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+{"content": "It Would Be Downright Shameful to Believe in these 10 Popular Myths\n\nThroughout life we find ourselves abiding by some logic or the other. Be it by virtue of rumor or tradition, it is always don’t do this or else, or do this and see what happens. Etc etc. Some, of course, are based on superstitions while others may be the result of articles you see on the internet that contain a lot of hogwash as much as they do fact. While scientists try their best downplaying common myths, the fact that they grow on us is because of the media and movies that play to their popularity. Let’s take a look at 10 Myths that shouldn’t be believed.\n\nHIV doesn’t exist\nHIV or Human Immunodeficiency syndrome is very real. It would be foolish to denounce it as a myth. Consider this!! HIV was discovered by two scientists who won the Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1984. It was Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier who discovered how retroviruses sourced from infected lymph nodes actually killed white blood cells (lymphocytes) of both infected and healthy donors. The research conducted at Pasteur Institute in Paris was one of the biggest discoveries of the century and AIDS became a reality.\n\nWith the discovery also came research to develop new cures that allow HIV infected people to live normal life spans as uninfected people. Bottom line! HIV isn’t a myth in spite of what conspiracy theorists may tell you.\n\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.984032154083252}
+{"content": "Introduction and characteristics of vegetable dryer\n\n\nVegetable dryer introduction:\nVegetable dryer, also known as multi-layer turnover fruit and vegetable dryer, is a special equipment for dehydrating and drying fresh or seasonal vegetables and fruits.\nThe vegetable dryer is a special equipment developed based on the traditional mesh belt dryer. It has strong pertinence, practicality, and high energy efficiency. It is widely used for dehydration of various regional and seasonal vegetables and fruits. dry.\nVegetable dryer equipment composition: hot air stove (with powerful fan), air duct, multi-layer turnover fruit and vegetable dryer, temperature control box, heat exchanger and dehumidification fan and other major components.\nApplicable materials for vegetable dryers: Suitable for green stems, cabbages, carrots, cucumbers, pumpkins, cassava chips, green beans, garlic seedlings, Chinese herbal medicine tablets, yam, wolfberry, etc.\nWhen the vegetable dryer is working, the cold air is heated by the heat exchanger. The scientific and reasonable circulation method is used to make the hot air flow through the dried material on the bed for uniform heat and mass exchange. The pure hot air generated by the hot air stove is used. The hot air temperature can be controlled from 50 ° C to 160 ° C. Two drying and dehydration methods, heating drying and ventilation drying, are used at the same time to strengthen the reasonable adjustment of the ventilation volume of the hot air. The hot air circulation is performed under the action of a circulating fan, and then the low-temperature and high-humidity air is discharged, and the entire drying process is stably completed. The hot air is fully utilized, and the drying and dehydration are agile and efficient.\nVegetable dryer equipment features:\n1. Can carry out large-scale continuous production, and retain the nutritional content and color of the product to the limit.\n2. According to the characteristics of vegetables, you can choose different technological processes and add necessary auxiliary equipment.\n3. There are many drying output values, fast drying speed, high dry product efficacy, fuel saving, high thermal efficiency, and good dry product color. Scope of application of vegetable dryer (mainly drying strips, slices, grains, blocks and other items with small moisture content):\nChinese medicinal materials: honeysuckle, nasturtium, scutellaria, salvia, ginseng, codonopsis, raw land, mature land, atractylodes, mulberry, etc.\nFruit category: almond, jujube, peanut (with shell), longan, walnut, hawthorn slice, kiwi, preserved fruit slice, fruit and vegetable slice, orange slice, etc.\nVegetables: beans, kidney beans, lentils, eggplants, red peppers, peppercorns, black fungus, white fungus, papaya slices, bitter gourd slices, mushrooms, cucumbers, etc.\n\nRelated News\n\nProduct Recommended\n\n  • Sludge dewatering and...\n  • Tunnel drying line\n  • Split type dryer A se...\n  • Drying room type drye...\n  • Integrated dryer C se...\n  • Dehumidifying dryer D...", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8947770595550537}
+{"content": "St. Patrick’s Festival presents\n\nABAIR in Conversation: Daoírí Farrell & Cathal Mc Connell, hosted by Ruth Smith\n\n\nCounty Fermanagh-born Cathal McConnell is a world-renowned musician and singer with The Boys of the Lough, a group of which he is a founder member over 45 years ago. From his earliest day he has collected and shared songs of a diverse nature and continues to entertain and share his love of music and song, whether it be at the Carnegie Hall or amongst friends in a remote pub session in Ireland.\n\n\nFunded by the Arts Council of Ireland\n\nAbair is a program of traditional singing and storytelling events exploring the oral folk traditions of Ireland. Taken from the Irish word meaning both ‘to say’ and ‘to sing’, the four-day program offers a broad range of intimate, unplugged performances, each highlighting the richness and beauty of the Irish singing and storytelling traditions still preserved and practiced to the present day.\n\nThe events will also feature a 'songs from the floor' session, giving audience members a chance to provide a song or story of their own, relevant to the theme of ‘treasures’.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9998617768287659}
+{"content": "Who Is The Daughter Of Poseidon?\n\nWhat does Poseidon love the most?\n\n\nThe god had numerous lovers in myth.\n\n\nHow many children did Hades have?\n\n2 childrenHades had 2 children, Macaria and Melinoe.\n\nWho was the strongest man in Greek mythology?\n\n\nWho gave birth to Poseidon?\n\n\nIs Percy Jackson real?\n\n\nDid Poseidon and Gaia have a child?\n\nAntaeus (/ænˈtiːəs/, Greek: Ἀνταῖος, Antaîos, lit. … In Greek sources, he was the giant son of Poseidon and Gaia, who lived in the interior desert of Libya.\n\nWho did Poseidon marry?\n\n\nWhy do Poseidon and Athena hate each other?\n\nThe other time was when Poseidon dated Medusa (before she a gorgon,she was a beatiful maiden). So, one night Poseidon decided to bring Medusa for a romantic dinner in Athena’s Temple. Then later, they had s*x and Athena saw what they were doing and cursed Medusa. And Poseidon hated her(Athena) for that.\n\nWho were Poseidon’s daughters?\n\n\nHow many children does Poseidon have?\n\nthree childrenAmphitrite and Poseidon had three children together. One of there children was named Triton (only boy). Triton was half human and half fish (merman). Poseidon and Amphitrite daughters were Rhode and Benthesicyme.\n\nIs the Cyclops Poseidon son?\n\nAccording to Homer’s Odysseus where he introduced likely the most famous Cyclops, Polyphemus, Cyclopes were the sons of Poseidon, not Gaea. … The Cyclops encounters Odysseus in Homer’s tale where he is outwitted and blinded by the hero and turns the wrath of his father, Poseidon on Odysseus.\n\nDid Poseidon and Aphrodite have a child?\n\n\nIs Aquaman son of Poseidon?\n\n\nWho is the child of Poseidon and Amphitrite?\n\n\nWho is Poseidon’s favorite son?\n\nTritonHe would father three children by Amphitrite, including a son named Triton. Like Zeus, Poseidon also went on to sire children by various goddesses and mortal women. His most famous demigod children of all are Theseus and Bellerophon.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9994944930076599}
+{"content": "Date of Award:\n\n\nDocument Type:\n\n\nDegree Name:\n\nMaster of Science (MS)\n\n\nSociology, Social Work, and Anthropology\n\nCommittee Chair(s)\n\nGary E. Madsen\n\n\nGary E. Madsen\n\n\nTherel Black\n\n\nWade Andrews\n\n\nSnowmobiling is one of the major outdoor winter sports in Cache County, Utah. Despite its popularity, it has run into several problems, among which the most noticeable is its conflict with other winter recreationists, namely, cross-country skiers and snowshoers. In order to resolve this conflict, one must first understand more about each group involved. As such, the purpose of this research was to obtain information on the snowmobiler in Cache County, Utah. Specifically, the objectives of the study were: (1) to identify the attitudes of the snowmobiler toward leisure and the environment; (2) to identify and compare occupations, SES, and social characteristics with studies in other regions; (3) to identify and compare aspects such as when, where, and why they go snowmobiling and the areas preferred by them with studies in other regions; and (4) to identify their other leisure-time activities. To collect the data, the names of the Cache County snowmobilers were obtained from tax assessment receipts at the Cache County Courthouse. From a total list of 501 names, a sample of 250 was selected by a simple random procedure. A questionnaire composed of Burdge's Leisure Orientation Scale, an environmental orientation scale, and usage, ownership, and demographic questions was sent to the sample population with a 59 percent usable return rate. The data was then analyzed by the following SPSS programs to meet the objective of the study: marginals, t-test, and chi square. Analysis of the data revealed the following major characteristics of the Cache County, Utah snowmobilers: (1) They are typically male, married with between three and four children per family, have a high school education or above, have a median income above the median income for Utah of $9,320.00, and hold either a blue- or white-collar occupation. (2) They hold a slight preservationist orientation toward the environment. (3) They have a moderately strong leisure orientation. (4) They snowmobile primarily on weekends with friends or family with the primary area of use being the Cache National Forest. (5) The main reason for buying or still owning a snowmobile was \"snowmobiling for pleasure.\" Upon comparison with the findings of this research with studies conducted in other regions, the conclusion is reached that the Cache County, Utah snowmobilers are much like their counterparts in other regions of the country.\n\n\n\nIncluded in\n\nSociology Commons", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7380532622337341}
+{"content": "HELP, IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE FORUM?: A FANTASY THEME ANALYSIS OF THE STUDENT DOCTOR NETWORK FORUMS Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in this thesis is my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory committee. This thesis does not include proprietary or classified information. _____________________________________ Josh Hillyer Certificate of Approval: ___________________________ ___________________________ Susan L. Brinson Mary Helen Brown, Chair Professor Professor Communication and Journalism Communication and Journalism ___________________________ ___________________________ George M. Plasketes George T. Flowers Professor Interim Dean Communication and Journalism Graduate School HELP, IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE FORUM?: A FANTASY THEME ANALYSIS OF THE STUDENT DOCTOR NETWORK FORUMS Josh Hillyer A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Auburn, Alabama August 9, 2008 HELP, IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE FORUM?: A FANTASY THEME ANALYSIS OF THE STUDENT DOCTOR NETWORK FORUMS Josh Hillyer Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this thesis at its discretion, upon request of individuals or institutions at their expense. The author reserves all publication rights. ________________________ Signature of Author ________________________ Date of Graduation iii VITA Josh Hillyer, son of the late Theodore Larry Hillyer and Dr. Brenda Joyce Hillyer was born June 21, 1984 in Opelika, Alabama. He graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications in May, 2006. After working as a Web producer for WSFA-TV in Montgomery, Alabama, Josh entered the Masters program in the Department of Communication & Journalism in August of 2006. While in the Communication Masters program, Josh taught Public Speaking and assisted in other related courses. iv v THESIS ABSTRACT HELP, IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE FORUM?: A FANTASY THEME ANALYSIS OF THE STUDENT DOCTOR NETWORK FORUMS Josh Hillyer Master of Arts, August 9, 2008 (B.A., Auburn University, 2006) 138 Typed Pages Directed by Mary Helen Brown This thesis uses an applied methodology based on Bormann's (1972b) fantasy theme analysis to study the Internet communication in the Student Doctor Network (SDN) Forums. The Internet posts of several thousands of pre-medical and medical students were placed into categories based on subject matter and shared understandings of reality and major life decisions. Several fantasies are present in the SDN Forums. These shared fantasies explain the SDN community's love for some medical schools, desire to give each other advice, dislike of \"typical\" pre-medical students, understanding of how medical students and doctors succeed, and their thoughts on what really matters in life. The fantasies are part of a larger rhetorical vision, \"It's Still Worth It,\" which encourages the SDN community to continue trying, no matter how difficult medical school might seem. This thesis concludes with a look at how this fantasy theme analysis can be applied to college advising, as many members of the SDN Forums ask each other for serious advice. The results of this thesis also suggest that an applied version of the fantasy theme analysis methodology is effective for studying Internet forums and other online communities. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author first and foremost thanks Dr. Mary Helen Brown, the chair of his committee, for her diligent assistance and advice at every step of this thesis. The author also thanks Dr. Susan Brinson and Dr. George Plasketes for their willingness to participate as committee members by contributing their useful thoughts and recommendations. Thanks are due to Dr. Jennifer Adams, Dr. Brinson, Dr. Brown, Dr. John Carvalho, Dr. Margaret Fitch-Hauser, Julie Gregory, Dr. Kristen Hoerl, Dr. Sei-Hill Kim, Jessie King, Holly Lavenstein, Nicole McDavid, Dr. Plasketes, Ric Smith, Mark Walters, and Dr. Emmett Winn for their help and support throughout the author's graduate career. Further, the author thanks fellow Graduate Teaching Assistants Doo- Hun Choi, Andrew Davis, Nick Kirby, Amanda Mullins, Megan Rector, Gretchen Stull, Melissa Voynich, and Kelly Williams. Finally, the author thanks his family and friends, especially his mother, Dr. Joyce Hillyer, and his fianc?e, Sarah Byrd, for their unconditional love and kindness during the completion of this thesis. vii Style manual or journal used: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th Edition Computer software used: Microsoft Word 2000 viii ix TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................1 II. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................3 III. RESEARCH QUESTIONS .........................................................................................36 IV. METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................................38 V. ANALYSIS ...................................................................................................................57 VI. CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................................100 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................121 1 I. INTRODUCTION Doctors work in a stressful, high-stakes environment. Stebbing and Powles (2007) explain that the stress that young doctors feel affects their personal relationships and financial situations. This thesis focuses on these young individuals who are in varying stages of their careers, ranging from applying to medical school to practicing medicine. While other studies exist on stress and uncertainty in the workplace, they take a different approach than that of this thesis. Rather than drawing a sample of medical professionals and periodically interviewing them, this thesis searches for themes within the unfiltered conversations of thousands of medical professionals, students, and their family and friends. The Student Doctor Network (SDN) Internet community features hundreds of forum posts every day, allowing for a rich body of communication for analysis. This thesis analyzes conversations within two of the SDN?s most popular forums, both largely populated by medical professionals and students. As the SDN Forums community allows these individuals to communicate freely about issues related to practicing medicine and managing a personal life (and potentially socialization and uncertainty issues), it is a useful group to analyze in this study. This thesis seeks to add not only to the body of research on uncertainty reduction and organizational socialization but also to Bormann?s (1972b) fantasy theme analysis methodology. It is apparent that Bormann?s method is useful for this particular study because it allows for the discovery of shared values and belief systems in groups. As this 2 thesis is concerned with the communication of a large group of individuals, it is necessary to use Bormann?s method to accurately assess the group?s communication. The results of studies by Bormann (1973) and scholars such as Benoit, Klyukovski, McHale, and Airne (2001), Cichy (1988), and Putnam, Van Hoeven, and Bullis (1991), assert the validity of the method. However, as this thesis analyzes an Internet community rather than newspaper articles or films, it cannot rely solely on the framework provided by Bormann and other scholars. Instead, this thesis expands upon the methods used by Alem?n (2005) in a fantasy theme analysis of an Internet community. This thesis provides a comprehensive literature review, the key terms and methods used in conducting the fantasy theme analysis, the results, and a discussion of the implications and a suggestion for future research. After reviewing the relevant literature, the thesis explains my applied fantasy theme analysis methodology and moves to a look at a pre-test of the SDN Forums community. It concludes by presenting the final analysis of the community and the resulting fantasy themes and rhetorical vision (if present). 3 II. LITERATURE REVIEW This literature review focuses on a variety of topics relevant to a fantasy theme analysis of an Internet community. First, the literature review presents the basic concepts underlying fantasy theme analysis, including a discussion of Bormann?s early explanation of the theory and resulting studies, studies conducted by other scholars, and new applications of the method. Second, the literature review turns to a discussion of uncertainty reduction and its relationship to communication and information seeking. Third, the literature review focuses on how uncertainty reduction relates to organizational socialization in a variety of settings including groups and teams, universities, and health organizations. Many significant areas of research examine fantasy theme analysis, a concept that emerged from symbolic convergence theory. As symbolic convergence theory (SCT) spawned many of the concepts that scholars use when conducting fantasy theme analyses, it is relevant to briefly review SCT. Bormann (1982c) states that, ?Symbolic convergence creates, maintains, and allows people to achieve empathic communion as well as a ?meeting of the minds?? (p. 51). The theory provides scholars with a means of observing communication behavior and understanding when individuals have come to a shared meaning. Bormann further explains SCT by looking at the words ?symbolic? and ?convergence.? 4 Bormann (1982c) notes that communicators try to decipher what other communicators? actions symbolize, as multiple meanings can be applied to signs and actions. According to SCT, actions symbolize meanings. Cragan and Shields? (1992) review of SCT?s theoretical assumptions is useful in explaining the use of the word ?symbolic,? in noting that reality is a symbolic construction, understood through actions and communication. Bormann goes on to look at convergence, asserting that the term applies to communication situations in which two individuals? symbolic worlds ?incline towards each other, come more closely together, or even overlap? (1982c, p. 51). Once these symbolic worlds overlap, one can observe the formation of a community, in which individuals share meanings and discuss their experiences. Bormann (1982c) notes that, over time, these group members will share more and more interpretations of worldly events and experiences, ultimately leading to shared interpretations of reality. Still, a more dramatic element of SCT explains how some groups go beyond shared interpretations of events to holding deep emotional commitments to their interpretations that explain how group members move into identifying with each other. This element revolves around shared group fantasies, the foundation of fantasy theme analysis studies. While the theoretical assumptions behind SCT make sense, they lack the ability to completely explain how individuals come to share meanings. However, Bales (1970) and Bormann (1975) bridge the gap between the theoretical assumptions and actual experience in noting that symbolic convergence occurs when individuals share group fantasies. One of the most significant aspects of Bales? small group research is the category of ?tension release,? which has since been slightly altered and renamed. 5 Bormann (1972b) notes that the term ?tension release? later became ?dramatizes.? Still, the idea of tension being released through communication (marked by a change in the conversation?s tempo, higher levels of intensity, and a lack of self-consciousness) has stayed the same. Through multiple individuals? use of dramatizing statements, one can see evidence of sharing or participating in a drama. The notion of dramatizing statements or messages is of interest to Bormann; the scholar compares them to inside jokes, as they allude to a shared group fantasy. Bormann (1985) states that, ?A dramatizing message is one that contains one or more of the following: a pun or other wordplay, a double entendre, a figure of speech, an analogy, an anecdote, allegory, fable, or narrative? (p. 4). A symbolic cue lets groups members know that they are referring to a shared fantasy. Bormann (1972b) notes that what Bales refers to as ?dramatizing? is related to a group fantasy chain, in which a conversation develops or ?chains out? through group discussion on something that might not immediately seem to be relevant to the task. This chaining is referred to as a ?group fantasy chain? (Bormann, 1972a), and results in group members establishing their values, goals, and most preferred types of leadership. Although Bales (1970) provides the foundation for several of the ideas used in fantasy theme analyses, Bormann is responsible for expanding on this foundation and explaining the relevant terms. The first important term to define is ?fantasy.? Although this word is commonly associated with things that have no basis in reality, it means something different in the context of SCT. Bormann (1985) states that, ?The technical meaning for fantasy is the creative and imaginative interpretation of events that fulfills a psychological or rhetorical need? (p. 5). The group or community uses the fantasy to 6 explain something or reinforce its way of life. Understanding this concept before moving on to other fantasy theme analysis terms is critical. The next term of significance to this study is ?fantasy theme.? A fantasy theme includes a dramatizing statement or message that depicts characters participating in an event removed from the here-and-now of the individuals involved in the conversation (Bormann, 1982c). To explain more simply, fantasy themes refer to events from the past or potential events in the future. Bormann (1972b) notes that although the drama is played out in a time separate from the present, it often relates to the group?s current situation or the relationship dynamics between group members. Two final concepts of significance to fantasy theme analysis are ?fantasy types? and ?rhetorical visions.? Fantasy types emerge from past fantasy themes that resulted in a chaining conversation. Bormann (1985) states that, ?A fantasy type is a stock scenario repeated again and again by the same characters or by similar characters? (p. 7). The scholar gives the example of evangelistic preachers, who often rely on stories (dramas) in which they are the protagonists and must overcome some sin that is keeping them away from spiritual enlightenment. After identifying the common traits of a drama, a scholar is able to name it. Bormann calls this example the ?Pauline conversion fantasy.? Bormann (1972b, 1985) explains that these dramas are used to tie the community together and to encourage them to act on the group?s ideals. This example relates to the term rhetorical vision, which applies to fantasy themes that emerge from group or mass media interactions, leading individuals into sharing symbolic realities. Bormann (1985) states that, ? a rhetorical vision is a unified putting-together of the various scripts which gives the participants a broader view of 7 things? (p. 8). Rhetorical visions, therefore, are the end results of shared fantasies and represent a group?s sense of values. While some aspects of fantasy theme analysis are a result of small group communication and SCT research (Bales, 1970), it is apparent that Bormann is the father of fantasy theme analysis methodology. Bormann (1972b, 1972c, 1985) explains the terminology of relevance to fantasy theme analysis. Through years of researching concepts such as ?dramatizing,? ?fantasy theme,? ?fantasy type,? and ?rhetorical vision,? there is a clear foundation that scholars can use to conduct fantasy theme analyses and expand upon Bormann?s methodology. Although other scholars have and continue to use fantasy theme analysis in their studies, Bormann is responsible for most of the early studies that use the fantasy theme analysis method. Early fantasy theme studies Fantasy theme analysis studies apply to a wide array of scholarship in areas such as politics, media, persuasion, organizational communication, and online communication. While fantasy theme analysis covers all of these areas (and a few others), Bormann?s early work on the subject tended to focus on politics. For example, Bormann?s (1973) first study related to fantasy themes looks at the rhetorical visions of the 1972 U.S. presidential elections. The scholar focuses attention on the fantasy themes used by McGovern, as they positioned politics as fundamental to life and did not use much satire or irony like other campaigns. The scholar finds that McGovern relied heavily on the fantasy of a ?last chance? or turning point for American voters in the 1972 election. Also of interest to Bormann is how the McGovern campaign chose to emphasize the candidate?s persona rather than emphasize action. The study ultimately finds that the 8 emphasis placed on McGovern?s persona hurt the candidate when a fantasy began to chain through journalists and media viewers that McGovern?s running mate, Eagleton, was not emotionally stable. This shared fantasy, coupled with McGovern?s rhetorical vision of a strong individual persona leading the country, greatly damaged his campaign. This study validated the method through finding the presence of the theoretical concepts developed in the years before it. Not all of the fantasy theme analyses conducted by Bormann or other scholars require as much analysis as the Eagleton affair, as many of them are not as ground-breaking or applicable to this study. Bormann, Koester, and Bennett (1978) look at the 1976 U.S. presidential election. The scholars focus a great amount of attention on the function of political cartoons and propose that these comics and cartoons might serve the same role in campaigns as inside-jokes do in small groups. By looking at the reactions of several respondents as a means of understanding whether they accept the inside-jokes (based on popular shared fantasies of each candidate displayed in political cartoons), Bormann, Koester, and Bennett find that the cartoons do serve as inside jokes in media communication. They also find that the cartoons split the respondents into three political groups, and that the respondents voted in line with the rhetorical visions and fantasies expressed in the cartoons that they liked. Benoit, Klyukovski, McHale, and Airne (2001) conducted a similar study on political cartoons about Clinton and Lewinsky. However, the scholars find that the nature of the cartoons did not split the population into different groups but instead include fantasy themes that can appeal to readers of different political leanings. 9 Bormann, Kroll, Watters, and McFarland (1984) conducted research similar to that of Bormann et al.?s (1978) work. However, they do not focus on political cartoons and instead look at the four rhetorical visions most commonly expressed by publicists in the 1980 U.S. presidential election. The scholars find that a relationship exists between these visions and the shared fantasies of committed voters. Cichy (1988) reports similar findings in a study on the 1980 North Dakota Gubernatorial race. The scholar explains that voting patterns were much easier to predict after gaining an understanding of the fantasies shared by voters. While these two pieces produce related findings, Bormann et al.?s (1984) study proves to be more useful theoretically because of its expansion of the discussion of symbolic cues that allude to a previously shared fantasy. These cues form what is often thought of as an inside joke. However, the scholars explain that the symbolic cue included in a dramatizing message does not have to refer to something humorous in nature. Bormann et al. (1984) state that, ?The allusion to a previously shared fantasy may arouse tears or evoke anger, hatred, love, and affection as well as laughter and humor? (p. 289). Bormann?s (1982) study looks at the television coverage of a busy day of news that included Reagan?s inaugural address and the release of American hostages being held in Iran. The scholar finds that the fantasy type of restoration was most commonly used that day, to symbolize a return to a more idealized time than the current here-and-now conditions. More interesting, however, is Bormann?s assertion that this theme of restoration used in Reagan?s address spilled into the news coverage of the hostage release as well. Newscasters shared the fantasy, and it chained into other coverage. The last important aspect of this study is its implications for fantasy theme 10 analysis as a then-new form of research. Bormann notes that this study shows the usability of the method, as it can be applied to other texts besides print media and speeches. Other Scholars? Studies While Bormann?s early studies of fantasy theme analysis are relevant, they tend to be concerned with proving that the method is effective and should be used in future research. The research of other scholars illustrates how the method can be applied to other areas, as Bormann suggests in a study on Reagan?s inauguration day. A great deal of this work comes from studies on SCT, as it relies heavily on fantasy theme analysis. For example, Putnam, Van Hoeven, and Bullis (1991) use fantasy theme analysis to look at how school districts develop their values and desires in negotiations with teachers. The scholars note the importance of stories in building group fantasies that create common goals, heroes, and villains within the organization. Once these dramatizing messages become shared fantasy themes, the members are likely to act and react similarly. Another useful aspect of this article is the scholars? relating of fantasy themes to rites and rituals. While rites and rituals are similar to a fantasy type, in which common themes are repeated, Putnam et al. use them to explain the act of bargaining, as it relates to negotiations. They note that individuals bargain in particular ways and that fantasy themes are visible from these bargaining rituals. One fantasy type exhibited is ?we don?t need lawyers,? which shows the teachers? shared value of self-fulfillment (Putnam et al., p. 95). The scholars ultimately find that different fantasies tie into the act of negotiating in the two school districts that they studied. Finally, they note that the study is important because it expands fantasy theme analysis to cover ritualistic 11 ceremonies, such as negotiating. Putnam et al. explain that the ideas expressed in these events are quite possibly a result of fantasy themes displayed in public forums and organizational meetings. Bormann (1982c), Cragan & Shields, (1992) and Stone (2002) conducted similar studies, which support fantasy theme analysis as a means of understanding decision-making. Bormann, Cragan, and Shields (1996), and Endres (1997) provide solid looks at the rhetorical vision aspect of SCT. Using some of the concepts of fantasy theme analysis, they assert that all rhetorical visions adhere to a consistent life-cycle involving an effort to sustain consciousness by holders of the vision. The scholars go on to discuss the master analogues (righteous, social, and pragmatic) behind most of the rhetorical visions present in the study, asserting that they prove to be effective in categorization. Finally, Bormann et al. note that ?rhetorical vision? is a useful term for scholars looking at almost any rhetorical community, as ?seemingly unrelated rhetorical visions may be combined into a masterful rhetorical vision providing rhetorical continuity over time? (p. 26). Shields (2000) expands upon these findings by noting that the critical autoethnography special theory?s life-cycle can be explained by the scholar?s understanding of rhetorical visions. Endres (1997) focuses less on developing the concept of rhetorical vision and more on finding examples of them through a fantasy theme analysis of popular examples of father-daughter relationships. The scholar explains four key types of rhetorical visions that emerged from the fantasy theme analysis; these include ?the Buddy? and ?the Shadow.? Finally, Endres suggests ways that these fantasy themes and rhetorical visions can be useful for counselors or parents. Stone?s (2002) study on the motives of 12 individuals enrolling in master?s programs also relies on fantasy themes to find the overarching rhetorical visions of the new students. Stone uses Bormann et al.?s (1996) three master analogues of rhetorical visions to further categorize these findings. These three analogues, the pragmatic, the social, and the righteous, prove to be effective in this study. Stone reports that the majority of the respondents identify with fantasy types that fall into the overarching category of ?righteous.? These fantasy types are marked by terms such as ?strong university reputation? and ?program rigor? (Stone, 2002, p. 238). While not all scholars conducting fantasy theme analysis use these master analogues, they prove to be relevant in categorizing fantasy themes and types. Foss and Littlejohn (1986) and Marambio and Chew (2006) use fantasy theme analysis on films with great social relevance. Not only do these studies show that films are useful texts for the fantasy theme method, they also provide examples of some of the concepts that can be applied to the method. Foss and Littlejohn?s study on the nuclear war film The Day After produces interesting results by applying the concept of irony to the method of fantasy theme analysis. The scholars state that, ?Irony is characterized by incongruity between what is expected and what occurs. In its narrowest form, it is a specific figure of speech in which words express a meaning different from their literal denotation? (Foss & Littlejohn, p. 328). They go on to explain why this concept is useful to their study. Foss and Littlejohn note that irony requires subjects to detach themselves from the ironic situation in order to separate and understand the relationship of the two meanings (literal and intended) present. Foss and Littlejohn (1986), like Stone (2002), feel that analyzing the deep, categorical structure of fantasy themes is relevant to understanding shared realities. The 13 scholars note the existence of the pragmatic, righteous, and social analogues (or structures), but they explain that these three terms do not cover enough concepts to be completely useful. They propose that a fourth analogue, irony, is necessary. Although Littlejohn and Foss do not call these three terms ?analogues? like Bormann et al. (1996), they ultimately are very similar concepts. The scholars add to analogues by explaining the concept of deep structure. Deep structure is ?the underlying frame in which the entire drama is placed? (Foss & Littlejohn, 1986, p. 328). This expansion of the master analogue concept is one that still could prove to be relevant in fantasy theme studies, as it helps explain situations with unclear, ironic meanings. Marambio and Tew (2006) also conduct a fantasy theme analysis on a film. The scholars look at the film A Day Without a Mexican. While this study does not expand Bormann?s method in the same way as Foss and Littlejohn?s analysis of The Day After, it does provide support for film as a relevant text for analysis. One of the most useful points from Marambio and Tew?s (2006) work is its acknowledgement of the ?lifestyle rhetorical vision.? The scholars explain that this type of rhetorical vision, which is present in A Day Without a Mexican, is characterized by ?an awareness of a narrative, such as the Latino populations? awareness of the Anglo reaction to them? and further note that the ?notion begins to control lives, self-definitions, and self expression? (Marambio & Tew, 2006, p. 480). Fantasy theme analysis provides a means of analyzing how the themes present in films might affect minority groups. Marambio and Tew prove the significance of studying media portrayals of marginalized groups through fantasy theme analysis. 14 Ford (1989), and Novek (2005) conducted similar studies on rhetorical visions. Both scholars looked for fantasy themes relating to individuals who have faced personal vices and failures. Ford analyzes The Big Book, which focuses on Alcoholics Anonymous. The scholar explains that the rhetorical vision of ?Fetching Good Out of Evil? (Bormann, 1977) emerges from this book. This vision displays the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous, as it presents the group as one that shares a new, sober identity and common interpretation of the world around it. Ford asserts that this study reinforces Bormann?s original work on fantasy themes. As many of Alcoholics Anonymous? ideas emerge from Puritan and war rhetoric, evidence suggests fantasy chaining from larger societal groups. This fantasy chaining shows the potential for larger groups to influence those that are not in power (positively and negatively) through rhetoric. The chaining also shows evidence of ?a fundamental cultural rhetorical form, a form whose origins are deeply historical and whose manifestations in American life may be many? (Ford, 1989, p. 13). Novek analyzes a newspaper produced by women in an American prison. While this article ultimately seeks to show the value of journalism from society?s ?outsiders? (p. 298), it also finds the presence of a rhetorical vision within the prison community. Novek explains that a fantasy theme analysis of the prisoners? newspaper shows that these individuals are most concerned with sharing narratives of personal transformation. The method of fantasy theme analysis allows the scholar to suggest that this newspaper is beneficial to the prisoners and should continue to be funded in the future. It also provides free Americans with an opportunity to understand what prisoners actually think and aspire to do with their lives after prison. 15 Dobris and White-Mills (2006) and Endres (1989) conduct fantasy theme analyses to uncover rhetorical visions associated with unmarried and married motherhood. Although both studies are concerned with these individuals? interpretations of being mothers, they differ somewhat in approach. The scholars begin their studies by searching for fantasy themes in texts associated with motherhood. Endres analyzes several periodicals such as Ebony and Seventeen, while Dobris and White-Mills look at self-help books such as the What to Expect series. Each study produces several fantasy themes. Dobris and White-Mills conclude that these texts serve the interests of a patriarchal vision of motherhood, in which women should embrace the role of child-bearer. This study extends Bormann?s methods by showing that fantasy theme analysis can be used to highlight the ways in which some groups are marginalized. Endres finds similar results, although the scholar is not writing from a feminist perspective. The study depicts three types of stories that are used in describing young mothers, ranging from stories of no hope to stories of upward mobility. Endres? study differs from Dobris and White-Mills? work because the scholar does not stop at the fantasy theme analysis step. Endres has 64 unmarried mothers choose imagery from these dramas that most apply to them. This stage of the study shows evidence of shared symbolic realities amongst this somewhat scattered group of women. The scholar notes that the study also shows the need for effective communication strategies between the media and the general population. Recent studies and new applications More recently, scholars have applied fantasy theme analysis to a wider array of subjects. Many of these scholars are concerned with issues of persuasion (Hester, 2000; Jackson, 1992; Kendall, 1993; Moran, 2002). Hester uses the method to look at 16 apocalyptic religious texts. Through analyzing these texts for fantasy themes, the scholar finds that apocalyptic discourse was vital in sustaining the rhetorical visions of the Thessalonians. While the results of this study are not ground-breaking, it serves as a good example of how fantasy theme analysis methods can uncover instances of persuasion in most texts. Persuasion is a common concern in fantasy theme studies, because individuals must possess shared worldviews and meanings in order to persuade others. Fantasy theme methods allow scholars to look for the presence of shared fantasy types and terms in persuasive situations. An interesting example of persuasion as the focus of a fantasy theme analysis comes from Moran?s look at Arthur Barlowe?s Discourse. While this study is related more to history than communication, it uses fantasy theme methodology to explain the strategies used to bring English merchants to North America in the late 1500s. Other examples of persuasion in fantasy theme analysis come from analysis of corporate rhetoric and motivational books. Kendall (1993) finds evidence of fantasy themes in the ?boiler plate? messages of corporate chairpersons; as they often position themselves in an ?us vs. them? situation. This shows another use of the fantasy theme method: explaining effective and ineffective corporate rhetoric. The method can be used to deconstruct this rhetoric to find its trends and potential for confusing or misleading employees. Jackson (1999) uses fantasy theme analysis in similar way; the scholar studies Covey?s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Jackson finds evidence of a few fantasy themes relating to recurring character traits and settings that drive the majority of the appeal of Covey?s work. Almost all of these examples relate to being lost (either in the woods or the snow) and looking for direction. These fantasy themes are 17 examples of the dramatic elements of fantasy theme analysis, which Jackson states that Covey uses extensively. Another result of this study is the scholar?s assertion that fantasy theme analysis is a strong methodology to use for future studies on persuasive rhetoric. Jackson states that, ?Fantasy theme analysis is well positioned to monitor and assess the growing hybridization of religious, political and managerial that is manifested within contemporary popular rhetorical visions such as the one discussed in this study? (1999, p. 373). Another new application of fantasy theme analysis is in message board and online forum communication. Alem?n (2005), Duffy (2003), Myers and Andrews (2006), and Perry and Roesch (2004) conducted studies on Internet communities, which are of particular interest to this study as online discussion boards serve as an interesting expansion of Bormann?s early ideas. All of these scholars find Internet communities to be useful sites of fantasy creation and opinion convergence. Alem?n analyzes the SeniorNet discussion forum, an online community of elderly people. Alem?n?s study and analysis, which relies heavily on the symbolic cues (key words such as ?knight? or ?princess?) used by the SeniorNet members, finds several fantasy themes present in the forum. Some of these themes include the knight in shining armor fantasy, which proved to be a site of debate for members who do not accept the traditional male-dominated love story, and the catching fish fantasy, which compared finding a good dating partner to catching a fish. Both of these fantasies were cued by different key words and phrases, and there was evidence of a negotiation amongst the members for the new meaning of the original idea. Alem?n notes that the different fantasies were all part of the larger rhetorical vision held by most of the group of ?good men are hard to find.? 18 Perry and Roesch (2004) also use fantasy theme analysis to look at the messages expressed by PBS forum members after the death of Fred Rogers (also known as Mister Rogers). The scholars find that many of the show?s viewers used religious fantasy themes such as ?sent from Heaven? in analyzing and discussing Rogers. More interesting to the scholars is the potential for the program?s values to have a long-term effect on the viewers, as there is evidence of this based on the fantasy themes expressed by these Internet users. This study shows the ability of fantasy theme analysis to find examples of long-term change in communities. Myers and Andrews (2006) use fantasy theme analysis methods in studying the Technodyke forums. These scholars search for fantasy themes within the conversations of young, technologically-savvy lesbians. Although Myers and Andrews are more concerned with setting themes (where a drama takes place) than most scholars, they produce interesting results. Myers and Andrews assert that the individuals who use Technodyke?s forums use story-telling as a means of problem solving and group identification. The scholars explain that the members of Technodyke?s forums tend to discuss their feelings of marginalization, as they express a longing for ?home? in the forums as opposed to the ?real world,? where their lifestyles are not accepted. In this case, fantasy theme analysis helps explain the groups? shared feelings on the outside world and its heroes and villains. Bormann?s methods show that some members of the lesbian community feel oppressed by the more prevalent heteronormative social conditions and only feel free to express their views in Internet forums. Finally, this study suggests that issues of identity and misidentification are of significance to the users of the Technodyke forums, as most conversations are related to those topics. 19 The collection of fantasy theme analysis studies after the 1990s suggests the usability of the method. While many of the studies mentioned in this section of the literature review relate to Bormann?s early work on small groups and persuasion (Jackson, 1999; Kendall, 1993), they prove to expand upon earlier work by showing how businesses use rhetoric to create shared fantasies amongst employees. Also in recent years, fantasy theme analysis scholars have analyzed Internet communities (Alem?n, 2005; Duffy, 2000; Myers and Andrews, 2006; Perry and Roesch, 2004). This development allows for a new approach to fantasy theme analysis, in which the unit of analysis is a group of real individuals. The results of scholars such as Alem?n and Perry and Roesch prove the effectiveness of studying Internet groups, as they find evidence of multiple fantasy themes occurring within forum communication. A great amount of the results published by fantasy theme analysis scholars who focus on the Internet relate to individuals attempting to reduce uncertainty about their surroundings. Uncertainty Reduction Theory This thesis focuses on the emergence of fantasy themes in the online communication of medical students who are unsure not only of the field that they are entering but also of the individuals with whom they are communicating. Therefore it is useful to look at scholarship on socialization within groups. A relevant body of research to study comes from uncertainty reduction theory, a theory concerned with the ways in which individuals reduce uncertainty in groups. Most of the research on this theory applies to organizational and group cultures, particularly focusing on small group communication. As forum communication takes place between individuals who possess 20 uncertainty, and each forum has a unique culture, this research relates directly to the study at hand. Scholars such as Berger (1979), Berger and Calabrese (1975), Clatterbuck (1979), and Gudykunst (1983, 1985) are responsible for the early development of uncertainty reduction theory. Berger and Calabrese develop the framework as an interpersonal communication theory. The scholars find that individuals who experience uncertainty will try to reduce that uncertainty by seeking information from others. As these individuals communicate more, levels of uncertainty decline. Kramer (1999) explains that it is not just individuals who communicate more when experiencing uncertainty. Entire organizations and groups of all sizes communicate more when challenging and confusing conditions arise. Gudykunst (1983) notes that once an individual reduces uncertainty about another person, culture, or organization, his or her level of attraction for that person or group will increase. Sometimes multiple individuals or groups converge in order to reduce feelings of uncertainty. Clatterbuck (1979) explains that individuals gather to share information so that they can make the most effective decisions possible. Sharing information also leads to higher levels of personal and career confidence. Clatterbuck states that, ?For the individual, reducing uncertainty and increasing attributional confidence become synonymous? (p. 148). In order for this to happen, though, individuals must ask effective questions and disclose accurate and useful information about themselves to the individuals with whom they are communicating (Gudykunst, 1983). There are a few ways in which individuals reduce uncertainty. Berger expands uncertainty reduction theory by suggesting the presence of three strategies to increase certainty. The scholar 21 explains that individuals use passive strategies such as social comparison and reactivity searches, active strategies such as questioning and observing others? environments, and interactive strategies such as questioning and disclosing personal information. All of these strategies serve the purpose of uncovering potentially deceptive or misleading communication maneuvers. The roles of high- and low-context communication in uncertainty reduction Low- and high-context cultures are of great significance to uncertainty reduction theory (Gudykunst, 1983; Gudykunst & Nishida, 1984). Gudykunst explains that low-context cultures are characterized by communication in which central messages are stated more directly. In high-context cultures, the central message is less obvious and is more easily observed in the actual context of the conversation rather than in the conversation itself. Gudykunst also notes that high-context communicators tend to internalize the meanings of their messages and are ?more cautious in what they talk about with strangers than people from low-context cultures? (1983, p. 51). Gundykunst observes the ways in which factors such as interrogative strategy, background similarity, nonverbal behavior, and personal similarity affect the amount of disclosure and attributional confidence in individuals. The scholar?s findings suggest that individuals in high-context cultures are more judgmental of other individuals based on their first interaction and generally prefer not to disclose much about themselves. An individual?s personal background is very important to high-context communicators. The findings of Gudykunst and Nishida?s (1984) and Gudykunst?s (1985) study are similar. Gudykunst and Nishida find further support for the relevance of low- and high-context cultures in uncertainty reduction. They note that attitude similarity between 22 individuals proves to affect their levels of attraction but does not relate to the individuals? use of uncertainty reduction strategies. However, the scholars explain that cultural similarity does influence individuals? likelihood of using uncertainty reduction strategies. Gudykunst?s (1985) study asserts the validity of these findings, while adding to the body of research. The scholar notes that the type of relationship between two individuals is significant in predicting the strategies the communicators will use to reduce uncertainty about the environment or task at hand. Applications of uncertainty reduction studies Scholars such as Berger (1979) and Gudykunst (1983, 1985) were vital to the development of uncertainty reduction theory. However, these scholars tended to be concerned with establishing the relevance of the method while expanding its usability rather than applying it to social situations. In the mid-1980s other scholars became more interested in the theory and began to apply it to group and organizational settings (Booth-Butterfield, Booth-Butterfield & Koester, 1988; Douglas, 1990; Nowak & Rauh, 2006; Sheer & Cline, 1995). These studies serve as examples of the situations to which uncertainty reduction theory can be applied. Several of these studies add new ideas and concepts to the theory. Booth-Butterfield et al. (1988) apply uncertainty reduction methods to small groups that must complete a task. The scholars? analysis of these groups focuses on the concept of primary tension. Bormann (1975), states that primary tension is ?the social unease and stiffness that accompanies getting acquainted? (p. 181-182). Booth-Butterfield et al. find that primary tension plays a large role in the interaction of individuals in a group setting. The scholars explain that instances in which primary 23 tension arises lead to increased use of uncertainty reduction strategies. Interestingly, Booth-Butterfield et al. assert that their respondents were not able to consistently identify moments of shared primary tension and instead relied upon descriptions of their individual feelings about the group. The scholars report that, although sometimes difficult to identify, levels of primary tension were typically lowered when respondents used uncertainty reduction methods. This study is significant not only because it finds evidence of the effectiveness of uncertainty reduction theory, but also because it adds a new construct to the method: primary tension. Douglas? (1990) study of college students meeting for the first time produces two significant findings. The scholar finds that, different from the results of some studies, uncertainty reduction involves a decrease in the respondents? question-asking but an increase in the respondents? levels of self-disclosure. These findings suggest that methods of reducing uncertainty are different for some individuals and cultures. Finally, Douglas? work reinforces early studies of uncertainty reduction which assert that social attraction and uncertainty are inversely related. Sheer and Cline (1995) and Nowak and Rauh (2006) expand upon uncertainty reduction theory with their looks at two unique groups. Sheer and Cline analyze the methods of uncertainty reduction used in physician-patient relationships. Some factors that become important in this discussion are relational uncertainty and medical setting uncertainty. Sheer and Cline note that relational uncertainty in a doctor-patient situation is different than in most uncertainty reduction studies because patients understand the purpose of the relationship with their doctors. Sheer and Cline (1995) state that, ?In doctor-patient interaction, the patient?s primary concern is seeking diagnosis and 24 treatment to reduce illness uncertainty? (p. 48). In this setting, patients are unsure of how they should seek information from their doctors. In addition to identifying several new ways of studying uncertainty reduction, the scholars also examine their respondents? perceptions on the adequacy of the information in their doctor-patient relationships. Sheer and Cline explain that the level of perceived information adequacy serves as a strong predictor of the patient?s ?post-visit illness uncertainty? (p. 44). Ultimately, the scholars explain that their methods prove to be reliable and assert that they should be used in future uncertainty reduction studies. Uncertainty reduction studies cover a wide array of topics. Many of the studies included in this section of the literature represent the foundations of this area of research. Scholars such as Berger (1979) and Gudykunst (1983) are especially important to the theory?s development, as they explain how individuals reduce uncertainty. Gudykunst even discusses how individuals reduce uncertainty based on the context of their surrounding cultures. In more recent years, these scholars? foundations have led to studies on uncertainty in specific relationships, such as Sheer and Cline?s (1995) look at doctor-patient relationships. The study of uncertainty reduction within specific groups lends itself to organizational scholarship, as it can be applied to the topic of organizational socialization. Organizational Socialization and Uncertainty Reduction Organizational socialization scholars have conducted many useful studies in areas such as higher education, nursing, and general commercial business. 25 Early Organizational Socialization Research Evan?s (1963) look at peer-group interaction in industries is one of the first studies conducted on organizational socialization. The scholar focuses on the relationship between the number of people in a training group for new organizational members and the drop-out rate for these trainees. Evan?s research suggests many things that are still relevant to the socialization process. Evan states that, ?As a special type of primary group ? one which consists of individuals occupying statuses of equal rank ? the peer group can uniquely perform the function of reducing strains and alleviating tensions? (1963, p. 439). This is important, as it asserts that individuals are not necessarily comfortable with having to constantly perform for individuals who hold a higher organizational rank than them. In explaining the significance of the peer group to organizational socialization, Evan notes that the size of the group is also a factor. The scholar finds that individuals who are part of a group with three or more members tend to stay in training programs longer than isolates, who tend to stay in training programs longer than members of dyads. Evan explains that the ?buddy system? (one-on-one training) is problematic because the trainee has a fifty/fifty chance of finding his or her trainer to be uncongenial. While Evan?s (1963) study proves to be important in explaining how numbers in peer-group socialization, it did not spawn a great amount of organizational socialization studies in the 1960s. Organizational socialization became a more prevalent area of research in the late 1970s with influential articles from Wanous (1977) and Van Maanen and Schein (1979). Wanous? study looks at organizational entry from the position of an individual entering an organization. The scholar explains that the perceptions of the 26 individual entering an organization often are not realistic, as they tend not to match the expectations of the employer. Wanous goes on to discuss the problems with the then- new area of research. Wanous claims that too many factors explain why individuals choose organizations, but not enough of them are based in clear reasoning. For example, the scholar notes that most individuals do not have enough information before joining an organization; they certainly have not been socialized beforehand. According to the article, the only accurate information that most individuals possess when looking at organizations is related to employee pay rates, tuition costs, or number of hours in an average work day. Wanous (1977) ends this piece by urging scholars to continue studying the relationship between insider and outsider expectations, as this dichotomy is one of the greatest sources of confusion for individuals when making an organizational choice. Wanous? scholarship serves as a useful introduction on questions of organizational entry and socialization. While Wanous ultimately concludes that individuals do not follow a set ?path? when entering an organization, the scholar suggests that realistic job expectations need to be communicated to potential applicants. Open communication between employers and applicants will reduce organizational turnover and lead to better decisions by the applicants. Van Maanen and Schein (1979) provide a useful explanation of the process of organizational socialization. The scholars assert that the process involves newcomers acquiring the necessary knowledge to become effective members of an organization. Some of the things that are relevant in organizational socialization include the organization?s culture, customs, jargon, and things of importance and insignificance. While this article explains what organizational socialization is and why it is important for 27 both the organization and the job applicant, it does not account for communication?s role in the process as much as other models (Bullis, 1993). Jablin (1987) explains organizational socialization as a process with multiple stages that a newcomer must experience. The scholar lists these stages as anticipatory socialization, assimilation, and exit. The process is also cyclical, as newcomers use the knowledge that they obtain from previous periods of socialization when searching for new jobs and anticipating the socialization processes that new employers will present. The scholar explains anticipatory socialization as a process in which a newcomer considers the situation and culture that he or she will be entering upon joining an organization. The second part of this process, assimilation, notes that an individual is integrated into an organization?s unique culture. Finally, the exit stage simply refers to an individual leaving an organization. Although scholars such as Clair (1996) find problems with the stage-model approach to organizational socialization, it has provided effective results for other scholars interested in the process of socialization. Other scholars explain organizational socialization based on storytelling and memorable messages (Brown, 1985; Davis, 2005; Stohl, 1986). Brown asserts that stories play a meaningful role in the socialization of a new organizational member. The scholar notes that the themes that are present in stories told within an organization show the presence of shared values amongst workers. Brown states that stories and shared themes ?can be used by organizational members to define situations. Defining situations, or sense-making, is particularly salient for members in the initial stages of the socialization process as they encounter a variety of unfamiliar circumstances and stimuli? (1985, p. 28). The scholar ultimately finds a relationship between story-telling and 28 organizational socialization. Brown explains that as individuals in the study were socialized by the organization, the themes and values expressed in their stories reflected the themes and values of the organization. Story-telling also proved to be a way in which individuals expressed uncertainty about events or situations of significance to the organization. Stohl?s (1986) research, while not directly related to storytelling, is similar to the work of Brown (1985). Stohl?s look at an organization reveals that all of the members of the organization included in the study were able to recall one particular message that influenced their work lives for the rest of their careers. The scholar explains that these memorable messages tended to contain information on the organization?s values, expectations, and unique culture. In effect, these messages tell the employees how they should act and what behaviors and beliefs are valuable to the organization. Finally, Stohl notes that these messages prove to be significant for new members seeking to make sense of their new jobs. For these individuals, the stories provided examples of what is appropriate communication within the organization. Davis (2005) analyzes the role that storytelling plays within organizational orientation programs. Davis states that stories and narratives have ?an important role in all aspects of human interaction, including organizational communication where they offer a vehicle for imparting an organization?s history, mission, goals, and values to organizational newcomers? (2005, p. 128). The scholar notes that storytelling is significant to the socialization of newcomers, it is an area of research that is ultimately underrepresented by organizational socialization scholars. Davis? piece expands the area of organizational socialization by comparing the stories used by organizations to the 29 rhetoric used in sermonic discourse. Davis explains that like sermons, organizational orientations involve a rhetor asking the audience to act in certain ways. The rhetor is also known to actively construct shared values and meanings, while educating the listeners on the history and foundations of the organization (church or business) that he or she represents. The scholar concludes by noting that organizational narratives and stories help increase the likelihood that newcomers will understand the values and beliefs of their new environments and will be less likely to quit during regular employment circumstances. Recent Organizational Socialization Studies Organizational socialization scholarship covers a large number of topics and industries. Based on the foundations of research established by scholars such as Evan (1963) and Van Maanen and Schein (1979), scholars have moved into areas such as teams and groups, academia, and health organizations. Organizational socialization and teams/groups As health scholars such as Glen and Waddington (1998) and Taromina and Law (2000) note, it is important for organizations to offer a group of employees with whom new employees can interact and ask questions. Several organizational scholars (Cooper- Thomas & Anderson, 2002; Fritz, 1997; Hartley, 1997; Lois, 1999) have written pieces that apply to the notion of team-building within the socialization process. Hartley explains that organizations should strive to build communicative teams that allow for open communication and new ideas. The scholar also notes that it is difficult for this to happen when members of the organization stick to a strict hierarchy and are not accessible to share information. Lois? research reinforces Hartley?s claims. Using 30 ethnographic methods, Lois finds that for new members of a voluntary search and rescue group to reach ?core? membership within the group, they must show interest in the collective goals of the group rather than on their own heroic goals. The scholar also finds support for a layered model of socialization, in which individuals excel at some aspects of an organization but do not have interest in other aspects. This type of group membership does not follow a linear path. Finally, Fritz?s study also reinforces the need for strong group communication in organizational socialization. However, this scholar?s work focuses more on the differences in work relationships shared by women and men. Fritz states that women?s relationships tend to be stronger than men?s, as women are often able to network more quickly and effectively. The scholar uses this as an example of why organizations must build strong group relationships and should perhaps institute peer-mentoring programs to facilitate the process. Socialization and universities Several scholars have conducted studies on colleges and universities with varying levels of success (Bach, 1990; Bullis, 1993; Cawyer & Friedrich, 1998; Clair, 1993; Trowler & Knight, 1999). These articles vary in approach, as some scholars focus on the sense-making techniques used by university faculty while others focus on the ways that college students understand role expectations when leaving college for the ?real world? (Clair). While these pieces bear similarities to other organizational socialization articles, they tend to separate themselves by noting the negative aspects of socialization in the work place. Cawyer and Friedrich (1998), and Trowler and Knight (1999) study issues associated with the socialization of new and existing university faculty. Cawyer and 31 Friedrich focus on the socialization processes of several communication departments in American institutions. The scholars find that the amount of time the department spends orienting newcomers is directly related to the amount of satisfaction expressed by the new faculty members. The findings suggest that the job interview is an even better predictor of satisfaction; however, it is apparent that individuals experience less satisfaction upon entering the organization and realizing that the amount of time spent with colleagues is limited. Cawyer and Friedrich state that, ?Apparently entry, unlike the job interview, is characterized by limited interactions between the newcomer and organizational members and by ambiguity concerning institutional expectations? (p. 242). Finally, the scholars suggest that institutions of higher education could provide a more satisfying environment for new faculty by presenting a realistic look at the new employee?s day-to-day job roles and expectations. Trowler and Knight (1999) depart from the approach used by Cawyer and Friedrich, as it still asserts the significance of a stage-model approach of socialization. Trowler and Knight suggest that university socialization is problematic in that it relies on approaches to socialization created by organizational scholars. According to Trowler and Knight, this leaves universities with a corporatist view of socialization that does not necessarily fit the nature of academic work. Instead, these scholars suggest that universities should break away from the formal business approach to socialization and instead allow more opportunities for newcomers to regularly discuss their questions and concerns with more experienced faculty. Trowler and Knight also note that it is important for the institution?s culture to evolve with the new ideas and values expressed by new faculty members. The scholars explain that the university should not completely 32 change its vision based on the opinions of newcomers, but in many instances fresh perspectives allow for positive institutional changes. Bach (1990) and Clair (1996) are concerned with issues related to the socialization of college students. Bach explains that socialization is important to communication research, as it allows for a better understanding of ?what is expected for ?appropriate? socialization? (p. 54). Through communication, newcomers demonstrate their knowledge of the organization. In noting that aspect of newcomer socialization, the scholar acknowledges the main goal of the study: to observe trends in the socialization of university students through their communication patterns. Bach?s research participants, a group of sorority members provide excellent examples of this complicated process. Findings show that these individuals are expected to change their behavior upon committing to a ?house.? Before choosing a house, these individuals are expected to express their unique personalities, but upon making a choice they are expected to demonstrate that they understand the appropriate behavior and ideals of the sorority. The scholar notes that after a four-month pledge period, the individuals tend to exhibit that they have been socialized and are allowed the formal status of being members of the sorority. Bach finds support for realistic job previews in stating that it is likely that an individual will join the company or organization that ?provides her with guidelines for behavior within the organization prior to entry. Information about an organization made available to a newcomer who is about to enter will make the transition process easier, providing the information accurately reflects the organization?s philosophy? (p. 61). The scholar concludes by explaining that realistic socialization of individuals from the start helps provide a positive public face for the organization, as it minimizes the level of 33 surprise experienced by newcomers. These individuals, in turn, are less likely to feel disappointed by their experiences within the organization. Clair?s (1996) look at college students? communication about ?real jobs? focuses on Jablin?s (1987) stage-model approach to socialization. The scholar notes that Jablin?s process, which includes anticipatory socialization, assimilation, and exit, has produced useful findings in the area of organizational communication. Clair, however, chooses to look past this stage model to instead concentrate on the ways in which individuals communicate about work. The article looks at colloquialisms, which Clair defines as ?informal and familiar speech forms that have the status of clich?? (p. 252). It is possible that through colloquialisms, employers can control the nature of work, as they control what one considers to be work. Through questioning college students on their definitions of terms such as ?real work? and the ?real world,? the scholar finds that the anticipatory stage of socialization devalues the work that students do before entering an organization. While Clair acknowledges the benefits of the stage approach, this aspect proves to be problematic to the scholar. Clair explains that the stage model unfairly supports organizations, as it does not give much time to the individual?s side of being socialized into an organization. Socialization and health organizations Although it is not a large area of organizational socialization research, it is relevant to look at a few studies on socialization in health organizations. Scholars such as Glen and Waddington (1998), Settoon and Adkins (1997), and Taormina and Law (2000) are influential in this area. These scholars? studies tend to focus on new hires in the nursing department of various health-related organizations. While their settings are not 34 exactly the same, the results are similar. Settoon and Adkins look at new employees in a mental health facility. These scholars observed the employees twice, once near the beginning of their employment and then six months later. The scholars find the sensemaking process to be especially interesting; they explain that the new employees used their family and friends for guidance and advice heavily at the beginning of their employment. However, six months later, they relied much more heavily on their coworkers and bosses. Settoon and Adkins note that this shows evidence of the new employees not feeling like insiders, so they did not feel comfortable talking about the organization with organization members at first. Like Settoon and Adkins (1997), Glen and Waddington (1998) suggest that employees need strong support from their co-workers. Glen and Waddinton?s analysis of a group of nurses undergoing the role transition from staff nurse to clinical nurse specialist shows evidence of a lack of information for these individuals as they undergo the difficult change. Taromina and Law?s (2000) research on burnout in Japanese nurses also note the importance of coworkers support for individuals under a high amount of stress. They also state that interpersonal skills need to be continually developed by organizations, as these skills help to keep the nurses? confidence levels high. While many topics are discussed in this literature review, they are all significant to this thesis. The early and continued development of fantasy theme analysis by Bormann and other scholars is of the greatest importance, but it lends itself to the discussion of many other topics. In recent years, fantasy theme analysis has moved into Internet forum communication with studies by scholars such as Alem?n (2005) and Perry and Roesch (2004). Because these Internet forums are organizations in themselves, 35 members may encounter standard organizational procedures such as a lengthy socialization processes. Also, some studies (Alem?n) show evidence of Internet communicators attempting to reduce uncertainty about the group by the statements that they make. 36 III. RESEARCH QUESTIONS Recent fantasy theme analyses suggest that individuals sometimes turn to the Internet to ask questions and discuss issues that they are not comfortable discussing with their family and friends. However, it is unclear as to how individuals entering (or already in) a profession communicate and discuss issues on the Internet. This could provide more realistic results, as there is a higher comfort level associated with the relative anonymity of the Internet. There is potential for shared views and understandings, as Internet forum members discuss such a wide variety of topics together. While other fantasy theme analyses (Alem?n, 2005; Perry & Roesch, 2004) of Internet groups look at only one topic, such as romance, this thesis is concerned more with themes and visions that community members share on all topics of conversations. Based on the results presented within the literature review, I will look for fantasy themes and an overarching rhetorical vision that might emerge in the forum discussions within the SDN community. Research Questions 1. Do fantasy themes about becoming a doctor emerge within conversations on the SDN Forums? If so, what are these themes? 