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Q:
How to display comma delimited JSON value as a list?
Say I have an array like this:
var ARTISTS: Artist[] = [
{
"name": "Barot Bellingham",
"shortname": "Barot_Bellingham",
"reknown": "Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture",
"bio": "Some bio here...",
"friends": "James, Harry, Bob"
}
Is it possible to display values for the key “friends” as an unordered list where each friend would be it’s own list item, e.g.:
<ul>
<li>James</li>
<li>Harry</li>
<li>Bob</li>
</ul>
I do realize the "friends" would be better stored as a nested array in order to display as a list, but I'm looking into this as a potential workaround for another issue.
Thank you!
P.S. I'm using Angular 2.
A:
You can use String.prototype.split() to get an array of friends.
var arrayOfFriends = Artist[0].friends.split(", ");
// arrayOfFriends = ['James', 'Harry', 'Bob']
From there loop over the array and create your list
|
FILED
July 27, 2016
TENNESSEE
WORKERS ' COMPENSATION
APPEALS BOARD
Time: 1 :04 P.M.
TENNESSEE BUREAU OF WORKERS' COMPENSATION
WORKERS' COMPENSATION APPEALS BOARD
Lazaro Valladares ) DocketNos. 2015-01-0117
) 2015-01-0118
v. )
)
Transco Products, Inc., et al. ) State File Nos. 91964-2014
) 39859-2014
and )
)
Williams Specialty Services, LLC, et al. )
)
and )
)
Abigail Hudgens, Administrator of the )
Bureau of Workers' Compensation, )
Second Injury Fund )
)
Appeal from the Court of Workers' )
Compensation Claims, )
Thomas Wyatt, Judge )
Affirmed and Remanded - Filed July 27, 2016
In these consolidated interlocutory appeals, an employer and the Second Injury Fund
present procedural issues questioning the trial court's denial of motions to dismiss the
employee's claims and motions to alter or amend status conference orders. Additionally,
the Second Injury Fund questions the trial court's authority to set a scheduling hearing
sua sponte. Following a show cause hearing, which was set when no party requested a
hearing within sixty days after the filing of dispute certification notices, the trial court
held a status conference that resulted in the employee's being allowed more time to file a
request for an expedited hearing. The trial court's orders instructed the parties to
participate in a second status conference if the employee did not file a request for an
expedited hearing by a specified date. Following a hearing on motions for dismissal and
other motions by the employers and the Second Injury Fund, the trial court denied the
motions and set a scheduling hearing. One employer and the Second Injury Fund have
appealed. We affirm the trial court' s denial of the various motions and remand the case
for further proceedings as may be necessary.
1
Judge Timothy W. Conner delivered the opinion of the Appeals Board, in which Judge
Marshall L. Davidson, III, joined. Judge David F. Hensley filed a separate concurring
opm10n.
Allison Lowry, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the appellant, Second Injury Fund
Joseph Ballard, Atlanta, Georgia, for the employer-appellant, Transco Products, Inc.
Chadwick Rickman, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the employee-appellee, Lazaro Valladares
David Weatherman, Memphis, Tennessee for the employer, Williams Specialty Services,
LLC
Factual and Procedural Background
On May 27, 2015, Lazaro Valladares ("Employee") filed two petitions for benefit
determination with the Bureau of Workers' Compensation ("Bureau"). In the first
petition, he alleged he slipped on gravel and fell on October 2, 2014, resulting in work-
related injuries to his left arm, low back, and body while in the employment of Specialty
Services, LLC ("Specialty Services"). In the second petition, he alleged he slipped and
fell in the rain on November 5, 2014, while in the employment of Transco Products, Inc.
(" ransco Products"), which caused work-related injuries to his right leg, left shoulder,
2
and body. 1 Both petitions included the Second Injury Fund ("SIF") as a party.
Employee alleged he reported both injuries to his employers. He apparently
neither sought nor received medical care following the October 2, 2014 incident. After
reporting the second incident, he was provided a panel of physicians by Transco
Products. 3 He was seen twice by Dr. Rickey Hutcheson, the physician he selected from
the panel, but he declined to return to Dr. Hutcheson after the second visit and requested
that he be provided a different physician. Since that time, Employee has received
medical care from a physician he selected on his own who was not authorized by
Specialty Services or Transco Products. Except for Employee's indication that he has
had surgery on his cervical spine, there is no information in the record regarding the
nature or extent of Employee's medical treatment.
1
No testimony has been given in this case and no affidavits or declarations made under penalty of perjury
have been filed with the trial court. Accordingly, the limited facts presented herein are taken from the
documents filed with the Bureau that are included in the technical record on appeal.
2
The two claims were consolidated by the trial court.
3
In numerous places throughout the record, reference is made to Employee's not having been provided a
panel of physicians. However, it appears to be undisputed that he was given a panel as a result of his
second alleged injury and that he chose a physician from that panel.
2
Following the filing of the petitions and unsuccessful efforts to resolve the claims
through the Bureau's mediation process, dispute certification notices were filed on July
20, 2015. Because no party filed a request for hearing in either claim within 60 days of
the filing of the dispute certification notices, on November 24, 2015, the claims were
placed on a dismissal calendar for a show cause hearing, which was scheduled for
December 21, 2015. 4
At Employee's request, the parties agreed to continue the show cause hearing to
January 12, 2016. Following the hearing, the trial court issued show cause orders that
extended the time for Employee to decide how to proceed until January 29, 2016 and
scheduled a status conference for that date. These orders required Employee's attorney to
inform the court during the January 29, 2016 status conference how Employee intended
to proceed and addressed the dates by which requests for an expedited hearing or an
initial hearing were to be made:
If [Employee's attorney] informs the Court at the Status Conference that his
client intends to file a Request for Expedited Hearing, the Court will enter
an order requiring that he file the Request for Expedited Hearing within
five business days from January 29, 2016, or, failing such, his claim will be
dismissed without prejudice. If [Employee's attorney] informs the Court at
the Status Conference that his client requests an Initial (Scheduling)
Hearing, the Court will schedule [the claims] for a Compensation Hearing.
Following the January 29, 2016 status conference, orders were entered noting
Employee's request for additional time to obtain an expert medical opinion and the SIF's
objection to the request and its own requests that the court schedule a compensation
hearing. The trial court granted Employee until February 29, 2016 to file requests for
expedited hearings, stating in its February 5, 2016 orders that "[i]f [Employee] has not
filed a Request for Expedited Hearing on or before February 29, 2016, the parties shall
call . . . on March 10, 2016, to schedule a Compensation Hearing and the attendant
deadlines." In addition, the orders provided that, should Employee file requests for
expedited hearings on or before February 29, 2016, "the Court will not conduct the
scheduling conference on March 10, 2016." The orders allowed the parties "to engage in
discovery at this time .... " The February 5, 2016 orders were not appealed.
Employee did not file a request for a hearing, and on March 4, 2016, the court
clerk issued docketing notices setting an initial hearing on March 10, 2016. However,
prior to the March 10 hearing, but more than 30 days after entry of the February 5, 2016
4
See Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0800-02-21-.12( 1) (2015) ("Immediately after a dispute certification notice
has been filed with the clerk, either party seeking further resolution of any disputed issues shall file a
request for a hearing .... If no request for hearing is filed within sixty (60) calendar days after the date
of issuance of the dispute certification notice, the clerk shall docket the case and place the case on a
separate dismissal calendar for a show cause hearing.")
3
status conference order, the SIF filed a motion to alter or amend the February 5, 2016
status conference order and for entry of a dismissal order. The SIF contended in its
motion that the trial court had no authority to set an initial hearing, arguing that "since no
request for hearing has been filed, it is the position of the SIF that this matter can only be
set sua sponte by this Court for a Show Cause hearing." The SIF requested the trial court
to "alter or amend its Status Conference Orders insofar as those Orders [and the
subsequent Docketing Notices] set this matter for an initial/scheduling conference on
March 10, 2016, and instead set this matter for a final show cause hearing on that date for
entry of an Order of Dismissal in accordance with this Court's Order of January 13, 2016
.... " (Brackets in original.) On March 8, 2016, the SIF filed a "Motion to Set Final
Show Cause Hearing on March 10, 2016, or, in the Alternative, to Continue Initial
Hearing." On the same date, the SIF filed a "Supplemental Motion to Alter or Amend
Status Conference Orders and to Set for Final Show Cause Hearing." The SIF again
asserted in its motions that "since no request for hearing has been filed, it is the position
of the SIF that this matter can only be set sua sponte by this Court for a Show Cause
hearing." The SIF requested that, rather than conduct an initial/scheduling conference on
March 10, 2016, the court "instead set this matter for a final show cause hearing on that
date."
At the March l 0, 2016 hearing, the parties announced they were in agreement to
continue the initial/scheduling hearing. Based on the parties' discussions with the court,
the court continued "the Initial (Scheduling) Hearing" to March 29, 2016 and allowed
"[a]ny party wishing to file written opposition to the [SIF's] motions [to] do so no later
than March 22, 2016." The trial court's March 11, 2016 order stated that Employee's
counsel "shall further report on his client's medical progress during the ... hearing."
Additionally, the court's order stated that the court "informed counsel that, at the motion
hearing, they should announce their clients' positions as to whether a bifurcated hearing
on the disputed legal/causation issues in these claims is in order to move this claim
forward more expeditiously."
Thereafter, Transco Products filed a motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12 of the
Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure, asserting that the dispute certification notice filed in
the claim against it limited the issues to "whether Employee is entitled to a second
opinion following the selection of his authorized treating physician." Contending
Employee was not entitled to a second opinion, Trancso Products asserted that Employee
could not prevail against it without such opinion and that the claim against it should,
therefore, be dismissed. Specialty Services likewise filed a motion to dismiss asserting
"the mere fact that Employee fell at work is not sufficient to maintain an action against
(Specialty Services] when there is no evidence of any resulting injury." In addition,
Specialty Services adopted the SIF's motion to dismiss. Alternatively, Specialty Services
moved the court for a more definite statement of the claims asserted against it.
4
Employee filed a response to the SIF's motions, requesting that the trial court
"schedule these matters for a Compensation Hearing." Because both employers filed
potentially dispositive motions, to which the Practices and Procedures of the Court of
Workers' Compensation Claims allows an employee thirty days to respond, the trial court
issued a docketing notice on April 11, 2016 scheduling an in-person hearing to address
all pending motions on May 18, 2016. On the scheduled hearing date, Employee filed a
response to Transco Products' motion to dismiss, requesting again that the trial court
"schedule this matter for a Compensation Hearing."
Following the May 18, 2016 hearing, the trial court entered an order denying the
SIF's motion to alter or amend the status conference orders. The trial court determined
that "it is not required to await a party's request for an Initial (Scheduling) Hearing, but
may schedule an Initial (Scheduling) Hearing sua sponte if it deems such is necessary to
move a case toward an efficient and timely conclusion." Additionally, the trial court
determined the SIF's argument for dismissal of Employee's claim was based on "an
incorrect interpretation of the Court's January 13, 2016 order," and was without merit.
Finally, the trial court set an initial hearing for June 15, 2016 "at which time it will
schedule the Compensation [Hearing] and attendant deadlines in these claims."
Similarly, the trial court denied Transco Products' motion to dismiss, determining
that although "the Court considered Transco's motion unopposed," the lack of opposition
to a motion does not require the court to "automatically grant the relief moved for."
Determining that Transco Products' Rule 12 motion was "based on the allegation that
[Employee's] [petition for benefit determination] ... failed to state a claim recognized by
law," the trial court concluded that Employee provided "a short and plain statement
communicating that he sought workers' compensation benefits for the described work-
related injury." The trial court also determined that the dispute certification notice did
not limit his request for relief to a second medical opinion, but sought "a new treating
physician and, potentially, other remedies for Transco's failure to provide him a panel of
physicians." The trial court considered "it appropriate to review the [dispute certification
notice] in considering whether [Employee] has sufficiently stated a claim," and
concluded that "[c]learly, [Employee] seeks remedies other than a second opinion."
The trial court also denied Specialty Services' motion to dismiss and its motion to
alter or amend the status conference orders. However, in light of Employee's counsel's
agreement during the May 18 hearing, the trial court granted Specialty Services' motion
for a more definite statement, ordering that Employee "file ... a more definite statement
regarding the alleged injury he sustained in the course and scope of his employment [with
Specialty Services]."
On June 7, 2016, the SIF filed a motion to stay the proceedings pending an appeal,
asserting that "[i]n the event the Appeals Board modifies or reverses [the trial court's]
interlocutory order, it would be in the interest of judicial economy and efficiency to stay
5
the Initial Hearing and further proceedings in this Court until prompt resolution of the
appeal." The trial court granted the motion and stayed "all further proceedings in these
claims pending the completion of the [SIF's] appeal" and cancelled "the Initial
(Scheduling) Hearing scheduled for June 15, 2016." Both the SIF and Transco Products
have appealed.
Standard of Review
The standard we apply in reviewing a trial court's decision is statutorily mandated
and limited in scope. Specifically, "[t]here shall be a presumption that the findings and
conclusions of the workers' compensation judge are correct, unless the preponderance of
the evidence is otherwise." Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-6-239(c)(7) (2015). The trial court's
decision must be upheld unless the rights of a party "have been prejudiced because
findings, inferences, conclusions, or decisions of a workers' compensation judge:
(A) Violate constitutional or statutory provisions;
(B) Exceed the statutory authority of the workers' compensation judge;
(C) Do not comply with lawful procedure;
(D) Are arbitrary, capricious, characterized by abuse of discretion, or
clearly an unwarranted exercise of discretion; or
(E) Are not supported by evidence that is both substantial and material
in the light of the entire record."
Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-6-217(a)(3) (2015). Like other courts applying the standards
embodied in section 50-6-217(a)(3), we will not disturb the decision of the trial court
absent the limited circumstances identified in the statute.
Analysis
Transco Products 'Appeal
In its brief on appeal, Transco Products raises two issues, which we have restated
as whether the trial court erred in allowing Employee to present oral argument at the May
18, 2016 hearing in opposition to Transco Products' motion to dismiss, and whether the
trial court erred in determining that Employee sufficiently stated a claim for relief. We
find no merit in either issue.
Whether Trial Court Erred in AlJowing Oral Argument Opposing
Transco Products' Motion to Dismiss
Rule 4.0l(B) of the Practices and Procedures of the Court of Workers'
Compensation Claims provides the following guidance with respect to the time within
which a party must respond to a dispositive motion:
6
If a dispositive motion is opposed, a response to the motion must be filed
and served . . . on or before thirty calendar days after the filing of the
dispositive motion. The response shall be in writing and shall state with
particularity the grounds for the opposition. If no opposition is, filed, the
dispositive motion will be considered unopposed.
Employee filed a response to Transco Products' March 18, 2016 motion to dismiss the
morning of the May 18, 2016 hearing, which was significantly more than 30 days after
the filing of the dispositive motion. Transco Products objected to the late filing, and the
trial court refused to consider the written filing, stating it was "going to consider the
motion to be unopposed" in accordance with Rule 4.0l(B). Nonetheless, the trial court
allowed Employee's counsel to argue his position at the hearing and granted Transco
Products' request for time to respond in writing to the Employee's oral argument.
However, in its June 2, 2016 order denying the motion to dismiss, the court noted that it
"does not consider the term 'unopposed' as used in Rule 4.0l(B) as a requirement that it
automatically grant the relief moved for. The moving party must still show entitlement
under the law to the relief moved for." The trial court did not address Employee's oral
argument in its order denying the motion to dismiss, but determined that the motion to
dismiss was based on Employee's alleged failure to state a claim for relief under Rule
12.02(6) of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure.
Transco Products asserts on appeal that "if any rational[] basis exists to grant an
unopposed motion, the Trial Court is bound to grant said motion." Transco Products has
cited no authority in support of this argument. Neither Rule 4.0l(B) nor any other
applicable rule prohibits a trial court from deciding motions on their merits. Likewise,
the Bureau's regulations do not prohibit a trial court from considering the merits of an
unopposed motion. Cf Rochelle v. Oscar Mayer Foods Corp., No. 01-S-01-9207-CH-
00087, 1992 Tenn. LEXIS 748, at *12 (Tenn. Workers' Comp. Panel Jan. 19, 1993)
(Local rules of practice requiring a response to an opposed motion to be filed and
providing that the court may dispose of the motion as unopposed if no response is filed
"do[] not prohibit any court from deciding questions on their merits."). Accordingly,
under the circumstances presented, we discern no error in the trial court's allowing
Employee to orally express his opposition to Transco Products' motion to dismiss at the
hearing. We also find no error in the trial court's decision to consider the merits of the
motion despite the lack of a written response.
Whether mp loyee Sufficiently Stated a Claim for Relief
The second issue Transco Products raises on appeal is whether Employee stated an
actionable claim against it. In its brief on appeal, it asserts that "[t]o test the sufficiency
of Employee's pleading, [it] filed a Motion to Dismiss to determine whether Employee
has set forth a valid claim for which relief can be granted." Noting the trial court's
reliance on Trau-Med of Am., Inc. v. Allstate Ins. Co., 71 S.W.3d 691, 696 (Tenn. 2002),
7
and asserting that the trial court "essentially equates Employee's [petition for benefit
determination] to the filing of a complaint," Transco Products contends "the sparse facts
contained within the [petition for benefit determination], without more, do not survive a
Motion to Dismiss."
In analyzing this issue, the trial court noted that Employee filed his claim against
Transco Products by completing a petition for benefit determination. The trial court
observed that "[w]hen read as a whole, [Employee's] petition for benefit determination
against Transco states that he injured his 'right leg, left shoulder and body' when he
'slipped and fell in rain while carrying [an] MRI panel' on '11/05/2014."' The court
concluded that "the petition for benefit determination filed by [Employee] provided
Transco a short and plain statement communicating that he sought workers'
compensation benefits for the described work-related injury. Accordingly, Transco is not
entitled to dismissal under Rule 12.02(6)." We agree.
In order to commence a cause of action within the applicable limitations period, an
injured worker must timely file a petition for benefit determination. Tenn. Code Ann. §
50-6-203(b ). A petition for benefit determination is defined as "a request for the
[Bureau] to provide assistance in the resolution of any disputed issues in a workers'
compensation claim." Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0800-02-21-.02(19) (2015). We have
noted that a petition for benefit determination is the general equivalent of a complaint
because it initiates the process for resolving disputes whether or not benefits have been
paid. See Duck v. Cox Oil Co., No. 2015-07-0089, 2016 TN Wrk. Comp. App. Bd.
LEXIS 2 (Tenn. Workers' Comp. App. Bd. Jan. 21, 2016); see also Black's Law
Dictionary (6th ed. 1990) (defining a "complaint" as "the original or initial pleading by
which an action is commenced" and a "petition" as "a formal written application to a
court requesting judicial action on a certain matter."). 5 This means that, when faced with
the type of motion to dismiss as was filed in this case, the trial court will consider
whether, assuming the truth of the employee's averments, the employee can prove no set
of facts entitling him or her to relief. 6
5
In his concurrence, our colleague argues that the filing of a petition for benefit determination and a
dispute certification notice "occurs before the point in time at which the Tennessee Rules of Civil
Procedure have attached to the process." While we agree with this statement in the abstract, we find
nothing in the statute or regulations that prohibits a trial court from examining these filings once the Rules
of Civil Procedure are applicable, as they are here, to determine their sufficiency in the context of a
pending motion. Moreover, our colleague asserts that "the analysis fails to address the procedure
established in the Reform Act for presenting disputed issues to the trial court." We disagree. Nothing in
the statute or regulations prohibits a party from utilizing Tenn. R. Civ. P. 15.01 or Tennessee Code
Annotated section 50-6-239(b), as applicable, to amend such filings by use of a motion, as opposed to
filing a request for expedited hearing. Indeed, the trial court in this case granted an employer's motion for
more definite statement, thereby giving the employee an opportunity to amend the allegations in his
petition for benefit determination.
6
Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 12.02(6) governs motions to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon
8
As noted above, Employee's petition for benefit determination naming Transco
Products as a party alleged an injury to his "right leg, left shoulder and body" when he
"slipped and fell in rain while carrying [an] MRI panel" on "11/05/2014." He
characterized the disputed issue as the "right to medical treatment under Tenn. Code Ann.
50-6-204." He indicated that he had not been provided a panel of physicians, identified
the doctor he had seen for the injury, and described the medical care provided to include
"x-ray of right leg, MRI." In addition, he indicated that the SIF was involved. The trial
court determined Employee's petition sufficiently stated a cause of action and declined to
dismiss the case. Taking the assertions in the petition as true for purposes of Rule
12.02(6) as we must, see Bell, 986 S.W.2d at 554, we find no error in the trial court's
denial of Transco Products' motion to dismiss.
