I was ever going to get my kiss." "Seventh grade brought changes, all right." "But the biggest one didn't happen at school." "It happened at home." "My grandfather came to live with us." "Mom said he stared like that because he missed Grandma." "That was not something Grandpa would ever talk about with me." "As a matter of fact, he never talked about much of anything with me." "That is, until Juli appeared in the local newspaper." " Oh, Bryce." "May I speak with you?" " What?" "Have a seat, son." "Tell me about your friend Juli Baker." "Juli." "She's not exactly my friend." "Oh." "Why's that?" "Why do you wanna know?" "Now, Juli Baker did not wind up in The Mayfield Times for being an eighth-grade Einstein." "No, she got front-page coverage because she refused to climb out of a sycamore tree." "Juli Baker and that stupid sycamore tree." "She always thought it was God's gift to our little corner of the universe." "Hey, Bryce." "Wanna come climb the tree with me and my brothers?" "No, thanks." "Bryce." "Come up here." "It's fun." "I can't." "My dad needs me to help him fix a thing." "That's all I needed." "Climb up a tree with Juli Baker." "I'd be dragged right back into the second grade." "Bryce and Juli sitting in a tree." "Why don't you just make me eat lima beans for the rest of my life." "It's three blocks away." "Two blocks." "One block away." " Like that's valuable information." " I hate it when she does that." "I like to think there's at least a chance the bus won't show." "I think the tree looks particularly beautiful in this light." "Don't you?" "If by "beautiful" you mean "unbelievably ugly," then, yes, I would agree." "You're just visually challenged." "I feel sorry for you." ""Visually challenged"?" ""Visually challenged"?" "This from the girl who lived in a house that was the joke of the neighborhood?" "They had bushes growing over windows and weeds all over the place." "It bugged my dad bigtime." "Oh, there he is." "The bricklayer who thinks he's a painter." "That truck's not ugly enough in real life?" "He's gotta make a painting of it?" "No, he does landscapes." "Sells them at the county fair." "People say they're beautiful." "Landscapes?" "Let me tell you something." "The world would have more beauty in it if he'd do a little landscaping on that piece of crap he calls a yard." "I feel bad for his wife." "She married a dreamer." "Because of that, one of the two of them will always be unhappy." "Yeah, fine." "But why do we have to be unhappy?" "As annoying as the yard was to my dad it was nothing compared to how annoying Juli Baker was in that tree." "Three blocks away." "Every morning we had to listen to the sound of her blow-by-blow traffic report." "Two blocks." "There you go." "Why do they call it The Three Stooges?" " I mean, there's five of them." " What?" "Well, yeah, there's Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp and Curly Joe." " Yeah, but they only have three at a time." " Yeah." "You know, I hate Curly Joe." "I mean, he shouldn't even be a Stooge." "Listen, girl, I'm this close to calling the police." "You are trespassing and obstructing progress on a contracted job." " What's going on?" " Either you come down or we're gonna cut you down." " You guys, come up here with me." "They won't cut it down if we're all up here." " Bus, bus, bus." " Juli was frantic." "They wanted to cut down her tree." "I couldn't understand why that mutant tangle of gnarly branches meant so much to her." " Bryce, please." " I felt bad for her." " Leave her." "But I wasn't about to cut school over it." "Come on, bro." "Why isn't she your friend, Bryce?" "You'd have to know Juli." "Well, I'd like to." "Why?" "That girl has an iron backbone." "Why don't you invite her over sometime?" "An iron backbone?" "She's just stubborn and she's pushy beyond belief." "Is that so?" "And she's been stalking me since the second grade." "Well, a girl like that doesn't live next door to everyone." "Lucky them." "Read this." "Without prejudice." "Like I needed to know anything more about Juli Baker." "Juli wasn't at the bus stop the next morning." "Or the morning after that." "She was at school, but you'd never know it." " Little Joe?" "He's got so much makeup on..." " He doesn't age." "I told myself I should be glad about it." "I mean, isn't that what I'd always wanted?" "But still, I felt bad for her." "I was gonna tell her I was sorry, but then I thought, hey, no that's the last thing I needed:" "Juli Baker thinking I missed her." "I see why you like to come out here." "Would you mind explaining it to your mother?" "I loved to watch my father paint." "Or really, I loved to hear him talk while he painted." "I learned a lot about my dad that way." "He told me all sorts of things like how he got his first job delivering hay and how he'd wished he'd finished college." "Then one day he surprised me." "What's going on with you and, uh, Bryce Loski?" "What do you mean?" "Nothing." "Oh, okay." "My mistake." "Why would you even think that?" "No reason." "Just that you talk about him all the time." "I do?" "Mm-hm." "I don't know." "I guess it's something about his eyes." "Or maybe his smile." "But what about him?" " What?" " You have to look at the whole landscape." "What does that mean?" "A painting is more than the sum of its parts." "A cow by itself is just a cow." "A meadow by itself is just grass, flowers." "And the sun peeking through the trees is just a beam of light." "But you put them all together and it can be magic." "I didn't really understand what he was saying until one afternoon when I was up in the sycamore tree." "I was rescuing a kite." "It was a long way up, higher than I'd ever been." "And the higher I got, the more amazed I was by the view." "I began to notice how wonderful the breeze smelled." "Like sunshine and wild grass." "I couldn't stop breathing it in filling my lungs with the sweetest smell I'd ever known." "Hey, you found my kite." "Bryce, you should come up here." "It's so beautiful." "I can't." "I sprained my, um..." "I have a rash." "From that moment on, that became my spot." "I could sit there for hours, just looking out at the world." "Some days the sunsets would be purple and pink." "And some days they were a blazing orange setting fire to the clouds on the horizon." "It was during one of those sunsets that my father's idea of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts moved from my head to my heart." "Some days I would get there extra early to watch the sunrise." "One morning I was making mental notes of how the streaks of light were cutting through the clouds so I could tell my dad when I heard a noise below." "Excuse me." "Excuse me." "I'm sorry, but you can't park there." "That's a bus stop." "Hey, what are you doing up there?" "You can't be up there, we're gonna take this thing down." " The tree?" " Yeah." "Now come on down." " But who told you, you could cut it down?" " The owner." "Why?" "He's gonna build a house, and this tree's in the way." " So come on, girl, we got work to do." " You can't cut it down." "You just can't." "Listen, girl." "I'm this close to calling the police." "You are trespassing and obstructing progress on a contracted job." "Now either you come down, or we're gonna cut you down." "Go ahead." "Cut me down." "I'm not coming down." "I'm never coming down." "Bryce." "You guys, come up here with me." "They won't cut it down if we're all up here." "Bryce, please don't let them do this." "Come on, you guys." "Bryce, please." "You don't have to come up this high." "Just a little ways." "Bryce, please." "Please." "What happened after that was a blur." "It seemed like the whole town was there." "But still I wouldn't move." "Then my father showed up." "He talked a fireman into letting him come up to where I was." "Sweetie, it's time to come down." "Daddy, please don't let them do this." " Sweetie..." " Daddy, look." "You can see everything." "You can see the whole world from here." "No view is worth my daughter's safety." "Now, come on." "I can't." "Julianna, it's time to come down now." "Please, Daddy." "It's time." "And that was it." "I must've cried for two weeks straight." "Oh, sure, I went to school and did the best I could but nothing seemed to matter." " Juli?" " Huh?" "Do you know the answer?" "Uh, the Peloponnesian War?" "I'm sure that's the answer to something but I was looking for the area of a rhomboid." "Somehow, rhomboids and isosceles right triangles didn't seem so important." "I rode my bike so I wouldn't have to pass by the stump that used to be the earth's most magnificent sycamore tree." "But no matter what I did, I couldn't stop thinking about it." "Are you okay?" "It was just a tree." "No, it wasn't just a tree." "I never want you to forget how you felt when you were up there." "Thanks, Dad." "It was the first thing I saw every morning and the last thing I saw before I went to sleep." "And once I could look at it without crying I saw more than the tree and what being up there meant to me." "I saw the day that my view of things around me started changing." "And I wondered, did I still feel the same things about Bryce?" "I've never been a huge fan of eggs." "I mean, I could always just take them or leave them." "That is, until one day in Skyler Brown's garage when my feelings about eggs were solidified." "Hey, hey, hey." "Guys." "Edna's found her breakfast." "I mean, if a slimy reptile found them appetizing there was certainly no place for them in my diet." "Oh, man, that's so cool." "She doesn't even have to chew." "I mean, think of all the time you'd save." "I could've gone my whole life not knowing that snakes eat eggs raw if it hadn't been for Lynetta." "She had a major-league thing for Skyler Brown." "I think it's gross." "He and Juli's brothers, Matt and Mark, had formed a band." "And Lynetta would watch them practice." "That is so neat." "How about that, huh, Bryce?" "Yeah." "Neat." "So, Brycie, how do you think he's gonna digest that?" " Stomach acid?" " You'd like to think that." "Wait, everybody quiet." "Here he goes." "Eggs over easy." "Gross." "Gross, gross, gross." "Wait, wait." "You haven't seen the best part." "Ugh!" "Gross." "I tried to be casual about it, but it didn't take." "I started having bad dreams." "I'd be trapped inside a huge egg and this monster would open his jaws and start to devour me." "I'd wake up just in time." "Then the real nightmare began." "Hi, Bryce." "I brought these over for you and your family." " My chickens are laying eggs." " What?" "You remember Abby and Bonnie and Clyde and Dexter and Eunice and Florence?" " The ones I hatched for the science fair." " How could I forget?" "It was classic Juli Baker." "She totally dominated the fair." "And get this, her project was all about watching boring eggs hatch." "I mean, here I had a live-action erupting volcano and all anyone cared about was Juli's boring chicks breaking out of their boring shells." "Oh, I think the last one's hatching." " It's hatching." " Oh, it's hatching." "Kids, come over here." "But hey, she won." "I lost." "I've never been one to dwell." "Here it comes." "But that didn't mean I had to eat her lousy eggs." "I think it was very sweet of Juli to bring us those eggs." "I don't care." "I'm still having cereal tomorrow." "Yeah, how do we know there's no chicks in one of those eggs?" "I used to eat farm-fresh eggs when I was a kid." "They were delicious." "Yeah, well, that's all well and good but what if we crack one open and a dead chick falls out?" "Do they have a rooster?" "If they don't have a rooster the eggs can't be fertile." "And if they had a rooster, we'd know." "The whole neighborhood would know." "Maybe they got it de-yodeled." ""De-yodeled"?" "You know." "De-cock-a-doodle-doo'd." "What the hell are you talking about?" "Like they de-bark dogs." "Bryce, why don't you just ask Juli?" "What?" " You afraid to talk to her?" " I'm not afraid to talk to her." "I know you are, but what am I?" " Okay." "Just talk to her and find out." " Bryce." "How do you tell if one's a rooster?" " Well, a rooster's bigger." "Longer feathers." " Mm-hm." "They've got that red stuff growing out of their head." " And around their neck too." " That shouldn't be too hard to spot." "Although, come to think of it, chickens have the rubbery red stuff too." "Just not as much." "Garrett's expertise in roosters was the cornerstone of our plan to avoid contact with Juli Baker." "The balance of which involved spying over her back fence." " Come on, come on." " Shh." "Shh." "Over here." "I can't see the stupid chickens." "We gotta get them out of the coop." "Is that a rooster?" "No, it looks like a chicken." "How can you tell?" "It just does." "See what I mean?" "Expertise." " Shh, shh!" " What?" "Juli." "Here, guys." "Go on, there you go." " Here, guys." "Go on." " Yeah, they're all chickens." " There's no rooster?" " What did I just say?" "How can you tell?" " Well, none of them are strutting." " Here, come on." " Roosters strut?" " Come on, guys." " What did I just say?" " Here." "Plus, hardly any of them have any rubbery red stuff." " What are you doing?" " Yeah." "They're definitely all chickens." "They're all chickens." "I'm proud of you, Bryce." " You overcame your fear." " Huh?" " You talked to her." " Oh, heh." "Yeah." "It's no big deal." "That's what she told you?" "They're all chickens?" "Yeah." "She's a genius." "You're both genius..." "Of course they're all chickens." "A rooster's a chicken." "The question is:" "Is one of them a rooster or are they all hens?" "Hens?" "Who said anything about hens?" "Then it hit me." "Garrett didn't know jack shit about chickens." " Do roosters strut?" " Yes, they do." "What does that have to do with anything?" "They're all hens." "Well, the main thing is the eggs are okay." "It's all settled." "Not for me." "There was no way I was ever gonna eat anything that had anything to do with Juli Baker." "I'm not eating them." "Well, why not?" "Have you seen their yard?" "It's..." "There's not even any grass." "It's all mud and chicken turds." "Ew." "Gross." "Salmonella." "Do you suppose they could have salmonella?" " It's not very likely." " Why take the risk?" "What do we do with the eggs?" "Give them back." " Give them back?" "To Juli?" " Sure." "You talked to her before, right?" "It didn't kill you." "Well, what do I say?" "Tell her we don't eat eggs." "Uh, we're allergic to them or something." "Come on, use your brains." "It didn't feel right to lie." "Besides, even a seventh grader would know that entire families aren't allergic to eggs." "But I didn't wanna hurt her feelings either." "So that left me with only one option." "And thus another near-death experience in my ongoing saga with Juli Baker had been successfully avoided." "Until one week later." "Hi, Bryce." "Brought you some more eggs." "Wow." " Thanks." " Did your family like the first batch?" "Do you even have to ask?" "Great." "See you at school." "What I hoped would be a one-time event was just the beginning of a life consumed with lies, intrigue and deception." "Every morning I'd be on the lookout for Juli so if she happened to come, I could whip the door open before she knocked." "Thanks." "Then I'd dump the eggs before anyone noticed." "And why?" "Why couldn't I just face her?" "Why couldn't I just say:" ""No, thanks." "Don't want them." "Don't need them." "Give them to the snake"?" "Was I really afraid of hurting her feelings or was I just afraid of her?" "Now, you wanna make sure you get it..." "When Mrs. Brubeck first suggested hatching eggs as my science project I was less than excited." "That is, until I saw my first sign of life." "Is that it?" "Wow." " It looks like a bean." " It does." "Let's try the other ones." "Suddenly it felt real." "All the eggs were alive." "There were, like, little bean babies inside every one." "On the day of the fair, all six chicks hatched." "What are the odds?" "This year's top prize goes to Juli Baker for her wonderful project:" ""A Chicken is Born."" "I won first place." "And that was cool, but all I really cared about were my chicks." "There you go." "There you go, guys." "My mom wasn't crazy about us raising chickens." "But I begged and pleaded." "I told her I would take care of everything." "And I did." "Where's Clyde?" "Clyde?" "Hey, Clyde." "What's the matter?" "Are you okay?" "Aren't you hungry?" "Come on." "Come here." "What's wrong, baby?" "Come here." "Hey, you're not Clyde." "You're Clydette." "Mom!" "As it turned out, my hens laid more eggs than we could eat." "At first we tried to keep up but after a month of boiling, frying and deviling like that movie The Blob, we were being overtaken by eggs." "Then opportunity in the form of our neighbor, Mrs. Steuby, knocked." "Hello, dear." "If you ever have any extra, I'd be happy to buy them from you." " Really?" " Certainly." "And I happen to know that Mrs. Helms would be interested as well." " Great." " Nothing like fresh eggs." " Thanks, Mrs. Steuby." " You bet, dear." "Bye." "Between Mrs. Steuby and Mrs. Helms, my egg overflow problem was solved." "Then I realized that Mrs. Loski deserved eggs too." "But I didn't think it would be right to charge her." "She had been such a good neighbor, lending us supplies when we ran out giving my mother a ride when our car wouldn't start it was the least I could do." "Besides, if I happened to run into Bryce, that wouldn't be the end of the world." "Hi, Bryce." "By the third time I brought eggs over to the Loskis I realized Bryce was waiting for me." "Waiting to pull open the door and say, "Thanks, Juli." "See you at school."" "And in return, I got a few moments alone with the world's most dazzling eyes." "Thanks, Juli." "See you at school." "It was a bargain." "Until the day it wasn't." "It was two weeks after the sycamore tree was cut down and I was just starting to feel normal again." "Hey, Juli." "Right on schedule." "Yeah, well, neither rain nor sleet." " Huh?" " You know, the mailman thing?" "Oh." "Right." "So, um, will you start riding the bus again?" "I don't know." "I haven't been up there since..." "It doesn't look so bad anymore." "It's all cleared away." "Well, um, I better get ready for school." "Guess I'll see you there." "See you." "Maybe Bryce was right." "Maybe it was time I started riding the bus again." "After all, didn't he just tell me he wanted me to?" "Could it be that Bryce Loski actually misses me?" "Juli?" "What are you still doing here?" "I was just thinking." "It's pickup day." "The cans are in front." "I know." "You need some help?" "No." "Maybe I'll do it later." "Are those my eggs?" "Yeah." "Yeah, I dropped them." "They're not broken." "Why are you throwing them away?" "Don't you want them?" "It wasn't me." "My dad didn't think it was worth the risk." "Risk?" "What risk?" "Salmonella." "What?" "He's afraid of being poisoned?" "Well, Juli, I mean, look at your back yard." "It's a complete mess." "It's, like, covered in turds." "That's not true." "I clean up after my girls every day." "We just didn't wanna hurt your feelings." "Have you always thrown them away?" "You know, Mrs. Steuby and Mrs. Helms pay me for my eggs." " They do?" " They pay me 60 cents a dozen." "I didn't know." "How could you?" "I'm sorry." "No, you're not." "It didn't take me long to realize that I'd traded in my old problems with Juli Baker for a whole set of new ones." "It was actually worse having her mad at me than having her annoy me." "The way she ignored me was a constant reminder that I'd been a jerk." "Then one day I was coming home from playing basketball with Garrett and things got weird." "Don't be so timid." "Come on, you won't hurt them." " Like this?" " Yeah, that's it." "My grandfather." "All I ever saw him wear was slippers." "Now, where did he get those work boots?" "I couldn't stop looking over there." "And the more I looked, the madder I got." "My grandfather had already said more to Juli in one hour than he'd said to me in the whole time he'd been living with us." "I was pretty sure I'd never seen him laugh." "And what was his deal with Juli Baker?" "Hi, Grandpa." "Juli told me about the eggs." "You know, Bryce one's character is set at an early age." "I'd hate to see you swim out so far you can't swim back." "Sir?" "It's about honesty, son." "Sometimes a little discomfort in the beginning can save a whole lot of pain down the road." "When it came to holding a grudge, Juli Baker was truly impressive." "All week I tried to approach her at school." "She'd always find some way to duck me." "And whenever she was in her yard, Grandpa was always there with her." "Finally, one Saturday I saw my opening." "My grandfather had gone into town to buy some Bengay." "I guess the yard work was starting to get to him." "It's looking real good." "Thanks." "Chet did most of it." "I'm sorry for what I did." "I just don't get it, Bryce." "Why didn't you just tell me?" "I don't know." "It was dumb." "And I shouldn't have said anything about your yard, either." "It wasn't right." "Maybe it's all for the best." "I mean, look, I learned so much from Chet, it's amazing." "You're lucky." "I don't even have grandparents anymore." "Oh." "I feel sorry for him." "He misses your grandma." "Can you believe it?" "He says I remind him of her." " What?" " I know." "That's what I said." "But he meant it in a nice way." "Something about her spirit." "Yeah." "Well..." "Good luck with the grass." "I'm sure it'll come up great." "Thanks." "I guess I'll see you around." "I guess so." "While Juli's acceptance of my apology was not all that I'd hoped for at least the eggs thing was finally behind me." "The first time in months I could truly enjoy