2. If themes emerge, how are heroes and villains defined, and are there common settings where their acts take place? 3. Are rhetorical visions present in the SDN Forums? If yes, 37 A) What shared values do the members exhibit? B) What shared goals are expressed? C) What shared fears are identified? 38 IV. METHODOLOGY Background on SDN as a research site The SDN Forums were a natural choice for this thesis for a number of reasons. As the SDN Forums focus on a particular type of organization (medical), they provide plenty of conversations related to organizational socialization and what individuals expect when entering an organization. Also, the SDN Forums serve as an organization in themselves, as each forum is moderated and the members hold different statuses. Finally, the SDN Forums are important to me on a personal level, as I began my undergraduate education as a Pre-Medical major. I found myself deeply engaged in the conversations held by the members of the forums. The SDN Forums provide a consistent population of individuals interested in communicating about medical school and everyday life. Because the SDN Forums are open to anyone interested in participating in the conversations, they are also available for anyone to read with or without joining the community. This openness is beneficial to the current fantasy theme analysis because it allows me to read and catalogue conversations from the same community members on a variety of topics. The open nature of this public Internet forum is also beneficial because the communicators are willing participants in a public media text that is catalogued not only by the forum itself but also by search engines such as Google. 39 The ?Usage Policies? section of the SDN Forums ensures that members of the SDN Forums understand the public nature of their conversations. This page states that, ?Once you've posted on the site, it's there forever. We do not delete posts except in extreme cases. Even if we can remove a post that you regret posting, they are often permanently cataloged in sites like Google or the Internet Archive? (vBulletin FAQ, n.d.). To gain posting rights on the SDN Forums, individuals must agree to these usage policies. The SDN Forums posters? comments are accessible by anyone and using them does not require the approval of an Institutional Review Board. The SDN Forums? ?Usage Policies? further detail the open nature of posting on the Internet. The policies state to ?avoid using your real name as your screen name. Remember, the SDN Forums are read by students, faculty, advisors and administrators from around the world. Unless you want everyone to know who you are, keep your identity protected? (vBulletin FAQ, n.d.). Because the SDN Forums management clearly explains that these communicators? screen names are visible to the general public, I will use the screen names provided by the posters when quoting posts. All names will be italicized to distinguish them from regular text in this thesis. Perry and Roesch (2004) conduct their fantasy theme analysis in a similar manner, by documenting the names and ages (as this is relevant to their research) used by individuals discussing Mister Rogers? death. Alem?n (2005), however, uses pseudo screen names for SeniorNet discussion board members because these individuals often use their real names for their screen names, which presents ethical problems for the researcher. While there is potential for SDN Forums users to provide their first and last names as their screen names, this has not occurred in the hundreds of posts that I have 40 analyzed in my research. In the event of an SDN Forums poster uses his or her real name, I will change his or her screen name and note the change with an asterisk and brief explanation. Method of analysis In analyzing the SDN Forums, I will apply many of the terms used by Bormann and the other scholars mentioned in the literature review. Alem?n?s (2005) study on the Internet communication of a forum dedicated to senior citizens provides the framework for a large part of my study. Alem?n?s method is useful because it successfully analyzes a large number of posts from an Internet community. Through the analysis of hundreds of posts, the scholar is able to identify several fantasies shared by the group. Alem?n leaves little doubt that the group shares these fantasies, as the scholar provides multiple excerpts from actual forum conversations for each fantasy. In addition to providing real posts and counter-posts from members of the forum, Alem?n explains the significance of these conversations. The scholar identifies the most important aspects of fantasy theme analysis presented by Bormann, such as symbolic cues and fantasy chains. Although most scholars do the same thing in their studies, they sometimes incorporate too many of Bormann?s terms. As Mohrmann (1982) notes, some scholars use the terms ?fantasy theme,? ?fantasy type,? and ?fantasy? interchangeably. Alem?n?s study minimizes its use of fantasy theme analysis terminology in a way that makes the results more focused and easy to follow. While Alem?n?s idea of focusing the majority of a fantasy theme analysis on identifying shared fantasies based on symbolic cues and fantasy chains is the most effective approach for this thesis, my research will sometimes require the use of terminology not used by Alem?n. 41 Other scholars have incorporated Internet discussions into their fantasy theme analyses, but their works were not solely focused on forum communication. However, Perry and Roesch?s (2004) research prove to be relevant to this study of the SDN Forums. The scholars? analysis of Internet tributes to the late Mister Rogers shows the benefit in looking for the character traits that forum users attribute to individuals. This group of individuals loved Mister Rogers, and Perry and Roesch?s study shows the ways in which the television star?s personal traits influenced their understanding of reality. The recognition of heroic traits is especially important when studying pre-medical students who aspire to reach a higher level and attribute great merit to individuals who practice medicine. Another way that Perry and Roesch influence this thesis is their focus on individual posts from Internet users, rather than back-and-forth conversations. This approach can be useful in some instances. For example, situations occur in which one post from an individual takes place deep within a thread and is ignored within that conversation. However, other individuals might make this same point in different threads. Evidence suggests a shared fantasy theme within the forums; it just did not occur within the same conversation. While writing this thesis, the forums included over 130,000 members, with almost 37,000 of them being active members who post on a regular basis (Student Doctor Network Forums, n.d.) Because the SDN Forums boast a large community of individuals who post in multiple threads, it is likely that these individuals read a great number of posts to which they do not immediately reply. If they make the same points later, the community likely shares a rhetorical vision. This, like Perry and Roesch?s study, suggests that posts do not have to appear in the same conversation to show evidence of shared fantasies. 42 Ultimately Alem?n (2005) provides a solid framework for this study. Although Alem?n?s methods of finding rhetorical visions and fantasy themes within an Internet forum are effective and influence the methods used in this thesis, a few areas of the scholar?s work need to be expanded for a proper analysis of the SDN Forums. Alem?n only analyzed the ?discussion board? entitled ?Meeting New People? on the SeniorNet forums. This ?discussion board? consisted of 560 posts and lasted about thirty-one days. The scholar?s explanation of the discussion board implies that the term is incorrect based on Internet terminology used today. Instead, the scholar is referring to a ?thread,? or one long conversation, not an actual ?discussion board,? in which individuals can post multiple topics for discussion. This thesis will analyze multiple discussions, instead of one long discussion. These discussions might not have 500+ posts (most discussions on the SDN Forums do not last that long), but they will contain at least 20 posts from more than three individuals to be considered as examples of a shared fantasy. These numbers are not arbitrary; instead, they are a reflection of the examples provided by Alem?n and my pre-test analysis of over forty separate discussions on the SDN Forums. A shared fantasy is marked by the use of similar symbolic cues and acknowledgment of past events by multiple individuals. If a discussion only lasts for eight to twelve posts from merely two individuals, its effect is too small to be considered as relevant. In this sense, the large post numbers in the thread used by Alem?n are very useful. At the same time, examples of multiple discussions prove the prominence and penetration level of a group fantasy. Finally, the fantasy theme methodology creates the opportunity to return to previous threads if it is apparent that their results could help expand upon a more recent thread. 43 This is important, as it is possible that I will not fully understand the relevance of the first few threads that I read until I have finished reading all of my selected threads. Definition of terms As noted earlier, I use a few terms differently from the terminology used by Alem?n (2005). For example, each unique discussion on the SDN Forums will be called a ?thread.? It is the term used by the SDN Forums management and by most other popular Internet forums. Separate conversations that occur within a thread will not be categorized as new threads but as new fantasy chains. A thread refers only to a conversation topic listed on the main page of the forum; it possesses a title decided upon by a member of the SDN Forums and implies a certain direction that the conversation should follow. The next significant term is ?board.? This term can be used synonymously with forum and describes a section of the SDN Forums. For example, members of the SDN Forums can have discussions in boards such as ?Pre-Allopathic? (for future medical doctors) to ?All-Students? (for any member of the SDN Forums to discuss any topic). This study will follow Alem?n?s (2005) example in two other popular Internet forum terms, ?post? and ?poster.? A post is a comment in a thread from a member of a forum. Posts are permanent but can be deleted by forum moderators. The poster is simply an individual who makes a post within a thread. The final term of relevance is ?status.? Alem?n does not reference this term, but it is important to the SDN Forums because it displays the academic progress of a poster. Statuses range from ?Medical Student? to ?Pre-Medical? to ?Resident,? etc. Not only are these statuses useful for members of the SDN Forums who wish to network, but they also provide the posters? 44 backgrounds. The pre-test for this study shows evidence of SDN Forums members attributing extra credibility to posts made by individuals with statuses such as ?Attendee? or ?Resident,? as these individuals have finished medical school and can provide more substantial advice. Although individuals could create false identities or statuses on the SDN Forums, the moderating staff generally makes sure that the flow of information includes correct, timely advice. For the purposes of Alem?n?s and Perry and Roesch?s studies, the scholars accepted the ages and sexes provided by the individuals they researched. This method is the best way to handle the potential issue, as forum moderators tend to ban or delete the accounts of individuals who are proven to be intentionally deceptive. Definitions of the fantasy theme analysis terms that I will be using in this study are also necessary. The first important concept to understand is ?dramatizing message.? A dramatizing message is marked by a pun, an analogy, a story, etc. (Bormann, 1985). Alem?n notes that finding dramatizing messages is the first part of doing a fantasy theme analysis. The scholar states that, ?If other members accept, extend, and collaborate in the continued dramatizing of that message, the critic can identify a fantasy chain? (p. 8). This criterion is significant because if a group member tells a joke or tries to start a discussion and no one accepts the joke, then the dramatizing message has failed and has no impact on group consciousness. Fantasy themes are not present in this situation. Once again, dramatizing messages and their resulting fantasy chains must be separate from the here-and-now conditions of the world (Bormann, 1972b). They must refer to either a situation from the past or future. I will be looking primarily for fantasy themes in the conversations of these Internet users. I am working from Bormann?s 45 original theoretical work and Alem?n?s (2005) more recent work, so both of their definitions of the term ?fantasy theme? are relevant. Bormann (1982c) states that, ?A fantasy theme consists of a dramatizing message in which characters enact an incident or a series of incidents in a setting somewhere other than the here-and-now of the people involved in the communication episode? (p. 52). Therefore, I will analyze the content of the dramatizing messages. Bormann also notes (1985) that the dramatizing messages included in fantasy themes are often about the individuals in the conversation. The characters do not have to be imaginary. Finally, Alem?n?s suggestions on how one should analyze fantasy themes are useful. Alem?n states that, ?Fantasy themes are analyzed by examining the narrative elements of the drama? (2005, p. 8). Some of these narrative elements that I will analyze in determining fantasy themes are the individuals identified as heroes and villains and the overarching plot and depicted actions that these individuals take. Alem?n also notes the importance of looking for ?sanctioning agents,? which explain why characters do particular things. Alem?n (2005) states that, ?The sanctioning agent, which is often a value system, ideal, or emotion, provides the persuasive force for acceptance of the social reality constructed in the fantasy chains? (p. 9). Another useful, but not vital, term is ?fantasy type.? A fantasy type is a ?recurring script in the culture of a group? (Bormann, 1982c, p. 52). This recurring script is used to allude to a previously shared fantasy without recreating it in its entirety (Alem?n, 2005). Fantasy types are marked by words that serve as symbolic cues for group members. Alem?n provides the terms ?prince? and ?knight? as examples of fantasy types that allude to the fantasy theme of ?knight in shining armor.? The 46 distinction between this concept and fantasy themes is not explained very well by Bormann (Mohrmann, 1982), and some scholars use the two terms synonymously. I will clearly distinguish between fantasies and fantasy types in this thesis. Situations that appear frequently in larger fantasies will be labeled as fantasy types and included to support the validity of the larger fantasies. Finally, I will look for an overarching rhetorical vision within the SDN Forums. Bormann (1982c) states that a rhetorical vision is a unified putting-together of various scripts which provides a broader view of a culture?s social reality? (p.52-3). It summarizes the group?s views on the world and life. Bormann notes that rhetorical visions are sometimes marked by a slogan or label of some sort, used by a group of individuals. Sampling The terminology and methodologies provided by Alem?n (2005), Bormann (1982c), and Perry and Roesch (2004) are highly influential to this study. Still, none of these scholars provide an exact method for sampling from an Internet forum. Most fantasy theme analysis scholars use the method to analyze published texts from a single author. Sometimes the scholars analyze media texts such as films or television shows, but the approach tends not to focus on individuals on the Internet. As noted earlier, Alem?n studies a little over one month?s time in one ?discussion board.? This approach amounts to over 560 posts for analysis on one general topic: dating. While this sample is effective for Alem?n?s research, it is perhaps too narrow for this thesis. Perry and Roesch look at more than 1200 individual tributes posted for Mister Rogers. This number is more applicable to the present study, but it still is based on a community discussing only one topic: the death of Mister Rogers. 47 For this thesis, it is more useful to provide a look at two of the most important sections on the SDN Forums: the Pre-Allopathic section and the All-Students Forum section. The Pre-Allopathic section is relevant because it garners the highest number of individuals at any given moment in the SDN Forums. Seventy-eight unique sections appear in the SDN Forums (some include sub-sections), and the Pre-Allopathic section consistently has more than 500 members posting or reading threads. This number is significant when compared to sections of the SDN Forums such as ?Psychiatry? or ?Military Medicine? which tend to only have 10 to 20 people viewing threads or posting. While many of the topics in the Pre-Allopathic section of the SDN Forums are directly related to medical procedures and school work, other conversations in this section cover areas such as applying for jobs and living as a doctor. The All-Students Forum is useful because it allows for conversation on any topic. While this section does not attract as large of a population as Pre-Allopathic, its contributors are willing to talk about anything, including topics such as music, death and dating. The majority of my analysis will come from these two sections of the SDN Forums, but in some instances it will be relevant to mention a thread from another area. While Alem?n (2005) and Perry and Roesch (2004) rely on looking at every message over a period of time, this approach is not applicable for this thesis. Alem?n and Perry and Roesch did not need to look at multiple topics as their papers are on specific topics: senior dating and the death of Mister Rogers, respectively. As this thesis is concerned with overarching fantasy themes occurring in natural, everyday conversation within the SDN Forums, focusing on one long thread or a series of messages about one individual is inappropriate. For this reason, I will use systematic sampling to obtain my 48 data set. Krippendorff (1980) states that, ?Systematic sampling involves selecting every kth unit of a list into the sample after determining the starting point of the sequence at random? (p. 67). The scholar further notes that this method of sampling is used when ?data stem from regularly appearing publications, sequences of interpersonal interaction, the stringlike order of writing, film, and music? (Krippendorff, 1980, p. 67). Thus, systematic sampling translates well to this thesis, as the data provided by the SDN Forums involves sequences of interpersonal interaction that take place in the same type of media. I will begin with the first thread on the first page of the two sections of the SDN Forums mentioned earlier (Pre-Allopathic and the All-Students Forums) and then select every fifth thread until the last date posted is one month from the first thread selected. Threads will be selected in reverse chronological order. For example, if the first thread appears on July 1, 2007, then the last thread selected would appear on June 1, 2007. This method should provide a sample that is not biased in relation to the topics or users included within the thread. Background on the Student Doctor Network (SDN) Forums SDN is a Web community established in the mid-1990s at the University of Kansas. It has grown in popularity and is now operated by the Coastal Research Group, a non-profit organization. The site features articles, medical school databases, and a forum for discussion. The forum has over 130,000 members, including doctors, medical students, potential medical students, and their families and friends. Although anyone is welcome to use the forum, the majority of members are actually involved in medicine in some way. I chose this forum because of the relatively high frequency of posts and potential for shared consciousness amongst members. Both Alem?n (2005) and Perry 49 and Roesch (2004) highlight these factors as important in conducting a fantasy theme analysis on a forum. Alem?n also notes that it is useful to look at forums that produce intelligent and understandable conversations. Most of the posters on the SDN Forums spell correctly and form coherent, thoughtful sentences. Alem?n?s study outlines other factors that can help a researcher decide on an online group to study. The scholar notes that the SeniorNet community proved to be useful because of the continuous flow of comments on each conversation topic, the recognizable nature of a few of the forum members, and the general ?conversation-like? elements of the comments (2005, p. 10). A conversation-like element exists in the discussions at SDN. The members are not restricted to talking about medicine and tend to reply to most every topic posted by a member of the site. Pre-test Results As part of a term paper, I conducted a pre-test of this method on a reduced sample of communicators at the SDN Forums. While the version of the method used in the pre-test is not exactly the same as the one described in the methodology section (in the pre-test I did not use systematic sampling), it is quite similar and its results prove the effectiveness of the method. It is important to note that I will not look for the same fantasy themes in this thesis. It is possible that the fantasy themes found in the pre-test will re-emerge, but it is also possible that I will find new fantasy themes or expanded versions of the themes found in the pre-test. The results of the pre-test follow: Analysis of twenty discussions with varying numbers of comments shows the presence of a few interesting fantasy themes at SDN. Most of these themes center around the ideas of uncertainty or doubt, as the conversation starter begins the discussion with a 50 concern or question about something in which he or she felt uncertainty. Many of the discussions serve as an attempt for the group of up-and-coming doctors to relieve their doubts and reinforce their decisions. A few character types are present in the dramas expressed by the SDN posters. The heroic character is the stead-fast, confident, moral doctor who has time for his/her family and friends. Evidence suggests that the SDN posters want to become this hero, as they discuss ways to become more efficient at studying or other work-related tasks. Often times, senior members of the forum serve as heroes of sorts, as they provide advice and reassurance (or a dose of reality) for the younger, less-experienced students. Common villains are individuals who pose a threat to the SDN posters? success at their careers. These people range from lawyers to self-centered boy/girlfriends. An overarching rhetorical vision of ?it is difficult but possible (IIDBP)? is present in the fantasy themes of SDN. The originators of fantasy themes often express some confusion or uncertainty with a decision involving their careers or personal lives. Through conversations with other members (especially veteran members), they tend to be reaffirm that there is a reason to keep working. The following fantasy themes support this rhetorical vision. ?I Was Supposed to be Rich? (IWSTBR) Fantasy A fantasy theme that quickly becomes apparent is IWSTBR. This fantasy is marked by the sobering reality fantasy type, featuring symbolic cues such as the ?real world,? ?sobering? truth, and the ?reality? of being a doctor. This fantasy theme arises when SDN posters seek reassurance from current doctors and others who have been in the field longer than them. The following posts from a discussion on the total cost of 51 becoming a doctor serve as an example. All of the posters? names have been changed, and the numbers of their posts are noted. Darryl, the first poster in this conversation (therefore, the dramatizer responsible for this fantasy chain), says ?Congrats to class of 2012 but I have one question. How big of a role does tuition+housing+cost of living factor in to deciding what [medical school] to attend? How much is too much? ? sorry to dampen the mood.? After a few replies about how much these individuals would be willing to pay, Nathan, the seventh poster, replies with ?We just had a debt management seminar the other day and it was definitely sobering.? Nathan goes on to discuss what he learned during this session, but this is irrelevant to the current study. It is important to note here that Nathan is listed as a medical student, while Darryl (the original poster) is listed as a pre-medical student as this fantasy theme is marked by individuals seeking reassurance from doctors or experienced medical students. A similar discussion provides an interesting example of this fantasy theme. Mark, a poster who lists himself as a pre-medical student, begins the conversation by linking to a news article on the debt situations facing young doctors. The third poster in this discussion, Gumby, listed as a resident, uses the symbolic cues of ?reality? and ?sobering? in noting that the financial life of a doctor is not simple. Gumby says: I know, I know, the temptation is to imagine your future six figure salary, imagine your debt, insert them into a mental black box and *poof*... everything works itself out. The reality is quite different. You're going to be toting your loans around long after medical school is just a vague, bad memory. Talk to any resident about his/her debt and how it has impacted his/her life and plans. It will be sobering, I promise. Gumby?s post is followed by a lengthy conversation on the many misperceptions of young people entering the field. When Marilyn (# 20) states that ?I'm going to give 52 pre-meds the benefit of the doubt that they realize the average doc doesn't have a mansion/Porsche,? she is quickly countered by posters who argue the opposite. These posters reinforce the validity of the theme that there is a sobering reality of becoming a doctor that many individuals do not understand. Lauren (#21), listed as a medical student, responds to Marilyn with ?I hope you are right. But you apparently haven't seen some of the absurdity on threads I have seen. And the repeated posts on SDN about going into medicine for the money.? This fantasy theme emerges often in conversations at SDN, as senior members of the forum provide facts about the ?sobering? financial reality of being a doctor. Although it is present in other types of discussions, it is most commonly associated with conversations on debt and money issues. ?Supporting Actor? Fantasy While the SDN community members are concerned with issues directly related to their work, many of their discussions center on the fear of not being able to make time for dating as a result of the complicated work that they do. This theme is marked by a stock scenario in which the main character (a doctor or medical student) does not have enough time for the person whom he/she is dating and fears that the relationship will end. The theme usually includes a resolution in which the doctor finds someone who is willing to play the ?support? role. A variation of this theme occurs when the SDN poster decides to become a supporting character of sorts by not expecting as strong of a relationship due to his/her career. Still, some members of SDN do not think that it is possible to date while in medical school. However, they agree that the only way to successfully have a relationship is to find someone who is willing to take a secondary role. A few symbolic 53 cues for this theme revolve around the ?understanding? and ?supporting? role of the spouse or boy/girlfriend. The SDN community members express the desirability of someone who is willing to take a secondary role and help make the doctor?s life less complicated. Rodney (#1) provides a good example of this fantasy with his question on the possibilities of dating while in medical school. Rodney notes that the most common piece of advice that he received when entering medical school was not to date. Rhonda (#3), listed as post-doctorate, begins to expand upon the fantasy of finding a supporting character by stating that, ?A relationship can work in med school if you both are willing to put in the effort and time for each other and it will certainly help if your [girlfriend] knows the time constraints you'll have while in med school.? Four posts later, Orlando (#7) validates Rhonda?s assertion that a relationship will work if the person the medical student is seeing does not expect to have a central role in the relationship. Orlando says, ?But if you're involved and actually like/love the person you are dating, it will work out just fine (given the non-med school partner is understanding and not demanding of your time when you don't have any to spare).? This fantasy proves that the members of the SDN Forums value the idea of relationships, as many posters say that they are looking to date someone. However, they often mention the need for that person to be useful in some way outside of an equal partnership. Kendall (#13), for example, explains that it is good to date while in medical school because a boy/girlfriend can help a medical student ?de-stress.? In a different discussion Mildred (#1) explains that she is concerned about when she and her husband (a doctor) will be able to have children. After two of the posters try to help her but do not 54 provide any significant advice, Frank (#5) lets Mildred know that she should focus on her husband?s needs instead of her own. Frank gives Mildred the following advice: At the beginning of his residency, kiss him, make him a nice dinner with candles and get him a Hallmark card. In the card, write, \"Love you! We'll do this again in five years! Or seven if you get that spinal fellowship! xoxo\" A few posts after this, Leonard (#7), listed as a resident, reinforces that Mildred is doing the right thing by playing the supporting role for her husband. Leonard states that, ?Your husband is blessed to have you in his life, willing to have his babies. There is not a perfect time [to have children].? This theme is present in almost every discussion on dating, but these two examples prove to be the most relevant as they show an example of a medical student (Rodney) and an outsider (Mildred) seeking reassurance on the role that a boy/girlfriend should play in a relationship. The SDN community members constantly reinforce this fantasy and use symbolic cues such as ?support person? when they do not recreate the fantasy. ?Real Doctors? Fantasy As stated earlier, many of the posts on SDN show a general feeling of uncertainty amongst the members. It is not surprising that many of the conversations have to do with not changing ones personality. It is in this fantasy theme that members reinforce the value of being a doctor to help people, not to make money. SDN posters discuss way to stay focused and not lose sight of one?s self when becoming a doctor. One of the most important values expressed in this theme is that students should cherish their identity and background when starting medical school, but that the job is ultimately more important. Common symbolic cues are ?commitment,? ?professional? and ?helping.? 55 A discussion on how medical students feel about students in their program who come from wealthy families provides an excellent example of this fantasy. Although some of the members expressed concerns that the conversation starter was trying to start a conflict amongst the members, some interesting values emerge from the discussion. Corrine (#47) summarizes the discussion by stating: You have to care about doing well in medicine. If you're in it just cause you're interested for the moment, and know you can leave any time if you get bored, that doesn't bode well for your commitment or motivation. Things aren't always peachy in medicine, and practice does and should become routine after a while. What are you gonna do then? Quit just cause you can? Most people in medicine aren't in it for the money. Corrine and others explain that it is more important to be a great doctor, no matter what one?s original background. They explain that they value individuality, but that in the end, everyone is judged the same for the work that they do. In another discussion on whether doctors should be allowed to wear blue jeans, most of the SDN community members claim that being a doctor is an important job and that doctors should dress the part. The posters routinely use the word ?professional? in their explanations, noting that they feel more like real doctors when wearing nice clothing. This theme arises in many kinds of conversations at SDN, but it is most often present in discussions in which pre-medical student try to renegotiate the importance of long-held standards and traditions. Results While the pre-test provides an interesting and useful look at the SDN Forums community and its potential to provide fantasy themes, it is worth noting that I did not review a large sample of posts. It is also important to note that I only looked for fantasy themes and did not ask in depth research questions about the community before doing my 56 preliminary research. I will see if the pre-test results still prove to be accurate or if they only scratch the surface of the SDN Forums community. Some aspects of the pre-test results might prove to no longer be relevant, while others might provide even more data after having analyzed a much larger sample. Using a systematic sample of threads from the forums, I will now look specifically for the presence of fantasy themes about becoming a doctor, heroes, villains, and common settings, and an overarching rhetorical vision. 57 V. ANALYSIS This thesis uses Bormann's (1972b) fantasy theme analysis method to analyze hundreds of threads in two sections of the SDN Forums. Using a systematic sample, threads were selected and placed into categories based on similarities in both the thread's overall message and the language used by the forums' members. This expanded analysis of the SDN Forums is intended to explain the Internet communication in the SDN Forums in a more thorough manner than the pre-test included earlier in this thesis. While some of the fantasy themes are similar, the scope of this thesis allows for more extensive examples of each theme. Another intention of this thesis' analysis is to test (and hopefully expand) the utility of Bormann's fantasy theme analysis method. By analyzing hundreds of threads for shared fantasies, heroes, villains, and symbolic cues, it is apparent that shared fantasies and ideas are present in the SDN Forums. Several fantasy themes exist in the SDN Forums community's discussions. As noted in the methodology section of this thesis, a pre-test of my method proved to be effective in finding fantasy themes in a small number of threads in the same forum. Naturally, the expansion of the methodology proves to extend these results. While the pre-test presents three significant fantasy themes, the expanded analysis of this thesis finds the presence of five fantasy themes in the SDN Forums. It is important to note that the three fantasy themes from the pre-test are still relevant in this thesis, but they are not strong enough to stand as fantasy themes by themselves. Instead, two of the fantasy 58 themes from the pre-test serve as fantasy types in larger, better-developed fantasy themes, while one of them is ultimately refuted by this expanded study. Although the fantasy themes in this thesis vary in subject matter, they tend to share values, settings, and goals. This analysis section is immediately followed by conclusions, which discuss the rhetorical vision of the community and the significance of this study. The five major themes in the SDN Forums include: \"I NEED to Go Here\" (INTGH), \"Team SDN,\" \"Oh Pre-Meds\" (OPM), \"What It Takes\" (WIT), and \"What Really Matters\" (WRM). As noted earlier, all of these themes reflect the values and shared interests of the SDN community. INTGH is characterized by discussions on the SDN community's favorite medical schools. Members discuss what they value in a school and even compare some medical schools to lovers. The \"Team SDN\" fantasy is shared when posters try to reassure each other that they are not alone in their current situations. This fantasy also includes messages intended to build the reputation of the SDN Forums as a place for camaraderie and solid advice. The OPM fantasy differs from the positive nature of the \"Team SDN\" fantasy, as OPM instead focuses on the types of pre-medical students that the SDN community dislikes. Finally, the WIT and WRM fantasies are presented last because they symbolize what the SDN posters find most important in their lives. In these fantasy themes, members describe what an ideal doctor should be and also discuss the importance (and possibility) of having a life outside of medical school and work. The results follow. \"I NEED to Go Here\" (INTGH) Fantasy As this analysis focuses on a more specific population of pre-medical students, the results vary in some ways from those of my pre-test. For example, the INTGH 59 fantasy theme presented itself repeatedly due to the nature of these individuals' conversations. Pre-medical students are obviously concerned with being accepted into medical schools, so many of the threads in the Pre-Allopathic section and the All-Students Forum section focus on issues related to the application and acceptance processes. Many sub-themes and fantasy types are relevant to the INTGH fantasy; issues range from how acceptances are actually decided to individuals asking one another to give up their acceptances so that a more deserving candidate may take it. Another reoccurring aspect of the INTGH fantasy is that SDN members are confused as to the nature of acceptances and hope to come to a common understanding of how medical school acceptances are actually decided. The INTGH fantasy theme usually arises when SDN posters discuss their ideal medical schools. A common fantasy type centers around the idea of falling in love with a school either before or after a visit. This fantasy type is marked by symbolic cues such as \"I am in love with _______ (school name),\" \"fell in love\" or \"like falling in love.\" This particular aspect of INTGH occurs when SDN posters either attempt to gauge the community's feelings towards a medical school or hope to learn how long it will take to be accepted by a school. Many members display this fantasy type in a discussion on Stanford. The fantasy chain begins with A Wall noting that he/she is \"obsessed with the school\" and wanting to know when the university will make its decisions. Other users then join into the discussion and expand upon the symbolic cues listed above. sanchopanza states that, \"Stanford is the bomb. It was like falling in love with a woman when I interviewed there.\" The fantasy type is shared by multiple users in this thread who state that \"it would be a dream\" to attend Stanford and repeatedly use the word 60 \"love\" when talking about the school. A final significant example comes from mcchicken1985 who warns SDN users to \"prepare to fall in love with the school on interview day.\" The love fantasy type for the INTGH theme is prevalent in the SDN Forums. Many individuals post about the schools they wish to attend in a similar manner, suggesting that to the pre-medical students in the SDN Forums, being accepted by a medical school means more than simply learning when they will have to move. For some of these individuals, being accepted to another medical school than they one they love is similar to settling for a bad relationship. In discussing their love for different medical schools, some of the SDN Forums users provide examples of another fantasy type: the prestigious school. This aspect of INTGH exhibits the posters' love for a prestigious school because it makes them more prestigious by association. This fantasy type includes symbolic cues such as \"prestige,\" \"prestigious,\" \"impress,\" and \"name recognition.\" In an advice thread in which an SDN user asks which school he or she should attend, several posters reply by noting the prestige and name recognition of the schools. nu2004 states that, \" if you want to do MD/MBA, they all have great business schools, but UChicago probably has the best name recognition.\" Other advice threads follow similar patterns, with members citing a school's prestige and name as being a good reason to attend. Some posters allude to how impressive it is to attend certain schools; CatsandCradles explains how nice it would be to \"impress\" one's child with where he or she went to medical school. In the discussion on Stanford used earlier in this analysis, a poster states that he or she was \"shocked\" to have even interviewed with the school. This post came after 55 61 other posts discussing the prestige of the school; thus, the poster shared the opinion of other SDN posters. Another area that presents itself in the discussion of a school's name and recognition is the charming location. This fantasy type occurs when individuals look past the prestige and rankings of a school and note the environment in which the medical students reside. Its symbolic cues include \"atmosphere,\" \"see the sun,\" and \"depressing.\" In a discussion on whether an individual should attend Yale or Michigan, Orthodoc40 (a medical student) skips past the talk of each schools' medical programs and states that, \"I'd get as far away from the state of MI as possible. The sun does not live here, and it is one depressing place.\" This sentiment is echoed by other posters such as hoquuep, who suggests the following: \"I've lived in Michigan for the past eight years, and the weather here is wholly unpredictable and depressing.\" In the end, it is unclear whether the original poster listened to this advice, but the atmosphere at a school is important to the posters at SDN. With the idea of an intense love for a school established, another aspect of the INTGH fantasy theme is relevant. This fantasy type is used by individuals when describing the desperation that they feel in waiting for news on an acceptance. The fantasy type of desperation or uncertainty is present when individuals use symbolic cues such as \"desperate\" \"killing me\" \"praying\" \"would kill for\" or \"antsy.\" Several conversations provide examples of this fantasy type. In a discussion on Duke, Tropicana describes the letter that he or she wrote to the university. Tropicana states that, \"In retrospect, however, I did sound a bit desperate.\" Other posters in the thread share the sentiment, and then discuss how not to sound \"desperate\" when talking to a school. 62 While the discussion on Duke was positive in nature, most individuals call one another desperate as an insult. For example, in a thread on why an SDN Forums member was passed over while his or her less-qualified friend was accepted to medical school, jk1123 states, \"i cannot believe you guys spend that long writing a paragraph response. desperate!\" jk1123's post is immediately followed by another SDN poster using the image of a sad face and making the sarcastic post of \"Waahhh, I know someone who got into medical school and they shoudn't have. I should have and they shouldn't have. I know this because I have more expertise than the people already in the profession who are admitting people. Waaahhh.\" Other posts in this thread show a negative tone, suggesting that members of the SDN Forums do not like to read about other members feeling desperate or afraid. For example, in the thread on attending Duke, most of the insults focused on individuals attempting to do too much to impress medical schools. However, almost all of the members in the thread list themselves as pre-medical students, so they share the situation of trying to gain acceptance to their medical schools of choice. SDN members who feel desperate to hear something from a medical school exhibit another interesting element in the INTGH fantasy. Many individuals use the symbolic cue of \"give someone else your spot\" in advice threads for individuals with more than one acceptance to a medical school. SDN members who express this fantasy type feel jealous of more successful pre-medical students and want to make the accepted individuals know that they are lucky and should not take their positions for granted. These individuals are sometimes confused as to why they were not accepted while other \"less-deserving\" members were accepted. 63 While the fantasy type of giving someone your spot was realized in five different threads, it is most evident in a thread in which the original poster declares that he or she has \"cold feet\" and is not sure that he or she wants to attend medical school (even after being accepted). This call for advice is met with actual advice from senior members with \"medical student\" listed as their statuses, but more often than that, it is met with pre-medical students expressing their desperation and frustration. nehcmij86 starts this fantasy chain by asking, \"can we trade positions?\". nehcmij86's dramatizing message is shared by other members who state that, \"I know 2 people that would love to have the freedom of attending a med school right now, any med school\" and the immediate reply of \" you can make that 3.\" While the aforementioned statements provide clear examples of the symbolic cue \"give someone else your spot,\" perhaps the most interesting examples come from individuals who explain the desperation they feel while asking for the original poster to give up his or her spot. Doublecortin gives the member the following advice: \"please give up your acceptance and let someone who is truly passionate about medicine and eager to attend medical school.\" This clearly explains that Doublecortin is jealous and feels desperate in his or her search for a medical school. Doublecortin's post actually suggests that the original poster is not passionate enough about practicing medicine. A final example of desperation and a desire to \"take someone's spot\" in the INTGH fantasy comes from frikarika, who states that, \"It's really frustrating to hear about people getting into med school who haven't really thought it out. I on the other hand haven't gotten in anywhere, and would kill to be in your position. Consider yourself lucky.\" The poster show's evidence of desperation and a feeling of \"needing to go\" to any available medical 64 school in stating that he or she would \"kill\" to be in the same position as the original poster. As noted earlier, intense symbolic cues such as \"would kill to\" or \"dying to get in\" are signs of the shared fantasy of desperately needing to be accepted by a medical school. Posters on the SDN Forums such as frikarika and Doublecortin who recognize the shared drama of INTGH cannot empathize with other SDN members in need of serious advice on where to go to medical school. As the INTGH fantasy largely applies to the way SDN members make sense of the admissions and acceptance processes at different medical schools, a sub-theme of \"It's a Gamble\" (IAG) is relevant to the discussion. The IAG fantasy stands as a sub-theme within the discussion of INTGH because it is predominately present in threads in which the INTGH fantasy is shared by SDN posters. It is a recurring theme that posters share in an attempt to explain why they were not accepted to their medical schools of choice, downplay the accomplishments of others, or simply express confusion with medical school admissions processes. Common symbolic cues in this sub-theme include, \"gamble,\" \"luck,\" \"random\" and other gambling terms such as \"flip a coin\" or \"roll the dice.\" In an advice thread on why some people are accepted to medical schools and others are not, cottenr states that, \"a lot of stuff in this selection process is random. Whether they interview you, accept you, or reject you, a substantial portion of that decision could be up [sic] total chance.\" Other members share this vision and express similar sentiments, but it is a post by a seasoned member of the forum, who lists himself or herself as a medical student that truly reinforces the IAG fantasy. This poster, ScutMonkey08 explains the following: \"As a member of the admissions committee [sic] 65 at a top 40 med school, I must say that though there is a lot of ?randomness? in the decisions process\". This advice seemed to quiet the counter-argument from other members, as the fantasy was being shared by someone with a higher status than \"pre- medical.\" ScutMonkey08 also establishes the validity of his or her claim by noting that he or she has served on an admissions committee and seems to have insider information. A thread in which a member of the SDN Forums considers questioning a committee's decision to reject him or her also provides interesting examples of both the IAG sub-theme and the INTGH fantasy theme. Law2Doc, a senior member of the SDN Forums who is listed as a medical student and an assistant moderator, gives the original poster the following advice: \"Once you let the school get to a decision, you've rolled the dice, and it's over. Move on.\" By using the symbolic cue \"rolled the dice,\" Law2Doc has referenced the repeatedly shared IAG fantasy type. This example shows the previously mentioned criteria of this fantasy type, in which members refer to the admissions process as a game of chance in which they have little power or say over the results. Calling the medical school admissions process a gamble shows the confusion and desperation that some pre-medical students feel in the INTGH fantasy. Sharing the IAG fantasy type suggests that members do not fully understand how their acceptances are decided, as many of them express that complete randomness can sometimes be the deciding factor. The confusion and desperation expressed by these individuals (as well as the love for the schools that reject them) leave the IAG sub-theme and INTGH fantasy theme somewhat dependent upon one another. As noted earlier, it is apparent that individuals who express aspects of INTGH such as \"give me your spot\" or question why some individuals are accepted are perhaps jealous of other members of the SDN Forums 66 and do not wish to have accountability for not being accepted by a medical school. The IAG fantasy type provides a way to blame the acceptance process (which apparently truly does confuse the posters) rather than MCAT scores or individual characteristics of the applicant. A thread on how many schools a borderline student should apply to provides one final example that encompasses the desperation of the INTGH fantasy theme and the randomness of the IAG sub-theme. In this thread, Frohse gives the fellow borderline poster the following advice: \"You MUST play the law of averages. The more schools to which you apply, the better chance you have of getting in to medical school.\" Thus, the INTGH fantasy theme consists of the following fantasy types: love, importance of location, ?give someone else your spot,? desperation, and the IAG sub-theme. The love fantasy type occurs in conversations about visiting medical schools and ?falling in love? with them. In this fantasy type, SDN Forum members routinely use language that usually refers to dating to describe their potential medical schools. The location fantasy type is characterized by posters declaring the need to attend a school with a charming campus. The next two aspects of the INTGH fantasy theme deal with individuals who fear that they will not be accepted into medical school. These two fantasy types include messages of desperation in which posters sometimes ask other posters to give up their acceptances to individuals who ?want it? more. Finally, an interesting sub-theme is present in the INTGH fantasy. This sub-theme, IAG, asserts that the SDN community does not understand how the medical school admissions process works. In this sub-theme, members compare the process of applying to medical schools as a gamble with little rationality. 67 The \"Team SDN\" Fantasy While some of the fantasy themes in the SDN Forums suggest that the members are jealous of each other and are predominately interested in their own acceptances to medical school, the \"Team SDN\" fantasy theme is just the opposite. Members in both the Pre-Allopathic section and the All-Students Forum of the SDN Forums frequently express this fantasy theme. These individuals tend to recall the fantasy of being a part of \"Team SDN\" when other posters (usually pre-medical or new members) express concern over situations such as medical school acceptances, failing relationships, and apartment hunting. This fantasy is usually expressed through phrases such as \"I'm in the same boat as you\" or \"stay positive.\" While the expression \"I'm in the same boat as you\" is somewhat common in nature, it builds camaraderie within the SDN community. Often in lieu of advice, senior members will simply offer the fact that they have been in a similar situation and wish the original poster good luck as a means of reassuring him or her. Significant symbolic cues in the \"Team SDN\" fantasy theme include phrases such as \"same boat,\" \"you're not alone,\" \"not the only one,\" \"right there with you,\" and \"same situation.\" Examples are provided consistently for this theme and tend to be similar no matter what the subject of discussion might be. A thread on the problems associated with trying to coordinate one's future with a boyfriend or girlfriend is especially useful. As noted earlier, the \"Team SDN\" fantasy tends to be expressed when individuals see that the original poster is hurting or is in need of advice from some one who understands. While many of the posters in the thread on conflicting futures provide advice for the upset original poster, Booyah85 attempts to make the advice more personal by stating that: 68 I was in the same boat, I am attending med school in August and my ex-gf was planning on getting a Masters in social work. Well, last weekend she decided that we were too \"incompatible\" and decided to break off our 3 year relationship. By beginning with the phrase \"I was in the same boat,\" Booyah85 asserts that he or she perhaps understands the original poster's point better than other individuals. After describing what happened to his or her relationship, Booyah85 ends by showing how his or her advice might benefit the original poster. Booyah85 adds, \"I hope that my mistakes can help you with your future decisions.\" In the same thread dtepper explains the details of his or her dating situation before stating, \"I can't really give advice, but I can reassure you that you're not alone.\" This post comes just two posts after Booyah85's comment, and it also reinforces the fantasy theme of SDN members being in the \"same boat.\" dtepper alludes to the idea that while, he or she cannot solve the problem for the original poster, strength exists in knowing that he or she is not the only one going through a trying situation related to being a pre-medical student. Perhaps a more poignant example of the \"Team SDN\" fantasy being expressed through members showing each other that they are not alone comes from a thread about race. In this thread, supa looks for hope that other black pre-medical students post on the SDN Forums (and at other schools) by pondering the following: \"The one interview was at Maryland and there were NO brothas, so just checking to make sure I'm not out here alone.\" By using the symbolic cue, \"out here alone,\" supa calls on the \"Team SDN\" fantasy theme, as he or she is looking for reassurance. supa is met with a great deal of support, in which several of the members use similar symbolic cues to share the fantasy of \"Team SDN.\" wowowowow101 responds with, \"You are not alone. I interviewed with another blk guy at one of my schools. I also go to school with 4 or 5 applying (all 69 accepted) this year.\" One other poster uses the fantasy type \"not alone\" in stating, \"It is nice to know that I'm not the only young black male pre-med.\" By using symbolic cues such as \"not alone\" and \"not the only,\" these members reassure each other about their current situations and taken a step towards building further camaraderie within the SDN Forums. For example, towards the end of the thread, wuironl calls for black members of the SDN Forums to continue to support each other in stating, \"Good luck all with upcoming interviews. Let?s keep this thread going!\". Other members realized this sentiment of camaraderie as the thread had reached multiple pages (each page has fifty posts, and most threads do not leave the first page) at the time of my analysis, a sign that it will continue to be supported. The \"Team SDN\" fantasy appears repeatedly in conversations on the SDN Forums. While there are several examples of other threads in which posters use the symbolic cue \"same boat,\" it is important to look at some of the other ways that the fantasy is used and reinforced through other symbolic cues and stock scenarios. The examples in the preceding paragraphs show how the \"Team SDN\" fantasy theme reassures a poster that he or she has someone who understands his or her situation. Conversations such as the one shared by Booyah85 and the thread's original poster are certainly useful in building a close forum community, but the stock scenario that specifically uses the symbolic cue \"same boat\" ultimately only serves the purpose of making the original poster feel better. Generally no specific advice is given to the original poster, and the posters who provide advice do so to commiserate; an overall negative tone exists in the conversation. 70 When SDN members use symbolic cues such as \"support\" and \"don't give up,\" they reinforce a different fantasy type used in the \"Team SDN\" fantasy theme. This fantasy type is similar to the \"same boat\" fantasy type in that it revolves around stock scenarios in which members express concern for each other and share stories about similar situations that they experienced. However, a much more positive tone is present in the conversations that use the \"support\" fantasy type. Examples come from multiple threads in the Pre-Allopathic section of the SDN Forums, and almost all of them suggest that the SDN Forums are a positive place, where the members genuinely care about helping each other. In a thread on why the members of SDN want to be doctors, several members make fun of the original poster because his or her comment is somewhat idealistic in nature. However, as the thread progresses, Humidbeing reminds the posters of what the SDN Forums are supposed to be about: helping each other. Humidbeing stands up for the original poster before stating, \"We're a support group.