The Second Injury Fund's Appeal
The SIF presents two issues on appeal. First, it alleges the trial court erred in
setting the cases for an initial hearing when the parties did not request a hearing. Second,
it alleges the trial court erred "in failing to dismiss [Employee's] claims in accordance
with [the trial court's] prior order(s)."
Following the trial court's issuance of the June 2, 2016 order denying the SIF's
motions, the SIF filed a motion to stay the proceedings pending its appeal, representing
that it would timely appeal the trial court's June 2, 2016 order. The motion to stay the
proceedings noted that the trial court's June 2, 2016 order scheduled an initial hearing on
June 15, 2016, and asserted that "[i]n the event the Appeals Board modifies or reverses
this Court's interlocutory order, it would be in the interest of judicial economy and
efficiency to stay the Initial Hearing and further proceedings in this Court until prompt
resolution of the appeal." On June 8, 2016, the trial court stayed the proceedings, finding
"that a stay of these proceedings serves the interest of judicial economy." The June 8,
2016 order cancelled the June 15, 2016 initial hearing and arguably rendered the SIF's
first issue on appeal moot. We note, however, that although Rule 0800-02-21-.12 does
not explicitly authorize trial courts to schedule initial hearings where no party has
requested a hearing, nothing in the regulations precludes a trial court from doing so.
Specifically, Rule 0800-02-21-.13(1) requires parties to participate in an initial hearing
"no more than thirty (30) calendar days after a request for hearing is filed," but the rule
does not preclude the possibility that such a hearing could be scheduled by the court
earlier. Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0800-02-21-.13(1) (2015) (emphasis added). It is
which relief can be granted. Such a motion challenges only the legal sufficiency of the complaint or
request for relief, not the strength of the proof. See Bell ex rel. Snyder v. Icard, Merrill, Cul/is, Timm,
Furen & Ginsburg, P.A., 986 S.W.2d 550, 554 (Tenn. 1999) ("Such a motion admits the truth of all
relevant and material averments contained in the complaint, but asserts that such facts do not constitute a
cause of action as a matter of law."). Thus, a trial court should grant a Rule 12.02(6) motion to dismiss
only when it appears the employee can prove no set of facts in support of the claim that would warrant
relief. Doe v. Sunquist, 2 S.W.3d 919, 922 (Tenn. 1999).
9
consistent with common practice, applicable regulations, the Tennessee Rules of Civil
Procedure, and the need to control its docket and the progress of cases to allow a trial
court to set a scheduling hearing in the absence of a request by a party to do so.
The SIF's second issue questions the trial court's failure to dismiss Employee's
claims pursuant to the trial court's January 13, 2016 order. In its brief, the SIF states
"[t]he position of the SIF is that [Employee's] claim should have been dismissed for
failure to show cause after being given a multitude of opportunities to do so." We note
that a show cause hearing was held on January 12, 2016, and that the trial court issued a
show cause order the following day granting Employee "time to decide how to proceed ..
. until January 29, 2016, on which date the Court scheduled a telephonic Status
Conference." No one appealed the January 13, 2016 show cause order or the February 5,
2016 status conference orders. Rather, the SIF filed motions to alter or amend the status
conference orders on March 7, 2016, which the trial court denied in the order on appeal.
Focusing on the trial court's explanation in the June 2, 2016 order on appeal addressing
why the January 13, 2016 show cause order did not mandate dismissal of Employee's
claims, the SIF contends that "based on the totality of the circumstances, it is clear that
[Employee's attorney] in fact communicated to the Court on January 29, 2016, that he
was filing a Request for Expedited Hearing, not a Request for Initial Hearing." Asserting
that "[s]ince [Employee's attorney] was ordered to inform the Court which of the two
hearings he intended to pursue and the Court did not schedule a compensation hearing at
that time, an inference should be drawn that [the attorney] communicated to the Court he
was pursuing an expedited hearing."
As noted in the SIF's brief, "no audio recordings of either January hearing were
preserved." Beyond what the transcripts of the March 10, 2016 and May 18, 2016
hearings and the trial court's orders reveal, we cannot know what the "totality of the
circumstances" might be, nor can we draw inferences concerning what a party or counsel
communicated or represented to the court without the aid of transcripts of the
proceedings or orders identifying such communications. It is the responsibility of the
appealing party to ensure a complete record on appeal by either filing a transcript
prepared by a licensed court reporter or, alternatively, filing a statement of the evidence.
See Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0800-02-22-.02(2). Here, transcripts of the March 10, 2016
and May 18, 2016 hearings were filed with the trial court, but neither transcripts of the
January 12, 2016 and January 29, 2016 hearings nor a statement of the evidence
presented in those hearings was included in the record. We are unable to discern the
"totality of the circumstances" as suggested by the SIF without such transcripts.
Moreover, the January 13, 2016 order upon which the SIF relies included the
following language that the SIF contends bound the trial court to a specific course of
action that it failed to take:
10
If [Employee's attorney] informs the Court at the [January 29, 2016] Status
Conference that his client intends to file a Request for Expedited Hearing,
the Court will enter an order requiring that he file the Request for
Expedited Hearing within five business days from January 29, 2016, or,
failing such, his claim will be dismissed without prejudice. If [Employee's
attorney] informs the Court at the Status Conference that his client requests
an Initial (Scheduling) Hearing, the Court will schedule this claim for a
Compensation Hearing.
In the order on appeal, the trial court addressed the January 13, 2016 order and concluded
it did not mandate a dismissal of Employee's claims, stating "the condition precedent in
the order for the Court's imposition of the five-day deadline to file Requests for
Expedited Hearing never occurred; therefore, the Court was not under a self-imposed
mandate to dismiss [Employee's] claims because he did not file Requests for Expe~ited
Hearings within a deadline that never came into effect."
The January 13, 2016 orders were interlocutory in nature and did not resolve all of
the issues or claims before the trial court. Thus, they were subject to revision by the trial
court at any time before entry of a final order. See Tenn. R. Civ. P. 54.02 (An "order or
other fonn of decision is subject to revision at any time before the entry of the judgment
adjudicating all the claims and the rights and liabilities of all the parties."). Here, the trial
court did not modify the January 13, 2016 order; rather, it interpreted its own order as not
requiring dismissal of Employee's claims on the sole basis of Employee's not requesting
an expedited hearing. Not knowing the "totality of the circumstances" as communicated
or represented by the parties in the January 12, 2016 or January 29, 2016 hearings, we
cannot say that the trial court erred in interpreting its own orders and denying the SIF's
motion to alter or amend the February 5, 2016 status conference orders, or in denying the
SIF's motion to dismiss Employee's claims.
Discretion to Control Docket
Before concluding, we must address the trial court's observations that "a majority"
of the Appeals Board in Smith v. The Newman Group, No. 2015-08-0075, 2015 TN Wrk.
Comp. App. Bd. LEXIS 30 (Tenn. Workers' Comp. App. Bd. Sept. 21, 2015), held that
trial courts have the discretion to control their dockets. Specifically, the trial court
observed that "a majority of the Appeals Board held [in Smith] that trial judges in the
Court of Workers' Compensation Claims possess discretion to control the pace of
litigation in their courts to ensure equitable and efficient disposition of the claims
litigated therein." The trial court reiterated the point a second time, noting that "the
majority in Smith held that a workers' compensation trial judge has broad discretion to
manage its docket."
11
While we were divided in Smith as to whether the trial court acted within its
discretion in denying an employer's motion to dismiss following a show cause hearing,
the observations made by the trial judge in this case reflect an overly narrow
construction of our views expressed in Smith. Consistent with well-established law, we
were then, and are now, unanimous in our belief that a trial court has the necessary
discretion to control the pace of litigation through the use of case supervision and docket
7
management. But we are also unanimous that such discretion is not without its limits.
In Smith, we differed over where the discretionary line should be drawn under the
particular circumstances presented in that case, but not over whether such discretion
exists.
Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the trial court did not err in denying
Transco Products' motion to dismiss Employee's claim or in denying the SIF's motions
to alter or amend the status conference orders or to dismiss Employee's claims. We
additionally conclude that the trial court's decisions did not violate any of the standards
set forth in Tennessee Code Annotated section 50-6-217(a)(3). Accordingly, the trial
court's decisions are affirmed and these consolidated cases are remanded for any further
proceedings that may be necessary.
-~
W. Conner, Judge
rs' Compensation Appeals Board
7
See, e.g., Sissom v. Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc., No. M2011-00363-WC-R3-WC, 2012 Tenn. LEXIS
411, at *3 n.2 (Tenn. Workers' Comp. Panel June 20, 2012) ("trial judges have been charged with
controlling the pace of litigation through the use of supervision and docket management which will
ensure efficient disposition of civil cases"); Lewis v. Dana Holding Corp., No. W2010-01863-WC-R3-
WC, 2011 Tenn. LEXIS 461, at *9 (Tenn. Workers' Comp. Panel June 6, 2011) ("[a] trial court has broad
discretion in managing its courtroom and docket").
12
TENNESSEE BUREAU OF WORKERS’ COMPENSATION
WORKERS’ COMPENSATION APPEALS BOARD
Lazaro Valladares ) Docket Nos. 2015-01-0117
) 2015-01-0118
v. )
) State File Nos. 91964-2014
Transco Products, Inc., et al. ) 39859-2014
)
and )
)
Williams Specialty Services, et al. )
)
and )
)
Abigail Hudgens, Administrator of the )
Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, )
Second Injury Fund )
)
)
Appeal from the Court of Workers’ )
Compensation Claims, )
Thomas Wyatt, Judge )
Concurring Opinion - Filed July 27, 2016
I concur with the conclusions in the lead opinion that the trial court did not err in
denying the motions at issue. Additionally, as noted in the lead opinion, the Appeals
Board is unanimous in our belief that a trial court has the necessary discretion to control
the pace of litigation through the use of case supervision and docket management and in
our belief that such discretion is not without its limits.
I write separately to express my opinion that it was error for the trial court to
analyze Transco Products’ motion to dismiss under Rule 12.02(6) of the Tennessee Rules
of Civil Procedure. In my opinion, the appropriate procedure Transco Products should
have followed to present its disputed issue would have included (1) properly identifying
the issue in the dispute certification notice filed with the Bureau, and (2) requesting that
1
the trial court hear its dispute on an expedited basis in accordance with Tennessee Code
Annotated section 50-6-239(d) (2015).
Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0800-02-21-.02(19) defines a petition for benefit
determination as a “request for the [Bureau] to provide assistance in the resolution of any
disputed issues in a workers’ compensation claim.” It further provides that “[a]ny party
may file a petition for benefit determination, on a form approved by the [Bureau], with
the [Bureau] at any time after a dispute arises in a claim for workers’ compensation
benefits.” Id. The form approved by the Bureau provides a checklist from which the
petitioner can select the type of relief being requested, and it includes an area for the
petitioner to explain any disputed issues in addition to providing information about the
employee, the employer, the injury, the insurance carrier, and whether the Second Injury
Fund is involved. Although the Appeals Board has equated a petition for benefit
determination to a complaint filed with the clerk of the court to commence a civil action,
see Duck v. Cox Oil Co., No. 2015-07-0089, 2016 TN Wrk. Comp. App. Bd. LEXIS 2
(Tenn. Workers’ Comp. App. Bd. Jan. 21, 2016), it is essentially a fill-in-the-blank
document and checklist intended to initiate a request that the Bureau provide assistance in
resolving disputed issues in a workers’ compensation claim.
Once a petition for benefit determination has been filed, the parties are required to
participate in alternative dispute resolution measures designed to help the parties resolve
claims by agreement. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-6-236(b) (2015). If the parties are
unable to reach an agreement, the mediator prepares and issues a dispute certification
notice, “setting forth all unresolved issues for hearing before a workers’ compensation
judge.” Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-6-236(d)(1). However, “[n]o party is entitled to a hearing
before a workers’ compensation judge to determine temporary or permanent benefits . . .
unless a workers’ compensation mediator has issued a dispute certification notice setting
forth the issues for adjudication by a workers’ compensation judge.” Tenn. Code Ann. §
50-6-236(d)(3)(A). See also Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-6-203(a) (“No request for a hearing
by a workers’ compensation judge . . . shall be filed with the court of workers’
compensation claims, other than a request for settlement approval, until a workers’
compensation mediator has issued a dispute certification notice certifying issues in
dispute for hearing before a workers’ compensation judge.”).
Tennessee Code Annotated section 50-6-239(a) provides the procedure for “a
party seeking further resolution of disputed issues” to present those issues to the workers’
compensation judge. This section provides that such party “shall file a request for a
hearing,” and subdivision 50-6-239(b)(1) limits the issues that may be presented to those
“issues that have been certified by a workers’ compensation mediator within a dispute
certification notice.” Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-6-239(a), (b)(1) (2015). Here, Transco
Products identified “compensability” as an issue in the dispute certification notice, but it
did not include as a defense or as a disputed issue whether the petition for benefit
determination fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. Instead of
2
requesting an expedited hearing to resolve the disputes identified in the dispute
certification notice, Transco Products filed a separate motion to dismiss grounded in Rule
12 of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure, which presented an issue that was not
included or identified in the dispute certification notice. In its brief on appeal, it asserts
that “[t]o test the sufficiency of Employee’s pleading, [it] filed a Motion to Dismiss to
determine whether Employee has set forth a valid claim for which relief can be granted.”
Tennessee Code Annotated section 50-6-239(c)(1) provides that the Tennessee
Rules of Civil Procedure “shall govern proceedings at all hearings before a workers’
compensation judge unless an alternate procedural . . . rule has been adopted by the
administrator.” Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-6-239(c)(1) (emphasis added). “[T]he phrase
‘proceedings at all hearings’ as used in section 50-6-239(c)(1) encompasses all filings
made by the parties as a result of any request for or notice of a hearing filed after the
issuance of a dispute certification notice.” Syph v. Choice Food Group, Inc., No. 2015-
06-0288, 2016 TN Wrk. Comp. App. Bd. LEXIS 18, at *13 (Tenn. Workers’ Comp. App.
Bd. Apr. 21, 2016). The filing with the Bureau of both a petition for benefit
determination by any party and an initial dispute certification notice by a workers’
compensation mediator occurs prior to any request for or notice of a hearing before the
Court of Workers’ Compensation Claims. Thus, the filing of these documents occurs
before the point in time at which the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure have attached to
the process. It necessarily follows that, at the time both a petition for benefit
determination and an initial dispute certification notice are filed, neither is subject to the
requirements applicable to a civil complaint or an answer to a civil complaint as
contemplated in the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure.
In these consolidated cases, the analysis by both the trial court and in the lead
opinion applies the pleading requirements of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure to
Employee’s petition for benefit determination, but that analysis fails to address the
procedure established in the Reform Act for presenting disputed issues to the trial court,
focusing instead on whether the information in the petition for benefit determination
states a claim upon which relief can be granted. In my opinion, this is an incorrect
analysis. Neither analysis addressed whether Transco Products identified the issue in the
dispute certification notice or whether Transco Products initiated the appropriate
procedure for presenting the issue to the trial court by requesting an expedited hearing
pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated section 50-6-239(d). In my view, the purpose of
the expedited hearing process is to allow any party the opportunity to have the trial court
hear and resolve disputes over issues included in the dispute certification notice
concerning the provision of benefits. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-6-239(d)(1). Transco
Products failed to comply with section 50-6-239(a) when it did not request an expedited
hearing, and it avoided the prohibition in section 50-6-239(b) against presenting issues
not certified by the workers’ compensation mediator by filing a motion to dismiss under
Rule 12 of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure. While I agree that the motion to
3
dismiss should have been denied, in my opinion, the trial court erred in analyzing
Transco Products’ motion to dismiss based on Rule 12.02(6).
4
TENNESSEE BUREAU OF WORKERS’ COMPENSATION
WORKERS’ COMPENSATION APPEALS BOARD
Lazaro Valladares ) Docket Nos. 2015-01-0117
) 2015-01-0118
v. )
) State File Nos. 91964-2014
Transco Products, Inc., et al. ) 39859-2014
)
and )
)
Williams Specialty Services, LLC, et al. )
)
and )
)
Abigail Hudgens, Administrator of the )
Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, )
Second Injury Fund )
)
Appeal from the Court of Workers’ )
Compensation Claims, )
Thomas Wyatt, Judge )
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I hereby certify that a true and correct copy of the Appeals Board’s decision in the
referenced case was sent to the following recipients by the following methods of service
on this the 27th day of July, 2016.
Name Certified First Class Via Fax Via Email Address
Mail Mail Fax Number Email
Chad Rickman X chad@loringjustice.com
Joseph Ballard X Joseph.Ballard@thehartford.com
David Weatherman X David.weatherman@zurichna.com
Allison Lowry X Allison.Lowry@tn.gov
Thomas Wyatt, Judge X Via Electronic Mail
Kenneth M. Switzer, X Via Electronic Mail
Chief Judge
Penny Shrum, Clerk, X Penny.Patterson-Shrum@tn.gov
Court of Workers’
Compensation Claims
Matthew Salyer
Clerk, Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board
220 French Landing Dr., Ste. 1-B,
Nashville, TN 37243
Telephone: 615-253-1606
Electronic Mail: Matthew.Salyer@tn.gov
|
Courtesy of the NAACP, with over 37,000 likes and 23,000 retweets. But this meme isn’t limited to them, it originates with a Washington Post article, based on research by political science professors at the University of North Texas. From there, it got picked up by countless media outlets, including The Hill, Business Insider, Vox and SF Gate. The amount of shares on social media are too numerous to count, but include major and influential voices like Joy Reid, Arianna Huffington, Will Bunch and Joe Scarborough, who repeated this claim as fact. Did hate crimes really rise 226% where Trump held his rallies? Let’s examine the evidence.
The Flawed Washington Post Study
Since this statistic originates with the Washington Post article, let’s look at their methodology. The professors examined the counties which hosted 275 Trump campaign rallies in 2016 and used the Anti-Defamation League’s “HEAT map” to compile data about hate crimes in the subsequent months. They found that hate crimes rose 226% in relation to “comparable counties” that did not host a rally. However, there are serious flaws with this study.
The ADL’s HEAT map is not a good source to analyze hate crimes, because it’s not a list of hate crimes. It includes a list of “extremist and anti-Semitic incidents,” which are often not crimes at all. If you download their data (click on “download selected data”) you can see all the events they include. A great many are simply examples of free speech and/or rude and offensive behavior. Here are some examples:
They list literally hundreds of instances where (generally far right) activist groups distributed fliers or other propaganda material. Some of these had slogans which were fairly benign (“America First,” “Defend America,” “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Victory,” “Better dead than red”) while others were outright racist or anti-Semitic (“Join the KKK and fight for race and nation,” “European roots, American greatness”).
Approximately two dozen League of the South members held a flash demonstration on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
A juvenile received images of Hitler to her cell phone from an unknown number.
Anti-Semitic comments made in a Snapchat group.
In a soccer game, a 13 year old was told “stop following me Jew” by another player.
During a sermon, a priest made anti-Semitic comments about Jewish liturgy.
However offensive one might find these events, they are not hate crimes. So long as groups and individuals are just distributing material, protesting or being jerks they are within their first amendment rights. Hate crimes involve credible threats or damage to persons or property, and include acts like vandalism, intimidation, burglary and assault. While the ADL’s list includes these acts, they also include many things that don’t qualify as crimes, just read through the list yourself. More than half appear to be examples of offensive speech, not crimes.
The purpose of the ADL map is to identify what they feel are disturbing racist or anti-Semitic acts, but this is not at all the same as identifying hate crimes. For that, the FBI data on hate crimes should be used, yet it wasn’t used in the study. Thus, the study cited in the Washington Post is based on flawed data for its stated purpose.
The study also says they compared counties with Trump rallies to “comparable counties”. They don’t explain how they do this, but it’s very suspect. For example, what is a comparable city/county to Las Vegas/Clark County? Vegas is by far the largest city in Nevada, and there’s no city of equivalent population for hundreds of miles. What ever is chosen will certainly not be “comparable” by any reasonable standard. Trump tended to have rallies in urban areas, which one would assume would have higher instances of these acts than the “comparable counties” around them. A far better method would be to compare the same city/county before and after a Trump rally, a method which will be done here.
In order for a study on hate crimes to be taken seriously, it must use the FBI Hate Crime database, or an equivalent (which doesn’t yet exist). The Washington Post article does not use such data, and I could find no other source which attempted to check Trump rallies with such data. Which meant I had to do my own study.