Bonanza." "Where you going and why you dressed like that?" "Skyler's." "Matt and Mark are bringing over recording stuff and they're gonna make a demo." "Demo?" "Like they know how to make a demo." " You don't even know them." " I don't have to." "I know the type." " You don't know anything." " Don't talk to me like that." " I'm late." " Be back by 11." "Yep." "Everything was back to normal." "Is that girl working you too hard?" "That girl's name is Juli." "And, no, she isn't working me too hard." "You've developed quite a soft spot for her, huh?" "Steven." "No, Patsy." "Just wanna find out why your father has the energy to befriend a complete stranger when he won't throw a baseball around with his own grandson." " It's okay, Dad." " No, it's not okay." "Juli reminds him of Grandma." "Of Renee?" "Heh." "That's ridiculous." "You know why the Bakers haven't fixed their yard?" "Yeah, because he's too busy with his paint-by-numbers kit." "If you had a brother with a severe handicap, what would you do?" "What the hell does that have to do with anything?" "Juli's father has a retarded brother." "So what?" "He's not the gardener, is he?" "Heh." "Ha-ha-ha." "It was a joke." "You know, other people have family troubles and they manage to mow their own lawns." "I don't know where their pride in ownership is." "They don't own that house." "The landlord's supposed to maintain it." "Mr. Baker puts every extra penny he has into caring for his brother." "Don't they have government facilities for that sort of thing?" "Maybe they thought that a private facility would be better for him." "Either way, it's not our fault that their family has some chromosomal abnormality." "It has nothing to do with chromosomes." "When Juli's uncle was born, he had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck." "If he'd had enough oxygen, he would've been a perfect little baby, just like your son." "Goddamn it, Chet." " Patsy?" "Patsy?" " Leave me alone!" "Sorry about that." "Why is Mom so upset?" "Because but for the grace of God your mother could be standing in Mr. Baker's shoes." "Did her brother have the cord wrapped around his neck too?" "You did." "Luckily, the doctor who delivered you was on the ball and got it untangled but it easily could've gone the other way." " Wanna go for a walk?" " Huh?" "I find it helps clear the mind." "What would they have done with me?" "You can't dwell on something that might've been, Bryce." "The way my dad was talking, sounds like he would've thrown me in a nuthouse." "No, no." "Now, that's not fair." "You can't condemn him for something he hasn't done." "This is where that tree was, wasn't it?" "Yeah." "Must've been a spectacular view." "She's quite a girl." "Some of us get dipped in flat some in satin some in gloss." "But every once in a while you find someone who's iridescent." "And when you do nothing will ever compare." "Flat, glossy, iridescent?" "What the hell did that mean?" "Juli Baker had always just seemed plain to me." "Until now." "And the way she talked about what it felt like to be up in that tree to be held above the earth, brushed by the wind." "Who in junior high talks like that?" "This weird feeling started taking over in the pit of my stomach and I didn't like it." "I was slipping, man." "And it was time to get a grip." "I'd never been embarrassed by where we lived before." "I also never really thought about money." "I knew we weren't rich, but I didn't feel like we were missing anything." "That is, until Bryce Loski called our home a complete mess." " What's your name?" " What's your name?" "Is it Mary or Sue?" "What's your name?" "Do I stand a chance with you?" "It's so hard to find a personality" "With charms like yours for me" "Ooh-ee, ooh-ee, ooh-ee" "I had to do something and I knew what it was." "What's your name?" " Oh, you're sounding really good." " Yeah." "We'll record it in Skyler's garage." "That's a wonderful project." "Speaking of projects, I was thinking it might be cool to fix up the yard." " What?" " I mean, how much can grass seed cost?" "I could plant a lawn, maybe some flowers." "I could even put up a fence." "Honey, that's a major undertaking." " I could pay for it with my egg money." " No." "That's your money." "The landlord should be the one taking care of all this." "But he doesn't." "And we live here." "And it looks so bad." "Jules." "What's going on?" "Nothing, Dad." "It's okay, sweetheart." "You can tell us." "The Loskis have been throwing away my eggs because they're afraid of salmonella." "Because our yard is such a mess." "Did Patsy say that?" "No." "Bryce did." "But it must have been a family discussion." "A boy doesn't come up with that on his own." " Who cares what they think?" " Yeah, who cares?" "Trina." "Let's not get into this." "No, I'm tired of living like this, Richard." "I'm tired of having to take temp jobs just to make ends meet." "I'm tired of having to push a chair up against the washing machine just to keep the door shut." "I'm tired of having to borrow Mrs. Steuby's vacuum cleaner every time ours breaks down." "Do you think this is the life I pictured for us?" "Sometimes you have to sacrifice to do the right thing." "We always end up agreeing that Devonhurst is the right thing for Daniel." "Well, maybe we should start thinking about what's right for us." "Our daughter is suffering because we won't fix up our own yard." "It's not our yard." "How can you say that, Richard?" "How?" "We've lived here for 12 years and for 12 years we've been saying it's temporary, but it's not." "This is our home." "Is it wrong to wanna live somewhere you can be proud of?" "To have enough to send your kids to college?" "Maybe it's time we considered government care." "We are not moving my brother." "He's more important than your own children?" " Dad!" " How dare you!" "Stop it, Dad!" "Please, just stop." "I'm sorry." "Julianna, this is not your fault." "We'll work this out, I promise." "That was the first time I ever heard my parents really yell at each other." "I'm sorry about tonight." "That night they each came into my room." "My father talked about his brother and how much he loved him and how he promised his parents he'd always take care of him." "My mother talked about how much she loved my father for his strength and kind heart." "When she kissed me good night she whispered that of all her many blessings, I was her best." "I felt sorry for my father." "I felt sorry for my mother." "But most of all, I felt lucky for me that they were mine." "I wanted to think the reason I started working on my yard had nothing to do with Bryce." "It was about making our house better." "After what he did with the eggs, why should I care what he thought?" "But I did." "Are you pruning that or trying to hack it to death?" "Hi." "I'm Chet Duncan, Bryce's grandfather." "Sorry it's taken me so long to come over and introduce myself." "Nice to meet you." "So are you trimming all these to the same height?" "Well, yeah, that's what I was thinking, but I don't know." "Do you think it would look better to take them out?" "Oh, these are Hicksii shrubs." "These will prune up nicely." "Listen, Mr. Duncan." "Call me Chet." "Chet." "If you're here because of what Bryce said I don't need your help." "Read about you in the paper." "Renee would've sat up in that tree with you." "She would've sat up there all night." "Renee?" "My wife." "You remind me a lot of her." "We worked on the yard for weeks." "And the whole time we worked, we talked." " Right there?" " Perfect, yeah." "He wanted to know more about the sycamore tree." "He knew exactly what it meant about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts." "He said it was the same with people but sometimes with people, the whole could be less." "I thought that was pretty interesting." "I started looking at people I'd known since elementary school trying to figure out if they were more or less than the sum of their parts." "Chet was right." "A lot of them were less." "Of all my classmates, the one person I couldn't seem to place was Bryce." "Until recently, I would've said with absolute certainty that he was greater, far greater, than the sum of his parts." "But now I wasn't so sure." "It's looking good, Juli." "Nice job." "Thanks." "Chet did most of it." "I'm sorry for what I did." "I just don't get it, Bryce." "Why didn't you just tell me?" "Was he really sorry?" "Or was he just saying these things to make himself feel better?" "Then I thought maybe I just wanted him to be more than the sum of his parts." "But as I looked into his eyes those dazzling eyes for the first time I was pretty sure that Bryce Loski was less." "We're going to invite the Bakers over for dinner." " What?" " I don't know, Mom." "I think that's a marvelous idea." "Patsy, what purpose does this serve?" "Trina Baker is a very nice person." " And Matt and Mark are really cool." " I hate cool." "Something we should've done years ago." "Yeah, but we didn't." "And now we can't." "The statute of limitations has run out." "We're having the Bakers over for dinner." "If this is about what I said last night, I'm sorry, okay?" "But, you know, having them over for dinner is not gonna fix his brother." "It's going to be a sit-down dinner." "And I expect everyone to dress accordingly." "Oh, God." "Can't we just have a barbecue?" "It's going to be a sit-down dinner." "Just shoot me now." "Careful what you wish for." "So that was it." "A dress-up, sit-down dinner with Juli Baker was in my immediate future." "And that made seeing Juli at school more uncomfortable." "I found myself staring at her in class." "And the way her hair fell back over her shoulders she looked just like the picture in the newspaper." "Dana Tressler caught me watching." "If I didn't do something fast, this could spread like wildfire." "There was a bee in her hair." "See, there it goes." "There's no bee." "It flew out the window." "I convinced myself I'd dodged a bullet." "I had to put Juli out of my mind." "Keep the focus on the important stuff like schoolwork." "My weakness was unnerving." "I need your sharpener." " You ever heard of knocking?" " Hey, what you got there?" "Dad's Playboy?" "None of your business." " Give my best to Miss October." " Get out." " Or should I say your best?" "Ha, ha." " You're disgusting." "Another disaster avoided." "My life had become a minefield." " Hey, man." " Hey." " Hey, man." " Hey." "What's this?" "Whoa." "It's not what you think." "Okay, it is what you think, but I can explain." "Okay, I can't explain." "Can we just talk about it later?" "Whatever you say." "I had to talk to someone." "Why not Garrett?" "Maybe he could help me get back on track." "Garrett was surprisingly sensitive in matters of the heart." "Are you freaking mental?" "Juli Baker." "You hate her." "That's what's weird." "I don't think I do." "I can't stop thinking about her." " You got it bad, man." " Well, what do I do?" "Well, you gotta nip this in the bud." "These aren't real emotions." " They're not?" " You feel guilty because of the egg thing." "Yeah, and I insulted her yard." "Exactly." "Of course, the place is a dump anyways." "Her dad's got a retarded brother and all their money goes to helping him." "A retard?" "Well, shoot, that ought to tell you something." " About what?" " About Juli." "What are you saying?" "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." "I couldn't believe it." "I wanted to yell at him." "Tell him that he didn't know Juli like I did." "But all that came out was:" "Heh, oh." " Right." " Yeah." "Right." "Um, I'll talk to you later." "I was supposed to go to Garrett's after school but I couldn't be around him." "He'd crossed the line." "And standing right next to him across that line was my father." "I didn't care what they thought." "I liked Juli Baker." "Sunday mornings are peaceful in our house." "My dad lets himself sleep in." "My mother lets herself not fix breakfast." "If my brothers have been out late playing with their band you won't even know they're around till noon." "But this Sunday, I woke up feeling weird." "I had to do something to shake off the confused feelings about Bryce that were starting to creep back in." "You really did it, didn't you?" "Heh." " Proud of you." " Thanks, Dad." " Where you going?" " To see Daniel." "It's his birthday." "I wanna come with you." "Oh, honey, just enjoy the morning, stay with your mom." "No, Dad." "I wanna come." "Sweetheart, listen." "Sometimes, with Daniel..." "I'm coming, Dad." "Okay." "We'd better leave a note for your mother." "In all the years, I'd never visited my Uncle Daniel." "I don't know why." "It was always something my dad did alone." "We didn't say much to each other on the drive to Devonhurst, but I didn't care." "I just liked being with my dad." "Somehow the silence seemed to connect us in a way that words never could." "The residents tend to the grounds as part of their therapy." "It takes some getting used to." "They're good people, though." "Daniel?" "Daniel." "Richard!" "You're here!" "Richard for my birthday." "Who?" "Richard, who?" "Who?" "Who?" "Who?" "Richard, who?" "Who?" "Daniel, Daniel, it's Julianna." "It's my daughter." "Your niece." "Julianna." " Ha, Julianna." " Happy birthday, Uncle Daniel." "Ha-ha-ha." "Richard." "It's my birthday." "I have your pictures, Julianna." "I have your pictures." "We have a present for you." "A puzzle?" "A puzzle, Richard?" "Not just a puzzle." "A puzzle and a pinwheel." "A pinwheel!" "Thank you, Richard." "Yes." "Orange." "Outside?" "Outside, Richard?" "You wanna go outside?" "All right, we'll go to, uh, McEIliot's." " We'll walk out there for an ice cream." " Ice cream!" "Oh, no." "No, no, we can't." "Daniel doesn't like ice cream." "Aw." " I do like ice cream, Richard." " I'm only kidding." " I know you like ice cream." " Ahh!" "You love ice cream." "All right, come on." " Here you go." "Got it?" " Ah!" "Here you go." "It's my birthday." "Lollipop." "It's my birthday." "You like it?" "Oh!" " All right, Daniel." "Okay, wait, wait." " Ice cream." "Ice cream." " My ice cream." "My ice cream." "Ugh!" " It's okay." "Daniel." "Daniel!" "Daniel!" "Leave it, I'll get y..." "Ice cream on the floor." "Ice cream on the floor." "Would you go get him another cone?" " Yeah." " I need ice cream, Richard!" "It's my birthday, Richard." "It's my birthday!" "Ice cream, Richard!" "Ice cream, Richard!" "Stop!" "Stop it!" " I need it!" " Stop it!" "Stop it!" " Here we go." " Ice cream!" "Aah!" " Richard!" " Okay, okay." "I've got some ice cream." "Birthday ice cream." "That's good, Richard." "I'm so sorry." "He hasn't done anything like that..." "I'd often heard my father talk about how difficult life was for Daniel." "But I never really understood it until now." " Yeah, there you go." " Heh." "Orange." "On the walk back, Daniel acted like nothing had happened." "Other way." "Other way." "On the ride home, my dad told me that Uncle Daniel used to live with him and Mom before we were born." "But after a while, it became too difficult." "When we got home, everything looked the same." "But it wasn't." "Before today, Daniel had always been just a name to me." "Now he was part of the family." " Hey." " Hey." "How'd it go?" "I'm glad I went." "I'm glad you went too." "Trina, it's Sunday." "What are you doing mopping the floor?" "Patty Loski invited us over for dinner Friday night." "Shouldn't she be mopping her floor?" "Or did she ask to borrow ours?" "Nervous energy." " Did she invite all of us?" " Yes, she did." "Even our friend Sal Monella?" "Richard." "Why, after all these years?" "Well, she said she felt really bad that they hadn't invited us before and apparently they want to get to know us better." "And you wanna go?" "Well, she insisted." "And I think it would be really nice." "All right." "We'll go." "I wasn't too thrilled about dinner with the Loskis but I could see it meant a lot to my mother." "At school the next day, I couldn't seem to concentrate." "My thoughts kept running back to Daniel." "I wondered what my grandparents had gone through having a son like him when reality interrupted." " Bryce Loski likes you." " What?" "He's got a big crush on you." "What are you talking about?" "Bryce Loski does not have a crush on me." "Oh, yeah?" "In science, I caught him staring at you." "He said it was because there was a bee in your hair." "Is that the lamest cover-up or what?" "Maybe there was a bee." "The only bee you're attracting is B-R-Y-C-E." "I'm telling you, that boy is lost in love land." " Come on." " Where?" "I saw him sneaking off with Garrett." "Come on." "Are you freaking mental?" "Juli Baker." "You hate her." "That's what's so weird." "I don't think I do." "I can't stop thinking about her." " You got it bad, man." " What do I do?" "You gotta nip this in the bud." "They're not?" "You feel guilty because of the egg thing." "Yeah, and I insulted her yard." "Exactly." "The place is a dump anyways." "Her dad's got a retarded brother and all their money goes to helping him." "A retard?" "Well, that ought to tell you something." " About what?" " About Juli." "What are you saying?" "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, my friend." " Oh, heh." "Yeah." "Right." " Yeah." "I'll talk to you later." "Okay." "I'm sorry." "I thought..." "It's okay." "It's fine." "And it was." "Because now my confusion was gone." "I was sure I no longer liked Bryce Loski." "Mom, are you trying to make the Bakers feel totally worthless?" "I want it to be nice." " And why aren't you dressed?" " I'm going." "I wanted to look good for Juli." "But I didn't want her to think that I wanted to look good for her." "It was a fine line." "A very fine line." "Bryce, they're here." "Come on down." "Coming!" "Hey, come on in." " Come in, come in." " There goes the waistline." "I'm glad you could make it." "Lynetta, Steven, company's here." " Coming!" " What is this?" "Homemade pie?" "Yes, it's pecan and blueberry cheesecake." "Let's take them to the kitchen." " Hi, guys." " Hey, looking good." " This is my dad." " Hi, I'm Lynetta." " Hi, nice to finally meet you." " Nice to meet you too." "Hey, big guy." "Hey, Steven." "How are you?" "We should've done this a long time ago." "Come on in." "This is a cool place." "Yeah, it's all right." "Come on, I'll show you my room." "You gotta hear this new song we wrote." "It's so good." "Hi." "You look nice." "I heard you and Garrett making fun of my uncle in the library." "And I don't wanna speak to you." "Not now, not ever." " And I say you can." " But what you're proposing would require a perpetual-motion machine, so it's not possible." "If you had two opposite charged poles with a neutral conductor..." "Perpetual motion?" "Here I was, dying inside, and they were talking about perpetual motion." "And how did Juli know about all that stuff?" "Come on, everybody, dinner's ready." "Lynetta!" "Dinner!" "Juli, can I talk to you?" "It was wrong, what Garrett said." "I know it." "Did you know it was wrong when he said it?" "Yeah." "I wanted to punch him." "But we were in the library." "So instead you just agreed with him and laughed." "Yeah." "Then that makes you a coward." "I had to sit across from Juli for an entire dinner." "My dad was right." "We should have barbecued." "I just want to say how wonderful it is to have you share a meal with us." "May it be the first of many." "Wrong pipe." "Well, we couldn't be happier." "We are just all so thrilled to be here." "Juli, you did a really nice job on your yard." "Thanks." "Chet was a big help." "Yeah, I know." "You gotta tell me your secret." "I can't get him to do a thing around here." " Steven." " I kid." "I'm telling you, the neighborhood is really coming to life." "I mean, that new house is taking shape." "Which one?" "You know, the one where they cut down that big ugly tree." "I wanted to say that a lot of people liked that tree, but I didn't." "I didn't want to go against my dad." "Some people thought that tree was the jewel of the neighborhood." "Yeah, well, there's no accounting for taste." "So, Matt, Mark, Mark, Matt..." "You guys are, uh, gonna be graduating soon, huh?" "Yeah, thank God." "You don't like high school?" " You kidding?" " No." "High school was the best time of my life." " Not for us, no." " Yeah, we've had enough of that scene." "Ah." "So college is probably out of the question, huh?" "No, it's a possibility." "They've actually been accepted at several places already." " Yes, they have." "Really?" "Well, that's good." "But, um, we're gonna give music a shot first." " Really?" " Oh, they are very talented." "Oh, their band is really boss." "They did a bunch of demos and they're really cool." "Thanks, Lyn." "When Steven and I first met, he was playing in a band." "You played in a band?" "He was a wonderful saxophone player." " Cool." "You still play?" " Well, I..." "Well, if you want, you can come jam out with us sometime." "Uh, you..." "No, I mean..." "Heh." "That's not me anymore." "Have you boys ever performed in front of an audience?" "A lot of times." "The more Matt and Mark talked about their musical exploits the quieter my dad got." "He tried to plaster on a smile now and then but underneath he seemed really sad." "But my parents didn't like him at first." "Republicans fought like crazy against the New Deal." "The rest of the evening was painless enough." "But through it all, Juli didn't say a word to me." "Never even looked at me." "Until she was about to leave." "I'm sorry I was so angry when we first came in." "I think everyone had a good time." "Your mom was really nice to invite us." "See you." "Her apology made things worse." " Hey, wait for me." " I knew I wasn't forgiven." "It