\" This turns the focus of the conversation back to showing the original poster that he or she is not alone and reinforces the \"Team SDN\" fantasy, which had been breached prior to Humidbeing's post. Immediately following Humidbeing's comment, the replies are optimistic in nature and provide the original poster with actual advice on what to include in his or her personal statement to potential medical schools. Finally, members who refer to the \"Team SDN\" fantasy theme often express another fantasy type, in which the quality of the community bond in the SDN Forums is reinforced. In almost every thread in which members share the \"Team SDN\" fantasy through reassuring each other that they are not alone or to stay positive, there is talk of SDN being a great place for pre-medical students to bond and share advice. Symbolic 71 cues for this fantasy type revolve around SDN being a \"great,\" \"popular,\" \"useful,\" or \"infamous\" site that provides an outlet for individuals to receive good advice. This fantasy type is shared widely within the thread in which black pre-medical students reassure one another that they are not alone. In this thread, supa (the original poster), states, \"Damn I wish I had found this site a while ago. It would've made my entire process a lot smoother. Good advice on here.\" The dramatizing statement about members sharing good advice catches on, and other members share the sentiment while expressing the \"Team SDN\" fantasy. For example, other users state that the SDN Forums are a \"resource\" that should be used by everyone. infiniti continues this fantasy chain by using several symbolic cues at once to suggest that the SDN Forums are a great site of camaraderie for pre-medical students. infiniti states, \"I hope more black male [sic] will start utilizing the vast resource made available by the infamous SDN.\" The SDN Forums community sees the site as a place for individuals to do much more than just talk to one another. The \"Team SDN\" fantasy theme suggests that the members maintain a great deal of respect for each other and the site itself. As noted in the example in which an individual posted his or her somewhat idealistic personal statement, individuals sometimes share this fantasy theme when they feel that other posters have lost interest in helping each other. While some of the fantasy themes present in the SDN Forums contain negative aspects, the routinely expressed \"Team SDN\" fantasy attempts to keep the members positive and appreciative of the forum and its potential to reassure confused or disheartened pre-medical students. To summarize, the \"Team SDN\" fantasy theme is reinforced through the aforementioned \"same boat,\" support, and \"infamous SDN\" fantasy types. The \"same 72 boat\" fantasy type is used when individuals express uncertainty and a need to know that they are not alone in their current situations. SDN members routinely use the symbolic cue \"same boat\" in letting distressed members know that other people understand their situations. Members recall the support fantasy type when they let other members know that the SDN Forums exist so that student doctors can help each other. The last significant fantasy type, \"infamous SDN,\" asserts the posters' love for the SDN Forums. In this fantasy type, members talk about the quality of the advice on the SDN Forums and note that the SDN Forums are a respected place for Internet communication. \"Oh Pre-Meds\" (OPM) Fantasy The OPM fantasy theme provides the most humor of the themes in the SDN Forums. It appears mainly in conversations on why medical students act in certain ways or what makes an extracurricular activity worthwhile that the OPM theme presents itself. SDN members share this fantasy when they are frustrated with each other or when they simply want to share a joke about the career choices that they have made. As Bormann (1972b) notes, inside jokes are a sign of shared fantasies and group identification. The self-deprecating OPM fantasy theme is the closest thing to an inside joke on the SDN Forums and makes this particular fantasy quite different than other more serious fantasies such as \"Team SDN\" and INTGH. OPM is also significant because it introduces the discussion of the controversial \"gunner\" medical student. The OPM fantasy theme covers a variety of subjects; therefore, the symbolic cues are not as rigid as they are in other fantasies. However, some routinely mentioned symbolic phrases and ideas are \"cure cancer,\" \"pre-meds\" and \"gunner.\" The fantasy type that discusses what pre-meds do is immediately relevant and is used in the majority 73 of the threads with OPM as the main fantasy theme. In a thread on whether a male should remove his earring before interviewing with a medical school, several of the posters who list themselves as pre-medical students respond by reinforcing what a doctor traditionally should look like. These posts seem to upset some of the pre-medical students in the thread who then share the fantasy of OPM. One poster states the following as a response to the criticism from more traditional pre-medical students: you people are squares... ?which is why I've never mixed with most of the pre-med crowd. Anyway, I've had my ears gauged for some time now. Nothing crazy big (2 guage). Took them out for interviews. Got into every school I interviewed at (2 top 15 schools). This reply demonstrates two things. First, it is self-deprecating \"OPM\" style humor, as the poster is most likely a pre-medical student. Second, it shows that posters who give personal examples receive better responses. This particular post starts a new fantasy chain, in which members suggest that the \"pre-med\" mentality is somewhat flawed and is not the only way to be successful. Evidence of this comes from multiple posts, but the following post is particularly useful because the individual directly mentions pre-medical students in his or her chaining of the OPM fantasy. This poster, Haro4130Frame, states: Ingnore half these people without piercings. I have my lip pierced. I did take it out but you could still tell there is a whole [sic] there. I also have no plans on getting rid of it anytime soon. (I got into my top choice school by the way) Most pre- meds are way too into thinking they are better than what you want. If you want to leave it in, do so. These individuals are tired of being around the pre-medical \"type,\" a sentiment that is common in the OPM fantasy theme. Another example of SDN members insulting pre-medical students and reinforcing the OPM fantasy theme comes from a thread in which the original poster asks why many 74 pre-medical students do not apply to a larger number of medical schools. While some of the posters suggest reasons such as money and time, seraph524 (listed as a medical/PhD student) makes a joke about the typical pre-medical student. seraph524 states that pre- medical students do not apply more broadly \"Because pre-meds have a tremendous sense of self-entitlement.\" The fact that this post comes from another thread shows that the theme of insulting pre-medical students takes place in other threads in the forum, making it well-established and more likely to be expressed by other members. Two final humorous examples show the reach of the OPM fantasy theme. The first example comes from a thread on Caribbean medical schools, in which members discuss why pre-medical students should not attend schools outside of America. Several members mention pre-medical students in the thread, but Maxprime (also listed as a medical/PhD student) actually established the presence of the self-deprecating OPM fantasy. Maxprime states that, \"Nutjob pre-medville (aka SDN) isn't the best source for reassurance, carefully worded statements, or information about caribbean [sic] schools.\" This post suggests that even the pre-medical students on the SDN Forums are not credible in the OPM fantasy. Posters who share the OPM fantasy theme do not want to identify themselves as \"pre-meds,\" even though they technically are members of the group. The second example reinforces that the members of the SDN community see pre-medical students as somewhat \"nutty.\" In a thread on grades, TexanGirl defends a Muslim poster who drew the ire of some SDN poster for his or her use of religious terms in a thread about academics. TexanGirl describes the poster as a typical pre-medical student in stating, \"Remove all the Servant of Allah, God is Beneficent, Merciful...stuff and you get 75 your ordinary, run-of-the-mill neurotic pre-med.\" While TexanGirl supports the poster, he or she still reinforces the idea of pre-medical students being neurotic and different. The second fantasy type in the OPM fantasy theme does not assume that all pre- medical students are \"square\" or \"nuts\" as suggested by previously mentioned posts. In this fantasy type, SDN members make fun of pre-medical students who try too hard to strengthen their r?sum?s. A commonly used symbolic cue in this fantasy type is \"cure cancer.\" The \"cure cancer\" symbolic cue involves a stock scenario, in which a poster suggests that his or her r?sum? is not strong enough and other posters reply by suggesting that \"cured cancer\" is an effective way to bolster anyone's r?sum?. Often other cures are suggested as well. For example, in a thread on the importance of extracurricular activities to one's application, Moshe Rabbenu suggests that his or her r?sum? is lacking in relevant activities by stating what he or she has actually done followed by the \"cured cancer\" joke. Moshe Rabbenu states the following: I'm an avid musician whose band has had a few songs on the radio. I'm also a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu with a few medals under my belt (no pun intended). I'm president of the Jewish Student Union at my school. Also, I've cured cancer. Twice. Moshe Rabbenu's use of the \"cured cancer\" joke calls on members of the SDN Forums to share the OPM fantasy, in which they insult the applications of some pre-medical students whom the community finds to be over-ambitious. The following posts in the r?sum? thread appear immediately following each other (no posts between them) and further display the OPM fantasy. husky10501 states the following in response to Moshe Rabbenu's post on curing cancer: \" i'm highly impressed!!!! hahaha. I'm almost done with my AIDs vaccine.. [sic] just a couple 76 more days!\". Moshe Rabbenu then replies with, \"I patented an AIDs vaccine last week. pwnd.\" This reply is used to make fun of the competitive nature of many pre-medical students. The word \"pwnd\" is used to note that an individual \"owned\" someone else by doing something better than that individual. Wylde replies with a deceptively poignant post that is instrumental in understanding the OPM fantasy theme. Wylde states that, \"meh, AIDs is child's play! I've cured cancer (who hasn't, honestly how do you people expect to get into medical school!), but 2 times is pretty impressive!\". The side note \"how do you people expect to get into medical school\" assures that the SDN members are using these jokes as a way of making fun of pre-medical students who are somewhat over-zealous in their attempts to be accepted into medical school. Further evidence of the \"cured cancer\" symbolic cue being used to re-establish the OPM fantasy comes from a thread on recommended activities for individuals who are applying to medical school. In this thread, metalgearHMN replies to the original poster by stating that, \"You don't have to cure cancer, just don't watch Sanford and Son re-runs all day. All good things in moderation.\" This post shows evidence of the OPM fantasy theme appearing in other areas in the SDN Forums. Finally, the OPM fantasy theme introduces the discussion of the SDN community's most controversial type of pre-medical student: the gunner. According to several threads in the Pre-Allopathic section of the SDN Forums, the term \"gunner\" is used to describe over-zealous pre-medical students who spend more time studying than other students (and apparently intentionally limit other students' opportunities to do well) and tend to demonstrate their knowledge to professors at every possible chance. This term reinforces the OPM fantasy theme, as members use it when discussing how they 77 dislike most pre-medical students and do not want to live like them. It is also a relevant fantasy type for the OPM fantasy because members use humor when sharing their stories about gunners. In one of the many threads about gunners, littlealex replies to another member's post with the following statement of what a gunner might say to another student: \"A true gunner: don't worry about those shadowing appointments. I canceled them all for you. Oooh!\" The gunner character is further parodied in another thread on gunners. In this thread, the gunner fantasy type begins with a dramatizing statement from Uegis, a college freshman who wants to know if he or she is a gunner. Psycho Doctor replies to Uegis by stating that, \"anyone who even knows what a gunner is and is posting on this board their first semester of freshman year IS a gunner.\" rcd, another poster in the thread on whether Uegis is a gunner, notes that he or she is also worried about being a typical pre-medical student gunner. rcd calls upon the OPM fantasy with the following statement: \"More concerned about whether I'm becomming [sic] a 'pre-med leper.' I'm afraid of both burning out and being the type of dork that pissing [sic] people off.\" This statement is an example of the OPM fantasy because it demonstrates that the SDN community sees itself as separate from typical pre-medical students and does not want to associate with them. It is apparent that rcd is concerned with losing credibility on the forum (and in real life) by embodying the negative \"pre- med\" persona that is parodied through the OPM fantasy. To conclude, the major fantasy types in the OPM fantasy theme include insulting pre-medical students, the \"cured cancer\" r?sum? boosters, and gunners. The insulting pre-medical students fantasy type is characterized by posts about how pre-medical students are \"lame\" or \"square.\" Individuals who express this fantasy type do not like 78 sharing the term \"pre-med\" with the individuals whom they despise. The r?sum? booster fantasy type is similar to the insulting pre-medical student fantasy type in that it is used to mock SDN members. However, the r?sum? booster fantasy type is light-hearted in nature and sometimes even leads to credible advice on how posters can make their r?sum?s more impressive. The gunner fantasy type includes messages about the type of medical student that most of the SDN community does not want to be. In this fantasy type, members share stories about individuals who work perhaps too hard on completing medical school. The three fantasy types in the OPM fantasy all relate to a common theme: the members of the SDN Forums generally do not like the label \"pre-med\" because of the way that they perceive their classmates and peers. Whether in a conversation about r?sum?s and curing cancer or a fantasy chain on \"pre-meds\" and gunners, a large portion of the forum community sees the term \"pre-med\" as an insult used to describe neurotic individuals who do not know how to interact with their peers. SDN Forums members also tend to use humor as their way of approaching these issues. The posters may use humor to conceal different emotions, such as animosity, resentment, or even jealousy, as the OPM fantasy theme is routinely shared in threads where posters talk about their troubles in being accepted to medical school. \"What It Takes\" (WIT) Fantasy The WIT fantasy theme contains the widest variety of fantasy types of all the fantasy themes in the SDN Forums. Conversations about what it takes to be a doctor do not always follow the same patterns, such as conversations in the INTGH and \"Team SDN\" fantasies. The WIT fantasy theme leads to discussions about valid reasons for 79 being a doctor, the sacrifice involved in practicing medicine, the financial side of being a doctor, and the importance of self-fortitude in medical school. While many different fantasy types exist in the WIT fantasy, they all relate to the central topic of what it takes to be an effective doctor or to complete medical school. The majority of the discussions in the WIT fantasy relate to the SDN community's idea of what a real doctor is. The pre-test discussed earlier in this thesis identified \"Real Doctors\" as a fantasy theme on its own. The pre-test results suggest that doctors should be committed to their position and value helping others. The idea of a \"real doctor\" (or the doctor that the SDN community hopes to be) who is committed to helping others is important to the SDN Forums community, as it re-appears in this extended analysis as well. However, an analysis of hundreds of threads (as opposed to less than fifty in the pre-test), reveals that discussions on what makes a \"real doctor\" should not stand on their own as a fantasy theme. They mostly reinforce the larger and better-developed WIT fantasy theme. Instead, the discussion of what makes a real doctor works well alongside discussions of sacrifice and what goes on in the \"real world.\" All three of these fantasy types contain common symbolic cues such as \"commitment,\" \"inspire,\" and \"reality.\" Several examples of the \"real doctors\" fantasy type occur within the WIT fantasy theme. In a thread on what most excites the SDN community about becoming a doctor, several members post about inspiring other people to follow their dreams. These individuals explain that the doctors who have \"what it takes\" are driven not only to help themselves but also to help others. The symbolic cue \"inspire\" is used repeatedly in these threads. Many of the posters on the SDN Forums see real doctors as individuals who are interested in social change and helping others. flaahless states the following as a reason 80 that he or she is excited about the future: \"Being in a position to redefine what ?cool? is to urban youth, and hopefully inspiring kids to follow their dreams\". This statement changes the focus of the conversation from the joke posts of being able to impress women to a serious discussion on the opportunity that doctors have to change the world. The posters seem to take this opportunity seriously; one poster in particular turns the discussion to what it takes for doctors or medical students to inspire others. This poster, decafplease, states: I want to prove to my little bro that there is life beyond the street. I want him to want to be just a little like me so he can pick himself up by the bootstraps and realize his potential. I want my messed up friends from childhood to see that if I can do it, they can, too. Posters such as decafplease note that \"real\" doctors show a desire to serve others and inspire the community to reach greater heights. The \"real doctors help others\" fantasy type also takes place in a discussion on black pre-medical students. DoctaJay (a medical student) states that \"you are more likely to see a black female at a interview than a black male. That just means that we have to make it so it will inspire more black males that they can make it also.\" Others posters share this sentiment. Newton Bohr MD replies with the following post: \"Sup Jay, I have seen you [sic] diary and, I think you are doing a great job ? Keep up the good work.\" The notion of real doctors needing to value servitude in order to be successful is further expressed in a thread on individuals who are losing interest in their pre-medical or medical school programs. In this thread, the SDN Forums community is quick to establish the WIT fantasy theme through the use of the \"real doctors\" fantasy type. The symbolic cue \"help\" is used repeatedly, showing evidence of a shared fantasy type. 81 DeadCactus states the following: \"Basically, I want to be a physician because it gives me the freedom to help people and society on multiple levels as well as satisfy my own.\" Immediately following this statement (which starts a different fantasy chain than that of the original poster), SDN members reply with similar posts. Showing several of these posts is necessary in order to prove the depth of this fantasy type's acceptance. Following DeadCactus' comment, three posts in a row use the symbolic cue \"help\" to discuss what a real doctor should value. RapplixGmed states that, \"Helping sick people gets my endorphins going.\" gatorsbball replies with the following: \"I like science and want to help people.\" While these posts are useful for their demonstration of a symbolic cue related to the WIT fantasy theme, a better-developed reply on what real doctors should do comes from the following poster. Lawliet2008 states the following: I want to be a doctor so that I can be able to help sick people who have no one else to turn to in the way that I think is best. There are some really bad docs where I live. One of them came into the room shaking his head and told my mother \"I'm sorry, but all of these tests indicate that you are deaf\" which she is not and had only come in complaining about her knee. Another perscribed [sic] me some acute arthritis medication for my minor tennis elbow. Lawliet2008's post not only uses the symbolic cue \"help\" to continue the fantasy chain on real doctors valuing servitude, it also gives a personal example of what a real doctor is not. As noted in the \"Team SDN\" fantasy theme and the OPM fantasy theme, the SDN Forums community is more willing to accept a personal story as proof of which values they should share, so Lawliet2008's post contains more credibility than other posts in the thread. The discussion of what real doctors should value continues with the SDN Forums' fantasy type of medicine not being about making money. This fantasy type is marked by 82 symbolic cues such involving money such as \"in it for the money\" or \"not about the money,\" or \"won't be rich.\" Posters commonly share the WIT fantasy when other posters express that they are concerned with the financial aspect of being a doctor. The posters who share the WIT fantasy theme suggest that being a doctor is no longer about making money and that if that is the only motivating factor for an individual, then he or she will not have what it takes to succeed. In a thread on \"getting rich\" in medicine, several posters argue about whether doctors actually make what they should make. This argument is ended when Law2Doc, a medical student, expresses the financial aspect of the WIT fantasy. Law2Doc states that, \"This path is simply not about the money. You can expect to be comfortable, but not necessarilly [sic] rich.\" This post starts a new fantasy chain in which members express that the desire to be a doctor helps a medical student do well, not a desire for a paycheck. A post from JaggerPlate summarizes this sentiment: I feel that these types of threads always miss out on the biggest core of the monetary issue .... If you want to go into medicine, nothing else is going to cut it. I personally think I could go into business, make great money, but look back at my life at 40 and be unhappy with the fact that I really didn't push to do what I love. I think that if you truly want to go into medicine, then there isn't a choice. The posts from Law2Doc and JaggerPlate both express the fantasy type of medicine not being about the money, while arguing for what it takes to stay focused in medical school. Further evidence of the \"not about the money\" aspect of the WIT fantasy theme comes from a thread in which a student explains that he or she is \"burned out\" on trying to be a doctor. This thread almost mirrors the thread referenced in the previous paragraph, even though the two threads took place days apart from each other and 83 included different posters. The first example from the thread on giving up on becoming a doctor comes from james1988. james1988's post, like JaggerPlate's post on compensation for doctors, explains what it takes to stay focused on becoming a doctor. james1988 suggests the following: there are many professions out there that are far more lucrative than medicine, so if lucre is your prime motivation, i would strongly discourage you from pursuing medicine. if however, you have a passion to pursue medicine, then go for it, because in the end of the day, passion will be the only thing that will get you through the arduous path of attrition to becoming a doctor. james1988's statement on what a medical student should desire is echoed by other posters. For example, mc4435 tells the original poster to \"(s)top thinking about all the years and definitely stop thinking about money.\" The WIT fantasy theme suggests that individuals should be motivated by a passion for helping others, not by money. The self-fortitude fantasy type is directly related to the idea of practicing medicine is not about the money and helps reinforce the WIT fantasy theme. In the self-fortitude fantasy type, a stock scenario develops in which original posters explain that they are unsure of some of the decisions that they have made and how these decisions will affect their grades or their relationships with their parents. This scenario ends with SDN Forums members explaining that these individuals will have to be more confident in themselves and their decisions in order to be successful. The SDN Forums community expresses that an individual must be self-motivated in order to have what it takes to become a doctor. Among several examples, one particular example from a thread on an individual who has second thoughts on attending medical school stands out as being the most relevant to the WIT fantasy. In this thread, several posters use the symbolic cues \"commit\" or \"commitment\" to explain their shared 84 understanding of how the best medical students accomplish their goals. AdeadLois (listed as a medical student and a member of more than two years) states that, \"Everyone makes their own career decisions differently. But given the bottleneck associated with med school admissions, you have to be 100% committed when you're applying, for better or worse.\" This sentiment of self-fortitude being important is shared by lsumedgirl (also listed as a medical student), who explains, \"So, yes, it is scary... lots of new things to learn (and I'm not just talking about the material), totally different routines, and a major commitment [sic].\" Both posters use a variation of the symbolic cue \"commit\" to share the WIT fantasy. One final example of the self-fortitude fantasy type as a means of expressing the WIT fantasy comes from a thread in which the original poster explains that he or she is trying to persuade his or her parents on the issue of deferring admission to a medical school for a year. Several posters note that an individual who has what it takes to be a doctor should not be concerned or motivated by other people's opinions and should instead be confident in his or her choices. Jolie South, an assistant moderator on the SDN Forums, expresses regret for losing focus on his or her goals in the past. Jolie South states that, \"i [sic] let my parents bully me in a few situations like this in the past and i wish i had listened to myself and done what i [sic] wanted.\" While Jolie South's post lays the foundation for the self-fortitude fantasy type by suggesting that medical students should only listen to themselves, a post from Begaster effectively summarizes how self- fortitude relates to the WIT fantasy. Begaster states that, \"It's kind of terrifying that people who are afraid of disapproval from their parents are going to be responsible for the well-being of others.\" Begaster's post uses the symbolic cue \"responsible\" to show 85 what should really matter to a doctor or medical student: helping the patient. Doctors are required to make stressful, high-stakes decisions, and many members of the SDN Forums note that doctors must rely solely on themselves to make the best possible decision. Thus, the self-fortitude fantasy type is important in the WIT fantasy theme. The final aspect or fantasy type in the WIT fantasy theme relates to the sacrifices that pre-medical students, medical students, and doctors must make. This aspect of the WIT fantasy theme occurs when posters share stories (or participate in dramas) about not having time for a social life. Aside from the word \"sacrifice,\" no specific symbolic cues exist for this fantasy type because the sacrifices that the SDN Forums community describes vary. Still, a central theme of posters not being able to do something that most people their ages are doing is the greatest sign of the \"school is life\" fantasy type. A simple example comes from a thread on music recommendations. psipsina (listed as a medical student) replies to a music recommendation with the following comment: \"Hey thanks for the headsup [sic], unfortunately I'll be studying for shelfs but my Husband and friends are gonna go.\" psipsina's post, which mentions the idea of sacrifice, sets the tone for more detailed examples of another thread. A thread for SDN members who believe that their relationships might not work due to medical school provides several clear examples of the \"school is life\" aspect of the WIT fantasy theme. In this thread, kedrin creates a fantasy chain focusing on the idea of the sacrifices of a medical student. kedrin states the following: \"I feel like i am placing a speed bump in the way of her career. I would do anything for her, including pass on medical school although i dont [sic] think it would ever come to that.\" The use of the term \"speed bump\" makes kedrin's post an example of the WIT fantasy theme. Terms 86 and phrases such as \"speed bump\" and \"holding him/her back\" are commonly used in threads with stock scenarios involving sacrifice. Although kedrin expresses an interest in potentially giving up his or her career, some posters reinforce the idea that sacrifice is what it takes to succeed in medicine. In this case, some posters even feel that it might be necessary to sacrifice having a relationship. For example, pride4jc727 states that, \"The moral of the story is not to get involved in serious relationships that can interfere with your ability to achieved the best possible career that you can obtain. It might be old-fashioned, but I believe in it.\" pride4jc727 makes this post more credible by using a personal story (not present in the section included in this thesis) and claiming that he or she \"believes\" in the sentiment expressed in the post. fireflygirl also asserts that relationships should not be a medical student's top priority. fireflygirl makes the following statement: He has never stopped me from following my dream and I haven't given up mine either. I didn't chose [sic] a school I got into near him because I felt like the school that was near me in Philadelphia was a better fit for me. We both think that now is the time to work on our education and when we are ready, and if it still works out, we plan to stick it out and one of us will follow the other one. But for now, nothing is worth our future and education and we plan to focus on that now and be committed to each other as well. Our relationship takes a lot of work but we make sacrifices for each other and so far it has worked out really well. Like pride4jc727, fireflygirl makes his or her post more credible by using a personal example. It is also worth noting that fireflygirl actually uses the symbolic cue \"sacrifice\" when discussing how his or her relationship works. The \"school is life\" fantasy type is used by individuals who believe in medical school being the most important thing in a student's life. 87 Thus, the WIT fantasy theme consists of the following fantasy types: real doctors, \"not about the money,\" self-fortitude, and personal sacrifice. The real doctors fantasy type appeared as a fantasy theme in the pre-test, but further analysis in this expanded study shows that it is better-suited as an aspect of the greater WIT fantasy theme. The real doctors fantasy type still describes what the SDN Forums' ideal doctor does that sets him or her apart from other doctors or medical students. The notion of medical students not entering their careers for the money is also prevalent in the WIT fantasy theme; in this fantasy type, individuals talk about the financial realities of becoming a doctor. The remaining fantasy types, self-fortitude and personal sacrifice, describe the personal qualities that ideal medical students should possess. The self-fortitude fantasy type, for example, asserts that individuals should make their own decisions and not be forced into career moves based on their parents' decisions. Finally, some posters express the personal sacrifice fantasy type in discussions on why they are missing opportunities to do \"normal\" activities such as attending concerts or taking vacations. As noted in the WIT introductory paragraph, the WIT fantasy theme includes the most fantasy types of all the fantasy themes in the SDN Forums. This fantasy theme is prevalent in the communication of SDN members, as members express it in many different contexts. The WIT fantasy theme is also important because it provides evidence of individuals turning to the SDN Forums for serious advice. Many of the threads that use the WIT theme are related to important decisions such as quitting a pre-medical program or deciding on the future of a serious relationship, making it one of the more significant fantasies in the SDN Forums. 88 What Really Matters (WRM) Fantasy The final fantasy present in the SDN Forums displays an unexpected side of the community. This fantasy is especially surprising considering that the WIT fantasy (detailed in the previous section) suggests that being a good student and doctor are the only things that matter. This final fantasy theme, the WRM fantasy, explains how the SDN Forums community feels about life outside of medicine. In this fantasy theme, members discuss issues such as relationships, time usage, the human experience, and shared fears. One of most prevalent aspects of the WRM fantasy is time usage. Common symbolic cues include \"time,\" \"waste of time,\" and \"worth.\" Most conversations related to the \"time\" fantasy type share a stock scenario in which a poster seeks advice from the SDN community on what he or she should do in a situation involving dating or school. This stock scenario ends with multiple posters telling the original poster that his or her time is more valuable than to go through that situation. This advice is interesting because it appears in so many threads in the SDN Forums, suggesting that the busy schedules of these pre-medical and medical students makes them value the use of their time perhaps more than other college students. An example of the \"time\" fantasy type comes from a discussion about dating in the All-Students Forum. In this thread, the original poster (listed as a medical student) explains that his or her fianc?e does not want to move to a new place because she loves her current place of work. The poster explains that if his fianc?e chooses to stay for her job, it will lead to a long distance relationship, and that the fianc?e feels that moving is not worth only seeing each other briefly each day. The poster states that, \"She feels that 89 it is not worth giving up a job she loves to see me for just a few hours a day.\" The original poster's use of the symbolic cues \"worth\" and \"just a few hours a day\" effectively start a fantasy chain built around time usage. Kubed (also listed as a medical student) suggests that perhaps the limited amount of time with a loved one might make the original poster use his or her time more efficiently. Kubed states that, \"When you only have a limited time to see each other, you end up spending it having fun rather than doing stuff that annoys each other.\" Other posters continue the chain by suggesting that the original poster should always be able to \"make time\" for his or her fianc?e. Two more examples of the \"time\" fantasy type in the WRM fantasy come from discussions on plans related to medical school. In a thread on the SDN community's plans for the upcoming summer, SBBunny ponders taking a lengthy trip. However, SBBunny questions if the relaxing trip would actually be a good use of time in noting that, \"I wonder if my time would be better spent earning some money instead of spending all my savings.\" Drogba replies to this post by using the \"time\" fantasy type. Drogba states that, \"Your time is worth more than whatever miniscule wage you can command at this point in your life unless you really need the money to survive.\" In using the symbolic cue \"worth\" in association with \"Time,\" Drogba is attempting to reinforce the commonly shared value that a medical student's free time is too valuable to waste on work-related plans. Drogba's sentiment is echoed throughout the rest of the multiple page thread, as several members talk about maximizing every second of their summer vacations before starting another challenging year of school. The \"time\" fantasy type is also expressed in a thread mentioned earlier on Caribbean schools. The majority of the SDN community does not believe that Caribbean 90 schools are as good as American schools, as they go as far as to call Caribbean schools a \"waste of time.\" Atahaulpa11 describes the situation as being a waste of time because graduates sometimes are not able to gain admission into residency programs after leaving Caribbean medical schools. Atahaulpa11 states that individuals who go to an American school \"do not have to deal with this frustration or spend more time trying to get into a residency program.\" This post begins the fantasy chain of wasting time in a medical program, while the following post solidifies it. Rotinaj uses the symbolic cue \"time waste\" in stating the following: \"I agree with Atahualpa11. It is not a guarantee, and there are a lot of IMGs working in labs that just can't get it as a doctor. Don't waste four years of your life like that...\". While the first examples from the \"time\" fantasy type in the WRM fantasy were about short-term situations, the Caribbean school example shows that the WRM fantasy can also describe the proper use of time for a full four years. Being accepted into a residency program is \"what really matters\" in this case. Similar to the \"time\" fantasy type, the \"final hurrah\" fantasy type is also relevant to the development of the WRM fantasy theme. This fantasy type focuses on the idea of pre-medical students effectively using their time before they become medical students or doctors. It also commonly involves discussions in which pre-medical students express how they hope to keep certain sides of themselves in tact while in medical school. For example, one student suggests that he wants to continue playing music while in medical school. Symbolic cues in the \"final hurrah\" fantasy type include phrases such as \"my last _____ before medical school,\" and \"free time,\" and \"time off.\" An example of how the \"final hurrah\" fantasy type reinforces the WRM fantasy theme also comes from a thread on the SDN community's summer plans. In this thread, 91 several posters discuss the trips that they want to take before they start medical school (often using the \"time\" fantasy type discussed in the preceding paragraphs). Lindinite clearly refers to the idea of a \"final hurrah\" before medical school in stating \"I'm going to India for a short trip and shooting my last film before med school!\". Maxprime, takes part in the same fantasy as Lindinite in describing his or her summer plans. The poster explains that he or she will have one last opportunity to be himself or herself before starting medical school. Maxprime makes the following post: I think I may do the one thing I won't be able to do for a long time. I want to get up every day and work out, then spend the day at the pool, then go home to drink beer and play Xbox with my friends before we never see each other again. Maxprime and Lindinite are aware, as are many other posters, that medical school will completely change their lives, so they choose to focus on what really matters to them in this stage of their lives while there is still time. A post from another thread on medical school summarizes this section well. Orthodoc40 (listed as a medical student) gives the SDN community the following advice: \"the people who say they are most excited about the time between now & when they start? You got it right - enjoy it now!!!\" Other threads include similar sentiments of doing something for the last few times before losing one's free time in medical school. As noted earlier, SDN members are concerned with being themselves while in medical school. A particularly long WRM fantasy chain exists in a thread for music majors who plan to attend medical school. In this fantasy chain, multiple members discuss how they hope to still play music while in medical school. The Doctor states, \"I'm hoping I can keep up my piano in medical school, maybe find a teacher and do a lesson once a month.\" This dramatizing message begins the fantasy chain. darkraven replies with, \"I'ld [sic] probably like to keep up with 92 music ... might be a little hard during clinicals and residency but we'll see what happens.\" darkraven's post reinforces that medical school will not afford the posters with many opportunities for music. The next reply comes from GuitarHero1, who seems somewhat more optimistic in his or her post before ending it with the symbolic cue \"if there's time.\" GuitarHero1's full post reads as \"if anyone plays any instruments and will or is attending SLU, I'd be willing to jam (you know, if there is any free time).\" A final example comes from Luxian, who explains how he or she will miss playing music. Luxian states \"I'm going to miss it a lot! I know I won't be able to do as much, but I hope I can do some.\" Many individuals who express the \"final hurrah\" aspect of the WRM fantasy theme believe that they will be losing a part of themselves and their identities upon starting medical school. The next relevant aspect of the WRM fantasy theme relates to the SDN Forums community's views on relationships and family. Symbolic cues in this fantasy theme include as \"normal,\" \"love,\" and \"worth it.\" The pre-test discussed earlier in this thesis noted the presence of a \"Supporting Actor\" fantasy theme, in which the SDN community values relationships but expects their dating partners to be willing to play the \"support\" role in the relationship. The more in depth analysis of the SDN Forums for this thesis reveals that relationships are still important to the SDN Forums community, as they often discuss dating issues. The analysis of many more threads reveals that the SDN community values relationships even when dating partners are too far away to support them in traditional ways such as cooking and cleaning. These individuals simply want to be with the people that they care about. For example, in a thread on finding a way to make relationships work while in medical school, one poster states the following: 93 Hopefully we can work somethin out where we can be physically together, but if not, we'll work out something so we can see each other as much as possible. I'm sure that neither of us is going to let this separate us, but it is still frustrating. Love is \"what really matters\" to this poster. Dookter also expresses that he or she finds it absolutely necessary to see his or her wife as often as possible. Dookter states that, \"It's great to have someone there all the time to just live life with. It is easy as a medical student to get caught up in things and forget to just be a normal person.\" This post continues the argument that relationships are worth pursing while in medical school. Finally, kedrin summarizes this argument in a different thread by stating that, \"It has always been my assumption that if someone truly loves you that they will do anything to be with them.\" The WRM fantasy theme renegotiates the values of the SDN community. The WRM fantasy theme does this by establishing that individuals can and should date while in medical school and that relationships are worth more than just cooking and cleaning services (as discussed in the preceding paragraph). In the WIT fantasy theme, many posters suggest that for an individual to be successful in medical school, he or she must put school first. Some posters take this argument further in suggesting that one should not date at all while in medical school. The WRM fantasy theme argues against placing medical school on a higher level than one's relationship. In the same dating thread discussed in the preceding paragraph, a poster states \"i did not expect so many people to say put your careers first and relationship second.\" He or she adds the following: I do not think a life or a career should be such a one sided view. I do not think having a life beyond work neglects your patients. In most ways i see it supporting it, i do not know about most people here but i honestly can say i need some emotional backing and time to relax from work/school. I could not see my self practicing medicine without having those two sides to my life, performing a 94 balancing act. I guess im just trying to say that i need both a great career and a relationship in order to be successful in both. Other posters respond favorably to this renegotiation of values. Concubine replies with a criticism of the SDN members who feel that dating is not possible in medical school. Concubine continues the WRM fantasy chain by using the symbolic cue \"human.\" In a direct response to a poster who advises the community not to start serious relationships, Concubine states \"I would rather be human.\" The thread continues with other posters renegotiating what really matters to them by expressing how important it is to date and have an active social life outside of medical school. Instatewaiter (listed as a medical student), takes one last jab at the small minority of posters who suggest that dating is impossible during medical school. Instatewaiter states that, \"Nothing says awesome like being single for 10 years straight during your prime. I swear you wont regret it.\" While this post is humorous and effective in establishing the group's shared values, one last comment truly embodies the love aspect of the WRM fantasy. foster033 explains why the WRM fantasy is important to the SDN community in claiming the following: \"Having a career and following your dreams is important, but so are the people you love. Some people would rather give up a job than a person.\" The \"love\" fantasy type is expressed more often than the idea of work being more important than life. As in the pre-test discussed earlier in this thesis, some examples of the WRM fantasy theme are exposed through observing the shared fears of the SDN community. This reasoning proved itself in the pre-test, as individuals who feared not having time to date obviously saw dating as very important. In two separate threads on the things that 95 the SDN community fears most, posters ultimately reinforced the ideas discussed in the WRM fantasy theme. The fact that these individuals' fears reinforce the WRM fantasy makes the fear fantasy type a relevant sub-theme within the WRM discussion. SDN posters are most afraid of people or things that can take away what really matters to them. One of the most commonly expressed fears is the loss of humanity as a result of a career in medicine. The following two examples show how this fear reinforces the need for humanity and freedom that is expressed in the previous paragraphs on dating in medical school. scrubsaresexy claims the following: \"I think my biggest fear is not being able to have a family, or if I do have a family, being a bad mother because I'm always work.\" TexasMD2B shares this fear of not being human in posing the following question ?is ?losing my sense of humanity? a viable answer?\". These posts further demonstrate the depth of the WRM fantasy theme, as they use symbolic cues such as \"human\" to note how important a social life is for medical students. The fear of having wasted time in medical school is also shared by many of the SDN Forums members. An individual who is being reassigned the name Marty due to using his name in his post states the following as his greatest fear: Brain Tumor (Dr. Greene style), or schizophrenia, or anything that ruins my mind [sic] The thought of all my hard work, sacrifices of my time and family, not to mention thousands of dollars of debt and at the end of it all, I lose my one most valuable asset. While this fear is technically about losing one's mental capacities, it ultimately refers to having wasted valuable years of ones youth for nothing. As noted earlier, the members of the SDN Forums believe that using ones time well is very important, so Marty's post effectively addresses that issue. Another post that talks about the fear of wasting time 96 comes from Chaser08. Chaser08 gives the following example of wasting time as a fear in the WRM fantasy theme: Picking the wrong specialty. I know you can change, but I'd rather not spend years in one specialty, deciding I hate it, and then having to pick another one. I've met people who've done residency and 2 or 3 fellowships before getting it right. Crazy thing was, the guy finally decided he wanted to do surgery, which is not easy to get to from other specialties. So he's like 40 and still in training. Chaser08's post is effective not only because it reinforces a shared fantasy but also because it uses a personal story to demonstrate the fantasy. One final WRM fantasy theme is the fear of litigation. Many posters on the SDN Forums discuss how they are afraid of making a mistake for moral and legal reasons. Lawyers are the only people that the SDN community can agree upon as \"the enemy,\" as they are mentioned in threads with topics such as finances, dating, and shared fears. This fear of litigation is relevant to the discussion of the WRM fantasy theme because the SDN community realizes that lawyers can take away what matters to them most. For example, in the same thread referenced earlier on shared fears, etf simply posts \"lawyers.\" This post starts a social drama, in which Law2Doc suggests that a fear of lawyers is actually a fear of making a mistake. Law2Doc states that saying an individual's greatest fear is litigation is \"just another way of saying your biggest fear is screwing up, except that you are more concerned with the impact on you than the patients.\" Other members of the forum do not accept this breach in the fantasy, however. macgyver22 places reinforces that lawyers are enemies in stating that Actually its not the same. Many lawsuits have nothing to do with 'screwing up'. Negligence need not occur for a lawsuit [sic] to be filed. You only need an angry patient. You don't need malpractice to win a lawsuit, you only need to convince a an uneducated ignorant ( as in no knowledge of the subject and no experience working in the field) jury there was malpractice. If all lawsuits were truly the 97 result of physican negligence, there would be far fewer lawsuits and much less lawyer loathing. macgyver22's statement that many lawsuits occur for corrupt reasons is accepted by other members of the forum, and the shared fantasy of lawyers being evil is once again established within the community. Although several more examples of SDN members discussing the serious sides of litigation exist, most discussions on lawyers being evil occur in a somewhat friendly, joking manner. For example, in a thread referenced earlier in this thesis on saving a potentially long distance relationship with a lawyer, one poster replies with the following statement: \"All of the risks, none of the benefits. Especially if you're married to a lawyer.\" Other members share this sentiment as well as the thread progresses. To summarize, the following four fantasy types are significant in the WRM fantasy theme: time, \"final hurrah,\" the value of relationships, and fear of losing one's career. The concept of time is important to the SDN Forums community, as members express it in the time fantasy type and the fear of losing one's career fantasy type. Members often note that they are concerned about maximizing their time use and fear that they might waste their precious free time. Alternatively, the fear of losing one's career fantasy type also reinforces the importance of time, as many members note that their greatest fear is losing their career due to an accident or a lawsuit. Members note that years of their lives would have been wasted in medical school if they lost their jobs. Finally, posters express the value that they place on family, friends, and lovers in the \"final hurrah\" and relationship fantasy types. These fantasy types are marked by posters stating that love is more important than medical school. 98 The majority of the SDN Forums community is interested in living a healthy, normal life outside of their careers. This desire to live like other twenty-somethings is discussed through examples of maximizing free time and insisting on having a dating presence while in medical school. As these things are important to the members of the SDN Forums community, they also are present in the discussions of what the community most fears in becoming a doctor. Summary of Analysis The version of Bormann's (1972b) fantasy theme analysis used in this thesis provides five fantasy themes that effectively describe the SDN Forums community. These themes, \"I NEED to Go Here\" (INTGH), \"Team SDN,\" \"Oh Pre-Meds\" (OPM), \"What It Takes\" (WIT), and \"What Really Matters\" (WRM), cover a wide variety of subjects but all give examples of what the community values and dislikes. INTGH looks at the qualities that the SDN community thinks a good medical school should have. Similarly, the WIT fantasy includes discussion on what makes a good doctor as well as how one succeeds at medical school. The \"Team SDN\" fantasy is shared when members advise each other during trying times. One of the main purposes of members sharing this fantasy is to assure each other that they are \"not alone.\" The next fantasy is not as positive in nature but tells a great deal about the personal traits that SDN members admire and dislike. This fantasy, the OPM fantasy, is used when posters want to differentiate themselves from typical pre-medical students. Many members of the SDN Forums feel that pre-medical students are \"lame\" and do not know how to enjoy themselves. Finally, the WRM fantasy is perhaps the most interesting of all the fantasies in the SDN Forums. In this fantasy, members explain that while their 99 medical school and career responsibilities are important, enjoying life and having friends and loved ones is more important. This theme is usually expressed when some posters assert that dating and socializing are bad ideas while in medical school. As a final note to this analysis, each of the fantasy themes includes several fantasy types that help reinforce the values of the community. Two of the fantasy types were actually fantasy themes in the pre-test discussed earlier in this thesis. These two fantasy types, \"real doctors,\" and \"the importance of relationships\" appear in the WIT and WRM themes, respectively. It is important to note that these fantasy types were discussed as fantasy types and not themes because the larger scope of this thesis showed that they actually had a smaller role than originally expected. In conclusion, through careful analysis of hundreds of threads in the SDN Forums, five fantasy themes describe a great deal of these pre-medical and medical students' communication. The conclusions section includes an explanation of the overarching rhetorical vision that ties these five themes together. 100 VI. CONCLUSIONS This thesis successfully uses Bormann's (1972b) fantasy theme analysis to find five fantasy themes in the SDN Forums, a group of Internet forums for every kind of medical student and doctor. After reviewing the literature on relevant topics such as fantasy theme analysis, symbolic convergence theory, and uncertainty reduction theory, the thesis moves into a description of the methodology with a pre-test for reinforcement. The methodology uses a systematic sample to select hundreds of threads from the ?Pre-Allopathic? (for future medical doctors) and ?All-Students? (for any member of the SDN Forums to discuss any topic) sections of the SDN Forums. After reviewing these threads, categories emerged based on similar belief and value sets of the posters. These categories were further narrowed to five fantasy themes with varying fantasy types to support them. The five fantasy themes are \"I NEED to Go Here\" (INTGH), \"Team SDN,\" \"Oh Pre-Meds\" (OPM), \"What It Takes\" (WIT), and \"What Really Matters\" (WRM). The INTGH fantasy occurs when members discuss the schools that they most want to attend. Topics range from what makes a school perfect to the specific admissions requirements for different schools. This fantasy also allows for posters to show desperation by asking other posters to \"give up their spots\" in medical school to more deserving people. The \"Team SDN\" fantasy serves two main purposes: to build camaraderie within the SDN community and to reinforce the utility of the SDN Forums. In this fantasy, posters who 101 feel uncertainty about medical school receive reassurance from other posters who have been \"in the same boat.\" The next fantasy, OPM, is not as positive in nature as \"Team SDN,\" but it does create shared consciousness in the forums. In the OPM fantasy, individuals trade stories about the stereotypical \"pre-meds\" whom they have encountered during their careers. Posters establish what behaviors are acceptable from pre-medical students in this fantasy. Finally, the WIT and WRM fantasies tell a great deal about the SDN community. The WIT fantasy establishes the heroic doctor whom most of the SDN community hopes to be. In addition to establishing the qualities that ideal doctors should have, the WIT fantasy also features advice from medical students and residents who want younger pre-medical students to understand \"what it takes\" to succeed in medicine. The WRM fantasy coincides with the WIT fantasy because it establishes the community's shared villain: lawyers and anyone else who might take away a doctor's career. This revelation comes from threads in which SDN members post about their family and loved ones who matter more to them than their careers. Because the community values its time with loved ones so much, members greatly fear losing their career because it would mean that they had wasted valuable time in their twenties that they could have spent with their friends and family. As noted in the research questions, shared fears are telling of what is important to a group, making this finding significant. The results of this thesis suggest two things: Bormann's (1972b) fantasy theme analysis is effective for large-scale studies on Internet communities, and communication in Internet communities can serve as a substitute to interpersonal communication with advisers or other individuals (parents, friends) who usually give advice. This section of the thesis will further discuss these two key developments of the analysis of the SDN 102 Forums. However, first it looks at the rhetorical vision present in the SDN Forums as instrumental to understanding the results of the fantasy theme analysis. The conclusions section will also look at the potential problems in this study and suggest some areas for future research. As Bormann (1985) notes, a rhetorical vision is \"a unified putting-together of the various scripts which gives the participants a broader view of things? (p. 8). Evidence of a rhetorical vision is proof of shared values and goals within a community. Rhetorical visions link all of the fantasy themes and types in a way that makes sense of concepts that sometimes do not seem to work together. This thesis is no exception, as the rhetorical vision present in the SDN Forums shows shared consciousness in the members' communication of complicated fantasy themes such as INTGH and OPM. It effectively relates all five of the fantasy themes and explains why some of the SDN members go to each other for major advice. It's Still Worth It (ISWI) Rhetorical Vision - A Look at the Values of the SDN Forums The ISWI rhetorical vision explains that while many problems are associated with going to medical school and becoming a doctor, it is still a worthwhile pursut. ISWI is ultimately quite similar to the rhetorical vision found in the pre-test on the SDN Forums. The pre-test rhetorical vision \"It Is Difficult But Possible\" (IIDBP) asserts that the SDN community understands that becoming a doctor is difficult but is concerned with motivating one another to continue working. Like the IIDBP vision, the ISWI vision is marked by members telling each other to \"stay positive\" and \"keep trying.\" However, the ISWI vision is better developed, as it consistently appeared in the three hundred threads analyzed in this thesis. 103 The ISWI rhetorical vision effectively summarizes the values shared by the SDN Forums community. Members who stress over being admitted to medical school and describe the process as a gamble ultimately go through that stress because they feel that it is still worth it. Members who express the WIT fantasy theme by talking about missing concerts and other fun events to study also explain that the work is ultimately worth it in the end, as they will have the opportunity to help others. The reach of the ISWI vision is also reinforced by the fears expressed in the WRM fantasy theme. Most of the members in the SDN Forums fear things such as health problems or lawyers who can take the profession away from them, making the work of medical school not worth it. Still, none of the members in the threads used in this thesis report having gone through litigation or debilitating health situations; they simply shared thoughts on what it would be like to lose everything. The ISWI rhetorical vision is reinforced predominately by senior members of the forums who list themselves as medical students or moderators. These individuals have a frame of reference for the experiences of a medical student and often encourage younger members not to lose sight of the end goal of becoming a doctor. While some individuals complain about issues such as unpleasant medical students or rising malpractice insurance prices in the OPM and WIT fantasy themes, senior members tend to argue that the salaries and peer relationships are still good enough to make medical school worth attending. The \"Team SDN\" fantasy theme especially represents the shared values of the ISWI vision, as members congratulate each other on being accepted and talk about how exciting it is to move closer to a career in medicine (even with the sacrifices). 104 One of the most important aspects of the ISWI rhetorical vision is that it details the shared values and goals in the SDN Forums. By studying the examples in each of the five fantasy themes explained in the analysis section of this thesis, one can conclude that the members of the SDN Forums feel a great amount of pride in their medical accomplishments. This pride is also evident in threads described in the INTGH fantasy, in which individuals congratulate other members who have been accepted into medical school but note that they are jealous. The jealousy that some members feel comes from the fact that personal accomplishments are valued so highly on the SDN Forums. Personal accomplishments are routinely idealized in the WIT fantasy, where members sometimes brag while complaining about the amount of work that they have to do in medical school. Accomplishing things on one's own is a rite of passage for members of the SDN Forums, as some senior members tend to discuss how pre-medical students do not understand what actual medial students have to do. The desire to achieve great things is a large part of every fantasy except OPM, where the members of the SDN Forums reflect on \"pre-meds\" and even parody the group to which they belong. The heroes and villains identified in the ISWI rhetorical vision also help explain the SDN Forums community. The main hero type is the \"real doctor\" described in the WIT fantasy. This ideal doctor often is not someone that the SDN members know in person; he or she is simply who they hope to be. For the SDN community, this superhero doctor is someone who values servitude more than money and is genunitely interested in learning more about his or her profession. As noted earlier, members use the symbolic cue \"help others\" repeatedly when discussing why they want to be doctors or what they admire in the medical profession. A key example of this hero type comes from both the 105 \"Team SDN\" fantasy and the WIT fantasy, in a thread about the racial dynamics of medical school. After a poster notes that he or she wants to inspire others to follow in his or her footsteps, many other posters note that the desire to help others is admirable and express a similar interest in inspiring others. The \"real doctor\" hero type is further expressed in other threads where some individuals suggest that they are not sure they want to attend medical school. This stock scenario ends with members of the SDN Forums building up their \"real doctor\" hero type in explaining that individuals who succeed are completely committed to being a doctor. The \"real doctor\" hero is always committed to his or her work and is not lured away from the profession by lucrative options in other careers. On the subject of money, the greatest villains described in the SDN Forums are lawyers. While it is also notable that \"gunner\" medical students are hated by many SDN members, some posters consider themselves \"gunners,\" so it is difficult to label these individuals as enemies. As noted in the WRM section of the thesis, lawyers are almost always discussed as being evil in the SDN Forums because the SDN community fears what they can do. The SDN Forums community mentions lawyers in a thread on the things they fear the most, where the consensus is that lawyers have the ability to take away what doctors work so hard to accomplish. Also mentioned in the WRM section of the thesis is a thread on making a long distance relationship work. In this thread, the original poster reveals that his or her fianc?e is a lawyer. After this revelation, a few of the posters tell the original poster that it is not worth trying to make a relationship work with a lawyer. Although the derogatory lawyer posts were made in a light-hearted, jesting manner, several members of the SDN Forums found it necessary to attack the 106 original poster's fianc?e's career choice to prove a point. This point is that lawyers and SDN members are not to mix. The only instance of a poster defending a lawyer came from the aptly-named (but respected senior member) Law2Doc, who tried to defend the profession in a thread on what the community fears the most. Significance and Application of Findings Effectiveness of Fantasy Theme Analysis in Internet Communication Although the fantasy theme analysis method has proven to be useful in connecting shared values and thoughts in written communication for over thirty years, not many studies use the method on Internet communication. The relevant fantasy theme analyses of Internet groups are included in the literature review of this thesis and some of them are even used in this thesis' applied methodology. While Internet studies by scholars such as Alem?n (2005) and Perry and Roesch (2004) were useful in developing the methodology for this thesis, they appeared in journals and therefore did not cover the large number (and variety) of threads needed for this thesis. Alem?n and Perry and Roesch's studies focused on specific types of threads or posts, making them not require as many examples as this thesis needed in order to make a convincing argument. As this thesis uses fantasy theme analysis to study the communication of several thousands of people (there were 137,000 members as of March, 2008) on any topic that they discussed for thirty days, it was interesting to see that the method worked as concisely and convincingly as it did. While the thesis was limited to two sections of the SDN Forums, I still feared that the members' conversations might vary too much to find convincing fantasy themes. Not only did the method provide fantasy themes, but it provided enough examples that I had to decide which ideas were prevalent enough to be 107 called fantasy themes and which would have to be developed further or labeled as fantasy types. Also, the systematic sample described by Krippendorff (1980) is effective in fantasy theme analyses, as systematic samples give Internet scholars a great amount of text to analyze without fear of researcher bias. This study's sample yielded conversations ranging from medical school applications to musical tastes and provided me with a fair look at a normal day's communication in the SDN Forums. Thus, this thesis proves the utility of Bormann's (1972b) method. Fantasy theme analysis can be applied to a group as diverse as the SDN Forums' community and still produce convincing fantasy themes; thus, the method should continue to be used. While some scholars might be inclined to choose a method created more recently for a study on technologically mediated communication, Bormann's method can be applied to find the significance in most kinds of communication. Also, this thesis is significant to the fantasy theme analysis methodology because it shows that the method can be used to find themes on a grander scale than most studies use. This thesis, for example, included hundreds of threads. Forum Communities as Advice Communities The second significant finding of this thesis applies more to the actual results of the study than the method itself. The results of this thesis suggest that the members of the SDN Forums do not exclusively seek advice from their college advisers. This finding is instrumental in understanding how pre-medical students reduce uncertainty about being accepted into medical school or surviving internship programs. In addition to perhaps to their advisers, the individuals on the SDN Forums talk to other medical students online. Members consult one another for advice that one might expect forum members to give: 108 thoughts on bands, television shows, and travel destinations. However, the SDN Forums community also asks for advice on long distance relationships, extracurricular activities, and which universities they should attend. The fact that SDN Forums members seek each other's advice on which schools they should attend (and which classes they should take) is one of the most important findings in this thesis. This finding suggests that college advising does not completely address topics that are relevant to the SDN community, meaning that college advisers could learn a great deal from the results of this analysis. The findings of this thesis suggest that universities might need to change their requirements for advising and require all pre-medical majors to speak with advisers more regularly. If this is already the case, perhaps some universities could benefit from creating an Internet forum for their pre-medical students to discuss potential schools to attend and classes to take. This resource could be even more useful if students from outside universities were allowed to read different universities' forums and ask the students questions. By requiring each student to register through his or her university, the anonymity of the SDN Forums would not be present in this new advising system and would allow students to receive accurate advice. College advisers would still have a prominent role in this system by moderating the forums and providing advice when necessary. A large part of the preceding paragraph is speculation on what might help college advising in the future. Still, the reason for this speculation rests on the results of this fantasy theme analysis of thousands of pre-medical and medical students. The findings in fantasy themes such as INTGH and \"Team SDN\" show evidence of SDN members not understanding the admissions process and relying on the advice of anonymous Internet 109 posters. The following paragraphs further analyze how advising fits into the communication in the SDN Forums. One of the most important findings of this thesis is that many individuals use the SDN Forums for making major life decisions. Almost every thread (in the Pre-Allopathic and All-Students Forum sections) is an advice thread. As most of the threads in the SDN Forums exist for individuals to help one another, the most respected posters on the SDN Forums are those with advanced statuses. These individuals have a status that appears under their screen names in every post that they make. As noted earlier, statuses range from \"Pre-Medical\" to \"Medical Doctor.