The Meme Policeman Methodology
For this analysis, I took the list of Trump’s presidential campaign rallies. These began in 2015, but only the ones during 2016 up until the election were used, as that’s what the meme references.
There were 275 total rallies, but some cities were visited multiple times, giving us 223 total cities/counties to analyze.
The hate crimes data was taken from the FBI database from 2015 and 2016 in order to compare hate crimes for each year for every area. If you click on Table 13, it breaks down each state’s reported hate crimes by the local reporting agency. If the thesis of the meme is correct, the rhetoric of the Trump rallies would register a noticeable uptick in the amount of hate crimes in these areas during 2016 compared to 2015.
FBI hate crimes statistics come from various participating law enforcement agencies around the country who provide them with data. Generally, it’s cities providing the data, although some states also have counties listed, and occasionally other agencies like universities, parks, highway patrol or airports will also report. Thus, it’s often a bit complicated to find data for a particular campaign rally’s area as there could be multiple reporting agencies.
For each rally, I included data for the city, county and any other relevant reporting agency nearby. Sometimes this was simple, as in New Hampshire, where only cities are listed. Other areas were more complex. For example, for Trump’s rally in Miami I included data from Miami Beach, North Miami, North Miami Beach and Miami-Dade County.
In some cases, Trump had two rallies in nearby towns or cities in the same county. For those, I only included the county once, as to avoid double counting.
If this sounds like a lot of work, it was! There was no way to automate the process, as each rally location had to be researched for county and possible universities, airports and parks. For more info on how to find and sift through FBI hate crime data like a ninja, see my instructional video.
Results
Of the 223 cities and towns Trump had rallies in, over 1/3 (86) reported zero hate crimes for all of 2016. Over half (127) reported one or less. Considering the relatively low frequency of these crimes, statistics for a given area can be wildly misleading. For instance, Tampa, which Trump visited more than any other city, had hate crimes rise by a whopping 300%! But this is because it went from 1 incident in 2015 to 4 in 2016. Meanwhile, hate crimes in Las Vegas, where Trump visited 4 times, plummeted by 40% (48 in 2015 to 29 in 2016). Thus, beware anytime you see hate crimes stats for a local area or even state, as these can fluctuate dramatically. The amount of Trump rallies evens out these fluctuations a bit, but it should still be taken with skepticism.
Here are the combined results for all the cities and counties Trump had campaign rallies for in 2016:
2016: 1,450 hate crimes
2015: 1,433 hate crimes
Far from the meme’s and Washington Post’s claim, the increase in hate crimes in cities/counties where Trump had rallies was just 1%. Furthermore, it could be credibly argued that hate crimes actually declined in these areas when factoring increased reporting and population. If you click on the “participating agencies” section of the FBI data, it shows the number of agencies reporting the data and population covered. In 2016, there were 257 more reporting agencies than 2015 (15,254 vs. 14,997) covering a population of 5.9 million more people (289.8M vs. 283.9M).
This means that the 2016 data included 2% more people, so we’d assume a 2% increase in hate crimes all things being equal. It’s sort of like comparing real and nominal prices. So a 1% increase is arguably a 1% decline.
Either way it’s looked at, hate crimes remained essentially flat. This data proves nothing about the influence Trump rallies have on hate crimes, except that they appear to have no influence.
Overall, hate crimes increased by 4.6% throughout the country from 205-16. This means that the areas Trump visited actually fared better than the rest of the country on average. Of course, this small statistical correlation can’t be attributed to Trump, but it further knocks down the narrative of the meme and Post article.
More Context
If one is inclined, just about any narrative can be created by examining hate crime statistics. For example, anti-Hispanic hate crimes increased 15% from 2015-16, which out of context could be attributed to Trump’s rhetoric. But anti-black crimes declined by 1%, and anti-white crimes increased by 17%. The Trump rhetoric narrative also collapses when we see that white offenders actually declined by 3% in 2016, while Hispanic offenders increased by a whopping 40%!
However, lest the pro-Trump crowd get too excited, many of these narratives flipped in 2017 (the latest data available). Anti-Hispanic crimes rose at an even faster pace (24%) than anti-white crimes (3%) and this time white offenders increased by 20%, although Hispanic offenders increased again more than any other group by 38% (but still committed far fewer hate crimes than whites). Of course, we also need to factor in the increased reporting agencies in 2017, which covered 6% more people, which tempers these numbers a bit. It becomes clear that things get quite complicated and nuanced!
One interesting narrative that is never reported is that the least amount of hate crimes happen in some of the deepest parts of Trump country. Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas all had less than 10 hate crimes reported in the entire state during 2017, with Mississippi registering just 4, a decline of 60% from the year prior. These are supposedly the most racist areas of the US, yet have the fewest hate crimes. Compare them with Democrat strongholds like California, with a whopping 1,270 hate crimes in 2017 or Washington with 613, a strikingly high number considering their population. Yet, even this narrative collapses when we look at other red states like Kentucky (432) and South Carolina (94), who had huge percentage increases in hate crimes in 2017.
Historical context on hate crimes (not adjusted for population)
Conclusion
The purpose of pointing out these different narratives is to show how manipulative these sorts of statistics can be. Depending on one’s agenda, almost anything can be hyped up without context. But if we step back, the reality is that hate crimes are far lower today than they were two decades ago, particularly when factoring in increased population, and are not at alarming levels historically. This could change in the future, of course, but for now the fear is not based on facts, but media hype.
Regarding this particular claim, it’s completely detached from reality and the facts. Any researcher who understands hate crimes should know to use the FBI database, not the ADL’s. The fact that this was published by one of the nation’s largest newspapers and shared heavily by the media elites is shameful.
|
10/11/2018
A truck bearing pro-Trump stickers was torched after the owner left the vehicle at a bar parking lot in Vancouver, Wash., overnight.
Johnny MacKay told KOIN News the incident occurred late Monday night, after he opted to take an Uber home after having a few drinks, leaving his Nissan Titan pickup in the Garage Bar and Grille’s parking lot.
During the night, Randy Sanchagrin, who lives near the bar, told the local station he heard an explosion. He then exited the house and began filming what turned out to be MacKay’s truck being engulfed by flames.
“By the time I ran back to the street it was so bad there was no getting close to it,” Sanchagrin told the local outlet.
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About Patterico
Pronounced "Patter-EE-koh"
E-mail: Just use my moniker Patterico, followed by the @ symbol, followed by gmail.com
|
Cochylimorpha nomadana
Cochylimorpha nomadana is a species of moth of the family Tortricidae. It is found in China (Xinjiang), Afghanistan, Iran, Russia (the Caucasus and south-eastern part of European Russia), Armenia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
The wingspan is 22–31 mm. Adults have been recorded from wing from July to August.
References
Category:Moths described in 1874
Category:Cochylimorpha
Category:Moths of Asia
|
Q:
How do I create a network from connected links
I have a bundle of links in 'some' networks. I need to find out which ones are connected to each other i.e. I need to find out which links are not connected to the 'main' network.
I have been working on a flood fill recursive method, which effectively goes from link to link, finding out which ones are connected, and recursively doing the same. But the numbers are quite high, and my machine just bailed, so I wondered if there were other, better, or more efficient, ways of doing this.
Using arcpy
Thanks in advance
A:
I used FME 2013 NetworkTopologyCalculator. Phenominal, took 4 seconds...
|
2.. Introduction {#s1}
================
This article describes a simple formula for calculating the mutual information between random variables where one or both of the variables take values in a metric space. This is relevant to neuroscience because electrophysiological data, whether spike trains from single neurons or collections of spike trains from a population of neurons, can be naturally considered to take values in a metric space \[[@RSOS140391C1],[@RSOS140391C2]\]. It is, in turn, useful to be able to calculate information theory quantities for these data as part of an investigation into effective coding theories of neurodynamics or as a tool for quantifying the relationship between the activity of different neurons or different neuronal populations. However, the relevance is not limited to spike trains, it extends to other electrophysiological data types, such as calcium or electroencephalogram traces. Indeed, non-coordinate metrics or similarity measures are also used, for example, in genetics and biochemistry \[[@RSOS140391C3],[@RSOS140391C4]\], in image analysis \[[@RSOS140391C5]\] and in information retrieval \[[@RSOS140391C6]\].
The aim here is to address two difficulties associated with estimating mutual information on metric spaces. The first difficulty is that information theory is most typically applied to problems where the data are either discrete or take values in an integrable manifold. The second difficulty is that many approaches to estimating information theory quantities can demand an unrealistically large amount of data. The second of these difficulties has been addressed in the past by the Kozachenko--Leonenko estimator \[[@RSOS140391C7]--[@RSOS140391C10]\], but, in line with the first difficulty, this estimator is derived specifically for an integrable manifold or using a local effective dimension. The aim here is to provide a simple approach to a Kozachenko--Leonenko estimator which applies to metric spaces. With this extension, mutual information can be calculated for the broad class of important data where there is a similarity measure, but no coordinates.
The particular application which motivates this article is the problem of calculating information theory quantities for spike trains. Three different types of neuroscience experiment could be considered typical. In the first, the activity of a neuron or group of neurons is recorded from the brain of an anesthetized or restrained animal while that animal is being presented with a series of stimuli. The challenge is to estimate the mutual information between the stimulus and the neuronal activity during the presentation. In the second, neuronal activity is recorded while an animal is moving freely in an arena and the mutual information is to be estimated between the position of the animal at a given time and the neuronal activity in a temporal window centred on that time. In the third example, the mutual information is to be estimated between temporal slices of the spike trains produced by different neurons so that this can be used to measure the relationship between those neurons, for example, at different times during development.
Estimating mutual information is not straightforward in any of these examples because there is no obvious coordinate system for describing neuronal activity. One approach to solving this difficulty is to discretize the spike trains, turning individual fragments of spike train into sequences of ones and zeros with each bit accounting for the presence or absence of a spike in a corresponding time slot \[[@RSOS140391C11]\]. However, the amount of possible words is huge and so this approach is bedevilled by the large amount of data it requires. One response to this problem is to exploit what is sometimes called the birthday problem and to look at coincidences \[[@RSOS140391C12],[@RSOS140391C13]\]. However, the proximity structure of the space of spike trains is poorly approximated by examining the coincidence whereby two spike trains are discretized to the same sequence of ones and zeros. Here, it is proposed that, instead, one of the many metrics or similarity measures on the space of spike trains be used to define proximity \[[@RSOS140391C14]--[@RSOS140391C20]\].
3.. Method {#s2}
==========
Two simple formulae for mutual information are presented in this article, one for the mutual information between a discrete space and a metric space and one for the mutual information between two metric spaces. These two formulae are intended to cover, respectively, the first and the second and third neuroscientific examples described above. There are two main steps to deriving these formulae. Firstly, probabilities are estimated using a simplified version of the Kozachenko--Leonenko approach \[[@RSOS140391C7]--[@RSOS140391C10]\]; this estimate of probability involves terms that depend on the volumes. In the second step, these volumes are estimated using the probability distribution as a measure.
3.1. A formula for the entropy {#s2a}
------------------------------
Consider estimating entropy for a random variable *X* which takes values in a space $\mathcal{X}$ with probability mass density *p*~*X*~(*x*). Given a set of *N* outcomes, {*x*~1~,*x*~2~,...,*x*~*N*~}, the entropy is estimated by $$H(X) \approx - \frac{1}{N}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{N}\log_{2}p_{X}(x_{i}).$$The problem here is how to calculate this quantity when *p*~*X*~(*x*) is not known. To do this, the approach given in \[[@RSOS140391C7],[@RSOS140391C9]\] is followed in spirit but modified to avoid any quantities that rely on coordinates; the aim is to derive a formula for metric spaces. This will require that a region *B*(*x*~*i*~,*V*) with volume *V* is chosen around each data point; this region will ultimately be specified using the metric, but for now it is supposed only that there is a such a region for each data point.
Now, consider the probability *P*~*k*~(*x*~*i*~) that the region *B*(*x*~*i*~,*V*) contains precisely *k* points; it is $$P_{k}(r_{i}) = \begin{pmatrix}
N \\
k \\
\end{pmatrix}F_{i}^{k}{(1 - F_{i})}^{N - k},$$where *F*~*i*~ is the probability mass contained in *B*(*x*~*i*~,*V*). This means that $$\langle k\rangle = NF_{i}.$$This quantity can be estimated from the data $$\langle k\rangle \approx \#\lbrack B(x_{i},V)\rbrack,$$where \#\[*B*(*x*~*i*~,*V*)\] denotes the number of data points in *B*(*x*~*i*~,*V*); that is for any $B \subseteq \mathcal{X}$ $$\#\lbrack B\rbrack = |B \cap \{ x_{1},x_{2},\ldots,x_{N}\}|.$$This means that $$NF_{i} \approx \#\lbrack B(x_{i},V)\rbrack.$$Now, the probability mass function is approximated by assuming that it is constant in the ball $$F_{i} \approx Vp_{X}(x_{i}).$$This means $$NVp_{X}(x_{i}) \approx \#\lbrack B(x_{i},V)\rbrack$$so $$\log_{2}p_{X}(x_{i}) \approx \log_{2}\#\lbrack B(x_{i},V)\rbrack - \log_{2}N - \log_{2}V$$or $$H(X) \approx \log_{2}N + \log_{2}V - \frac{1}{N}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{N}\log_{2}{\#\lbrack B(x_{i},V)\rbrack}.$$This assumption is the same as the one used in \[[@RSOS140391C7],[@RSOS140391C9]\]; in \[[@RSOS140391C9]\], some care is given to justifying this as an approximation; here, though, it is introduced only with the general justification that the variation in *p*~*X*~(*x*) should be modest if the region spanned by *B*(*x*~*i*~,*V*) is small.
The formula for the entropy, equation ([3.10](#RSOS140391M3x10){ref-type="disp-formula"}), is similar in spirit to the one given in \[[@RSOS140391C7],[@RSOS140391C9]\]. However, it is not identical, and is, in fact, simpler, because here the probability is estimated using the expected number of points in a ball rather than the size of the ball that contains a given number of points; the latter requires the trinomial, as opposed to the binomial, expansion. Also, of course, the approach here is chosen because it makes it possible to avoid quantities that are only defined on integrable manifolds.
3.2. Estimating the volume {#s2b}
--------------------------
The problem with this is that there may not be an obvious measure. Certainly in the case of spike trains there are no good coordinates and so there is no way to calculate the volume of a region based on the usual sort of coordinate-based measure. However, a probability distribution always defines a measure: the volume of a region can be defined as being equal to the probability mass it contains, $$\text{vol}\, B = P(x \in B).$$This volume can be estimated from the data $$\text{vol}\, B \approx \frac{\#\lbrack B\rbrack}{N}.$$
This gives a trivial estimate of the entropy: differential entropy is zero if the probability distribution is used as the measure and the approximation used here is exact in this case: if *V* =*h*/*N* for some integer *h*≤*N* $$H(X) \approx \log_{2}N + \log_{2}\frac{h}{N} - \frac{1}{N}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{N}\log_{2}h = 0$$as \#\[*B*(*x*~*i*~,*h*/*N*)\]=*h* by definition. Thus, using the probability as a measure for estimating information theory quantities would be useless if the aim was to estimate entropy. In fact, the entropy is a measure-dependent quantity whose value changes if the measure is changed. This is perhaps less important when a particular relevant coordinate system distinguishes a measure, but generally the significance of the entropy is not clear. The mutual information, however, does not suffer from this problem, its value is independent of the measure used. Furthermore, from the perspective of the approach taken in this article, it involves more than one distribution which means that one distribution can be used to give a measure while calculating estimates for the other distributions.
Here, two cases will be considered: in the first case one random variable is discrete and the other takes its values in a metric space; in the second case both random variables take values in metric spaces. In addition, an estimate is derived for the Kullback--Leibler (KL) divergence between two distributions over the same metric space.
3.3. The mutual information where one random variable is discrete {#s2c}
-----------------------------------------------------------------
In many electrophysiological experiments, stimuli from a discrete corpus are presented repeatedly while spike trains are recorded. In this situation, the stimuli are represented by a discrete random variable and the response by a random variable taking values in a metric space. This situation is considered here; the situation is more general than the neuroscientific application, but, for convenience, the terminology is based on that application.
Let $\mathcal{S}$ be a discrete set representing the stimuli and let $\mathcal{R}$ be a set of responses, which may be spike trains or sets of spike trains recorded from multiple neurons. For simplicity, consider the situation where each element of $\mathcal{S}$ is presented an equal number of times, *n*~t~. Let $n_{s} = |\mathcal{S}|$ be the number of stimuli, so the total number of data points is *N*=*n*~t~*n*~S~.
The metric on $\mathcal{R}$ is used to define the regions that are required around the data points. For a point *r* in $\mathcal{R}$ define an open ball $$B_{\epsilon}(r) = \{ t \in \mathcal{R}:d(r,t) < \epsilon\}.$$Next, let *B*(*r*,*V*) be the open ball *B*~*ϵ*~(*r*) with *ϵ* chosen so that *B*~*ϵ*~(*r*) has volume *V* . The total probability *p*~*R*~(*r*) will be used as a measure and the volume *V* fixed at *V* =*h*/*N* for some *h*≤*N*. This means that *B*(*r*,*h*/*N*) is the open ball around *r* which contains *h* points.
With this measure *H*(*R*)=0. The same measure can be used for the conditioned probabilities; that is, for calculating *H*(*R*\|*S*=*s*) using the conditioned probability *p*~*R*\|*S*=*s*~(*r*). Hence, $$\begin{matrix}
{H(R|S = s)} & {\approx \log_{2}n_{t} + \log_{2}\frac{h}{N} - \frac{1}{n_{t}}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{N}\log_{2}{\#\left\lbrack {B\left( {r_{i},\frac{h}{N}} \right)} \right\rbrack}} \\
& {\approx - \log_{2}n_{s} + \log_{2}h - \frac{1}{n_{t}}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{N}\log_{2}{\#\left\lbrack {B\left( {r_{i},\frac{h}{N}} \right)} \right\rbrack.}} \\
\end{matrix}$$Thus, averaging over $s \in \mathcal{S}$ $$\begin{matrix}
{I(R;S)} & {\approx \log_{2}n_{s} - \log_{2}h + \frac{1}{N}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{N}\log_{2}{\#\left\lbrack {B\left( {r_{i},\frac{h}{N}} \right)} \right\rbrack}} \\
& {\approx \frac{1}{N}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{N}\log_{2}{\frac{n_{s}\#\lbrack B(r_{i},h/N)\rbrack}{h}.}} \\
\end{matrix}$$
This formula is the same as the one proposed in \[[@RSOS140391C21]\]. However, it is derived there in a convoluted way which leaned heavily on intuition, whereas here the derivation is straightforward and can be easily extended to the case where both $\mathcal{S}$ and $\mathcal{R}$ are metric spaces. It is pointed out there that although the estimate given in \[[@RSOS140391C9]\] is derived using coordinate-based quantities, it can be used to give a formula that applies in this case. Numerical experiments in \[[@RSOS140391C21]\] comparing the two formulae gave very similar results.
3.4. The mutual information where both random variables take values in metric spaces {#s2d}
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If $\mathcal{S}$ and $\mathcal{R}$ are both metric spaces, the marginal probability mass functions *p*~*R*~(*r*) and *p*~*S*~(*s*) give volume measures and with these measures *H*(*R*)=*H*(*S*)=0. These same measures also induce a measure on $\mathcal{R} \times \mathcal{S}$, the space where (*R*,*S*) takes its values. In other words, *p*~*R*,*S*~(*r*~*i*~,*s*~*i*~) is estimated by considering regions around (*r*~*i*~,*s*~*i*~) whose volumes are calculated using the measure *p*~*R*~(*r*)*p*~*S*~(*s*) induced from the marginal spaces $\mathcal{R}$ and $\mathcal{S}$. Thus, a square is used to define the regions: $$S\left( {r_{i},s_{i},\frac{h_{1}}{N},\frac{h_{2}}{N}} \right) = \left\{ {(r,s) \in \mathcal{R} \times \mathcal{S}:r \in B_{R}\left( {r_{i},\frac{h_{1}}{N}} \right),\, s \in B_{S}\left( {s_{i},\frac{h_{2}}{N}} \right)} \right\},$$where *h*~1~/*N* and *h*~2~/*N* are the volumes chosen for $\mathcal{R}$ and $\mathcal{S}$. Now, under the induced measure $$\text{vol}\, S\left( {r_{i},s_{i},\frac{h_{1}}{N},\frac{h_{2}}{N}} \right) = \text{vol}\, B_{R}\left( {r_{i},\frac{h_{1}}{N}} \right)\text{vol}\, B_{S}\left( {s_{i},\frac{h_{2}}{N}} \right) \approx \frac{h_{1}h_{2}}{N^{2}}$$so $$I(R;S) \approx \frac{1}{N}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{N}\log_{2}\frac{N\#\lbrack S(s_{i},r_{i},h_{1}/N,h_{2}/N)\rbrack}{h_{1}h_{2}}.$$Thus the mutual entropy depends on \#\[*S*(*s*~*i*~,*r*~*i*~,*h*~1~/*N*,*h*~2~/*N*)\] which counts the number of stimulus--response pairs (*s*,*r*), where *s* is one of the *h*~1~ points closest to *s*~*i*~ and *r* is one of the *h*~2~ points closest to *r*~*i*~.