was like I wasn't even important enough to hold a grudge against." "Well, I think they're a delightful family." "Those boys were nothing like I expected." "I thought they were very nice young men." " Hoodlums." " What?" "How you think they can afford all that recording gear?" "Steven, please." "You can't just make an accusation like that." "Don't be so naive, Patsy." "Do you know how expensive it is to record a demo?" "They're probably stealing hubcaps, for chrissake." "You are such an asshole." "What is the matter with you?" "Go to hell." "Don't you talk to me like that." "Steven, stop!" "Nobody talks to me like that in my own house!" " Stop!" "I'd seen my father angry before, but this was different." "As I lay in bed that night I thought about how my dad always looked down on the Bakers." "And how he'd called them trash and made fun of Mr. Baker's paintings." "And now I realized he was just mad at himself." "But why?" "Juli called me a coward." "Was it possible my dad was a coward too?" "I didn't know." "What difference did it make?" "Juli Baker was out of my life." "Or, more accurately I was out of hers." "As I was getting dressed for the Loskis' dinner party I found myself staring at the painting my father had given me and became furious all over again." "Bryce had never been a friend to me, ever." "He hadn't taken my side about the tree he'd thrown away my eggs and he made fun of me at my uncle's expense." "When my mother called that it was time to go..." "Juli, let's go, we're late!" "I went out with every intention of telling her that I wasn't going to the Loskis." "Please hold these." "I need to check my hair really quickly one more time." " Your hair is perfect." " Really?" "But she looked so happy and she'd gone to so much trouble over the pies that I couldn't." "Ooh!" "Oh, my gosh." "Oh, God, what a disaster." "Okay." "Here, hold one, and you hold this." " I don't wanna hold it." " I won't have you hold it." "Let's go, boys." "But that didn't mean I had to be nice to Bryce." "And I don't wanna speak to you." "Not now, not ever." "It felt good to take charge." "I felt strong, in control." "I told Bryce what I thought and I was determined not to talk to him for the rest of the evening." "At dinner it struck me that we were sharing a meal with a group of strangers." "We'd lived across the street from the Loskis for years but except for Chet, I didn't know these people at all." "Mr. Loski was clean and smooth on the outside but it seemed like there was something rotten buried just beneath the surface." "By the end of the evening, all I felt was detached, neutral." "No fireworks, no leftover anger no flutters, nothing." "See you." "I went to bed that night feeling peaceful." " You okay?" " Yeah." "I was grateful that I had the family I had." "And it felt good to no longer care about Bryce Loski." "The dinner with the Bakers had taken its toll on me." "Then the annual school fundraiser arrived and I found myself with a whole new set of problems." "I was a Basketboy." "To fully appreciate the humiliation of being a Basketboy you need to know that the chosen few are auctioned off in front of the student body to the highest-bidding females." "Yes, technically, each of us comes with a lunch in a basket but let's not kid ourselves." "This was a beefcake parade." "There he is, my idol." "One word, you're a dead man." "No, man, I'm serious." "Listen, you won't believe this." "What?" "Two of the hottest chicks are fighting over you." " What are you talking about?" " Sherry is breaking up with Mitch." "She and Melanie are having a bidding war over you." "I don't care." "Are you nuts?" "Sherry dumped Mitch because of you." "You're my idol." "As comforting as it was to be Garrett's idol it didn't diminish the horror of being Basketboy number nine." "And my only hope was that a giant tornado would destroy the school before the event." "It was a long shot." "Welcome, everyone to this year's Mayfield Boosters Club Auction." "Once again we are pleased to present 20 of Mayfield's finest young men..." " Bryce, Bryce, Bryce." " What are you doing here?" " Juli's in the third row." " So?" " So she's got a wad of cash." " Bullshit." " Bull-true." "I saw her counting it by her locker." "And now please give a big Mayfield School welcome to your 1963 Basketboys." "Juli with cash?" "What did this mean?" "Was it possible she was gonna bid on me?" "First up, we have Raymond Hughes." "Raymond's on the chess team and his hobbies include stamp collecting and the yo-yo." "Remember, when you bid you'll not only be getting the handsome Mr. Hughes you'll also be enjoying a lovely chicken-salad sandwich and what looks to be a tasty bean dip, and..." "Oh." "Excuse me, onion dip." "And a big slice of cherry pie." "Okay, who will start the bidding at $5?" " Thus began the bidding." " Anybody?" "Or in Raymond Hughes' case, the lack of bidding." "Very good, here we go." "Sold." "Sold." "Sold." "Come on." "Do I hear 10?" " Ten." " Ten." " Ten." " Peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich." "Fifteen." "Sold for $15." "Number eight is Eddie Trulock." "Eddie is a member of the debate team." "Now only Eddie Trulock stood between me and the auction block." "I wasn't interested in his hobbies or what was in his basket." " Let's start the bidding at $5." " All I could think of was Juli." " Anybody?" " What if she did bid on me?" "What if she got in a bidding war with Sherry and Melanie and lost out?" "No bidders?" "I was contemplating the horrors of this when..." "Eight dollars." "There you go." "Eight dollars, that's more like it." "Do I hear 10?" "Juli Baker was bidding on Eddie Trulock?" " Okay, 8 going once." " How could she bid on Eddie?" " Eight going twice." " How could she bid on anyone?" "Sold to Juli Baker." "Next is Basketboy number nine, Bryce Loski." "I knew I was supposed to step forward, but I couldn't move." "Step up, Bryce, don't be shy." "Better late than never." "Ha, ha." "Bryce likes to play baseball." "Oh, well, wait until I..." "Oh." "Well, it appears the bidding is underway." " Fifteen." " Twenty." " Twenty-five." " Thirty." "Forty." "Oh, my." "Fifty dollars." "Wh..." "Fifty going once." "Fifty going twice." "Sold to Miss Sherry Stalls for $50." "An all-time record." "Oh, the boosters will be very grateful for such a generous donation." "It's strange." "Here I was, having lunch with the hottest girl in school and I was miserable." "We're going up to the lake." "My dad has a cabin there and you get the most outrageous tan." "Because less than 20 feet away from me was Juli." "My Juli with Eddie Trulock." "She's laughing." "What was she laughing about?" "How could she sit there and laugh and look so beautiful?" "Bryce, are you all right?" "What?" "What are you staring at?" "Nothing." "Lunch is really delicious, Bryce." "Bryce, did you hear me?" "This is a really delicious lunch." "Can we not talk about tans or food?" "Well, what do you wanna talk about?" "I don't know, perpetual motion?" "Do you know anything about that?" "Perpetual what?" "I don't know what came over me." "It was like I was possessed or something." " Juli, I gotta talk to you." " What?" "What's going on, Bryce?" "What are you doing?" "Bryce, stop it." "Bryce, you didn't even make it to first base." "I'll kiss you." "Ha, ha." "Juli!" "Juli!" "Juli, wait." "Can we talk?" "Juli!" " What's the matter with you?" " Leave me alone, Garrett." "You get a date with the finest girl on campus and you blow it for Juli." " You wouldn't understand!" " I completely don't understand!" "We're talking about Juli Baker here." "Nightmare neighbor, know-it-all nuisance." "The coop-poop babe." "Shut up!" "Hey, have you flipped?" "What's the matter with you?" "You know what, if you're gonna be like this, I don't need the association." " Well, good, because neither do I." " Yeah, neither do I!" "As I walked home with the dirty dishes clanking inside my picnic basket all I could think of was Juli." "And I realized Garrett was right about one thing:" "I had flipped." "Completely." "Hello?" "Oh, heh." "Hi, Mrs. Baker." "Is Juli there?" "Oh." "I'm sorry, Bryce." "Juli doesn't wanna talk." "Please, Mrs. Baker." "I gotta see her." "I'm sorry, Bryce." "But I'm afraid she's locked herself in her room." "I tried to go to bed early that night but I couldn't sleep." "I watched her house from my window for hours." "I had to find a way to show her how I felt." "Monday morning, as I made my way into school I was deciding which of the Everly Brothers I'd rather marry when Dana Tressler forced Bryce back into my brain." "Juli." "The list is out." "There he is, number nine, your main dish." "Bryce Loski's not my main dish." " Oh, you're sticking to your diet." " It's not a diet, Dana." " I'm over him, okay?" " I'm glad to hear it." "Because rumor has it Sherry's already staking her claim on him." "Sherry?" "Sherry Stalls?" "Oh, Liz." "Macy." "The list is up." "That afternoon, I found myself obsessing about the Basketboy auction." "I could feel myself backsliding about Bryce." "But why should I care if Sherry liked him?" "I shouldn't even be thinking about him." "I had to rise above this." "Bryce Loski was no longer in my life." "On the morning of the auction, I was on edge." "I found myself, without even knowing how it happened, staring at my egg money." "I needed a strategy." "It was simple." "If I left my money at home, I'd leave temptation with it." "My strategy suffered a setback when I ran into Mrs. Steuby." "Julianna." "Julianna." "Hello, dear." "I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to get this to you but I keep missing you in the morning." "Mrs. Steuby, I don't want that." "You don't have to..." "Don't be ridiculous." "I'm gonna pay you." " I'm going to pay you." " I don't want that." "I don't want it." "Yeah, I want you to go out and buy yourself something festive." "Pedal pushers." "Ha, ha." " Mrs. Steuby." " Bye, dear." " Mrs. Steuby, I don't want pedal pushers." " No, no." "You'll look great." "It's okay." "It's okay." "No big deal." "Just pretend like I don't have it." "I hear you're planning to bid on Bryce." "What?" "Who told you that?" "No, I'm not." "Someone saw you with a wad of cash this morning." " How much do you have?" " It's none of your business." "And I'm not bidding, okay?" "I don't even like him anymore." "Oh, that'll be the day." "It's true." "Go ahead, waste your money on him." "I don't care." "And now, will you all give a big Mayfield School welcome to your 1963 Basketboys." "I could say I didn't care all I wanted but seeing Bryce walk out in his jacket and tie holding that picnic basket set my head spinning again." "Fifteen going once." " The auction seemed to fly by." " Fifteen going twice." "Sold to Macy Taylor for $15." "Before I knew it, Eddie Trulock was called." "Number eight is Eddie Trulock." "Which meant Bryce was next." "Eddie is a member of the debate team." "And his hobbies include fishing and model-airplane building." "Who will give me $5?" " Why isn't anyone bidding?" "He's so nice." " Exactly." "Nobody?" "Eight dollars." "Sold to Juli Baker for $8." "How did this happen?" "Was it because I felt bad for Eddie?" "Or was it because I couldn't trust myself with Bryce?" "As I made my way to the multi-purpose room I contemplated the startling turn of events." "Here I was, about to have lunch with Eddie Trulock while the boy I mooned over for half my life was going to share a meal with my mortal enemy." "I wanna thank you for bidding on me." "It was touch-and-go there for a while." "No, I wanted to." "This will be fun." " I hear you like building model airplanes." " Yeah." "My father and I just finished a Russian MiG-19." "It was made in 1955." "MiG's first supersonic fighter." "Tricky because the cockpit was recessed..." "I tried to give Eddie my full attention." "But it was difficult, because Bryce was right behind him." "Eddie was saying something about intake valves when out of nowhere, Bryce stood up and marched straight towards me." "Hey, Juli, I gotta talk to you." "What are you doing?" "He was going to kiss me." "To kiss me." "All my life I've been waiting for that kiss." "But not like this." "Not this way." "I pedaled home so hard, I thought my lungs would burst." "Julianna?" "Julianna." "Honey?" "What's wrong?" "I can't." "Sweetheart you can tell me." "Bryce tried to kiss me." "He did?" "In school." "In front of everybody." "Mom, please don't get it." "It's probably him." "Sweetheart maybe you should talk to him." "I can't." "I can't." "Bryce wouldn't leave me alone." "He kept calling on the phone." "And knocking on the door." "He even snuck around the house and tapped on my window." "Juli!" "Please, I gotta see you!" "Come on out, just for a minute!" "Why didn't he understand that I just wanted to be left alone?" "Please!" "After two days, Bryce stopped." "And I thought it was finally over." "Then, one afternoon, I was coming into the front room to read when I heard a noise in the yard." "Hey, what's he doing?" "Juli, calm down." "I gave him permission." "Permission?" "Permission for what?" "He's digging a hole." "I told him he could." "But why?" "I told him he could." "It was torture seeing him dig up my grass." "How could my father let him do this?" "Bryce knew I was there too." "He's gone." "A tree?" "He's planting a tree?" "Is it a?" "I didn't really need to ask." "I could tell from the shape of the leaves and the texture of the trunk." "It was a sycamore tree." "When she walked out of the door, I thought back to the first time I saw her." "How could anybody, ever, have wanted to run away from Juli Baker?" "He looked at me with those eyes." "Those once again dazzling eyes." "And I knew that Bryce Loski was still walking around with my first kiss." "But he wouldn't be for long." "As we stood there, I realized that all these years we never really talked." "Do you need some help?" "Yeah." "But that day, we started." "And I knew we'd be talking for a long time." "Let's do it from the beginning again." "You ready?" "And action." "Juli, can we talk?" " What's going on?" " And..." "Oh, God." "Oh, God, here we go." "The scene where we're doing the Basketboy thing where we almost kiss, that one was so hard." "Bryce, what are you doing?" "Mm..." "Stop it." "Ha, ha!" "And then I leave?" "Ha, ha." "God." "You gotta be serious about this." "You can't be giggling during this." " Okay." "Okay." " Sorry." "Can't be Giggleville." "Let's do it again." "No giggling." "It's supposed to be we're talking and he comes up and tries to kiss me." "It was really hard." "I had to wait until he got there and then I'm like:" "Oh, it was so embarrassing." "And action." "Juli, I gotta talk to you." "We don't actually kiss." "It's a near kiss." "I try to kiss her and then she runs out." "I was kind of confused when I read that." "Because she wanted the kiss the entire time, then when I try she runs." "He gets up and, like, walks towards me and says, "Can I talk to you?" And he grabs me and he goes like:" "And then I have to run away." "But we kept laughing." "I tripped on the cloth." "It was so funny." "Oh, my gosh." "It was so hard to keep a straight face." "It was so embarrassing." "Just turn around." "That was so weird." "I thought the sniffing hair was weird, when I had to sniff his hair in one scene but that was really weird." "That was really fun to film but it was really awkward as well." "Then Madeline was trying to not laugh." " Why are you smiling?" " Cut." " What are you doing?" " I'm sorry." "Ha, ha." "It was so hard not to laugh." "I had to have Callan..." "He was off camera." "I'm like, "Turn around!"" "What are you doing?" "Stop." " Ha, ha." " And cut." "One of the kids, who played Eddie Trulock who ended up being chosen by Juli at the Basketboy thing he told Madeline and I that my look when I was trying to kiss her was like:" "Show him your face." "You see... coming towards you and you're supposed to be serious." "Okay, picture's up." "I had to run out after and I'd stay there for a bit after she'd run away." "And we had all the really nice extra kids over there and they were saying, like, "Ooh." "Bryce." "Bryce."" "Bryce, stop." "Bryce, you didn't even make it to first base." "Hey, Bryce, I'll kiss you." " Nice job, make-out artist." " Hello, lover boy." "And cut." "Good." "Okay." "Good." "Very good, Cal." "Sometimes Rob will yell a direction, like, "Try it like that!"" "Because he's in the other room." "I was like, "We're not gonna kiss, right?" "We're not, right?"" "Then we did the scene and he's like:" ""Okay, Callan, this time I want you to actually kiss her."" " Cal?" " Yes?" "On this time, I want you to really kiss her." " No, I'm kidding." " He's kidding." " Ha, ha!" " What?" "My face drained." "I'm just like:" "And I looked at Callan." "I'm like, "What?"" "It was so funny." "They got me really good." " Oh, my gosh." "That was scary." " Ha, ha." " Good one, Rob." " Who put you up to that?" "But the sad thing was, my mom and dad put him up to it." "Oh, gosh." "That was so embarrassing."
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Introduction {#sec1}
============
Infectious endocarditis (IE) denotes infection of the endocardial surface of the heart and implies the physical presence of microorganisms in the lesion. Although the heart valves are most commonly affected, the disease may also occur within septal defects or on the mural endocardium but also on intavasculary implanted foreign materials such as valvular prostheses or pacemaker electrodes. Despite medical advances, IE remains a life-threatening disease with substantial morbidity and mortality. Its diagnosis and treatement are still a major challenge in clinical practice. In developped countries, Chronic rheumatic valvular disease has been supplanted by mitral valve prolapse with mitral regurgitation and degenerative aortic valve disease as the leading cardiac conditions predisposing to bacterial endocarditis in adults \[[@cit0001]\]. Nosocomial endocarditis associated with therapeutic interventions such as implanted devices, dialysis shunts is increasing in frequency. Many studies found that Staphylococcus aureus was the most common pathogen throughout much of the world \[[@cit0002]\]. In Sub-Saharan Africa, IE is recongized as a disease associated with rheumatic heart disease. Although many factors have altered the epidemiology of IE while maintaining its incidence: an aging population with degenerative valvular disease, increasing number of valve replacements and medical intervention \[[@cit0003]\]. The objective of this work was to study the epidemiological, clinical features, diagnostic techniques currently used in medical practice and the range of micro-organisms that are responsible.
Methods {#sec2}
=======
This was a retrospective study conducted at the cardiology, paedriatrics, Internal medicine, Infectious diseases and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Departments of Principal Hospital of Dakar over a period of 10 years (January 1^st^2005 to December 31^st^ 2014). We include all patients who were admitted with manifestations of definite or possible IE according to the extended DUKE criteria \[[@cit0004]\]. We collected and analyzed epidemiological, clinical, paraclinical and outcomes data of patients. We studied data on age, gender, past history including history of medical interventions, predisposing heart disease and underlying disease. We sought the presence of fever, cardiac murmur and extracardiac symptoms of EI such vascular and immunological phenomena (Osler\'s nodes, Janeway lesions, splinter hemorrhages etc.). All patients had a complete physical examination and a laboratory assessment. Blood cultures were done for most of patients and the other tests included urine examination, renal function and the usual laboratory parameters of inflammation such as C-Reactive Proteine, Erythrocyte sedimentation rate and fibrinogen. On the ECG we looked for chamber enlargement, rhythm and conduction abnormalities. Doppler echocardiography were performed for all patients for the demonstration of endocardial involvement and the assessment of left and right ventricular function and tissue destruction. Current aspects of antibiotics therapy were evaluated as well as evolution during hospitalization. The studied parameters were entered into an electronic questionnaire using Epi Iinfo version 6.0 of the World Health Organization. Data analysis was performed using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). Quantitative data were expressed as mean± standard deviation. Qualitative data were expressed as percentage.
Results {#sec3}
=======
We included 42 patients. Hospital prevalence of IE was 0.078% (42/53711). 27 patients (64.29%) were females and 15 patients (35.71%) were males giving a sex ratio (M/F) of 0.55. The mean age of patients was 27.5+/- 8 years with a range of 8 months and 72 years. Most of patients (54.76%) was under 25 years. Most cases were encountered in the department of cardiology (54.8%), paedriatrics (26.2%) and ICU (11.9%). The Diagnosis latency ie, the interval from the onset of symptoms to the definite diagnosis of IE was 29.97 days. Predisposing conditions to IE in our patients ([Table 1](#t0001){ref-type="table"}) were dominated by rheumatic valvular disease (64.3%). Six patients had endocarditis previously, 4 patients had a valvular prosthesis (9.5%) and 6 patients had congenital heart defects (14.3%). Predominant causes of bacteremia that were found in 27 patients were: dental caries (26.2%), urosepsis (26.2%), skin infections (14.2%) and Ear Nose Throat (ENT) infections (9.5%). For other patients no cause was found.