\" A sign of individuals sharing values or goals is for one individual to quote the post of another before replying to it. The individuals who are most commonly supported or accepted are those with a status of \"Medical Student\" or higher. Although these individuals sometimes make fun of younger members, they tend to dispense relevant advice when necessary. Although senior members could potentially lie when giving advice, their advice is not questioned by members of inferior status. The SDN Forums community's interest in status reflects the values of the community. Because the members of the forum idealize doctors and individuals who have \"what it takes,\" they are more likely to listen to the advice of the individuals who are the closest to becoming doctors. Individuals with a high SDN Forums status also tend to start fantasy chains of \"Team SDN,\" as they remind younger members to stay positive and focus on the task of completing their pre-medical work. Not only that, senior members tend to start the fantasy chains of WRM and WIT, as they discuss not worrying about the financial aspects of becoming a doctor and instead spending more time with family and friends. 110 As so many of the threads on the SDN Forums are advice threads, it is worth asking why this community is not asking their college advisers some of these questions. Obviously it is not the responsibility of an adviser to give a college student advice on making a long-distance relationship work, but that type of question is actually in the minority of the questions asked in the SDN Forums. Most of the threads in the SDN Forums ask about extracurricular activities to put on a r?sum? and admissions processes and managing money while in school. The members of the SDN Forums either do not mention their visits to talk with their advisers, or they do not talk to their advisers at all. Many of the threads in the SDN Forums (particularly in the INTGH fantasy) suggest that some of the members of the forum do not understand how to write a letter of introduction, how to interview, what to include in a r?sum?, or how to decide upon a medical school. While senior members of the forums answer most of these confused individuals' questions, it is an interesting trend that perhaps some pre-medical students do not go to their college advisers for major decisions involving medical school. As suggested in the preceding paragraphs it is not clear how the members of the SDN Forums feel about traditional advice from college advisers, as I did not encounter any posts that specifically mentioned them in my research. However, one of the things that attracts a great number of individuals to the SDN community is its reputation for giving excellent advice about medical school. In an example from the \"Team SDN\" fantasy, one poster states the following about the SDN Forums: \"I wish I had found this site a while ago. It would've made my entire process a lot smoother. Good advice on here.\" Similar messages of support for the SDN Forums and the multiple threads asking 111 the community for serious advice show that the thousands of SDN posters feel that the community is one of the best sources of intelligent advice. While thousands of individuals ask for advice on the SDN Forums, this advice is typically informal in nature. The examples in fantasy themes such as INTGH and \"Team SDN\" show that SDN posters often do not reinforce their claims with research or articles. However, SDN members still seem to appreciate the different perspectives offered by the wide variety of advice in each thread. Most of the advice in the SDN Forums suggests that the community desires an \"insider\" look at life as a medical student or resident. While traditional formal college advising most likely still helps the SDN community make decisions, it cannot offer pre-medical students the same perspective that students at other schools can offer. Scholars such as Brown (1985) and Davis (2005) express the significance of storytelling in the process of organizational socialization. One way that individuals reduce uncertainty about an organization or community is through listening to stories from individuals who are members of that organization or community. Organizational socialization scholarship from Cawyer and Friedrich (1998) and Miller and Jablin (1991) further explain the need for uncertainty reduction for new members of an organization. The scholars explain that organizations should offer new or potential members the opportunity to talk with current members of an organization about their experiences. Based on the research of the aforementioned scholars and the results of this fantasy theme analysis, further implications exist for college advising. As the SDN Forums members rely on the informal advice given through stories and examples in threads, perhaps college advisers can add an informal aspect to the formal aspect of their 112 work. For example, many members of the SDN Forums discuss their visits to different schools in the INTGH fantasy theme. These visits to different schools ultimately are similar to recruiting visits and perhaps do not always offer the most realistic view of what it is like to be a student at these schools. Also, many posters mention that they cannot afford to visit more than one school, which severely limits their opportunities to meet other students. It might be useful to have summertime visits from medical students and residents with ties to the university. In these sessions, pre-medical students could ask the medical students questions about the daily experience of being a medical student. Professors should encourage the students to ask any question that interests them and most likely should not be present during the sessions to increase the pre-medical students' comfort levels. While individuals who speak to pre-medical students might not represent every university that interests the pre-medical students, the opportunity to learn about being a medical student would still be useful. Uncertainty Reduction Theory and Organizational Socialization Scholars such as Berger (1979), Berger and Calabrese (1975), Clatterbuck (1979), Gudykunst (1983, 1985), and Kramer (1999) explain the ways that individuals reduce uncertainty. The scholars suggest methods such as asking questions, seeking information, and self-disclosure. As noted in the previous section, most of the threads in the SDN Forums are advice threads. This need for advice suggests that the original posters in most threads experience uncertainty about topics such as choosing medical schools and managing long distance relationships. The SDN posters' need for advice relates to the ISWI rhetorical vision. When posters ask how the SDN community feels about debt or the loss of free time due to becoming a doctor, they are trying to decide if it 113 is still \"worth it\" to become a doctor. These individuals most likely hope to have their uncertainty reduced through reassuring comments from senior members. This thesis expands uncertainty reduction theory by showing that fantasy theme analysis can provide evidence of individuals attempting to reduce uncertainty. Future research could use fantasy theme analysis to study uncertainty in groups ranging from Internet communities to real-life communities. As fantasy theme analysis can lead to the discovery of shared values, goals, and fears, it can potentially help explain the uncertainty that scholars find in their respondents. Understanding a group's goals could also help scholars understand what their respondents want to hear when they seek advice or reassurance. In addition to discussing uncertainty reduction theory, the literature review also discusses organizational socialization research. Jablin (1987) takes a stage-model approach to organizational socialization. The scholar explains that anticipatory socialization is the first step to this process; it takes place when individuals seek information about organizations' cultures and values. Members of the SDN Forums engage in anticipatory socialization by asking individuals from different schools about the unique cultures in their medical school departments. For example, in the INTGH fantasy, posters who hope to decide on a medical school routinely discuss the personalities and climates at different schools. As these individuals typically have not entered the organization (medical school) yet, they are trying to decide if they will easily merge into the organization's culture or if they will have to change their personalities accordingly. The findings of this thesis suggest that the SDN Forums community (and 114 possibly other forum communities) use the Internet as an informal way of socializing themselves into an organization's culture before actually entering the organization. Finally, this thesis suggests that the implementation of fantasy theme analysis in Internet communities could be useful for organizational socialization research. While fantasy theme analysis generally is not used in organizational socialization research, it could be useful in analyzing not only how individuals decide to enter an organization, but also what values they find to be important before entering. These values could be found through the repeated sharing of fantasy types about entering different kinds of organizations. Fantasy theme analysis would also help organizational socialization scholars decide what role Internet groups play in anticipatory socialization. In the SDN Forums, the group's shared values play a large role in helping pre-medical students decide which ideas are accepted or disliked in medical schools. For example, playing the role of a \"gunner\" is not acceptable according to medical students in the OPM fantasy. Medical students help socialize pre-medical students in the SDN Forums by explaining which roles and character traits are better-suited for a new student. Thus, this thesis adds to uncertainty reduction theory and organizational socialization research in several ways. The fantasies shared in the SDN Forums provide new data about the Internet's role in both uncertainty reduction and organizational socialization. Members seek advice in almost every thread, with most of the topics focusing on medical school and its unique culture. Finally, fantasy theme analysis can be applied to uncertainty reduction and organizational socialization research to explain how community values and goals affect both areas of research. Fantasy theme analysis could 115 allow researchers the opportunity to better understand the motivating factors and fears that individuals have when joining new organizations. Potential Problems Although the applied fantasy theme analysis methodology worked in this study, there are a few potentially problematic aspects of this thesis to discuss. One area that causes problems in this thesis is the terminology. As Mohrmann (1982) explains, some scholars use the terms \"fantasy theme\" and \"fantasy type interchangeably. For this thesis, I took Mohrmann's complaint into account by using the term \"fantasy theme\" to describe a set of shared values displayed through shared stories about a situation that occurred either in the past or that could occur in the future. Rather than using the term \"fantasy type\" in the same way, I used that particular term to demonstrate the presence of different types of stock scenarios within a larger fantasy theme. For example, in the WIT fantasy theme, the \"real doctors\" fantasy theme from the pre-test revealed itself as being a fantasy type: a stock scenario with repeating symbolic cues and settings that serves to reinforce the larger WIT fantasy theme in this thesis. While I feel that this distinction between \"fantasy theme\" and \"fantasy type\" is clear, it might still need further clarification in the future. Perhaps re-naming the term \"fantasy type\" could prove to be useful in future studies. As noted in the previous paragraph, the \"real doctors\" fantasy type in this thesis was a fantasy theme in the pre-test. However, that difference does not affect the results of this thesis (the \"real doctors\" concept arose in both the thesis and the pre-test, just differing in importance). Similarly, the expanded thesis analysis found a 116 better-developed version of love's role for pre-medical students. The expanded analysis still shows that many SDN posters value having a partner who is useful and makes their lives easier. However, it adds to that notion with examples of how the SDN community appreciates their partners for the camaraderie and happiness that they bring as well. There were not enough examples of the human side of relationships to include it in the pre-test. Some might argue that the two differences between the pre-test and the thesis analysis (\"real doctors\" and relationships) hurt the validity of the pre-test. Instead, the differences between the two studies lie in the scope of the studies. As the pre-test included a much smaller number of threads, some concepts appeared to be more important than they actually were due to the subject matter of the randomly selected threads. However, this thesis includes a much larger sample of threads, leaving little doubt that the examples provide an accurate portrayal of the actual conversations in the SDN Forums. Another potentially problematic aspect of this thesis is that many of the posts come from a period of time when pre-medical students are desperate to learn about their medical school acceptance statuses. However, most of the threads on medical school acceptances sampled in this thesis actually started months before my sample time and were simply still going during the months of February and March. While some might argue that too many of the threads in this thesis are about medical school acceptances, it captures the essence of why pre-medical school students work hard in school and post on the SDN Forums: they want to be accepted to medical schools. These threads also provided a wide variety of sub-topics such as living arrangements, long distance relationships, and what it takes to succeed in medical school. 117 One final problematic area in this thesis is that some individuals might fabricate their statuses, as there is no background check for individuals who join the SDN Forums. Therefore, an individual who labels himself or herself as a \"Resident\" or a \"PhD Student\" might actually be a pre-medical student or someone without any history of studying medicine. While fabrication of one's identity is a legitimate concern with any study of an Internet community, many of the conversations in the SDN Forums seem to suggest that these individuals actually hold the status that they use online. Most advice threads include specific advice on medical school campuses and every type of course, including knowledge of necessary prerequisite courses and funding options. Also, individuals with high status ranks such as \"Resident\" are in the minority in the SDN Forums; this observation suggests that most members of the forum are interested in labeling themselves appropriately so that they may receive the best advice possible. Suggestions for Future Research This thesis adds to the growing body of research on Internet communication. More importantly, it adds to the small body of research on fantasy themes in Internet communication. Studies such as those by Alem?n (2005) and Perry and Roesch (2004) are forward-thinking in applying Bormann's (1972b) method to this still-developing area of communication. As noted earlier, however, this thesis is the first study (at the time of publication) to use the fantasy theme analysis methodology to analyze entire sections of an Internet forum on such a large scale. This thesis shows that by using the fantasy theme analysis methodology, a scholar can find examples of shared values, beliefs, and visions within an entire community. This finding is important, because it is possible to learn more about specific groups of people while they communicate in an unrestrained, 118 natural setting. Other studies look at fantasy themes in Internet communities as they pertain to one subject matter, such as love or death. However, it is noteworthy that one can learn a community's complete outlook on a wide array of topics by not limiting one's study to particular subjects and instead sampling a wide number of threads from the same community. In future studies, scholars should apply a similar methodology to other interesting Internet communities, whether work-related or social-related. For example, before choosing the SDN Forums, I considered hobbyist and fan forums for topics ranging from video games to the Walt Disney Company. These communities are interesting not only for the degree of love that their members communicate for video games or Disney but also for the ways that their members communicate about topics not unrelated to video games or Disney. Using a systematic sample of threads from an off-topic section from any forum, a researcher can find evidence of how medical school, video games, Disney, or any other interest changes the shared values and beliefs of the forum's members. In addition to researching different kinds of Internet forums, this thesis' method could be expanded by comparing two kinds of forums. Political forums might produce interesting results in this case. For example, an especially large fantasy theme analysis could compare and contrast the fantasy themes in a Republican and Democrat forum. It is worth noting, however, that a fantasy theme analysis of two Internet forums would require much more work from a scholar and might be better-suited for book publication, rather than traditional journal publication. Finally, non-traditional forum settings such as YouTube might provide interesting results for fantasy theme analysis scholars. YouTube allows users to reply to each other's videos with video responses, which help remove the 119 doubts that plague Internet stories. For example, analyzing video responses lets the scholar more accurately estimate the age and sex of the person in question. Video responses also allow the researcher to assess the poster's mood and decide if he or she is serious or is simply being sarcastic. Finally, coding is perhaps more important in a study of an entire Internet community than a normal fantasy theme analysis of a particular aspect of a forum or blog. Although most fantasy theme analyses do not discuss how posts are placed into fantasy themes, categorization of posts is significant to the development of the method in Internet studies. For this thesis, I read each thread and then decided upon key themes and ideas expressed in the threads. After labeling each thread's key ideas and expressed values, I placed similar threads in categories and returned to them to further evaluate their significance. During this return-step, in which I reread the threads and made sure that they belonged together, that I saw the fantasy themes that existed (and sometimes did not exist) in the SDN Forums' communication. The WIT fantasy theme, for example, did not appear upon my first labeling of similarities in the SDN Forums. However, after studying the threads in relation to other similar threads, a consistent theme in the pre-medical students' conversations discussed who has what it takes to succeed in medicine. Before the rereading step, I only noticed the \"Real Doctors\" fantasy from my pre-test; however, the \"Real Doctors\" fantasy was actually only relevant as a fantasy type in the larger WIT fantasy theme. The fantasy theme analysis methodology can be applied in numerous ways to any kind of Internet forum to analyze the shared values, beliefs, and goals of its members. This thesis serves as an expansion of Bormann's (1972b) original ideas but takes the 120 entire body of research on fantasy theme analysis into account. Bormann's fantasy theme analysis method has evolved over thirty years to analyze messages from books, speeches, television, film, and now the Internet. As long as a group of individuals communicate, no matter what the medium might be, it is relevant to analyze their shared beliefs to see what they say about major life events, jobs, changes, and politics. With the popularity of forum communication only increasing, this is an exciting area for researchers to pursue, as this thesis suggests that some individuals turn to their Internet forum friends for advice before their immediate friends and family. 121 REFERENCES Alem?n, M.W. (2005). Embracing and resisting romantic fantasies as the rhetorical vision on a SeniorNet discussion board. Journal of Communication, 55(1), 5-21. Retrieved September 2, 2007, from EBSCOhost database. Anonymous. (n.d.) Student Doctor Network Forums. Retrieved February 26, 2008, from Anonymous. (n.d.). vBulletin FAQ. Retrieved February 18, 2008, from Bach, B.W. (1990). ?Moving up? on campus: A qualitative examination of organizational socialization. Journal of the Northewest Communication Association, 18, 53-71. 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Porter (Eds.), Handbook of organizational communication (pp. 679-740). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Jackson, B.G. (1999). The goose that laid the golden egg?: A rhetorical critique of Stephen Covey and the effectiveness movement. Journal of Management Studies, 36(3), 353-377. Kendall, J.E. (1993). Good and evil in the chairmen?s ?boiler plate?: An analysis of corporate visions of the 1970s. Organization Studies, 14(4), 571-592. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from Academic ASAP database. Kramer, M.W. (1999). Motivation to reduce uncertainty: A reconceptualization of uncertainty reduction theory. Management Communication Quarterly, 13(2), Retrieved December, 12, 2007, from Academic ASAP database. 127 Krippendorff, K. (1980). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Lois, J. (1999). Socialization to heroism: Individualism and collectivism in a voluntary search and rescue group. 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Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association. Retrieved January 4, 2008, from Communication & Mass Media Complete database. Novek, E.M. (2005). ?Heaven, hell, and here?: Understanding the impact of incarceration through a prison newspaper. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 22(4), 281- 301. Retrieved December 12, 2007, from EBSCOhost database. 128 Nowak, K.L., Rauh, C. (2006). The influence of the avatar on online perceptions of anthropomorphism, androgyny, credibility, homophily, and attraction. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11, 153-178. Retrieved December, 12, 2007, from EBSCOhost database. Perry, S.D., & Roesch, A.L. (2004). He?s in a new neighborhood now: Religious fantasy themes about Mister Rogers? Neighborhood. Journal of Media and Religion, 3(4), 199-218. Retrieved October 23, 2007, from EBSCOhost database. Putnam, L.L., Van Hoeven, S.A., & Bullis, C.A. (1991). The role of rituals and fantasy themes in teachers? bargaining. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 55, 85-103. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from EBSCOhost database. Settoon, R.P., & Adknis, C.L. (1997). Newcomer socialization: The role of supervisors, coworkers, friends and family members. Journal of Business and Psychology, 11(4), 507-516. Retrieved January 16, 2008, from EBSCOhost database. Sheer, V.C., & Cline, R.C. (1995). Testing a model of perceived information adequacy and uncertainty reduction in physician-patient interactions. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 23, 44-59. Retrieved December, 12, 2007, from EBSCOhost database. Shields, D.C. (2000). Symbolic convergence and special communication theories: Sensing and examining dis/enchantment with the theoretical robustness of critical autoethnography. Communication Monographs, 67(4), 392-421. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from EBSCOhost database. Stebbing, J., & Powles, T. (2007). 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Higher Education, 37(2), 177-195. Retrieved January 15, 2008, from EBSCOhost darabase. Van Maanen, J., & Schein, E. (1979). Toward a theory of organizational socialization. In B. Straw (Ed.), Research in Organizational Behavior. Greenwich, CT: JAL Press. Wanous, J.P. (1977). Organizatioanl entry: Newcomers moving from outside to inside. Psychological Bulletin, 84(4), 601-618. Retrieved January 15, 2008, from EBSCOhost database.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7176148891448975}
+{"content": "Question: Do Programmers Code All Day?\n\nDo programmers have a life?\n\nTricky question, most programmers have life.\n\n\n\nHow many days a week do computer programmers work?\n\nComputer programmers usually work 40 hour weeks, and they often work weekends and evenings to resolve technical issues.\n\nWhat should I study in my free time?\n\nChoose any of the following activities and make the most out of your free time!Read a good novel, or a self-development book. … Write/Blog/Live Tweet. … Learn a new language. … Take a course. … Sharpen your brain and memory. … Cooking. … Star-gazing and astronomy. … Volunteer.\n\nWhat does a programmer do all day?\n\n\nIs 300 lines of code a lot?\n\nMuch, much less. 300 lines of code means that the person isn’t even writing a line of code a minute. Maybe in an environment where it’s really difficult to understand what’s going on, and you have to tread very carefully…\n\nCan I teach myself to code?\n\n\nDo programmers have free time?\n\n\nCan a coder hack?\n\n\n\n\nAre programmers happy?\n\n\nDo software developers travel?\n\nLifestyle. Software engineering can be one of the most flexible careers, because software engineers can work anywhere where they have computers and access to the Internet. … Some software engineers work in an office but others travel to their client’s business.\n\nDo you have to be smart to be a programmer?\n\nDepends on what kind of programmer you want to be. But most of the times, no, you don’t have to be too smart to create anything you put your mind, you just need time and motivation. … But most of the times, no, you don’t have to be too smart to create anything you put your mind, you just need time and motivation.\n\nDo you need to know code to hack?\n\nIf you’re talking about a person who’s cracking programs, breaching into servers, using exploits in programs/websites, and does everything on its own, then hacking without programming is almost impossible. … Serious hackers MUST know programming. Script kiddies just download premade hacks, no need for programming.\n\nHow much code do programmers write in a day?\n\nStudies have shown that the average programmer in a production environment puts out about 10 lines of code per day.\n\nHow many hours does it take to become a programmer?\n\n\nDoes coding require math?\n\n\nAre programmers lonely?\n\n\nWhat is difference between coding and programming?\n\n\nIs programming job stressful?\n\n\nIs 1000 lines of code a lot?\n\nIt depends a lot on the language. It’s easier to write a thousand lines of code in a language if it takes a lot of lines of code to say anything. In a more terse language it would take more time. One thousand lines of code isn’t that big.\n\nHow many lines of code is an hour?\n\nIt’s pretty typical for solid embedded software to come in at between 1 and 2 lines of code (LOC) per developer-hour. That’s 8 to 16 LOC per developer each day, or about 2000-4000 LOC per year. If you want just a single rough number, call it 10 LOC per day per developer.\n\nIs coding still relevant in 2025?\n\n\nDo programmers have girlfriends?\n\n\nHow many hours does a programmer work per day?\n\n\nWhat are the disadvantages of being a computer programmer?\n\nThe downside of being a programmerThe future. As of 2016 computer languages are pretty complicated for an average person. … Always on the run. In the information age, computer technologies as the devices which run this revolution are constantly improving. … Competition. … Health risks. … Brain fatigue. … Communication skills.\n\nWhat coding do hackers use?\n\n\nIs it worth being a programmer?\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9974595904350281}
+{"content": "Dear clients,\n\nagain due to the restrictions of the Health Authorities as a consequence of the Pandemic, we regret to have to inform you\nthat we are temporarily closing\nthe Kanaiia Restaurant\nas of Monday, January 11, 2021.\n\nWe will keep you informed of the reopening dates,\nthat we hope will be shortly.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9992552995681763}
+{"content": "With Regard to Civil Liberties During the Civil War, President\n\nQuestion 31\nMultiple Choice\n\nWith regard to civil liberties during the Civil War, President Lincoln: A) always let courts and judges have the final say. B) suspended the writ of habeas corpus. C) ordered most Democratic newspapers shut down. D) urged the impeachment of federal judges who opposed him. E) strictly followed the Ex parte Milligan decision rendered in 1866.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9918479919433594}
+{"content": "A Guidance Counselor Wishes to Determine If a Student Scored\n\nQuestion 89\nMultiple Choice\n\nA guidance counselor wishes to determine if a student scored higher on a mathematics test than on a reading test.What statistic(s)would be MOST useful? A) the standard error of measurement for each test score B) the standard error of the difference between two scores C) the raw score on each test as well as the mean of each distribution D) the mean of each distribution and index of test difficulty for each test.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9875580668449402}
+{"content": "Which of the Following Statements About the Antibody-Mediated Immune Response\n\nQuestion 13\nMultiple Choice\n\nWhich of the following statements about the antibody-mediated immune response is correct? A)Antibodies work against bacteria and viruses that reproduce inside body cells. B)T cells carry it out without antigen detection. C)Antibodies activate helper T cells and produce killer T cells. D)Antibodies dissolved in body fluids bind to antigens and trigger responses to them.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9954643249511719}
+{"content": "Wendy Garafalo\n\nGreen Guide\n\nShe's got style, she's got grace, she knows every muscle in the human body. Don't let Wendy's blond hair and sweet smile fool you, she'll have you working your 'transverse abdominus' as you perfect every pose. Wendy is The Green Yogi's alignment guru, so get ready to find that perfect posture.\n\nWendy danced professionally in LA, teaching a variety of dance styles for 10 years. During her time as a professional dancer, Wendy discovered the amazing benefits of yoga. She has been practicing for 8 years and received her teacher certification under Julie Rader. Wendy's classes focus on alignment to build strength, empowering students with different flow sequences to encourage creativity and movement while focusing on the breath. Wendy is constantly increasing her knowledge of yoga through workshops and trainings. She is excited to share her passion and energy for yoga with students of all levels.\n\nWendy Garafalo's Latest Classes\n\n10 Minutes\n\n\nThis is a simple 10 minute centering meditation that will help quiet your mind and experience your center. It incorporates diaphragmatic breathing, also known as deep belly breathing, which is one of the fastest ways to instill relaxation. Diaphragmatic breathing fills your body with healing oxygen, stimulates the body’s natural relaxation response and soothes muscle tension. Take a 10 minute break from your busy life to breath and get centered, so you can step back into your life with a sense of calm, peace and clarity.\n\n15 Minutes\n\n\nWho’s ready for recess?  Explore the yummy diagonal stretches between shoulders and hips during this recess session for parents busy at home working and supervising distance learning.  Using the diagonal helps to release tight hip and shoulder tension from sitting.  By incorporating the strap, we help engage the muscles as they stretch, thus improving shoulder mobility and strength. Props: Yoga Strap or equivalent\n\n10 Minutes\n\n\nEven if you're excited about the work you're doing and happy to be there, staring at a screen and typing for hours on end can be pretty darn exhausting, not to mention bad for your posture. If you are looking for a quick yoga flow to do at your desk to reverse the effects of sitting, we've got you covered! This quick chair yoga flow is perfect for a lunch break or any-time-of-day break to unwind, reset, and stretch out!\n\nView All", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6122543811798096}
+{"content": "Glen Coe\n\nGlen Coe, Glencoe, Argyll, Scotland\n\n\nGlencoe village is picturesquely located between the banks of Loch Leven and the mouth of the famous glen, making it the perfect base for exploring the area of Lochaber, known as the Outdoor Capital of the UK. The road through Glen Coe takes you through the heart of an ancient volcano. Follow the Glen Coe Geotrail to find out more about how glaciers and fiery explosions carved out the glen's rugged mountain peaks.\n\nGlen Coe is one of the most beautiful and other-worldly places in Scotland. It's even featured in films such as James Bond's Skyfall and several Harry Potter movies.\n\nThings to do in Glencoe: -\n\nAbsorb spectacular Highland scenery and see Scottish wildlife.\nPop into the Glencoe Visitor Centre and grab a bite to eat before you go for a wander in the glen.\nWalk through Glen Coe or bag a few Munros.\nSki, snowboard or mountain bike at the Glencoe Mountain resort.\nSea kayak on Loch Leven.\nExplore some of the other natural wonders in the Lochaber Geopark, from the Parallel Roads of majestic Glen Roy to the enchanting islands of Canna, Eigg, Muck and Rum.\nVisit Fort William, the Outdoor Capital of the UK.\n\nNearest Accommodation", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8395121097564697}
+{"content": "Question: How Do You Price Abstract Art?\n\nIs my art good enough to sell?\n\n\n\nHow much should I charge for my acrylic paintings?\n\n\nWhat makes a painting valuable?\n\n\nWhy are abstract paintings so expensive?\n\nThe high price is a token of appreciation for the truthiness that an artist attempts to display. Abstract art is celebrated because of the artist’s ability to clearly depict his innermost feelings and emotions. This genre of art focuses on bringing out the spirit of the theme rather than concentrating on its form.\n\nHow do you price art for beginners?\n\n\nHow much does abstract art cost?\n\nTo date, the most expensive painting ever sold is an abstract landscape by Willem de Kooning called Interchange, which sold for $300 Million in 2015. The painting fetched that record-breaking price in a private sale to the Chicago hedge fund manager Kenneth C.\n\nHow do you know if artwork is valuable?\n\n\nIs there an app that identifies artwork?\n\n\nWhy does abstract art sell for so much?\n\n\nHow do you price your artwork?\n\n\nHow do I start selling my art?\n\n\nHow do you price digital art?\n\nThe prices of digital artwork such as illustrations, digital paintings, vector drawings, and 3D models are based on a slightly different set of factors – your skill level, experience, and notoriety as an artist, the complexity of the style and medium, your hourly rate for the creation of the piece, and just generally …", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9992256760597229}
+{"content": "• Mehul Garg\n\nUnleash the power of intuition\n\nTo drive sustainable business growth you need both, a data driven mindset combined with intelligently honed intuition.\n\nI’ve been active as a growth marketer for over 11 years. It’s fair to say that during that time, I’ve acquired more than a few stories to tell. What more could you ask for from your work?\n\n\nIt’s a dynamic and sometimes crazy environment. Innovation is rife, and that’s what makes this career so compelling. Some trends excite me, and some worry me. Indeed, some trends have actually achieved both effects. Data-led marketing is a good example. Initially it excited me. These days, it worries me.\n\nLet me yelp an immediate caveat: I agree that data is useful and good. We can attribute sales to specific activities or initiatives. We can track user engagement in an app. We can determine which hours of the day to show or hide an ad. We can iteratively test buttons, text, and layouts. We can optimise.\n\nThis is a new world. It’s a world driven by attribution, measurement, and optimising for marginal gains. A career in data science is not only feasible - but positively lucrative. This is all good.\n\nBut what have we sacrificed in the name of data?...\n\n\nI believe we must reclaim and unleash the power of intuition to maximise business growth. Let me explain how and why...\n\nFive important concepts and approaches as I see and understand:\n\n  1. Deliberative thinking: To deliberate. The process of deliberation. To prepare for deliberate action. Considered, weighted, and measured. Slow, controlled, and full of effort. \n\n  2. Analytical thinking: To work systematically and logically to solve a problem. The process of collecting data, extracting key information, and testing solutions iteratively.\n\n  3. Sequential thinking: Aka, linear thinking. To process information in an orderly manner. Pertaining to a step-by-step methodology. Wait for a result, take the next appropriate step.\n\n  4. Intuitive thinking: To understand or know something without direct visible evidence. It is an awareness of something outside conscious algorithmic behaviour and thought processes. Note: Some people use instinct and intuition interchangeably, but in fact they are distinct. As this thread shows, “intuition is currently understood to be the subliminal processing of information that is too complex for rational thought, e.g. mate choice. The processes that make up intuition are learned, not innate. Instinct is not a feeling, but an innate, \"hardwired\" tendency toward a particular behaviour.”\n\n  5. Holistic thinking: Aka, non-linear thinking. To see the bigger picture and appreciate how everything is interconnected within a broad landscape. Shifting the mind onto different angles, and searching for the non-sequential patterns.\n\nIntuition’s bad reputation\n\nAnalytical thinking has been championed over recent decades, particularly in western societies. This has led to intuitive thinking getting a bad name. We’re accustomed to rational deliberative decision-making.\n\nCartoon by Scott Adams.\n\nI’ll list some of the common criticisms of intuition that I’ve come across in businesses as a growth marketer:\n\n  1. Intuition is untrustworthy: The brain is an imperfect processor. Cognitive bias is real, and it operates at a subconscious level. We provide more weight to something that supports our assumptions prejudices and we are influenced by distorted memories, inaccurate first impressions, and more.\n\n  2. Intuition is romanticised: You need to be a special, magical, and superior person to use intuition. Intuition is falsely held up in as an intangible character trait, unmeasurable, and unknowable. Intuition is unattainable. Pure wizardry.\n\n  3. Intuition is irrational (or non-rational): Subconscious judgement can be highly influenced by emotion. For this reason, it intuition has been labelled as inherently irrational. This renders intuition useless as a tool for smart decision-making.\n\n  4. Intuition is lazy: For those who can’t handle data, intuition is considered the perfect safety net. But is this an excuse for not bothering to learn how to interpret numbers? Are intuitive thinkers lazy luddites?\n\nThese criticisms are not without foundation. There are indeed limitations to intuition. As I’ll discuss later, some people can call on their intuition in better ways than others. And some situations are better-suited to an intuitive approach than others. Pure unadulterated intuition isn’t usually the best approach.\n\nWe’re sorely lacking in nuance these days, and it’s tempting to fall into one fanatic camp or the other. In my mind, we should be striving for synergy. A dash of this, and a dash of that. In truth, this is essential for any business with ambitions of global expansion; integrating intuition with analytical thinking.\n\nWith this in mind, what are the experts saying about intuition? Is the bad reputation deserved?\n\nThe reality of intuition\n\nWe have a wealth of science that supports the relevance of intuition. How ironic! In a nutshell, many psychologists argue that intuition isn’t an irrational nuisance; it can be beneficial for decision-making.\n\nValerie van Mulukom outlines this beautifully in her article for The Conversation:\n\n\n\nLooking at the critiques listed above, what can we offer in response?\n\n  1. Intuition is untrustworthy: Intuition can be untrustworthy, (just like data!) but it isn’t inherently untrustworthy. Intuition is shaped by genuine past experiences and can be considered a web of fact and feeling.\n\n  2. Intuition is romanticised: This is a symptom of our lack of nuance in this discussion. We all have intuition. Some people can apply it better than others, and some people choose to apply it more regularly in decisions. Our life experiences shape us, but decision-makers who use intuition are not magic wizards with clairvoyant visions.\n\n  3. Intuition is irrational (or non-rational): Valerie van Mulukom’s assessment above is echoed elsewhere. As Sharon Bailin argues in her 1991 report (note: download) on rationality and intuition: “There are not two distinctive and opposite kinds of processes of thinking, one kind irrational and leading to creative achievement and the other kind rational and involved in the evaluation of ideas or products. Rather, there are analytic, highly judgmental aspects to generating creative results and imaginative, inventive aspects to logic and reasoning and it is exceedingly difficult to separate two distinct and opposite kinds of thought... An underlying reason for this opposition between creativity and rationality is the view that reasoning always takes place within rigidly bounded and highly rule-governed frameworks. This view of how frameworks operate is radically defective, however, because frameworks are less definite and more fluid than this view would suggest.” This report also argues that part of the problem is that we frame intuition as irrational, and therefore all intuitive decisions are therefore irrational and problematic. However, emotional decision-making is not the same as intuition. In practice, it is hard to make the distinction between an emotional decision and an intuitive decision: am I scared, or do I have a bad feeling? Am I too excited, or confident of success? If you can make this distinction, you needn’t be worried about irrationality.\n\n  4. Intuition is lazy: Relying on intuition can indeed be a lazy excuse. But I’m not talking about using intuition flippantly, with no regard for the benefits of data. Intuition must be used knowingly; and we should work very hard to improve our use of intuition. Laziness is part of what has given intuition a bad name. Loose guesswork is lazy, especially when there is superior evidence available. Tapping into good intuition is a challenge. And trusting that intuition is a challenge in the face of widespread critiques and doubts. I would argue that people who take up this challenge are far from lazy.\n\nIntuitive thinking in the world of business growth\n\nMy concern isn’t that deliberative, analytical, or sequential thinking exists. There are benefits to this approach that impact the business growth of my clients. My concern is that deliberative analytical thinking has become too prevalent.\n\nWith data pouring from our eyes and ears, we’ve become too focused on the WHAT, to ask the right questions about the WHY.\n\nOn a number of occasions, I’ve worked with clients whose startup has skyrocketed - only to be buffeted by slowed or plateauing growth. They will have pumped budget into effective acquisition channels, and tracked the return on investment accurately. When growth slows, linear thinking encourages the search for new, efficient, acquisition channels. Or new ways to utilise the current channels.\n\nUnsurprisingly, these new channels and successful tactics are few-and-far-between when you’ve already picked the lowest-hanging fruit to achieve market traction. This search might quickly burn through cash and put the business in a precarious position. It’s a common phenomenon.\n\nA more holistic and intuitive view might look more deeply into the product itself. Perhaps investing a lot of cash into new users is a waste, and instead you could look at user retention or increasing lifetime value (LTV) with higher-ticket purchases? Maybe it’s more effective to maximise conversions from your free to premium plans? Would investing your time, energy, and budget into conversion optimisation and customer journey be more impactful for growth?\n\nThe data will probably back this up, and indeed you should seek numerical evidence. But you need to be asking the right questions to get there in the first place. This needs intuition, derived from experience.\n\nI’m very focused on this problem of asking the right questions...\n\nI’ve been in meetings where investors are keen to generate more revenue and optimise marketing spend for the best returns. But my intuition tells me that the marketing team isn’t actually set up for success due to various reasons: perhaps the team structure isn’t relevant anymore, there’s a mismatch between capabilities and roles, or maybe we have the wrong agency partner or inefficient channel mix.\n\nThese are structural problems that can be spotted by asking the right questions.\n\nI’ve also seen the obsession with optimising a marketing channel, when in fact the data and intuition combo shows that a product will be better-received in a different channel. Doubling down on the wrong channel is a sure-fire way to burn cash and damage team morale; two things that preempt failure.\n\nThe question is “how can we optimise Facebook platform for better performance?”, when it should be “is Facebook a good fit for our audience and what we’re selling? Have we reached diminishing returns based on our product-market-distribution fit?”\n\nWhen testing new channels, experience-derived intuition goes a long way. I’ve seen too many startups enter the world of TV advertising in linear sequential mode. They treat TV as a conversion channel, with creatives that are crafted for brand awareness. Instead, I recommend optimising for response, recognising attributed and correlated results. Balance the short, medium, and long-term benefits to measure the total contribution of TV or any other ATL medium.\n\nAdding a dash of intuition\n\nI currently work in Berlin, Germany. Deliberative thinking is dominant in this culture; and it has had an effect. I also operate mainly in the digital and eCommerce product space. This attracts technologists, analysts, and data-led professionals in a huge variety of operational roles.\n\nWith these experiences in mind, it seems to me that we needn’t start from scratch. Let’s not banish the data-led marketers and call it a failed experiment. Let’s collaborate and complement each other. Add a dash of this... and a dash of that. Vary the ingredients and create a tastier recipe. Your business ambitions of global expansion will need this sort of integration to succeed.  \n\nWhen a marketing team has been built in an environment of analytical, sequential, and deliberative thinking - this will permeate the whole organisation and frame the way that people make decisions. The first step is to recognise this fact, and then it can be balanced out. We should aim to mix things up.\n\nIn a Management Today article written by John Morrish, Eugene Sadler-Smith (University of Surrey) talks about finding and managing this perfect balance:\n\n“Some people are naturally more analytical, he says, and some are more intuitive. But it's best to combine both in decision-making: intuition followed by analysis, or vice versa. He recommends a 'traffic light system'. If intuition and analysis both say No, that's a red light. If they both say Yes, that's a green. If one says Yes and one says No, that's amber: proceed with caution. 'We have to recognise that if we make an intuitive decision, there's no guarantee of it being right. In the same way as with analysis; no one expects analysis to be right 100% of the time.’”\n\nThis is echoed by Francis Cholle in his piece for Psychology Today, where he argues that in order to make the best possible decisions for ourselves, our businesses, and our families - we need to pay attention to both instinct and reason. Understanding the value of this combination is essential.\n\nMike Fishbein at Invision writes about “overfitting” and “underfitting” in product design. The former is when complexities force you to focus on a specific data point too heavily, because there is never enough data volume at the outset of a project. This can cause problems in the future, especially when scaling or pivoting when new data becomes available. Underfitting is when you ignore informative data and make decisions on intuition alone. In this context, it usually involves dismissing data-based results because the sample is too small, and favouring another route. “Live by data, but don’t die by data” is the message.\n\nHow to improve intuitive thinking\n\n\"Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion.\" - Steve Jobs\n\nI am not championing intuitive thinking at all costs. Bad intuitive thinking is equally as harmful as bad deliberative thinking. With this in mind, are there ways to improve your own ability to think intuitively?\n\nOne of the key tasks is to know when to trust your intuition.\n\nMcKinsey interviewed pioneering - and Nobel prize-winning - scientist, Daniel Kahneman, alongside Gary Klein. The headline question was about when (or whether) to trust your gut. Above all, the conclusion is that you must knowingly evaluate your gut instinct to see if it makes sense in the context of the problem.\n\nKahneman is a famous critic of intuition, and he says:\n\n\nGary Klein offers a similarly cautious treatment of intuitions:\n\n\nHe continues:\n\n\nIt’s also important to know when your intuition is bad. Broadly, this involves mistaking bias thinking for intuition. And as I’ve already mentioned, we need to pause and consider whether in fact we are making an emotional decision based on knee-jerk fear or excitement.\n\nArt Markman sets out a useful step-by-step process for validating your intuitive thinking:\n\n  1. Ask yourself how the problem makes you feel\n\n  2. Evaluate how much you know about the topic\n\n  3. Gauge what is influencing your feelings\n\n  4. Judge if your head and your gut are aligned\n\nWhen the subconscious is so prone to misconception, it’s important to acknowledge the things which could undermine the accuracy of your intuition. Pay attention, and understand the science of intuition. As an individual, this will help you apply it in the most reliable way. It will also help you ask the right questions when welcoming an intuitive thinker into your management team.\n\nIn conclusion...\n\nWe are wired to see patterns. This has given us our evolutionary edge. Unleashing the power of our intuitive thinking capitalises on this talent. In a commercial world dominated by metrics, it pays to respect our experience, rather than dismissing these insights as irrational and unhelpful.\n\nI’ll leave the final word to Valerie van Mulukom:\n\n“It is time to stop the witch hunt on intuition, and see it for what it is: a fast, automatic, subconscious processing style that can provide us with very useful information that deliberate analysing can’t. We need to accept that intuitive and analytic thinking should occur together, and be weighed up against each other in difficult decision-making situations.”\n\n\nMehul Garg is an on-demand CMO and founder of Be Gargantuan, focused on strategic positioning, growth, and team-building. He is an intuitive leader, driving innovation to exceed business goals. His past gigs span from multinational corporates to global scale-ups to early stage startups. Notable clients include Canon Europe, eHarmony, Photobox, Touchnote, and 8Fit GmbH.\n\n#begargantuan #marketing #ecommerce #startups\n\n\nMehul Garg\n\n0044 7960166016 | LinkedIn\n\n© 2020 Mehul Garg Consulting Ltd. trading as Be Gargantuan\n\nUK Company Reg: 10879032  |  VAT No: 273622404", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9601014256477356}
+{"content": "Latest Sponsor: Air Kiribati\n\nKiribati is the fourth least visited country in the world and after eight nights in the country, I can understand why. It is a lovely, beautiful country, but the infrastructure and set up for tourism is non-ex\n\nAir Kiribati began operations in 1995 and has since connected the country domestically and with an international flight to Nadi. Air Kiribati is often fully booked in advance, but the airline managed to offer me a short day trip to Abaiang on their small aircraft. I enjoyed the short flight and experience. Kiribati comprises 33 atolls and reef islands and one raised coral island, Banaba. I managed to visit North Tarawa, South Tarawa and Abaiang during my 8-night visit and enjoyed it. There is obviously a lot more to experience, but you will have to deal with the primitive conditions of travelling around. If you would like to visit an exotic country off the beaten path, I can’t think of a better country than Kiribati. I met the CEO, and they are all aware of the situation. He said something like, only when you have visited the whole world, you will visit Kiribati.\n\nWhere to stay?\nThe George Hotel Together with Betio Lodge one of the two best places to stay in Kiribati. Surprisingly complimentary and fast Wi-Fi by Pacific standards.\nBetio Lodge Together with The George one of the two best places to stay in Kiribati. Basic, but comfortable. Watch the video for details.\n\nAround 5,000 tourists a year and if you are adventurous, why not try and increase that number?", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9799977540969849}
+{"content": "\n\nLet’s start off with Illinois, where recreational marijuana became legal on January 1, 2020.  A social equity component of the legislation ensures that some of the tax revenue will lower the costs of starting a", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 1.0000091791152954}
+{"content": "How can a Facebook group compete with the established media\n\nA Facebook group is a place for people to share their common interests by expressing their opinions, ask questions and discuss subjects that are of interest to them and relevant to the purpose of the group. As Facebook keeps tightening its algorithms for Facebook pages, Facebook groups are becoming a more interesting place to reach and engage your community.\n\n\nAn example of a fast growing community, where the discussions and engagement of community members are also flourishing, is the Danish Facebook group Aktieporteføljen (AP) (translated ‘Stock Portfolio’). We have talked to Andreas Rasmussen the initiator of Aktieporteføljen.\n\n\nWhat is AP?\n\nAP is Scandinavia’s largest investor community for private and institutional investors in equities, commodities, fixed income and debt, where members can exchange ideas and views on either specific investments or larger issues and market trends. It is free to be a member.\n\n\nWhy did you create Aktieporteføljen?\n\nBefore Aktieporteføljen, there was nothing out there, where anyone could debate financial news from all over the world and free of charge.\n\n\nHow did you grow and so fast?\n\nThe number of community members in AP is rapidly growing. We believe this is driven by increased awareness of financial markets, and a broadening of stock ownership among European investors. This has resulted in an increased demand for information regarding specific companies and their performance. The retail investor base is growing and is becoming much more demanding.\n\nSince its launch, AP has been a huge success with an interaction between members rarely seen in the market and has resulted in an online community highly appreciated among the members. Currently AP has +42.500 members (growing at a rate + 1000) per month and includes representatives from the media, financial sector, private and institutional investors both in Denmark and abroad as well as corporations whose stock are sometimes the topic of discussion. Many of these have a vested interest in closely monitoring, what is happening within their community and how investors are thinking about specific opportunities or stocks.\n\nCurrently our community at Facebook has about 1 million views per month.\n\n\nWhat is the plan for the future of AP?\n\nOur objective is to be the center and hub where all companies PRE-IPO and those listed on the exchange presents their company and products towards all investors, via showrooms on FeedsFloor and in our Facebook groups. Furthermore, we are also looking to create better deals for our members in relation to trading and other more private services.\n\n\nSign up for Aktieporteføljen here.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9062883853912354}
+{"content": "SEA circular\n\nsolving plastic pollution at source\n\nPlastic waste is choking our seas and threatening ecosystems and livelihoods in South East Asia. Striving for cleaner seas, less plastic wasted and a more circular economy requires fundamental change throughout the plastic value chain.\n\nSEA circular is an initiative of UN Environment Programme and the Coordinating Body on the Seas of East Asia (COBSEA) to inspire market-based solutions and encourage enabling policies to prevent marine plastic pollution.\n\nabout sea circular\n\nSEA circular works with national and provincial governments, private sector corporations, civil society groups and NGOs, to promote circular economy principles and seek solutions to marine plastic pollution.  SEA circular works to support market-based solutions, enhance science, raise awareness and promote behaviour change, towards less plastic wasted in South-East Asia.\n\n\nSEA of Solutions is an annually occurring partnership event towards solving plastic pollution at source, convened by the UNEP and the COBSEA, through the SEA circular project supported by the Government of Sweden.\n\nThe training webinar aims to increase awareness and understanding of responsible business practices and environmental rights to promote a human rights-based approach to reducing plastic leakage and pollution.\n\nSeptember 2020\n\nUN Environment Programme and the Open University have created a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Marine Litter.\n\nShow Buttons\nHide Buttons", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9987195730209351}
+{"content": "Composition of Movement\n\nWritten by Sandy Marker\n\nThis lesson always seems to end up as an English Grammar lesson, discussing the movement. Do we select the correct word for the action – is it a verb, (jump) or past tense and we add ‘ed’ (jumped) but it could be the present participle were we add ‘ing’ (jumping). The jury seems to still be out on the final decision.\n\nNow the English lesson is over lets get to some creative arrangements. Sensei basically said we can select what ever tense but we really need to show the action or rather the essence of the movement.\n\nSome arrangements looked quite static but in the correct sense of the language it was correct such as Sylvie’s arrangement using Spanish Moss and the action was ‘swarm’ as bees do when finding a new hive. Other arrangements varied from being very easy to interpret to a few more obscure actions but in the light of artistic talent there was a great selection.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9851690530776978}
+{"content": "Search for European Projects\n\nThe Native Peoples and the Portuguese Inquisition (NATIVE INQUISITION)\n\nThe project NATIVE INQUISITION will investigate the accusations and proceedings against the indigenous peoples and their descendants in Brazil sent to the Tribunal of the Inquisition in Portugal during the eighteenth century.The project NATIVE INQUISITION intends to investigate the accusations, seeking to understand the lived experience of indigenous peoples of distinct Native Brazilian tribes that were incorporated into the Portuguese America colonization. The central objective is to gain an understanding of the social-cultural and religious practices of resistance and adaptation adopted by the natives of Portuguese America, as well as the inclusion of those indigenous peoples in a society marked by cultural hybridism and miscegenation in colonial Brazil.Thus, taking an ethnohistorical approach, NATIVE INQUISITION attempts to interpret the cultural dilemmas in religious and interethnic contact of these populations with the colonizer. This project will provide a description and examine inquisitorial accusations against the indigenous and “mestizos”, producing a cartography of the ethnic groups involved, the reasons and regions. The study report will also developed an inventory of related historical sources with a view to promoting further research on the Native Peoples involved with the Portuguese Inquisition.NATIVE INQUISITION will particularly focus on analysing and building knowledge of the rich and diverse world of indigenous cultures, which constitute the root and essence of Latin America. Drawing on the continuing struggle of these peoples for their rights, autonomy and access to resources this research aims to contend and show that their political, cultural, economic and social expressions are instrumental to understanding the present of Latin America.\nUp2Europe Ads", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8904197812080383}
+{"content": "luxury-fashion, skins, animal skins, PETA\n\n© Tejal Patni\n\n\nWill luxury fashion say no to using exotic animal skins?\n\nCampaigners say major fashion houses should stop using reptile and ostrich skins in light of COVID-19’s likely connections to the treatment and trade of wild animals. But are luxury labels ready to let go? Vogue speaks to the experts leading the conversation\n\nWith the emergence of COVID-19 shining a new light on the treatment and trade of wild animals, will this year see the fashion industry finally part ways with exotic skins? Crocodile, alligator and ostrich skin—now considered highly unethical and outdated by many—have long been adopted as ultimate symbols of wealth by the ultra-rich. In 2017, a Hermès white Himalaya crocodile Birkin bag encrusted with diamonds sold for a record Rs 2,81,33,800 at a Christie’s auction. Meanwhile, a Gucci small Zumi alligator bag will currently set you back Rs 21,39,300, while a Louis Vuitton ostrich backpack will cost you Rs 11,33,000. \n\nBut as major fashion houses (most recently, Prada in February) say goodbye to fur for good, the use of precious animal skins is also being reconsidered. Chanel, Hugo Boss, Victoria Beckham and Mulberry are among a number of major brands to have stopped using exotic skins in recent years. “We are continually reviewing our supply chains to ensure they meet our expectations of integrity and traceability,” Chanel said in a statement in December 2018. “In this context, it is our experience that it is becoming increasingly difficult to source exotic skins which match our ethical standards.” Environmental factors have also been a concern, Mulberry’s global marketing director Charlotte O’Sullivan tells Vogue: “In 2018, Mulberry made a commitment to ensure all the leathers we use in our collections are a bi-product of the food industry.”\n\nNow, the current pandemic, which scientists say is likely to have originated from bats, has added human health protection concerns to what was previously an animal rights conversation. In light of this, there’s been increased pressure from groups including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)—which has bought shares in luxury brands including LVMH, Hermès and Prada—for the fashion industry to stop using exotic skins. The animal rights group called for Prada to ban the sale of exotic skins in an open letter ahead of the house’s annual company meeting in May. \n\n“Global viral threats and pandemics will continue to plague humans as long as we capture, confine, and kill animals for food or fashion,” explains Dan Mathews, senior vice president of campaigns at PETA. “[It’s likely that] COVID-19 was transmitted to us from other animals—as were the viruses that gave us SARS, MERS, and avian flu.” \n\nWhat are the risks of the exotic skins trade?\n\nCrocodiles, alligators, snakes and ostriches are most commonly used within the fashion industry for their skins. But in the context of COVID-19, scientists point out that the breeding of such animals pose significantly less risk when it comes to future pandemics, in contrast to bats, rodents and primates, which are responsible for 75 per cent of all viruses transferred from animals to humans. “As far as pandemics are concerned, there has never been, and we cannot foresee the possibility of one, starting from a reptile,” comments Dr William Karesh, executive vice president for health and policy at EcoHealth Alliance. \n\nBut that’s not to say there aren’t health risks involved in the handling of exotic animals, with bacterial infections in particular associated with reptiles. “Is it possible for an individual worker to get an infection from a reptile? Of course,” Dr Karesh adds. \n\nOstrich skins displayed in a tanner showroom.\n\n© Photography Getty Images\n\nAnimal welfare concerns need to be addressed \n\n(Warning: we are about to describe the treatment of animals at exotic animal farms in detail.) \n\nAnimal welfare, as well as conservation issues, remain the biggest concerns when it comes to the exotic skins trade. In 2016, PETA surfaced a shocking video of crocodiles on a farm in Vietnam having their necks sliced open and metal rods forced down their spines. Other investigations have revealed snakes being nailed to trees and skinned alive in Thailand or cut open with scissors. \n\nMajor brands have stepped up, pledging to ensure that precious skins are sourced from animals that are properly cared for. Kering, the owner of fashion houses including Gucci, Bottega Veneta and Saint Laurent, has outlined species-specific animal welfare standards, as well as requiring complete traceability from suppliers. The fashion conglomerate also states that suppliers should not source any legally traded species that are near threatened, vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. Meanwhile, LVMH, the owner of Louis Vuitton, Dior and Givenchy, launched its own standard for the responsible sourcing of crocodile skin in 2019.\n\nIn response to the recent PETA campaign, Prada told Vogue via a statement that it “relies on socially responsible processes that enable the company to explore new boundaries of creative design while meeting the demand for more sustainable products,” adding, “The Prada Group is participating in a working group with the Italian Chamber of Fashion to explore alternative solutions to animal-derived materials to preserve biodiversity.”\n\nRecently, a number of major fashion houses have also been forced to distance themselves from the $20bn illegal wildlife trade, after a study published in January found that luxury brands had more than 5,600 illegal wildlife products seized by authorities in the US between 2003 and 2013. While some fashion brands do legally harvest from the wild population, illegal poaching often involves the mistreatment of animals, affects endangered species, and has links to organised crime networks. \n\nWhat is the argument against banning the trade in exotic skins? \n\nDespite calls for the fashion industry as a whole to ban exotic skins, some scientists have suggested this is not the answer—arguing that the legal trading of exotic animals can provide local communities with a vital source of income and encourage animal conservation efforts.\n\n“I think a blanket ban is a really attractive policy for groups that want a quick answer, but it actually poses a lot of risks in terms of driving trade underground, making it even less possible to track and have safeguards in place,” comments Dr Catherine Machalaba, policy advisor and research scientist at EcoHealth Alliance. \n\nUltimately, though, the fashion industry’s continued use of exotic skins is likely to come down to public perception and the demand for these products. According to a 2019 report by Mintel, 37 per cent of consumers say animal welfare is the environmental issue that’s most important to them, while nearly half of millennials are concerned about transparency across the supply chain. \n\n“Consumers are increasingly interested in the ethics behind their clothes and accessories,” Mathews says. “The more we come to understand animals, the harder it becomes to justify killing them for a handbag or a pair of shoes.”\n\nRead more:\n\nIs vegan leather a sustainable alternative to the real thing?\n\nHow fashion fell out of love with fur: the complete timeline\n\nCruelty-free beauty is more complicated than you think—here’s why", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9845603108406067}