It is instructive to consider what happens when the two variables are independent. By definition, *B*~*R*~(*r*~*i*~,*h*~1~/*N*) contains *h*~1~ points out of *N*; as *R* and *S* are independent this means the average number of points in *B*~*S*~(*s*~*i*~,*h*~2~/*N*) which are also in *B*~*R*~(*r*~*i*~,*h*~1~/*N*) is *h*~1~*h*~2~/*N* so $$\frac{N\#\lbrack S(s_{i},r_{i},h_{1}/N,h_{2}/N)\rbrack}{h_{1}h_{2}} \approx 1.$$
The formula includes two integer parameters, *h*~1~ and *h*~2~, which need to be chosen; large values for these parameters reduce the accuracy of the approximation in equation ([3.7](#RSOS140391M3x7){ref-type="disp-formula"}) where the probability is taken as constant throughout the region, whereas taking a smaller value reduces the accuracy of the approximation in equations ([3.6](#RSOS140391M3x6){ref-type="disp-formula"}) and ([3.12](#RSOS140391M3x12){ref-type="disp-formula"}) where the mean or volume is estimated by counting.
3.5. The Kullback--Leibler divergence on a metric space {#s2e}
-------------------------------------------------------
The approach described in this article also gives an estimate for the KL divergence. Consider two random variables *R* and *S* on a metric space $\mathcal{X}$ with probability mass functions *p*~*R*~(*x*) and *p*~*S*~(*x*). If {*r*~1~,*r*~2~,...,*r*~*M*~} and {*s*~1~,*s*~2~,...,*s*~*N*~} are sampled from *R* and *S* then the KL divergence is estimated by $$d(R|S) \approx \frac{1}{M}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{M}\log_{2}\frac{p_{R}(r_{i})}{p_{S}(r_{i})}.$$Now, as before $$MVp_{R}(r_{i}) \approx \#\lbrack B(r_{i},V)\rbrack.$$However, in this case, the other distribution on the same space is used to measure the volume. If the volume is chosen as *h*/*N*, then *B*(*r*~*i*~,*h*/*N*) is the ball around *r*~*i*~ chosen to be large enough to include *h* points from {*s*~1~,*s*~2~,...,*s*~*N*~} and \#\[*B*(*r*~*i*~,*h*/*N*)\] is the number of points from {*r*~1~,*r*~2~,...,*r*~*M*~} in the ball. The usual formula then gives $$d(R|S) \approx \frac{1}{M}\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{M}\log_{2}\frac{N\#\lbrack B(r_{i},h/N)\rbrack}{Mh}.$$It is easy to check that this formula gives an alternative derivation of the formula above for the mutual information between two random variables on metric spaces.
4.. Conclusion {#s3}
==============
The formula derived here is very simple and is derived without any reference to coordinates on the sample space. It is intended that this demonstrates that the Kozachenko--Leonenko approach applies to metric spaces. The Kozachenko--Leonenko formula presented in \[[@RSOS140391C9]\] relies on a manifold structure in its derivation, but in its final form it is also applicable to metric spaces. It seems unlikely that the performance of the estimates here will be different from the performance of that formula.
In the estimates here, the distance or similarity measure is only required to order the points. Although electrophysiological data are used as a paradigmatic example, the formula can be applied to any pair of random variables taking values in metric spaces or indeed any space with a similarity or distance function suitable for defining regions surrounding each data point. As such it could be used in a straightforward way to calculate, for example, the mutual information between local field potentials and spike trains, or between the position of an animal in a maze and a neuronal population response, or, indeed, between two collections of images, or between images and text.
The estimate provided here relies on an approximation in which probabilities are replaced by counting how many data points fall within a region in space. This makes sound intuitive sense, but it has not been proved here that the estimate is a good one. Indeed, no principle has been described that would allow the volume of the regions to be chosen to sensibly balance the two competing requirements: small regions to reduce the error in assuming the probability is constant throughout the region and large regions so that counting-based estimates are robust. There are two ways in which these difficulties will need to be addressed: theoretically, in demonstrating that the estimate converges under sensible conditions, and practically, in demonstrating that the estimate is accurate and not overly sensitive to the choice of volumes for the sorts of data that are likely to be of interest. Hopefully, the simplicity of the approach described here will aid further development.
I am grateful to Karoline Weisner and Alonso Espinosa Mireles De Villafranca for useful discussion, and to Jonathon Victor, who suggested the extension to the Kullback--Leibler divergence.
Funding statement {#s4}
=================
I am grateful to the James S McDonnell Foundation for financial support through a Scholar Award in Cognitive Science and to the Elisabeth Blackwell Institute for a Senior Fellowship.
Conflict of interests {#s5}
=====================
I declare I do not have any competing interests.
|
positive. k**(-113/60) Simplify ((h*h**(-3/2)*h)/(h*h/h**(-6)))/(h**(-2/3)/h*h/(h**(-5/4)*h)) assuming h is positive. h**(-85/12) Simplify y*y*y**(-3/2)*y/y**10*y**(2/7)/y**(-8) assuming y is positive. y**(-3/14) Simplify (s**(-1/6)/(s/s**(-3/5)))/((s*s**(1/3))/(s/(s**(-3)*s*s))) assuming s is positive. s**(-11/10) Simplify t/(t/(t*t**(-15/2)))*t/(t**9/t) assuming t is positive. t**(-27/2) Simplify s*s*s/s**(-8)*s*s/s**(-11)*s assuming s is positive. s**25 Simplify (c*c**(-3))**(7/2)*(c**(2/9))**(1/17) assuming c is positive. c**(-1069/153) Simplify d**(3/8)*d*d*d**(-2/5) assuming d is positive. d**(79/40) Simplify (h/h**(-1/11))/h*h*h**(-3/4)*(h**(-2)/h)/(h*h*h**0) assuming h is positive. h**(-205/44) Simplify (u*u**(8/7)*u)/(u*((u*u**(-3/4))/u)/u*u*u)*(u*u**(-4))/(u/(u*u/(u**(-2/11)/u*u))) assuming u is positive. u**(23/308) Simplify ((o**(-4/7)*o)/o**0)/((o*o**(-6/11))/(o*o/o**(1/5)*o)) assuming o is positive. o**(1068/385) Simplify ((c/(c*(c/(c**4*c)*c)/c*c))/(c/c**(-4)))/((c*c**2*c)/(c/c**(-4/5))) assuming c is positive. c**(-21/5) Simplify a**7*a*((a**(17/4)*a*a)/a*a)/a*a assuming a is positive. a**(57/4) Simplify ((n*n**5*n*n*n)/n*((n/n**(2/5))/n*n)/n)**(-1/11) assuming n is positive. n**(-38/55) Simplify (s/(s/s**(3/5)))**3 assuming s is positive. s**(9/5) Simplify (v*v**(-1/16))/((v**1/v)/v) assuming v is positive. v**(31/16) Simplify ((d**0)**16)**26 assuming d is positive. 1 Simplify i**(-9)*i**(-17) assuming i is positive. i**(-26) Simplify (((k*k*(k*k**6)/k)/k)/(k**(-3/4)/k))/(k/(k*k**2*k))**(16/3) assuming k is positive. k**(99/4) Simplify (p**(-4)*p/(p*p**(-4)))**(1/23) assuming p is positive. 1 Simplify l**(5/6)/l*l*l**(-7/2) assuming l is positive. l**(-8/3) Simplify t/(t**15/t)*(t/(t/(t**(2/3)*t)))/t assuming t is positive. t**(-37/3) Simplify ((b*b**14*b)/b**12)**11 assuming b is positive. b**44 Simplify ((g*g**(2/13))/g)/g**(-6) assuming g is positive. g**(80/13) Simplify (v/v**(10/7))**(2/87) assuming v is positive. v**(-2/203) Simplify (t/(t*t**(-4/5)))**(-50) assuming t is positive.
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One thing is for sure, with potential refreshes of such super handsets as the Samsung Galaxy S4, Sony Xperia Z and HTC One, the next iPhone will have to seriously up its game.
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The iPhone 6 release date will be in 2014. It will follow the iPhone 5S which will be released at the end of this week..
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Interestingly, in May 2013 Stuff reported it received a photo of the till system at a Vodafone UK store (which it has since removed along with the reference to Vodafone), with '4G iPhone 6' listed.
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It's been suggested that there could even be three size variants of the new iPhone - check out these mocked up images by artist Peter Zigich. He calls the handsets iPhone 6 Mini, iPhone 6 & iPhone 6 XL (these look rather like the iPhone 5C variant though). However, as ZDNet rightly points out, different size variants aren't exactly easy to just magic out of thin air.
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The Smoking Tire hits the canyons with one of the fastest Audi's on the road: Stasis Engineering's Supercharged R8 5.2 FSI. Matt Farah wrings out the red Spyder on an empty canyon road, proving that no amount of horsepower is ever too much.
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local l;
l := 0 * [1..6];
l[[1..3]] := 1;
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f:=function() local x; if x then return 1; fi; return 2; end;;
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f:=function() if 1 < 0 then return 1; elif 1 then return 2; fi; return 3; end;;
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f:=function(x) local i,j; Unbind(x); j := 4; for i in true do return 1; od; return 2; end;;
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# Verify issue #2656 is fixed
InstallMethod( \[\,\], [ IsMatrixObj, IsPosInt, IsPosInt ],
{ m, row, col } -> ELM_LIST( m, row, col ) );
l := [[1]];; f := {} -> l[2,1];;
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# verify issue #1373 is fixed
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Examination of factors affecting gait properties in healthy older adults: focusing on knee extension strength, visual acuity, and knee joint pain.
Gait properties change with age because of a decrease in lower limb strength and visual acuity or knee joint disorders. Gait changes commonly result from these combined factors. This study aimed to examine the effects of knee extension strength, visual acuity, and knee joint pain on gait properties of for 181 healthy female older adults (age: 76.1 (5.7) years). Walking speed, cadence, stance time, swing time, double support time, step length, step width, walking angle, and toe angle were selected as gait parameters. Knee extension strength was measured by isometric dynamometry; and decreased visual acuity and knee joint pain were evaluated by subjective judgment whether or not such factors created a hindrance during walking. Among older adults without vision problems and knee joint pain that affected walking, those with superior knee extension strength had significantly greater walking speed and step length than those with inferior knee extension strength (P < .05). Persons with visual acuity problems had higher cadence and shorter stance time. In addition, persons with pain in both knees showed slower walking speed and longer stance time and double support time. A decrease of knee extension strength and visual acuity and knee joint pain are factors affecting gait in the female older adults. Decreased knee extension strength and knee joint pain mainly affect respective distance and time parameters of the gait.
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PENRITH young gun Nathan Cleary has claimed an impressive record in his side’s thrilling 26-22 win on Sunday which ended Canberra’s 2017 finals hopes.
Heading into the game, Cleary needed just eight points to break Manly legend Graham Eadie’s 43-year-old record to become the youngest player in premiership history to score 200 points in a season.
The 19-year-old did it in classy fashion at GIO Stadium, scoring a try and kicking five goals as the Panthers hung on for the win.
MATCH CENTRE: Raiders v Panthers
Round 20
The Green Machine rallied in the second half after 10-point deficit at halftime and took the lead at the three-quarter mark, but a 73rd minute try to Panthers rookie Tyrone May landed the killer blow for the visitors.
The result means the Panthers have cemented a spot inside the top eight, while the Raiders will now have to wait until next year to get another shot at playing finals football.
HOW IT WENT DOWN
The Raiders got their day off to a horror start when a Joseph Tapine error led to the Panthers scoring first points through Waqa Blake.
Minutes later they were under the pump again after Nick Cotric dropped a bomb, and the Panthers extended their lead in the following set thanks to a Cleary penalty goal.
The Green Machine came to life following a penalty and Cotric soon redeemed himself when he dived over in the corner after some hot potato footy from Blake Austin and Jack Wighton.
Nick Cotric of the Raiders celebrates after scoring a try. Source: AAP
In the 25th minute Blake showed up Jarrod Croker to race down the sideline and put Cleary over for his record-breaking 200th point.
Live stream the 2017 NRL Telstra Premiership on FOX SPORTS. Get your free 2-week FOXTEL NOW trial and start watching in minutes. SIGN UP NOW!
The Raiders weren’t done however, and with Dave Taylor injected into the game, they narrowed the gap after a stunning offload from the big man saw Josh Papalii crash in for a meat pie.
Moments before the break the Panthers made it 20-10 following two huge runs from Josh Mansour.
The men in green came out firing in the second half and scored first points courtesy of a strong run from Jack Wighton.
The Raiders fullback was back in the action in the 54th minute after scooping up a grubber and racing down field only to be caught by James Tamou and Reagan Campbell-Gillard. But the home side took full advantage of the field position and hit the lead after a Tapine try and Croker goal.
Was Blake of the Panthers (L) celebrates after scoring a try. Source: AAP
The Panthers almost immediately snatched back the lead but Corey Harawira-Naera coughed up the ball near the Raiders’ line.
Suddenly the Green Machine rolled down to the Panthers’ tryline after a stunning 40/20 kick from Aidan Sezer.
The Raiders bunkered themselves down that end of the field for the next couple of sets but weren’t able to make the most of the opportunity.
May continued his impressive debut season in the 73rd minute when he darted from dummy half to score next to the posts and give his side the lead once again.
The final moments of the match were frantic, but the visitors were able to hang on for a well-deserved victory.
PENRITH 26 (W Blake N Cleary J Mansour T May tries N Cleary 5 goals) bt CANBERRA 22 (N Cotric J Papalii J Tapine J Wighton tries J Croker 3 goals) at GIO Stadium. Referee: Alan Shortall, Ashley Klein. Crowd: 14,818.
LIVE SCORES, UPDATES, SUPERCOACH STATS IN MATCH CENTRE
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About me
My name is Vasco Ferreira, i'm a young Portuguese investor who likes to share and receive constructive feedback on his stock analysis.
I first graduated in Business Administration, worked for a couple of years at PricewaterhouseCoopers on financial report auditing and i'm currently doing a Master in Finance at Faculdade de Economia do Porto, University of Porto.
During my first degree I was seduced by financial markets! Its complexity was a big challenge at first and everytime I learn some more it just gets more challenging.
I started investing (mostly in company stocks) in 2009, but I have to admit experience came with a price. It was until I lost some money, that I started to understand a bit more about the dinamics of the stock market. Obviously I still have a long way ahead until I can say I'm a professional analyst, but my results improved a lot since I started to actually read the full reports and know the story of the company, analyse its fundamentals and graph patterns before I take a decision.
This Blog serves my intention of sharing my analysis to those who like me in 2009 don't know how to start investing and at the same time allows me to improve my analysis with the feedback from the internet community.
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Welcome To Impact Church’s Website
Impact Christian Church is an independent Christian church who welcomes everyone with open arms! At Impact, you can relax in our informal services and enjoy worshiping and learning how God’s Word can impact your life today. We are just ordinary people striving to live extraordinary lives. We would love for you to join us! We are located on the right just past Shining Mountain Golf Course on Hwy 67. Sunday services are at 9:00 and 10:45 AM.
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Q:
PHP/MySQL Insert into Database not working
I tried everything I could to fix the link of code but everything I tried gave me a white screen I know that this line of code is the only code is the only one that has a syntax error and the rest of the code is 100% fine. I am trying to insert name, email, password from a Form using $_POST and with md5 hashing for the password.
$link = connect to mySQL Database
$query="INSERT INTO 'users' ('name', 'email', 'password')
VALUES(
'".mysqli_real_escape_string($link, $_POST['name'])"',
'".mysqli_real_escape_string($link, $_POST['email'])."',
'".md5(md5($_POST['email']).$_POST['password'])."')";
A:
Why don't you make it simple instead? Something like:
$name = mysqli_real_escape_string($link, $_POST['name']);
$mail = mysqli_real_escape_string($link, $_POST['email']);
$pass = md5(md5($_POST['email']).$_POST['password']);
$query="INSERT INTO `users` (`name`, `email`, `password`) VALUES('$name','$mail', '$pass')";
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Karen Dalton (basketball)
Karen Dalton (born 2 January 1961) is a former Australian women's basketball player.
Biography
Dalton played 252 games for the national team between 1983 and 1994. Her tournaments with the Opals include four World Championships - 1983, 1986, 1990 and 1994 - and two Olympic Games; 1984 and 1988.
In the domestic Women's National Basketball League (WNBL), Dalton was a 2-time Defensive Player of the Year (1990 & 1993) and played in 375 games. Following her retirement, Dalton went on to become the head coach of the Sydney Flames, a position she has held since 2001. During the 2001–02 season Dalton was named the WNBL Coach of the Year. In 2004, Dalton was assistant coach to the Australian team that won the silver medal at the Athens Olympics tournament.
Dalton was inducted into the Australian Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007. Dalton is also a Life Member of the WNBL.
See also
WNBL Defensive Player of the Year Award
References
Category:1961 births
Category:Living people
Category:Australian women's basketball players
Category:Commonwealth Games competitors for Australia
Category:Olympic basketball players of Australia
Category:Basketball players at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Category:Basketball players at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Category:Basketball players from Sydney
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Comments
Comment by autopsied
drop rate for this and the legs in baradin hold is pretty low. personally i saved vp for the chest first, and have been waiting for these or the legs to drop. the low drop rate means you might be better off farming vp weekly to get them rather than relying on rng to acquire these.
Comment by fm0use
Actualy, the worst piece of warlock t11 set
Comment by nachocheese17
These aren't the best gloves (which is sad as it is T11) These or These are better.(Haste and crit are a Destro warlocks dream)Just remember to reforge the mastery! ;)
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Q:
Color every second row of the table
I need to color every second row in my table.
I would love it to look like on the attached image
Any ideas how to do this?
A:
EVEN AND ODD RULES
One way to improve the readability of large tables is to color alternating rows. For example, the table below has a light gray background for the even rows and white for the odd ones. The rules for that are extremely simple:
Css:
tr:nth-child(even) {background: #CCC}
tr:nth-child(odd) {background: #FFF}
Check here google 1st result
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Wise Words
"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot." - Morpheus, The Sandman - Dream Country (Neil Gaiman)
"A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensly right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt." - Mark Twain
"At the beginning there was the Word - at the end just the Cliche." - Stanislaw J Lec
Small Press
I’ve been really looking forward to the release of this book and it’s finally here in paperback as well as ebook. The ebook has been out for ages, but I saved mentioning it here until the print edition was available too. It contains my story, “Shadows of the Lonely Dead”, which is probably the most personal story I’ve ever written. I drew extensively on my experiences surrounding the deaths of people very close to me in the writing of it. It’s sharing the pages with a plethora of amazing people and I’m sure their stories will be excellent. Here’s the skinny and some sweet blurbs:
“Disquieting and at times terrifying, SUSPENDED IN DUSK shows that horror can, and should, have substance.” ~ Kaaron Warren, Shirley Jackson Award winner, and author of Slights, Mystification, Walking the Tree.
“SUSPENDED IN DUSK offers a delicious assortment of chills, frights, shocks and very dark delights!” ~ Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker Award winner and New York Times bestselling author of Fall of Night and V-Wars
DUSK
A time between times.
A whore hides something monstrous and finds something special.
A homeless man discovers the razor blade inside the apple.
Unlikely love is found in the strangest of places.
Secrets and dreams are kept… forever.
I decided it would be really cool to put together a list of great books by Australian Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror writers so people could essentially have the best Xmas shopping list of Aussie SFF and horror books ever. After drowning in an inbox full of Aussie spec fic goodness, I now have this sweet megapost of Aussie spec fic goodness. It’s far from definitive – there are loads more out there – but it’s pretty impressive nonetheless. There really is something for everyone. Have a scroll through, enjoy the covers, read the blurbs – if you like it, buy it! Links to places of purchase are right there with every book. Books are listed alphabetically by author surname. And don’t forget to buy loads of books for your family and friends for Xmas too. There’s really no better gift than a book. (Unless you need a new bodily organ or something, but you know what I mean.) Amazon allows you to gift ebooks as well, don’t forget, as do several other outlets and publishers. Have it at!