######
Predisposing conditions to Infective endocarditis
Predisposing conditions number Percentage
---------------------------------------- -------- ------------
Rheumatic heart valves 27 64.3%
**Congenital heart defects**
Tetralogy of Fallot 1 2.4%
ventricular septal defect 3 7.1%
Atrio-ventricular septal defect 1 2.4%
Patent ductus arteriosus 1 2.4%
Degenerative valve disease 2 4.8%
**Valvular prosthesis**
mitral 3 7.1%
aortic 1 2.4%
Other (diabete, hodgkin, Basedow, HIV) 4 9.5%
The most common presenting symptoms were fever (90%), cardiac murmurs (81%) and dyspnea (42.9%). The fever was above 38°5C in 86.8% of cases with high remitting pyrexia often associated with chills and night sweats in 6 patients. Weight loss was found in 22 patients (52.4%). Extracardiac clinical manifestations were dominated by vomiting (26.2%), abdominal pains (14.28%) and seizures (7.14%). Clubbing was found in 2 patients and 1 patient had splenomegaly. Mild to moderate anemia was commonly present (82.1%) with a hypochromic, microcytic picture. Neutrophil Leukocytosis was common (90%) and the Erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and C-reactive proteine (CRP) were elevated in 90% of patients. Renal function test results showed an elevated creatinine level in 17.1% of patients, proteinuria in 12% and microscopic hematuria in 1 patient. Blood cultures were negative in 50% of cases and positive in 21.4% of cases. The main organism found were Staphylococcus aureus (55.5%), Enterococcus faecalis (22.2%), Klebsiella pneumoniae (11.1%) and Escherichia coli (11.1%) [Table 2](#t0002){ref-type="table"}. Echocardiography found vegetations in 95.2% of cases, Chamber enlargement in 73.8% and mitral regurgiation in 83.3%.
######
Positive blood cultures
Micro-Organisms Number Percentage
----------------------- -------- ------------
Staphylococcus aureus 5 55.5%
Enterococcus faecalis 2 22.2%
Klebsiella pneumoniae 1 11.11%
Escherichia coli 1 11.11%
The mitral and aortic valves, in respectively 23 patients (57.5%) and 8 patients (20%), were the most frequent affected sites; there was 1 case (2.5%) of tricuspid valve endocarditis, and 1 patient (2.5%) had two valves affected; there was 3 cases (7.5%) of septal defects endocarditis and 2 cases(5%) were prosthetic valve infections. There was 4 cases of rupture of chordae. Concerning treatment, antibiotics, administred parenterally in sufficient doses, were used in 41 patients (97.6%). The average duration of antimicrobial treatment was 17.48 days. Penicillins (68.2%), cephalosporins (68.2%), aminoglycosides (87.8%) and glycopeptides were the most used. No surgical treatment was performed.
The evolution during hospitalization after a mean hospital stay of 21.45 days was favorable in 28 patients (66.6%). Complications were dominated by Congestive heart failure (CHF) (47.6%), neurological complications (31%) and major systemic emboli in 14.3% of cases. The complications are summarized in [Table 3](#t0003){ref-type="table"}. Thirteen (13) deaths (31%) were recorded, 8 of which were females (61.5%) and 5 were males(38.4%).
######
Complications
Complications Number Percentage
------------------------ -------- ------------
heart failure 20 47.6%
**Neurologic**
Stroke 6 14,3%
Cerebral abscess 4 9.5%
Meningitidis 1 2.4%
Cerebral hemmorrhagies 2 4.8%
Acute renal failure 2 4.8%
**Embolic events**
Splenic infarction 3 7.1%
Renal infarction 1 2.4%
Femoral artery emboli 2 4.8%
Septic arthritis 1 2.4%
In patients with negative blood cultures, mortality was 69.2% against 30.8% in patients with positive blood cultures. Mortality according causative organisms was 50% for Staphylococcus aureus, 25% for Enterococcus faecalis and Klebsiella pneumoniae respectively. Ten (10) deaths were due to CHF, 2 deaths to neurological complications (meningitidis and cerebral abscess) and 1 death was due to anaphylactic reaction following blood transfusion.
Discussion {#sec4}
==========
In our study the prevalence of IE was 0.078%. In Africa, different series show a higher prevalence around 1.6% \[[@cit0005], [@cit0006]\]. This difference is difficult to explain because criteria for diagnosis and methods of reporting vary with different series. Also, in our study all cases were definites IE, while in other series, only a small proportion of clinically diagnosed cases are categorized as definite. HASE \[[@cit0007]\] in Japan found a prevalence of 0.19% over 12 years-study. In France its incidence (0.0032%) has not changed appreciably over the past years according to REVEST\'s study \[[@cit0008]\]. These low incidences are probably due to a decline in the incidence of rheumatic heart disease and antimicrobial prophylaxis before selected dental and invasive procedures in most developped countries. However, the use of antibiotics for IE prophylaxis in procedures that can cause bacteremia is controversial. The mean age of our patients was 27 years. Our study confirms young age of patients with IE as has been emphasized in previous African works. IKAMA \[[@cit0009]\] and NEBIE \[[@cit0005]\] found, respectively, a mean age of 30.6 years and 32.6 years. In European an American series, patients with IE are typically older with a mean age around of 60 years \[[@cit0010]\]. A number of factors may relate to this difference in age distribution. First, there has been a change in the nature of the underlying heart disease owing to a decline in the incidence of rheumatic heart disease. Second, the age of the population has been steadily increasing, and people with rheumatic or congenital heart disease are surviving longer. In addition, such patients increasingly undergo prosthetic valve surgery, an important risk factor for IE \[[@cit0011]--[@cit0013]\]. Our study confirms female predominance as has been emphasized in previous african works \[[@cit0009], [@cit0014]\]. This female predominance relate to the higher incidence of rheumatic disease in women as noted in African literature \[[@cit0015]--[@cit0017]\].
In Europe and America men are more commonly affected than women with a sex ratio up to 2. This is close to what is found in some africans country like Tunisia \[[@cit0018]\]. Predisposing conditions to IE in our patients were dominated by rheumatic valvular disease (64.3%). Indeed, most of Africans series on the occurence of IE, have rheumatic valve as a dominant underlying disease \[[@cit0014], [@cit0019]\]. In high income countries, currently, patients with degenerative valve disease, congenital heart disease, implantable devices and users of illicit intravenous drugs rather than those with rheumatic heart disease, account for the majority of cases of IE \[[@cit0010], [@cit0020], [@cit0021]\]. Predominant causes of bacteremia that were found in our patients were: dental caries (40.7%), urosepsis (40.7%). Dental carries as a cause of bacteremia is more common in african series than urosepsis \[[@cit0009], [@cit0019]\]. In general, risk of IE is considered to be highest for oral or dental procedures in which the oral mucosa is penetrated and in which gingival or mucosal bleeding is likely to occur. The risk of bacteremia is substantially lower for invasive genitourinary procedures. Clinically, IE in Africans does not appear much different from that of high income countries. This has been emphasized by several authors \[[@cit0008], [@cit0014], [@cit0022], [@cit0023]\]. The picture of IE is dominated by fever and cardiac murmurs, found in our study, respectively in 90% and 81% of cases. Blood cultures remain the definitive procedure for diagnosing IE. Blood cultures were negatives in 50% of cases in our study. Similar findings were noted by LAKHDHAR and YAMEOGO \[[@cit0019], [@cit0024]\] versus 5% found by HASE in Japan \[[@cit0007]\] and 9% by HOEN in France \[[@cit0025]\]. These high rates of negative blood cultures in african series may relate to prior antibiotic therapy and also by the method employed.
IE is usually caused by Stapylococcus aureus. This has been emphasized by several authors both in Africa and Europa \[[@cit0019], [@cit0025], [@cit0026]\]. In our study, Staphylococcus aureus was the main pathogen and was responsible of 50% of death. This result confirms data from the literature. The utility of other blood laboratory tests in the diagnosis of IE is limited. Hematologic parameters are often abnormal in IE, but none is diagnostic. Anemia is nearly always present and usual parameters of inflammation elevated.
Echocardiography has become paramount in the process of evaluating IE. It is crucial in detecting vegetations, echogenic distinct masses from the adjacent valve with independent motion from the valve itself. In our study, vegetations were found in 95.2% of cases. This percentage is close to what is found in Africa, Japan and France \[[@cit0007], [@cit0008], [@cit0019]\]. As in many african studies \[[@cit0017], [@cit0019]\], mitral valves (57.5%) were the most frequently affected sites weither it is the aortic valves in occidental series \[[@cit0008]\].
Following the establishment of a diagnosis using clinical, microbiological, and echocardiographic methods, antibiotics should be administered in a dosage designed to give sustained bactericidal serum concentrations throughout much or the entire dosing interval. A prolonged course of therapy is necessary to eradicate microorganisms growing in valvular vegetations \[[@cit0027]\]. In our study, almost all patients was under antibiotics. Penicillins and aminoglycosides were the most used. Duration of treatment was shorter than indicated. The reasons for this were due to many factors including lack of avalaibility and inability of some patients to meet the high cost of certain antibiotics. No surgical treatment was performed in our study as in many other african series while it has become an important adjunct to medical therapy in the management of IE and is now used in at least 25% of the cases in occident \[[@cit0008]\].
Favorable outcomes, as seen in our work and as noted in literature, seems higher in patients with positive blood cultures than those with negative ones. As usual in african series \[[@cit0014], [@cit0019], [@cit0028]\], complications were dominated by cardiac failure (47.6%) and was responsible of 76.9% of death. Neurologic manifestations occur in 20% to 40% of the cases and may dominate the clinical picture, especially in staphylococcal IE. Stroke is the most common neurologic complication of IE, occurring in 9.6% of patients \[[@cit0029], [@cit0030]\]. In our work stroke was present in 14.3% of cases. The development of clinical neurologic deterioration during IE is associated with a two- to fourfold increase in mortality. Less common noted in literature and found in our study were 4 cases of cerbral abscess (9.5%) and 1 case of meningitidis \[[@cit0031], [@cit0032]\]. Mortality remains high in Africa around 31% \[[@cit0023], [@cit0024]\].
Conclusion {#sec5}
==========
Because of the variability in clinical presentation and the heterogeneity in both microbiologic etiology and the patient population, IE remains a challenging disease for clinicians. In Africa, where most health facilities are understaffed, the morbidity and mortality of IE remains high due to many reasons including inability to meet high cost of antibiotics and cardiac surgery which are rarely available. In addition, the costly treatment presents a huge financial burden on both the patients and the health system. Therefore, antimicrobial prophylaxis before selected dental and invasive surgical and diagnostic procedures should become standard and routine.
What is known about this topic {#sec5.1}
------------------------------
- In Sub-Saharan Africa, IE is recongized as a disease associated with rheumatic heart disease and Staphylococcus aureus is the main pathogen;
- Patients affected are young with a female predominance;
- complications are dominated by congestive heart failure and mortality remains very high.
What this study adds {#sec5.2}
--------------------
- The Diagnosis latency IE, the interval from the onset of symptoms to the definite diagnosis of IE remains long (29.97 days);
- Favorable outcomes, seems higher in patients with positive blood cultures than those with negative ones which represent about 50% of cases;
- Despite medical advances, No surgical treatment was performed in our study while it has become an important adjunct to medical therapy in the management of IE.
Competing interests
===================
The authors declare no competing interests.
Authors' contributions
======================
Djibril Marie BA, Mouhamed Cherif MBOUP, Nafissatou ZEBA and Sara Boury GNING designed the study protocol, participated in the data collection and contributed in analyzing the data and writing of the draft manuscript. Khadidiatou DIA, Awa Ndaw Fall, Fatou FALL and Pape Diadie FALL participated in data analysis and critically revising themanuscript for important intellectual content. All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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Q:
Using loops within CSV export - Ruby
I'm trying to DRY up my code and wondering if many people have experience with CSV's and ruby.
My code is below. It works just... Its awful.
I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on how I could do the following:
1 - How could I use a loop rather than explicit 1..10 that I've done. I did try a few ways but couldn't get them to work with CSV.
2 - Is there a nicer way to do headers in CSV?
3 - Any other ideas on how to make CSV code nicer?
I initially went with this
(1..10).each do |number|
end
However the csv system didn't like that one! It was thinking my end statements were incorrect however, I don't think this was the case.
Here's my code. If you have any bright ideas you're awesome! Yes I know it's awful, just wondering how I could do it better!
require 'csv'
class CampagignsCsv
class << self
HEADERS = [
'Job Title',
'Business Name',
'Business Contact Name',
'Location',
'Job Status',
'Created date',
'Last Modified date',
'# Positions',
'Description',
'Std/Prem',
'Referral code (To discuss)',
'Coupon code (To discuss)',
'Question1',
'Knockout?1',
'Correct Answer1',
'Question2',
'Knockout?2',
'Correct Answer2',
'Question3',
'Knockout?3',
'Correct Answer3',
'Question4',
'Knockout?4',
'Correct Answer4',
'Question5',
'Knockout?5',
'Correct Answer5',
'Question6',
'Knockout?6',
'Correct Answer6',
'Question7',
'Knockout?7',
'Correct Answer7',
'Question8',
'Knockout?8',
'Correct Answer8',
'Question9',
'Knockout?9',
'Correct Answer9',
'Question10',
'Knockout?10',
'Correct Answer10'
].freeze
def report
puts 'campaigns_report.csv created in reporting_output folder'
CSV.open("reporting_output/campagins_report.csv", "wb") do |csv|
csv << HEADERS
Paddl::Models::Job.all.each do |job|
csv << [
job.title,
job.employer.business_name,
job.employer.profile.full_name,
job.address,
job.status,
job.created_at,
job.updated_at,
job.num_of_positions,
job.description,
job.employer.account_type,
'null',
'null',
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:question] }[1],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:knockout] }[1],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:correct_answer] }[1],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:question] }[2],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:knockout] }[2],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:correct_answer] }[2],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:question] }[3],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:knockout] }[3],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:correct_answer] }[3],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:question] }[4],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:knockout] }[4],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:correct_answer] }[4],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:question] }[5],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:knockout] }[5],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:correct_answer] }[5],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:question] }[6],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:knockout] }[6],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:correct_answer] }[6],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:question] }[7],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:knockout] }[7],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:correct_answer] }[7],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:question] }[8],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:knockout] }[8],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:correct_answer] }[8],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:question] }[9],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:knockout] }[9],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:correct_answer] }[9],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:question] }[10],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:knockout] }[10],
job.job_questions.map { |item| item[:correct_answer] }[10]
]
end
end
end
end
end
A:
How's this?
...
job.employer.account_type,
'null',
'null',
*1.upto(10).flat_map {|i|
jq = job.job_questions[i]
[jq[:question], jq[:knockout], jq[:correct_answer]]
}
...
|
{
"pile_set_name": "StackExchange"
}
|
Use of cessation methods among smokers aged 16-24 years--United States, 2003.
Smoking cessation among adolescent smokers is relatively rare, with approximately 15.6% of smokers aged 12-19 years quitting smoking in a 4-year period (approximately 4% per year). Rates for failed quitting attempts among younger smokers are higher than those for adults (43%), with approximately 58% of high-school smokers having tried to quit at least once for 1 day or longer in the preceding year. To track the history of quitting behavior among smokers aged 16-24 years, Roswell Park Cancer Institute (Buffalo, New York) initiated the 2-year longitudinal National Youth Smoking Cessation Survey (NYSCS) in 2003. This report summarizes key findings from the survey regarding lifetime use of smoking-cessation methods. The findings indicated that smokers aged 16-24 years who had tried to quit were more likely to use unassisted quitting methods than assisted quitting methods; none of the unassisted methods are recommended by the Public Health Service (PHS) clinical guidelines for treatment of tobacco use and dependence, whereas most of the assisted methods are recommended for adults and have been determined to be effective. Many youths aged 16-24 years are trying to quit smoking but often underestimate the rapid progression to tobacco dependence; therefore, PHS clinical practice guidelines for treating tobacco use and dependence recommend that certain clinical interventions proven to be effective among adults be used in youth-based approaches to cessation. In addition, other components of comprehensive tobacco-control programs also increase smoking cessation and should be implemented at CDC-recommended levels to lower tobacco use among youths and adults.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
|
Search form
Winner of 2013 Norman Borlaug Award announced
A young Kenyan scientist who made major breakthroughs in combating the deadly aflatoxin mold contamination that occurs in stored grain, which has been a serious problem in Africa and around the world for decades, was today named the 2013 recipient of the prestigious “Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application, Endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation.”
Charity Kawira Mutegi, Ph.D., 38, who currently serves as the Kenya Country Coordinator for the Aflasafe Project for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), on assignment from the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), was named winner of the award. At the request of the World Food Prize Foundation, Mamadou Biteye, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Managing Director for Africa, made the announcement during the renowned African Green Revolution Forum in Maputo, Mozambique.
Aflatoxin, a naturally occurring mold, is a major concern for farmers and consumers worldwide; it is toxic to people who consume it either directly through contaminated grain, or through milk or meat if livestock have been fed contaminated grain. It is one of the most carcinogenic substances known.
Mutegi spearheaded efforts to identify the cause of, and solution to, a deadly outbreak of aflatoxicosis in 2004-05, fatal to 125 people in eastern Kenya who consumed contaminated grain. Her diligent research led to innovative solutions to avert future outbreaks and safeguard the region’s staple crop of maize. Mutegi is leading efforts for the development of a biocontrol product in Kenya that can be used to significantly reduce aflatoxin levels in maize. This works by introducing naturally occurring non-toxic strains of the fungus, which have a competitive advantage over the strains that produce the deadly aflatoxin, a technology that was developed by the US Department of Agriculture – Agriculture Research Service (USDA-ARS), and locally adapted for use in several African countries by IITA and partners. The non-toxic strains outcompete the toxic strains, thus reducing aflatoxin contamination in the maize crop. The microbial bio pesticide she and her team are developing – “aflasafe KE01” – is affordable for farmers, is natural and environmentally safe, and once applied to a field, the effects last multiple growing seasons, making it extremely effective.
“Mutegi is an inspiration to other young scientists around the world. She tackled a critical problem, and has effectively transferred her own scientific knowledge to farmers and policymakers to help improve food safety for the entire region,” said Amb. Kenneth M. Quinn, President of The World Food Prize. “Like Dr. Borlaug, she has put the needs of people first, and has shown persistence, innovation, effective communication, contribution to science, and application of that science to improve lives and livelihoods.”
The award is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, and administered by the World Food Prize. In 2011, during the 25th Anniversary World Food Prize Award Ceremony, Judith Rodin, Ph.D., president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced a $1 million contribution to the World Food Prize to endow the new award in honor of Dr. Borlaug, who did his groundbreaking research on improving wheat crops while working for the Rockefeller Foundation, and went on to found the World Food Prize. This year’s announcement is especially momentous as we near the 100th anniversary of Dr. Borlaug’s birth in March 2014, and also celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Rockefeller Foundation.
Mutegi will be formally presented with the $10,000 award on World Food Day, Oct. 16, 2013, in Des Moines, Iowa, as part of this year’s World Food Prize international symposium.
Mutegi is originally from Kenya and has dedicated her time and efforts to improving food security there.
During her studies of the 2004-05 outbreak, through support by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Mutegi compiled the first-ever report in the country that provided a holistic outlook on possible avenues for contamination, and also proposed an integrated approach to managing aflatoxin contamination along the maize value chain, including regulatory and policy measures. As part of her work, she facilitated the training of more than 300 agricultural extension officers, who then worked with farmers, and over 70 maize traders and millers to increase awareness and management of deadly aflatoxin. She reached over 46,000 farmers in education campaigns about aflatoxin.
At the same time, she has engaged the government and sparked Parliament to establish a committee to investigate sources of contaminated grain, create heavy penalties for traders dealing contaminated grain, and investing in education efforts directed at Kenyan farmers who contribute to 75 percent of the country’s maize production. She has also documented the extent of aflatoxin contamination in peanuts, and proposed affordable means to prevent it.