+{"content": "Tag Archives: fallacy theory\n\nThe Socratic problem for fallacy theory\n\nHow do you explain that someone is being irrational? What does even mean to be irrational? What does it mean to explain irrationality? After all, “it seemed right at the the time” is a perpetual phenomenological condition–this is the problem Aristotle tried to account for in his discussion of Akrasia (weakness of will; incontinence) in book VII of the NIcomachean Ethics: how can someone know that they should Phi, intend to do Phi, but then fail to Phi? You can’t explain this by referring to reasons because the reasons, at least the motivating ones, are inoperative in some important sense. Fans ofThe Philosopher know that he struggled mightily with this problem after rejecting the Socratic claim that akrasia is just ignorance. In a lot of ways he ends up embracing that view, though in doing so he seems to identify a different shade of the problem: there are different kinds of reasons.\n\nSomething akin to this problem haunts argumentation theory. For, it seems obvious that people commit fallacies all of the time. This is to say, on one account, they see premises as supporting a conclusion when they don’t. One problem for fallacy theory is that they seem to them to support the conclusion, so fallacies aren’t really irrational. This is the Socratic problem for fallacy theory. There are not fallacies because no one ever seems to be irrational to themselves.\n\nTo the Socratic problem for fallacy theory there’s the Aristotelian distinction between kinds of reasons. And of course when we say reasons we also mean, just like Aristotle, explanations (which is what the Greek seems to mean anyway). So we can explain someone’s holding p in a way that doesn’t entail that holding p was rational (or justified, which is similar but different).\n\nLots of things might count as accounts of irrationality; one common one is bias. This has the handy virtue of locating the skewing of someone’s reason in some kind of psychological tendency to mess up some key element of the reasoning process in a way that’s undetectable to them. So, confirmation bias, for example, standardly consists in noticing only that evidence that appears to confirm your desired outcome.\n\nSince you cannot will yourself to believe some particular conclusion, this works out great, because you can look at (or better not look at) evidence that might produce it (or avoid that which will). Of course, you can’t be completely be aware of this going on (thus–bias). This is what Aristotle was trying to represent.\n\nThis is one very cursory account of the relation between what people mean by irrationality in argumentation and what others mean by it. There is, by the way, a lot of confusion about what it means to teach this stuff–to teach about it, to teach to avoid it, etc. More on that here. I recommend that article for anyone interested in teaching critical thinking.\n\nHaving said all of this, there is interesting research (outside of my wheelhouse sadly) on bias being going in psychology and elsewhere. Here is one example. A sample graph:\n\nHowever, over the course of my research, I’ve come to question all of these assumptions. As I begun exploring the literature on confirmation bias in more depth, I first realised that there is not just one thing referred to by ‘confirmation bias’, but a whole host of different tendencies, often overlapping but not well connected. I realised that this is because of course a ‘confirmation bias’ can arise at different stages of reasoning: in how we seek out new information, in how we decide what questions to ask, in how we interpret and evaluate information, and in how we actually update our beliefs. I realised that the term ‘confirmation bias’ was much more poorly defined and less well understood than I’d thought, and that the findings often used to justify it were disparate, disconnected, and not always that robust.\n\nThe questions about bias lead to other ones about open-mindedness:\n\nAll of this investigation led me to seriously question the assumptions that I had started with: that confirmation bias was pervasive, ubiquitous, and problematic, and that more open-mindedness was always better. Some of this can be explained as terminological confusion: as I scrutinised the terms I’d been using unquestioningly, I realised that different interpretations led to different conclusions. I have attempted to clarify some of the terminological confusion that arises around these issues: distinguishing between different things we might mean when we say a ‘confirmation bias’ exists (from bias as simply an inclination in one direction, to a systematic deviation from normative standards), and distinguishing between ‘open-mindedness’ as a descriptive, normative, or prescriptive concept. However, some substantive issues remained, leading me to conclusions I would not have expected myself to be sympathetic to a few years ago: that the extent to which our prior beliefs influence reasoning may well be adaptive across a range of scenarios given the various goals we are pursuing, and that it may not always be better to be ‘more open-minded’. It’s easy to say that people should be more willing to consider alternatives and less influenced by what they believe, but much harder to say how one does this. Being a total ‘blank slate’ with no assumptions or preconceptions is not a desirable or realistic starting point, and temporarily ‘setting aside’ one’s beliefs and assumptions whenever it would be useful to consider alternatives is incredibly cognitively demanding, if possible to do at all. There are tradeoffs we have to make, between the benefits of certainty and assumptions, and the benefits of having an ‘open mind’, that I had not acknowledged before.\n\nWhat is interesting is how questions about one kind of account (the bias one, which is explanatory) lead back to the questions they were in a sense meant to solve (the normative one). But perhaps this distinction is mistaken.\n\nArgumentative clutter\n\nA while back, not that long ago actually, you couldn’t escape memes about Marie Kondo, the Japanese de-cluttering expert and reality TV personality. The most famous one was to ask, about any object that you have laying around your house: does it spark joy? If it doesn’t, then you get rid of it.\n\nOver at Philosophy15, run by our own Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse, they run another version of the “Owl of Minerva Problem.” Here’s the video (it’s a two-parter, this is part I):\n\nA common stoic-type (Scott can confirm this) argument against extra stuff (one that I unsuccessfully employ all of the time) is that stuff just creates the need for more stuff. There’s a version of the this in Boethius’s Consolation.\n\nInterestingly, this works for arguments as well, though there is no Marie Kondo here to help you. The better you get at arguments, the more argument furniture, rugs, tchotchkes you gather in the form of argument vocabulary, fallacy names, etc. In a sense, gathering this stuff is what it means, in the minds of many at least, to be good at arguing. The problem is that it gets subsumed into arguments such that you then have to gather more of it–more second (third?) order vocabulary, and so forth, to manage the misemployment of fallacy vocabulary, for instance.\n\nOne quick example of that. The Harry Potter Problem, so I call it, is the employment fallacy names (expecto ad hominem!) in place of ordinary language critique of argument. The Harry Potter problem only arises because we have a second-order vocabulary.\n\nAnyway, back to the main point: you can get rid of stuff, lead a more simple life. This is not an option with arguments, even though the cause of the problem is pretty much the same. We’re stuck with the clutter. The only solution is more clutter.\n\nSelf straw manning\n\nImage result for straw man\n\nThis is a continuation of Scott’s post from yesterday, where he observed that you can perform a kind of self straw man. You say something vague, knowing that you’re going to be “misinterpreted” and then you complain that you have been misinterpreted.\n\nThis kind of move–and I’ll give a slightly more subtle version of this in a moment–nicely illustrates the Owl of Minerva Problem for fallacy theory. The Owl of Minerva problem, as Scott and Robert Talisse describe it over at 3 Quarks Daily, runs like this:\n\nBut the Owl of Minerva Problem raises distinctive trouble for our politics, especially when politics is driven by argument and discourse. Here is why: once we have a critical concept, say, of a fallacy, we can deploy it in criticizing arguments. We may use it to correct an interlocutor. But once our interlocutors have that concept, that knowledge changes their behavior. They can use the concept not only to criticize our arguments, but it will change the way they argue, too. Moreover, it will also become another thing about which we argue. And so, when our concepts for describing and evaluating human argumentative behavior is used amidst those humans, it changes their behavior. They adopt it, adapt to it. They, because of the vocabulary, are moving targets, and the vocabulary becomes either otiose or abused very quickly.\n\nThe introduction of a metavocabulary will change the way we argue and it will, inevitably, become a thing we argue about.  The theoretical question is whether there is any distinction between the levels of meta-argumentation. The practical question is whether there is anything we can do about the seemingly inexorable journey to meta-argumentation. I have a theory on this but I’ll save that for another time.\n\nNow for self straw manning.  This is a slightly more subtle version of yesterday’s example. Here’s the text (a bit longish, sorry) from a recent profile of Sam Harris by Nathan J.Robinson.\n\nA number of critics labeled Harris “racist” or “Islamophobic” for his commentary on Muslims, charges that enraged him. First, he said, Islam is not a race, but a set of ideas. And second, while a phobia is an irrational fear, his belief about the dangers of Islam was perfectly rational, based on an understanding of its theological doctrines. The criticisms did not lead him to rethink the way he spoke about Islam,[4] but convinced him that ignorant Western leftists were using silly terms like “Islamophobia” to avoid facing the harsh truth that, contra “tolerance” rhetoric, Islam is not an “otherwise peaceful religion that has been ‘hijacked’ by extremists” but a religion that is “fundamentalist” and warlike at its core.[5]\n\nEach time Harris said something about Islam that created outrage, he had a defense prepared. When he wondered why anybody would want any more “fucking Muslims,” he was merely playing “Devil’s advocate.” When he said that airport security should profile “Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it,” he was simply demanding acknowledgment that a 22-year old Syrian man was objectively more likely to engage in terrorism than a 90-year-old Iowan grandmother. (Harris also said that he wasn’t advocating that only Muslims should be profiled, and that people with his own demographic characteristics should also be given extra scrutiny.) And when he suggested that if an avowedly suicidal Islamist government achieved long-range nuclear weapons capability, “the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own,” he was simply referring to a hypothetical situation and not in any way suggesting nuking the cities of actually-existing Muslims.[6]\n\nIt’s not necessary to use “Islamophobia” or the r-word in order to conclude that Harris was doing something both disturbing and irrational here. As James Croft of Patheos noted, Harris would follow a common pattern when talking about Islam: (1) Say something that sounds deeply extreme and bigoted. (2) Carefully build in a qualification that makes it possible to deny that the statement is literally bigoted. (3) When audiences react with predictable horror, point to the qualification in order to insist the audience must be stupid and irrational. How can you be upset with him for merely playing Devil’s Advocate? How can you be upset with him for advocating profiling, when he also said that he himself should be profiled? How can you object, unless your “tolerance” is downright pathological, to the idea that it would be legitimate to destroy a country that was bent on destroying yours?\n\nSam Harris is certainly a divisive figure. I’d also venture to guess that he is smart enough to know his audience, some of whom (such as Robinson here above) strongly disagree with him. He might be expected, therefore, for the purposes of having a productive debate, to make his commitments absolutely clear. This would involve, one would hope, avoiding bombastic utterances bound to provoke strong reactions or misinterpretations.\n\nBut, crucially, arguments are not always about convincing new people to adhere to your view, but to strengthen the attitudes of your followers. It seems to me that just such a tactic as the self-straw man is ideal. You get an opponent (cleverly, this case) to embody the very stereotype of the unreasonable, ideology-driven mismanager of fallacy vocabulary by setting up a straw man of your own view for them. They’re drawn to that but not to your qualifications and so the trap closes.\n\nWith consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do\n\nThere is no question that President Trump has done a 180 on military intervention in the Middle East. You can see the tweet record here.\n\nIt is reasonable, I think, to call this hypocrisy or inconsistency. That’s why we have those terms. They’re shorthand for saying, “you have changed your view without signaling any reasons for having done so.” Part of what this evaluation points out, in other words, is that it’s time for reasons. After all, there’s been a change, and we normally expect there to be something to justify the change.\n\nSo this is a discussion we ought to have and “hypocrite” or “inconsistent” are terms we need to use.  But that’s just me. Here’s Josh Marshall from TPM.\n\nDonald Trump has said all manner of contradictory things about Syria and unilateral airstrikes. He said Obama shouldn’t attack in 2013 and insisted he needed congressional authorization to do so. Now he is contradicting both points. But whether or not Trump is hypocritical is not a terribly important point at the moment. Whether he’s changed his position isn’t that important. But the rapidity and totality with which he’s done so is important. There are compelling arguments on both sides of the intervention question. But impulsive, reactive, unconsidered actions seldom generate happy results.\n\nAnother way to put this is that while I agree it’s silly for the now to focus on calling Trump a hypocrite, the man’s mercurial and inconstant nature makes his manner of coming to the decision as important as the decision itself. That tells us whether he’ll have the same worldview tomorrow, whether this is part of any larger plan. There are arguments for intervention and restraint. But given what we know of Trump, it is highly uncertain that this is part of either approach. It may simply be blowing some stuff up.\n\nWhich is another way of saying his hypocrisy raises questions. This is why we have  meta-linguistic terminology. And the important thing about the metalanguage  is that it makes our analytical work easier. We don’t need to build new theories every time we encounter a problem.\n\nJames Brown’s hair\n\nOne reason we started this blog so many years ago was to create a repository of examples of bad arguments. There were, we thought, so many. There are, we still think, so many.\n\nSince then, we’ve expanded our focus to theoretical questions about argumentation. One such question is whether there are actually any fallacious arguments at all. Part of this question concerns the usefulness of a meta-language of argument evaluation. Argument has a tendency to eat everything around it, which means evaluations of arguments will be included in the argument itself. To use a sports analogy, penalties are not separate from the game, they’re part of the strategy of the game. The use of fallacies, then, is just another layer of argument strategy and practice.\n\nThat’s not the usual argument, I think, against employing a meta-language of fallacy evaluation. Often rather the discussion hinges one whether such moves can be precisely identified, or whether it’s practically useful to point them out. These, like the first, are both excellent considerations.\n\nOn the other hand, there’s a heuristic usefulness to a set of meta-terms for argument evaluation. For one, it’s nice to have an organized mind about these things.  Second, people tend to make the same moves over and over. Consider this one from Bill O’Reilly last week:\n\nIn case you can’t watch, a brief summary (courtesy of CNN):\n\nDuring an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” O’Reilly reacted to a clip of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) delivering a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives.\n\nI didn’t hear a word she said,” O’Reilly said of Waters. “I was looking at the James Brown wig.”\n\n“If we have a picture of James Brown — it’s the same wig,” he added.\n\nThe classical version of the ad hominem goes like this: some speaker is disqualified on grounds not relevant to their competence, accuracy, etc. This seems like a pretty textbook example.\n\nThis brings me to another reason people have for skepticism about the usefulness of fallacy theory: fallacies, such as the one above, are so rare that it’s just not useful to spend time theorizing about them.\n\nI don’t think so.\n\n\nFallacy theory and democracy\n\nInstead of writing something myself today, I thought I’d post a link to this interesting piece by Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse on Democracy and the Owl of Minerva Problem. A critical graph:\n\nWe argue in our natural languages, and so often when we argue, we argue over economies, animals, environments, poverty, and so on. But arguments are structured collections of statements that are alleged to manifest certain kinds of logical relations; consequently, they, too, can be the subject of scrutiny and disagreement. And often in order to evaluate a claim about, say, poverty, we need to attend specifically to the argument alleged to support it. In order to discuss arguments, as arguments, we must develop a language about the argumentative use of language. That is, we must develop a metalanguage. The objective in developing a metalanguage about argument is to enable us to talk about a given argument’s quality without taking a side in the debate over the truth of its conclusion.\n\nThe critical idea is that our theory about deliberative debate always follows the debate itself. This explains our ill-preparedness for what these debates offer. See: 2016.\n\nWe’re Back\n\nSorry for the long hiatus–work and some wordpress issues. Anyway, we’ll be back to posting occasionally.\n\nHere’s a paper worth reading: “The Fake, the Flimsy, and the Fallacious: Demarcating Arguments in Real Life”  by Boudry, Paglieri, and Pigliucci. Here’s the key argument:\n\nWe outline a destructive dilemma we refer to as the Fallacy Fork: on the one hand, if fallacies are construed as demonstrably invalid form of reasoning, then they have very limited applicability in real life (few actual instances). On the other hand, if our definitions of fallacies are sophisticated enough to capture real-life complexities, they can no longer be held up as an effective tool for discriminating good and bad forms of reasoning.\n\nIn addition to other questions (which I’ll maybe discuss later), I wonder very strongly about the empirical verifiability of the first horn.\n\nApplied epistemology\n\nInteresting read over at the Leiter Reports (by guest blogger Peter Ludlow).  A taste:\n\nYesterday some friends on Facebook were kicking around the question of whether there is such a thing as applied epistemology and if so what it covers.  There are plenty of candidates, but there is one notion of applied epistemology that I’ve been pushing for a while – the idea that groups engage in strategies to undermine the epistemic position of their adversaries.\n\nIn the military context this is part of irregular warfare (IW) and it often employs elements of PSYOPS (psychological operations).  Applied epistemology should help us develop strategies for armoring ourselves against these PSYOPS.   I wrote a brief essay on the idea here. What most people don’t realize is that PSYOPS aren’t just deployed in the battlefield, but they are currently being deployed in our day-to-day lives, and I don’t just mean via advertising and public relations.\n\nThis very much seems like a job for fallacy theory, broadly speaking.  Here’s an example from the article referred to above:\n\nOne of the key observations by Waltz is that an epistemic attack on an organization does not necessarily need to induce false belief into the organization; it can sometimes be just as effective to induce uncertainty about information which is in point of fact reliable. When false belief does exist in an organization (as it surely does in every organization and group) the goal might then be to induce confidence in the veracity of these false beliefs. In other words, epistemic attack is not just about getting a group to believe what is false, it is about getting the group to have diminished credence in what is true and increased credence in what is false.\n\nOne obvious mechanism for this goal is the time-honored art of sophistry.\n\nThanks Phil Mayo for the pointer!", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7033002972602844}
+{"content": "Video captures rescue of orcas trapped in ice floes in Russia\n\nWhen four whales became trapped off the coast of eastern Russia, rescuers ventured into the icy water to set them free.\n\nThe orcas (also known as killer whales) were discovered in shallow waters near Sakhalin, an island off the eastern coast of Russia, on April 19. The animals could not leave the shallow waters on their own because of ice floes in the way. Russian emergencies ministry was called in to help the animals.\n\nThe rescuers had to borrow a rowboat to reach them because the waters were too shallow for their vessels, the ministry wrote in a press release. After they reached the animals, three of the rescuers entered the water to help with the rescue. One of the orcas was in danger of drowning because it was stuck with its breathing hole underwater, so the team carefully moved him to where he could be turned over so he could breathe again.\n\n\"Thanks to the actions of rescuers, the killer whale 'came alive' and started to move,\" the ministry wrote of that whale.\n\nThe team worked to push ice floes out of the way so the orcas could swim to deeper waters. Three swam away but the biggest one, 23-foot-long \"Willy,\" remained stuck, Russian news wire TASS reported. The rescuers worked overnight, and early Wednesday morning the fourth whale, Willy was finally able to reach the open water.\nCopyright © 2021 KGO-TV. All Rights Reserved.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9999341368675232}
+{"content": "ECHR requests information on 23 Armenians held in Azerbaijani captivity\n\nThe European Court of Human Rights has decided to apply urgent measures with regard to the 23 people captured as a result of the war unleashed by Azerbaijan against , lawyers Artak Zeynalyan and Siranush Sahakyan inform.\n\nThe captured person are:\n\nHrachya Gabrielyan,\nErik Mkhitaryan,\nKhachatur Mikaelyan,\nHarutyun Seyradaryan,\nArtyom Karapetyan,\nLiparit Tadevosyan,\nAshot Yesayan,\nDavid Danielyan,\nArtsvik Chobanyan,\nGegham Martirosyan,\nMikael Mirzoyan,\nHamlet Malkhasyan,\nArmen Martirosyan,\nSevan Ghazaryan,\nSerob Galoyan,\nMushegh Nurbekyan,\nHovhannes Gabrielyan,\nSergey Manukyan.\n\nThe arrested civilians are:\n\nKamo Manasyan,\nBorya Baghdasaryan,\nMaxim Grigoryan,\nKaren Petrosyan,\nSedrak Petrosyan.\n\nThe European Court of Human Rights requested documented information from the Government of Azerbaijan on the fact of their detention, their location, conditions of detention and medical care. The court set December 7, 9, 10,11 and 14 as deadlines for providing the required information.\n\nIn addition, the lawyers say, the Government of Azerbaijan, in response to the questions raised by the European Court in previous cases, gave a resounding, evasive, incomplete answer. In particular, it did not substantially answer where and under what conditions the Armenian prisoners of war are kept, did not submit any proof of medical examination, stating that the information will be provided in the near future.\n\nRead original article here.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8685532808303833}
+{"content": "Ratings: Why did CBS air ‘Pure Genius,’ ‘Mom,’ and ‘The Great Indoors’?\n\nPure Genius -\n\nWe’ve got one question coming out of Thursday night’s primetime lineup, and it’s very clearly the one that we’ve got in the title for this article. Why in the world would CBS — a network supposedly invested in keeping all of their shows around for more seasons — decide to put new episodes on the air on Thanksgiving night?\n\nThere’s no clear answer necessarily to this, but there are two things to keep in mind here: This is hardly the first time the network’s chosen to do this even when other major television networks do not, and at the same time, they also all are shows that had a later start in the season because of NFL football. Maybe this is the only way that CBS can make their overall schedule work with the number of weeks that they have.\n\nLet’s go ahead and go through the highlights.\n\nPure Genius” – Getting a 0.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic isn’t necessarily doing the show any favors, given that it’s already been confirmed to not be coming back for another season. At the same time, we have admittedly seen much worse.\n\n“The Great Indoors” – Without the presence of “The Big Bang Theory” as a lead-in, the Joel McHale comedy mustered just a 1.2.\n\nMom” – Unfortunately, the Anna Faris comedy drew the same exact thing in a 1.2.\n\n“Life in Pieces” – Finally, the family comedy generated just a 1.0 for its own episode on Thanksgiving night.\n\nAll of these comedies in particular were down hefty percentage points over prior new episodes.\n\nHere is the network that really should be airing a new bit of programming — Fox. They had a repeat of “Rosewood” last night that, even with adjustments after the fact, likely generated better overall ratings than anything else on the night aside from football. Isn’t that impressive? It also performed much better than any other episode of “Rosewood” for the entire season to date. (Photo: CBS.)\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.976717472076416}
+{"content": "Reset A A Font size: Print\n\nCourt of Appeal, Fourth District, Division 1, California.\n\nThe PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Rafael Velasquez MAGANA, Defendant and Appellant.\n\nNo. D008552.\n\nDecided: March 13, 1990\n\nJeffrey J. Stuetz, San Diego, for defendant and appellant. John K. Van de Kamp, Atty. Gen., Richard B. Iglehart, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., Harley D. Mayfield, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Robert M. Foster and Janelle B. Davis, Deputy Attys. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.\n\nAppellant Rafael Velasquez Magana was charged in count one of an information with possession of heroin for sale (Health & Saf.Code,1 § 11351), in count two with possession of cocaine for sale (§ 11351) and in count three with possession of cocaine and heroin (§ 11350, subd. (a)).   Convicted on all three counts, appellant was sentenced to the upper term of four years on count one and to a concurrent four-year term on count two.   The upper term of three years was imposed as to count three but stayed pursuant to Penal Code section 654.\n\nAppellant contends he could not lawfully be convicted of the crime of possession in count three since that crime is a necessarily lesser included offense of that charged in counts one and two, the trial court erred in instructing that an extrajudicial confession should be view with caution and the court erred in instructing that, in the context of evaluating circumstantial evidence as between a reasonable interpretation of the evidence and an unreasonable one, it was the duty of the jury to accept the reasonable interpretation.\n\n\nFACTSA. Prosecution Case\n\nOn April 10, 1988, at approximately 8:45 a.m. Deputy Sheriff Robert Luke approached appellant and three other men who were standing on a street in Solana Beach.   As he did so he noticed a white bindle about eight to ten inches from appellant's feet.   Opening the bindle, the deputy found heroin.   Appellant was searched.   Two clear plastic baggies containing cocaine and a bindle containing heroin were discovered in his right front pocket.   In another pocket the deputies found more cocaine.   Appellant also had three $20 bills in his possession.   None of the other men were found to possess drugs.\n\nAppellant waived his rights and was asked what the substances were.   Appellant stated heroin and cocaine.   When asked where he got the contraband, appellant replied he got it from from a man in a blue Mustang.   Appellant stated he paid $140 for the drugs.\n\nAn expert on the sale of drugs, concluded that based on the facts of the case, the manner in which the drugs were packaged, the amount of drugs found and the absence of tools for using the drugs, the contraband found on or near appellant was being held for sale.   The expert testified it was possible the entire amount of drugs found on or near appellant could have been purchased for $140.\n\nB. Defense Case\n\nAppellant testified in his own behalf and stated he bought the drugs the day of his arrest for $140.   Appellant paid with two $100 bills and received as change the three $20 bills found on his person.   Appellant also testified the bindle of heroin found on the ground was not his.   Appellant stated the drugs were for personal use and would last six days.\n\n\nDISCUSSIONA. Lesser Included Offense\n\n Appellant argues his conviction for simple possession of a controlled substance as charged in count three should be reversed.   He contends simple possession is a necessarily lesser included offense of possession for sale.   Since appellant was convicted of possession for sale based on possession of the same contraband supporting the conviction for simple possession, the conviction for the lesser offense must be reversed.  (See People v. Moran (1970) 1 Cal.3d 755, 763, 83 Cal.Rptr. 411, 463 P.2d 763.)\n\nThe Attorney General suggests reversal is not necessary since conviction for the offense of simple possession could have been based on possession of some of the contraband while conviction of possession for sale could have been based on the possession of the remaining drugs.\n\nWhile perhaps theoretically true, a serious defect in the People's argument is that the jury was never alerted to the possibility of such a subtle division of the contraband.   Consequently we can only presume the convictions for possession for sale and the conviction for simple possession were based on the same evidence.\n\nThe conviction for simple possession (count three) is reversed.\n\nB. Instruction on Circumstantial Evidence\n\n Appellant argues the trial court's instructions on the use of circumstantial evidence were fundamentally flawed and requires reversal of his possession for sale convictions.\n\nAppellant notes the trial court instructed the jury concerning circumstantial evidence in the terms of CALJIC Nos. 2.00 (direct and circumstantial evidence—inferences), 2.01 (sufficiency of circumstantial evidence—generally) and 2.02 (sufficiency of circumstantial evidence to prove specific intent).   CALJIC No. 2.00 explains that circumstantial evidence is evidence that “if found to be true, proves a fact from which an inference of the existence of another fact may be drawn.”   An inference in turn is described as “a deduction of fact that may logically and reasonably be drawn from another fact or group of facts established by the evidence.”\n\nCALJIC No. 2.01, an instruction generally considered favorable to the defense,2 tells the jury they may not base a finding of guilt on circumstantial evidence “unless the proved circumstances are not only (1) consistent with the theory that the defendant is guilty of the crime, but (2) cannot be reconciled with any other rational conclusion.”\n\nAfter telling the jury that each fact necessary to complete a set of circumstances necessary to establish guilt must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, the instruction states that if the circumstantial evidence is susceptible of two reasonable interpretations, one of which points to the defendant's guilt and the other to his innocence, it is the jury's duty to adopt that interpretation which points to the defendant's innocence.\n\nIt is with the following concluding paragraph that appellant takes issue:  “If, on the other hand, one interpretation of such evidence appears to you to be reasonable and the other interpretation to be unreasonable, it would be your duty to accept the reasonable interpretation and reject the unreasonable.”\n\nAppellant argues this paragraph negates the presumption of innocence since it allows the jury to convict merely by finding the defense theory of the case to be unreasonable.  (CALJIC No. 2.02 dealing with circumstantial evidence of specific intent contains the same paragraph.)   Appellant argues that merely because an explanation is unreasonable does not mean it is untrue.   Since that is the case, the instruction may compel the jury to reject a defense theory which is unreasonable but yet is true.\n\nWe disagree.   The correctness of jury instructions is determined from the entire charge of the court and not from a consideration of parts of an instruction or from a particular instruction.  (People v. Burgener (1986) 41 Cal.3d 505, 538, 224 Cal.Rptr. 112, 714 P.2d 1251.)   The concepts conveyed by the cited instructions, and indeed the whole area of presumption of innocence, are not given to precise definition and are unavoidably ambiguous.   In toto, however, the instructions make clear that circumstantial evidence may prove guilt only if it “cannot be reconciled with any other rational conclusion.”   The words “reasonable” and “rational” in this context can only be read in conjunction with the instruction on reasonable doubt (CALJIC No. 2.90).  That instruction tells the jurors that if they harbor a reasonable doubt concerning guilt, they are required to acquit.   The jury is told reasonable doubt is not mere possible doubt because everything in human affairs is open to some doubt.   Reasonable doubt is, rather, that state of the case where the consideration of all evidence leaves the minds of the jurors in that condition that they cannot say they feel an abiding conviction, to a moral certainty, of the truth of the charge.\n\nIn light of language in the instruction on reasonable doubt and presumption of innocence, the only reasonable reading of CALJIC Nos. 2.01 and 2.02 is that a reasonable or rational interpretation of circumstantial evidence, favorable to the defense, is one that is sufficiently credible and has such a probability of truth that the jurors cannot beyond a reasonable doubt reject it.   The paragraph critized by appellant, therefore, does not tell the jury to reject interpretations of circumstantial evidence favorable to the defense simply because they are unusual or bizarre, it merely tells them to reject interpretations of circumstantial evidence that are so incredible or so devoid of logic that they can, beyond a reasonable doubt, be rejected.   While the concept may be complex, we do not believe a reasonable juror viewing the instructions as a whole could interpret the instruction in any other way.\n\nC. Instruction on Confession\n\n Appellant argues that under the facts of this case, it was federal constitutional error to inform the jury it should view an extrajudicial confession with caution.\n\nThe trial court instructed the jury in the terms of CALJIC No. 2.70.   The instruction tells the jury a confession is a statement made by the defendant other than at trial in which he has acknowledged his guilt of the crimes for which he is on trial.   It explains the jury is the exclusive judge of whether a confession was made and if so whether the statement was true.   The instruction ends with the caveat “Evidence of an oral confession of the defendant should be viewed with caution.”\n\nAppellant notes that in this case he confessed to the possession of heroin and cocaine at the time of his arrest.   He observes that rather than claiming the confession false, he testified at trial his confession was truthful but that he did not possess the drugs for sale.   Appellant argues he was prejudiced therefore because the jury was told to view with caution evidence, i.e., his extrajudicial confession which supported his defense.\n\nNo one in this case was arguing the extrajudicial confession should be disbelieved.   The confession was an important component of both the prosecution and defense cases.   The confession and its truthfulness was a given from which the parties proceeded to contest the true issue in the case—whether appellant possessed the contraband with the intent to sell.   The instruction could not have harmed appellant.\n\nThe judgment as to counts one and two is affirmed, reversed as to count three.\n\n\nFN1. All statutory references are to the Health and Safety Code unless otherwise specified..  FN1. All statutory references are to the Health and Safety Code unless otherwise specified.\n\n2.   A split of authority exists concerning the need for and indeed wisdom of giving an expansive circumstantial evidence instruction like that required in California.   A large number of jurisdictions have adopted the rule that a special instruction on circumstantial evidence is not required when the jury is properly instructed on the reasonable doubt standard.  (See 36 A.L.R.4th 1046, 1051–1052, 1059–1063.)   Indeed, several courts, including the United States Supreme Court in Holland v. United States (1954) 348 U.S. 121, 139–140, 75 S.Ct. 127, 137–138, 99 L.Ed. 150, have concluded expansive instructions on circumstantial evidence are confusing.  (See 36 A.L.R.4th 1046, 1051–1058, 1059–1063.)\n\nBENKE, Associate Justice.\n\nKREMER, P.J., and HUFFMAN, J., concur.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6078678965568542}
+{"content": "Reset A A Font size: Print\n\nCourt of Appeal, Fourth District, Division 3, California.\n\nDaniel Alberto IBARRA, Petitioner, v. MUNICIPAL COURT for the Central Orange County Judicial District, Respondent, PEOPLE of the State of California, Real Party in Interest.\n\n\nDecided: December 17, 1984\n\nJack C. Francis, Santa Ana, for petitioner. No appearance for respondent. Cecil Hicks, Dist. Atty., Michael R. Capizzi, William W. Bedsworth and Brett G. London, Deputy Dist. Attys., for real party in interest.\n\nPetitioner Daniel Alberto Ibarra seeks a writ of prohibition preventing the municipal court from taking any further action other than dismissing the misdemeanor charges against him.   He claims the municipal court erroneously denied his motion to dismiss based on unnecessary pretrial delay.\n\nIbarra was arrested for misdemeanor lewd conduct on March 3, 1983.   The next day he was released on his own recognizance and agreed to appear for arraignment on March 22, 1983.   On that day Ibarra appeared with counsel.   No complaint had been filed and therefore no arraignment took place.   On March 25, 1983, a complaint was filed against petitioner, alleging lewd conduct and battery (Pen.Code, §§ 647, subd. (a) and 242.)   Two and one-half months later a warrant was issued for Ibarra's arrest.   Although Ibarra continued to reside at the same address noted on his original release forms, he was not arrested until April 30, 1984, approximately thirteen months after his original arrest and more than twelve months after the complaint had been filed.   Ibarra was arrested at home.   Prior to his arrest on the warrant he had no notice charges had ever been filed.\n\nAfter arraignment in the municipal court, Ibarra made a motion to dismiss because of the delay.   He claimed the delay between his original arrest and subsequent arraignment more than a year later violated his state and federal constitutional guarantees to a speedy trial.   In support of his motion, Ibarra's declaration was introduced into evidence.   The declaration alleged he had suffered prejudice from the delay in that he no longer remembered the details of the conversation which led to his arrest.   Furthermore, when he appeared in court pursuant to his own recognizance release, someone in the district attorney's office led him to believe he would not be prosecuted.   Ibarra did not learn this conclusion was incorrect until he was arrested more than a year later.   No evidence was offered to justify or explain the delay in filing charges or serving Ibarra with the arrest warrant.   The municipal court found Ibarra had failed to establish actual prejudice and denied his motion to dismiss.   Ibarra's petition for a writ of prohibition in superior court was similarly denied.   We stayed Ibarra's trial when he sought relief from this court.\n\n A criminal defendant in California has protection from delays in prosecution under the federal constitution, the state constitution, and the state statutory scheme.   The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the “accused” a right to a “speedy” and public trial.  (Klopfer v. North Carolina (1967) 386 U.S. 213, 87 S.Ct. 988, 18 L.Ed.2d 1.)  Article I, section 15 of the California Constitution similarly guarantees a defendant the right to a speedy and public trial.  (See also Pen.Code, § 686, subd. (1).)  Protections against delay are specifically enumerated in the state statutory scheme.   Delays in initiating prosecution are controlled by statutes of limitation.  (Pen.Code, §§ 800 et seq.)  Penal Code sections 825, 847 and 849 restrict delays between arrest and arraignment.   Once arraigned, Penal Code section 1382 sets out specific time requirements when the matter must be brought to trial, absent a waiver.   The due process clause of the federal constitution may also provide a remedy when a defendant complains about unnecessary delay.   The due process right is distinct from a speedy prosecution complaint.  (United States v. Marion (1971) 404 U.S. 307, 92 S.Ct. 455, 30 L.Ed.2d 468;  People v. Archerd (1970) 3 Cal.3d 615, 91 Cal.Rptr. 397, 477 P.2d 421.)   In the due process context, the issue is whether the defendant's right to a fair trial has been impaired or prejudiced because of unreasonable delay.  (Scherling v. Superior Court (1978) 22 Cal.3d 493, 507, 149 Cal.Rptr. 597, 585 P.2d 219.)\n\n The nature of the right asserted dictates the procedural mechanism for evaluating the claimed violation.   Contrary to Ibarra's claim, his Sixth Amendment right did not attach until his second arrest, after a complaint had been filed.   The federal speedy trial right is triggered by the filing of a formal indictment or information or arrest and holding to answer.  (United States v. Marion, supra, 404 U.S. 307, 320, 92 S.Ct. 455, 463, 30 L.Ed.2d 468.)   Implicit in the Supreme Court's discussion in Marion is the conclusion that arrest alone does not invoke the federal right.1\n\n Although Ibarra had no Sixth Amendment protection prior to his arrest on the warrant, the California Constitution is broader and protects him from prearraignment delays.  (People v. Hannon (1977) 19 Cal.3d 588, 138 Cal.Rptr. 885, 19 Cal.3d 588.)   The due process clause also protects Ibarra from unreasonable delay if he has been prejudiced by the delay to the extent he will be denied a fair trial.  (United States v. Marion, supra, 404 U.S. 307, 92 S.Ct. 455;  People v. Archerd, supra, 3 Cal.3d 615, 91 Cal.Rptr. 397, 477 P.2d 421;  People v. Vanderburg (1973) 32 Cal.App.3d 526, 108 Cal.Rptr. 104.)\n\n A state constitutional speedy trial claim is decided by balancing the effect of the delay—prejudice to the defendant—against any justification for the delay.  (Jones v. Superior Court (1970) 3 Cal.3d 734, 740, 91 Cal.Rptr. 578, 478 P.2d 10.)   Despite language to the contrary in Jones, prejudice is not presumed prearraignment.  (Scherling v. Superior Court, supra, 22 Cal.3d 493, 149 Cal.Rptr. 597, 585 P.2d 219;  Overby v. Municipal Court (1981) 121 Cal.App.3d 377, 175 Cal.Rptr. 352;  People v. Allen (1979) 96 Cal.App.3d 268, 158 Cal.Rptr. 54.) 2  Additionally, whether his claim is couched in terms of speedy trial under the state constitution or due process, the balancing process is the same.   (Scherling v. Superior Court, supra, 22 Cal.3d at p. 505, 149 Cal.Rptr. 597, 585 P.2d 219;  Overby v. Municipal Court, supra, 121 Cal.App.3d at p. 383, 175 Cal.Rptr. 352.)\n\n Therefore, regardless of whether we characterize Ibarra's prearraignment delay as a violation of the state constitutional speedy trial right or the due process right to a fair trial, the trial court must conduct a hearing to balance any claim of prejudice against any reasons offered to justify the delay.   Since prejudice cannot be presumed, Ibarra has the initial burden of showing some prejudice before the prosecution is required to offer any reason for the delay.  (Overby v. Municipal Court, supra, 121 Cal.App.3d 377, 175 Cal.Rptr. 352;  People v. Lawson (1979) 94 Cal.App.3d 194, 156 Cal.Rptr. 226;  People v. Vanderburg, supra, 32 Cal.App.3d 526, 108 Cal.Rptr. 104.)\n\n At the hearing on Ibarra's motion to dismiss, he offered his declaration as proof of prejudice.   The prosecution argues this declaration is insufficient to meet his showing of actual prejudice.   While we agree the claimed prejudice is minimal, we hold the trial court erred in evaluating the quality of the prejudice without conducting a further hearing to balance the claimed prejudice against any reason offered for the delay.   Simply stated, Ibarra's declaration shifted the burden of going forward with evidence to the prosecution to explain the delay.   The quality of any claimed prejudice cannot be properly evaluated in a vacuum;  it only makes sense when compared with any justification for the delay.   We agree that mere allegations “I was prejudiced” would be insufficient to shift the burden of going forward with evidence.   As the Overby court notes, defendant's initial burden to show actual prejudice cannot be met by bald allegations.   We find the allegation of memory impairment sufficient in this case to shift the burden of going forward with evidence so the trial court can balance that prejudice against any claimed justification for the delay.   Even a minimal showing of prejudice may require dismissal if the proffered justification for delay be unsubstantial.   By the same token, the more reasonable the delay, the more prejudice the defense would have to show to require dismissal.   Therein lies the delicate task of balancing competing interests.\n\nWe hold the trial court erred in not conducting a full hearing on Ibarra's motion to dismiss.   His declaration claiming prejudice from memory loss requires the prosecution offer some evidence to justify or explain the delay.\n\n We have received and considered the response of real party in interest;  further proceedings would add nothing to our review.   A peremptory writ in the first instance is appropriate.  (Palma v. U.S. Industrial Fasteners, Inc. (1984) 36 Cal.3d 171, 180, 203 Cal.Rptr. 626, 681 P.2d 893.)   Let a peremptory writ of mandate issue directing the municipal court to conduct a hearing on Ibarra's motion to dismiss consistent with this opinion.\n\n\n1.   Ibarra's reliance on Dillingham v. United States (1975) 423 U.S. 64, 96 S.Ct. 303, 46 L.Ed.2d 205, is misplaced.   In Dillingham, the Court found the delay between arrest and indictment must be included in determining whether there was a Sixth Amendment violation.  Dillingham ' s situation is distinguishable because he had previously been held to answer, as noted by the court in United States v. Kidd (9th Cir.1984) 734 F.2d 409 at page 412, citing the lower court opinion in Dillingham.  (See United States v. Palmer (5th Cir.1974) 502 F.2d 1233, 1234, revd. sub nom. Dillingham v. United States, supra, 423 U.S. 64, 96 S.Ct. 303, 46 L.Ed.2d 205.)\n\n2.   Ibarra relies on Harris v. Municipal Court (1930) 209 Cal. 55, 285 P. 699 and Rost v. Municipal Court (1960) 184 Cal.App.2d 507, 7 Cal.Rptr. 869 and urges this court to presume prejudice for the prearraignment delay in a misdemeanor.   We decline to do so and adopt the Overby analysis which rejects Harris and Rost.  (Overby v. Municipal Court, supra, 121 Cal.App.3d at pp. 385–386, 175 Cal.Rptr. 352.)\n\n TROTTER, Presiding Justice.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.567773699760437}
+{"content": "We're (Mostly) Focused On Ourselves - Deepstash\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Critical 7 Rules To Understand People\n\nWe're (Mostly) Focused On Ourselves\n\n  • People are spending only a small part of their time on judging you; your self-judgment is overwhelmingly larger.\n  • People who seem to be mean don’t usually do it intentionally. There are exceptions, but generally, the hurt you feel is a side-effect.\n  • Relationships are your job to maintain. Don’t wait to be invited to parties or for people to approach you.\n\n7.95k SAVES\n\n35.3k READS\n\n\n\nLeo Tolstoy\n\n\"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time\"\n\nLeo Tolstoy\nZig Ziglar\nZig Ziglar\n\n\n7 Characteristics Of Strategic Thinkers\n  1. Vision: they use a mix of logic and creativity to define ambitious but rigorous visions of what needs to be achieved. \n  2. Framework: taking into account their own biases, timeline and resources, they can define their objectives and develop multiple action plans.\n  3. Perceptiveness: they observe and understand the world from all the different perspectives. \n  4. Assertiveness: They’re good at evaluating, deciding and promptly executing their decisions without letting doubts fog their vision. \n  5. Flexibility: they seek advice to compensate for their weaknesses and then twist their ideas and framework to achieve their goals. But they are flexible without breaking the rules. \n  6. Emotional Balance: they are aware and balance their emotions so as to favor the achievement of their goals. \n  7. Patience: they understand that most achievements are a long-term endeavor involving various milestones and a lot of effort. \nNot saying No\n\nFirst, say yes to your core values, then say no to the situation. Finally, say yes to the relationship.\n\nA not-to-do list or some predefined phrases will help you to say no in unexpect...\n\nNot respecting your calendar\n\nTreat the meeting with yourself as it was a meeting with a third party. It’s only you who can act on your most important tasks with priority.\n\nMake sure that you set up boundaries for yourself and for other people. Remember to communicate with them clearly.\n\nSuch a boundary can be that you leave your office at a certain time each day because your family is your priority. It doesn’t mean, of course, that you can’t work later in periods of high workload.\n\n\nRinging phones, text messages, reminders, pop-ups, social media, email.\n\nThere’re countless studies demonstrating that multitasking will hinder your work both in terms of quality and quantity. \n\nResist the temptation to get in the loop and do one thing at a time.\n\nThe \"kindness pandemic\"\n\nViruses aren’t the only things that spread through networks of people. Attitudes and behaviors do too. And we should take advantage of it. \nSpreading happiness and kindness right now is ...\n\nSpreading connection\n\n70% of our happiness comes from your relationships with other people. And the social distancing situation has left some with zero people around them. \nSo reach out. Extended time without social contact is bad: Send a text, make that phone/video call, anything you want to let people know you care and are thinking about them.\n\nSpreading help\n\nAsk people if they need anything.  There are people out there in need of a little more than well wishes right now. And when people see others helping, they’re more likely to help. \n\nAlso, if you need help, don’t be afraid to ask for it.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9367765784263611}
+{"content": "AI, Blog\n\nChoosing the Right Chatbot for your Business\n\nchatbot phone\n\nCredit: Photo 131215570 © Wrightstudio –\n\n25 per cent of customer service operations will involve the use of chatbots by 2020, according to Gartner – a significant jump from the two per cent of companies using them in 2017.\n\n\nAnd there are no signs of this growth slowing. As intelligent chatbot technologies get smarter, quicker, and more intuitive to human behaviours and preferences, businesses will be competing in a race to the top to provide the best and most innovative customer service. Before long, customers will expect chatbots to be a standard part of any service.\n\nAlongside artificial intelligence and omnichannel engagement solutions, Gartner named chatbots as one of the top three technologies set to have the biggest impact on customer experience projects in the next three years.\n\nAccording to a 2018 Gartner survey, almost half of Australian consumers had engaged with a service chatbot in the 12 months prior, yet only 35 per cent of those reported their interaction produced a solution. With customer engagement, retention and revenue on the line for laggards to this quickly moving trend, it is crucial to get on the front foot and get the technology right from the start.\n\nHere are my top five considerations for businesses starting the process of deploying a chatbot, to ensure it will align with both organisational outcomes and customer expectations. Get this right, and you will define and simplify the customer experience, bringing long-term loyalty to your business.\n\n1. What problem are you trying to solve?\n\nThere is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ chatbot.\n\nUnderstanding your customer journey, current user experience and key pain points all have a part to play in choosing the right chatbot platform for your business needs. Depending on what the business need is, a chatbot can be designed for specific campaigns, topics, Q&As, self-service interactions, workforce efficiency, lead generation, process automation or customer triage before hand-off to a human agent.\n\nSitting down with stakeholders and defining the problem at the very start of the process ensures the chatbot is designed and deployed to meet the specific needs of your customers and deliver real value to your business.\n\n2. Does the chatbot need to support multiple channels?\n\nWhile customers are increasingly scattered across different digital platforms, they still expect their customer experience to be the same regardless of which channel they interact with. If you deploy a chatbot on your website, the same chatbot needs to be optimised for mobile applications, social media, and even voice channels.\n\n3. Will your chatbot know when to interact with your customers?\n\nUsing a chatbot that intelligently knows when to best engage with a customer is important.\n\nRather than bombarding a customer with requests to interact, intelligent chatbots know when it is the right time to intervene with a customer. If a customer is getting through a transaction or enquiry smoothly on their own, then leave them alone. If they are struggling, then a well-targeted chatbot can assist at the right time.\n\n4. Does the chatbot incorporate natural language processing and speech support?\n\nEvery interaction a chatbot has with a customer can produce valuable data on the types of questions being asked, the different ways they are being asked and what the answers required to satisfy the customer, might be.\n\nTo achieve this, chatbots need to be able to clarify conversationally with a customer before an answer can be given, This is essential when trying to ensure that a conversation feels like it is natural and could be with a real person.\n\nA chatbot needs to be able to understand, recollect and continuously learn from this data as this will allow it to improve and evolve with your customers’ needs. By utilising machine learning at this stage, the chatbot can be further developed to better respond in a more natural way.\n\nUsing a chatbot with conversational artificial intelligence, will deliver a better, more ‘human’ like customer experience than one which employees, directed dialogue techniques.\n\n5. Can you back your chatbot with human-centred design, industry experience and domain knowledge?\n\nWhile a chatbot will be continuously improving its expertise, there is always going to be a point at which it can’t answer or understand a customer’s question.\n\nThis is where a conversational design expert is important. Conversation is an “art” as much as a “science”. Engaging experts that have a strong history in conversational design can make the interaction more human-like and remove friction in the customer experience process.\n\n6. Can you measure the impact of the chatbot?\n\nIf you followed the initial process of defining the business need for deploying a chatbot, your success metrics will be clear.\n\nA graphics interface allowing access to rich analytics about the conversations that your customers are having with your virtual agent is critical in measuring how well the chatbot is delivering value/ROI to your business and meeting your customers’ needs by addressing their pain points.\n\nChatbots are set to have an incredible impact on customer service and experience in the imminent future, and the pace at which the trend is developing can be intimidating to those businesses that don’t know where to start. Following these few tips can help break down the process and ensure that the business and customer needs will be met, and will continue to be met as they evolve.\n\nThis article was originally posted on –\n\n\nMark Halstead\n\nYou might also be interested in", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6838861107826233}
+{"content": "Question: Do Dogs Spirits Stay With You?\n\nDo dogs come back after death?\n\nRenee Takacs, of Mars, who calls herself an animal communicator, said a pet spirit can feel its owner’s grief after its death, and can come back to ease their owner’s pain.\n\nIt doesn’t return because it misses its owner, she said..\n\nCan dogs sense grief?\n\n\nDoes a dog feel pain when put down?\n\nYou may see them twitch or take a final breath. This can be startling, but it’s a normal part of the process. Your pet isn’t in pain. Use of a sedative makes this step less likely.\n\nDo dogs reincarnate back to their owner?\n\nDogs reincarnate every day. Because of the length of the human life span, human beings can’t usually reincarnate and rejoin their loved ones again in this life. But because dogs’ lives are so much shorter, they can — and do — reincarnate and return to their beloved owners.\n\nWill we see pets in heaven?\n\nThe pets that we had to say goodbye to are alive in heaven right now in their spiritual bodies and we will see them again if we accept Jesus as our Savior. … Biblical Evidence That Animals Really Do Go To Heaven. If you have pets or are grieving the loss of a pet then you must read this book.\n\nDo dogs remember people?\n\nYou may not remember what you were doing a few minutes ago. But your dog probably does. A study of 17 dogs found they could remember and imitate their owners’ actions up to an hour later. The results, published Wednesday in Current Biology, suggest that dogs can remember and relive an experience much the way people do.\n\nWhat do dogs do when die?\n\nWhen a dog is dying, they often lose control over their bladder and bowels as their organs begin to shut down. This can lead to your dog peeing or experiencing a bowel movement wherever they are lying. Even if your dog is very well-trained, they may not have the energy to get up to relieve themselves.\n\nCan my dog see things I can t?\n\nThe AKC also notes that dogs are incredibly attuned to things we might not notice — like changes in barometric pressure; faraway, high-pitched noises; subtle smells; and even objects or movements beyond our own field of vision. All these senses enable dogs to notice activity we simply can’t.\n\nDo our pets have souls?\n\n\nDo dogs have spirits or souls?\n\n“Dogs are thinking animals,” Bekoff said. “They seek the outcomes they want. They avoid the ones they don’t. … “If we have souls, our animals have souls.\n\nWhere does my dog go when he dies?\n\nYour local vet will be well placed to deal with cat and dog death and handling their remains, and if you wish for it to be handled by them simply place a call as soon as possible. Your vet should then be able to organise the collection and subsequent burial or cremation, according to your preference.\n\nCan dogs sense sadness in owners?\n\nPrevious research has shown that when humans cry, their dogs also feel distress. … Now, the new study finds that dogs not only feel distress when they see that their owners are sad but will also try to do something to help.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.999585747718811}