Dean J Anderson
Unnaturals
Unnaturals tried to kill Mason Douglas and his family. Big mistake.
He became The Butcher, a cold relentless Hunter with a vendetta that took him across the world.
And now, on his return home to Australia – to mend his heart, soul and family – his destiny collides with a millennia-old struggle between strange Gods.
Their prize is Earth. Their warriors are warring races of Unnaturals: the Bloodells and the Darkells.
As an unlikely alliance forms between Natural and Unnatural – between the Douglas clan and the Darkells – Mason’s family grows in unexpected ways… not all of whom are human.
In a far future where technology is all but indistinguishable from magic, Tanyana is one of the elite. She can control pions, the building blocks of matter, shaping them into new forms using ritual gestures and techniques. The rewards are great, and she is one of most highly regarded people in the city. But that was before the “accident”. Stripped of her powers, bound inside a bizarre powersuit, she finds herself cast down to the very lowest level of society. Powerless, penniless and scarred, Tanyana must adjust to a new life collecting “debris”, the stuff left behind by pions. But as she tries to find who has done all of this to her, she also starts to realize that debris is more important than anyone could guess.
The bitter war between the sinister Puppet Men and the nebulous Keeper for the control of the ancient city of Movoc-under-Keeper has intensified. For Tanyana, imprisoned within her extraordinary suit and cast down as a lowly debris collector, choosing a side should be simple. But when even her own suit becomes aggressive against her, Tanyana must weigh some very personal issues against her determination to serve the greater good.
The grand city of Movoc-under-Keeper lies in ruins. The sinister puppet men have revealed their true nature, and their plan to tear down the veil between worlds. To have a chance of defeating them, Tanyana must do the impossible, and return to the world where they were created, on the other side of the veil. Her journey will force her into a terrible choice, and test just how much she is willing to sacrifice for the fate of two worlds.
Enter a world where terrible secrets are hidden in a wind chime’s song
Where crippled witches build magic from scrap
And the beautiful dead dance for eternity
The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories collects the finest science fiction and horror short stories from award-winning writer Joanne Anderton. From mechanical spells scavenging a derelict starship to outback zombies and floating gardens of bone, these stories blur the lines between genres. A mix of freakish horror, dark visions of the future and the just plain weird, Anderton’s tales will draw you in – but never let you get comfortable.
Alex Caine is a martial artist fighting in illegal cage matches. His powerful secret weapon is an unnatural vision that allows him to see his opponents’ moves before they know their intentions themselves.
An enigmatic Englishman, Patrick Welby, approaches Alex after a fight and reveals, ‘I know your secret.’ Welby shows Alex how to unleash a breathtaking realm of magic and power, drawing him into a mind-bending adventure beyond his control. And control is something Alex values above all else.
A cursed grimoire binds Alex to Uthentia, a chaotic Fey godling, who leads him towards destruction and murder, an urge Alex finds harder and harder to resist. Befriended by Silhouette, a monstrous Kin beauty, Alex sets out to recover the only things that will free him – the shards of the Darak. But that powerful stone also has the potential to unleash a catastrophe which could mean the end of the world as we know it.
Alex Caine is looking for direction and trying to build a new life with his recently acquired magical talents, and Kin girlfriend, Silhouette. He is recruited by a secret organisation to head off an impending doom, foretold by Seers as already somehow linked to his destiny. Claude Darvill is desperately trying to get in touch with his father, Robert Hood. When the company, Black Diamond, reveals that Hood had gone missing after chasing Alex Caine, Darvill takes over control of Black Diamond and starts hunting Caine himself. Alex and his crew close in on three amateur mages in Britain’s north, who think they have uncovered ancient magic that will reveal great powers. But they are caught in a vortex and pulled through to a strange lost city, isolated in the void. Trapped in a place removed from everything they know, ruled by a hierarchy of monsters, Alex and his friends must find a way to escape Obsidian.
Alex Caine has been suffering the weight of the world, and some days it’s hard to even get out of bed. Alone one night, a band of Fey overwhelm him and steal him away from the mortal realm. Silhouette, desperate to save her lover, calls in Armour, but the organisation seems reluctant to help.
Claude Darvill, his fragile alliance with Alex at an end, is still searching for the remains of his father, Robert Hood. In frozen wastes of Iceland, Darvill is driven by a deep-burning grudge and a need for revenge. His efforts are backed by all the considerable resources of Black Diamond Incorporated.
Silhouette must overcome her greatest fears and use all her skills to locate Alex. But even if she can find him, that’s only the start of their problems.
In this third Alex Caine book, sequel to the bestsellers Bound and Obsidian, old enemies and new share a common goal. Alex Caine hates to be the centre of attention, but he and Silhouette need to pull together as the world is threatened once more and only Alex can save it.
The future does not belong to us anymore. The mighty Wolfen of Valkeryn, descendants of the canines of the era of man, have ruled for many millennia. But now their kingdom has fallen to the monstrous hordes and the remaining Wolfen scattered.
Arnold ‘Arn’ Singer, a youth from the past and perhaps the last human being alive on the planet, finds himself cast into this maelstrom of chaos and horror. He seeks answers to the missing Ancients – mankind itself. But back in his time the world continues to destabilize. The portal through which he fell is destroying the planet. The portal must be closed. Arn holds the key, and our world and its future is at stake.
Colonel Marion Briggs leads a team of Special Operations soldiers into the distant future, fully armed and with one order – bring back Arn or his body.
But there are more dangers in this strange and beautiful world than anyone knew. More horrors dwell in the deep jungles, below the inland seas and deep below the earth. There are things that can change the shape of two worlds, tear at sanity, and stretch friendships and loves to the limit.
Valkeryn is an epic adventure that spans worlds and time itself.
“… mixed in fantasy with hard, biological, and evolutionary science. Beck has yet again created fast-paced, literary escape that I just couldn’t put down.”
War is Hell…
Soldiers fight to survive.
They fight each other, and they fight the demons inside.
Sometimes, they fight real monsters.
SNAFU collects stories of ancient myths, time travellers, horrors in the old west…
And the soldiers who fight them.
Featuring some of the best writers working in the field today.
Jonathan Maberry, Weston Ochse, Greig Beck and James A Moore lead the way, with a contingent of emerging authors to back them up.
Fight or die.
Available on:
Amazon, Kobo, Nook, and as a signed limited edition from the publisher.
In a climate-changed future, after the gene and borders wars of the 2060’s, and in a world governed by the Alpha-Omega Accord and its Interplanetary Exchange, Capra Jane fights a never-ending battle against crime.
Things change in unexpected ways, however, when she is teamed up with the enigmatic and beautiful Zanzibar Black of HomeWorld Security, and Decker, a returned astronaut who’s never been in
Waking in Anaskar Prison, covered in blood and accused of murder, nobody will listen to Notch’s claims of innocence until he meets the future Protector of the Monarchy, Sofia Falco.
But Sofia has her own burdens. The first female Protector in a hundred years, her House is under threat from enemies within, the prince has made it clear he does not want her services and worst of all, she cannot communicate with her father’s sentient mask of bone, the centuries-old Argeon. Without the bone mask she cannot help anyone — not herself, and certainly not a mercenary with no powerful House to protect him.
Meanwhile, far across the western desert, Ain, a young Pathfinder, is thrust into the role of Seeker. Before winter storms close the way, he must leave his home on a quest to locate the Sea Shrine and take revenge on the people who drove his ancestors from Anaskar, the city ruled by the prince Sofia and Notch are sworn to protect, whether he wants their help or not.
The stories you are about to read showcase a wonderfully talented writer; someone with a vivid imagination and the unique ability to create stories that can just as easily shock and frighten as they can move and disturb (often all in the one story). These are serious works, not merely light entertainment designed simply to give the reader a quick jolt or a nervous chuckle, but designed to make you think and feel.
You’re about to embark on a dark and wondrous journey through the mind of a very talented young writer. Be prepared to visit strange worlds and even stranger beings. Horror and violence abounds, but there’s also time for reflection, to ponder some of life’s most important questions.
– Brett McBean, 2014
Caeli-Amur: an ancient city perched on white cliffs overlooking the sea; a city ruled by three Houses, fighting internecine wars; a city which harbours ancient technology and hidden mysteries. But things are changing in Caeli-Amur. Ancient minotaurs arrive for the traditional Festival of the Sun. The slightly built New-Men bring their technology from their homeland. Wastelanders stream into the city hideously changed by the chemical streams to the north. Strikes break out in the factory district.
In a hideout beneath the city, a small group of seditionists debate ways to overthrow the Houses. How can they rouse the citizens of the city? Should they begin a campaign of terror? Is there a way to uncover the thaumaturgical knowledge that the Houses guard so jealously? As the Houses scramble to maintain their rule, it becomes clear that things will change forever in Caeli-Amur.
What would you do if you woke in a room filled with strangers, with no memory of how you got there, and no way out?
Morgan Drimmel wakes to find herself in the midst of this nightmare. The gouged, blood-splattered walls scream of terror and torture, and the unrelenting light that shines between the cracks in the walls fills her with dread.
When the others in the room wake, they form alliances, and Morgan finds herself drawn to rogue biker Slade Rivers. But dependence, for her, has always come with a deadly price.
Those inside the room have secrets too; dark secrets they will go to any length to keep from getting out. When evil rears its ugly head, Morgan will not only have to fight to survive—she will also have to trust.
The newly widowed Queen Ellyria just wants her sick triplet sons to live, each ruling over a third of the kingdom as their dying father decreed. When she finds herself trapped in a deadly bargain with a dark spirit, she recruits a band of young mages to help – but a terrible curse takes over.
Young guitar virtuoso Clarice Marnier is on the verge of success when she crosses the wrong A&R man. Suddenly, instead of being signed to the major label that’s been courting her, she finds herself blacklisted.
So Clarice makes a deal with the Devil: the soul of her greatest enemy for a record deal and a second chance.
As Clarice and her band, Bloody Waters, begin their ascent to rock stardom they are are beset by a strange array of enemies. Has-been guitar heroes, popstar succubi, spell-slinging DJs, angry divas and killer angels—every occult freak and music industry player in LA wants something from them, whether it’s a slice of their fame or a bite out of their souls.
Clearly, there’s more at stake than just a record deal—but what does the Devil really want, and how far will Clarice go to protect what’s hers?
An exciting adventure story in the style of the classic Choose-Your-Own-Adventure series. Seven companions set out to free the woman trapped in the moon, and change the world along the way. In this exciting story that allows the reader the choice of following different characters, young, sheltered Branguin discovers that his ancestor, Marama, has been trapped in the moon, and sets out to free her. But he must first unravel the mystery of how she got there, confront and defeat the sorcerer Raul, and counter a menacing new force that’s assembling an army to attack the capital. Branguin deciphers the clues with the help of his companions, several lost relatives along the way. The Lunation Series is a modern-day moon myth about ordinary people discovering their inner strength and overcoming extraordinary challenges, in order to solve a great mystery.
Follow murderous trails into the bloody foothills of Kathmandu; destroy yourself with obsessive sexual jealousies; disappear into the drug-hazed dust of the Baluchistan desert; and share health-conscious recipes with a gourmet cannibal. Read Paul Haines’s dark, hard-edged fantasies about real people dealing with strong emotions in impossible situations and experience the paranoia, fear and lust that lurks in the shadowy recesses of the human soul.
With an introduction by Jack Dann, this anthology contains twenty-one stories, including the Aurealis Award and Ditmar winning novella “The Last Days Of Kali Yuga”. It also includes two previously unpublished stories “Burning From The Inside” and “Mnemophonic”.
Paul Haines sliced through the Australian writing scene with his twisted and murderous black humour in 2002. he has since won many awards and praise for his dark and surreal stories that make you think twice about his sanity and good taste.
Published here together for the first time are the Ditmar winning story “The Devil In Mr Pussy”, the Aurealis Award shortlisted horror story “Doof Doof Doof” and the complete “Slice of Life” series of stories, including the previously unpublished “Slice of Life – A Spot of Liver” which also won the Aurealis Award 2009 for Best Horror Short Story.
HAINES’ SLICE OF LIFE – seventeen glistening stories, sweating with twenty first century paranoia and anxiety from the decaying mind of the winner of the 2005 Ditmar for New Talent.
These are the last days …
Travel the blood-stained trails of Kathmandu.
Explore doorways to other worlds.
Fight for humanity’s darkening soul.
… when the powers of the Gods wane and evil walks the Earth.
The Last Days Of Kali Yuga is dark urban fantasy at its darkest. You won’t find traditional vampires or werewolves in Paul Haines’s stories. Instead, you will stare deep into the heart of the cruelest monster of all: man.
Paul Haines is one of Australia’s and New Zealand’s leading dark fiction authors. He pioneered the ‘backpacker horror’ sub-genre with stories of Westerners confronted by dark powers and corrupted souls in India and Asia. His novellas “The Last Days of Kali Yuga”, “Doorways for the Dispossessed”, and “Wives”—all of which appear in this book—have won Australia’s highest honours for speculative fiction. The Last Days of Kali Yuga is a collection of Paul Haines’ best work.
“Paul Haines knows what it is to be human, in all our cruel beauty, with all our vile dreams. His stories tear the masks off our civilised faces and expose the raw, bleeding apes beneath” – Sean Williams, New York Times Bestselling author of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and the Books of the Cataclysm series.
“Paul Haines has an unnerving sense for the softest, most secret corners of the male psyche, and in this collection dissects them excruciating skill. There is no better horror writer working in Australia today.” – Max Barry, author of Syrup and Jennifer Government.
Lisa L Hannett’s debut collection, Bluegrass Symphony, deals with cowboys and fallow fields, shapeshifters and rednecks, superstitions and realities in harsh prairie country — and a whole bunch of other things thrown in the mix.
Introduction by Ann Vandermeer.
Finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Collection.
In The Female Factory, procreation is big business. Children are a commodity few women can afford.
Hopeful mothers-to-be try everything. Fertility clinics. Pills. Wombs for hire. Babies are no longer made in bedrooms, but engineered in boardrooms. A quirk of genetics allows lucky surrogates to carry multiple eggs, to control when they are fertilised, and by whom—but corporations market and sell the offspring. The souls of lost embryos are never wasted; captured in software, they give electronics their voice. Spirits born into the wrong bodies can brave the charged waters of a hidden billabong, and change their fate. Industrious orphans learn to manipulate scientific advances, creating mothers of their own choosing.
From Australia’s near-future all the way back in time to its convict past, these stories spin and sever the ties between parents and children.
When Mymnir flees the devastation of Ragnarok, she hopes to escape all that bound her to ?sgar?r ? a heedless pantheon, a domineering brother, and her neglectful father-master, ??inn. But the white raven, a being of memory and magic, should know that the past is not so easily left behind. No matter how far she flies, she cannot evade her family?
In planting seeds of the old world in the new, Mymnir becomes queen of a land with as many problems as the one she fled. Her long-lived Fae children ignite and fan feuds that span generations; lives are lost and loves won because of their tampering. Told in thirteen parts, Midnight and Moonshine follows the Beaufort and Laveaux families, part-human, part-Fae, as they battle, thrive and survive in Mymnir’s kingdom.
Midnight and Moonshine is a collection of interconnected tales with links between them as light and strong as spider-silk. From fire giants to whispering halls, disappearing children to evening-wolves, fairy hills to bewitched cypress trees, and talking heads to moonshiners of a special sort, Midnight and Moonshine takes readers on a journey from ninth century Vinland to America?s Deep South in the present day. Hannett and Slatter have created a mosaic novel of moments, story-tiles as strange as witchwood and withywindles.
Midnight and Moonshine is a rich tapestry of dark fantasy, fairy tale and speculation.
One false step could undo everything the Timekeepers hope to accomplish…
Earth’s ancient past, the future of the planet Kila – the Timekeepers universe of origin, the primordial era when the Nefilim first ruled the galaxy and a timeless universe of utter darkness are all vital periods to advancing human consciousness.
After surviving Ancient Zhou, the Timekeeper’s efforts turn to rescuing Kila from its ill-fated future. But a mishap in the remote mountains of Tibet before departure provides a nemesis with the perfect opportunity to launch a time-hopping vendetta against them. There is no where in this universe to hide.
The discovery of a gate thought to lead to several universes promises more than just the means to undermine their stalker; it offers the chance to remember their lives as the Grigori, who once dwelt with the fallen Elohim in the dark universe beyond the Eternity Gate.
Steam clouds rise off the water as a ferry approaches a jetty in ancient China. On board is Hudan, one of the mysterious Wu who reside on the sacred mountain of Li Shan.
The Wu have been living in isolation for decades, while the arrogant Shang emperor and his enchantress have ruled the land. It has been a terrible time for the common people and the noble Ji brothers – Dan and Fa – are keen to bring the emperor’s reign of terror to an end. They are told a Wu prophecy has predicted the fall of the emperor, but first they must journey to Li Shan to learn the truth.
When the Ji brothers join forces with the enigmatic Hudan and her equally mysterious tiger sister, Huxin, they begin a powerful journey of love and adventure.
But the Shang emperor is not their greatest threat. There is a dark curse that has plagued the rulers of the land for generations. The mysterious Sons of the Sky who visit Hudan in her dreams have a plan to destroy it., but can they be trusted?
Dreaming of Zhou Gong is a beautiful, evocative journey through ancient China.
Lissa Wilson’s life hasn’t been quite the same since people she cared about started getting themselves killed.
By vampires.
And Lissa learnt that the opposite of life is not always death. On the plus side, she made a new friend.
Gary Hooper may be the worst best-friend a librarian could have – and easily the worst vampire ever – but he has taught Lissa the real meaning of life. Gary’s world view has also improved remarkably since meeting Lissa, but all that could be lost if she discovers what services he provides Melbourne’s undead community.
Meanwhile, as their friendship brings him closer to the humanity he lost, it also puts them both in grave danger.
And there’s a big chance that the evil stalking them could them both killed – in his case, for good this time.
Fifty years after a second Dark Age has nearly destroyed humankind, the World Union is now confronted with a new threat that doesn’t just challenge their survival but also the nature of life and civilisation itself.
The Hunt for Pierre Jnr is the first book in a trilogy of futurist thrillers that follows the attempts of a powerful world government to track down and kill a telepathic eight-year-old boy.
In Manifestations, a mysterious new threat has been unleashed that destroys an entire city. As tensions with the psis rise and political fortunes shift, the World Union appears perilously close to collapse.
From geopolitical convergence to emergent online super organisms, the future is coming. Henley’s books explore themes of technological evolution, species diversification and takes the ‘all-powerful creepy child’ theme to a scary new level.
In a land where no stars appear in the night sky, a group of strangers with ancestries reaching back to an earlier apocalyptic disaster come together to track down a resurrected corpse whose very existence portends the End of the World. Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead is an epic tale of greed, dying magic, distorted monstrosities and a motley group of heroes, with a strange and breathless climax you won’t easily forget.
“This is a tale of heroes. It includes all sorts — born of the gods, descended from ancient, magical bloodline, member of a legendary order, reincarnated, last of their tribe and way too intimate with their own sentient weapon — cycling through various degrees of reluctant and unlikely. There is a villain, of course, although he’s thoroughly sick of the whole business; dark gods, giant monsters and an ancient magical artefact. But principally it is a tale of heroes, heroism and what it means to be in such an uncomfortable position.” (Review, Kyla Ward)
She hates school and only has a few friends. She has an obsession with angels and fallen angel stories.
Life was boring until she one day decided to steal a famous painting from a small art gallery.
Her life will never be boring again.
She meets a stranger at the gallery who claims to know her. She stumbles into a world where cities float in the sky, and daemons roam the barren, magma-spewing crags of the land far below.
But not all is well. Maree is turning into something she loves but at the same time, fears. Most fearful of all is the prospect of losing her identity, what makes her Maree, and more importantly, human.
Guardian of the Sky Realms takes the reader on a journey through exotic fantasy lands, as well as across the globe, from Sydney to Paris, from the Himalayas to Manhattan.
He thought he’d return from Hell a hero. But things are never easy when your business is Death.
Steven de Selby gave up his love, his life, and his lucrative position as Head of Mortmax, the corporation in charge of Death. Then he found himself banished to the briny depths of hell. But hell has never held him before …
Now Steven’s back from hell, after escaping from the cruel Death of the Water, but he’s not sure how or why, or even if. No one at Mortmax trusts him, and he’s running out of time to prove he is who he says he is.