Mutegi is currently leading the Kenyan collaborative project funded by USAID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to develop the biological control approach as a long-term solution for managing aflatoxin.
Mutegi credits her success to her “supportive work environment, guidance from senior scientists, mentorship and my personal work ethics. I do share the United States Marine Corps’ perspective that ‘no one ever drowned in sweat,’” she said. “An extra effort towards a worthwhile course as to save the lives of numerous non-suspecting citizenry is indeed worth the effort.”
Mutegi said she has dedicated her life’s work to food security because she has seen the effects of contamination firsthand.
“The devastating effects of maize grain contaminated with aflatoxins on many Kenyan households cannot be understated. Several lives have been lost, tons of staple food destroyed, millions of shillings worth from the livestock sector have been lost; and by extension, several livelihoods have been destroyed through death and/or economic disempowerment,” she said.
“Having studied and understood the subject matter on aflatoxins, I was confident that the solutions were not far-fetched, but rather required a dedicated course. In addition, my desire to engage in identifying lasting solutions for the aflatoxin problem was propelled by the fact that I come from an area that suffers perennial risk to aflatoxin contamination and exposure. I therefore could not overlook an opportunity to be part of the solution.”
Mutegi was educated at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, where she received her Bachelor’s degree in Food Science and Post-Harvest Technology. She received her MSc in Food Science and Technology at the University of Nairobi. She earned her PhD at the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
}
|
Spinal neurenteric cyst presenting as burning feet syndrome.
Spinal neurenteric cysts are rare congenital cysts of endodermal origin. A 34 years old man presented with burning feet syndrome of two years duration. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed an intradural extramedullary cystic mass lesion extending from L2 to L5 vertebrae causing severe compression and displacement of terminal portion of conus medullaris and filum terminale to the right side. Additionally, tethered cord and filar lipoma were also present. Cystic mass and filar lipoma were resected along with release of tethered cord. Histopathology confirmed a neurenteric cyst. This case is reported in view of rare occurrence and peculiar presentation.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
|
Crystal structure of the secreted form of antigen 85C reveals potential targets for mycobacterial drugs and vaccines.
The antigen 85 (ag85) complex, composed of three proteins (ag85A, B and C), is a major protein component of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis cell wall. Each protein possesses a mycolyltransferase activity required for the biogenesis of trehalose dimycolate (cord factor), a dominant structure necessary for maintaining cell wall integrity. The crystal structure of recombinant ag85C from M. tuberculosis, refined to a resolution of 1.5 A, reveals an alpha/beta-hydrolase polypeptide fold, and a catalytic triad formed by Ser 124, Glu 228 and His 260. ag85C complexed with a covalent inhibitor implicates residues Leu 40 and Met 125 as components of the oxyanion hole. A hydrophobic pocket and tunnel extending 21 A into the core of the protein indicates the location of a probable trehalose monomycolate binding site. Also, a large region of conserved surface residues among ag85A, B and C is a probable site for the interaction of ag85 proteins with human fibronectin.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
|
Cape Town - The actions of truck driver Zain Small were lauded as heroic on Monday after he tried stopping a drunken motorist who drove into oncoming traffic on the N1 highway in Cape Town.
Had it not been for him trying to get in front of the silver Jaguar, or flashing his bright lights to warn others, lives surely would have been lost, said the city's safety and security mayoral committee member JP Smith.
The errant driver, in his early 70s, travelled at a speed of around 70km/h in the fast lane of oncoming traffic late on Thursday night.
Miraculously, the drama played out on the highway for around 6km without any collisions.
Traffic officials said the man's breathalyser result was 0.69, three times over the legal limit.
"That kind of behaviour comes from a mix of alcohol and testosterone," chirped Smith.
He said Small's bravery was "something you don't see every day".
'I don't know what went through my mind'
Small, 24, an independent distributor for Golden Crust Bakery, blushed at the praise.
He explained how he was driving home to Goodwood on Thursday when he spotted the silver Jaguar just as he got onto the highway.
He had more than two tons of bread in his truck.
Footage from highway cameras showed the truck making a U-turn when it was safe to follow the Jaguar.
"I don't know what went through my mind at that stage but as a Capetonian, and many mistakes in my life, I just decided I need to save this guy and other Capetonians as well," he said.
City officials got a call around 23:15 about a flashy vehicle and a white truck travelling the wrong way.
At first they did not realise the truck was trying to stop the Jaguar, said Smith.
The footage featured a number of hair-raising moments when vehicles narrowly missed hitting the Jaguar, either by swerving or by slowing down in time and changing lanes.
Charges laid
Smith said Small put his life in danger a number of times.
At one point, he managed to get in front of the vehicle and force it to stop.
"I tried to get him to open his windows but he refused and kept on going," said Small while looking at the footage.
During the cat and mouse pursuit, the Jag blew a tyre and later, hit a barrier.
Traffic officials soon closed in on all sides and the vehicle came to a stop. An officer took the car keys away.
The driver was charged with reckless and negligent driving, driving while intoxicated and possession of an unlicenced firearm.
"I am very grateful that I did my part. I was a nervous wreck and fortunately it ended well," said Small.
'Don't drink and drive'
Smith said this was not an isolated incident. Previous accidents such as this had resulted in the deaths of innocent motorists.
With the festive season approaching, Smith warned motorists to be responsible.
Motorists should preferably not drink even one alcoholic beverage when driving as it affected judgement.
"Don't do something that causes us to dispatch 20 traffic officers at you because by the end of that, there are a lot of supporting affidavits that are going to make very sure you will sink when you get to court."
The driver was booked in at Maitland police station and was apparently appearing in court on Monday.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Surgical specialty, surgical unit volume and mortality after oesophageal cancer surgery.
Mortality after oesophagectomy is lower in high-volume than in low-volume surgical units. Case series from cardiothoracic surgeons report lower mortality rates than those from general surgeons. We therefore used a national data set to investigate the effects of surgical specialty and volume on mortality after oesophagectomy. We analysed Hospital Episode Statistics for oesophagectomy for cancer (n=9034 cases), linked to data from death certificates, in England from 1998 to 2003. After adjustment for patients' age, sex and deprivation score, the odds ratio (OR) for death of general surgeons' (GS) patients, compared with cardiothoracic surgeons' (CTS) patients, was significantly high: 1.62 [95% CI 1.34-1.96] at 30 days and 1.38 [1.18-1.61] at 90 days. The odds ratio for high-volume GS patients was not significantly different from that for high-volume CTS patients. However, the odds ratio for low-volume GS patients compared with high-volume CTS patients was significantly high: 1.72 (1.40-2.11) at 30 days and 1.48 (1.26-1.74) at 90 days. Patients treated by general surgeons in low-volume hospitals had worse mortality outcomes than those treated by general surgeons in high-volume hospitals or by cardiothoracic surgeons. This is important because a majority of patients who underwent oesophagectomy for cancer were in this high-mortality risk group.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Abstracts"
}
|
Van Jones, host of "The Messy Truth," says that President Donald Trump should give Susan Rice the Presidential Medal of Freedom for doing her job.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
List of Niki destinations
As of November 2017, Austrian leisure airline Niki served the following scheduled destinations. Niki restructured its route network in early 2017, decreasing from 34 to 20 destinations. Shortly after, a takeover of several Air Berlin leisure routes from Germany and Switzerland was announced. Niki declared bankruptcy and ceased all operations on 13 December 2017.
Destinations
Africa
Egypt
Marsa Alam - Marsa Alam International Airport
Morocco
Agadir - Al Massira Airport
Marrakesh - Marrakesh Menara Airport
Europe
Austria
Graz - Graz Airport
Innsbruck - Innsbruck Airport
Salzburg - Salzburg Airport
Vienna - Vienna International Airport base
Cyprus
Larnaca - Larnaca International Airport
Germany
Berlin – Berlin Tegel Airport focus city
Cologne/Bonn – Cologne Bonn Airport focus city
Dresden – Dresden Airport
Düsseldorf – Düsseldorf Airport focus city
Frankfurt – Frankfurt Airport
Hamburg – Hamburg Airport focus city
Hanover – Hannover Airport
Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden – Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden Airport
Leipzig/Halle – Leipzig/Halle Airport
Munich – Munich Airport focus city
Nuremberg – Nuremberg Airport focus city
Paderborn/Lippstadt – Paderborn Lippstadt Airport
Saarbrücken – Saarbrücken Airport
Stuttgart – Stuttgart Airport focus city
Greece
Kalamata - Kalamata International Airport seasonal
Iceland
Reykjavík - Keflavik International Airport seasonal
Italy
Catania - Catania–Fontanarossa Airport
Portugal
Faro – Faro Airport
Funchal – Madeira Airport
Ponta Delgada – João Paulo II Airport
Spain
Fuerteventura - Fuerteventura Airport
Ibiza - Ibiza Airport seasonal
Lanzarote - Lanzarote Airport
Las Palmas - Gran Canaria Airport
Málaga - Málaga Airport
Palma de Mallorca - Palma de Mallorca Airport
Tenerife - Tenerife South Airport
Switzerland
Basel - EuroAirport
Zürich - Zürich Airport focus city
References
Category:Lists of airline destinations
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Wikipedia (en)"
}
|
Q:
Why do we feel gravity on a plane?
How come a plane flying at constant velocity experiences gravity? If you were in a space capsule flying (not accelerating) you would feel weightless until you hit the ground. Why not a plane?
A:
This is the difference between flying and in orbit. In orbit, you are indeed falling toward the earth, but the spacecraft is too, and you're going fast enough that you keep missing the earth.
In an aircraft, because it's staying aloft due to lift, it is not falling. This is why you experience the pull of gravity on a plane.
Some aircraft are designed to feel weightlessness, see Vomit comet.
A:
Why do we feel gravity on a plane?
Exactly for the reasons we feel gravity when traveling on a train:
We're not free falling (the cabin floor prevents this to happen).
We're not at orbital speed which is about 28,460 km/h.
We're not flying very tight curves that could create a free fall (but only for a few seconds anyway).
Gravity and weight
Everything is weighty everywhere in the cosmos as soon as it is subject to some acceleration (e.g. gravity acceleration, but not limited to it) and it tries to oppose this acceleration.
So there are only two means to escape gravity acceleration effects:
Remove gravity with another exactly opposite acceleration. This is "the satellite way". The satellite own speed and its circular trajectory create (as viewed from the satellite) a centrifugal acceleration exactly opposite to gravity acceleration. Effects of both accelerations disappear.
Remove everything preventing gravity to fully act, this is "the free fall way". Gravity wants us to fall, then we just remove everything preventing us to fall, starting with the floor and/or the ground. When we jump from some height we're in micro-gravity for a short time, and then at the hospital if we underestimated the time. This is also what some aircraft do for 30s to train astronauts ("0G flight"). While the gravity still exists, its effects are cancelled by accelerating with the "gravity flow".
In both cases, the aircraft and the satellite experiences "micro-gravity" (which means a residual gravity in the order of some $\small \mu g$). Any mass subject to micro-gravity is (nearly) weightless.
For the physicists here, there is actually a single case, as a satellite in orbit is also in free fall and there is no centrifugal force, provided we select the appropriate frame of reference for the observer (an inertial frame). If we wanted to be even more rigorous, Einstein also intuited gravity is actually fictitious (if I may say) itself, an idea which led him to the discovery of the general relativity and the space-time curvature
Constant velocity vs constant speed
How come a plane flying at constant velocity experiences gravity?
Micro-gravity never happens in a trajectory at constant velocity.
The reason is because constant velocity is constant speed and also constant direction:
Constant speed means we are not free falling, else we would accelerate towards Earth.
Constant direction means we are not creating any centrifugal acceleration either, because it requires changing direction.
When satellites are in circular orbit, they are not at constant velocity, they are at constant speed.
Following their orbit, the direction of their displacement is constantly adjusted, hence velocity constantly varies, which allows them to create a centrifugal acceleration exactly opposite to gravity.
Can we create micro-gravity on a plane (or on a train) moving horizontally?
Horizontal doesn't mean "in straight line". It means at right angle from the direction of gravity (the local vertical), so when moving horizontally on large distances, we are actually following Earth curvature.
If the plane/train follows Earth curvature (hence changes direction constantly), we could in theory achieve micro-gravity, but at the condition we travel very fast, a bit faster than the ISS (27,560 km/h at the current time), about 28,460 km/h. In such case we are in orbit at altitude zero (orbital trajectory doesn't depends on altitude).
This is not possible in practical, an enormous amount of power would be required and everything would melt due to friction.
Micro-gravity in a plane flying a specific curve
But as explained in Can one fly up side down while a glass of water keeps full due to g-forces?, we can create micro-gravity by flying a specific trajectory. In that case, the speed we are missing is replaced by constant changes in direction along the curve. This gives nice videos, like the funny weightless dog with the two unperturbed guys:
Source
To sum up
Weightlessness is the consequence of being subject to micro-gravity which can be obtained:
At constant speed we need to follow a curve which creates an acceleration exactly opposite to gravity. This either requires moving at a large and specific speed (orbital speed) or doing relatively tight turns at limited speed.
In free fall we must follow the downwards trajectory and permanent acceleration dictated by gravity, which means, e.g. in 35 seconds, and 6 km lower, we are already moving hypersonic! Not so comfortable, and that's only for the first 35 seconds!
For feasible and durable micro-gravity at low altitude, the two techniques must be combined.
A:
You never actually “feel gravity” at all†, not in orbit, not on a plane and not on solid ground either.
What you do feel on ground is the earth pushing against your feet, with a force that exactly cancels out the gravitational acceleration. As soon as you stop that force, e.g. by cutting the ropes in an elevator, the gravitational acceleration would very quickly change your velocity, downwards, which of course inevitably brings you back to the ground (where it will hurtfully reaffirm its upward force...) in situations like an elevator. We're completely used to that upwards force as the normal state, so much that we don't even notice it as a force and instead talk about the “gravitational down force”, but physically that's not really the force that's there.
In a plane, the situation is much the same: the force you're feeling is the force of air flowing around the wings, pushing the entire plane upwards. Without that force, the plane quickly stops travelling at constant velocity and instead travels ever faster towards the ground.
Now, for a space capsule in orbit, this actually happens as well: here, there isn't any force counteracting the gravitational acceleration, so it is in free fall. But because it has a blisteringly fast horizontal velocity, there's not enough time for it to fall down onto the ground – it “misses the Earth” instead, and thus continues its orbit.
†The only place where you could actually feel gravity itself is close to a black hole, where your body would be getting stretched out by the tidal forces... but that never happens in homogeneous gravity field, and any sufficiently large/distant field is approximately homogeneous.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "StackExchange"
}
|
Palmer VJ, Chondros P, Piper D, *et al*. The CORE study protocol: a stepped wedge cluster randomised controlled trial to test a co-design technique to optimise psychosocial recovery outcomes for people affected by mental illness in the community mental health setting. *BMJ Open* 2015;5:e006688. One of the authors' names in this paper was misspelt. Konstancja Densely should be Konstancja Densley.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "PubMed Central"
}
|
Carrot chip
Carrot chips are carrots that have been fried or dehydrated. Some carrot manufacturers also refer to bagged, sliced carrots as carrot chips. The fried version of carrot chips is often referred to as carrot fries, especially when the chips are made in the shape of french fries. Fried carrot chips have an oil content of 35-40%.
Carrot chips are considered a healthy alternative for potato chips, as the two items have similar consistencies and uses.
Carrot chips may, in fact, become a very important food in some developing countries. University of Nebraska Scientists Ahmad Suleiman and Judy Driskell have been working with carrot chip recipes because they believe that the chips might help to combat vitamin deficiencies in children who are growing up in impoverished circumstances.
See also
List of carrot dishes
Vegetable chips
References
External links
Category:Snack foods
Category:Deep fried foods
Category:Carrot dishes
|
{
"pile_set_name": "Wikipedia (en)"
}
|
You are here
Golan Heights activist: “We dream of freedom”
Since the Syrian Golan Heights were occupied during the June 1967 War, the indigenous Arab population has resisted Israeli control. The Electronic Intifada contributor Adri Nieuwhof interviews Taiseer Maray, general director of the non-profit organization Golan for Development, about the situation in the occupied Golan Heights.
Adri Nieuwhof: Tell us about the activities of the Golan for Development.
Taiseer Maray: The Golan for Development was established in 1991 in the occupied Golan Heights. We are working on development projects as a method to resist Israel’s occupation and control. We provide basic services in many different projects. We cover most of the health services in all five Arab villages, and we increase awareness of health issues. We offer agricultural outreach services to the farmers. We have a theater project, and in our music center fifty pupils receive music lessons. We run a kindergarten for children, we organize teaching courses and activities for women. We also developed a project on alternative tourism. With our research project we monitor the Israeli settlements in the Golan and relevant issues in our society. We are innovative. For example, we have developed a new technique of growing shitake mushrooms on apple wood. We researched and published information about this.
AN: The media does not cover the situation in the occupied Golan Heights. What can you tell us about it?
TM: In 1967, before the June War, 130,000 Arabs lived in 139 villages and more than sixty farms in the Syrian Golan Heights. After the war, about 60,000 to 90,000 Syrians remained in the Golan. Within two months following the June [1967] war, the Israeli forces transferred the rest of the population. People were pushed out of their houses. Only about 6,300 Syrians remained in five villages, mainly farmers. People were frightened at that time. You don’t hear much about us because of our small numbers. In 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights. The people resisted, there were clashes and demonstrations. We were attractive to the press then. Israel tried to force us to take Israeli citizenship. We refused.
In the 1990s, Israel understood that putting pressure on the Arabs in the Golan Heights led to more unity and resistance. Now they want us to assimilate into Israeli society. We don’t face hard Israeli policies like in the 1970s and 1980s. They are trying to destroy our cultural heritage by forcing us to assimilate. The fight is about education, and against the silent attack on our cultural heritage and identity. It makes resistance more difficult. Israel tries to control the brains of the new generation through education. We have to study Hebrew, Zionist history, Jewish history. The culture of Arabs that is taught is in the best case half the truth. In Syria, we have a culture of resisting occupations, by the French, the Ottomans. Our resistance is reflected in our poetry, but the Arab poetry that is taught in school is about love. The Israeli educational curriculum brainwashes the youth.
AN: What are Israel’s motivations for maintaining its occupation of the Golan Heights?
TM: It goes back to the history of the Zionist movement. The Golan Heights has been part of Zionist ambition since its establishment. In the literature you find how the Zionists asked the British to include the Golan Heights in the plans for the new Jewish state. Water is the main reason for Israel to occupy the Golan Heights. The Jordan River springs into the Golan Heights. We in the Golan get about 1,000 mm of rain per year. About 25 percent of the water Israel uses is from the Golan Heights. The biggest water company from Israel, Eden Springs, bottles our water in a factory on our land and exports it worldwide.
Another reason is that we have very fertile land. Since 1967, Israel has used all the potential of the Golan Heights: agriculture, tourism, minerals, grazing land, vineyards. Israeli wine produced from grapes from the vineyards in the Golan Heights is sold in the Netherlands. Flowers grown by Israel in the Golan are exported, also to the Netherlands. There is an Israeli olive oil factory in the Golan. We have lots of Israeli industries on our land.
AN: What does the Israeli occupation look like for the Arabs in the Golan Heights?
TM: In the 43 years of the Israeli occupation we have seen different strategies. The first ten years we were under military rule. Hundreds of people were taken to jail for political resistance in the 1970s and 1980s. You were taken to jail for discussing politics. After the annexation of the Golan Heights in 1981, we resisted and had clashes with the Israeli military forces. They tried to suppress and break us. We resisted and still do not have Israeli citizenship. Israel’s policies change. Now, they opened the gates to work, to assimilate us into Israeli society.