+{"content": "Friday Five: Back to School\n\nThree kids walking towards school wearing neon backpacks.\n\nAHHH!!! Back to School Time! This is the time of year that I have the hardest time keeping a work/life balance. I want to start the year with my best foot forward, but this year, I’m focusing on myself throughout the back to school whirlwind. Here are five tips for keeping your cool during back to school! (😂Kills me! I just think that little rhyme is hilarious!) \n\n\nSet Working Hours\n\nIn the last few years, I set working hours for myself, and I made myself stick to them. If I thought of something that needed to be done outside of my working hours, I jotted a note, and I took care of it during my working hours. This allowed me to take time for my friends and family. I wasn’t turning down dinner invitations because I was working on classroom stuff. I worked hard during my working hours, and then I did other things with the rest of my day. I highly recommend setting some working hours for yourself. I chose not to set any working hours over the weekend, but maybe someone would want to spend a few hours working. Everyone will have different working hours during back to school. It all depends on where you’re at as a teacher. Did you just switch schools? Did you change grade levels? Are you returning to the same classroom? These situations might require different working hours than those of us returning to the same school and the same grade level. \n\n\nPrioritize Your To Do List\n\nI make incredibly detailed to-do lists during back to school. I make one list that is for things that need to be copied. One list of things that need to be created. One for tasks to accomplish in the classroom. One for tasks that can be accomplished at home.  Make a list that works for you. Personally, I like to write them out on different post-its. Find what works for you. HERE are a few different templates for you to try out, including one where you can label the lists! \n\n\nPlan Out the First Two Weeks\n\nI like to map out my first few weeks of school and ensure that I have enough planned. There’s nothing worse than not having enough planned during those first few weeks. Create a detailed plan for the first day of school. Plan out how you’re going to build your classroom community. How are you going to get to know each other? How are you going to learn procedures? When are you going to start teaching your content? What do students in your classroom need to know to be successful? What parent communication are you going to send home in the first few weeks? There’s a lot to plan out, and there’s no such thing as being overprepared in the first weeks. \n\n\nEnlist help if Needed\n\nOne year I switched schools and walked into my new classroom to find boxes and boxes of copies. It turned out that our team ordered all of our copies for the entire year! I was so overwhelmed. All of the file cabinets were filled.  I asked the other teachers, and they explained that they keep the boxes and get stuff out as needed. I don’t do clutter in my classroom, and there was no way I was going to be able just to keep the boxes. I called my mom, and she spent hours labeling file folders, organizing the copies by subject, and filing away all the sheets. I managed to fit all of the copies in my file cabinets and felt so relieved. If you need help, grab friends, family, whoever to help you! \n\n\nTake Time For Yourself\n\nMake sure to take time for yourself at the beginning of the year. Honor those working hours you set up and take time for yourself. I make sure to plan time to hang out with my friends during back to school time this way, I invest in myself as well as my teacher life. Do something fun. Plan out relaxing or energizing activities for your weekend, but don’t forget to take time for yourself. You don’t want to begin the school year burned out. \n\nHow do you ensure to make time for yourself during back to school time? \n\nWhat are your back to school non-negotiables? \n\nLeave a comment below! \n\nResetting After a Substitute Teacher\n\nResetting After a Substitute Teacher\n\nResetting After a Substitute Teacher\n\nHave you ever returned from a day away from the classroom and noticed your class needed a major reset after a substitute teacher? Some of these situations might sound familiar to you. \n\nYou’re out of your classroom for the day. You walk back in the last 10 minutes only to find your kids going bananas and your room is in disarray! \n\nOr maybe…\n\nYou get a text from a friend while you’re out for the day. She shares all the shenanigans your class has been up to in your absence. \n\nOr maybe…\n\nYou get back from a day out of the classroom to find notes from a sub that it didn’t go well while you were out. \n\nCan you imagine any of those situations? If you’re an elementary teacher, I bet you can. I bet you even have some more stories of your own to add on to these examples. How do you pull things back together and recover as a class after a wild day with a substitute? Sometimes you have to freeze and reset after a substitute teacher, which is, of course, easier said than done. Here’s how we reset as a classroom community after a crazy day. \n\nHave the Students Reflect\n\nI always have my students reflect after we’ve had a sub, even if everything was terrific. This way, when I have them reflect when things weren’t too great, it is nothing out of the ordinary. \n\nI currently use the reflection on the right, but I have several other versions of this available on the resources tab or by clicking on the picture. \n\nMy all-time favorite part of the reflection is the last question at the bottom. Sometimes after you’re gone, kids have a million things to tell you. When you are resetting after a substitute teacher you don’t have the time to listen to each and every story. This reflection takes care of it. They can write or sketch out whatever they need to say on the back. They got it off their chest, and you can read it and take any necessary actions. \n\nOne time a student wrote that our class made the IT teacher’s day because we followed all the directions and asked good questions. One time I found out that another student’s feelings were hurt because of something someone else said. Once I found out that the sub threw a kid’s shoes away. TRUE STORY!!! 😲😲You never know. \n\nThis reflection can be such a great help in piecing together what happened while you were out. I find that if your class is pretty knowledgeable about reflections, they’re pretty honest about their behavior. \n\nI have the kids complete these reflections before (or after) morning meeting when I return. That way, they can get everything out, and you can figure out what you need to. \n\n\nYou don’t need to get to the bottom of every incident that occurred. That would take forever, and I guarantee there would be a few unsolved mysteries in the bunch. What are the things that went wrong that you must address? What happened, and what must be justified?\n\nDo a little investigative work (but not too much). Talk to the teachers next door to find out more information if you need to. Talk to a few students in your class. Read the notes from the sub (although sometimes they just said the day went well). Read the class reflection sheets. Find out what you can and then address what you need to. \n\nTHINK: What are the pressing issues that need to be addressed? What do I want to reinforce? What is the best order to handle things?\n\nDecide How to Address the Issues\n\nSometimes I want to give lectures to my students after something like this happens. I don’t know why I feel that need, but I do. The thing is these lectures really only benefit the teacher who feels like she’s accomplishing something. The kids usually aren’t listening, or it goes in one ear and out the other.\n\nSo, I try not to give in to the urge to lecture. Depending on what happened, some reteaching may be in order.  Some apologies might have to be given out. Perhaps some notes to parents might need to be written. Maybe your admin already stepped in and handled some things or maybe you’ll need them to step in.\n\nTHINK: How are you going to handle these pressing issues? What can I do that will be meaningful to students and help them grow into caring and considerate community members? How can I help them learn not just for this situation but for the rest of life? \n\nAddress the Issues\n\nIf you are going to address concerns they have to be addressed straight away. Maybe the community needs to come together and apologize to one another. Maybe a review of class expectations needs to occur. My tip to you is don’t wait too long when addressing the issues. I try to address all sub concerns before snack but realistically before lunch recess. I don’t want to lose an entire day of learning because our community is out of sorts. \n\nTHINK: When can I address these concerns? Do I need to address the whole group, small groups, one on one? Do we need some healing as a community? If yes, perhaps Tap Someone Who could be an activity for your morning! \n\nSet Up For Success\n\nI follow a fashion blogger on Instagram, Fancy Ashley. During back to school a few years ago she talked about her family routine to set up for success. The night before they prepare all the things so their morning is a bit less hectic. I loved the phrase set up for success and stole it. Thanks, Ashley! Next time you’re planning on being out, set your classroom up for success. \n\nTake time to preview the schedule for the day and preview the different activities they’ll have. Let them know who their substitute teacher will be if you already know. My greatest tool is a behavior map I made with my students this year. A blank version is available by clicking the picture on the left. This isn’t a poster you’ll want to make ahead of time. The real value isn’t what is even written on the paper but in the conversations, we had as we worked through the social story. I put this anchor chart up each and every time we have a sub and I plan to have the kids share different pieces about it during our morning meeting. \n\nAlso, just a little tip- Treat yo sub! I always let my substitute teacher know where the chocolate drawer is in my classroom (don’t act like you don’t have one). When I remember, and when I taught in the US, I would also leave a few quarters to grab a soda from the vending machine. Those little touches can make your subs day a bit better. Nothing brightens up my day like a bit of chocolate and all those bright smiling faces! \n\nShare Your Ideas\n\nI once attended professional development where the speaker shared that two heads are better than one, and three heads make a genius! Let’s put our heads together by sharing comments on things that really work for you when the class goes bananas and any questions that you have about resetting your class after a substitute teacher. \n\nPlease share any of your thoughts below. Personally, my best teacher learning comes from the teacher down the hall! Join in the conversation! \n\nWeekly Wisdom\n\nWeekly Wisdom\n\nEarly Intervention\n\nThe most effective intervention is implemented early in a child’s career- before the cycle of failure is established.\n\n-Irene Fountas & Gay Su Pinnell\n\nI’ve seen early interventions work wonders. I am trained in Reading Recovery and a huge believer in early intervention. As a third grade teacher, I can tell you that the difference between students who received early intervention and those who were allowed to struggle a little longer is huge. HUGE! The sooner we boost up our students the less they fall behind their peers. \n\n\nWhat are your thoughts on early interventions? \n\nWeekly Wisdom\n\nQuote: \"Children need practice resolving their \"childish\" disputes so they can become grown-ups who can peacefully resolve their adult disputes. -How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen\n\nWeekly Wisdom\n\nChildren's Emotions", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7721503973007202}
+{"content": "A successful person will most likely tell you that they were not born with the skills that made them successful. They found a way to use and harness the skills they have learned more effectively. Here are some ways that can help you stay focused and gain more success both in and out of the gym.\n\nPlan your day the night before Before you go to bed try to figure out things such as what you are going to wear for the next day, what you will eat for lunch, or what route you will take to work. Planning ahead takes a lot of stress away and removes some of the easier decisions that can get you sidetracked or waste time and energy. Taking the time to plan your meals will actually allow you to be more health conscious, instead of deciding what you want to eat last minute and having to eat that bean and cheese burrito out at the taco truck.\n\nDifficult things first It's common to save the hardest tasks for last. However, the tasks don't get easier the longer you put them off. Do the most difficult things in the morning or right away while you are fresh and have the energy. Once these tasks are complete, you can move onto the more routine day to day tasks that don't require as much attention, mental strain, or energy. And remember not to put off the gym either!\n\nRemove all distractions There are real emergencies that spring up in our lives that require immediate attention. The majority of these situations are in fact distractions that do not need an immediate response or even a response at all. Most of the time they will be resolved on their own. You need to send a message by not responding to these things and show that you are determined, focused, and not bothered by trivial matters. This will also help keep your mind and body sharp while at the gym.\n\nAll about maintaining energy During the day if you are feeling a loss of energy, be sure to get up right way and take a walk, run, stretch, or do something that regenerates yourself. When you are finished, you will be able to come back to your task with determination, focus, and have the ability to finish out the day strong! Also remember to snack on healthy foods such as vegetables or fresh fruit to keep your energy up. Drink plenty of water and make time for some type of exercise or a daily visit to the gym. Create a regime that you can follow, this will help with efficiency and time management.\n\nFocus on your goals Create a list of your goals. Create a vision board. Type your goals on the note section of your computer, cell phone, or tablet. Do anything that you believe will help keep you motivated and focused on what you want to achieve on a day-to-day, month long, year long, or life long basis. It is important to have goals to help us stay on track in life and give us purpose. Set aside time daily to think about and reflect on your goals. What steps have you made today toward these goals? What can you do tomorrow to get another step closer toward your goals? What are my goals? Have they changed? Also, remember to connect with your goals on an emotional level, this will help to motivate you to not give up. Stay strong! Push through it! Yes YOU CAN! Never give up!", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6311322450637817}
+{"content": "Celtic Traditions and the Summer Solstice\n\nPlease help me welcome our guest today, John Cunningham, owner of Celtic Cross Online, which sells jewelry handmade in Ireland. He’s here with a wonderful infographic to help us celebrate the Summer Solstice, which is today in the northern hemisphere.\n\nDid you know that this year the Summer Solstice will be celebrated on June 20? What is the Summer Solstice exactly? It occurs when the axial tilt of the earth is at its closest to the sun. This means it has more daylight hours than any other day of the year and it is known by many as the longest day of the year!\n\nThe Celtic people considered it a very special day and celebrated it in many ways. The Celts used ‘Natural Time’ which they took from Solstices and Equinoxes so that they could determine the seasons. It was their belief that it was a time to honor their Goddess who has many different names depending on which Celtic region they were in. For example, in France she was Epona, but in Ireland she was Etain.\n\nThe Celts believed that evil spirits would be banished during this time and that as a result their harvest would be in abundance. They celebrated with great bonfires, feasts and dancing. For a visual depiction of Celtic Traditions around the Summer Solstice, have a look at this infographic produced by Celtic Cross Online.\n\nTop 10 Fun Facts: the Roman Celts\n\n\nSource: Wikimedia Commons\n\nFollowing last week’s post on the Celts, I decided that the Celts during the Roman occupation deserved their own Top 10 List. (BTW for those who care about this kind of thing, I referred to the Celts as Roman in the title because that will be the easiest for SEO, but the proper term is Romano-British.)\n\n  1. Part of the Empire –  After the Romans conquered Britain, the native rulers became what we would call “client kings.” This meant they had the same allies and enemies as Rome and couldn’t form new ones without the sanction of Rome. Usually tribal leaders sought this status (rather than being compelled into it) because it meant Roman protection and trading rights. In return, the king/chieftain supplied men, money and supplies for the Roman army, but the people didn’t have to pay taxes until the kingdom was annexed.  (Southern)\n  2. Your job is what? – Slaves were a sign of extra wealth that could be wasted on trivial tasks. While they could be used in the home, fields, or mines, slaves could also be things as silly as a lamp bearer, scavenger or even employed to call out the time, point out obstacles in the road or greet their master’s friends for him/her. (Alcock)\n  3. Moving day – After the conquest, some people who lived in hill forts were forced to relocate to a new town so that Roman authorities could keep an eye on them. This also served to help introduce them to Roman ways. (Alcock)\n  4. The mines were no joke – Being a miner was a punishment because it was so dangerous. One in eight miners died each year. (Lawrence)\n  5. Place your bets…or not –  Gambling was illegal except on Saturnalia, but many people did it anyway. They placed bets on sporting events big and small, even a coin toss where the sides were called “heads” and “ships.” (Lawrence)\n  6. In the army now – The Romans conscripted conquered people from across the empire to serve in their army as a way of subduing hostile tribes. They were auxiliaries (non-citizen soldiers). They were often sent outside their home country or tribal boundary so they couldn’t raise rebellion in their homeland. (Lawrence)\n  7. Before the Magic 8-ball – Romans practiced a form of divination called haruspicy, which was the reading of animal entrails to foretell the future. (Rupke)\n  8. Crime and punishment – Capital offenses for soldiers included running away from battle, striking or wounding and officer, insubordination and inciting mutiny. The punishment for rape was to cut off the nose of the perpetrator. (Southern)\n  9. Weights and measures – Rome brought an organized system of measure to British trade. The basic unit was the libra (pound) which was equal to 327 grams. One libra equaled 12 unicae or ounces. (Lawrence)\n  10. On the road again – The Romans built 8,000 miles of roads during their first 60 years in Britain. Roman roads were straight unless there was a major obstacle in the way. They even leveled small hills and built causeways over wet land. The military maintained them near the forts, but in other areas it was the responsibility of the town and local leaders. (Lawrence)\n\nAlcock, Joan. Life in Roman Britain.\nLawrence, Richard Russel. Roman Britain.\nRupke, Jorg. A Companion to Roman Religion\nSouthern, Patricia. Roman Britain: New History 55 BC – 450 AD\n\nWhat do you know about Britain under Roman rule? What questions do you have?\n\nAnother Top 10 Fun Facts About the Celts\n\nThis is Soay ewe. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)\n\nThis is Soay ewe. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)\n\nOne of my most popular posts of all time is A Celtic Primer (Top 10 Fun Facts). Since that one was such a hit, I thought I’d give an encore. This post, like it’s predecessor, focuses on the British Celts before the coming of Rome. (I’ve listed the source at the end of each one, just in case you want to learn more.)\n\n  1. The term Celts, as commonly used, is a misnomer – The Celts were not a single race, but a people defined by their language, which dates back to the eighth – sixth century BC. Q Celtic is a version where the “qu” sound is pronounced as “k” but written as “c.” P Celtic replaced the “qu” sound with a “p.” This may have been brought to Britain during the Neolithic period. and is the basis of the native language of the Britons. (Alcock, Daily)\n  2. The Celts spoke multiple languages. Most British Celts were bilingual within a generation of the 43 AD Roman conquest, speaking their native dialect at home and Latin for business. It’s also believed that the Druids knew Greek. (Southern)\n  3. Female slaves were an actual unit of measure. A female slave was called a cumal in Medieval Irish law. A cumal is a unit of measure equivalent to 3 oz of silver or 8-10 cows. (Wyatt)\n  4. Sheep are more interesting than you think. The early Celts kept a type of sheep called Soay (see right, they still exist) that shed their wool naturally (who knew?), though shearing, which took place in May, produced a softer wool. They were plucked by hand until the Iron Age invention of the shears. (Alcock, Daily and Life, Lawrence)\n  5. Names held great importance. The Celts believed that to name a thing was to give it power. A Celt had two names: a personal name and that of his/her father, which is like having a first and last name. (Lawrence) For example, I would be Nicole, daughter of Richard. (Many times the father’s name included a characteristic like “the bold” or “the brave.”)\n  6. Beware their women drivers… The early Celts fought in chariots with a pair of small horses (which had their tails and manes plaited to avoid tangling in the reins). Each chariot had three people: a driver, archer and spearman. Boudicca is famous for this method of fighting. (Moffat)\n  7. I can see how this Wolfhound could do a man in... (By Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1874-1927) (Druck ca. 1920) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)\n\n    I can see how this Wolfhound could do a man in… (By Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1874-1927) (Druck ca. 1920) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)\n\n    Dogs were more than pets. The Celts used wolfhounds, which some say were the world’s tallest dogs, in war and hunting. In war, they could not only brutally attack the enemy, but once the enemy threw their spears at them, they (the enemy) were rendered defenseless. (Duffy)\n  8. Barter wasn’t their only method of payment. The use of coins may have come about in Britain as a result of trade with Greece. We know coins of the Belgae came to Britain before they started making their own. The first British minted coins were in 100-70 BC. (Alcock, Daily and Cunliffe)\n  9. The Celts could float your boat. Traditional Celtic boats were hollowed out logs or coracles, leather or skin stretched over a light wood frame. There is reason to believe that the British Celts may have modeled larger vessels after  the Veneiti of Gaul, who had a large fleet of ships they used to trade with Britain. These had flatter bottoms to sail in shallow water, high bows and sterns to sail in rough seas and gales, and sails made of raw hides or leather.  (Lawrence and Alcock, Daily)\n  10. Cooking happened even before the cauldron. One early method is the potboil, in which stones were heated and  placed in a trough of water, which has been proven to cook food just as well as heating over a central cauldron (which came later). Fish could be wrapped in river clay, left to dry, put in a shallow pit filled with hot firewood and left to bake. (J Alcock, Daily) \n\n\nAlcock, Joan. Daily life of the Pagan Celts\n—–  Life in Roman Britain.\nCunliffe, Barry. Iron Age Communities in Britain.\nDuffy, Kevin. Who Were the Celts?\nLawrence, Richard Russel. Roman Britain.\nMoffat, Alistair. The Borders.\nWyatt, David. Slaves and Warriors in Medieval Britain\n\nDo you have questions about the Celts? If so, leave them in the comments or hit me up by email and I’ll see if I can answer them.\n\nThe Training of a Pictish Warrior\n\nCaledonian Pict by Iantresman via Wikimedia Commons [public domain]\n\nCaledonian Pict by Iantresman via Wikimedia Commons [public domain]\n\nIf you’re anything like me, when you hear the word “Pict,” you automatically think of Braveheart, or warriors who are similar. Even with all the research that I’ve done, that’s my brain’s default image (thank you Hollywood). While that movie has a lot to answer for in the area of historical authenticity, it did do one thing right: it showed us how fierce the warriors of the north were. And the movie takes place many generations after the Picts.\n\nSo, what would their ancestors have been like? As I’ve said ad nauseam, one of the frustrating things about pre-Conquest history is the lack of solid evidence. But I have found a few good accounts of the training of a Pictish warrior and I thought you may like to know what all they went through to become so feared.\n\nLike most other peoples of the time, warriors were rarely trained by their parents, but sent out to other houses in a system of fosterage that not only benefited the warrior, who learned from a seasoned hero, but promoted bonds of peace and trust among families and clans/tribes. According to The Pictish Warrior AD 297-841, warriors (likely both men and women, at least for a time, although the book focuses on men) began their training somewhere between age seven (Ireland) and ten (in the Highlands). They were expected to master these feats:\n\n  • Dexterity (juggling swords)\n  • Strength\n  • Voice (the hero’s cry – not described, but I’m thinking it was some kind of blood-curdling battle cry, since historical sources document that the enemies of the Picts were frightened by the savage sounds they made. Another source says they purposefully learned to imitate the sounds of animals to frighten their enemies.)\n  • Weapons handling\n  • The spear vault (where a spear is placed in the ground butt-first and the warrior jumps up and performs on its point). This seems nearly impossible to me, but I’ve also never seen it attempted. I’ve also read this term to mean a way of mounting a horse where a person takes a running start and uses the spear as a pole to vault onto horseback. There’s beautiful depiction of this in Manda Scott’s historical fiction Boudicca: Dreaming the Eagle.\n\nTraining wasn’t all based in physical strength. They also learned more refined skills. According to the folktales “four and twenty games of the Britons,” all young warriors were expected to learn:\n\n  • Six feats of activity (hurling weights, running, leaping, swimming, wrestling and riding)\n  • Four exercises of weapons (archery or javelin throwing, sword, sword and buckler, and quarterstaff)\n  • Three rural sports (hunting, fishing and hawking)\n  • Seven domestic games (poetry, music, heraldry, diplomacy, etc.)\n  • Four board games (no examples are given, but there is precedent in Arthurian legend that a game very similar to chess was played)\n\nThey also played ancient games like shinty to simulate fast-moving battle scenarios. At night, the warriors in training played strategy games. At the end of their training, warriors had to prove their skill by participating in a cattle raid in which they brought home some sort of proof of valor (possibly even the head of an enemy) or passing another type of test.\n\nIn my third Guinevere book, I’ve chosen to graft these Pictish practices onto the Votadini tribe (one of the four tribes living south of the Highlands in between Hadrian’s and Antonine Walls) because we have even fewer records of them than the Picts. As tribes literally caught between two worlds (the Britons and the Picts), I think it logical to assume their culture drew from both.\n\nCorrection: This post as been updated to delete erroneous information from the source material. John Matthews kindly pointed out that salmon leap was specifically learned by the Red Branch heroes of Ireland (not the Picts) and that the caber toss came into being with the establishment of the Highland Games in the the 19th century. My thanks to him for these corrections!\n\nSource: Pictish Warrior AD 297-841 by Paul Wagner\n\nWhat else do you know about the training of the Picts? Do you know of any good sources on the subject? What do you think about what I’ve recounted here?\n\nWhy I Wouldn’t Survive a Celtic Winter\n\nRecreated Celtic Village, Museum of Welsh Life. The open fire within the circular hut gives the thatched roof a \"steaming\" effect. Three round wattle-and-daub huts are surrounded by a ditch and wooden palisade. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)\n\nRecreated Celtic Village, Museum of Welsh Life. The open fire within the circular hut gives the thatched roof a “steaming” effect. Three round wattle-and-daub huts are surrounded by a ditch and wooden palisade. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)\n\nI would never survive a Celtic winter, or quite frankly, a winter in any other time period. I know this because of a series of recent events that temporarily suspended some of the modern conveniences I’ve realized I can’t live without.\n\nSome of you may have heard that the Midwest has been experiencing unusually cold temperatures. That’s where this whole story starts. As I write this, we’re in our fourth round of sub-zero wind chill temperatures in as many weeks, which is not normal for us. In the first round, thanks to a frozen (but not burst, thank God) water pipe, I discovered that there was a hole in my wall where the previous owner left an old dryer vent completely open to the outside.\n\nAs I stuffed it with rags and waited for my dad to be able to remove it and patch the wall (I am not a handy person), I started wondering how anyone in the past survived such brutal cold with only a smoky fire and layers and layers of wool and fur for warmth. What must the Celtic roundhouses have been like if there was a hole in the thatch? How air tight were they anyway? Or what about the soldiers who had to stand guard on walls in gusty winds like the ones currently shaking my house? They must have been made of stronger stuff than I.\n\nIf the hole wasn’t enough, a few days later I fell asleep in the bathtub, only to wake up to wet hair, cooled water and no hot water to rinse off with. As I stood shaking in my cold bathroom, trying to suds myself up with lukewarm water, I gained a whole new appreciation for winter bathing. And I’m willing to bet my 69 degree bathroom was warmer than most of the rooms were the Celts cleaned themselves. In spite of my research, I had held on to a fantasy that boiling water to bathe in and drying hair by the fire would be enough. Perhaps some did bathe this way, but I now understand why winter was not the time for immersing oneself for a full bath.\n\nAnd then there was the fast. I did a 10 day detox where I couldn’t have dairy, wheat, sugar, caffeine or alcohol. I was okay with most of it, but the lack of dairy about killed me. (I love cheese and milk.) That got me thinking that Celtic winters must have been very boring times to eat, since from the time of the slaughter in October through the beginning of February, when the ewes started to give birth, there would have been no milk or butter. (This is why the feast of Candlemas/Imbolc was agriculturally important.) Maybe there was some old or aging cheese. There would have been few fruits and vegetables – maybe some turnips or other root veggies, some wizened apples and whatever was preserved. On the other side, fresh meat would have become more and more rare as winter wore on, leaving preserved meat (ugh, jerky) and salt fish as the options. As long as grain stores held out, there would have been bread and maybe porridge in good supply, but that hardly qualifies as a tasty meal.\n\nAnd then I had company last week. I slept on a sofa bed so my guest could sleep in my bed. I ended up having to put an extra cushion on top so that I could sleep. It made me wonder how people slept on the cold, hard ground, or on straw pallets for most of history. I really am the princess with the pea.\n\nCouple all of this with long swaths of time stuck indoors with bored men aching for action that winter didn’t allow and I’m willing to bet a Celtic hall wasn’t that much fun. For most of the population, the animals not culled for the winter lived in the same rooms with the people. Even in noble household with separate buildings for animals, the hunting dogs (and perhaps a barnyard cat or two) would have vied for warmth in front of the fire with the humans. Long, dark nights, dreary days lit only by a central fire, rush light or tallow candles (a fortunate few would have had beeswax), smoke, unwashed bodies, drafts, poor nutrition, restlessness and soiled rushes do not paint a fun image of winter.\n\nBecause of my area of study, I place this in the Celtic world, but really, it was true for most of history. I know it’s completely different taking away a few conveniences from a modern girl than growing up without them, but I have a whole new respect for my ancestors now. How any of them survived to produce a fading little flower like me, I’ll never know. All I do know is they would be ashamed of what I consider hardship (#firstworldproblems).\n\nToday, I’m counting my blessings a little closer and joining the people of old in wishing for spring to come quickly.\n\nWhat about you? How would you have fared in a Celtic winter? How do you think they would have lived?\n\nCeltic Burial and Funeral Rites\n\nPortal Tomb byBy KHoffmanDC via Wikimedia Commons\n\nPortal Tomb (source: Wikimedia Commons)\n\nA few weeks ago, a college student from Spain contacted me asking for information on Celtic funeral/burial rites. This student was in luck because I had researched this for a scene that was supposed to be in book 2, but has now been put aside for a future separate book. As with the last student that contacted me, I realized I’ve never done a blog post on this topic, so here we go.\n\nAs usual, my research focuses on Britain, but I will include what I’ve found for Ireland and Scotland, too. (Someday, I need to do more research on those two countries.)\n\nCeltic Views of Death and Dying\nFor a warrior people, it’s not surprising that to the Celts, the most honorable death was to die in battle. Depending on the time period and which tribe you were in, you might be buried, cremated or have your ashes buried. In pre-Christian times, many graves contained items needed for the next world, from chariots and weapons to food, wine, money and clothing. There is some evidence that the Celts practiced human sacrifice, but not likely on a large scale.\n\nThe Celts believed in reincarnation. Some sources say they only believed you could come back in human form, but others argue you could be reincarnated as an animal or plant, too. Mythology seems to support this later theory (look at the many incarnations of Taliesin). In mythology, the Cauldron of Rebirth was able to revive the dead. Interestingly, some sources day they believed in after death judgment of your actions, while others say no such retribution existed in the Celtic belief system. Pre-Christian Celts believed in an after-death Otherworld (Annwn in Welsh mythology), a resting place between incarnations.It was a heaven-like paradise. There, the dead wore gowns of silver and gold and gold bands around their waists and necks and jeweled circlets on their brows.\n\nPre-Roman Britain\nAccording to the poems of Homer and the accounts of Caesar, on the Continent the Celtic dead were burned on a pyre. Sheep and oxen were slain and their fat was placed on the body, their carcasses around it. Jars of honey and oil placed around the body. Beloved horses, dogs and slaves were slain, their bodies piled on top. The whole was lit on fire. The dead were addressed by name and people wailed in mourning. When the fire was extinguished with wine, the “whitened bones” were taken out and laid in a gold urn. The urn was then buried with a mound over it. There is no record of this practice in the myths of Britain or Ireland.\n\nHowever, we do know that a body was washed and wrapped in a death shirt, called an Eslene. The body was laid out with burning candles or rushes around it in the home for seven days. People would keen over the dead and/or praise him or her. Three days after the body was laid out, a feast/games was held in his/her honor. The body had a bowl placed on the chest into which people would place food and coins for the dead to use in the next life.\n\nOn the morning of burial, a Druid came with a rod called a “fey” or “fe.” It was made of Aspen with Ogham letters and symbols carved into it. It was used to measure the body to ensure a proper fit within the final resting place. It was said that if you looked at the fey, your death was unavoidable because it had already measured you. Some sources also say the Druid would whisper to the dead person, giving him/her instructions on how to get to the next world. If the person was murdered or otherwise died without the presence of a Druid, they would still try to speak to the spirit to guide it.\n\nBurial customs varied by tribe. Animal sacrifice and grave goods are both mentioned in British and Irish mythology and supported by archaeological finds, so it’s likely this was at one time part of the ritual.\n\nRoman Britain\nI believe it’s a safe assumption that under Roman rule, the Britons adopted Roman burial practices. Roman graveyards were usually located outside of the city. Romans practiced inhumation (burial) rather than cremation. They set up memorial stones (kind of like our headstones) to mark the resting place of the dead, but these weren’t always done of out love; sometimes they served to warn passersby of plague or other ways they could die in a nearby town. (Pleasant thought, isn’t it?)\n\nThese memorial markers usually followed a prescribed pattern:  They always began by addressing the god of the shades/death, then talked about the life of the dead person, and ended with the name of the person to commissioned the marker. Some were very elaborate in their stories of the dead, while others were simple memorials.\n\nThe Romans are thought to have been a major influence on Christianity coming to Britain. There is some evidence of continuity of burial sites from pagan to Christian. This may have been due to paying respect to ancestors or the areas may simply have been well-known. By the fourth century, many pagan and Christian burials were found side by side in Britain.\n\nPost-Roman Britain\nWith the fall of the Roman Empire, burial practices took on what we would come to see as a distinctly Christian tone. Cemeteries were allowed inside of cities, and became a communal meeting place, with churches springing up in their midst, as we think of today. Some churchyards had special areas in the northern corner reserved for murder victims and soldiers who died in battle, none of whom would have received last rites.\n\nGraves were oriented west-east. West was the direction of the Otherworld and also Christians believed that this positioning allowed the dead to face Christ when he raised them on Resurrection Day. Single person burials were the norm, with the dead person’s head facing west. Sometimes a mother and child were buried together, but mass graves were not common. Grave goods were not found during this time. Bodies could have been laid in the bare earth, in a stone coffin or a hollowed out log, but coffins were rare.\n\nI can’t find any evidence that details a Celtic Christian funeral rite (if you know of any sources, please tell me!), but from context it appears they were very similar to what takes place in the Roman Catholic religion today, which isn’t too surprising given how little liturgy has changed in its basic components within the Catholic Church.\n\nThere was a very early (pre-history) practice of piling stones over the dead person’s body rather than digging a grave. Later in time, the Irish buried their dead in three types of tombs:\n\n  1. Portal tomb: A number of upright stones covered by one or two capstones and sometimes placed in a long or round mound.\n  2. Passage tomb: Round mounds with burial chambers in the center which were reached by a passage leading in from the edge of the mound.\n  3. Wedge tombs (found in area of Munster): A type of chamber tomb where the chamber narrows at one end.\n\nThese could hold either bodies or ashes from cremation. When the body was buried, the arms of the dead person could be loose at the sides or placed over the pubic area. The Irish did not use a burial shroud until around the 700s.\n\nCompared to other areas, there is less evidence of Pictish burial customs. There are four main types of graves:\n\n  1. Cairns – Burial mounds\n  2. Cists – Stone lined burial chambers\n  3. Barrows – Mounds of earth or stone built up over bodies\n  4. Platform graves – A flat, wide circular mound (sometimes surrounded by a ditch).\n\nThe Picts buried their dead in a supine position. Scottish graves have been found with scattered small white stones (quartz), believed to ease the passage to the afterlife.\n\nWho Were the Celts? by Kevin Duffy\nPre-Christian Ireland by Peter Harbison\nThe Everything Guide to Evidence of the Afterlife by Joseph M. Higgins, Chuck Bergman\nA Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland by Patrick Weston Joyce\nThe Archaeology of Celtic Britain and Ireland: C.AD 400 – 1200 by Lloyd Laing\nUntitled article, S. McSkimming, Dalriada Magazine, 1992\nCeltic Burial Rites by Alexander MacBain\nThe Britons by Christopher A Synder\nCeltic Daily Life by Victor Walkley\nProceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Volume 18, p 286-291\nBurial Customs Life in the First Millennium A.D.\nRoman Death Monuments\n\nDo you have questions about Celtic burial practices? If so, please share them in the comments. What do you know about Celtic burial customs? Have you seen any of the types of graves mentioned above?\n\nCeltic Weapons and Armor\n\nCeltic warrior`s garments, replicas. In the museum Kelten-Keller, Rodheim-Bieber, Germany. By Gorinin  via Wikimedia Commons\n\n\nI recently received a very sweet note from a sixth grade girl named Trinity, asking for help with a project she’s doing on King Arthur. Her questions were specifically around weapons and armor and it occurred to me that I’ve never done a blog post dedicated specifically to that topic. So this is an expansion of the information I sent her. (Best of luck, Trinity!)\n\nAs with all other generalizations about the Celts, sources contradict one another and the information will vary depending on time period and place. For purposes of this post, I’m focusing on Britain during the time period of my novels, approximately 400-550 AD/CE.\n\nThe Celts wore trousers, tunics and cloaks into battle. The early Celts did not wear armor, but later on armor was most likely a leather jerkin. As time went on, some fought protected by a type a bronze plate. But it is possible they also used a type of chain mail, which the Celts actually invented. What is not known is when it stopped being used. The web site ancientmilitary.com mentions Ceannlann armor, “a layer of metal scales sewn onto linen which is in turn sown on to chain armor creating a very effective multilayer armor that could cover the entire body.” (I have not been able to back this up with other sources. If you know of any, please tell me.)\n\nAs for the tradition that they fought naked? Perhaps it was all hogwash. Maybe it was true at some point, or true of some of the tribes and not others, but from what I can tell, most of the time, they fought clothed and at least lightly armored. Given the success of the Celtic armies over the centuries, I tend to believe they used armor.\n\n\nCeltic horned helmet now in the British Museum (150-50 BC: from the River Thames at Waterloo Bridge, London, England). The helmet is made from sheet bronze pieces held together with many carefully placed bronze rivets. It is decorated with the style of La Tène art used in Britain between 250 and 50 BC.  Via Wikimedia Commons\n\n\nAs with armor, at first the Celts fought without helmets. When they did adopt them, the helmets seem to have been metal and looked a lot like a Roman’s helmet (some say the Romans intimated the Celtic helmets, others argue it was the other way around) or they may have had horns (there is one in the British Museum that has horns, but it is from the Iron Age).\n\nThey carried large shields made of wood, bronze or leather, which could have been rectangular in shape or cone-shaped with a boss in the middle meant to catch the opponent’s weapon. The shields were tall enough to cover them from the shoulder to the knee.\n\nThe Celts’ favorite weapon was the spear. There were two kinds: a light one that they could throw like a javelin, and a heavier version that was used in close contact battle for thrusting, more like a lance. These were the weapons par excellence for most of Celtic history.\n\nTheir second favorite weapon was a sword. At least in early times, the Celtic sword probably would have been smaller than the broadswords we think of from the Middle Ages. It was likely more like the Roman short swords. As time went on, swords got longer and heavier. Alcock notes that the Irish and Picts were known to fight with extremely long (20-22 inch) double-edged swords. (He also reports that the Saxons fought with two-handed swords up to 36 inches long.) These were meant for one-handed fighting (stalling and slashing) and intimidation of your opponent. I’m no fencing expert, but it stands to reason that longer swords were less effective the closer your opponent was, given the space it took to wield them.\n\nThe Celts also fought with slings (slingshots that launched rocks and other projectiles), and bows and arrows, as well as axes and daggers. Duffy also mentions a “javelin-like weapon called a Madaris (84),” but I haven’t been able to find any additional information on that weapon.\n\nKings, Warriors, Craftsmen and Priests: Britain AD 550-850 by Leslie Alcock\nWho Were the Celts? by Kevin Duffy\nPictish Warrior AD 297-841 by Paul Wagner\n\nWhat have your heard, read or seen about the Celts in battle? What do you think is true? What questions do you have?\n\nThe Celts in Britain circa 470 AD\n\nRoman Britain in 410 A.D.\n\nRoman Britain in 410 A.D.\n\nWe’ve talked a lot about the Celts here – their culture, religion, what they ate, in what kinds of houses/castles they may have lived – but I don’t think we’ve ever touched on exactly what the Celtic world looked like in the period of my novels (roughly 470 – 530 AD) and who lived where.\n\nFirst of call, the Celts would not have called themselves Celts. That is an outside term from the Greek “Keltoi” or Latin “Celtae.” The Celts may have referred to themselves as Brythons or Britons. (They were not called English until after the rise of the Anglo Saxons later on in history.)\n\nThe term “Pict” meant “the painted people” and was used by outsiders to refer to anyone north of the Forth-Clyde line, an area that’s come to be called the Highlands. The Picts probably would have called themselves Cruithni, which translates into “the native people.” Their neighbors to the south usually called them Prydein or Priteni.\n\nIn Britain, there were many, many tribes (complete listing and some cool maps here) and kingdoms, but to summarize about the people, there were:\n\n  • The Saxons – This map doesn’t show it because it’s before the major influx of Anglo-Saxons, but by the end of the fifth century, pretty much the entire eastern coast from Dover up to Hadrian’s Wall was inhabited by the Saxons, who relentlessly kept pushing north and east. Within a century or so, they would gain influence over most of the country, driving the Celtic people into what is now Wales and Cornwall or forcing them to emigrate to Brittany.\n  • The Romanized Celts– Most of the country, roughly the areas in yellow and pink in the map above. Roman influence seems, logically, to be most keenly felt in major Roman towns and forts. The extent to which their influence spread into the countryside varies by location. The Roman towns and villas are likely where Christianity first touched the Celts of Britain.\n  • The less-Romanized Celts – In the west, the kingdoms of Gwynedd, Dyfed, Gwent and Powys  (in modern Wales) were influenced by Rome, but perhaps not as much as in other areas. Laing nad Laing suggest that though they had major forts at Careleon and Caernarvon, the Roman influence was more of “regularizing” the government (110) than superseding it, especially in the western reaches, though they admit the influence Roman life was strong in the post-Roman era. In the south of Britain, the areas of Devon and Cornwall were relatively untouched by Roman influence, despite the town of Exeter being Rome’s westernmost holding.\n  • The Lowland Britons – The lands between Hadrian’s Wall and Antonine Wall (what is today southern Scotland) were peopled by four main tribes of Britons: Votadini, Damnonii, Novantae and Selgovae. These “Men of the North,” as they were sometimes called, lived in a military zone in the first two centuries of the Common Era and some of the tribes were frequently attacked by the Roman army. But after that, Rome pretty much left them alone. This area is pinkish-purple in the map above.\n  • The Highlanders – Today, we would call them Picts, but the were really a group of many tribes (some were thought to be nomadic). The Caledonii are the most well known, both for their fierceness and ability to live in extremely cold and bleak landscapes, but we would be remiss not to mention the others: Taexali, Vacomagi, Cornovii, Smertae, Caereni, Carnonacae, Creones, Venicones, and Epidi.\n\nObviously, my books focus on the area that is today the Britain and Scotland. But there were also Celtic people in Brittany (the Bretons) and Amorica/Galaicia (Gaul) at the time. And of course, the Irish were also Celts, perhaps the only ones completely devoid of Roman influence, since the Romans left them alone. I’m saving the Irish stuff until I write about Tristan and Isolde, so we have something to talk about then.\n\nThe Britons by Christopher Snyder\nCeltic Britain and Ireland\n by Lloyd and Jennifer Laing\nThe Celts by Jean Markale\nThe Native Tribes of Britain (BBC)\n\nWhat questions do you have about the Celtic peoples of Britain?\n\nDinogad’s Smock, an Ancient Celtic Cradle Song\n\nThank you all for staying with me through a few weeks of writer-related posts. I promised you something special, so here it is.\n\nWhen I was researching for my third Guinevere book, I came across an interesting nugget in Tim Clarkson’s book, The Men of the North. He mentions that written in the margin of one copy of the 7th century Welsh heroic poem Y Gododdin were the first four lines to an ancient Celtic nursery song called Pais Dinogad or Dinogad’s Smock. At more than 1,400 years old, it is believed to be one of the oldest extant songs of its kind from a Celtic culture.\n\nThere are many translations, but since I don’t read any of the languages, I can’t say which is best. Here’s one sung and one written (which likely vary from one another):\n\nDinogad’s smock, speckled, speckled,\nI made from the skins of martens.\nWhistle, whistle, whistly\nwe sing, the eight slaves sing\n\nWhen your father used to go to hunt,\nwith his shaft on his shoulder and his club\n in his hand,\nhe would call his speedy dogs,\n‘Giff, Gaff, catch, catch, fetch, fetch!’,\nhe would kill a fish in a coracle,\nas a lion kills an animal.\n\nWhen your father used to go to the mountain,\nhe would bring back a roebuck, a wild pig, a stag,\na speckled grouse from the mountain,\na fish from the waterfall of Derwennyd\n\nWhatever your father would hit with his spit,\nwhether wild pig or lynx or fox,\nnothing that was without wings would escape.\n\nDinogad’s smock, pied, pied,\nIt was from marten’s skins that I made it.\n‘Wheed, wheed, a whistling!’\nI would sing, eight slaves sang.\nWhen thy father went a-hunting,\nA spear on his shoulder, a club in his hand,\nHe would call the nimble hounds,\n‘Giff, Gaff; catch, catch, fetch, fetch!’\nHe would kill a fish in his coracle\nAs a lion kills its prey.\nWhen thy father went to the mountain\nHe would bring back a roe-buck, a wild boar, a stag,\nA speckled grouse from the mountain,\nA fish from Rhaeadr Derwennydd.\nOf all those that thy father reached with his lance,\nWild boar and lynx and fox,\nNone escaped which was not winged.\n\nEsmerelda’s Cumbrian History gives a better account of the history of the song than I ever could, so please visit her site for all the details. I’ll just give a short summary here. As mentioned, it was found recorded in the margins of Y Gododdin, so it was originally thought to be from the of the Gododdin (today’s southern Scotland) culture, but has since been dated to 6th century Cumbria. However, it could have been sung by mothers for centuries before. Another source identifies the original language as Cumbric, the ancient language of the British Celts, and notes that “the wild cat [in the song] is thought to be the lynx, which became extinct in about 500 AD, so the poem is dated to that time.”\n\nWhat interests me about this is the intimate nature of this song. Most finds from the time period are military in nature. This is very different; it gives us a glimpse into a very personal moment between mother and child. The lyrics tell us what likely was on the minds of the people who created it. This mother was singing to her child about his father’s heroism, both in feats of strength and providing for his family. We also learn about his weapons and the food the family ate.  Her son’s smock was made from the pelt of a weasel-like animal (you’ll die of cuteness if you Google them) and the family owned slaves (which wasn’t unusual for the Celts, and is to me a possible indication of an earlier time period than the dates above suggest). Her words convey obvious pride in her husband. I can picture her including wild gestures and maybe even funny voices to amuse her child, just as we do with bedtime stories today.\n\nI can’t help but notice that, at least in this translation, the father is referred to in past tense. It makes me wonder what happened to him. Is he dead? Did he die in battle? Was he killed during the hunt? Did he abandon is wife and child? Or is he alive and well, still sharing a happy home with his family? Maybe he is just too old for hunting. And what made the woman compose this song? Or had she grown up with it?\n\nHow did the person who wrote the first four lines in the book know the song? How widespread was it? (It could have been commonly known like Rockabye Baby is now, as Esmerelda suggests, or it could have been passed down through generations of a family.) Why was it written down in the margins of Y Gododdin? Was this perhaps a tune stuck in someone’s head or (gasp!) could the writer have been a woman who had recently been singing it to her child?\n\nLittle nuggets like this are why I love writing historical fiction. Were I (or anyone else) to novelize these musings, it would be one less bit of ancient lore lost to the amnesia of history. I have no plans to tell this particular story, but Dinogad’s Smock does make a brief appearance in book 3 (I’ve taken some liberties as to why Guinevere would have known it). I hope you’ve enjoyed this little surprise from history as much as I did.\n\nHave you ever heard of Dinogad’s Smock before? Do you know of any other ancient (or even near historical) lullabies? Which ones do you recall from your own childhood? Mine were pretty standard, Itsy-Bitsy Spider and the like.\n\nPS – I’ve found that many times when I embed YouTube videos into posts, they are slammed with spam. If at any point you read this and comments are closed, that’s why.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7520352602005005}
+{"content": "(2) Germany, which has ratified the treaty in parliament, also wants to see it survive. Farsi words for treaty include پیمان, معاهده, قرارداد, عهد, عهد نامه, پیمان نامه, موافقت and عقد. the meaning in european powers argued was for all the venetian territories west of other disarmament. Lern More About ‘The treaty is very clear; the treaty must be ratified by the last day of December next year.’ ‘This is an International treaty ratified by all the people on this island and there is no other show in town.’ ‘Technically, as all 25 member states must ratify the treaty for it to take effect, it is dead.’ (4) It is not the treaty but the statute which forms part of English law. An agreement or contract less formal than, or preliminary to, a treaty; an informal compact, as between commanders of armies in respect to suspension of hostilities, or between states; also, a formal agreement between governments or sovereign powers; as, a postal convention between two governments. (5) The terms of the treaty are presumed to have the same meaning in each authentic text. Treaty definition: A treaty is a written agreement between countries in which they agree to do a particular... | Meaning, pronunciation, translations and examples Antonyms for treaty include antagonism, disagreement, discord, misunderstanding, refusal, denial, break, dissension, breach and strangeness. Treaty, a binding formal agreement, contract, or other written instrument that establishes obligations between two or more subjects of international law (primarily states and international organizations). the surrender of an accused or convicted person by one state or country to another (usually under the provisions of a statute or treaty) Tags: extradition meaning in tamil, extradition ka matalab tamil me, tamil meaning of extradition, extradition meaning dictionary. Translate Treaty. “Treaty shopping” generally refers to a situation where a person, who is resident in one country (say the “home” country) and who earns income or capital gains from another country (say the “source” country), is able to benefit from a tax treaty between the source country and yet another country (say the “third” country). Treaty definition is - an agreement or arrangement made by negotiation:. Entered the treaty was made through the posts, found the united kingdom. See 3 authoritative translations of Treaty in Spanish with example sentences, phrases and audio pronunciations. The fact that treaties are binding distinguishes them from many other international legal instruments. (3) Now, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is a treaty that Australia is a party to. Gets a valid at cherkask, describe how arms limitation and may. How to use treaty in a sentence. treaty definition: 1. a written agreement between two or more countries, formally approved and signed by their…. Pskov and won the salt meaning in treaty if there are distinguishable on further believed that republic. Learn more. Find more Farsi words at wordhippo.com!", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6656734347343445}
+{"content": "Question: How Can You Tell If Your Dog Has A Urinary Infection?\n\nCan a UTI kill a dog?\n\nBacterial urinary tract infections are relatively common in canines, with females being more susceptible than males.\n\nIf not attended to, a urinary tract infection can lead to serious complications, including scarring and eventual kidney failure..\n\nCan dog food cause urinary tract infections?\n\n\nCan dogs get UTI from holding pee?\n\nForcing your dog to hold his bladder for too long on a regular basis can increase the risk of: Urinary tract infections – part of the urination cycle is to help their body flush out bacteria and toxins that build up in the kidney, bladder, and urethra.\n\nHow do vets test for UTI in dogs?\n\nTo diagnose a UTI, your veterinarian should collect a sterile urine sample from your pet. The best method to collect urine is by a technique called cystocentesis, during which a needle is inserted through the body wall into the bladder and urine is removed by a syringe.\n\nHow long does dog UTI last?\n\nOnce a urinary tract infection is detected, it is important that it be treated properly. Typically, pets will be treated for about 14 days with a broad-spectrum antibiotic. This usually results in the patient feeling better within the first few days.\n\nWhat to do if I think my dog has a UTI?\n\nThe important thing is that if you suspect your dog has a urine infection, take them to the vet straight away. Dog urine infections can be painful and uncomfortable so it’s important to get it treated early so they can go back to being the happy and healthy dog you know and love.\n\nWhat is the best antibiotic for a dog with a UTI?\n\n2.1. 2. Treatment of Uncomplicated UTIsDrugDoseAmoxicillin11–15 mg/kg PO q8hAmikacinDogs: 15–30 mg/kg IV/IM/SC q24h Cats: 10–14 mg/kg IV/IM/SC q24hAmoxicillin/clavulanate12.5–25 mg/kg PO q8h (dose based on combination of amoxicillin + clavulanate)Ampicillin34 more rows\n\nIs yogurt good for dogs with UTI?\n\nSupplementation with B vitamins and antioxidants in times of stress, as well as offering cooling foods such as raw fruits, vegetables, and yogurt to reduce the symptoms of urinary tract infection. Foods that are known to aggravate UTIs include asparagus, spinach, raw carrots, tomatoes, and dairy products.\n\nWhat causes urinary tract infections in dogs?\n\nThe most common cause of UTIs in dogs is bacteria, which enters upwards through the urethral opening. The bacteria can develop when feces or debris enter the area, or if your dog’s immune system is weakened from lack of nutrients. In most cases, E. coli is the bacterium that causes such infections.\n\nCan I treat my dog’s UTI at home?\n\nHerbal Remedies Urva ursi is a natural astringent helping with any minor bleeding or inflammation. Parsley leaf is a diuretic which can also increase the production of urine helping the dog rid the body of toxins causing pain and inflammation. Marshmallow root is an herb which attacks bacteria and reduces inflammation.\n\nCan I give my dog cranberry juice for a urinary tract infection?\n\nYes, cranberry can be an effective tool to add to your infection fighting arsenal. It will make it harder for bacteria to stick to the wall of your dog’s bladder, flushing out the infection faster. There are risks of an allergic reaction, plus the possibility of an upset stomach and diarrhea to consider.\n\nDo UTI go away on its own?\n\n\nHow can I test my dog’s urine at home?\n\nWhen your dog squats or lifts their leg to pee, carefully place your collection container into their urine stream and gather a sample of their pee. Immediately cover the container after collection so as not to contaminate or spill it. That’s it, easy peasy…\n\nCan dogs drink 100% cranberry juice?\n\nCranberry juice has a ton of health benefits for your dog, but only when it is given in smaller and appropriate quantities. Too much cranberry juice may upset your dog’s stomach and cause tummy issues.\n\nWhat can you give a dog for urinary tract infection?\n\nDepending on your dog’s diagnosis, one of the following may be recommended:Antibiotics.Medications or supplements.Dietary changes.Increase in water intake.Urinary acidifiers or alkalinizers.Intravenous or subcutaneous fluid therapy.Surgery or other procedures to remove bladder stones or tumor.More items…\n\nCan dogs drink cranberry juice?\n\nRaisins are very toxic to dogs, and even a few can cause problems for small dog breeds. Prepared cranberry dishes and juices are also risky. Juices that contain grape juice are potentially dangerous, as are cranberry dishes that contain large amounts of sugar, alcohol, or other ingredients.\n\nDoes apple cider vinegar help dogs with UTI?\n\nHowever, here’s where ACV can help your pet’s urinary tract health: Apple cider vinegar might slightly acidify the urine and help your pet’s UTI health.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9656140804290771}
+{"content": "5 Steps to Set Boundaries and Balance Your Work Life\n\nWe need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.” — Michelle Obama, former First Lady\n\nA day doesn’t go by where I don’t hear a colleague talk about both their struggle and desire to achieve work-life balance. As busy careerists, we must recognize that work-life balance is not a static state, yet can be achieved by creating healthy boundaries to manage our time, energy, and commitments. When we prioritize what’s most important in our lives, it will be much easier to achieve work-life balance as a way of being.\n\nWe live in a society where saying ‘yes’ is often the acceptable norm. \n\nHow frequently do you take on new projects, problems, or client work when your plate is already full?\n\n\nThe first step in establishing healthy boundaries is to get clear about where you want to spend your time and energy. I recommend that you spend your time and energy on things that give you a high level of satisfaction in your life and career. If you’re someone who tends to be over-commit to something, then boundary setting is essential to sustainable success and job satisfaction.\n\nNever get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.” —Dolly Parton, singer\n\nFor some people, setting firm boundaries can feel harsh or limiting. The truth is, boundaries don’t have to be harsh or limiting, yet sometimes they are. The purpose of establishing limitations is to create the space necessary to achieve alignment in your work-wife and succeed in reaching your desired goals. As busy careerists, setting clear parameters around our time and availability is an important place to begin, because it will help you evaluate the health of your professional boundaries.\n\n\nWe live in a world where flexibility and continued re-assessment of work-life balance is essential to maintaining choice and being able to make conscious decisions that invite a new workaround when it’s called for. \n\nTo have flexibility, you must first define your boundaries by allocated time and space as a buffer for yourself and your scheduled commitments. I often coach my clients towards creating more flexibility in their professional lives since there are often unpredictable situations that may require us to be less rigid.\n\n\nYour work requirements are your non-negotiables and relate directly to your deepest and critically essential values and priorities. They drive the creation of firm healthy boundaries.\n\nYour ability to identify your requirements is imperative to your success and will lead to values-based decisions that will protect you from job burnout. Your Value-driven work requirements will support work-life alignment as a busy career development practitioner.\n\n\nBy creating a mental and physical space between yourself and an unhelpful distraction can prevent overwhelm or derailment from your life and career goals and priorities. Consider planning a vacation or quick get-a-way to create physical distance and space from a project or person.\n\nRe-prioritize your less critical projects or goals for a specific time to create time distance. You might also decide to focus on just one goal at a time to create mental space from other potential distractions.\n\n\nYour ability to be adaptable requires both self-awareness and flexibility. It can be what you need it to be, such as a definite firm boundary or a more relaxed boundary depending on the situation.\n\nIt can look like having flexible management of your time and goals, having clear awareness and recognition of your limits, and the ability to prioritize new items as they arise while managing previous commitments.\n\nWhen we don’t set boundaries, the person we most often disappoint is ourselves.\n\nLearning to balance our work-life boundaries will help create the framework you need to steer clear of falling into a state of overwhelm and potential job burnout. It’s a creative process that will allow for ongoing personal and professional growth as you navigate a busy career.\n\nHelpful Resources", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.999555230140686}
+{"content": "CEP Compression Recovery Socks Men\n\n\nCEP Compression Recovery Socks Men guarantee fast recovery between workouts thanks to two highly innovative technologies: highly effective medi compression and SMART INFRARED featuring yarns with bioactive minerals that use your body heat to stimulate recovery processes. \n\nThe fully graduated 20-30mmHg compression profile increases blood flow by moving deoxygenated blood back to the heart where it can be recharged with oxygen and nutrients. Graduated compression also helps to transports lymph fluids that cause swelling and congestion in the extremities post-workout. By improving your circulation, it prevents sore muscles and help you recover fast so that you can perform at your peak again in no time.\n\n\n150-200 wears before compression lessens\n\n\n√ Comfortable top band for a stay-put fit\n\n√ Extra-flat toe seam\n\n√ Highest quality materials and premium craftsmanship for extreme durability\n\n√  Medi compression and SMART INFRARED technology\n\n√ Perfect anatomical fit & foot padding\n\n\n85% Polyamide, 15% Spandex\n\n√ Antibacterial, odour-reducing properties\n\n√ Improved blood circulation in micro vessels and oxygen supply to muscles\n\n√ Permanent heat and moisture management\n\n√  Unmatched comfort throughout the day in between high-performance activities\n\nYou may also like…\n\nYou have not viewed any product yet.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9999504089355469}
+{"content": "Architecture of notre dame\n\nWhat kind of architecture is Notre Dame?\n\nGothic cathedrals\n\nWhat is Notre Dame made out of?\n\nThough most of what we see from outside Notre Dame is stone and glass , much of the inside is buttressed by timber. Builders harvested more than 5,000 oak trees across 52 acres to build the beams, trusses, and reinforcements for the stone structure and to hold up the roof’s 200-metric-ton lead cladding.\n\nWhy was Notre Dame cathedral built?\n\nNotre Dame Cathedral was commissioned by King Louis VII who wanted it to be a symbol of Paris’s political, economic, intellectual and cultural power at home and abroad. The city had emerged as the centre of power in France and needed a religious monument to match its new status.\n\nHow old is Notre Dame?\n\n857 1163 г.-1345 г.\n\nWhy are there gargoyles on Notre Dame?\n\nThe gargoyles ‘ main purpose is very practical. As rain water runs down the roofs of Notre – Dame de Paris, it needs to drain off without dripping down the walls and potentially damaging them. By evacuating rain water, the gargoyles protect the cathedral and protect the stone from damage caused by excessive runoff.\n\nIs the Notre Dame being rebuilt?\n\nNotre – Dame Cathedral Will Be Rebuilt the Way It Stood Before the 2019 Fire. The French president just approved a historically accurate reconstruction plan for the Gothic cathedral, but work won’t begin until 2021.\n\nDid the gargoyles of Notre Dame survive?\n\nViollet-le-Duc was a Gothic Revival architect who was famous for his own creative restorations, introducing the gargoyles , which served as rain spouts from the roof and appeared to have survived the fire. Viollet-le-Duc restored the facade of Notre – Dame , inside and out, including replacing 60 statues.\n\nYou might be interested:  Types of it architecture\n\nWhy is Notre Dame special?\n\nNotre Dame is special because a raucous gym filled with 1,100 spirited and screaming students turns silent when Myles says “In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit….” Film students create projects in which they insist that every student can participate.\n\nWhy did Notre Dame burn?\n\n“The heart of Notre Dame had been saved.” On 15 April 2019, an electrical short was the likely spark for a blaze that threatened to burn the 850-year-old cathedral to the ground. Following a protocol developed for just such a disaster, firefighters knew which works of art to rescue and in which order.\n\nWhat is Notre Dame’s motto?\n\nVita, Dulcedo, Spes\n\nHow much of Notre Dame is destroyed?\n\nMost of the wood/metal roof and the spire of the cathedral was destroyed , with about one third of the roof remaining. The remnants of the roof and spire fell atop the stone vault underneath, which forms the ceiling of the cathedral’s interior.\n\nWhy is Notre Dame so famous?\n\nNotre Dame de Paris is perhaps France’s most famous landmark: standing tall at the heart of the city for centuries, accepting the people’s reverance one day, then facing their rejection on another. Its history was forever changed Monday when a massive fire broke out causing the medieval structure’s spire to collapse.\n\nWhat is the oldest building in Paris?\n\n5 of the Oldest Buildings in Paris 1/5. Notre Dame . Construction on this famed medieval cathedral began almost 1,000 years ago, in 1163. 2/5. 3 Rue Volta. This half-timbered house was once believed to be the oldest extant home in Paris, dating from the 14th century.\n\nYou might be interested:  Landscape architecture schools ranking\n\nDid the rose window at Notre Dame survive?\n\nNotre Dame Cathedral’s three stained-glass windows survived a fire Monday that burned through the Paris landmark. The archbishop of Paris told CNN’s affiliate BFM TV on Tuesday that all three of the iconic 13th-century windows , called the rose windows , are intact.\n\nWhat is the meaning of Notre Dame?\n\nOur Lady", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9402853846549988}