Steven is about to discover that hell really is other people, and the worst of them may well be himself.
On remote Rollrock Island, the sea-witch Misskaella discovers she can draw a girl from the heart of a seal. So, for a price, any man might buy himself a bride; an irresistibly enchanting sea-wife. But what cost will be borne by the people of Rollrock – the men, the women, the children – once Misskaella sets her heart on doing such a thing?Margo Lanagan weaves an extraordinary tale of desire and revenge, of loyalty, heartache and human weakness, and of the unforeseen consequences of all-consuming love.
Daniel Rolan is bored. Not your average, everyday kind-of bored. The seriously mind-blowing I’m-stuck-here-at-the-end-of-the-universe-surrounded-by-nerds kind of bored. Living on a space station might sound like an adventure straight out of a science fiction movie, but in reality – as Daniel was discovering day after boring day – it was really, well… mostly boring.
But Daniel will soon come to regret wishing for an action and adventure filled life. One seemingly innocent decision – and a catastrophe he could not have foreseen – is about to change his world forever.
It will set him on a path he never imagined, introduce him to new friends and even aliens he could not have thought up in his wildest dreams. Eventually it will even challenge his notion of where the end of the universe actually is.
Meanwhile, on the alien world of Nomassaii, the larger of the two planets through the Veil, Jacdan would love a bit of boredom. He has far more action and adventure in his life than he’d like. Sentenced to die in the arena, he’s fighting – battle by battle – to survive another day. But it’s one thing to fight for your own life – quite another to discover you are fighting for your little brother’s life, as well.
These alien worlds are about to collide, changing the lives of Daniel and Jacdan forever.
In a post-apocalyptic Australian landscape dominated by free-wheeling cyborgs, a young man goes in search of his lost lover who has been kidnapped by a rogue AI truck – the Brumby King. Along the way, he teams with Sinnerman, an independent truck with its own reasons for hating the Brumby King. Before his final confrontation with the brumbies, he must learn more about the broken-down world and his own place in it, and face his worst fears.
I am in a world deeply strange and strangely deep, a world as different from my old life as it’s possible to be, and it feels completely natural.
An unexpected encounter with a handsome stranger in a Russian wood changes the life of 22-year-old traveler Helen Clement forever, catapulting her into a high-stakes world of passion, danger, and mystery. Tested in ways she could never have imagined, she must keep her own integrity in a world where dark forces threaten and ruthlessness and betrayal haunt every day.
Set against a rising tide of magic and the paranormal in a modern Russia where the terrifying past continually leaks into the turbulent present, Trinity is a unique and gripping blend of conspiracy thriller, erotically charged romance and urban fantasy, laced with a murderous dose of company politics. With its roots deep in the fertile soil of Russian myth, legend, and history, it is also a fascinating glimpse into an extraordinary, distinctive country and amazingly rich culture.
A girl in a tower. An underground kingdom. A crystal heart split in two, symbolising true love lost . . .
When Kasper joins the elite guard watching over a dangerous prisoner in a tower, he believes he is protecting his country from a powerful witch.
Until one day he discovers the prisoner is a beautiful princess – Izolda of Night– who is condemned by a prophecy to die on her eighteenth birthday. Kasper decides to help her escape. But their hiding place won’t remain secret forever.
Will they find their happily ever after?
‘A deftly woven tale of warring kingdoms and the redeeming power of love. Another winner from Sophie Masson.’ – Juliet Marillier, author of the Shadowfell series .
Antoinette and Jacqueline have little in common beyond a mutual antipathy for their paranoid, domineering mother, a bond which has united them since childhood. In the aftermath of a savage betrayal, Antoinette lands on her sister’s doorstep bearing a suitcase and a broken heart.
But Jacqueline, the ambitious would-be manager of a trendy Melbourne art gallery, has her own problems – chasing down a delinquent painter in the sweltering heat of a Brisbane summer. Abandoned, armed with a bottle of vodka and her own grief-spun desires, Antoinette weaves a dark and desperate magic that can never, ever be undone.
Their lives swiftly unravelling, the two sisters find themselves drawn into a tangle of lies, manipulations and the most terrible of family secrets.”
The debut collection from multi-award nominated author Andrew J McKiernan brings together 14 of his previously published short stories and novelettes, plus two brand new tales unique to the collection.
Often defying conventions of genre and style, these stories range from fantasy and steampunk to science fiction and horror, but always with an edge sharper than a razor and darker than a night on Neptune.
From the darkly hilarious “All the Clowns in Clowntown” to the heart-breakingly disturbing title story, the collection pulls no punches. Delving deep into what scares us most, McKiernan’s tales are by turns heartfelt and gut-wrenching.
With an Introduction by Will Elliott, Last Year, When We Were Young is a collection of horror and dark fantasy from one of Australia’s finest new authors that should not be missed.
There are people involved. That’s the first mistake. Scientists were never meant to be part of history. Anything in the past is better studied from the present.
It’s safer.
When a team of Australian scientists – and a lone historian – travel back to St-Guilhem-le-Désert in 1305 they discover being impartial, distant and objective just doesn’t work when you’re surroundedby the smells, dust and heat of a foreign land.
They’re only human after all.
But by the time Artemisia is able to convince others that it’s time to worry, it’s already too late.
‘Viscerally powerful, deeply felt, strongly written: Langue[dot]doc 1305 challenges reader expectations of time travel, of ‘Grim-dark’ and of mediaeval life and brings a haunting, authentic voice both to the past and to the struggles facing the present.’
Elizabeth Smith, recently made redundant, thinks that her life is deadly dull. She feels like cellophane like people look right through her, like she’s not even there. A simple redecoration job involving a mirror turns her life upside down.
Through ominous horror and an unexpected romance Liz learns to become a whole person someone who takes up space in the world, and demands to be herself.
Part gentle love story, part bizarre horror tale, but never, ever boring, Ms Cellophane is a revealing look at one woman’s nightmare transforming her reality in unexpectedly amusing ways.
In 2010 the best-selling book at the world science fiction convention was…unexpected.
Humankind carries the past as invisible baggage. Thirteen brilliant writers explore this, looking at Australia’s cultural baggage through new and often disturbing eyes.
Baggage explores layers and complexities that are oddly Australian. If you think Australian culture is all about surfboards and mateship, you may find Baggage distressing.
What is Australia? What baggage do Australians carry? Pick up this book. Have a read. You know you want to.
“Baggage collects many of the finest voices in Australian speculative fiction. Each author contributes a unique cultural perspective, with stories ranging from the deeply personal to the highly disturbing. Baggage is an anthology not to be missed.”
Shane Jiraya Cummings, OzHorrorScope
“Baggage is a fascinating exploration of Australian issues through characters and situations that feel immediate and real. There’s little in the way of escapism here, but instead much subtlety and nuance, combined with stunning writing. From the incendiary, no-holds-barred ‘Acception’ by Tessa Kum to the quiet power of K.J. Bishop’s ‘Vision Splendid’, and beyond, this anthology tackles difficult and diverse subject matter.”
Rawk is one of the great Heroes. He has travelled the world for forty years, hunting exotic creatures, battling magic and fighting evil wherever he found it. But he has been fighting mostly mundane battles since Prince Weaver outlawed magic. And with no great deeds left to be done, Rawk is afraid he’ll soon be the old man in the corner of the tavern, dreaming of the good old days and telling tales for anyone who will buy him a drink.
But when a huge wolden wolf is spied from the walls of Katamood for the first time in a decade, Rawk is the man the city looks to once more. He’ll save them. He always has.
Rawk will fight to ensure the Age of Heroes doesn’t slip away into history, but what if the good old days aren’t quite as good as he remembers?
Links…
Welcome back to the magic and pathos of Angela Slatter’s exquisitely imagined tales.
The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings returns to the world of Sourdough and Other Stories (Tartarus, 2010), introducing readers to the tales that came before. Stories where coffin-makers work hard to keep the dead beneath; where a plague maiden steals away the children of an ungrateful village; where poison girls are schooled in the art of assassination; where pirates disappear from the seas; where families and the ties that bind them can both ruin and resurrect and where books carry forth fairy tales, forbidden knowledge and dangerous secrets.
The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings is enhanced by eighty-six pen-and-ink illustrations by artist Kathleen Jennings.
In the cathedral-city of Lodellan and its uneasy hinterland, babies are fashioned from bread, dolls are given souls and wishes granted may be soon regretted. There are ghosts who dream, men whose wings have been clipped and trolls who long for something other. Love, loss and life are elegantly dissected in Slatter’s earthy yet poetic prose.
Blurb Black-Winged Angels is a collection of 10 incredible contemporary retellings of fairy tales, and will be available in a limited hardcover edition illustrated by the multiple World Fantasy Award nominated Kathleen Jennings.
The book will appeal to fans of Angela Carter (“The Company of Wolves”) and Emma Donoghue (“Kissing the Witch”).
Murder and betrayal in deep space, with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance…
Thirty-four light years from Earth, the explorer ship Magellan is nearing its objective – the Iota Persei system. But when ship commander Cait Dyson wakes from deepsleep, she finds her co-pilot dead and the ship’s AI unresponsive. Cait works with the rest of her multinational crew to regain control of the ship, until they learn that Earth is facing total environmental collapse and their mission must change if humanity is to survive.
As tensions rise and personal and political agendas play out in the ship’s cramped confines, the crew finally reach the planet Horizon, where everything they know will be challenged.
“Refreshingly plausible, politically savvy, and full of surprises, Horizon takes you on a harrowing thrill-ride through the depths of space and the darkness of the human heart.” – Sean Williams, New York Times bestselling author of the Astropolis and Twinmaker series
Journey beyond the borders of the real with our first annual collection of stories appearing in Dimension6 magazine, with all new stories from some of the best speculative fiction authors working in Australia today including Richard Harland, Dirk Strasser, Jason Nahrung, Alan Baxter, Robert Hood, Cat Sparks, Robert N Stephenson, Steve Cameron and Charlotte Nash.
A businessman staying in a Scottish manor makes the mistake of deciding to spend the evening in the library. A group of unpopular teenage girls uses witchcraft to pursue their aims. A rich banking tycoon has forgotten his university days when he and his friends dared to imagine a world ruled by social justice and working class ideals. The estranged family of a deceased aristocrat bicker over their inheritance. A botanist’s love for his plants is unnaturally deep-rooted.
“Hoffman’s Creeper and Other Disturbing Tales” is the first short story collection from Cameron Trost. It plunges the reader into a world of mystery, suspense, obsession and greed. From the Scottish highlands and the jagged peaks of the Pyrénées to the streets of Brisbane and the Australian countryside, Cameron Trost provokes the reader by ensnaring recognisable characters in disturbingly plausible situations. His writing seeks to entertain while exploring the absurdities and peculiarities of society and the human mind.
Subtropical Suspense Anthology of Suspense and Mystery Tales set in Brisbane
“Cameron Trost has brought together a dark pantry of crime stories and mysteries, and cooked up a gumbo rich and spicy enough to befit any of the world’s sultry cities… but these happen to be set in Brisbane. Sixteen short stories take the reader from Morningside to Indooroopilly, from Hamilton to Acacia Ridge. There is baking sun and flooding rains, police procedurals and criminal capers, murderous mermaids and poison pens… all give a ripple of pleasure to the reader who knows Brisbane – or wants to know it – and who has wondered why stories of murder, malice, and magic couldn’t be set here. And of course, they should be: Brisbane’s shadows are as dark and good to hide in as any in the world – and Subtropical Suspense revels in this.”
Clair and Jesse have barely been reunited when the world is plunged into its biggest crisis yet … It’s the end of the world as Clair knows it – and it’s partly her fault. A brilliant science-fiction thriller, the second in the Twinmaker trilogy. This edition includes a bonus short story.
Stranded in the desert, the last of mankind is kept safe by a large border fence… Until the fence falls.
Squid is a young orphan living under the oppressive rule of his uncle in the outskirts of the Territory. Lynn is a headstrong girl with an influential father who has spent her entire life within the walled city of Alice.
When the border fence is breached, the Territory is invaded by the largest horde of undead ghouls seen in two hundred years. Squid is soon conscripted into the Diggers – the armed forces of the Territory. And after Lynn finds herself at odds with the Territory’s powerful church, she too escapes to join the Diggers.
Together Squid and Lynn form an unlikely friendship as they march to battle against the ghouls. Their journey will take them further than they ever imagined, leading them closer to discovering secrets about themselves, their world, and a conspiracy that may spell the end of the Territory as they know it.
Arrabella Candellarbra is like no one you’ve ever met before; even though her questy thing is the stuff of legend.
Arrabella, a beautiful, flaxen-haired maiden trained in all things warrior-like by The Reginas – the most famous warriors of all – embarks on a quest to claim her birthright and to wield the power of all the lands.
The Four Adventurers soon find themselves pitted against the Evil Betty-Sue – the meanest of evil beings in all of the lands – and her scary minions: the Saw-Toothed Bunnies, the Viscous Tongued Frogs and the Barella Monkeys – to rescue The Reginas from… something!
Arrabella Candellarbra and the Questy Thing to End All Questy Things, a fairy tale for grown-ups, features love and lust, action and inaction, battles, incantations, sexual shenanigans and high-kicking sing-a-longs.
And it promises that all those epic questy things will never be the same again.
Fourteen year old Byron James wishes he’d never been dragged to Parkton.
It’s a crazy sideshow of a town in the middle of damn nowhere, and he’s stranded there. To make matters worse, his two new friends – his only friends – turn out to be class rejects with an unhealthy interest in monsters. They want to discover the truth to the infamous monster house at number 809 Jacob Street.
Joey Blue is an old bluesman who fell into his songs and couldn’t find his way out again. Now he’s a Gutterbreed, one of the slinking shifting shadows haunting the town’s alleys. When an old dead friend comes begging for help, Joey’s world is torn apart. He is forced to stare down the man he has become in order to rescue the man he once was – and there is only one place he can do that.
The house on Jacob Street calls to them all, but what will they find when they open its door?
By now you all know I’m good friends with Angela Slatter. You should also know that I’m a huge fan of her work – it’s great when one of your friends is also one of your favourite writers. One of the best books I’ve read in recent years was Sourdough & Other Stories, Angela’s collection of short stories published by Tartarus Press. Not only is it a collection of brilliant stories, it’s a beautiful artifact of a book too. Tartarus make wonderful things. Well, Angela was supposed to write a sequel collection, but being the contrary writer she is, she wrote a prequel collection instead. It’s called The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings. Tartarus agreed to publish it and Angela scored the amazing Kathleen Jennings to do internal illustrations for it. The result is a book even more beautiful than Sourdough, and equally chock full of amazing stories. I know that, because I’ve read it. The book’s not out til September 1st, but we’re friends, remember? So I got Angela and Kathleen to talk a bit about it and the process of its creation. You can read that below. At the end is a link to the Tartarus Press website where you can pre-order the book, and I really, really recommend that you do. And if you haven’t read Sourdough, buy that too and you can read it while you wait. I’m not just talking up my friends here, either – Sourdough was nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the Aurealis Award for Best Collection. These are books you do not want to miss. Over to Angela and Kathleen.
***
Angela:
My Author’s Note to Bitterwood goes thus:
The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings is intended as a prequel to Sourdough and Other Stories. It was meant to be a sequel, but the tales were determined to defy me—they insisted upon telling what had happened before, to show how the books of Murcianus came to be, how Ella came into the world, where Hepsibah Ballantyne—who appears only as a name on a headstone in Sourdough’s Lodellan cemetery—began the chain of events that are traced through the mosaic of this book. Bitterwood expands and builds upon the world of Sourdough and, I hope, makes readers feel they are coming home once again.
I’d written “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter” in 2011 as a standalone story for Steve Jones’s A Book of Horrors anthology, and that seemed the place to start. Hepsibah had gone from being a name on a grave to a powerful presence, so that story is one that threads through the whole of Bitterwood. As I wrote the stories fell into place and I can honestly say that this collection was one of those rare things that a writer dreams of: knowing exactly what was going to happen, when, and to whom. I was able to weave together so many of the things I love: elements of history and myth and fairy tale and folklore. There are little nods to writers as diverse as Umberto Eco and Kim Newman. There are vampires, boarding schools for assassins, pirates who are being hunted to extinction, a brazen head that tells the future, bakeries and rats, transformed badgers and dreadful revenges − and books. So many books.
As the narrative came together I started to think not about a cover, strangely, but about internal illustrations. I love Kathleen Jennings’ artwork and I knew she had an ambition to do endpapers, so I asked if she would like to beta read the stories as I finished them and, if perhaps the spirit moved her, do some illustrations as she read? She said yes, which was lucky for me; luckier still the lovely people at Tartarus took both the collection and agreed to use Kathleen’s illustrations. I feel very fortunate and privileged to have drawings done that truly capture the spirit of the tales I wrote. And of course there was the absolute wicked delight of having Kathleen text me photos of what she’d done as she read a story.
It was such a pleasure to work with her and I hope I was a well-behaved author! I don’t think I was critical or asked for any kangaroos to be added to The Last Supper. I’m doubly spoiled because Kathleen also did the artwork for my limited edition collection of Black-Winged Angels (Ticonderoga Publications), which echoes the silhouette technique of Arthur Rackham, but has its own wonderful unique beauty.
Kathleen:
Angela would keep dropping hints about the most beautiful parts of her stories, often before they were written – badgers (sigh) and a school for poison girls, doors in trees, dangerous quilts… so any workload-related resolve was fairly well weakened by the time she sent me the manuscript, because now they were here! They were real stories in the world, and I could read them!
I spent a lot of time in cafes, reading and sketching, sending Angela texts with reactions and pictures – each gaining energy from the other’s excitement! We’re still doing this, if you saw our comments back and forth when Tartarus released pictures of the Actual Book.
It was a lovely way to work, actually: just a free hand to sketch my way through the book. Because the original plan was to try and sell Tartarus on the idea of endpapers, I was going for multiple small images and the individual pressure was off – I could just draw anything that caught my fancy. And then Angela would edit it out of the manuscript. But anyway.
I’m still haunted by images from this book. Images and titles (‘Now all pirates are gone’). And Tartarus did a lovely job of putting the pictures in just where they ought to be – Angela and I had to check in with each other to say, “Did you see where they put the badgers? I knowwww!”
This has come up a couple of times in various conversations recently, so I thought I’d talk about it here. Ebooks are here to stay, obviously. While there will always be print books too, even if that does eventually reduce to Print-on-Demand and collector’s folio editions, ebooks will only continue to gain strength. There’s the whole format and DRM thing to still sort out – Amazon aren’t about to give up the mobi format any time soon, and a lot of places are struggling with where they stand on DRM – but these are all ongoing teething problems. I’d like to imagine a utopia where ePub is the standard across all vendors and publishers (which it already is if you don’t include Amazon) and where DRM is a thing of the past. But regardless of how it all shakes down, ebooks are mainstream now.
I love ebooks. I dig that I can carry hundreds of books around on my phone. Honestly, how living-in-the-future is that shit? And I do read on my phone. But primarily I read from an iPad Mini. I love my Mini – it’s the perfect size and does all the things I want. Plus, I have this sweet leather cover for it that makes it look like a cool old hardback book. Here it is:
Pretty sweet, huh? I use it for internet, email, videos, TV, games and loads of other stuff as well as reading. It’s just the best thing ever, technology-wise.
But I didn’t always read ebooks on the Mini and I use several apps even now. Other people I’ve spoken to use a variety of devices and all swear by them. Some people consider dedicated ereaders a cul-de-sac technology that’ll die down to almost nothing because tablets are so much more versatile, while others love their dedicated ereader precisely because it’s just for reading and has no other distracting functions.
I got onto the whole ebook bandwagon pretty early on. For example, when I originally self-published RealmShift back in the day, it was the 376th book to be uploaded to Smashwords, as evidenced by its URL there. There are now over 300,000 books on Smashwords. I would read ebooks on my PC from very early on too. I guess I knew right off the bat that this technology was going to quickly become the norm and it most certainly did. Interestingly, that massive rush into the mainstream that ebooks made was largely encouraged along by Amazon and their Kindle device. They really saw an opportunity and exploited it with expert (some might say evil) skill.