We fight about land and water resources. We fight to cultivate our land, while the settlers have free access to land and free access to water. Arab farmers may only use 150 cubic meters per dunam, which is one thousand square meters. A settler may use 700 cubic meters for one dunam. Water costs us about $1 per cubic meter, settlers pay $0.25 cents. The last four to five years Israel has uprooted more than 10,000 apple trees. Israel claimed it was state land. People went to the land collectively and replanted it with apple trees.
The farmers in the Arab villages in the Golan produce forty percent of the apples and fifty percent of the cherries for the Israeli market. We want to export our produce to the occupied West Bank and Gaza, but we don’t have access to them. We want to export to Europe. Maybe Fair Trade could be an option.
The last four years we could sell about ten percent of our apples to the Syrian market — to Damascus. We negotiated that the apples can pass the demarcation line with Syria. And now Israel tries to use it for political pressure. To use the sale of our apples as an example of normalization. But our apples are a Syrian product, grown by Syrian farmers on our land with our water. The apples are sold to our government in Damascus.
We fight about the education system. We have a big fight about building areas and rights. The municipalities in the Golan Heights are not elected. Israel appoints the mayors. Since 1981 we are forced to pay taxes but we receive nothing in return. We pay more taxes than the settlers. Our population grew from 6,300 in 1967 to 21,000. Israel controls the land near our villages to claim it for future needs of the settlers. We are fed up with it. With a few thousand people we went to the mountain near the village and opened roads. We are going to hand out our land to villagers to build on it.
AN: Do you see similarities between the occupation of the Golan Heights and the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip?
TM: We are the same people under the same occupation. At present our reality is different. The political prisoners of the Golan Heights spend their time in jail with Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. People say the first Palestinian intifada was inspired by the resistance in the Golan Heights. The Palestinians supported our struggle. We had a six-month strike and could not survive without the support of the Palestinians from the West Bank, Gaza and Israel. The first Palestinian intifada was a sort of continuation of what happened in the Golan Heights in the 1980s. We had lots of demonstrations to support the Palestinians. In 2008, during Israel’s invasion of Gaza, we collected food and sent trucks to Gaza. We keep close relations, we have the same struggle against the same aggressor. We have the same policy, the same goals. Israel tries to limit our development.
AN: What is the dream of the Arabs living under occupation in the Golan Heights for the future?
TM: Freedom for all of us. We dream that the Golan Heights will be given back to Syria. That Palestinians should be liberated and have their own state. We dream of the liberation of the Jewish people from the Zionist ideology. We dream of a Middle East where we have equal rights. We are not against Jews. No, we should be equal. I want to see Israel become a free, democratic country with no fascism and racism. This is an important step for our liberation from the Israeli occupation.
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~ where a Dutch choir conductor writes in English
Movement in music: on Frank la Rocca’s “Miserere”
Singing, or making music in general could be described as: Executing movement by means of sound.
Movement in music can be achieved in many different ways:Going from one tone to another tone (higher or lower) is movement (image 1):
But singing the same tone for a long time also harbours movement, in the duration of the tone (image 2):
Think about what you see here: Every tone moves from the beginning to the end of its duration.
Drawing this observation wider, we can say: Outside its duration, music does not exist.
Or, to focus on what exactly is outside the duration of musical sound, we can even discover thatmusic moves from the silence that precedes it to the silence that follows it.
Being embedded in silence can be essential to music. Both the silence preceding and the silence following the music can be included in the awareness of the performance, in the execution of movement through sound. Not every type of music needs this, but contemplative music does in my opinion.
Miserere (Have mercy)
These thoughts came to me as I was going through the beautiful “Miserere“ (SATB choir, composed in 2004) by Frank la Rocca (1951, New Jersey). The examples above are indeed taken from the first measures of the alto part (with permission of the composer).
If you don’t know La Rocca’s Miserere, you can hear a performance of it on his website, sung by the Mt. Eden High School Chamber Choir, with or without visual access to the score.
My intention here is not to analyze and discuss the piece from start to finish, but to remind myself and my choir members of the intention or attitude this piece could use to really come alive.
Troughout the Miserere, La Rocca not only tells us about the silence from which music appears and in which it disappears, but he integrates silence as an ever- present element in the music. And not just silence as in “the absence of sound”. It is a living silence, filled with the possibilities of what can become. A silence that needs to be listened into as an essential part of performing this piece.
Besides the silence, all the movements, especially the ‘duration movements’ in the Miserere both have to be sung and listened to at the same time. Because what this music wants to be arises from the duration of its elements. Choir singers should not just count the time or the amount of beats each tone or chord requires, but they should really discover -whilst singing- the time each sound/tone needs to reach the next sound/tone. Or the next silence. Yes, this music should grow in time, for it is growing made audible.
Silence and sound
La Rocca’s Miserere is built upon an immense space of silence, from which it emerges as a questioning and answering sound. But it can only emerge by really listening into this silence. I try to remind my choir singers that they really have to listen into the silence, because it will give them the music. Several times there is a short action in one of the voices, an initial initiative of sound, which is being handed over to the silence or to a duration movement, but also to the other voices, to respond to it. The other voice(s) can only respond to it by listening to the initial initiative first. The first 4 measures illustrate this very clearly, in the alto and soprano parts (image 3).
As you can see, the alto begins with a very basic movement: the major second from b-flat to c, and immediately reversing this movement in the opposite direction, returning to the b-flat tone.
B-flat – c – b-flat
Here lies the first discovery for the listening choir singer: The starting tone (b-flat) is ‘home’, is designation of where we actually are. Like it or not, but the syllable “Mi”, sung here, sounds just like the English word “me”, with which we point to ourselves. From there we modestly reach out towards the surrounding world (the tone c), only to retreat humbly to our own position or location immediately. Put simply, this b-flat-c-b-flat movement says: Me – You – Me. To demonstrate this a bit more, I replaced the text of the above example with these personal pronouns (image 4):
Image 4
Notice that the sopranos also move along the tones f and d-flat, increasing the ‘homing tendency’ of the piece towards the tonality of b-flat minor (the tones b-flat, d-flat and f of course constitute the triad of b-flat minor). Thats’s why it seems justified to share these tones under the syllable “Me”.
Me – You – Me
The ‘You’ in this basic Me-You-Me movement can be anything really: another human being, God, the universe, or just plainly everything that we are not.
Why spend so much words on such a basic, even simple movement?
Because in a nutshell it contains the supplication that a Miserere (‘have mercy’) is: one reaches out from oneself (Me) towards something else (You). It is the seed of the responsible opposition, planted in silence. This seed is the starting point of the composition, and it gradually developes (grows) towards larger movements through the whole piece.
Back to image 3 (see above). In the first 2 measures the alto represents as it were a lonely Me, questing for a You, but returning empty handed for the moment. “Well”, the listening and responding sopranos think in measure 2, “maybe we should look further away: we’ll try it one octave higher”. At the end of their first response, it becomes clear that the sopranos actually repeat the initial alto-movement from b-flat to c, because c is the tone where they finish, whereas b-flat was their starting point. They remain reached out, in ‘You-position’, almost forming the words “Where are you?” Below them in the meantime, the b-flat or ‘Me-tone’ has stayed present in the altos, so the first 4 measures are particularly filled with the color of the interval between b-flat and c, both as a melodic (horizontal) and as a harmonic (vertical) movement. And, most importantly, they end opening up into the first silence.
There are about 14 silences, including the fermata on barlines. As we saw in image 3, the first silence is preceded by just 2 tones. The other silences are preceded by fuller chords (3 or more tones). All these chords sound as if they want to touch or influence the silences they are preceding, if they want to scratch the surface of these silences (that is to say, if silences would have surfaces to scratch), to verify their existence, or to find an entrance into them.
The last silence (in measure 91), before the music ends with a beautifully found ‘modern cadenza’ that evades all likeness to classic cadenzas but still sounds like one (see image 5), is preceded by a D-flat major chord with an added fourth, on the syllable “-bus”. This chord has a very specific sound, that really attracts the attention of the modern listener, who wants to be near it, hearing it out, because it fascinates. This modern listener has also learned to associate this chord with Eric Whitacre’s music, although I seem to remember hearing it somewhere in Alfred Schnittke’s (1934-1998) music. But I’m not sure about this.
To me it was a real discovery that Whitacre is not the only one using it. Besides him and Frank La Rocca, I have found several other contemporary composers from the North-American continent using this chord. It truly is a contemporary sound, and I’m curious to find out why exactly. What kind of quality lies in this chord that makes it contemporary and attractive? Maybe I’ll be able to write about this later.
Image 5
Well, this is as far as I want to follow these lines of thought. Not only because continuing would make this blogpost way too long, but also because music can hardly be described with words. Words follow thoughts in a more linear way, while music consists of many thoughts at the same time, used and abandoned at the same time. It would be possible to start an article on La Rocca’s Miserere from a lot of different angles, pointing to other organizing structures in the music, that could possibly also contradict everything I wrote here.
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She was the embodiment of irresistible force. Joanna Lumley, blonde tresses flowing, moved at the head of a legion of the British army's most doughty and romantic fighters whose warcry is Jai Mahakali, Ayo Gorkhali – "Glory be to the Goddess of War, here come the Gurkhas!"
She swept all before her: civil servants, MPs, ministers, even the then prime minister. Like some Boadicea of British decency and fair play she forced the last government into a climb-down so that all the former Gurkha soldiers who had served more than four years in the British Army now have the right to settle in the UK if they wish.
But has it now all gone terribly wrong for the actress who was born in Kashmir and whose father served for 30 years with the 6th Gurkha Rifles bringing her up as a "daughter of the regiment" before she turned to more prosaic activities like being a Bond girl, experiencing close encounters with Dracula, saving the world as a New Avenger and ending with a touch of louche living in Absolutely Fabulous?
The Home Office now estimates that since her famous victory in 2009, more than 7,500 former soldiers and their families have been given visas to settle in the UK. They have settled around garrison towns like Aldershot, Reading, Folkestone, Colchester, Catterick and Warminster. But Britain has not proved the land flowing with milk and honey as they had been led to believe.
Instead, according to the British Gurkha Welfare Society, Joanna Lumley's campaign has resulted in thousands of elderly and infirm Gurkha pensioners living in poor accommodation on paltry incomes.
"They are thoroughly miserable," says Chhatra Rai, the general secretary of the Gurkha charity. It would have been far better, he believes, if retired Gurkhas had been paid better pensions and encouraged to stay at home in Nepal.
"We told Joanna Lumley that. We are grateful to her for campaigning but entitlement to come to the UK was not the problem. There is also the pension problem. The whole situation is much more complicated than people realise."
There is not much room for complexity in British attitudes to the Brigade of Gurkhas, whose service to the British Crown goes back as far as 1815 and the days of the East India Company. They have served with immense courage and distinction in numerous conflicts worldwide and yet they remain one of the repositories of British imperial mythology, plucky little natives who had to draw blood once they had drawn their curved kukri blades in the service of their masters.
With what delight the popular press reported an incident only last month in which a Gurkha serving with the British Army in Afghanistan had severed the head of a dead Taliban warlord to bring home proof that the regiment had got their man.
The truth has always been more tricky. The Gurkhas, feared fighters from Nepal recruited into the British Indian Army, were divided in two when India became independent in 1947. Twelve battalions were transferred to the new Indian Army while eight battalions were taken into the regular British Army. The governments of Britain, India and Nepal under the Tripartite Agreement settled that the Gurkhas should receive the same pay and conditions whichever army they had joined.
The British Gurkhas were then based in Malaysia and Hong Kong. After 15 years they were given pensions which would allow them to retire and live as well as a middle-ranking civil servant back in Nepal. But then in 1997 Hong Kong was handed back to China and the Gurkhas moved to Britain. There they served alongside English soldiers whose pensions were three times their own. In 2007, the rules were changed to give Gurkha soldiers who retired after 1997 full pension rights. But there are still about 25,000 Gurkhas who retired before 1997 who still get only about a third of the pension that other British Army regulars receive.
What makes things even more complex is that there are thousands of ex-Gurkhas in Nepal who get no pension whatsoever, because they served less than the minimum 15 years. It is from this group that around 70 per cent of the new arrivals in the UK are drawn. Having no income at all beyond their savings, they rely utterly on the state to survive. Had they been paid even the basic pension, Rai argues, they would probably have stayed in Nepal.
The quality of life for many of these new arrivals is terrible," Rai adds. "They have no money. They are old and frail and have medical problems. They are separated from their family. Many cannot speak English and find it difficult to mix with the community. They are even intimidated by crossing the road."
One such individual is Man Bahadur Sunuwar, 67, who with his wife sleeps on a mattress on the floor of his Gurkha cousin Jit Bahadur Sunuwar, 70, in a cramped one-bedroom flat in Aldershot which has a tiny kitchen and bathroom.
"Life in the UK is very different from what he was told it would be like in Nepal," says Rai. He, like others, had been told their adult children would be allowed to enter the UK to look after them. But relatives are not eligible over the age of 18. Sunuwar's 25-year-old daughter has been denied a visa.
"We told the government that these would be the problems," Rai says. "If they had increased the pension it would have cost, we estimate, an extra £26m. It was a no-brainer."
The British Gurkha Welfare Society and other groups have now taken the pension disparity to the European court of human rights, arguing that it is wrong for someone like Chhatra Rai, who served in the British Army for 20 years before retiring as a Warrant Officer Second Class in 2005, to receive a pension of £290 a month, where his English comrades-in-arms get around £1,000. They also got lump sums of around £22,000 compared to his £3,000. "It doesn't seem right," he concludes, with considerable under-statement. It will be two years before the court rules.
Joanna Lumley, who had remained silent on the issue for some time, has just issued a statement in response to the plight of the Gurkha arrivals.
"We should remember that there would be no Great Britain, no National Health Service and no welfare state were it not for the blood spilt by Gurkhas and others to protect this country in much darker and more dangerous times than those we face now," she says, with her accustomed rhetorical flair.
Her campaign was a success. "It was a wonderful moment in our democratic history, where a public desire for justice turned into a massive campaign that changed government policy in the face of strong resistance from the Ministry of Defence."
She may have forgotten the law of unintended consequences. Political reality is a bit more serpentine than celebrity campaigners sometimes admit.
Celebrity campaigners
Bob Geldof: Africa
The quintessential celebrity campaigner and arguably the one who has achieved most for his chosen cause: raising awareness of extreme poverty in Africa. The former Boomtown Rat co-wrote the 1984 charity song "Do They Know It's Christmas?", organised Live Aid in 1985, Live 8 in 2005 and regularly uses his international fame as a platform to berate western politicians. Although criticised for his abrasive anti-diplomatic style, Geldof has been awarded an honorary Knighthood and the Man of Peace title for his "outstanding contribution to international social justice and peace".
Audrey Hepburn: UNICEF
After retiring from acting in the 1980s, Hepburn devoted her life to raising awareness of the plight of children in the developing world. As well as raising money in the US and Europe, she made frequent visits to Africa and Asia in her role as UNICEF "goodwill ambassador", and was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George Bush in 1992 for her efforts.
Wyclef Jean: Haiti
Inspired by Bob Geldof and Bono's work setting up the DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa) organisation, Jean set up his own non-governmental organisation in 2005. Yéle Haiti is focused on the development of Haiti through youth programmes in education, sports, the arts and the environment. In its first year, the NGO provided scholarships to 3,600 children. Jean's abortive run for Haiti's presidency in 2010 drew criticism, as did allegations that the charity has mismanaged donations. Jean admitted the organisation had "made mistakes" but said he had never personally benefited from the foundation.
Angelina Jolie: Refugees
When first appointed as a "goodwill ambassador" for the UN refugee organisation UNHCR, staff took bets on whether she would wear high heels on her first field trip – but Jolie quickly proved herself equal to the role. She has taken up politically divisive issues: she visited Iraqi refugees in Syria in 2009, has spoken out against the detention of asylum seekers along the US-Mexican border, and donated $1 million to set up a National Centre for Refugee and Immigrant Children in the US.
Mia Farrow: Human Rights
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30 Mass. App. Ct. 536 (1991)
571 N.E.2d 34
COMMONWEALTH
vs.
JOHN THOMAS McLEOD.
No. 90-P-1026.
Appeals Court of Massachusetts, Hampshire.
March 12, 1991.
May 7, 1991.
Present: BROWN, KASS, & LAURENCE, JJ.
Brownlow M. Speer, Committee for Public Counsel Services, for the defendant.
Ariane D. Vuono, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.
BROWN, J.
In this appeal from convictions of aggravated rape and kidnapping we face once more a situation where, but for the prosecutor's failure to stay within the bounds of proper closing argument, the defendant's appeal could have been dealt with in a summary manner.[1] Instead, we must witness another prosecutor "snatching defeat from the jaws *537 of victory." Commonwealth v. Kozec, 21 Mass. App. Ct. 355, 366 (1985) (Brown, J., concurring), S.C., 399 Mass. 514 (1987). See also Commonwealth v. Harris, 11 Mass. App. Ct. 165, 176 (1981). "We think it unnecessary to explain, once again, the permissible limits of closing argument." Commonwealth v. Sevieri, 21 Mass. App. Ct. 745, 754 (1986). We have now reached the point where we cannot allow appellate counsel merely to state that "the prosecutor could have chosen his words more carefully." Commonwealth v. Phoenix, 409 Mass. 408, 427 (1991). As this court and the Supreme Judicial Court have said too many times, "[I]t is long past time for prosecutors to prepare their closing arguments carefully in order to avoid the possibility of reversals of convictions because of prosecutorial error." Commonwealth v. O'Brien, 377 Mass. 772, 778 (1979), and cases cited. Commonwealth v. Mosby, 11 Mass. App. Ct. 1, 12 (1980).
The crucial question at trial in this case was whether the victim had consented to sexual intercourse, a matter which, as might well be expected, was hotly contested. The victim, in the course of her testimony before the jury, was "crying, sobbing, simply hysterical." In his final argument the prosecutor unfairly exploited the victim's expression of emotion, first by telling the jury that it was a "tragedy" that the victim "had to take the witness stand, sobbing and hysterical, and [had] to explain her whole humiliation in public," and then, after a bench conference prompted by an objection, by reiterating his belief that this (the victim's having to testify) was a "tragedy" and commenting that they, the jury, "[had] an opportunity to rectify that [tragedy]."[2]
*538 In determining whether reversal is required, we follow the four-part test set out in Commonwealth v. Kozec, 399 Mass. 514, 518 (1987). As noted in Commonwealth v. Cobb, 26 Mass. App. Ct. 283, 288 n. 7 (1988), seasonable objection, "[t]he first factor mentioned in the Kozec case, ... appears to be of large, if not necessarily conclusive, importance upon appellate review." In the present case, unlike Commonwealth v. Harris, 11 Mass. App. Ct. at 176-177, defense counsel made a timely objection to the prosecutor's initial excursion out of bounds. The colloquy at the bench conference[3] called pursuant to that objection should have alerted the prosecutor at this juncture that he was unwisely "sail[ing] unnecessarily close to the wind." Commonwealth v. Redmond, 370 Mass. 591, 597 (1976).