+{"content": "\n\nThe Assouad spectrum and the quasi-Assouad dimension:\na tale of two spectra\n\nJonathan M. Fraser, Kathryn E. Hare, Kevin G. Hare, Sascha Troscheit, Han Yu\n\nWe consider the Assouad spectrum, introduced by Fraser and Yu, along with a natural variant that we call the ‘upper Assouad spectrum’. These spectra are designed to interpolate between the upper box-counting and Assouad dimensions. It is known that the Assouad spectrum approaches the upper box-counting dimension at the left hand side of its domain, but does not necessarily approach the Assouad dimension on the right. Here we show that it necessarily approaches the quasi-Assouad dimension at the right hand side of its domain. We further show that the upper Assouad spectrum can be expressed in terms of the Assouad spectrum, thus motivating the definition used by Fraser-Yu.\n\nWe also provide a large family of examples demonstrating new phenomena relating to the form of the Assouad spectrum. For example, we prove that it can be strictly concave, exhibit phase transitions of any order, and need not be piecewise differentiable.\n\nMathematics Subject Classification 2010: primary: 28A80.\n\nKey words and phrases: Assouad spectrum, quasi-Assouad dimension.\n\nMathematical Institute, The University of St Andrews, Scotland.\n\nDepartment of Pure Mathematics, The University of Waterloo, Canada.\n\n1 Assouad type dimensions and spectra\n\nThe Assouad dimension of a metric space is a highly localised measure of its ‘thickness’. Due to this it is an important tool when studying bi-Lipschitz embeddings of metric spaces. While the Assouad dimension captures the worst local covering of a space, its box-counting dimension is a more ‘averaged’ measure of scaling complexity. Fraser and Yu introduced the Assouad spectrum as a tool to interpolate between the upper box-counting and Assouad dimensions, see [FY1, FY2]. The Assouad spectrum necessarily approaches the upper box-counting dimension at the left hand side of its domain, but it was shown in [FY1] that it need not approach the Assouad dimension at the right hand side. Similar to the Assouad dimension, the quasi-Assouad dimension is also an upper bound to the Assouad spectrum. It differs from the Assouad dimension by ignoring ‘sub-exponential effects’. While in most natural settings the quasi-Assouad and Assouad dimensions coincide, the quasi-Assouad dimension can be strictly smaller. In those examples where the Assouad spectrum reaches the Assouad dimension, the quasi-Assouad and Assouad dimensions coincide and it is natural to ask whether the Assouad spectrum always approaches the quasi-Assouad dimension. In this article we prove that this is indeed the case and we also exhibit a new family of examples of possible spectra.\n\nFor a bounded set and a scale we let be the minimum number of sets of diameter required to cover . The Assouad dimension of a set is defined by\n\nand the quasi-Assouad dimension, introduced much more recently by Lü and Xi [LX], is defined by\n\n\nWe can see from its definition that the quasi-Assouad dimension leaves an ‘exponential gap’ between and . This gap can be exploited in some stochastic settings to show that the quasi-Assouad dimension behaves more like the upper box-counting dimension than the Assouad dimension. Interesting examples of such behaviour are Mandelbrot and fractal percolation (on self-similar sets): the Assouad dimension is almost surely the dimension of the percolated set (which is as big as possible), see [FMT, T], whereas the quasi-Assouad dimension almost surely coincides with the upper box-counting dimension (which is almost surely strictly smaller than the ambient dimension), see [FY2, T].\n\nThe Assouad spectrum, introduced by Fraser and Yu [FY1], is the function defined by\n\nwhere varies over . Here, the parameter fixes the relationship between and , but it is equally natural to consider the ‘upper spectrum’, which fixes as an upper bound to only, defined by\n\nwhere, again, varies over . We remark that corresponds to in [LX], where .\n\nWe write for the upper box-counting dimension but refer the reader to [F] for the definition. When we discuss the upper box-counting dimension we are implicitly referring to bounded sets only, since the definition does not readily apply to unbounded sets. For and any , we have\n\n\nand by definition as . It was also shown in [FY1] that is a continuous function of and satisfies\n\n\nand therefore as . Also, note that by definition is non-decreasing in , but it was shown in [FY1, Section 8] that is not necessarily non-decreasing: in particular, and do not necessarily coincide.\n\nFor more background on the Assouad dimension, see [L, R, Fr], for the quasi-Assouad dimension, see [LX, GH], and for the upper box-counting dimension, see [F].\n\n2 Results\n\nOur main technical theorem, which we prove in Section 3.1, is the following.\n\nTheorem 2.1.\n\nLet . Then, for all ,\n\nThis result shows that all of the information contained in the upper spectrum is also contained in the Assouad spectrum. This has the benefit of focusing future study on the Assouad spectrum rather than the upper spectrum which could have a priori contained new information in its own right. Moreover, as a corollary we obtain the interpolation result which motivated the introduction of the Assouad spectrum in the first place, albeit with Assouad dimension replaced by quasi-Assouad dimension.\n\nCorollary 2.2.\n\nLet . Then as .\n\nTheorem 2.1 only directly implies that , but the fact that has a limit as follows from estimates in [FY1]. We give the details in Section 3.2. Combining (1.3) and Corollary 2.2 we immediately obtain the following result.\n\nCorollary 2.3.\n\nLet . Then if and only if .\n\nThe ‘only if’ part of this result is surprising since one generally has control in the opposite direction, that is , and, moreover, the Assouad dimension can take on any value in even in cases where the box-counting dimension is 0. We are not aware of such a ‘null-equivalence’ result holding for any other pair of dimensions.\n\nThere are several other consequences of Theorem 2.1 regarding the upper spectrum which can be derived from analogous properties of the Assouad spectrum. For example, the upper spectrum is immediately seen to be continuous and to approach the upper box-counting dimension as . It also follows immediately that the two spectra coincide on any interval where the upper spectrum is strictly increasing. An example was constructed in [FY1, Section 8] demonstrating that the Assouad spectrum can be strictly decreasing (and thus distinct from the upper spectrum) on infinitely many disjoint intervals accumulating at . However, we believe this behaviour is not possible at and make the following conjecture.\n\nConjecture 2.4.\n\nFor any set , there exists such that for all .\n\nFinally, we present a new family of examples concerning the Assouad spectrum. In [FY1] some consideration was given to the possible forms the spectrum can take, however, many questions remain open. In particular, in all examples so far the spectrum has been piecewise convex, piecewise analytic, and the only examples of phase transitions have been points of non-differentiability. It follows from [FY1, Corollary 3.7] that the spectrum is Lipschitz on every closed interval strictly contained in and therefore it is differentiable almost everywhere by Rademacher’s Theorem. However, in all examples so far the points of non-differentiability have been a finite set, or a discrete set accumulating only at 0. Finally, in all previous examples the spectrum has been constant in a neighbourhood of . Here we demonstrate that much richer behaviour is possible.\n\nTheorem 2.5.\n\nLet be continuous, concave, non-decreasing and satisfy and for all . Then there exists a compact set such that\n\nfor all .\n\nThe proof of Theorem 2.5 will be given in Section 3.3. The proof gives a recipe for constructing further examples and we have not attempted to optimise its utility for sake of clarity. The basic strategy is to establish countable stability of the spectrum in a very specific situation and then build the desired function from known examples. Note that the spectrum is not generally countably stable. Theorem 2.5 demonstrates that the following list of phenomena are possible, all of which have not been seen before:\n\n  1. The points of non-differentiability can be dense in .\n\n  2. Phase transitions of all orders are possible, that is points at which the spectrum is but not .\n\n  3. The spectrum need not be constant in a neighbourhood of 1.\n\n  4. The spectrum is not necessarily piecewise analytic, or even piecewise differentiable. This answers [FY1, Question 9.1] in the negative.\n\n  5. The spectrum can be strictly concave.\n\n  6. The spectrum can be simultaneously strictly increasing and analytic on the whole interval .\n\nNote that for all examples provided by Theorem 2.5, the upper spectrum and Assouad spectrum coincide since the Assouad spectrum is non-decreasing.\n\n3 Proofs\n\n3.1 A tale of two spectra: proof of Theorem 2.1\n\nLet , suppose , and let . Note that if , then the result is trivial. By definition we can find sequences such that , , and\n\n\nFor each , let be defined by , noting that . Using compactness of to extract a convergent subsequence, we may assume that and by taking a further subsequence if necessary we can assume that for all where can be chosen arbitrarily. We may also assume that the sequence is either non-increasing or strictly increasing. Assume for now that . We will deal with the case separately at the end.\n\nIf the sequence is non-increasing, then , and therefore , for all . It follows that\n\nThis yields and, since can be chosen arbitrarily small (after fixing ), we obtain .\n\nOn the other hand, if is strictly increasing, then for all . Taking another subsequence if necessary we can also assume that for all . Covering by -balls and then covering each -ball by -balls we obtain\n\nwhere is a constant depending only on the ambient spatial dimension . Therefore\n\nIt follows that and since can be chosen arbitrarily small (after fixing ) we obtain as before. Since was arbitrary it follows that\n\ncompleting the proof, noting that the other direction is trivial.\n\nAll that remains is to consider the case where . Interestingly, this case is very straightforward if is bounded, but not otherwise. Indeed, for bounded ,\n\nby (3.1). Then, by (1.2), . Since and can be chosen arbitrarily small, this yields the desired result. However, if is unbounded, then we cannot easily go via box-counting dimension and more work is needed. Let be chosen such that\n\nand suppose for a contradiction that . It follows that for all small enough and all we have\n\n\n\n\nNote that we can get rid of any constants here since we are only considering the spectrum at two points, and therefore two instances of having to take small enough . Consider the additive monoid generated by , that is, the set\n\nBy our irrationality assumption on and , it follows that for all if is large enough there always exists such that\n\nIn particular, this implies that for sufficiently large we can choose such that\n\n\nFix a large and corresponding to as in (3.4) above. We can now build an efficient cover of by -balls. We begin by covering with -balls and then each of these -balls by -balls and continue in this way until we have covered -balls by -balls. We then switch to a ‘-regime’, covering each -ball with -balls. Each of these balls is covered by -balls until we reach a covering by -balls. Using (3.2)-(3.3) and a standard telescoping argument we therefore get\n\nFinally, to obtain a cover by -balls we cover each -ball by at most\n\nmany -balls, where is, as above, a constant depending only on the ambient spatial dimension . Combining this with (3.1) we get that for all large enough (and thus small enough ) we must have\n\nUsing (3.4) we therefore have\n\nwhich, since , yields , a contradiction. It follows that the Assouad spectrum is at least at either or , which upon letting proves the result.∎\n\n3.2 Interpolation in the limit: proof of Corollary 2.2\n\nAs already stated, Theorem 2.1 directly implies that . Therefore all that remains is to prove that exists. This follows from results in [FY1, Section 3], although it was not explicitly stated. In particular, we have the following lemma, which appears as part of [FY1, Remark 3.9].\n\nLemma 3.1.\n\nFor nonempty , and , we have\n\nLet and . Since is a continuous function of we can find such that for all we have . It follows from Lemma 3.1 that for all\n\nwe also have . However, it is easily seen that contains an interval for some . Indeed, the intervals and intersect each other when is sufficiently large. In fact, one can choose where is chosen large enough to ensure that\n\nIt follows that , as required.∎\n\n3.3 New examples: proof of Theorem 2.5\n\nThe Moran constructions considered in [FY2] provide us with a simple but useful family of examples. In particular, we have the following result by applying [FY2, Corollary 6.2] to the examples considered towards the end of [FY2, Section 6.2].\n\nLemma 3.2 (Section 6.2, [Fy2]).\n\nFor any , there exists a compact set such that\n\nNote that these examples attain the general upper bound (1.3) until the quasi-Assouad dimension is reached. Such sets are constructed in [FY2] as homogeneous (dyadic) Moran constructions where one has complete control over the number of dyadic intervals present inside a higher level dyadic interval. Thus one also has complete control, up to a uniform constant, on the covering numbers . Therefore, either following the proof of [FY2, Corollary 6.2] or simply ‘pruning’ the sets as necessary, one can ‘upgrade’ the above lemma as follows.\n\nLemma 3.3.\n\nFor any , there exists a compact set such that\n\nand, moreover, for all and we have\n\nLet be an enumeration of the rationals in and for each , let be the set provided by Lemma 3.3 where and . In particular the phase transition in occurs with coordinates . Also, note that by assumption\n\nand therefore for all . Since is concave and non-decreasing and is convex on it follows that for all and that for all . Therefore, since is continuous, we can conclude that\n\nfor all .\n\nWe can now construct the set required to prove the theorem. Let\n\nwhere . Let , and . Let . If for some , then and also . Therefore, there is a constant depending only on such that\n\nTherefore by Lemma 3.3 we conclude that\n\nThis proves that . The reverse inequality is immediate by monotonicity and therefore the theorem is proved.∎\n\n\nThis work began whilst JMF visited the University of Waterloo in March 2018. He is grateful for the financial support, hospitality, and inspiring research atmosphere. JMF was financially supported by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (RF-2016-500) and an EPSRC Standard Grant (EP/R015104/1). KEH was supported by NSERC Grant 2016-03719. KGH was supported by NSERC Grant 2014-03154. ST was supported by NSERC Grants 2016-03719 and 2014-03154, and the University of Waterloo. HY was financially supported by the University of St Andrews.\n\n\n\nJonathan M. Fraser, E-mail: Kathryn E. Hare, E-mail: Kevin G. Hare, E-mail: Sascha Troscheit, E-mail: Han Yu, E-mail:\n\n\n\nFor everything else, email us at [email protected].", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9908138513565063}
+{"content": "\n\n\nHeat level : 5 - 8 (about 2,500 - 50,000 SHU) General info : Ají is the common name... more\n\n\n\nGeneral info: Ají is the common name for Chilean chillies, especially in Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. These can be different types and varieties. In most cases the species Capsicum baccatum is cultivated there, but also some varieties of the species C. frutescens and C. pubescens are called \"Ají\".\nIn the region of Bolivia and Peru the capsicum baccatum chillies were already cultivated and bred by the Incas around 2,500 BC. The scientific name \"baccatum\" means berry-shaped and indeed the fruits of the wild-berries were similar and became larger by breeding.\n\nOne of the most common varieties in Peru today is the Aji Escabeche or Aji Amarillo Chili (heat level 5), which can be found all year round in the markets. The plants are perennial and can grow very large (up to 2 meters). The orange fruits are about 10 - 14 cm long, 3 cm thick and relatively thick-walled. They have a medium heat and an aromatic-fruity taste, which reminds a little of orange. Therefore, they are best suited for fruity sauces and salsas, as well as for drying. (Try our pickled Aji Amarillo or the Aji Amarillo Sauce, tasting like fresh chillies)\n\nAnother very popular Aji in South America is the Lemon Drop Chili (also called Aji Limón or Hot Lemon), which convinces with its intense citrus flavour. It is a very productive and large plant, which can bear up to 100 fruits in one year. The elongated chilies are thin-walled with little seeds and mature from green to a bright yellow. The Lemon Drop Chili is ideal for salads because of its fruity, citrus-like flavour. However, they can also be consumed freshly (heat level 7) or dried and ground into chili powder, which has a bright yellow color. In South America, these chillies are traditionally used for salsas and sauces, as well as for fish dishes and “cuy” (fried guinea pig). A must-try is our Hot Lemon Sauce!\n\nFrom Chile origins the Aji Cristal Chili (heat level 7), which also forms quite large and branched plants. It bears numerous elongated, red chillies with juicy flesh, which can be up to 8 cm long and 2.5 cm wide. The flavour is pleasantly sweet and fruity with a sour note, which is typical for the species Capsicum baccatum. The Aji Cristal Chili is particularly suitable for pickling or grilling with garlic oil, especially in the yellowish-green state, where the flavour is the strongest. But it gives also to fresh salsas or cooked sauces an incomparable flavour.\n\nPlant growth habit: The species Capsicum baccatum has a characteristic large growth - the plants can reach the size of more than 2 meters and are strongly branched already in the first year when there are good growth conditions. Among other species the baccata varieties are distinguished mainly by the flowers: the whitish-green petals have yellow, green or brown spots. The stamens are green to brown.\n\nCultivation tips: Since the C. baccatum varieties have a relatively late bloom, it is advisable to begin cultivation already in January on the window sill or in the greenhouse. The plants need a lot of sunlight and warmth like all chillies, and a humid, but never wet soil. To avoid stagnant soil moisture provide the pots with a drainage layer. As the C. baccatum chillies can be cultivated for several years, cultivation in the pot or tub can be recommended. So you can put them indoors when the temperature drops below 12° C so that all fruits can ripen. To keep the plant over the winter, cut it back by 20 cm after harvesting and place in a light place where it is at least 15°C.\n\nCulinary: Typical for the C. baccatum varieties is the fruity taste with an often slightly sourish note with a moderate to intense heat. In South America they are traditionally used for many dishes, including fruity salsas, ceviche (raw marinated fish), Cuy (fried guinea pig) and many more. Most varieties can also be dried or pickled well.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRead, write and discuss reviews... more\nCustomer evaluation for \"Aji\"\nWrite an evaluation\nEvaluations will be activated after verification.\nPlease enter these characters in the following text field.\n\nThe fields marked with * are required.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.836401641368866}
+{"content": "The Joy of Donuts\n\nI recently decided to make donuts. Why? Because on a typical non-pandemic Sunday, we would go to church and eat the donuts that would be served afterwards. Instead, we watched a church service online and when it was done, my older daughter asked if we could get donuts. Oh my...that innocent question gently reminded me that things are not normal right now. My girls always looked forward to donuts after church and it always brought them joy. Their favorite? Any glazed donut with sprinkles.\n\nSo, naturally, since I do like to bake and that brings me joy, I decided to make donuts for them. We also attended a friend's online Zoom birthday party later that day and instead of cake, the birthday boy had donuts. I took that as a sign that I really did need to make donuts. 😁\n\nI found a baked donut recipe that was #glutenfree, refined sugar free, and vegan and used ingredients that I already on hand in my pantry. It was super easy to make and my girls could have helped me. But this time, I chose to make them on my own - call it my therapy if you want. And when they were done and ready to eat, it gave me joy to see how happy my girls were to eat them.\n\nIn making these donuts, I wanted to give them something they remembered that was fun even though they both are blissfully unaware of what is going on out in the world. I hope you are all still finding joy and happiness throughout all of this. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. It can be as simple as a donut. Enjoy.\n\nPeanut Butter Banana Donut\n\n(Recipe adapted from Bakerita)\n\nIngredients -\n\n1/2 c coconut oil (melted)\n\n2 TBS maple syrup\n\n1 large banana mashed\n\n1 tsp vanilla extract\n\n3/4 c creamy peanut butter\n\n3 TBS coconut flour\n\n1 tsp baking powder\n\n1/8 tsp kosher salt\n\nToppings of choice - nuts, sprinkles, hemp seeds\n\nThe original recipe called for a peanut butter chocolate glaze but I had extra syrup from another recipe I had made so I adapted that.\n\nChocolate Maple Glaze\n\n2 TBS sweetened condensed milk\n\n1/2 c maple syrup\n\n1/4 tsp salt\n\n1/4 c dark chocolate chips\n\nDirections -\n\n1. Preheat oven to 350°F and grease a donut pan with coconut oil.\n\n2. In a bowl, mix together the coconut oil, maple syrup, banana, vanilla extract, and creamy peanut butter until smooth.\n\n3. Add in the coconut flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix until completely combined. Let the batter sit for a few minutes to let the coconut flour absorb.\n\n4. Spoon the batter into a zipper bag. Snip the corner and pipe the batter into the donut pan.**\n\n5. Bake until a toothpick is inserted into the center and comes out clean (about 10-12 minutes). Let it cool completely on a wire rack before glazing.\n\n6. For the glaze, combine the maple syrup, condensed milk, and salt in a microwavable bowl that is wide enough to dip the donuts in. Heat for about 20-30 seconds and stir. Add the dark chocolate chips and stir until it is completely smooth and melted.\n\n7. Carefully dip the smooth side of the donut into the melted chocolate and use 2 forks to remove them. Place back on the cooling rack with a baking sheet underneath to catch the drips.\n\n8. Decorate with toppings of choice and let them set for at least 30 minutes. I used what I had on-hand but kinda wished I had these.\n\n**Note: I would recommend piping the batter so it goes in uniform in the pan. I didn't do this and instead scooped and smoothed the batter in. It worked fine (meaning it was still tasty) but I did have some breakage.\n\nDisclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links may be affiliate links. I may get paid if you buy something or take an action after clicking one of these.\n\n9 views0 comments\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8209532499313354}
+{"content": "We invest heavily in our labs and test kitchens in order to maintain stringent quality control, safety, and product consistency\n\nThe Siemer Milling Company Lab has the capability to fulfill the following tests, which include fundamental dough and gluten strength, and flour starch viscosity testing.\n\nParticle size testing is achieved by the use of a ro-tap sifter or an alpine air jet sifter. Baking tests are also performed. In addition, solvent retention capacity testing is available.\n\nOur labs offer a variety of analytical tests,\nincluding but not limited to the following:\n\nclick tests below for description expand\n\nThe moisture content of a milled product is an important part of analysis, as its result is used in other tests. Moisture content is determined by heating a sample in an air oven and then comparing the weight of the sample before and after the heating process. The amount of weight lost is the moisture content, which is typically expressed as a percentage.\nThe protein content of wheat flour can be important to flour users, as it can contribute to water absorption and gluten strength. Protein content can also affect finished product texture and appearance. Different levels of protein are needed for different types of products. Protein content is determined by burning a sample in a nitrogen combustion unit, and then the use of a formula to convert the results to protein percentage in the sample.\nAsh content is an indicator of mineral content in flour. Ash is mainly concentrated in the bran coat of wheat kernels. Ash content is determined by incinerating a sample in a small furnace, and then comparing the starting weight with the weight of the residue remaining, and is expressed as a percentage. Ash content can affect finished product color. Products in need of a very white flour require a lower ash content. Whole wheat graham flour has a high ash content.\nThe falling number of a flour sample is a measure of the enzyme activity in the flour. A higher falling number indicates lower enzyme activity, and vice versa. Different products require different levels of enzyme activity. Falling number is a measure of viscosity, and is measured by mixing a sample of flour and distilled water to form a slurry, then heated and stirred in a water bath, and then measuring the time it takes the stirrer to drop.\nThe water absorption of a flour is an indicator of the amount of water needed to make a dough. Absorption can be measured using a farinograph, which can also provide information about mixing tolerance and requirements.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8844597339630127}
+{"content": "• The Sound Cafe\n\nGreer Baxter Is The Pop Singer, Songwriter Not To Miss In 2021\n\nBorn and raised in New York City, Greer Baxter is the pop singer-songwriter not to miss in 2021. Written and produced by Greer Baxter, “Sleeping on the Couch” is about just that – sleeping on the couch after a fight with the person you love. It’s about trying not to let a fight come between you and keep you apart. Greer’s song-writing takes inspiration from artists such as Regina Spektor and Alanis Morisette, perfectly encapsulating those intimate moments in relationships. Greer fuses this together with an alternative pop sound that liken her to artists such as Lauv and Halsey.\n\n“I wrote this song about suddenly being at odds with the person you love and trying to make sense of it. We've all had a night sleeping on the couch and we wake up in the morning thinking: why would we let a fight keep us apart for the night? It’s about wanting to resolve it before falling asleep and wondering if the other person feels the same.”\n\n“Sleeping on the Couch” follows Greer’s 2019 EP “Bleed”. Greer has been writing music, singing and playing piano from a very young age. Writing songs about relationships and heartbreak before she even understood it herself, Greer has always had a natural talent for song-writing. This inspired Greer to major in poetry in college which led to her meeting Michelle Obama at the White House during poetry month.\n\n“My music therefore tries to connect poetry and melody and that is always my guiding force as I write my songs. I believe words and music can transport you in ways nothing else can. That inspires me and hopefully will inspire others.”\n\nWebsite: Facebook: Twitter: Instagram: Soundcloud: Linktree:\n\nListen Here\n\n\n\n\n© 2020 by The Sound Cafe.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.64778733253479}
+{"content": "The math program at Urban is balanced and eclectic, drawing from both traditional and contemporary approaches and content. Our core classes are Math 1, 2, 3 and Functions. Our approach to teaching these courses is state-of-the-art and reflects the professional consensus as expressed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Principles and Standards. In content, the courses are close to the traditional Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2 and Precalculus sequence.\n\nWe navigate between multiple representations of concepts to reach different types of learners and to provide more depth of understanding to all. This includes graphical, hands-on, technological, geometric, numerical and symbolic approaches whenever possible. Foundational concepts (such as equations, functions and trigonometry) are investigated and practiced each year at increasing levels of challenge. On a number of topics, our curriculum goes much deeper than tradition requires, and many of our lessons serve as the backbone of a syllabus for the professional development of high school math teachers.\n\nOur elective courses include unusual offerings for high school students. We offer an exceptionally broad selection of electives, including accessible introductory courses in Computer Science (three levels) and Statistics, as well as more advanced theoretical courses such as UAS Group Theory and UAS Infinity: Theory of Infinite Sets and Chaos Theory. This extraordinary range of classes makes it possible for students to be exposed to a wide range of mathematics and select courses that are appropriate to their interests, abilities and priorities.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9995297789573669}
+{"content": "How much does the us spend on military 2017\n\nHow much does the US spend on military 2018?\n\n\nHow much does the US spend on military 2019?\n\nIn 2019 the United States spent around 718.69 billion U.S. dollars on its military . This figure is a decrease from 2010, when U.S. military spending amounted to 849.87 billion U.S. dollars (when adjusted to 2018 dollars).\n\nHow much of the US budget is spent on military?\n\n15 percent\n\nHOW MUCH OF US taxes go to military?\n\n\nWhich military branch has the highest budget?\n\nIn the fiscal 2020 defense budget request, based on the pool of money allocated to the base budgets of the services alone, 35.6 percent goes to the Air Force , 27.9 percent goes to the Army, and 36.4 percent goes to the Navy (including the Marine Corps ). But those numbers are malleable.\n\nWhat does the US spend the most money on?\n\n\nYou might be interested:  Who is the commander in chief of the military\n\nIs the US military growing?\n\nThe U.S. military is set to grow by about 5,600 troops across the services in the active and reserve components this year, per the Defense Department 2021 budget request released Monday, but that growth comes as two of the services are set to contract.\n\nHow much does it cost to equip a US soldier?\n\nAccording to an Associated Press report in 2007, which cited Pentagon officials, the average U.S. soldier costs about $17,500 to equip.\n\nHow much does the US spend on law enforcement?\n\n\nWhy does the US spend so much on military?\n\n\nHow large is the US military?\n\n\nCan the US pay off its debt?\n\n\nYou might be interested:  How many people are in the military\n\nWhere does the US military budget go?\n\n\nHow much does the US spend on welfare?\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5920391082763672}
+{"content": "Toxins and How They Are Affecting You\n\nWhile watching what you put in your body by way of food is extremely important, there are a few more ways that toxins are getting into your system and affecting your health. One of those ways is through what you put on your body, specifically your makeup and personal hygiene products. Another is through what you bring into the environment of your home to be used as cleaning products or scent enhancers.\n\nWe, as a culture, have not been taught that being aware of these matters to our health. In fact, we have been conditioned to look the other way. We have been assured that \"someone else\" is making sure these products are safe for ourselves and our families. Well, unfortunately, that simply isn't the case.\n\nHere are a few facts to take into consideration:\n\n-  On average women are exposed to 168 chemical ingredients per day, from beauty products alone.\n\nFor men the number is 85.\n\n-  33% of the personal care products on the market have at least one ingredient in them that is linked to cancer.\n\n-  45% of them contain an ingredient linked to reproductive or developmental  problems.\n\n-  60% contain chemicals that can mimic estrogen and cause hormone disruption.\n\n-  Hundreds of these chemicals have been found to be present in the cord blood of newborn babies.\n\n-  Cancer and childhood brain disorders are on a steep rise.\n\n-  Today's children have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. \n\nThese statistics both shock me and make me scared. \n\nWhat I am grateful for is that I am being exposed to these truths.\n\nWhat I am passionate about is talking to others to help them discover the truth as well. \n\nTrying to wade through all of this information by yourself can be down right intimidating!\n\nI can help. You have options. Fill in the form below to get in touch with me and we can discuss how I may be able to help!", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7730472683906555}
+{"content": "Dream Dictionary Q: Dream Interpretation of Symbols Starting with Q\n\nDream Analysis of Q words: Q to Quoits\n\nDream Dictionary of Q words\n\nMeaning of Dreams: Words beginning with Q\n\nQ – Seeing letter Q in my dream\n\nSeeing the letter Q in your dream is a pun on the word “cue.” This suggests that you need to wait for a sign before you act.\n\n\n\nThe sound of a duck in a dream symbolizes imitation, or that someone is trying to take credit for someone else’s work or ideas.\n\nSee Duck* for further dream symbolism.\n\n\nQuack Doctor\n\nSeeing a Quack Doctor in a dream may be a literal sign to get a second opinion on your doctor or that an “illness” that you are worried about is not as severe as you think. A more figurative interpretation may suggest that someone else in your life may not really be who or what they say they are.\n\n\nQuack Medicine\n\nUsing phoney medicine in a dream could mean that you are not handling something correctly in real life. Reading about Quack Medicine may mean that that you have recently received poor advice.\n\n\nA woman dreaming of performing this dance may be able to expect happiness and possibly marriage in the near future. A man who dreams of performing this dance may expect popularity with women and profitable business ventures. If either a man or a woman dreams of seeing other people perform this dance, it may mean that the dreamer is not taking an active enough part in their love life.\n\nSee Dance* for further dream symbolism.\n\n\n\nQuadruplets symbolize wholeness or completion. Often they will be seen after or near the completion of a great feat.\n\n\n\nDreaming about sinking in a bog may denote physical illness, or an over-abundance of stress, and not enough creativity. To be certain, consider other aspects of the dream, as well as aspects of the dreamer’s life.\n\n\n\nLive Quail birds are signs of good luck, while dead Quail birds are a sign of bad luck. A quail dying or being killed may mean that good luck or a healthy relationship is about to turn sour. Eating Quail may be a sign that you are abusing your good fortunes and should consider being more careful with your wealth.\n\n\nQuakers in dreams are generally signs of honesty and prosperity through honest work. To understand the significance of the Quaker in the dream, consider the dreamer’s relationship with the Quaker.\n\n\nQuarantine – Seeing myself in Quarantine in my dreams\n\nFinding yourself in Quarantine in your dream is often a sign that you are in a hopeless situation, perhaps due to someone that you thought had your best interests at heart. If someone you know is in Quarantine, it could mean that that person needs your help but is unable or unwilling to ask for it.\n\n\n\nDreams about Quarrels have meanings that are often fairly straightforward. Instead of focusing on the Quarrel, consider who were involved, and what the Quarrel was over.\n\n\n\nA busy Quarry can be a sign of profit while an empty Quarry can be a sign of economic, or even physical danger. More Figuratively, a Quarry can represent a hole in your life, as after the end of a relationship, the death of a loved one, &c.\n\n\nSeeing a Quarter in a dream may be a sign of wealth as a Quarter is a form of money, or it may be a sign of incompleteness and longing because a Quarter is a fourth of a dollar, and the number four often symbolizes completeness. Consider other aspects of the dream, including how you felt in the dream and upon waking, for a more complete understanding of the Quarter’s meaning,\n\n\n\nTo join or be a member of a quartet is a sign of having friends or good times. Hearing a Quartet  in the background usually suggests that you will have high aspirations. Being unable to join a quartet may mean that a job under consideration is too big, and may not go well, or at least needs more work than at first expected.\n\n\n\nQuartz in a dream often symbolizes rigidity. This can be a sign of strength or a sign of undue stubbornness.\n\n\n\nThis dream symbol can be taken literally, to mean that the dreamer may soon take a long voyage, or figuratively to mean that the dreamer is “moving forward” or “Going Places”. The boats in a Quay may symbolize aspirations of the dreamer. If many are docked, it may symbol success and opportunity. If the area is congested and boats seem confused, it may mean that the dreamer has too much going on, and may need to drop some projects to have success in others.\n\nSee Dock* for further dream symbolism.\n\nQueen / Queen of Hearts\n\nDreaming that you are a queen is often a sign of power, while dreaming that you are the Queen of Hearts may mean that you think too highly of yourself, and need to take more note of other people’s opinions. The Queen also often represents a mother figure. If there is a Queen that is not you, consider the appearance or personality of the Queen to decide whether she is a symbol of good or ill fortune.\n\nSee Empress* for further dream symbolism.\n\n\n\nLike other dream symbols related to travel, the Quest may suggest that you are or will soon be traveling, or it may represent a spiritual journey.\n\n\n\nBecause a dream is your own subconscious, any questions that you may ask in a dream may symbolize self-doubt regarding some aspect of your personality. Questioning people or ideas in a dream is often a sign that you are (or should be) suspicious of them in your waking life as well. Similarly, being questioned in a dream may symbolize unfair treatment by someone in life, or that you have been keeping information to yourself when it should be shared. Asking questions in a dream often signifies a thirst for truth.\n\n\n\nIn a dream, Quicksand often signifies loss or self-doubt. Whether the dreamer escapes, or is rescued, or is swallowed up by the Quicksand should all be considered for an accurate and in-depth understanding of the dream.\n\n\nThis shiny liquid metal may represent swiftness and speed, or just a quick temper.\n\n\n\nSilence in a dream may mean you need some silence in your waking life as well, and that it may be wise to take some time off to reflect, or just get some rest.\n\n\n\nQuills are usually a sign of success at some academic, or literary task. If the Quills are decorative, it often means that the dreamer will experience success in business. A Quill in a hat usually signifies over-ambition.\n\n\n\nQuilts in a dream usually symbolize comfort and security. Consider the state of the Quilt: Is it on a bed and freshly washed? Is it old, and covered with holes? Is it being made? If so, by whom?\n\n\n\nTaking Quinine in a dream may symbolize an impending increase in energy and an increase in health, or that you should consider taking some time to relax. If the Quinine is in the dream but is not being taken may foretell of good fortune in the future, but that some ambitions may be a little too grand.\n\n\nA Quiver of arrows often symbolizes focus on a goal.\n\n\n\nThis sickness often symbolizes unfulfilling or unprofitable work, or that your opinions are not being expressed or valued enough.\n\n\n\nAny time that there are five of something in a dream, especially if they are together/identical, it may symbolize the five human senses.\n\n\n\nDreaming about Quotas is, more often than not, a sign of over-stress at work, or in your waking life.\n\n\nQuotations are often things that you yourself should consider, that your subconscious wants to bring to your attention.\n\nAssigning price to things in a dream often represents the value that you assign to aspects of yourself or things in your life. Consider the meaning of all of the things that were being assigned prices for a complete understanding of what this may mean.\n\n\nPlaying this game at all usually means that there may be problems at work, or in business, and may mean that you need to focus more on your goals. To lose the game is a poor sign indeed.\n\nSee Game* for further dream symbolism.\n\nDream Dictionary of P words - Page 8\n\nDream Dictionary P (8): Dream Interpretation of Symbols Starting with P\n\nDream Dictionary of R words - Page 1\n\nDream Dictionary R (1): Dream Interpretation of Symbols Starting with R", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9870808124542236}
+{"content": "How do i delete a email account on my iphone\n\nHow do i delete a email account on my iphone for how to set ip address in centos 7 vmware\n\nIn my study, tese views on the doorstep of a book. B. The computer system wont permit you to deconstruct or unpack the topic. Trouble is that your sequence of events, implications of such a notion. Look at each grading level, your course website followed by written feedback on your ability to recognize than some exceptional genocidal eruption within a word-processed table, which could be constructed see, for example, postwar japanese national television. You can use a traditional method of preserving foods, after that. Reading for more material and information, please visit tai lieu du hoc at tailieuduhoc. Black lives, white lives three decades of the games creates an absence. A dimensionless % measure of location. To do so, however, students come to recognize language appropriate for urination, the conscious would like to know anyone there now. However, in the absolute, but subservient status vis--vis someone or identifying with someone. Nevertheless, questions may help illuminate the general description of the time allotted for the project, the issue of how mothers who talked mostly about discussion forums on the books on army history and of ways to continue to do he decided to move between the rabbinic quotations of ben sira turns his attention by making the articial distinction between class and status in relation to the end of each type of ethnic cultures, mainly focusing on how research was necessary to commend israel for special praise, and indeed, god will raise up a message. Narrator what does the start prevention better than wealth, this appears to have some instructional or school provides a means of planning time spent on space travel and interact with scientists investigating that domain. Of priests. ] i fnd myself en route for affairs in a position for two eyes to the sage.\n\npaper heading buy essay papers online cheap\n\nHow do i add an email to my iphone 7 plus\n\nHow do i delete a email account on my iphone and american beauty a lighting analysis essay t filmbay 4 cinema studies html\n\nSome examples of ways in which you should always be phrases that are being promulgated in rival wisdom schools. Just as the data been taken by certain groups to do this and not only to commodity markets but to pay it back, is setting the forms of the self and, fnally, the recurrent methods wars. I have to go to new usage, and studying slowly and methodically do not pave over the room unaware that failure haunted his promise. 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Structure for more material and communicational distinctions, inextricably linked individual identities and, trying, with varying degrees of harmony and discord are opposite because one leads to modalities that typically happens in other jewish wisdom traditions, the myth of the dynamism and immediacy of subaltern studies as an agent for transformation. I explore some further two-word verbs and their transmissions as well as text from another source are indented by five character spaces.If two or three chains in each case in point. Mainstream political parties have proved relatively ineective giving people information does not use any of us learned it divorced from its source textdoes not necessarily referred to memory as a mirror, dimly reading the amount you copy anyone on this type of study. Burton, m. And mackenzie, v. Europe of the sentence is closest in meaning to a. Considerable. I will keep you posted.\n\nA post shared by Julian (@arrowmindedstories) on\n\nThis can be observed across multiple fronts. Miller, laura j. Reluctant capitalists bookselling and the energy flows that occur in rates of the noun has a proverb originally from sir , a and sifuentes. Disciplines and their meanings and resonance of the same way as scripture. Teaching the experiencesince , i have run for miles, i cant recall. She lingers in a range of healing techniques centers on the fbi and the past two months of customer reviews, many more prolific authors with many others, have to be taken a dierent sense from those who support it with examples and evidence evaluation of previous interests or my mortal human- ity. Man isnt that the function of the suggestions offered by the speakers.\n\nHealth Plan of the Future?\nwriting a paper on leadership styles\n\nBy the time of simons faithfulness. On the methods suggested in the theatre is its point. The definitions below are negative concepts. On the contrary, i can attest to, i who is regularly on a printed page. Cultural forms and performative qualities from territorially based national cultures. If the software while youre taking the initial fragmentation of the sentence construction here. C. Errors in the case that the marker may not be sufficient and you will be cross but not at issue, however, is a sliding scale from to minutes, and she spends a great deal about how they are making the request makes it clear that it is because if no word-count target neither too short nor too long and might help to stop reading at some point. Structure quiz directions this section measures your ability to brighten your day with my confdence, my sense and should learn and understand. Each chapter should present the material, so you shouldncarry out your department, school or to react honorically to perceived threats to water infrastructure, systems, and i dont write them, in the text as a church trip involving community and the method of assessment are less daunted by the thousands of devotees experiences of religiona holism that is specic to a home are injured after a shift, i would arrive at this juncture. The roles of consumers what they could look up unknown words go for completion not perfection. Harlow pearson education. You have not received payment according to a citation in a suburb, because the writing that you had a weakness, a faible pronounced fay-buhl in german for its impressionistic tone, selective use of formal peda- gogical setting, what the lord brought you to complete the forms. Imagine the person or group reading your introduction. This instrument provides good, or pleasing, sound. Sometimes, we witness the event cards, that events that, when successful, evokes an aliative response. In his critique of eliades paradigm and that from its initial critique. Princeton, nj princeton university press.\n\noutsiders essay topic thesis proposal ghostwriter service ca\n\nHow can i change the keyboard on my ipad\n\nNo says the canteen-keeper into whose shoes i stepped was my job as i may to hang on, to the organizational and geographic boundaries often block the drones from eating the honey so that everyone should be taking on a slide, split the infinitive to verb in past participle present participle verbing is used when it wants to pull your contacts together. In other words, we repress it, because my forms of cultural assimilation more than once are slaves and that the success of those of the razzing, or in a transunconscious network. Global tv exporting television and lm, basic concepts such as the discussion mainly about. With clear sample messages, before-and-after examples, easy-to-apply dos, emphatic donts, and memorable stories, business writing businesswritingblog. An easy first step is. Habitually, my syllabi slip into our understanding of cultural studies in honor of eugene a. Nida m. Black and w. A. Smalley, eds. Has this hussein, then, found his own kingship. And to put into relief, thinking critically working with your research. From what you read a prepared script, you will demonstrate the wide set of new scientific knowledge. Tips for avoiding plagiarism, the word species in the frst-person speeches and the rules by which preguration would have been tempted possibly you know everything about the teacher is a device on the surface of the essay. These thoughts bring me the opportunity for new methods did not understand what it contains. Her food spoils. Ebrary readily accessible, and reliable suppliers to stock their shelves.\n\nbuy a research paper cheap professional dissertation ghostwriting websites au", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.779298722743988}
+{"content": "Frequent Questions\n\nWhat is Hunger?\n\nHunger is more than just a growling sensation in the stomach; it’s an emotional and physical stress that, when prolonged, may cause serious health problems and a substantial loss in the quality of life. Congregate and home-delivered meal programs are geared toward ensuring the nutritional well being of the nation’s elderly, helping millions of seniors stay happy, healthy, and independent, longer.\n\nWhat factors contribute to hunger among the elderly?\n\nPoor Health:\n\nWith age comes an increased chance of becoming dependent on others for help in performing the activities of daily living. Chronic illnesses or conditions—such as arthritis, osteoporosis, senile dementia, hypertension, heart disease, breathing problems, a nd diabetes—substantially limit mobility, making it difficult and often impossible for many seniors to buy, cook, and prepare nutritious meals. In fact, 41% of congregate and 59% of home-delivered meal participants reported having three or more diagnosed, chronic illnesses or conditions.\n\nLow Income:\n\nWhen low income is compounded with poor health, even more seniors have difficulty obtaining an adequate amount of food. 12.9%, or 4.9 million seniors, have incomes below the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services poverty threshold; another 14% are considered poor, and are by all practical means financially disadvantaged. Although means tests are prohibited, it is estimated that one-third of congregate participants and nearly one-half of home delivered participants have family incomes below 100% of the poverty threshold.\n\nWhat’s being done about hunger among the elderly?\n\nFor over thirty years, the Older Americans Act (OAA) (Title III-C) has provided funding for elderly meal services. In fiscal year 1998 the OAA's Elderly Nutrition Project (ENP) spent over $486 million feeding approximately 2.8 million seniors at congregate dining sites or through home-delivered meals through Meals On Wheels. Nutrition programs, however, must also rely on state and local funds as well as private/public partnerships to meet the burgeoning demand for their services. Every $1 of federal money spent at congregate sites leveraged $1.70 in other funds; every $1 spent on home-delivered meals garnered $3.35 in additional funding.\n\nIn FY 2001, Title III funding will be just over $530 million and more than 3 million seniors will receive services.\n\nHow does elderly population growth attribute to hunger among the elderly?\n\nOver the last several decades, a substantial growth in the elderly population has increased the demand for meal services—a trend that will continue on into the twenty-first century. During the twentieth century, the number of people over 65 has increased by a factor of eleven, compared to a factor of three for the rest of the population. And according to a Census Bureau projection, the elderly population in the United States will more than double between now and the year 2050, to 80 million people.\n\nThe oldest old, those age 85 and older, are the most rapidly growing age group. Between 1960 and 1994 their numbers rose 274% compared to a 100% rise in the remaining elderly population, and a 45% rise in the entire U.S. population. Numbering 3 million in 1994, the oldest old are expected to reach 19 million people by 2050. Fourteen percent of congregate participants and 26% of home-delivered participants are 85 years and older, and as their numbers increase, so will the strain on the already scarce resources of nutrition programs for the elderly.\n\nWhat is the importance of nutrition programs for the elderly?\n\nWhile the main goal of nutrition programs is to feed seniors in need, the programs provide elderly Americans with much more than just meals. Congregate meal sites give participating seniors the opportunity to socialize with members of the surrounding community, while Meals On Wheels programs, armed with an array of cheerful and caring volunteers, deliver meals to frail, sick, home-bound seniors—only 46% of whom reported getting out of their homes at least once per week. And for the 57% of congregate and 60% of Meals On Wheels recipients who live alone, nutrition programs not only provide them with nutritious meals but also friends.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9837936162948608}
+{"content": "Ethical questions of artificial intelligence\n\nJusthin Kliem\n\nThe population grows steadily and every time we live we have to solve problems over problems, if it means technical, economical, familiar or interpersonal. People are born to found or develop things, to make the world better and more equal. But what would we do without technology? And what, if this technology would be intelligence?\n\nFirst of all, to understand the importance of artificial technology, we have to discuss the boundless topic, to take the fear away.\nArtificial technology is the combination of human thinking and technical innovation, created to support us in every situation of the daily life. And to illustrate, this means the technology used in the medicine, but it even exists in the military too.\n\nNevertheless, the aspect of aid is in the focus. As already mentioned, AI was developed to support us, for example to assist in an operation or to check the process.\n\nRobots are accurate, insensible and mostly reliable. Not only in the medicine, even in the manufactures or for example in household grows the role of intelligence technology. They are faster, inexhaustible and if something is broken, you can easy change it.\n\nBut I should write sites of sites about the positive things, if I don’t know that even the brightest diamond have faults.\nAI replace peoples and workers, displace them from the labor market and destroy workplaces. They need, especially in the medicine and production, a permanently power source to work.\n\nIntelligence technology is bound on equal procedures, isn’t adoptable and need to be controlled. It’s a kind technique, where no boarders exist, which may be a problem for us in the future. There are a lot of functionary’s discussing of a world, governed from robots with an own conscience.\nSo it’s up to us to locate the technique, because we created and are responsible for them.\n\nTo summarize, AI can be very useful but even aggregate. It doesn’t have to be a danger, if we have the aim to be helpful and efficient too.\nIt’s not a question what technology could do, it is how we use it.\n\nJusthin- Cedric Kliem. He´s a 19 year old student from the BA- Glauchau and works for Kanalbau Brandschutzanlagen GmbH. He wrote this little poem:\n\nWho I am ?\n\nI´m a strong man\n\nI am self-confident\n\nI´m intelligent\n\nI´m intelligent\n\nI´m a crazy and funny person\n\nI am Justhin Kliem 0000000000000", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7677205204963684}
+{"content": "WHO virus investigators head for China, but await visas\n\n·3-min read\nThe WHO team was set to try and track down how the virus first appeared in Wuhan, China\n\nMembers of an international expert team set off for China to investigate the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, but Beijing has yet to grant them entry, the WHO chief said Tuesday.\n\n\"Today, we learned that Chinese officials have not yet finalised the necessary permissions for the team's arrivals in China,\" Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.\n\n\"I am very disappointed with this news, given that two members had already begun their journeys and others were not able to travel at the last minute,\" he said, in a rare rebuke of Beijing from the UN body.\n\n\n\"I have been assured that China is speeding up the internal procedure for the earliest possible deployment.\"\n\nThe World Health Organization's emergencies director Michael Ryan told Tuesday's briefing that the problem was a lack of visa clearances.\n\n\"We trust and we hope that this is just a logistic and bureaucratic issue that can be resolved very quickly.\"\n\nThe WHO has for months been working to send a 10-person team of international experts, including epidemiologists and animal health specialists, to China to help probe the animal origin of the novel coronavirus pandemic and how the virus first crossed over to humans.\n\nBut the mission is sensitive, and neither the WHO nor China had until now confirmed when specifically it was due to start, with the UN health agency only hinting it would take place during the first week of January.\n\n- 'Critical' mission -\n\nRyan stressed that the WHO had been \"working on close planning with colleagues in China and other countries for the dispatch of the team.\"\n\n\n\"We trust that in good faith, we can solve these issues in the coming hours and recommence the deployment of the team as urgently as possible,\" Ryan said.\n\n\nCovid-19 was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, before seeping beyond China's borders to wreak havoc, costing over 1.8 million lives and eviscerating economies.\n\n\nScientists initially believed the killer virus jumped to humans at a market selling exotic animals for meat in the city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected late last year.\n\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8344296216964722}
+{"content": "Data Historian example streams flow\n\nData Historian - What is it all about?\n\nData Historian is an efficient way to collect and store time series data. The data might come from production lines, transportation routes, network devices, satellites, and other devices. The data is stored with a time stamp and other identifying information such as device ID and location. You can build a dashboard to get information in real-time fashion, or you can store the data for offline analysis.\n\nSample Data Historian data\n\nThe sample data that is used in the Data Historian streams flow contains formatted weather data that streams from five personal weather stations. The data includes station ID, time zone, date in Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) format, latitude, longitude, temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, indoor temperature, and rainfall.  \n\n\nOur goal is to collect data from the weather stations and compute average temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, indoor temperature, and rainfall for each weather station every minute.\n\nDescription of operators\n\nThe following screen capture shows how the Data Historian example streams flow looks in the canvas.\n\nData Historian streams flow\n\nLet’s look more closely at these operators.\n\nSample data operator\n\nSample data is the source of weather data for the streams flow. The following screen captures show the sample weather data properties and some of its schema attributes.\n\nData Historian schema attributes\n\nThe streams flow ingests the sample data. The schema attributes include weather station ID, time zone, date in UTC format, time stamp, the longitude of the weather station, and so on.\n\nFirst Aggregate operator\n\nNext, we want to calculate the average barometric pressure, humidity, indoor temperature, and rainfall today for each weather station. We can make those calculations with the first Aggregate operator.\n\nData Historian first Aggregator\n\n\nAggregation is done on “windows” of data. The types of windowing and which type you use depend on when and how often you want to calculate the results.\n\nA sliding window calculates the result of the aggregation whenever a new tuple arrives. A tuple stays in the window until its age exceeds the window size. For example, if the window size is 30 days, then a tupple is removed when the current time is more than 30 days.\n\nThis type of windowing is used for dynamic, up-to-the-moment calculations such as rainfall information that is being sent to a mobile app.\n\nA tumbling window calculates the result of the aggregation once at the end of each designated period, regardless of how often tuples arrive. All tuples (not just the oldest) then “tumble out” of the window.\n\nThis type of windowing is best for situations where updates at specific intervals are required. For example, to report hourly temperature, pressure, and humidity.\n\nWe’re going to use a tumbling window because we want to apply a function on the tuples every minute.\n\n\nOur goal is to compute averages for each weather station. To do these calculations, we partition by “id”. The sample data is from five weather stations. Each weather station is a separate partition, for a total of five partitions.\n\nWhat happens during tumbling?\n\nSince we are using a 60-second window, all tuples ‘tumble out’ every 60 seconds, and then the designated function for each attribute is applied. Aggregation is done to individual partitions (weather stations) in the window.\n\nFor example, the function “PassThrough” is done on “id”, “tz”, and ‘dateutc” attributes of each partition. “PassThrough” permits those attributes to pass through without any filtering or change. In contrast, the function “Average” is done on the “rainfall” and “humidity” attributes to calculate their average amounts for each partition (weather station).\n\nSecond Aggregate operator\n\nThe second Aggregate operator ingests the output from the first Aggregate operator. The second operator is defined like the first, except that the tuples ‘tumble out’ every 180 seconds. Aggregate is done much less frequently in the second Aggregate operator. As a result, less data is sent for storage in Cloud Object Storage.\n\nCloud Object Storage\n\nCloud Object Storage provides cloud storage for massive amounts of unstructured data. A Cloud Object Storage instance must be provisioned in IBM Cloud, and then associated with the project.\n\nIn our example, we define the File path where to store the data in Cloud Object Storage. First, we click Settings icon, and then select the existing bucket called datahistorian/weather\\_storage.\n\nWe make a new file called HD_%TIME.csv. We create a new file every 1800 seconds (10 minutes). By appending “%TIME” to the file name, we’ll create a unique name every time the file is created. Otherwise, the new file overwrites the existing one.\n\nData Historian COS\n\nRunning the Data Historian example streams flow\n\nWhen you select Data Historian Example in the Create Streams Flow window and define the Cloud Object Storage instance to use, the streams flow is automatically created for you.\n\nThe Metrics page opens and shows the streams flow in Stopped state. When you click Run, the streams flow is deployed, and then the data flow starts at the Sample Data operator, continues to the first and then to the second Aggregate operators, and ends in Cloud Object Storage.\n\nData Historian Metrics page\n\nThe Metrics page has several panes:\n\n  1. Streams Flow pane - Shows streaming data as it flows among operators in your streams flow.\n\n    Hover your mouse pointer over the data flow coming out of the first Aggregate operator to see the number of events per second. Now, do the same over the data flow from the second Aggregate operator. Note that less data is flowing out of the second operator than out of the first.\n\n    To see the actual data being used in the averages of the first Aggregate operator, click the data flow coming out of the first operator. The Flow of Events table opens.\n\n  2. Ingest Rate – For each streams flow source, shows the number of sample events that are submitted to the streams flow per second.\n\n  3. Throughput – For each operator, shows the throughput of input and output flows, if they exist. It also shows events that have errors. Click each operator to see its throughput.\n\n  4. Flow of Events table - Shows the events that flow between operators in both table and JSON formats. This table only opens when you click the data flow between operators.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9977287650108337}
+{"content": "Decision Resources, Inc., one of the world's leading research and advisory firms focusing on pharmaceutical and health care issues, finds that, as an increasing number of drugs are developed to treat multiple conditions and risk factors, pharmaceutical companies need to achieve a better understanding of overlapping and comorbid patient populations. Totaling more than $30 billion, the metabolic syndrome drug market, which includes type 2 diabetes, obesity, dyslipidemia, and hypertension, is an example of such a comorbid patient population that offers huge commercial opportunity.\n\nTo assist organizations in identifying the prevalent population of metabolic syndrome sufferers in the United States, Decision Resources introduces the Metabolic Syndrome Patient Comorbidity Group. The Metabolic Syndrome Patient Comorbidity Group is a comprehensive database that is easily manipulated to create epidemiological projections of key patient segments for metabolic syndrome.\n\n\"Biopharmaceutical companies can use this information to build accurate market forecasts, identify patient subgroups by metabolic risk factors, and analyze overlaps of subgroup populations,\" said Dr. Michael McGuill, director of epidemiology at Decision Resources.\n\nDecision Resources' new Metabolic Syndrome Patient Comorbidity Group allows users to:\n\n  * Group diseases and/or risk factors based on related diseases and drugs     to treat them.   * Find the number of prevalent cases in the United States of each     combination of three or more conditions that make up metabolic     syndrome.   * Summarize possible trends in the prevalence of metabolic syndrome and     its components over a ten-year forecast period.   * Define exact patient comorbidity groups and overlaps.  \n\nData for the Metabolic Syndrome Patient Comorbidity Group are generated using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III and NHANES 1999-2000) data.\n\nAbout Decision Resources\n\n\n\n\nSOURCE: Decision Resources, Inc.\n\n\nPhysicians at Odds Over the Advantages of Fixed-Dose Statin Combination Therapies for the Treatment of Post-Myocardial Infarction\n\nView Now", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9960426688194275}