After reading on my laptop and phone for a while, my first dedicated ereader was an old generation Kindle 3, like the one pictured on the left, and I got hooked fully into the Amazon ecosystem. I was already there really, using the Kindle app – I even converted ePub files to mobi to use on the Kindle. I didn’t mind at all at the time – Amazon always had the most content, you could buy with one click and it would roll straight onto your reader. And the battery life of the Kindle is awesome. The reading experience is great too, with no backlight and all that jazz. Apparently, the new Paperwhite is even better, but I’ve yet to see one of those in the flesh… plastic… whatever. But I don’t use my Kindle any more. My wife uses it a bit and I do actually miss it in some ways, but it became superfluous to my needs.
I used the Kindle app on my phone while I used my Kindle 3 and that was awesome. If I was out and had ten minutes to spare, I could dial up whatever book I was reading and the app would automatically sync it to the last place I’d read. But I began to get more and more disillusioned with Amazon and at the same time, more or less, got my iPad Mini. The Kindle was no good for comics and I read a lot of those, so an iPad was a great choice. I got the Kindle app for it and discovered that the backlit screen really doesn’t bother me at all. So the Kindle 3 became unnecessary luggage.
Now my phone and iPad are all I carry, and they do all I need. But I’m not all about Kindle any more. There are so many reading apps out there. Rather than buy in to the Amazon ecosystem entirely, I started looking at other options. I found that a lot of publishers sell direct from their own websites, a lot of small press use places like Smashwords as well as Amazon, and I recently discovered that the Kobo store is great. All of these use ePub, and don’t tie you to Amazon. And I particularly like ePub because I discovered a couple of years ago an app called Marvin. It’s only for iDevices at the moment, but apparently an Andriod version is in the works. It’s my favourite ereader now and I’ll always look for an ePub file that I can sideload to Marvin as my first port of call when I want a new book. If I can’t find that, I’ll shop at Kobo and use the Kobo app. As a last resort, I’ll go back to Amazon and read with the Kindle. I also still use the Kindle app to read PDFs and Word documents that I send myself using my Kindle email thing. It’s really a case of what’s best for any given situation, but always looking for ePub first.
So while I almost exclusively read ebooks on the iPad Mini now (with occasional forays on my phone), I do it with a variety of apps and stores. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to a dedicated ereader. And I read about 50/50 ebook/print, so I’ll certainly never abandon paper books. I’m an utter bibliophile and love my bookshelves. I love to get beautiful editions, especially hardbacks, of my favourite books, though income doesn’t allow me to indulge that as much as I’d like. And if I read an ebook that I really enjoy, I’ll get the paper edition for my shelves. Most recently that happened with Nathan Ballingrud’s amazing debut collection of short stories called “North American Lake Monsters”. I bought the ebook, absolutely loved it and, as soon as I’d finished reading, I flipped from the reading app to the browser on my iPad and bought the last signed hardcover from the Small Beer Press website. All without leaving my couch. There’s that living-in-the-future shit again. So brilliant.
So what about you? What’s your ereader of choice? How do you shop for ebooks? Let me know in the comments and let me know too about any great apps or readers I might have missed out on.
I’ve been going on a lot lately about Bound. It’s no surprise, really. I have a book out from a major publisher and it’s on shelves in bookstores and everything! I’m still finding it hard to believe, but I’m certainly enjoying it. However, now I want to spread the love – I’ve been going on so much lately about myself, it’s time I talked about other people a bit. Below are the books and stories I’ve been really enjoying lately and I highly recommend you check them out. Let’s go:
The Hunt for Pierre Jnr By David M. Henley (the sequel, Manifestations, is out now too.) As the blurb says, “He can make you forget, he can control you and he is only eight years old. Three months after his birth he escaped. An hour later he was lost to surveillance. No one knows where he has been for the last eight years … Now Pierre Jnr is about to return.” Sounds good, right? It is.
Last Year, When We Were Young by Andrew McKiernan. I had the pleasure of MCing the launch of this excellent debut collection of short stories. It’s fantastic and Greg Chapman sums it up nicely in this review here.
Exile by Peter M Ball. Okay, I haven’t read this one yet as I’ve only just bought it, but Peter Ball’s stuff is always good and I expect this novella to be up there as well. So I’m including it here.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. I mean, really, it’s enough that it’s by Gaiman, right? But this is a wonderful book and very British in style and setting. As an ex-pat Brit, that appealed to me a lot. But whether you’re British or not, it’s well worth your time.
SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror edited by Geoff Brown and A J Spedding. I had the honour of writing a foreword for this collection of military horror short stories. There’s fantastic variety here and it’s a tremendous collection. You’ll be surprised at the scope.
Trucksong by Andrew Macrae. A post-apocalyptic Australia with sentient trucks fighting and fucking and stuff. I know, right? It’s written in an incredibly well-developed Australian voice and is something quite different.
Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto. This is the guy who wrote True Detective, which is some of the best television I’ve seen in recent years. This is a southern crime noir kinda thing, fantasically written. I loved it.
North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud. Possibly the best short story collection I’ve read in recent years. Again, I reviewed it for Thirteen O’Clock, so go here to read me gushing about it.
Lexicon by Max Barry. My book of the year last year and it won an Aurealis Award. A fantastic story about the power of words and language and modern magic rolled up with science and it’s a thriller and… and… Just read it.
The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. A superb supernatural serial killer, crime thriller thing. This book has had loads of attention and all of it well-deserved. A must read.
And next up on my list are Guardian by Jo Anderton (which will be great because it’s book three after Debris and Suited, which were great), Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes (after the awesomeness of The Shining Girls, I can’t wait for this one) and Dreaming of Zhou Gong by Traci Harding (which I only got yesterday, signed no less, and I’m looking forward to a lot). Very exciting reading ahead, I think.
A quick web search will reveal any of these to you, so off you go and get some good stuff. Let me know what you think. And if you’ve read something simply brilliant lately, drop a mention in the comments and we can keep this sharing of good stuff going.
You guys have heard me talk about Angela Slatter plenty before. She’s a good friend of mine, but more than that, she’s one of the best writers I know. Specialising in dark fantasy and horror, she’s the author of the Aurealis Award-winning The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, the World Fantasy Award finalist Sourdough and Other Stories, and the Aurealis finalist Midnight and Moonshine (with Lisa L. Hannett). And that’s just a fraction of her bio. She’s the first Aussie to win a British Fantasy Award too. Check out all about her publications and awards here.
Angela has a new chapbook out from Spectral Press called Hearth and Home. It’s a great read and I’ve asked her five questions about it and about horror and her writing in general. The questions are below, but before you read them, go and get the chapbook, as it’s limited edition and there aren’t many left. You can send an email to spectralpress[AT]gmail[DOT]com or maybe get one of the last ones from Angela herself by emailing me[at]angelaslatter[dot]com
You won’t be sorry. So, on with the Qs:
1. What’s “Hearth and Home” all about and why did you write this story?
Well, it’s about a woman whose teenaged son has come home after a lengthy trial. He was found innocent but things are not as they should be, life doesn’t return to ‘normal’. Basically it’s the story of Caroline’s journey through figuring out just how far from normal things are. I wrote it because Simon Marshall-Jones from Spectral Press had said ‘Sooo, hey, how about a chapbook story?’ And I’d seen the work he’d done with other authors such as Gary McMahon in the chapbook series and thought ‘Yep, get me some of that!’
2. What’s the real draw card for you with horror?
I don’t mind gore if it’s well used and cleverly placed for maximum effect, but I really, really hate explicit shock for the sake of shock. It has a numbing effect after a while and that is not the point of horror for me. Horror is about the creeping shiver that becomes a full-blooded scream … I enjoy the psychology of that journey, that’s what wraps me up in a good horror story.
3. Chapbooks are still cool. Why?
I think they’ve never really gone out of fashion in particular, i.e. genre, quarters, and they’re now riding the wave of small press resurgence. I think that’s because small presses are in a unique position to create books that aren’t your traditional trade paperback with the imperative to sell millions. That’s not to say they don’t want to make money, but there’s definitely a place for books are collectable artefacts that remains even in an age of e-books and the throwaway paperback.
I also like to think that you can see the craft in them, they don’t necessarily look like something that’s from a cookie cutter … there’s an individuality to them that feels very human and person-made.
4. If you could organise one of those haunted house murder mystery dinners, who would you invite? And who would be the killer?
Oooooh. I’m going to ask the living and the dead, the real and the imagined! Angela Carter and Tanith Lee, Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Shearman and Lisa Hannett, Mark Gatiss and Christopher Lee, Helen Marshall and Helen Mirren. And Neil Gaiman, who would be the killer and whom no one would suspect coz he always seems so nice.
5. What’s next for Doctor Slatter?
Dr Slatter has three books out this year: The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings (from Tartarus Press), Black-Winged Angels (from Ticonderoga Publications), and The Female Factory (written with Lisa Hannett and coming out from Twelfth Planet Press). No matter what anyone tells you, I am open to working with publishers that don’t start with the letter ‘T’.
I currently have a novel called Vigil doing the rounds; I am finishing my novella for Spectral Press, which is called The Witch’s Scale; and I’m finishing up my collection The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales, which is the result of my Queensland Writers Fellowship year; I’m working on another novel called Scandalous Lady Detective, and going back to an old novel called Well of Souls to finish it off.
In between I am occasionally offering an editing and story development service, but it’s starting to feel like a bit of a time-squeeze at this point!
My story, “Shadows of the Lonely Dead”, is coming out in the Suspended in Dusk anthology (Books of the Dead Press, due mid-late 2014) and the editor, Simon Dewar, has just released the full list of contributing authors and their stories. It’s a stellar bunch:
That’s alphabetical, of course. The final order of stories and a cover reveal are apparently coming soon. I think this is going to be a great book. A few of those stories are reprints, but the majority are original, and all follow the theme of “suspended in dusk” to some degree. Should be well worth a read. And can I just point out that I’m going to be in a book with Ramsey Campbell. Achievement Unlocked!
Issue 14 of SQ Mag is out. It’s the Australiana Special Edition and includes loads of great stuff like new stories from Kaaron Warren and Sean Williams, lots of other top stories and features, and my novelette, The Darkness in Clara.
I’m really proud of this story and I hope other people like it too. I was honoured to learn that it inspired the cover for this issue.
The best thing about SQ Mag, apart from the stellar content obviously, is that it’s all free to read online. Here’s the opening to my story:
The Darkness in Clara
by Alan Baxter
Michelle saw Clara’s feet first, absurdly suspended a meter above the ground, toes pointing to the carpet, ghostly pale and twisting in a lazy spiral. The rest of the scene burst into her mind in one electric shock a fraction of a second later; Clara’s wiry nakedness, limp arms, head tilted chaotically to one side. Her tattoos seemed faded against ashen skin. Her so familiar face grotesque and wrong, tongue swelling from her mouth like an escaping slug. And her bulging eyes, staring glassy and cold as Michelle began to scream. Light from the bedside lamp cast Clara’s shadow across the wall like a puppet play, glinted off the metal legs of the upturned chair beneath.
I bought her that belt, Michelle thought, as she stared at the worn black leather biting deep into the blue-tinged flesh of Clara’s neck, and she drew breath to scream again.
I got a wonderful surprise on Saturday when a few messages started coming in saying something along the lines of, “Congratulations on your Ditmar nomination!” I hadn’t realised the Award shortlist had been released, but it only took a moment to see social media alive with the news (at least, spec fic related social media in Australia.) It turns out that my story, Not the Worst of Sins, published in issue 133 of Beneath Ceaseless Skies magazine, has been noninated in the Best Short Story category. Thanks so much to everyone who voted for that, it’s a real honour. The Ditmars are an Australian national award decided by popular vote. Anyone active in the SF scene and fandom can nominate works, then anyone who was at the previous year’s NatCon (National SF Convention) or has a full or supporting membership for this year’s NatCon can vote for the winners.
This year, the NatCon is Continuum X in Melbourne in June. The awards ceremony will be held there. If you went to Conflux in Canberra last year, or you’re going to Continuum this year, you can vote in the Ditmars. I really recommend that you do vote, as the more people who get involved, the more the winners will reflect the opinion of the wider community. If you’re not going to the cons, but you want to vote, you can buy a supporting membership for Continuum X for just $35, which gives you several benefits including voting rights. And you can vote online in a matter of minutes. Couldn’t be easier! Voting is open now until one minute before midnight AEST (ie. 11.59pm, GMT+10), Wednesday, 28th of May, 2014.
I’ll post the full list of nominated works in all categories below, but here are a few relevant links:
So please do get involved. My own inclusion notwithstanding, I honestly think this is one of the strongest Ditmar Award ballots for years, in every category. You could do worse than getting hold of everything on this list (and anything on the Aurealis Awards list from last month) and you’d be set up with some fantastic reading of Aussie spec fic.The AAs and now the Ditmars are showing very clearly that Australian spec fic is stronger than ever.
So, get your membership and get voting (or if you went to Conflux last year, just get voting!) and if you’re going to NatCon this year in June, I’ll see you there!
* Tsana Dolichva, for body of work, including reviews and interviews in Tsana’s Reads and Reviews
* Sean Wright, for body of work, including reviews in Adventures of a Bookonaut
* Grant Watson, for body of work, including reviews in The Angriest
* Foz Meadows, for body of work, including reviews in Shattersnipe: Malcontent & Rainbows
* Alexandra Pierce, for body of work, including reviews in Randomly Yours, Alex
* Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work, including essays and reviews at www.tansyrr.com
Best Fan Artist
* Nalini Haynes, for body of work, including “Defender of the Faith”, “The Suck Fairy”, “Doctor Who vampire” and “The Last Cyberman” in Dark Matter
* Kathleen Jennings, for body of work, including “Illustration Friday”
* Dick Jenssen, for body of work, including cover art for Interstellar Ramjet Scoop and SF Commentary
Saturday was a big day. I drove down to Canberra, took part in the Conflux Writer’s Day minicon, where I did a highspeed “Social Media for Authors” presentation, then went for a quick change of clothes in order to attend the Aurealis Awards ceremony. Nicole Murphy, who organised everything that day, did a truly amazing job. The writers day and awards ceremony were both superb. We caroused and drank and laughed, and fantastic Australian fiction scored very well-deserved awards.
Here are all the fantastic nominees and winners. If you want a sampler of excellent recent Aussie spec fic, here’s your huckleberry:
(The winners are separated at the top of each list of nominees.)
Best Science Fiction Novel
Lexicon, Max Barry (Hachette)
Trucksong, Andrew Macrae (Twelfth Planet)
A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists, Jane Rawson (Transit Lounge)
|
---
abstract: 'We study the effects of weak columnar and point disorder on the vortex-lattice phase transitions in high temperature superconductors. The combined effect of thermal fluctuations and of quenched disorder is investigated using a simplified cage model. For columnar disorder the problem maps into a quantum particle in a harmonic + random potential. We use the variational approximation to show that columnar and point disorder have opposite effect on the position of the melting line as observed experimentally. Replica symmetry breaking plays a role at the transition into a vortex glass at low temperatures.'
address: |
Department of Physics and Astronomy\
University of Pittsburgh\
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
author:
- 'Yadin Y. Goldschmidt'
date: 'August 4, 1996'
title: ' [**Phase Transitions of the Flux Line Lattice in High-Temperature Superconductors with Weak Columnar and Point Disorder**]{} '
---
[2]{}
There is a lot of interest in the physics of high temperature superconductors due to their potential technological applications. In particular these materials are of type II and allow for partial magnetic flux penetration. Pinning of the magnetic flux lines (FL) by many types of disorder is essential to eliminate dissipative losses associated with flux motion. In clean materials below the superconducting temperature there exist a ’solid ’ phase where the vortex lines form a triangular Abrikosov lattice [@blatter]. This solid can melt due to thermal fluctuations and the effect of impurities. In particular known observed transitions are into a flux liquid at higher temperatures via a [*melting line*]{} (ML)[@zeldov], and into a vortex glass at low temperature [@VG],[@Fisher],[@BG] in the presence of disorder- the so called [*entanglement line*]{} (EL). [@blatter]
Recently the effect of point and columnar disorder on the position of the melting transition has been measured experimentally in the high-$T_c$ material $Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_8$ [@Khaykovitch]. Point disorder has been induced by electron irradiation (with 2.5 MeV electrons), whereas columnar disorder has been induced by heavy ion irradiation (1 GeV Xe or 0.9 GeV Pb). It turns out that the flux melting transition persists in the presence of either type of disorder, but its position shifts depending on the disorder type and strength.
A significant difference has been observed between the effects of columnar and point disorder on the location of the ML. Weak columnar defects stabilize the solid phase with respect to the vortex liquid phase and shift the transition to [*higher*]{} fields, whereas point-like disorder destabilizes the vortex lattice and shifts the melting transition to [*lower*]{} fields. In this paper we attempt to provide an explanation to this observation. The case of point defects has been addressed in a recent paper by Ertas and Nelson [@EN] using the cage-model approach which replaces the effect of vortex-vortex interactions by an harmonic potential felt by a single vortex. For columnar disorder the parabolic cage model was introduced by Nelson and Vinokur \[8\]. Here we use a different approach to analyze the cage-model Hamiltonian vis. the replica method together with the variational approximation. In the case of columnar defects our approach relies on our recent analysis of a quantum particle in a random potential [@yygold]. We compare the effect of the two types of disorder with each other and with results of recent experiments.
Assume that the average magnetic field is aligned along the $z$-axis. Following EN we describe the Hamiltonian of a single FL whose position is given by a two-component vector ${\bf r}(z)$ (overhangs are neglected) by: $$\begin{aligned}
{\cal H} = \int_0^L dz \left\{ {\frac{\tilde{\epsilon} }{2}} \left({\frac{ d%
{\bf r }}{dz}} \right)^2 + V(z,{\bf r }) + {\frac{\mu }{2}} {\bf r }^2
\right\}. \label{hamil}\end{aligned}$$
Here $\tilde \epsilon =\epsilon _0/\gamma ^2$ is the line tension of the FL, $\gamma ^2=m_z/m_{\perp }$ is the mass anisotropy, $\epsilon _0=(\Phi
_0/4\pi \lambda )^2$, ($\lambda $ being the penetration length), and $\mu
\approx \epsilon _0/a_0^2$ is the effective spring constant (setting the cage size) due to interactions with neighboring FLs, which are at a typical distance of $a_0=\sqrt{\Phi _0/B}$ apart.
For the case of columnar (or correlated) disorder, $V(z,{\bf r})=V({\bf r})$ is independent of $z$, and $$\begin{aligned}
\langle V({\bf r})V({\bf r^{\prime }})\rangle \equiv -2f(({\bf r}-{\bf %
r^{\prime }})^2/2)=g\epsilon _0^2\xi ^2\delta _\xi ^{(2)}({\bf r}-{\bf %
r^{\prime }}), \label{VVC}\end{aligned}$$ where $$\begin{aligned}
\delta _\xi ^{(2)}({\bf r}-{\bf r^{\prime }})\approx 1/(2\pi \xi ^2)\exp (-(%
{\bf r}-{\bf r^{\prime }})^2/2\xi ^2), \label{delta}\end{aligned}$$ and $\xi $ is the vortex core diameter. The dimensionless parameter g is a measure of the strength of the disorder. On the other hand for point-disorder, $V$ depends on $z$ and [@EN] $$\begin{aligned}
\langle V(z,{\bf r})V(z^{\prime },{\bf r^{\prime }})\rangle =\tilde
\Delta \epsilon
_0^2\xi ^3\delta _\xi ^{(2)}({\bf r}-{\bf r^{\prime }})\delta (z-z^{\prime
}). \label{VVP}\end{aligned}$$
The quantity that measures the transverse excursion of the FL is $$\begin{aligned}
u_0^2(\ell )\equiv \langle |{\bf r}(z)-{\bf r}(z+\ell )|^2\rangle \ /2,
\label{ul}\end{aligned}$$
Let us now review the connection between a quantum particle in a random potential and the behavior of a FL in a superconductor. The partition function of the former is just like the partition sum of the FL, provided one make the identification [@nelson] $$\begin{aligned}
\hbar \rightarrow T,\qquad \beta \hbar \rightarrow L, \label{corresp}\end{aligned}$$ Where T is the temperature of the superconductor and L is the system size in the $z$-direction. $\beta $ is the inverse temperature of the quantum particle. We are interested in large fixed L as T is varied, which corresponds to high $\beta $ for the quantum particle when $\hbar $ (or alternatively the mass of the particle) is varied. The variable $z$ is the so called Trotter time. This is the picture we will be using for the case of columnar disorder.
For the case of point-disorder the picture we use is that of a directed polymer in the presence of a random potential plus an harmonic potential as used by EN.