The prosecutor, however, failed to heed the warning signs and alter his course, but instead immediately proceeded again beyond permissible limits. The prosecutor's argument[4] suffered from the use of inflammatory language similar to that held as requiring reversal in Commonwealth v. Sevieri, 21 Mass. App. Ct. at 753-755, where the jury "were told by the prosecutor to approach their deliberations, not as impartial evaluators of the defendant's remarks and actions, but from the [alleged sexual assault] victim's point of view."[5] Cf. Commonwealth v. Harris, 11 Mass. App. Ct. at 176-177. Prosecutors should bear in mind that when the question is whether the defendant committed the crime, luxuriating in *539 the ghastliness of the crime and the suffering of the victim does not help to answer the question.[6] Such irrational and irrelevant comments "only serve to make it less likely that the jury will return a verdict based on fair, calm consideration of the evidence." Commonwealth v. Shelley, 374 Mass. 466, 470 (1978), and authorities cited. In addition, the combined effect of the prosecutor's two improper statements here was unmistakably to convey to the jury his personal opinion as to both the truth of the victim's testimony and the guilt of the defendant, in violation of PF 13(b) of Supreme Judicial Court Rule 3:08, Standards Relating to the Prosecution Function, as appearing in 382 Mass. 802 (1981).[7]
We again are reminded of the situation in Commonwealth v. Redmond, 370 Mass. at 597 (one of the Supreme Judicial Court's earliest advisories on improper argument), in which the court stated: "The defendant's version was not such as to excite admiration or sympathy for him. In these circumstances, particular care was needed to assure that the central issues were tried factually and dispassionately, without inflammatory diversions." See also Commonwealth v. Smith, 387 Mass. 900, 905 (1983). In the present case, the prosecutor not only "deliberately" went beyond permissible limits, as in Redmond, but, in addition, his subsequent remarks exacerbated the prejudice that may have arisen from his prior improper comment.
Our next task is to determine whether the judge's instructions[8] to the jury not to be swayed by emotion should "preserve *540 serve [the] conviction in spite of the error." Commonwealth v. Kozec, 399 Mass. at 519. We cannot say with confidence that the judge's instructions mitigated the effect of the prosecutor's appeal to sympathy. See Commonwealth v. Ward, 28 Mass. App. Ct. 292, 296 (1990). Contrast Commonwealth v. Porter, 24 Mass. App. Ct. 694, 698 (1987). They were "standard, not curative." Commonwealth v. Sevieri, 21 Mass. App. Ct. at 754.
We agree with the defendant that the judge's analysis of the impropriety, as he expressed it at the second bench conference, was sound and cogent, and his chastisement of the prosecutor was forceful. But all that was at the side bar, out of the jury's hearing. The instructions the jury actually heard from the judge were lacking in "capacity actually to reach to the trouble generated in the jury's mind." Commonwealth v. Hawley, 380 Mass. 70, 86 (1980). Following the side bar conference the judge told the jury that "any verdict of jurors will not be based on sympathy, pity, bias, or prejudice, but it will be on the evidence." In the final instruction, in pertinent part, the judge rather perfunctorily told the jury that "[t]he openings and the closings of counsel are not evidence" and that they were to "decide the case solely upon the facts you find from the evidence" and not "on the basis of bias, prejudice, sympathy, or pity, but upon the evidence." See Commonwealth v. Hawley, 380 Mass. at 85; Commonwealth v. Sevieri, 21 Mass. App. Ct. at 754. Compare Commonwealth v. Porter, 24 Mass. App. Ct. at 697-698; Commonwealth v. Cobb, 26 Mass. App. Ct. at 287. These "instructions were entirely bland, without even an effort to lay special stress on the boilerplate charge that closing statements were not evidence." Commonwealth v. Gallego, 27 Mass. App. Ct. 714, 720 (1989); nor did the judge give "explicit warnings" to the jury. Ibid. Nothing in the judge's instruction suggested to the jury (1) that it was not a "tragedy" that the victim had had to testify before them, (2) that *541 they did not have the power to "rectify" the purported "tragedy," (3) that the offending argument to that effect was to be struck from their consideration, or (4) that the prosecutor had engaged in misconduct in making that argument to them. See and compare Commonwealth v. Mosby, 11 Mass. App. Ct. 1, 10 (1980).
In these circumstances, we cannot say that the improper argument did not make a difference in the jury's conclusions. Unfortunately, again we find it necessary to call attention to that often repeated but seldom followed sage advice of the Supreme Judicial Court: "Advance preparation" is not only "indispensable to good argument" but also the key to proper argument. See Commonwealth v. Haas, 373 Mass. 545, 557 & n. 11 (1977). See also, most recently, Commonwealth v. Phoenix, 409 Mass. at 428, in which the Supreme Judicial Court stated: "We remind prosecutors again that `[a]dvance preparation would eliminate from our consideration most aspects of closing arguments constantly being urged as improper.' [Commonwealth v. Smith, 387 Mass. 900, 903 (1983)], quoting Commonwealth v. Haas, 373 Mass. 545, 557 (1977)."[9] Thoughtful and careful preparation would have saved the Commonwealth and this court much time and expense. Because of the prosecutor's failure so to prepare, scarce judicial resources have been needlessly wasted[10] and a victim witness will endure the emotional hurt of testifying again.
Finally, we think that in order to cure the particular type of ill found in this case a formal disciplinary procedure should be established.[11]
*542 We do not want to leave the impression that all trial prosecutors have committed similar sins. Many have never engaged in such "ill-advised rhetoric." Commonwealth v. Harris, 11 Mass. App. Ct. at 176. We merely point out that it is the disservice of the few, visited upon the many who have consistently maintained exemplary ethical conduct and a high level of professionalism, that tends to bring all prosecutors into disrepute. Justice Kaplan said it best:
"Members of the bar, however, would be most ill-advised to consider that each departure from the norm which is not so grievous as to precipitate a reversal of a conviction sets a new and less elevated standard for lawyers' behavior. The concern of the court in this regard has been expressed repeatedly." Commonwealth v. Johnson, 372 Mass. 185, 197-198 (1977).
The defendant's challenge to other aspects of the judge's charge is of no avail.
Judgments reversed.
Verdicts set aside.
NOTES
[1] For an example of a similar occurrence, see Commonwealth v. Chandler, 17 Mass. App. Ct. 1022, 1024-1025 (1984) (Brown, J., concurring).
[2] The first statement was in full: "I would suggest there are two tragedies here. One tragedy happened on July 16 when she was kidnapped and raped and the other tragedy happened on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, or, excuse me, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. And that tragedy was when [the victim] had to take the witness stand, sobbing and hysterical, and [had] to explain her whole humiliation in public."
After the bench conference, the prosecutor continued by saying: "Well, let me suggest to you that it is a tragedy what this woman went through, and she knew she was going to go through it before she took the stand. And albeit in some way, maybe a small way, maybe a larger way, you have an opportunity to rectify that" (emphasis supplied).
[3] In fairness, we note that the judge perhaps may not have heard the remark because at the outset of the bench conference he asked the prosecutor: "What did you say?"
[4] The second prong of the Kozec test asks, was the error limited to "collateral issues" or "did it go to the heart of the case ... ?" Commonwealth v. Kozec, 399 Mass. at 518. Commonwealth v. Cobb, 26 Mass. App. Ct. at 287.
[5] The argument in this case may have been even worse than the one in Sevieri because here the prosecutor not only was seeking sympathy for the alleged victim, but also inferentially attacked the defendant for asserting his right to trial and, arguably, seemed to be calling on the jury to punish him for exercising that right.
[6] To her credit, appellate counsel concedes that the second "comment was the equivalent of an exhortation that the jury had a duty to the victim to return verdicts of guilty." Commonwealth v. Sanchez, 405 Mass. 369, 375 (1989).
[7] We find the remarks improper without regard to the defense counsel's assertion that because of the interracial aspect of the rape there was a risk that extraneous issues would influence the jury, which these remarks could have exacerbated. Cf. Commonwealth v. Clary, 388 Mass. 583, 592 (1983) (remarks were calculated "to sweep the jurors beyond a fair and calm consideration of the evidence").
[8] The third prong of the Kozec test is "[w]hat did the judge tell the jury, generally or specifically, that may have mitigated the prosecutor's mistake ...?" Commonwealth v. Cobb, 26 Mass. App. Ct. at 287 (quoting from Commonwealth v. Kozec, 399 Mass. at 518); the fourth, "generally, did the error in the circumstances possibly make a difference in the jury's conclusions?" Ibid.
[9] Defense counsel, likewise, are not immune from criticism; they too must adhere to proper professional and ethical standards. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Hogan, 12 Mass. App. Ct. 646, 653 n. 10 (1981). See also Commonwealth v. Burno, 18 Mass. App. Ct. 796, 797 n. 1 (1984).
[10] The plea for prosecutors (and all parties) to steer clear of unnecessary error and to strive for a fair trial has been made on numerous occasions. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Paiva, 16 Mass. App. Ct. 561, 563 (1983); Commonwealth v. Young, 22 Mass. App. Ct. 452, 457 & n. 1 (1986) (Brown, J., concurring); Commonwealth v. Bodden, 24 Mass. App. Ct. 135, 141 (1987) (Brown, J., concurring).
[11] See, for example, the practice in effect in another jurisdiction: "This opinion should be filed separately in the office of the Clerk of this Court, and indexed against the name of the [prosecutor], so that, in the event that his professional conduct in any other connection shall become a subject of inquiry, this case and this record can be referred to for such instruction as it may yield." American Auto. Assn., Inc. v. Rothman, 104 F. Supp. 655, 656 (E.D.N.Y. 1952).
|
{
"pile_set_name": "FreeLaw"
}
|
---
abstract: 'We investigated the electrostatic interaction between two identical dust grains of an infinite mass immersed in homogeneous plasma by employing first-principles N-body simulations combined with the Ewald method. We specifically tested the possibility of an attractive force due to overlapping Debye spheres (ODSs), as was suggested by Resendes et al. (1998). Our simulation results demonstrate that the electrostatic interaction is repulsive and even stronger than the standard Yukawa potential. We showed that the measured electric field acting on the grain is highly consistent with a model electrostatic potential around a single isolated grain that takes into account a correction due to the orbital motion limited theory. Our result is qualitatively consistent with the counterargument suggested by Markes and Williams (2000), indicating the absence of the ODS attractive force.'
author:
- 'H. Itou'
- 'T. Amano'
- 'M. Hoshino'
title: 'First-principles simulations of electrostatic interactions between dust grains'
---
Introduction
============
Dust grains are quite common in astrophysical environments. They are thought to exist in, for example, interstellar molecular clouds, protoplanetary disks, planetary rings, the Earth’s magnetosphere, and tails of comets. In addition, in laboratories, the lattice formation of dust grains, known as Coulomb crystallization, is a well-known phenomenon that has fascinated many researchers. Dust grains immersed in plasmas usually acquire a large amount of charge through several charging processes, such as collisions with plasma particles and photoemission. Such charged grains and the ambient plasma are electromagnetically coupled with each other, forming so-called dusty plasmas or complex plasmas. Dusty plasma has been studied for both industrial and astrophysical applications, largely motivated by the in-situ detection of dust grains in the Solar System and Ikezi’s prediction, and subsequent experimental verification of Coulomb crystallization.[@Goertz89; @Angelis92; @Shukla09; @Shukla01; @text; @Ikezi86]
When collisions between dust grains and plasma particles are dominant among the charging processes, dust grains become negatively charged because the thermal velocity of electrons is generally higher than that of ions, resulting in a larger electron current. Therefore, one would expect a repulsive shielded electrostatic Coulomb potential (or Yukawa potential) to exist. In reality, however, forces acting on dust grains may be much more complex because the interaction forces between charged dust grains are mediated by the ambient plasma in a complicated manner. There has been much discussion on forces acting between dust grains, including attractive forces for which the ambient plasma response plays the essential role.[@Shukla09; @Lampe00] It is necessary to understand the nature of such attractive interactions among dust grains because they may play a role in the aggregation or crystallization of dust grains observed in laboratories, as well as the formation of stars and planets in the dense cores of interstellar molecular clouds.
One such attractive force acting between two grains, and on which we focus in the present study, is the force due to overlapping Debye spheres (ODSs).[@Resendes98] According to Resendes et al. (1998), when two charged dust grains (each having charge $q$) exist in a plasma, their interaction potential, including the electrostatic energy of ambient plasma particles, may be modified from the simple Yukawa potential. The potential in this case may be written as $$\label{l-j}
q{\phi_{{\rm ODS}}}\left(d\right)=\frac{q^{2}}{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}\left(\frac{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}{d}-\frac{1}{2} \right)\exp\left(-\frac{d}{\lambda_{{\rm D}}} \right)+{\rm constant},$$ where $\lambda_{{\rm D}}$ is the Debye length and $d$ is the intergrain distance. This is similar to the Lennard-Jones potential, which is repulsive at short distances and weakly attractive at longer distances. It is clear that a Lennard-Jones-like potential can assist the processes of aggregation and crystallization, and in fact, it has been shown that the attractive force due to ODSs has a drastic effect on aggregation and crystallization in dusty plasmas if indeed effective.[@Hou09] It has also been suggested that the ODS attractive force may enhance gravitational instability and assist the formation of stars and planets in astrophysical environments.[@Shukla06] On the other hand, the derivation of this attractive potential is based on several nontrivial assumptions that need to be verified. For instance, one must assume that the electrostatic potential around a dust grain is given by the Yukawa potential: $$\label{yukawa}
q{\phi}\left(r\right)=\frac{q^{2}}{r}\exp\left(-\frac{r}{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}\right).$$ In addition, linear superposition of the potential around two dust grains (with ODSs) should be valid in order for such an attractive force to exist. Since the concept of Debye shielding is the key to understanding the attractive force, one must be careful in adopting these assumptions. Furthermore, the derivation of the ODS attractive ${\it force}$ from Eq. (\[l-j\]) assumes that the force operating between the grains is given by the derivative of Eq. (\[l-j\]) with respect to the intergrain distance $d$. We note that Markes and Williams (2000) pointed out that this assumption is incorrect in that it does not take into account energy exchange with the ambient plasma.[@Markes00] Lampe et al. (2000) also suggested that, on the basis of orbital motion limited (OML) theory, such an attractive force would not exist.[@Lampe00] Nevertheless, those counterarguments are also based on some non-trivial assumptions. Consequently, the existence or nonexistence of the ODS attractive force has yet remained a controversial issue.
The purpose of our study is thus to investigate the validity of the theory of the ODS attractive force from first principles. We employ the direct N-body simulation method in which all particle-particle interactions acting through the electrostatic Coulomb force are calculated. This first-principles approach allows us to investigate the electrostatic potential structure of sub-Debye scales without making any assumptions, and thus provides a direct answer to the problem.
It is demonstrated herein that the electric field acting on a charged grain actually deviates from the standard Yukawa-type field in general. We find that the electrostatic force acting between two dust grains is repulsive rather than attractive, which may be well explained by OML theory for an isolated test charge. There is no noticeable signature of the net attractive force due to the effect of ODSs around dust grains. Our result is qualitatively consistent with the analysis given by Markes and Williams (2000). Although the simulations were performed within a limited range of plasma parameters, this strongly indicates the ODS attractive force is absent in reality.
Simulation method
=================
Our N-body simulations are performed in a periodic system (surrounded by a virtual perfectly conducting medium at the infinite distance). The system consists of the simulation box and its replicas, and the box contains many plasma particles (ions and electrons) and two charged dust grains. For the time integration, the Coulomb force acting on each particle must be evaluated by taking the summation over all particles. Since the Coulomb interaction is a long-range interaction, convergence of the summation is very slow and the calculation of contributions from many particles at long distances significantly increases the number of operations required.
We thus adopt the Ewald method, which allows us to accelerate the summation by dividing it into two parts: one in real space and the other in wavenumber space. For instance, the electrostatic potential may be calculated as follows: $$\label{ewald}
U=U_{{\rm real}}+U_{{\rm wave}}-U_{{\rm self}},$$ $$\label{real}
U_{{\rm real}}=\frac{1}{2}\sum_{i,j}\sum_{n}{\frac{q_{i}q_{j}}{r_{ijn}} {\rm erfc}\left(\frac{r_{ijn}}{\sigma} \right)},$$ $$\label{wave}
U_{{\rm wave}}=\frac{1}{2}\sum_{i,j}\sum_{{\bm k}\neq 0}{q_{i}q_{j}\frac{\exp\left[{-\pi^{2}\sigma^{2}k^{2}+2\pi i{\bm k}\cdot\left({\bm r}_{i}-{\bm r}_{j}\right)}\right]}{\pi V k^{2}}},$$ $$\label{self}
U_{{\rm self}}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi}\sigma}\sum_{i}{q_{i}^{2}}.$$ Here, $n$ represents the labels of boxes, $r_{ijn}$ is the distance between particles $i$ and $j$ in box $n$, $q_{i}$ is the charge of particle $i$, ${\bm k}$ is the wavenumber vector, and $V$ is the volume of the box. The parameter $\sigma$ gives a cut-off radius beyond which the direct summation in real space, Eq. (\[real\]), is replaced by that in wavenumber space, Eq. (\[wave\]). Note that in Eq. (\[real\]), the term $n=0$ has to be excluded for $i=j$. This method approximates long-wavelength modes associated with the long-range nature of the Coulomb interaction in wavenumber space with the aid of the Fourier transform, whereas short-wavelength components arising from close encounters between particles are accurately calculated. The electric field is given by the spatial derivatives of Eqs. (\[real\]) and (\[wave\]) and is calculated in the same way.[@Deserno98-1; @Pollock96]
In calculating Eq. (\[real\]), we introduce a small softening parameter $\epsilon$ and rewrite Eq. (\[real\]) as $$\label{ereal}
U_{{\rm real}}=\frac{1}{2}\sum_{i,j}\sum_{n}{\frac{q_{i}q_{j}}{\sqrt{r_{ijn}^{2}+\epsilon^{2}}} {\rm erfc}\left(\frac{\sqrt{r_{ijn}^{2}+\epsilon^{2}}}{\sigma} \right)}.$$ With the softening technique, we ignore large-angle scatterings between particles at distances ${\protect\raisebox{-0.5ex}{$\:\stackrel{\textstyle <}{\sim}\:$}}\epsilon$ because resolving such scatterings would require very small time steps. Since we are interested in weakly coupled space and astrophysical plasmas that are defined by a large plasma parameter $\Lambda$ (where small-angle scatterings play the dominant role), we think this technique is reasonable for our purpose.
Having calculated the electric fields acting on particles, we can solve the equations of motion for each particle: $$\label{newton1}
m_{i}\frac{d}{dt}{\bm v}_{i}=q_{i}{\bm E},$$ $$\label{newton2}
\frac{d}{dt}{\bm r}_{i}={\bm v}_{i},$$ where $m_{i}$, ${\bm v}_{i}$, and ${\bm r}_{i}$ are the mass, velocity, and position of particle $i$, respectively, and ${\bm E}$ is the electric field at each particle position ${\bm r}_{i}$. In Eq. (\[newton1\]), assuming nonrelativistic plasma temperatures, $v_{i}/c\ll1$, we ignore the effect of magnetic fields.
Throughout the present paper, the masses of ions and electrons are assumed to be equal to allow the system to relax quickly to an equilibrium state. This assumption may be justified because the mass ratio affects only the time scale, and structures of the equilibrium state can be assumed to be independent of the mass ratio. Therefore, we only discuss the properties of equilibrium states. Note that because of the symmetry of ion and electron masses, the sign of the grain charge is irrelevant. Simulations are performed with two identical dust grains of infinite mass in the box. That is to say, the grain mass is so large that the change in positions can be ignored on the simulation time scale, which is typically limited to a few plasma oscillation periods. The effect of finite grain size is also ignored. These assumptions are made to simplify the problem as much as possible for our purpose of investigating the electrostatic interactions between plasma particles and dust grains.
simulation result
=================
Simulations were initialized with plasma particles distributed randomly in space, and two dust grains placed at fixed distances in the box. The velocity distribution was initialized to a Maxwellian distribution for a given temperature. Time integration was carried out until the system reached an equilibrium state, at which point we measured the properties of the system. The simulation box was a cuboid whose dimensions were $2L$ in the $x$ direction and $L$ in the $y$ and $z$ directions. Throughout this paper, we use a softening parameter of $\epsilon=0.03L$ in simulations. Each grain was located at $\left(y,z\right)=\left(L/2,L/2\right)$, and the intergrain distance along the $x$ axis was varied in each simulation run. By comparing the equilibrium states of different runs, we measured the dependence on the intergrain distance.