The main effect of the harmonic (or cage) potential is to cap the transverse excursions of the FL beyond a confinement length $\ell ^{*}\approx
a_0/\gamma $. The mean square displacement of the flux line is given by
$$u^2(T)\approx u_0^2(\ell ^{*}). \label{uT}$$
The location of the melting line is determined by the Lindemann criterion $$u^2(T_m(B))=c_L^2a_0^2, \label{Lind}$$ where $c_L\approx 0.15-0.2$ is the phenomenological Lindemann constant. This means that when the transverse excursion of a section of length $\approx
\ell ^{*}$becomes comparable to a finite fraction of the interline separation $a_0$, the melting of the flux solid occurs.
We consider first the case of columnar disorder. In the absence of disorder it is easily obtained from standard quantum mechanics and the correspondence (\[corresp\]), that when $L\rightarrow \infty ,$
$$u^2(T)=\frac T{\sqrt{\widetilde{\epsilon }\mu }}\left( 1-\exp (-\ell ^{*}%
\sqrt{\mu /\widetilde{\epsilon }})\right) =\frac T{\sqrt{\widetilde{\epsilon
}\mu }}(1-e^{-1}), \label{u2g0}$$
from which we find that
$$B_m(T)\approx \frac{\Phi _0^{}}{\xi ^2}\frac{\epsilon _0^2\xi ^2c_L^4}{%
\gamma ^2T^2}. \label{Bmg0}$$
When we turn on disorder we have to solve the problem of a quantum particle in a random quenched potential. This problem has been recently solved using the replica method and the variational approximation [@yygold]. Let us review briefly the results of this approach. In this approximation we chose the best quadratic Hamiltonian parametrized by the matrix $%
s_{ab}(z-z^{\prime })$:
$$\begin{aligned}
h_n &=&\frac 12\int_0^Ldz\sum_a[\widetilde{\epsilon }{\bf \dot r}_a^2+\mu
{\bf r}_a^2] \nonumber \\
&&-\frac 1{2T}\int_0^Ldz\int_0^Ldz^{\prime }\sum_{a,b}s_{ab}(z-z^{\prime })%
{\bf r}_a(z)\cdot {\bf r}_b(z^{\prime }). \label{hn}\end{aligned}$$
Here the replica index $a=1\ldots n$, and $n\rightarrow 0$ at the end of the calculation. This Hamiltonian is determined by stationarity of the variational free energy which is given by
$$\left\langle F\right\rangle _R/T=\left\langle H_n-h_n\right\rangle
_{h_n}-\ln \int [d{\bf r}]\exp (-h_n/T), \label{FV}$$
where $H_n$ is the exact $n$-body replicated Hamiltonian. The off-diagonal elements of $s_{ab}$can consistently be taken to be independent of $z$, whereas the diagonal elements are $z$-dependent. It is more convenient to work in frequency space, where $\omega $ is the frequency conjugate to $z$. $%
\omega _j=(2\pi /L)j,$with $j=0,\pm 1,\pm 2,\ldots $.Assuming replica symmetry, which is valid only for part of the temperature range, we can denote the off-diagonal elements of $\widetilde{s}_{ab}(\omega
)=(1/T)\int_0^Ldz\ e^{i\omega z}$ $s_{ab}(z)$, by $\widetilde{s}(\omega )=%
\widetilde{s}\delta _{\omega ,0}$. Denoting the diagonal elements by $%
\widetilde{s}_d(\omega )$, the variational equations become: $$\begin{aligned}
\tilde s &=&2\frac LT\widehat{f}\ ^{\prime }\left( {\frac{2T}{\mu L}}+{\frac{%
2T}L}\sum_{\omega ^{\prime }\neq 0}\frac 1{\epsilon \ \omega ^{\prime
}\,^2+\mu -\widetilde{s}_d(\omega ^{\prime })}\right) \label{s} \\
\tilde s_d(\omega ) &=&\tilde s-{\frac 2T}\int_0^Ld\zeta \ (1-e^{i\omega
\zeta })\times \nonumber \\
&&\ \ \widehat{f}\ ^{\prime }\left( {\frac{2T}L}\sum_{\omega ^{\prime }\neq
0}\ \frac{1-e^{-i\omega ^{\prime }\varsigma }}{\widetilde{\epsilon \ }\omega
^{\prime }\,^2+\mu -\widetilde{s}_d(\omega ^{\prime })}^{}\right) .
\label{sd}\end{aligned}$$ here $\widehat{f}$ $^{\prime }(y)$ denotes the derivative of the ”dressed” function $\widehat{f}(y)$ which is obtained in the variational scheme from the random potential’s correlation function $f(y)$ (see eq. (\[VVC\])), and in 2+1 dimensions is given by:
$$\widehat{f}(y)=-\frac{g\epsilon _0^2\xi ^2}{4\pi }\frac 1{\xi ^2+y}
\label{f}$$
The full equations, taking into account the possibility of replica-symmetry breaking are given in ref. [@yygold]. In terms of the variational parameters the function $u_0^2(\ell ^{*})$ is given by
$$u_0^2(\ell ^{*})={\frac{2T}L}\sum_{\omega ^{\prime }\neq 0}\frac{1-\cos
(\omega ^{\prime }\ell ^{*})}{\widetilde{\epsilon \ }\omega ^{\prime
}\,^2+\mu -\widetilde{s}_d(\omega ^{\prime })}. \label{u2qp}$$
This quantity has not been calculated in ref. [@yygold]. There we calculated $\left\langle {\bf r}^2(0)\right\rangle $ which does not measure correlations along the $z$-direction.
In the limit $L\rightarrow \infty $ we were able to solve the equations analytically to leading order in $g$. In that limit eq. (\[sd\]) becomes (for $\omega \neq 0$) :
$$\begin{aligned}
\tilde s_d(\omega ) &=&\frac 4\mu \widehat{f}\ ^{\prime \prime }(b_0)-\frac 2%
T\int_0^\infty d\varsigma (1-\cos (\omega \varsigma )) \nonumber \\
&&\times (\widehat{f}\ ^{\prime }(C_0(\varsigma ))-\widehat{f}\ ^{\prime
}(b_0)), \label{sdi}\end{aligned}$$
with
$$C_0(\varsigma )=2T\int_{-\infty }^\infty \frac{d\omega }{2\pi }\frac{1-\cos
(\omega \varsigma )}{\widetilde{\epsilon \ }\omega \,^2+\mu -\widetilde{s}%
_d(\omega )} \label{C0}$$
and $b_0$ given by a similar expression with the cosine term missing in the numerator of eq. (\[C0\]).
Defining
$$\begin{aligned}
\tau &=&T\ /\sqrt{\widetilde{\epsilon }\ \mu },\ \alpha =\tau \ /(\xi
^2+\tau ), \label{tau,al} \\
f_1(\alpha ) &=&1/(1-\alpha )-(1/\alpha )\log (1-\alpha ), \label{f1} \\
f_2(\alpha ) &=&\frac 1\alpha \sum_{k=1}^\infty (k+1)\alpha ^k/k^3
\label{f2} \\
a^2 &=&f_1(\alpha )/f_2(\alpha ),\ A=-\widehat{f}\ ^{\prime \prime }(\tau )\
f_1^2(\alpha )/f_2(\alpha )/\mu , \label{a2,A} \\
s_\infty &=&\widehat{f}\ ^{\prime \prime }(\tau )\ (4+f_1(\alpha ))/\mu ,
\label{sinf}\end{aligned}$$
a good representation of $\widetilde{s}_d(\omega ),\ (\omega \neq 0)$ with the correct behavior at low and high frequencies is
$$\widetilde{s}_d(\omega )=s_\infty +A\mu /(\widetilde{\epsilon \ }\omega
^2+a^2\mu ). \label{sde}$$
(notice that this function is negative for all $\omega $). Substituting in eq. (\[C0\]) and expanding the denominator to leading order in the strength of the disorder, we get :
$$\begin{aligned}
u_0^2(\ell ) &=&C_0(\sqrt{\widetilde{\epsilon }\ /\ \mu })=\tau
(1-A/(a^2-1)^2/\mu ) \nonumber \\
&&\ \times (1-e^{-\ell /\ell ^{*}})+\tau A/(a(a^2-1)^2\mu )\times \nonumber
\\
&&(1-e^{-a\ell /\ell ^{*}})+\tau /(2\mu )\times \ (s_\infty +A/(a^2-1))
\nonumber \\
&&\times \ (1-e^{-\ell /\ell ^{*}}-(\ell /\ell ^{*})\ e^{-\ell /\ell ^{*}}).
\label{u2f}\end{aligned}$$
In order to plot the results we measure all distances in units of $\xi $ , we measure the temperature in units of $\epsilon _0\xi $, and the magnetic field in units of $\Phi _0/\xi ^2$ . We observe that the spring constant $%
\mu $ is given in the rescaled units by $B$ and $a_0=1/\sqrt{B}$. We further use $\gamma =1$ for the plots.
Fig. 1 shows a plot of $\sqrt{u_0^2(\ell ^{*})}/a_0$ vs. $T$ for zero disorder (curve a) as well as for $g/2\pi =0.02$ (curve b). We have chosen $B=1/900$. We see that the disorder tends to align the flux lines along the columnar defects , hence decreasing $u^2(T)$ .Technically this happens since $%
\widetilde{s}_d(\omega )$ is negative. The horizontal line represents a possible Lindemann constant of 0.15.
In Fig. 2 we show the modified melting line $B_m(T)$ in the presence of columnar disorder. This is obtained from eq. (\[Lind\]) with $c_L=0.15$. We see that it shifts towards higher magnetic fields.
For $T<T_c\approx (\epsilon _0\xi /\gamma )[g^2\epsilon _0/(16\pi ^2\mu \xi
^2)]^{1/6}$, there is a solution with RSB but we will not pursue it further in this paper. This temperature is at the bottom of the range plotted in the figures for columnar disorder. We will pursue the RSB solution only for the case of point disorder, see below. The expression (\[u2f\]) becomes negative for very low temperature. This is an artifact of the truncation of the expansion in the strength of the disorder.
For the case of point defects the problem is equivalent to a directed polymer in a combination of a random potential and a fixed harmonic potential. This problem has been investigated by MP [@mp], who were mainly concerned with the limit of $\mu \rightarrow 0$. In this case the variational quadratic Hamiltonian is parametrized by:
$$\begin{aligned}
h_n &=&\frac 12\int_0^Ldz\sum_a[\widetilde{\epsilon }{\bf \dot r}_a^2+\mu
{\bf r}_a^2] \nonumber \\
&&\ \ -\frac 12\int_0^Ldz\sum_{a,b}^{}s_{ab}\ {\bf r}_a(z)\cdot {\bf r}_b(z),
\label{hnpd}\end{aligned}$$
with the elements of $s_{ab}$ all constants as opposed to the case of columnar disorder.
The replica symmetric solution to the variational equations is simply given by :
$$\begin{aligned}
s &=&s_d=\frac{2\xi }T\widehat{f}\ ^{\prime }(\tau ) \label{s,sd} \\
u_0^2(\ell ) &=&2T\int_{-\infty }^\infty \frac{d\omega }{2\pi }\frac{1-\cos
(\omega \ell )}{\widetilde{\epsilon \ }\omega \,^2+\mu } \left( 1+
\frac{s_d}{ \widetilde{\epsilon \ }\omega \,^2+\mu}\right) \label{u2p}\end{aligned}$$
and hence
$$\begin{aligned}
u_0^2(\ell ) &=&\tau (1-e^{-\ell /\ell ^{*}})+\tau \ s_d\ /\ (2\mu ) \nonumber
\\
&&\ \ \times \ (1-e^{-\ell /\ell ^{*}}-(\ell /\ell ^{*})\ e^{-\ell /\ell
^{*}}). \label{u2p2}\end{aligned}$$
In eq.(\[s,sd\]) $\widehat{f}$ is the same function as defined in eq. (\[f\]) with $g\ $replaced by $\widetilde{\Delta }$. As opposed the case of columnar disorder, in this case $s_d$ is positive and independent of $\omega
$, and hence the mean square displacement $u_0^2(\ell ^{*})$ is bigger than its value for zero disorder. Fig. 1 curve [*c* ]{}shows a plot of $\sqrt{%
u_0^2(\ell ^{*})}/a_0$ vs. $T$ for $\widetilde{\Delta }/2\pi =0.8$. Again $%
B=1/900$. For $T<T_{cp}\approx $ $(\epsilon _0\xi /\gamma )(\gamma $ $%
\widetilde{\Delta }/2\pi )^{1/3}$ it is necessary to break replica symmetry as shown by MP [@mp]. This means that the off-diagonal elements of the variational matrix $s_{ab}$ are not all equal to each other. MP worked out the solution in the limit of $\mu \rightarrow 0$, but it is not difficult to extend it to any value of $\mu .$ We have worked out the first stage RSB solution which is all is required for a random potential with short ranged correlations. The analytical expression is not shown here for lack of space. The solution is represented by curve [*d*]{} in Fig. 1 which consists of upward triangles.
The modified melting line in the presence of disorder is indicated by the curve [*c*]{} in Fig. 2 for $T>T_{cp}$. For $T<T_{cp}$ the so called [*entanglement line* ]{}is represented by curve [*d*]{} of filled squares.The value of the magnetic field $B_m(T_{cp})\approx (\Phi _0/\xi ^2)(\gamma
\widetilde{\Delta }/2\pi )^{-2/3}c_L^4$ gives a reasonable agreement with the experiments.
The analytical expressions given in eqs. (\[u2f\]), (\[u2p2\]), though quite simple, seem to capture the essential feature required to reproduce the position of the melting line. The qualitative agreement with experimental results is remarkable, especially the opposite effects of columnar and point disorder on the position of the melting line. The ’as grown’ experimental results are corresponding to very small amount of point disorder, and thus close to the line of no disorder in the figures. At low temperature, the entanglement transition is associated in our formalism with RSB, and is a sort of a spin-glass transition in the sense that many minima of the random potential and hence free energy, compete with each other. In this paper we worked out the one-step RSB for the case of point disorder. The experiments show that in the case of colmunar disorder the transition into the vortex glass seems to be absent. This has to be further clarified theoretically. We have shown that the [*cage model* ]{}together with the variational approximation reproduce the main feature of the experiments. Effects of many body interaction between vortex lines which are not taken into account by the effective cage model seem to be of secondary importance. Inclusion of such effects within the variational formalism remains a task for the future.
For point disorder, in the limit of infinite cage ( $\mu \rightarrow
0$), the variational approximation gives a wandering exponent of 1/2 for a random potential with short ranged correlations [@mp], whereas simulations give a value of 5/8 [@halpin]. This discrepancy does not seem of importance with respect to the conclusions obtained in this paper. Another point to notice is that columnar disorder is much more effective in shifting the position of the melting line as compared for point disorder in the range of parameters considered here. We have used a much weaker value of correlated disorder to achieve a similar or even larger shift of the melting line than for the case of point disorder. The fact that the random potential does not vary along the z-axis enhances its effect on the vortex lines.
We thank David Nelson and Eli Zeldov for discussions. We thank the Weizmann institute for a Michael Visiting Professorship, during which this research has been carried out.
G. Blatter [*et al.*]{}, Rev. Mod. Phys. [**66**]{}, 1125 (1994).
E. Zeldov [*et al.*]{}, Nature [**375**]{}, 373 (1995); see also H. Pastoria [*et al.*]{} Phys. Rev. Lett. [**72**]{}, 2951 (1994)
M. Feigelman, [*et al.*]{}, Phys. Rev. Lett. [**63**]{}, 2303 (1989); A. I. Larkin and V. M. Vinokur, ibid. [**75**]{}, 4666 (1995).
D. S. Fisher, M. P. A. Fisher and D. A. Huse, Phys. Rev. [**B43**]{}, 130 (1990).
T. Giamarchi and P. Le Doussal, Phys. Rev. Lett. [**72**]{}, 1530 (1994); Phys. Rev. [**B52**]{}, 1242 (1995); see also T. Nattermann, Phys. Rev. Lett. [**64**]{}, 2454 (1990).
B. Khaykovitch [*et al.*]{}, Phys. Rev. Lett. [**76**]{}, 2555 (1996) and preprint (1996).
D. Ertas and D. R. Nelson, preprint, cond-mat/9607142 (1996)
D. R. Nelson, Phys. Rev. Lett. [**60**]{}, 1973 (1988); D. R. Nelson and V. M. Vinokur, Phys. Rev. [**B48**]{}, 13060 (1993).
Y. Y. Goldschmidt, Phys. Rev. E [**53**]{}, 343 (1996); see also Phys. Rev. Lett. [**74**]{}, 5162 (1995)
M. Mezard and G. Parisi, J. Phys. I (France)[**1**]{}, 809 (1991)
T. Halpin-Healy and Y.-C. Zhang, Phys. Rep. [**254**]{}, 215 (1995) and references therein.
Figure Captions: Fig1: Transverse fluctuations in the cage model for (a) no disorder (b)columnar disorder (c)point disorder (d)RSB for point disorder. Fig. 2: Melting line for (a) no disorder (b) columnar disorder (c)point disorder (d) entanglement line for point disorder.
|
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in Data Studio
Pile Calibration v3
A high-quality calibration dataset for LLM quantization, combining NeelNanda/pile-10k with bartowski's v3 imatrix calibration data.
Dataset Summary
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Total samples | 9,767 |
| Pile-10k samples | 9,599 |
| Bartowski v3 samples | 168 |
| Languages | English (primary), German, Spanish, French, Italian, Swedish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese |
What's Included
This dataset merges two sources:
- NeelNanda/pile-10k (filtered): A diverse subset of The Pile, filtered for quality
- bartowski's calibration_datav3.txt: Curated multilingual calibration data with code, scientific text, dialogue, and more
The bartowski samples are randomly distributed throughout the dataset (not appended at the end) for better calibration coverage.
Quality Filtering Applied
The pile-10k source was filtered to remove low-quality samples. Starting from 10,000 samples:
| Filter | Samples Removed | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Min length (< 200 chars) | 226 | Very short, low-content samples |
| Encoding corruption | 1 | Mojibake, replacement characters (�) |
| Line repetition | 55 | Same line repeated 5+ times, >25% of content |
| Low alphabetic ratio | 33 | Less than 25% alphabetic characters |
| Tag soup | 80 | Excessive HTML/XML markup with little actual content |
| Excessive whitespace | 6 | More than 60% whitespace |
| Total filtered | 401 | |
| Samples kept | 9,599 |
Examples of Filtered Content
Encoding corruption:
�I�v�V�����ƃv���[���тɂ��� H-RANDOM �� S-RANDOM...
Line repetition:
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
(repeated 11 times)
Low alphabetic ratio (math dumps):
Solve 0 = -6*x - 27*p + 276, 73*p - 72*p = 4*x - 146 for x.
37
Solve 6*n + 2828 = 5*z + 3287...
Tag soup:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<segment><name>PD1</name><description>Patient...
Bartowski v3 Processing
The bartowski calibration data was processed using semantic chunking to detect document boundaries and prevent bleed-in (mixing of unrelated content). The algorithm detects:
- Language switches (English ↔ Russian, Spanish, German, etc.)
- Content type transitions (prose ↔ code, dialogue, math)
- Document start patterns (copyright headers, patents, story beginnings)
- Wikipedia end markers (
Category:lines) - Vocabulary shifts between paragraphs
This hopefully produced 168 semantically coherent samples, I couldn't detect any bleed-in with my quick preliminary analysis.
Usage
With Hugging Face Datasets
from datasets import load_dataset
dataset = load_dataset("lemon07r/pile-calibration-v3", split="train")
print(f"Samples: {len(dataset)}")
print(dataset[0]["text"][:200])
With AutoRound
from auto_round import AutoRound
# Load calibration data
calib_dataset = load_dataset("lemon07r/pile-calibration-v3", split="train")
# Use with AutoRound
autoround = AutoRound(
model,
tokenizer,
dataset=calib_dataset,
# ... other parameters
)
For imatrix Calibration
Download the .txt file for use with llama.cpp imatrix:
# Download the text file
wget https://huggingface.co/datasets/lemon07r/pile-calibration-v3/resolve/main/pile-calibration-v3.txt
# Generate imatrix
./llama-imatrix -m model.gguf -f pile-calibration-v3.txt -o imatrix.dat
Files
| File | Description |
|---|---|
data-00000-of-00001.arrow |
HuggingFace dataset format |
pile-calibration-v3.jsonl |
JSONL format for AutoRound |
pile-calibration-v3.txt |
Plain text for imatrix calibration |
License
MIT License
Acknowledgments
- NeelNanda/pile-10k - Original pile subset
- bartowski1182 - v3 imatrix calibration data
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