![Temporal evolution of total electrostatic potential energy for a run with $d=0.1L$, $q=1000e$, $2L^{3}n_{{\rm e}}=10000$, $2L^{3}n_{{\rm p}}=8000$, $\lambda_{{\rm D}0}\simeq0.11L$, $\lambda_{{\rm D}}\simeq0.12L$, and $\Lambda\simeq16$. The dotted line indicates the equilibrium value.[]{data-label="ene"}](enenene.eps){width="90mm"}
The system is characterized by the dust charge $q$ and the intergrain distance $d$. The number densities of electrons and ions are denoted $n_{{\rm e}}$ and $n_{{\rm p}}$, which are chosen so that charge neutrality (including dust charges) is satisfied. In the following, time and space are respectively normalized by the inverse plasma frequency $1/\omega_{p}$, where $\omega_{p}=\left(4\pi n_{{\rm e}} e^{2}/m_{{\rm e}}+4\pi n_{{\rm p}} e^{2}/m_{{\rm p}}\right)^{1/2}$, and the Debye length $\lambda_{{\rm D}}$. Note that the Debye length is defined as $\lambda_{{\rm D}}=\left(4\pi n_{{\rm e}} e^{2}/kT_{{\rm e}}+4\pi n_{{\rm p}} e^{2}/kT_{{\rm p}}\right)^{-1/2}$, including both ion and electron contributions, and the temperatures of the resultant equilibrium states are used. Here, $e$ is the elementary charge, and $m_{{\rm e}}$, $m_{{\rm p}}$, $T_{{\rm e}}$, and $T_{{\rm p}}$ are the electron mass, proton mass, electron temperature, and proton temperature, respectively. Note that we always assumed that the initial electron and proton temperatures were the same for simplicity.
In Fig.\[ene\], the time variation of the potential energy integrated over the simulation box is shown for the example of a run with an intergrain distance of $d=0.1L$. The energy is normalized by $q^2/\lambda_{{\rm D}0}$, where $\lambda_{{\rm D}0}$ is the Debye length defined by the initial temperature. In this run, $q=1000e$, $2L^{3}n_{{\rm e}}=10000$, $2L^{3}n_{{\rm p}}=8000$, $\lambda_{{\rm D}0}\simeq0.11L$, $\lambda_{{\rm D}}\simeq0.12L$, and $\Lambda\equiv\left(n_{{\rm e}}+n_{{\rm p}}\right)\lambda_{{\rm D}}^{3}\simeq16$. Generally speaking, the Debye length in the final equilibrium state, denoted $\lambda_{{\rm D}}$, actually differs from $\lambda_{{\rm D}0}$, as explained below. We see from Fig.\[ene\] that the potential energy decreases during the first $\sim1/\omega_{p}$, and then fluctuates around the equilibrium value. This initial decrease in the potential may be explained by the redistribution of plasma particles due to Debye shielding. This decrease in the potential energy is compensated by an increase in the plasma temperature, changing the Debye length from the initial value accordingly. All runs discussed in this paper showed essentially the same trend. We thus assume that the equilibrium was achieved by the time $\omega_{{\rm p}}t\sim8$, and physical quantities averaged after this time were regarded as equilibrium values.
![Summary of simulation results. The normalized electric field acting on the grain multiplied by $d^{2}$ is shown as a function of the intergrain distance $d$. Note that the distance is normalized by the Debye length defined with the kinetic energy measured at the equilibrium states rather than the initial temperature. The red and green lines are the theoretical curves expected from the standard Yukawa potential and the ODS attractive potential, respectively. Blue triangles and magenta diamonds show the results of our simulations with $\Lambda\simeq13$ and $\Lambda\simeq16$, respectively.[]{data-label="res_ele"}](reseses.eps){width="90mm"}
Figure \[res\_ele\] summarizes the results of our simulations. Blue triangles show the results for $2L^{3}n_{{\rm e}}=5000$, $2L^{3}n_{{\rm p}}=3000$, $\lambda_{{\rm D}}/L\simeq0.15L$, and $\Lambda\simeq13$. Individual triangles represent intergrain distances of $d=0.2L, 0.4L, 0.5L, 0.6L, 0.8L$. Simulations with a different set of parameters ($2L^{3}n_{{\rm e}}=10000$, $2L^{3}n_{{\rm p}}=8000$, $\lambda_{{\rm D}}/L\simeq0.12L$, and $\Lambda\simeq16$) were also run, and the results are shown by magenta diamonds; in this case, the intergrain distances were $d=0.1L, 0.25L, 0.4L, 0.5L, 0.6L, 0.75L, 0.9L$. In all runs, $q=1000e$ and $\lambda_{{\rm D}0}\simeq0.11L$. Note that $\lambda_{{\rm D}}$, which normalizes the intergrain distances in Fig.\[res\_ele\], was defined at the equilibrium states, and thus not necessarily the same in each run because the self-consistent increase in temperature depends on plasma densities, plasma parameters and intergrain distances $d$. The red and green lines in Fig.\[res\_ele\] show the theoretical curves expected from the standard Yukawa potential and the ODS attractive potential of Resendes et al. (1998), respectively, which are written as $$\label{yukawa-e}
qE_{{\rm Yukawa}}\left(d\right)=\frac{q^{2}}{\lambda_{{\rm D}}^{2}}\left[\left(\frac{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}{d}\right)^{2}+\frac{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}{d}\right]\exp\left(-\frac{d}{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}\right)$$ and $$\label{l-j-e}
qE_{{\rm ODS}}\left(d\right)=\frac{q^{2}}{\lambda_{{\rm D}}^{2}}\left[\left(\frac{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}{d}\right)^{2}+\frac{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}{d}-\frac{1}{2}\right]\exp\left(-\frac{d}{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}\right).$$ Eq. (\[l-j-e\]) assumes that the force on the grain is given by the derivative of Eq. (\[l-j\]) with respect to $d$. The error bars represent the standard deviation ($1\sigma$) of temporal fluctuations after the system has reached an equilibrium state. Note that when calculating the electric field acting on the grain, we used a softening parameter of $\epsilon=d/12$, which is different from that used in the simulation to reduce the variance of the measured electric fields. That is to say, the softening parameter $\epsilon$ is chosen to be proportional to the intergrain distance, whereas it is constant in all simulations. This choice is mainly motivated by the conjecture that the equilibrium electrostatic structure will not strongly depend on the softening parameter. However, some remarks must be made before discussing the results.
First, the effect of softening is not seen even at $d \lesssim 0.03 L\left(\simeq0.2-0.25\lambda_{{\rm D}}\right)$ because the softening parameters used in the calculations are smaller than the simulation value at $d < 0.36L\simeq2.5-3\lambda_{{\rm D}}$. In the region where the softening effect is significant, it is obvious that the potential approaches the Coulomb potential because the softening parameter in the simulations is chosen to be smaller than the mean particle distance. Therefore, this will not change our conclusions.
Second, the error bars may be underestimated at $d > 0.36L$ because the softening parameter used in the calculation becomes larger than that in the simulations. (Note that large error bars are caused by close encounters with plasma particles.) In any case, the error bars are so large that it is difficult to extract a physically meaningful argument in this regime.
Third, we have confirmed that calculation with a constant softening parameter of $\epsilon=0.03L$ (i.e., consistent with the simulations) does not change the result substantially. Although the error bars in the far regions, i.e., $d > 0.36L$, tend to increase, the average electric fields stay within the error bars shown in Fig.\[res\_ele\].
Based on these discussions, we believe that the simulation results are reliable at least in the intermediate regime, i.e., $1\lambda_{{\rm D}}\lesssim d\lesssim2.5\lambda_{{\rm D}}$. In this region, it is evident from Fig.\[res\_ele\] that the simulation results deviate from the theoretical prediction of the ODS attractive potential beyond $2\sigma$. The result also suggests that the electric fields acting on the grain are even larger than the standard Yukawa potential prediction. Although the large error bars make it difficult to draw conclusions from this result alone, the systematic deviation from the theoretical predictions suggests that the underlying assumptions made in the derivation of (\[yukawa-e\]) and (\[l-j-e\]) may be violated. In the next section, we discuss possible reasons for this discrepancy between the theory and simulations.
Discussion
==========
Our simulation results show that the force between two dust grains is repulsive and stronger than that predicted by the standard Yukawa potential Eq. (\[yukawa\]). At first, we discuss the validity of Eq. (\[yukawa\]). When the grain radius is negligible, the functional form of the Yukawa potential itself must be correct at large distances, where the shielding is nearly complete and the first-order expansion of the Boltzmann-type density distribution is appropriate. In fact, Poisson’s equation and the linearized Boltzmann distributions give $$\label{long}
q\phi\left(r\right)=\alpha\frac{q^{2}}{r}\exp{\left(-\frac{r}{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}\right)}.$$ However, the coefficient $\alpha$ (integration constant) in Eq. (\[long\]) is unknown and must be determined by the inner boundary condition. In standard textbooks, it is determined by assuming that the outer solution smoothly connects to the bare Coulomb potential at $r \rightarrow 0$, which gives $\alpha=1$.
On the other hand, according to OML theory, $\alpha\neq1$ in general. In OML theory, when particle absorption by dust grains is ignored, the density distribution of ions around a negatively charged dust grain may be written as [@Lampe00] $$\label{oml}
n_{{\rm p}}=n_{0}\left[\exp\left(-\frac{e\phi}{kT_{{\rm p}}}\right){\rm erfc}\left(\sqrt{-\frac{e\phi}{kT_{{\rm p}}}} \right)+\frac{2}{\sqrt{\pi}}\sqrt{-\frac{e\phi}{kT_{{\rm p}}}} \right]$$ instead of the Boltzmann distribution $$\label{boltz-p}
n_{{\rm p}}=n_{0}\exp\left(-\frac{e\phi}{kT_{{\rm p}}}\right),$$ whereas the electron density distribution is written as $$\label{boltz-e}
n_{{\rm e}}=n_{0}\exp\left(\frac{e\phi}{kT_{{\rm e}}}\right)$$ in both cases. It is easy to show that Eqs. (\[oml\]) and (\[boltz-p\]) give the same dependence on $e\phi/kT$ when expanded to first order in $e\phi/kT\ll1$, meaning that the functional form is the same far from the grain.
Since the OML correction given by Eq. (\[oml\]) gives an ion density much lower than that suggested by the Boltzmann distribution given by Eq. (\[boltz-p\]) close to the grain, the shielding of the potential becomes weaker. We may thus expect $\alpha\geq1$ in general if the OML correction is taken into account.[@Lampe00] The parameter $\alpha$ may be determined by the solution in the inner region, where the OML correction may become important. On the other hand, the OML solution must also be connected to the bare Coulomb potential $$\label{short}
q\phi\sim \frac{q^{2}}{r},$$ at distances on the order of the mean interparticle distance $a$, which is defined as $$\label{wig2}
\frac{a}{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}\equiv \sqrt[3]{\frac{3}{4\pi \Lambda}},$$ where $\Lambda$ is the plasma parameter. While it is difficult to analyze the potential structure analytically in the inner region with the OML correction, we expect $\alpha\left(\Lambda\right)$ to be a decreasing function of $\Lambda$ because a larger $\Lambda$ narrows the region in which the OML correction should be taken into account and strengthens the shielding effect.
![Comparison between simulation results and theoretical models including the OML correction for the electric field acting on the grain. Only results with $\Lambda\simeq16$ are shown.[]{data-label="com"}](comcom.eps){width="90mm"}
To determine the value of $\alpha$, Figure \[com\] compares the simulation results and a theoretical electric field around ${\it a}$ ${\it single}$ ${\it isolated}$ ${\it grain}$ including the OML correction. That is to say, the potential $\phi$ was determined by solving Poisson’s equation, $$\label{poi}
\nabla^{2}\phi=-4\pi e\left(n_{{\rm p}}-n_{{\rm e}}\right),$$ with the ion and electron densities given by Eqs. (\[oml\]) and (\[boltz-e\]), respectively. $n_{0}$ in Eqs. (\[oml\]) and (\[boltz-e\]) was approximated as $n_{0}=(n_{{\rm e}0}+n_{{\rm p}0})/2$ for simplicity. The plasma parameter was $\Lambda\simeq16$, which is almost the same as that in our simulations. The electric field $E$ was calculated by taking spatial derivatives of $\phi$. As we have already mentioned, the functional form of Eq. (\[long\]) should be valid far from the grain even if the OML correction is included. Therefore, Poisson’s equation was integrated from a large radial distance toward the inner region by taking $\alpha$ as a free parameter. We then tried to find the values of $\alpha$ for which this theoretical solution reasonably matched the simulation results. It is readily seen from Fig.\[com\] that the simulation results are well explained by this model with $\alpha\simeq 1.8-2.0$. Note again that the theoretical curve is for an isolated grain, whereas the simulation results are obtained with two dust grains. This means that the effect of ODSs is not observed, at least to a detectable level beyond the error bars of our simulations. This result is qualitatively consistent with the suggestion by Markes and Williams (2000). They have shown explicitly that the electrostatic force acting between two grains surrounded by a plasma is repulsive by solving Poisson’s equation. The critical assumption in their model is that the ion and electron densities can be written as a function of the local electrostatic potential alone. Although this assumption sounds reasonable for instance in the collisionless limit where OML theory should apply, its validity must be tested carefully. On the other hand, our first principles approach free from such an assumption also demonstrates a repulsive nature for the electrostatic interaction. Furthermore, the fact that the electric field around the grain is consistent with the OML theory indicates the assumption made by Markes and Williams (2000) is indeed reasonable.
One might argue that the fact that $\alpha\neq1$ explains the discrepancy between the simulation results and ODS theory, but this is not the case. Assuming that linear superposition of the potential is also possible for $\alpha\neq1$, we can easily calculate the ODS attractive force for this case as well. The resulting attractive potential force may be written as $$\label{ml-j}
q{\phi_{{\rm ODS}}}\left(d\right)=\alpha\frac{q^{2}}{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}\left(\frac{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}{d}-\frac{\alpha}{2}\right)\exp\left(-\frac{d}{\lambda_{{\rm D}}} \right),$$ which is shown in Fig.\[mod\] for $\alpha=1, 1.2, 1.4$. It can be easily understood that the potential minimum moves inward and the depth increases as $\alpha$ increases. In fact, an easy analytical calculation confirms this tendency. Clearly, $\alpha\neq1$ does not help to explain the discrepancy.
![Modified ODS attractive potential given by Eq. (\[ml-j\]). Red, green, and blue lines represent $\alpha = 1, 1.2, 1.4$, respectively.[]{data-label="mod"}](modod.eps){width="90mm"}
Although it is not easy to analytically determine the value of $\alpha$ in general, we can estimate the upper and lower bounds as follows. We define $r_{{\rm c}}$ as a solution to the equation $$\label{exp-equ}
\frac{\alpha}{4\pi\Lambda}\frac{q}{e}\frac{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}{r_{{\rm c}}}\exp{\left(-\frac{r_{{\rm c}}}{\lambda_{{\rm D}}}\right)}=1,$$ where the left-hand side is the normalized outer potential. An analytic solution to this equation is given by $$\label{sol}
r_{{\rm c}}=\lambda_{{\rm D}} W\left(\frac{\alpha}{4\pi \Lambda}\frac{q}{e}\right),$$ where $W\left(x\right)$ is the inverse function of $x=W\exp\left(W\right)$, which is also known as the Lambert W-function. The potential at $r=r_{{\rm c}}$ may be approximated by $\phi\left(r_{{\rm c}}\right)=\alpha q \exp{\left(-r_{{\rm c}}/\lambda\right)}/r_{{\rm c}}$ and should be bounded by $q \exp{\left(-a/\lambda\right)}/a$ and the bare Coulomb potential $q/a$, leading to the inequality $1\leq\alpha\leq \exp{\left(r_{{\rm c}}/\lambda\right)}$. Using $\Lambda$ and $q/e$, we can rewrite this inequality as $$\label{ine1}
1\leq\alpha\leq \exp{\left(\frac{1}{4\pi \Lambda} \frac{q}{e}\right)}.$$ This estimate must be modified when $\Lambda$ is much larger than the critical value $\Lambda_{{\rm c}}$ for which the condition $a=r_{{\rm c}}$ is satisfied. When $a\gg r_{{\rm c}}$, $\phi\left(a\right)$ rather than $\phi\left(r_{{\rm c}}\right)$ must be used for a similar comparison, yielding $$\label{ine2}
1\leq\alpha\leq \exp{\left(\sqrt[3]{\frac{3}{4\pi\Lambda}}\right)}.$$ The condition $r_{{\rm c}}=a$ leads to $\Lambda_{{\rm c}}\sim\left(q/e\right)^{3/2}$, which can also be expressed as $kT_{{\rm c}}\sim eq/a$ with a critical temperature $T_{{\rm c}}$. From this, it is clear that when the temperature is above the critical value, the plasma is weakly coupled even with dust grains having relatively large charge. This indicates that the OML correction in this regime is only a minor modification, and essentially, the Yukawa-type potential in the far zone directly connects to the bare Coulomb potential.
In our simulations, since we used large dust charges with relatively small numbers of particles, the plasma parameter is smaller than the critical value. Note that the plasma parameter of dusty plasmas in space is usually huge, and so is almost always above the critical value. Our choice of dust charge was motivated by the fact that the theoretical ODS attractive force is proportional to $q$, and the effect is expected to be more pronounced for larger dust charges. As a drawback, we were forced to use sub-critical plasma parameters owing to limited computational resources. Because of this, it was not possible to draw a final conclusion. Nevertheless, the qualitative consistency between our results and the counterargument against the ODS attractive force strongly indicates that the ODS attractive force may not operate in reality. In particular, we believe the assumption that the derivative of the potential energy of the whole system with respect to the intergrain distance provides a net force acting on the grain is incorrect as was pointed out by Markes and Williams (2000). Equation (\[ine2\]) shows that, when the plasma parameter is sufficiently large, $\alpha$ becomes almost unity and the potential structure around the grain approaches Eq. (\[yukawa\]), on which the derivation of the ODS attractive potential is based. Even in this parameter regime, our results suggest that the electric field acting on the grain is given by the spatial derivative of the potential at the grain’s position rather than that of the potential of the whole system with respect to the intergrain distance. In this case, the electrostatic force acting between two dust grains is always repulsive.
Of course, our results should apply only to the simplest situation where two infinitely small dust grains remain at rest with respect to an ambient fully ionized collisionless plasma. There has been a lot of discussion on the force acting on dust grains that may be affected by, e.g., finite grain size, relative streaming between the plasma and grains. Comprehensive understanding of the net force due the combined effect of those contributions is needed for, e.g., star and planet formation in astrophysical environments.
Conclusion
==========
We investigated the electrostatic interaction between dust grains surrounded by a plasma by employing first-principles N-body simulations combined with the Ewald method. It was shown that the interaction between two charged dust grains is repulsive and its magnitude is somewhat larger than that derived from the Yukawa potential. The force acting on the dust grains was explained by OML theory for a single isolated grain quite well. The result is consistent with the analysis given by Markes and Williams (2000). Consequently, we think that the electrostatic force acting between dust grains are always repulsive. Nevertheless, since our simulations have been performed only in a limited parameter range, a final conclusion awaits simulations with much higher plasma parameters, which will be made possible by adopting modern numerical schemes such as particle-particle particle-mesh and special-purpose GRAPE (GRAvity-piPE) computers for N-body simulations. [@text2; @Yamamoto06]
Acknowledgement
===============
We are grateful to the anonymous referee for his/her critical and constructive comments on the manuscript.
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