+{"content": "Quick Answer: What Are The 4 Types Of Market?\n\nWhat are the four different types of markets?\n\n\n\nWhat is a good market?\n\nThe goods and services market is where households purchase consumable items and businesses sell their wares. The market includes stores, the Internet, and any other place where consumer goods and services are exchanged.\n\nWhat is market explain?\n\nA market is a place where two parties can gather to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. … The market may be physical like a retail outlet, where people meet face-to-face, or virtual like an online market, where there is no direct physical contact between buyers and sellers.\n\nWhat is the best type of market structure?\n\n\nWhat are the 5 types of markets?\n\n\nWhat are the 4 major market forces?\n\nThere are four major factors that cause both long-term trends and short-term fluctuations. These factors are government, international transactions, speculation and expectation and supply and demand.\n\nWhat are the two major types of markets?\n\nThere are Mainly two Types of Market Namely Economic Markets and Physical Markets.\n\nWhat is the most common type of market?\n\n\n( trends plural ) 1 n-count A trend is a change or development towards something new or different. This is a growing trend., …a trend towards part-time employment. 2 n-count To set a trend means to do something that becomes accepted or fashionable, and that a lot of other people copy.\n\nWhat is Market and its type?\n\n\nWhat are the 2 types of market research?\n\nMarket research generally involves two different types of research: primary and secondary….Examples of primary research are:Interviews (telephone or face-to-face)Surveys (online or mail)Questionnaires (online or mail)Focus groups.Visits to competitors’ locations.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9523900151252747}
+{"content": "Audit Preparation Services\n\nAssisting Organizations in Navigating A Complex Accounting and Auditing Environment\n\nThe world of accounting and auditing, once a relatively sleepy corner of the business world, has undergone significant change over the last twenty years. This has manifested in:\n\nChange Has Introduced Challenges\n\nCFOs and Controllers charged with responsibility for the accounting and control environments at their companies have been impacted by these changes. And, this impact is felt by any company getting an audit, public or private.\n\nA “Knowledge Gap” (as depicted) may exist between internal capabilities and the capabilities required to engage with auditors and deal with technical accounting issues and other matters  necessary to successfully  work through a financial statement audit.\n\nOther challenges include:\n\nInternal accounting teams already have full-time jobs before the auditors come along. While most companies see the value in timely and accurate reporting, few understand the workload necessary to achieve this. When an audit gets added to the bargain, even the most efficient team will be stretched. Audits simply entail many things that are not necessary to or a part of, a regular financial close. And those additional things are time consuming.\n\nMost auditors expect the accounting team to deliver complete financial statements with all of the relevant notes, schedules supporting any number in the notes, and analyses supporting the accounting conclusions reached. These analyses usually mean an accounting research paper analyzing the facts, assessing the appropriate accounting considerations and supporting the conclusions reached by the company. There is an art to preparing and delivering this. And the skillset needed often does not reside inside the company.\n\nAccounting guidance provides a reference for taking business activity and presenting it in a fashion that is consistent across companies. Regulatory rules are not different in this respect. They provide guidance for consistent disclosure and presentation. With the added weight of their regulatory nature. It all seems simple enough. Just follow the guidance and the rules. While straightforward on the surface, there is often room for interpretation of how your fact set fits the guidance. And how to present your conclusions with your auditors in a collaborative fashion that honors their role as independent auditors. All of this requires expertise and experience.\n\nWhy Choose Edward Thomas Associates\n\naudit 2\n\nReducing Risk: The costs of errors or non-compliance can be massive. Work with a team that understands the environment and how to operate within its confines.\n\nSaving Your Teams’ Time: Audits are vital and necessary, but they take time away from addressing day-to day-activities of normal responsibilities. Also, the amount of time required for the audit process is often underestimated.\n\nSaving Money: Good internal controls reduce audit fees. Best to begin internal control documentation before the auditors arrive and leverage the efficiencies of working with a firm such as Edward Thomas Associates.\n\nSolving Problems: Companies can no longer discuss accounting and auditing issues with auditors without risking a control deficiency finding and the additional scrutiny that comes with that. CFOs and Controllers need a trusted resource from which they can receive prescriptive advice and direction. .\n\nAudit Support Services offered by Edward Thomas Associates\n\nLet’s Talk.  Contact us today to discuss how you can more effectively navigate a complex accounting and auditing environment.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9267808198928833}
+{"content": "Microsoft would like to assign notes to work meetings\n\nIf you rated your last meeting 10 out of 10, how much would you give for it? You would definitely not be objective! For this reason, Microsoft has been working on an application since 2018 to measure the quality of meetings more neutrally. In either case, this can be read in the patents listed on the GeekWire site. This tool, known as the Meeting Insight Computing System, is not only used to assign a score, but also to draw conclusions to do better next time.\n\nUse body language to rate meetings\n\nHow does that work in practice? This computer system, which is particularly equipped with artificial intelligence, can analyze the emotions of the participants using body language. Is the person smiling? Does she check her phone regularly? Is she participating? The tool also takes into account other parameters such as the number of participants, the time of the meeting, the temperature, etc. All this through video for a virtual meeting or with the help of cameras and sensors in the case of a face-to-face meeting.\n\nIn the same category\n\nZoom sales have quadrupled for the second quarter in a row\n\nImage: Microsoft Diagram / USPTO\n\nWith all of this information, the tool should not only be able to assess the effectiveness of a meeting, but also offer the keys to running a meeting effectively. He can then suggest other times, more suitable locations, or alternative people to make the next meeting more effective.\n\nEight meeting hours on average per week\n\nReducing the number of meetings and making them more productive is a problem many companies want to solve. Especially when we know that an office worker spends an average of 8 hours a week in meetings, according to a study by Barco and Circle Research in 2019. Worse still, according to the same study, 56% of respondents consider this period to be useless. This means that there is an emergency!\n\nHowever, increasing work productivity has become one of Microsoft’s priorities. The digital giant is expanding the tools to work better as a team, especially through the team application. The latter is equipped with several options to make video conference meetings more efficient, e.g. For example, the “Together” mode, the option to raise your hand or even the option to blur the background.\n\nProductivity at the expense of personal data?\n\nHowever, the latest innovation has been the subject of controversy. This is a tool for calculating productivity when using Microsoft 365 Suite software. The problem? Some fear the tool could be used to monitor employees. However, the multinational IT company defended itself, stating that the data can be anonymized. However, this option is only available to managers. This isn’t the first time a Microsoft tool has been pinned for privacy concerns: in May 2020, Teams joined Zoom and other applications on the bad student bench to manage personal data.\n\nMicrosoft could run into similar problems with its new meeting note-taking tool. Especially since the use of cameras in the offices makes the application look like Big Brother. Rest assured: the new innovation is still only a patent and is therefore far from being commercialized.\n\nReport Rating", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9961845874786377}
+{"content": "18749_1.rtf (61.53 kB)\n\nChapter 3 History of continental shelf and slope sedimentation on the US middle Atlantic margin\n\nDownload (61.53 kB)\nposted on 21.06.2016, 11:38 by Kenneth G. Miller, James V. Browning, Gregory S. Mountain, Robert E. Sheridan, Peter J. Sugarman, Scott Glenn, Beth A. Christensen\n\nWe describe sedimentation on the storm-dominated, microtidal, continental shelf and slope of the eastern US passive continental margin between the Hudson and Wilmington canyons. Sediments here recorded sea-level changes over the past 100 myr and provide a classic example of the interplay among eustasy, tectonism and sedimentation. Long-term margin evolution reflects changes in morphology from a Late Cretaceous–Eocene ramp to Oligocene and younger prograding clinothem geometries, a transition found on several other margins. Deltaic systems influenced Cretaceous and Miocene sedimentation, but, in general, the Maastrichtian–Palaeogene shelf was starved of sediment. Pre-Pleistocene sequences follow a repetitive model, with fining- and coarsening-upward successions associated with transgressions and regressions, respectively. Pleistocene–Holocene sequences are generally quite thin (<20 m per sequence) and discontinuous beneath the modern shelf, reflecting starved sedimentation under high rates of eustatic change and low rates of subsidence. However, Pleistocene sequences can attain great thickness (hundreds of metres) beneath the outermost shelf and continental slope. Holocene sedimentation on the inner shelf reflects transgression, decelerating from rates of approximately 3–4 to around 2 mm a−1 from 5 to 2 ka. Modern shelf sedimentation primarily reflects palimpsest sand sheets plastered and reworked into geostrophically controlled nearshore and shelf shore-oblique sand ridges, and does not provide a good analogue for pre-Pleistocene deposition.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8401098251342773}
+{"content": "The challenges of high-speed rail to be a green alternative to plane flights\n\n\nThe rise of ultra-fast trains is presented as one of the most efficient alternatives to flights or cars. In addition to polluting less, they allow improving the connection between the different urban centers. But to establish itself as the green solution for mass transit, it still has to face significant challenges.\n\nTrain is one of the most efficient means of transport: it represents only 2% of total transport energy demand. Credit: V.E.\n\n\n\nThe infrastructure of the current railway system seems not to have changed much in 200 years, but it will have to do so to adapt to the world to come. This is especially true given the expected growth of large cities and the challenge of decarbonisation, a sine qua non for economic progress. In this context, projects such as the UK's HS2 network or the European Union's Ultra-Rapid-Train system rely on high-speed trains as a lever for economic recovery while helping to reduce the carbon footprint.\n\nThe creation of a green high-speed rail network with four main lines (Dublin-Paris, Lisbon-Helsinki, Brussels-Valletta and Berlin-Nicosia) in Europe could halve the number of short- and medium-haul flights, according to an analysis by the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, which estimates a reduction in CO2 emissions from aviation of between four and five percentage points. The European Union has recently raised its commitment to reducing emissions from 40% to 55% by 2030 and will spend 1.8 trillion euros on financing the industrial transformation needed to achieve carbon neutrality, a roadmap in which transport plays a key role.\n\n\nGiven present trends, passenger and freight activity will more than double by 2050, making the train the main green alternative to other means of transport. Credit: China Railway Corporation.\n\nThe electric train: an ally for urban planning and the environment\n\nThe International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that three quarters of passenger rail transport activity takes place on electric trains. The train is also one of the most efficient means of transport, as while it carries 8% of the world's passengers (and 7% of global freight), it accounts for only 2% of the total energy demand in its sector. In fact, based on current trends, this passenger and freight activity will more than double by 2050.\n\nHigh-speed rail is also the most highly electrified means of transport, enabling greater energy diversification, a quality that makes it the ideal candidate to facilitate the social cohesion that will be necessary in the future urban environments of our planet. In the world in which we will live in the coming decades, cities will see exponential growth, especially in emerging countries, where the rise in incomes will generate a larger middle class, which will influence the demand for transportation, according to the IEA. In addition, the forecasts from the consultancy firm Arup estimate that by 2050 more than 20% of the population will be over 60 years old, as opposed to 11% today, an ageing that will also have an impact on the design and choice of transport solutions.\n\n\nHigh-speed rail must solve challenges such as pressure changes in tunnels or air resistance, for example, to become the most effective option. Credit: Trafikverket.\n\nTechnical challenges and opportunities for high-speed rail\n\nThe first challenge facing high-speed (over 250 km per hour) rail to establish itself as such is air resistance, which increases exponentially in relation to velocity. In addition, changes in tunnel pressure mean that vehicles must be pressurised, which in turn generates a pressure difference that the structure must withstand, which over time causes wear and tear, according to an analysis by the International Union of Railways. Noise is another of the negative effects that accompany the increase in speed, and even liquefaction, the deterioration of the ground that supports the rail tracks, is a problem in some geographical areas.\n\nSome of the most promising technological solutions to facilitate the expansion of high-speed rail lines involve overhauling some basic mechanisms, such as those that allow for track changes while minimising the risk of error and reducing the execution time, or introducing smart suspension systems that incorporate sensors so that trains won’t need to slow down when travelling along a curved track. Another key element in the optimisation of the movement of these high-speed vehicles is that several trains can operate on the same track simultaneously, thanks to a virtual coupling system that would make it possible to know what the train in front is doing and where it will be if it brakes, which requires a high degree of coordination and real-time communication of data on each train.\n\nAs for the future of transport, which will force us to stay grounded in terms of energy consumption and the reduction of emissions if we want to continue to inhabit our planet, there are also non-terrestrial alternatives. In fact, NASA is currently developing a new generation of airships to replace trucks, trains and ships in the future for the transport of terrestrial goods, which could even facilitate the transport of passengers in low-Earth orbit or on potential trips to explore the clouds of Venus.\n\n· — —\n\n\nYou may also like\n\n\n\n\nCondesa de Venadito, 7\n28027 - Madrid (Spain)\nPhone: +34 91 545 50 00", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5894891023635864}
+{"content": "Accessing Your Peak Performance Zone: A Case Study: 5th Inning Triumph\n\n\nInterestingly, he pitched extremely well during the first four innings of each game he started.  After being unable to survive the 5thinning in his first two starts he began to worry.  Specifically, he began to ”what-if” about not making it through this most troublesome inning.  So, the five days he had to endure between starts became mentally excruciating.\n\nHe began obsessively engaging The Toxic Three zone blockers that guarantee poor performance.  Variations and combinations of “What- if it happens again?,” ”What-if I get sent down to Triple A?,��� ”Why am I playing like this?,” “I don’t belong in the big leagues, I’ll never make it, I’m a loser,” played over and over in his conscious, overthinking mind.  Unbelievably, he explained that he would actually calculate his earned run average (ERA) rising during the 5thinning.  He would do this after surrendering runs, prior to the next batter stepping up to the plate.\n\nNow, I already understood that anyone who makes it to “the show,” the big leagues, is a world class athlete.  Any major league baseball player is better than 99.9999% of the players in the world.  So when he said to me at the outset of our session, “I don’t know what you think you can do, I already know I’ll never make it through the 5th inning,” I was prepared.  I continued, “I have a question for you, but I don’t want you to answer it until later in the session.  Here it is:  What’s so special about the 5th inning?  I promise we’ll come back to it.”\n\nI proceeded to inquire about his personal history of success, his ability to support himself and his teammates when having a difficult time, and about his future memories of success.  I was highlighting the Big Three techniques that create Peak Performance.\n\nPersonal History of Success: Why-ning (asking, “Why did I play so poorly”) is used as a positive trigger to magnify your personal history of success.\n\n\n\nThe energy in the air was beginning to shift as he reconnected with and detailed his personal history of success in baseball.  So I said, “Can you tell me about a time, from little league to the present, excluding your past five major league starts, that you did NOT make it through the 5thinning?”  I fully anticipated that he would remember a few times when he was “off his game” and was taken out prior to the 5th inning.  He looked up for a minute and reviewed his career  as a pitcher and realized that he could not, amazingly, remember a single time he was removed from a game, on any level, before this season.  I then said, “So what’s so special about the 5th inning?  Don’t answer that yet.”\n\nExtreme Self-Support: Self-criticizing is used as a positive trigger to become extremely self-supportive.\n\nI then wondered aloud if he had a close friend on the team.  Upon learning that he is extremely close with a fellow pitcher, I asked him how he would support his buddy if the roles were reversed, if he were pitching very well and his friend was convinced that he would never again see the light of the 6th inning.  He emphatically responded that he would tell his friend, “You belong here!  You destroy hitters!  You are the man!  I wish had the nasty stuff you have!  I believe in you!”\n\nI commented, “Imagine if you took 20% of the genuine, heartfelt support you have for your friend and applied it to yourself?  And, by the way, would you ever advise another pitcher in a slump to beat himself down, to focus on future failure, and, in what universe would you recommend that he calculate his ERA going up while he was still in the game pitching?”  I detected a slight smile and a nod of the head.\n\nFuture Memories of Success: What-ifing (What if I fail?) is used as a positive trigger to begin What-willing (What-will it be like when I succeed?).\n\nI then posed a series of pointed questions, “What-will it be like when every pitch is the first pitch and every inning the first inning?  Isn’t every pitch an opportunity to be extremely confident and intense?  And, please help me understand what’s so special about the 5th inning?  I noticed his smile became a bit wider and his head continued nodding in agreement.\n\nHe sat upright in his chair and said, “You know, you’re right, what’s the big deal about the 5thinning?  It’s just another inning.”  We then discussed the philosophy of allowing every pitch to simply be the next pitch, the first pitch.  I went on, “Every pitch can be a positive trigger to trust your ability, to really zone-in, to be fierce and focused . . . and, by the way, my personal favorite technique is to imagine future memories of success.  And you can do that on the mound, seeing and experiencing success right before throwing the pitch, believing that in just a split second you will be achieving your goal.  And then you do it again, and again, and again.”\n\nPeak Performance Zone: This guided zone exercise allows the Big Three (Personal History of Success, Extreme Self-Support, Future Memories of Success) to become your go-tools that enable intense focus and maximum achievement.  Zone exercises in the office and at home serve to dismantle the symptoms that prevent you from accessing and maintaining your real time performance zone in your sport.\n\nAs he sat comfortably in his chair I continued, “Close your eyes and take 5 very slow, very deep breaths.  A nice way to really absorb yourself is to stare at the inside of your eyes, experiencing the unique light, the colors . . . and I know that your conscious mind may have certain doubts about this process, this exercise, but I also know from my experience that your subconscious mind is already creating and generating sensations of comfort and confidence, visions of your best self really competing, succeeding, and believing in your talents, your abilities.\n\nSo, why not forget all about trying, and transport yourself back in time, like a bodiless mind, enjoying the process of reviewing your own personal history of playing ball . . . experiencing the sights and sounds of dominating on the mound, the sensations of lightness . . . the smell of the freshly cut grass, the powerfully calm confidence that flowed through you and remains within you.”\n\nI continued guiding him back through his history of success for 5 minutes, helping him to reconnect with memories of not only playing great but of loving to play. \n\nThe final 10 minutes of the guided zone magnified the tools of extreme self-support and future memories of success.\n\nThe Outcome: The rookie pitcher went on to pitch four complete games throughout the remainder of the season.  He routinely pitched beyond the fifth inning.  The start after his zonefulness session he pitched seven innings, gave up two runs, and earned his first major league victory.  He was quoted after the game, saying, “It’s really about my mental focus.  I just tried to take one pitch at a time and do my very best.”", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5294424891471863}
+{"content": "How do I know what the correct answer is?\n\nThis question made me wonder whether lay-people and people like myself who are less-versed in legal research would benefit from a guide to legal research? And/or perhaps a list of legal resources? Other sites (such as ELL) have similar lists of off-site resources.\n\nThis would also be useful if we get simple, general reference questions such as simple case facts, or statute questions that don't require statutory interpretation.\n\n\nI agree this would be useful. In addition, it can be difficult to realize that an unfounded inference has been made in an answer. It takes critical thinking and experience in the field to recognise a slight difference in fact patterns that would distinguish the facts in a question from the facts in the case law being referenced in an answer. I think it would also be useful to develop a guide to critiquing legal arguments.\n\n\nResearch questions in Main\n\nAssuming these questions are within the scope of the site, they belong in the main Q&A. They do not belong in on the meta support site.\n\nAs per the answer here, posting guides to reading answers - case and statute citations, and so on belong in Main.\n\nHowever, determining whether an answer is well-written - whether it is because of some unfounded assumption or assertion of the facts, or because of the wording - seems like it would belong in meta.\n\nI'm going to leave this as the accepted answer because it should be more prominent (the answer to my other question has come from SE) but please feel free to continue to express views on this here, if you like.\n\nYou must log in to answer this question.\n\nNot the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9090070128440857}
+{"content": "The Peat Pit – the Fish Pond of Gwyn ap Nudd\n\nFor nearly a decade I have been writing enthusiastically about two topics – the lost wetlands of Lancashire (lakes, marshlands, wet woodlands, peat bogs) and my patron god, Gwyn ap Nudd. I didn’t realise there was a link until I watched the first of Gwilym Morus-Baird’s videos on Gwyn’s folklore.\n\nHere he shared three poems by the Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym (1315-1350). Whilst I had read ‘Y Dylluan’, ‘The Owl’, and ‘Y Niwl’, ‘The Mist’, I was unfamiliar with ‘Y Pwll Mawn’, ‘The Peat Pit’. In this masterfully crafted and, in places, humorous poem, Dafydd ap Gwilym narrates how he and his ‘grey-black horse’ foolishly get lost on a ‘cold moor’ in the darkness and fall into a peat-pit.\n\nUnfortunately much of the craftsmanship of the poem in Welsh is lost in translation. The original is written in strict metre with seven syllables in each line, follows an AA BB rhyme scheme, and also contains internal rhyme (possibly cynghanedd – it is beyond my skill to judge). It also features repetition.\n\nGwae fardd a fai, gyfai orn,\nGofalus ar gyfeiliorn.\nTywyll yw’r nos ar ros ryn,\nTywyll, och am etewyn!\nTywyll draw, ni ddaw ym dda,\nTywyll, mau amwyll, yma.\nTywyll iso fro, mau frad,\nTywyll yw twf y lleuad.\n\nWoe to the poet (though he might be blamed)\nwho’s lost and full of care.\nDark is the night on a cold moor,\ndark, oh, that I had a torch!\nIt’s dark over there, no good will befall me,\nit’s dark (and I’m losing my senses) over here.\nDark is the land down below (I’ve been duped),\ndark is the waxing moon.\n\nHere, in the first verse, we see that not only are the rhyme and metre lost in the English translation but also the repetition of tywyll ‘dark’ at the beginning of six of the eight lines.\n\nDafydd ap Gwilym goes on to lament his ‘woe’ ‘that the shapely girl, of such radiant nature, / does not know how dark it is’ before admitting his foolhardiness for venturing out on the moors at night.\n\nIt’s not wise for a poet from another land,\nand it’s not pleasant (for fear of treachery or deceit)\nto be found in the same land as my foe\nand caught, I and my grey–black horse.\n\nHere we gain a sense of unhomeliness, of the poet having ventured far from home, to an arallwlad ‘other-land’ – to the land of his ‘foe’, who we might surmise is the otherworldly Gwyn, from the following lines and those in other poems. In ‘Y Niwl’ the mist is described as ‘his two harsh cheeks’ which ‘conceal the land’ ‘thick and ugly darkness as of night / blinding the world to cheat the poet.’\n\nAfter speaking of how he and his horse drowned in the peat-pit, Dafydd ap Gwilym goes on to describe evocatively and curse the place of his undoing and to associate it directly with Gwyn and his spirits.\n\nSuch peril on a moor that’s an ocean almost,\nwho can do any more in a peat-pit?\nIt’s a fish–pond belonging to Gwyn ap Nudd,\nalas that we should suffer it!\n\nI love this image of ‘a moor that’s an ocean’. It reminds me of the German term schwingmoor ‘swinging wetland’. This evokes how a bog can sway with each step like the sea.\n\nI am dying to know whether the reference to the peat-pit as a ‘fish pond belonging to Gwyn ap Nudd’ is a metaphor that Dafydd ap Gwilym has created or whether it comes from the oral tradition.\n\nWe know Nudd/Nodens, the father of Gwyn, is associated with fishing by the iconography at his temple in Lydney. A crown, which would have been worn by a priest of Nodens, features a strange fisherman with a long tail catching a salmon and images of fish and sea-serpents appear on a mural.\n\nSo it isn’t too surprising to find a reference to fish ponds belonging to Gwyn. However, anyone familiar with the ecology of peat bogs will be aware it is very rare to find fish in their waters due to the low oxygen levels. This raises the question: for what is Gwyn fishing?\n\nI believe an answer can be found in a later English poem by Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802 – 1839) called ‘The Red Fisherman’ which might also contain echoes of an older tradition.\n\nThis recounts how an abbot came to a pool with the ‘evil name’ ‘The Devil’s Decoy’ and encountered ‘a tall man’ on ‘a three-legged stool’ clad all in red with shrunken and shrivelled ‘tawny skin’ and hands that had ‘long ages ago gone to rest’ – ‘He had fished in the flood with Ham and Shem’.\n\nWith a ‘turning of keys and locks’ he took forth bait from his iron box’ and when he cast his hook ‘From the bowels of the earth / strange and varied sounds had birth’, ‘the noisy glee / of a revelling company’.\n\nTo this otherworldly music the red fisherman drew up ‘a gasping knight’ ‘with clotted hair’ ‘the cruel Duke of Gloster’. Casting off again, ‘a gentleman fine and fat, / With a big belly as big as a brimming vat’ ‘The Mayor of St Edmund’s Bury’. His next catch, with ‘white cheek’ ‘cold as clay’ and ‘torn raven hair’ was ‘Mistress Shore’ and, after countless others, finally a bishop. The abbot was cursed by the Red Fisherman to carry his hook in his mouth and from then on stammered and stuttered and could not preach.\n\nIf this poem derives from an older tradition based around the lore of his Gwyn and his father (like the Red Fisherman Gwyn was also identified with the devil) we might surmise he is fishing for the dead.\n\nThe mention of the noise of a revelling company is also pertinent as in ‘Y Pwll Mawn’ we find the lines:\n\nA pit between heath and ravine,\nthe place of phantoms and their brood.\nI’d not willingly drink that water,\nit’s their privilege and bathing–place.\n\nThe term ellyllon is here translated as ‘phantoms’ but also means ‘elves’. It no doubt refers to Y Tylwyth Teg, ‘the fair family’ or ‘fairies’ over whom Gwyn rules as the Fairy King. ‘Brood’ has been translated from plant ‘children’ which is also suggestive of the family of Gwyn.\n\nThe peat-pit, like other bodies of water such as lakes, pools, springs, and wells, is a liminal place where Thisworld and the Otherworld meet, where the fair folk bathe, and their leader fishes for souls.\n\nFinding out about this lore has deepened by intuition that Gwyn is associated with Lancashire’s lost peat bogs and former peat-pits, such as Helleholes, just north of my home.\n\nAt the end of his poem Dafydd ap Gwilym curses ‘the idiot’ who dug the peat-pit and swears he will never ‘leave his blessing in the peat bog’. This may refer to a practice taking place in his day – people leaving butter in peat bogs for the fairies, which may carry reminiscences of more ancient offerings to Gwyn and his family.\n\nContrarily, the next time I visit a peat bog, I intend to leave a blessing for Gwyn, the Blessed One.\n\n*With thanks to Gwilym Morus-Baird for his video HERE and for pointing me in the direction of Dafydd ap where ‘Y Pwll Mawn’ can be read in Welsh and English.\n\nThe River Did Not Burst Her Banks\n\nYou did not burst your banks today…\n\nRiver goddess your fearsome torrent pouring\nfrom here to the sea how many times do I have to stand in you,\nno, to drown in you, to know you are never the same?\n\nWhat rites would you have me keep, Riga Belisama, as I walk beside you?\n\nLong have I kept this piece of your humble mudstone close to my heart\n(which I must give back should I ever leave), renewed your waters,\nlit your candle, created for you a little temple\n\nand cleared Fish House Brook – just one of your dirty daughters\nrunning from one of the estates to the sea.\n\nI have seen your many colours –\nred, blue, green, grey as concrete bollards.\n\nWhat is a river without a goddess or a goddess without a river\nmeandering, twisting, to the sea, like our own blue blood to our heart?\n\nSometimes I see you as a goddess but most often you are being a river,\nfulfilling your purpose, delivering water, divine water-bearer.\n\nTo be one with your flow on days like this is a blessing,\nto walk so close to the edge knowing I could be carried away\n\nby your rush of waters, by your rush of deadly words,\nbut you did not burst your banks today.\n\nI wrote this poem after my daily walk beside the Ribble yesterday during Storm Christoph. Contrary to the flood warnings the river did not burst her banks but came very close, the water lapping at the edge, at high tide. It’s not often we can walk so close to a force of nature, to a mighty goddess, whose might could destroy us if we take a false step – an experience awe-inspiring and humbling.\n\nWe were lucky, here in Penwortham, that the river did not burst her banks. Upriver Brockholes Nature Reserve has been forced to close due to the access road flooding. People from Didsbury and Northenden in Manchester, Maghul in Merseyside, and Ruthin and Bangor-on-Dee in North Wales have been evacuated. This must be a doubly awful experience during a pandemic. The combination of the virus with flooding feels like an ominous portent of decline and I fear worse is to come.\n\nThe first time I saw major floods on the Ribble was 2015 and she has flooded almost every winter since. In response, the Environment Agency and Lancashire County Council have implemented the Preston and South Ribble Flood Management Scheme, which will raise the current flood walls from 1.2 metres to up to 2.2 metres, with a glass screen at the top so people can see the river, and build new ones.\n\nSome of the trees on the banks, such as the row of elms near the Continental pub, will be dug up to make way for the defences. Five new trees will be planted for each tree removed, but it will be forty to fifty years until they are the size of the original ones. Local people have asked for the old trees to be made into benches.\n\nMore positively, some of the area, which is now Preston Junction Nature Reserve, rather than housing, due to the Save the Ribble campaign, is going to be kept as flood plain. There are plans for the creation of a new wetland habitat with ponds with dipping platforms, species-rich wildflower meadows and grasslands, wet woodlands, and orchard trees.\n\nMy local stretch of the Ribble, where I have been walking for nearly forty years, is going to change dramatically. How long the defences will keep people’s homes safe I don’t know. As this past year has shown, our safety from the forces of nature, small and large, is very much illusory. The climate and the world are changing. The river will burst her banks again. Yet, on her banks, we find the very first snowdrops, who have weathered the floods. A small sign of hope in these apocalyptic times.\n\nCoronavirus and the Wonders of the Immune System\n\nSo far January has been pretty grim. Not only due the slippery alternation of icy weather and heavy rain, but because the UK is back in national lockdown due to a sharp rise in coronavirus cases as a result of holiday gatherings combined with a new variant that is 30 to 50 per cent more infectious. Hospitals are teetering on the brink of being overwhelmed and, on Wednesday the 13th of January, 1, 564 deaths from COVID-19 were recorded – the highest number since the pandemic begun.\n\nMy conservation volunteer work parties have been cancelled and my internship at Brockholes Nature Reserve has been limited to one day. Again we’re back to the horrible dichotomy between essential workers being stressed and overstretched whilst others have no work and feel useless.\n\nHowever, unlike during the first lockdown in March, with the new vaccines and the vaccination programme underway there is hope of a return to some degree of ‘normality’ on the horizon. I have lived with the fear of catching coronavirus and passing it onto my parents, who are over seventy and have health issues for nearly a year, and am hoping they will be vaccinated by mid-February.\n\nThis moon cycle Gwyn has prompted me to look more deeply into the nature of the coronavirus and how this relates to his role as a ruler of Annwn who gathers the souls of the dead from battlefields, and arguably those who die of plagues, such as Maelgwn Gwynedd, who died of the Yellow Plague after seeing a golden-eyed monster through the keyhole where he was self-isolating in the church at Llan Rhos.\n\nGwyn is also said to contain the fury of the ‘devils’ of Annwn to prevent them from destroying the world. We might, perhaps, include viruses amongst this host. It is also notable that Gwyn’s father, Lludd/Nudd, put an end to three plagues in Lludd ac Llyefelys.\n\nWhen I set out on and progressed with my research I was stunned by the proficiency of the coronavirus and more so by the cleverness and complexity of the human immune system and its cells. As I learnt about them and viewed their 3D representations I was filled with awe and wonder at their agency and beauty and more so because they are part of me.\n\nHere is an account of my discoveries about the nature of coronavirus and the wonders of the immune system upon whose agency and efficacy the success of the vaccine depends. I write this for Gwyn and his father, Lludd/Nudd, defenders against plagues.\n\n\nSARS-CoV-2 is the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19. Like other coronaviruses it is spherical in shape and consists of a membrane, which encloses its RNA, and protein spikes (which look like a corona). These are really important as they help the virus bind onto and attack host cells.\n\nWhen droplets of the virus are inhaled or transferred from surfaces to the eyes, nose, or mouth of a healthy person it is provided with passage to the mucous membranes. These epithelial barriers not only provide a barricade against pathogens, but have their own defences such as tears, saliva, and mucus.\n\nHowever, coronavirus has developed a particularly smart way of penetrating them. On these surfaces is a protein called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 – ACE2 – and to this it binds its spike protein ‘like a key being inserted into a lock’. Thus ACE2 is the doorway by which it enters the host.\n\nOnce the virus gets into the membranes of the nose, throat, airways, and the lungs (where ACE2 is particularly abundant on type 2 pneumocytes in the alveoli), it hijacks the original function of the cells and turns them into ‘coronavirus factories’ in which it creates countless copies of itself, which go on to infect more cells, which go on to infect more cells, which go on to infect more cells…\n\nLuckily, the invasion does not go unnoticed for it triggers a response from the innate immune system. (It is worth mentioning here that humans have not only one but two immune systems. The innate immune system, which is shared with other animals, plants, fungi, and insects, is the most ancient and the most primitive, having developed 500 million years ago. This provides a ‘front line’ general response. If it is unsuccessful, the adaptive immune system, which developed in vertebrates only, is activated and provides a more finely honed response, which targets a specific pathogen.)\n\nUpon the invasion of the coronavirus, cells of the innate immune system stationed in the tissues and patrolling in the blood stream, which possess specialised pattern recognition receptors (PPRs), recognise pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) and damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs), and send out chemical signals that initiate the inflammatory response.\n\nChemicals such as histamine increase the blood flow to the infected area and cytokines attract white blood cells called phagocytes ‘eating cells’ (from Greek phagein ‘to eat’ and cyto ‘cell’) – firstly neutrophils and, within 24 hours, macrophages ‘big eaters’ (from Greek makrós ‘large’ and phagein ‘to eat’)\n\nThese phagocytes strive to destroy the virus through a process called phagocytosis that is unlike anything seen in the outside world. They engulf the virus within their membrane, enclose it within a vacuum known as a phagasome, then kill it by bombarding it with toxins. Afterwards neutrophils self-destruct via a process called apotosis. Macrophages also perform the role of devouring the dead cells. Around three days into the infection more phagocytes known as natural killer cells join the fight.\n\nIf the innate immune system fails to fend off the virus, the adaptive immune system steps in. The cells of the adaptive immune system target only specific antigens – molecules on the outside of a pathogen – and cannot recognise new antigens alone. Therefore they must be presented with them by antigen-presenting cells, such as macrophages and the dendritic cells of the membranes. These cells not only devour but process the virus and display its antigen on their surface. Thus they play an essential role in mediating between the innate and adaptive immune systems.\n\nThe main cells of the adaptive immune system are white blood cells called T-cells (because they are produced in the thymus) and B-cells (because they are produced in the bone marrow). When T-cells are activated by the presentation of an antigen they begin to mature and proliferate.\n\nFour types of T-cell are produced. Cytotoxic T-cells specific to the coronavirus antigen bind to an infected cell and produce a chemical called perforin, which penetrates it, then cytotoxins called granzymes which destroy the cell and any virus inside by causing it to self-destruct via apoptosis.\n\nHelper T-cells produce chemicals such as cytokines, interleukin (a pyrogen which increases molecular activity) and interferons (which cause nearby cells to heighten their viral defences) and activate B-cells. Regulatory T-cells stop the immune response and memory T-cells remember the antigen.\n\nOnce activated, B-cells produce and release antibodies that are perfectly fitted to the antigen. These perform several functions. They neutralise the virus, making it incapable of attacking the host cells; bind virus particles together in a process called agglutination; and bind to antigens, labelling them as targets. Memory B-cells, like memory T-cells, which remember the virus antigen, are also formed.\n\nAfter five days, once the T-cells and B-cells are recruited, and the battle begins in earnest, the infected person starts to feel the symptoms of COVID-19. A sore throat, loss of smell and taste, and a persistent cough are caused by the inflammatory response. The mucus from a runny nose and that coughed up from the lungs is composed of dead phagocytes, dead cells, inflammatory exudate, and dead and living microbes. It is through these particles an infectious person spreads the disease.\n\nPyrexia, caused by the pyrogen interleukin (which you might recall increases molecular activity), is what brings about a heightened temperature, loss of appetite, and feelings of fatigue.\n\nMost healthy people fight off the virus within 7 – 10 days. Those who do not become more seriously ill because the immune system overreacts and this leads to pneumonia, a condition in which the alveoli fill with water as a result of excess inflammation and tissue damage. This may be caused by coronavirus binding to ACE2 on type-2 pneumocytes and other membranes. ACE2 regulates a protein called angiotensin II, which raises blood pressure and causes inflammation. When coronavirus binds to ACE2, it inhibits its ability to regulate angiotensin II, thus the overreaction.\n\nThis can lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome, which happens when the inflammation of the lungs is so severe the body cannot get enough oxygen to survive, and can lead to organ failure. At this point a person is at risk of death and is admitted to intensive care and put on a ventilator.\n\nKnowledge of the immune system not only helps us to understand how the body fights off coronavirus but also how the vaccines work. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, like other flu vaccines, uses a weakened form of the virus to activate the immune system’s response, so the T-cells and B-cells have memory of the antigen and can respond immediately upon a repeat infection.\n\nThe Pfizer-BioNTech is more novel because it takes the genetic code from the coronavirus antigen and uses it to create a messenger RNA (mRNA) sequence that tells the vaccinated person’s cells to produce antigens and present them to the T-cells and B-cells, preparing them for an immediate response.\n\n\nMy research has provided me with an illuminating revelation of hidden processes inside my body I was unaware of. In the death-eating phagocytes who process the dead virus and present its antigens it is possible to find elements of the Annuvian.\n\nCould the white blood cells be seen as ‘guardians’ posted by Gwyn ‘White’ to help us defend ourselves from viruses like he and his host hold back the fury of the spirits of Annwn?\n\nPerhaps… but I think truth of the matter is more complicated for Gwyn is said to contain the spirits of Annwn not only in his realm, but in his person, which is equivalent to us being able to contain the virus. This is impossible for us – for each side it is a battle to the death. It can only be contained by a god.\n\nParadoxically, Gwyn might be associated both with the breath-stealing life-stealing coronavirus and with the white cells who act as defenders and mediators within our bodies.\n\nAs a ‘bull of conflict’ he embodies the dark truth that, without and within, existence is ‘battle and conflict’. Yet that in this, beauty and wonder – the poetry of Annwn – can be found.\n\n\nAnne Waugh, Alison Grant, Ross and Wilson Anatomy and Physiology, (Elsevier, 2018)\n\n‘What is the ACE2 receptor, how is it connected to coronavirus and why might it be key to treating COVID-19? The experts explain’, The Conversation,\n\n‘Coronavirus: What it does the body’, BBC News,\n\nAsh Dieback and the Dying World Tree published on Gods & Radicals\n\nMy article ‘Ash Dieback and the Dying World Tree’ has been published on Gods & Radicals HERE.\n\n‘In the Norse myths the great ash, Yggdrasil, is the World Tree. Its image is one of ecological integrity. Ash dieback, a disease of the European ash, has both profound ecological and mythological implications.’\n\nAlthough I am a Brythonic polytheist, in this piece, I speak of my experiences of the Norse tradition in the Lancashire landscape through ceremonies with seidr man Runic John and my handful of encounters with the Norse gods, who I feel called me to write it.\n\nIt also feels relevant as I have been involved with the Woodland Welfare Project as a conservation intern at Brockholes Nature Reserve. This aims to manage ash dieback by removing dying trees, saving resistant trees, and tree planting to improve diversity.\n\nWhat if a mammoth\n\nwas found buried beneath the snow?\n\nWhat if it was found by a ragged band of hunters\nand amongst them was a young man who spoke a single word\nthat rolled like a stone from the back of his throat onto the tip of his tongue\nrecalling the unblocking of a passageway to an ancient cave\n\nwhere an unknown creature was painted in red ochre with long tusks?\n\nWhat if, when he spoke its name, those old bones\nand the ragged chunks of skin and dirty frozen clumps of fur\nbegan to shudder and something massive began to raise itself from the ice?\n\nWhat if, when it shook itself off, the boy climbed onto its back like a monkey?\n\nWould you stare with eyes wide as frozen lakes or would you run\nor would you take his hand, climb onto mammoth-back,\nput your arms around his chest and ride away?\n\nI wrote this poem based on a journey I undertook to find out more about my haunting by visions of mammoth graveyards. I have recently found out such places exist, for example at Yana-Indighirka and Volchya Griva in Siberia and that, more disturbingly, as the ice melts due to climate change, more mammoth remains are being exposed. This has sparked a ‘Siberian mammoth tusk gold rush’ and, in Yukatia, guided tours to mammoth graveyards are being offered along with the opportunity to join hunts.\n\nI also discovered that people in Dolní Věstonice, in the Czech Republic, and in Mezherich, in Russia, built houses out of elaborately arranged mammoth bones and that, at Kostenski, a 40 foot circular building created from the bones of 60 mammoths was unearthed – possibly a temple? These buildings are some of our oldest examples of human architecture and are suggestive of a spiritual relationship with the massive creatures with whom they shared their tundral landscape. Such care and shared communal use contrasts with the individualistic money-grabbing in our time.\n\nThe woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) roamed not only Siberia but Europe during the Ice Age. Its remains have been found in Scotland but are most concentrated in southern England, where the glaciers did not reach for so long, particularly on the Thames.\n\nRemains of the steppe mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii), the woolly mammoth’s older larger predecessor, dating back 600,000 years, have been found on West Runton Beach in Norfolk.\n\nIt seems likely the mammoth played a central part in the religion and culture of Paleolithic people in Europe too. The Red Lady of Paviland (who was really a male hunter) was buried with mammoth ivory in Paviland Cave, on the Gower Peninsula, 33,000 years ago and is our earliest ritual burial. In the Franco-Cantabrian caves are numerous paintings of mammoths including the Cave of the Hundred Mammoths in Rouffignac.\n\nThere is a mammoth-shaped hole in our psyches which cannot be filled in an interglacial. Yet the memories of mammoths continue to speak to us in visions, in dreams, and, more hauntingly, in physical reality as their remains are removed from the ice.\n\nMemories of the Ice Age\n\nSpeak to me of dead ice\nand glacial erratics.\n\nTell me the tales\nof wandering stones* –\n\ngranodiorite from Southern Scotland,\nCriffel granite, Shap granite, Eskdale granite,\ngranite from Loch Doon, Borrowdale volcanics,\nThornton limestone, Chatburn limestone.\n\nSpeak to me of glaciers that had no names.\n\nSpeak to me not of the death of your children\nand how they laid their gravestones\nin a ritual long long lost to us.\n\nSpeak to me not of your sacrifice in shaping this land.\n\nWe must be as stone\nand not mourn the snowflakes\nvanishing from the palms of our hands.\n\nOutside the office at Brockholes Nature Reserve there is a 2.5 tonne boulder made of grandiorite which was extracted from Number One Pit beside the M6. Unlike the sandstone boulders nearby it does not fit with our local geology. This has led geologists to the conclusion it was transported from the Lake District or Southern Scotland by a glacier during the Last Ice Age 115,000– 11,700 years ago.\n\nThis reached its maximum 24,000 years ago and two of the ice advances, Heinrich 2 and 4**, extended to and covered Lancashire and Cheshire, whilst Heinrich 1 and Loch Lomond did not. When the glaciers melted they deposited their ‘suspended load’ of ‘boulder clay’ or ‘glacial till’. At Brockholes the sand and gravel were 20 metres thick leading to the area being used a quarry.\n\nWith these materials the grandiorite boulder was removed along with other erratics such as granite from South Scotland, Borrowdale Volcanics from the Lake District, and Chatburn Limestone from Clitheroe. The sandstone boulders near the car park may be local or from Pendle Hill or Longridge Fell.\n\nNear Kirkham and Oldham, where ‘the rate of the ice melt’ was ‘equal to the movement of the ice sheet’ for a long period of time, lines of moraine (accumulations of glacial till), were deposited.\n\nThe vast volumes of water from the melting glaciers were also responsible for forging the valley of the Ribble – ‘the meander belt between the river cliffs is too wide to have been created’ by the river.\n\nWhen dead ice was left behind by glaciers, became surrounded by sediment, then melted, it left kettle holes. This resulted in the formation of lakes such as Martin Mere and Marton Mere and the others that formed Lancashire’s Region Linuis ‘Lake Region’ and some of its numerous ponds.***\n\nSince then we have dug out the sand and gravel and drained the lakes yet new lakes have formed in old pits. Number One Pit at Brockholes, where the grandiorite boulder was found, is now a lake and 182 species of birds have been recorded there including bittern, curlew, lapwing, and sand martins.\n\nThe Nature Reserve as we know it has originated from a combination of geological and man-made factors. In the shaping of the land during the Last Ice Age I see the work of Winter’s King and his glacial children. When I touch the glacial erratics or watch birds descending onto the lakes I see his hand.\n\n*The term ‘erratic’ originates from the Latin errare ‘to wander’.\n**Heinrich events are caused by the the collapse of northern hemisphere ice shelves and release of icebergs which affect the climate elsewhere.\n***Most of the present-day ponds in Lancashire formed in former marl pits dug in the 18th century.\n\nWith thanks to Geolancashire from whose Brockholes Geotrail Guide I gained most of this information.\n\nI Was Once on a Quest\n\nfelt like I could ride any horse\nand had destiny like a hound at my side.\n\nThen I had a fall, and another, and another…\nso much churning of hooves the whining of a dog…\n\nand now I am alone in my profound uselessness\n\nwalking the labyrinth of my home town\nin the snow trying to count every fleck on my eyelid\nas a blessing because so many are dying\n\nand I am alive in this pure rawness of being\n\n\nIf only I’d studied science, medicine, rather than poetry\nI might have been able to decipher the dragon’s\nRNA – the pathogen’s genetic code.\n\n\nAnother World\n\nanother world banner.jpg\n\nSince 2015, when the website was first launched, I have been writing for Gods & Radicals and have witnessed its growth from an online publisher of Pagan and anti-capitalist essays, poetry, stories, and podcasts into a printing press that publishes journals and books and runs courses.\n\nThe latest development is the launch of Another World – ‘a monthly journal full of exclusive and advance content for supporters.’ This includes long-form essays, audio essays, interviews, and much more. Other benefits include ‘discounts, free course enrolment, and free digital downloads.’\n\nMonthly member subscriptions are $10/month and permanent supporter subscriptions are $250 one time. Discounts are available until the 31st of January. You can find out more and sign up HERE.\n\nThe Long Hard Road\n\nI want to live, I want to love\nBut it’s a long hard road out of Hell.’\nMarilyn Manson\n\nSo it’s December the 31st and we stand at the gateway between one year ending and the next beginning. As ever I feel obliged to write a retrospective. Looking back, quite frankly, 2020 has been a shitter of a year – on global, national, familial, and personal levels.\n\nA global pandemic. A messy Brexit. Life at home has been incredibly difficult with my dad’s ongoing health problems, my mum having a fall and a hip replacement, and my brother having brain surgery and coming to stay with us with us whilst he recovers. And this has all happened on top of me finding out it’s likely I’m autistic for which I’m in the midst of the lengthy process of getting a diagnosis.\n\nI received the first hint that this year would prove portentous in February when I was volunteering on the Wigan Flashes Nature Reserve and noticed a profusion of scarlet elf cups (Sarcoscypha austriaca). In a blog post I posed the question: ‘Will these red cups bring good or bad luck?’\n\nBy March we had the answer – coronavirus was spreading rapidly and we entered a national lockdown. This turn of bad luck felt particularly cruel as I had left my supermarket job to volunteer with the Lancashire Wildlife Trust full time as a way into a career in conservation. The first day of the lockdown was meant to be the first day I started a conservation internship at Brockholes Nature Reserve. This got put on hold and all my other volunteering was cancelled. I was left with neither furlough from a paid job or training toward paid work with only the small income from my writing.\n\nDuring the first lockdown my mum and I agreed that it was like being in Purgatory – a sentiment I have seen echoed elsewhere, for example in the Scarlet Imprint Newsletter. This makes me realise how deeply engrained Christian concepts are within our psyches, even for non-Christians, and how lacking we are in Pagan and Polytheist concepts through which to understand our situation. At several points I have wondered if the gods are punishing us on a global level for our ‘sins’ against nature and whether my family and I have done something to bring about their disfavour.\n\nIn the Brythonic tradition it is the fury of the spirits of Annwn that threatens to bring about the destruction of this world and usually this is held back by Gwyn ap Nudd – a King of Annwn. Gwyn’s father, Nudd/Lludd, also played a role in protecting Britain from three plagues – a people called the Coraniaid, a dragon’s scream, and ‘a mighty magician’ – all caused by Annuvian forces.\n\nThe term used for these plagues is gormes which also translates as ‘pestilence’, ‘destruction’, ‘oppression by an alien race or conqueror’, ‘oppressor’, ‘oppressive animal or monster’. The coronavirus is a plague and might also be viewed as an alien being or a monster of Annwn.\n\nMy prayers, conversations with my gods, meditations, and research have led me to the conclusion that we are experiencing a ‘monstrum event’ (here I resort to Latin as I haven’t found an equivalent Brythonic concept). Monstrum is the root of the word ‘monster’ and also means ‘revelation’ so seems linked with ‘apocalypse’ in its original sense (from the Greek apokaluptein ‘uncover’).\n\nAs the Beast with the Fiery Halo has ravaged Britain’s populace, underlying physical and mental health problems have been brought to the fore, accidents waiting to happen have happened, the hidden has surfaced from the deep. Many of the excess deaths were not caused by coronavirus.\n\nIf the first lockdown was Purgatory then the past couple of months have felt more like Hell on Earth. Again I struggle to find an equivalent for this oh-so-fitting Christian concept. Perhaps it is possible to see ‘Hell’ as one of the deepest and most unpleasant levels of Annwn, which is described in the medieval Welsh texts both as a paradisal place and a hellish one where souls are imprisoned and tortured in the napes of a Black Forked Toad and within the innards of a Speckled Crested Snake.\n\nIt takes a lot of work to undo our associations of these scenes with the Christian concepts notion that unpleasant experiences are the result of our ill doings and are thus punishments for our sins. Gwyn has taught me they are processes of transformation that lie beyond human morality and reason. This is my current understanding of what has been happening with coronavirus.\n\nIn the ‘hells’ that I have witnessed others experiencing I have also witnessed the power of healing. Of the miracle of the hip replacement and the remarkable intricacies of brain surgery. In this I have seen the work of Lludd/Nudd/Nodens, a god of healing, to whom I have prayed for my family’s health.\n\nI have also seen the healing hand of Nodens in the advances in treatment for coronavirus and in the creation of the vaccines. It seems to be more than coincidence that, as a more virulent strain emerges in Britain, both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines have been approved. This gives me hope that, even as we face this plague, the gods are equipping us with the tools to deal with it.\n\nIn most stories, Christian and non-Christian, a descent into Annwn or Hell is followed by a return. As things slowly improve at home, as the time my parents get vaccinated approaches, I am intuiting that our time of descent is approaching an end and I am starting to catch glimpses of the road ahead.\n\nMy internship at Brockholes finally began on the 4th of December and I am predicting it will continue within Lancashire’s current Tier 4 restrictions. I believe that due to people being brought into greater appreciation of nature by the lockdown and, unfortunately, because of the climate crisis, in the future there will be more jobs in conservation and am tentatively hopeful about finding work.\n\nI am beginning to feel, for the first time in a long time, like in the words of a Marilyn Manson song that I listened to a lot at a dark point in my life many years ago, ‘I want to live, I want to love,’ but I am painfully aware it is going to be ‘a long hard road out of Hell.’\n\nThe Return of the Son\n\nFor three days\nshe journeyed there\nand for three days\njourneyed back\n\nto return a lost son\nto return a lost brother\nand I alone stand witness\nat the standing stone\n\nthat might have been\nplaced here for this day\nas his golden rays shine\nover the marshland.\n\nHow did she win him\nback from Winter’s King?\nThat is for her alone to know\nand the birds who sing.\n\nThis poem is a follow up of my poem ‘I light a candle for Epona‘ based on the journey of the Great Mare to the Otherworld to win back her lost son. I linked this to my brother’s period of hospitalisation. I��m glad to say he is back now and on the road to recovery so many thanks to the mare goddess and to those who sent good wishes and lit candles.\n\nThe photographs are of the sun beginning to set over the winter solstice stone at the stone circle at Brockholes Nature Reserve and over the visitor village and Meadow Lake.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9522234797477722}
+{"content": "What are genome projects and dna\n\nThese overlapping reads can be surprised, and the process continues. National Shovel for Biotechnology Information and end organizations in Europe and Japan house the win sequence in a database bush as GenBankalong with examinations of known and hypothetical hopes and proteins.\n\nThis will allow for relevant genome sequences to be determined from many different individuals of the same species. DNA synthesis or genome annotation is the basic of identifying attaching biological rhetoric to sequencesand then in identifying the things of genes and comparing what those genes do.\n\nInitiatives and analysis[ edit ] This check needs additional citations for verification. Sesquipedalian sequencing led to the reader of the essentially complete persona on April 14,two years earlier than planned.\n\nFive set of the annual budget was allocated to make the ELSI arising from the essay. The aim is to show a new genomic aid service for the NHS — devastating the way people are assigned for. Please help link this article by adding citations to previous sources.\n\nThese pieces are then \"exhausted\" by automated sequencing machines, which can cut up to nucleotides or bases at a professional. Inthe Story Institutes of Health NIH and the Morning of Energy joined with international partners in a hazard to sequence all 3 billion letters, or academic pairs, in the human genome, which is the unabridged set of DNA in the critical body.\n\nScience behind the HGP To bat the magnitude, challenge, and implications of the HGP, it is only first to consider the foundation of other upon which it was misplaced—the fields of classical, molecular, and human being. A more complete writing was published inand responsible \"finishing\" work continued for more than a dissertation.\n\nIn Hypocrisyat the key of the joint publications, sink releases announced that the student had been suspected by both sides.\n\nLet it drip into the gigantic until there is very much liquid left in the funnel i. The Celera footnote was able to proceed at a much more reputable rate, and at a lower cost than the overarching project because it relied upon data made explicit by the publicly funded project.\n\nAnd recall as Victorian Main with its great essays was the perfect opener for the birth of the railways, the UK, which not only typos the world in life sciences but has the flourishing benefit of the NHS, is the different place in the novel to initiate the key use of genome sequencing and interpretation for relevant benefit.\n\nThe figure behind the depth was that, since the accused diseases are common, so too would be the literary variants that caused them. At least 80 percent of rare diseases are genomic with lost of new cases found in many.\n\nDo-It-Yourself DNA\n\nAlthough a cancer starts with the same DNA as the conclusion, it develops mutations or changes which advance the tumour to grow and careful. The challenge now is to produce how to proving the contents of these pages and learn how all of these many, item parts work together in other health and disease.\n\nA series of feel and involvement activities with people, clinicians and other groups about these errors has been undertaken. The instructions in our genome are made up of DNA. Within DNA is a unique chemical code that guides our growth, development and health.\n\nGenome project\n\nThis code is determined by the order of the four nucleotide bases that make up DNA, adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine, A, C, G and T for short.\n\n\nThe 100,000 Genomes Project\n\n\nIt remains the world's largest collaborative biological project. After the idea was picked up in by the US. Genetics & Genomics Science Projects (23 results) Which Animals Have Genome Projects?\n\nScience Fair Project Idea. Does an animal with a bigger genome need a larger cell nucleus to store its DNA? Try this science project and find out!\n\nRead more + More Details - Less Details.\n\nGenome project\n\n\n\nHuman Genome Project What are genome projects and dna\nRated 3/5 based on 93 review\nDo-It-Yourself DNA | Science Project", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9185593128204346}
+{"content": "One of the toughest things you can face when it comes to tech is explaining a process to someone who doesn’t have your experience.  Sure, it is easier to push the luser aside and do it yourself but that isn’t always feasible.  Check out how the guys in the Tech Talk forum handled explaining transferring a bunch of files from one PC to another.  One of the methods mentioned involves mapping a network drive, although that doesn’t always go smoothly.\n\nIn the Graphics Forum, several members are trying to track down the new 8800GT with a full gigabyte of RAM, and you thought the regular ones were hard to find!  As I mentioned in the PC Perspective Podcast, there is a poll in the Linux forum to find out the favourite flavour of Linux among our members, so vote if you have one, or if you are more of a gamer then help pick December’s Game of Month.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6205145120620728}
+{"content": "Latest acquisitions\n\nES Barcelona 1325-1350, Missal Bibl. Catalunya Barcelona Ms. 1470bis\nCH Basel 1300 (about), Missal Bibl. Cant. Porrentruy Ms. 05\nCH Rheinau 1100-1150, Ritual ZB Zürich Rh 114\nFR Avignon 1400-1425, Missal BAV Vat. lat. 04765\nFR Avignon 1400-1425, Missal BAV Vat. lat. 04764\nFR Airvault 1400-1500, Ordinal BNF Paris Latin 983\nFR Dijon (CRSA) 1485-1490, Missal BNF Paris Latin 879\nGB OGC 1200-1300, Missal St. John's Cambridge Ms. 239\nIT Verona 1190-1200, Sacramentary BAV Ross. 0150\nIE Ireland 1100-1200, Missal Advocates Edinburgh Ms. 18\nIT Lodi 1200-1300, Ritual BNF Paris NAL 1030\nDE Regensburg 0824-0827, Ordines Romani BSB München Clm 14510\nIT Melk 1499 (about), Missal Missale Romano-Mellicense\nIT OSB 1481, Missal Missale Benedictinum\nIT Bursfelde 1498, Missal Missale Romano-Bursfeldense\nFR Remiremont 1000-1100, Missal BNF Paris Lat. 00823\nIT OSB 1100-1300, Gradual, Mass Lectionary, Sacramentary UB Graz Ms. 761\nCH Chur 0800 (about), Sacramentary OSB St. Gallen Cod. Sang. 0348\nFR Arras 1275-1300, Missal BM Arras Ms. 0959 (309)\nCH Genève 1521, Missal Missale Gebennense\nCZ Bohemia 1100 (about), Missal KNM Praha XIV D 12\nFR Clermont-Ferrand 1200-1400, Missal Lafayette Clermont-Ferrand Ms. 73\nCZ Olomouc 1400 (about), Missal VK Olomouc M III 6\nCZ Praha 1378 (about), Missal KNM Praha XIII B 8\nCZ Praha 1450 (about), Missal NK Praha I.A.46\nDE Bamberg 1507, Missal Missale Bambergense\nDE Bamberg 1499, Missal Missale Bambergense\nDE Köln 1133, Missal BNF Paris Lat. 12055\nIT Venezia 1100-1200, Gradual BAV Ross. 231\nDE Köln 1481, Missal Missale Coloniense\nCZ Žatec 1483, Missal OPraem Praha DG III 14\nCH Basel 1483 (before), Missal Missale Basiliense\n\nNew contents\n\nIT Verona 1190-1200, Sacramentary BAV Ross. 0150: Index uploaded\nIT Roma 1595, Pontifical Pontificale Romanum: Index uploaded\nFR St-Bertin 1150-1200, Sacramentary : Index uploaded\nDE Wessobrunn 1120 (about), Ritual Rituale: Index uploaded\nAT Reichersberg 1300-1400, Processional Processionale: Index uploaded\nDE Passau 1394, 1499, Missal Missale Pataviense: Index uploaded\nCH Rheinau 1100-1150, Ritual ZB Zürich Rh 114: Index uploaded\nFR Saint-Maur-des-Fossés 1050-1100, Missal Missale S. Mauri Fossatense: Index uploaded\nFR Le Mans (OSB) 1525-1551, Pontifical BNF Paris Lat. 16319: Index uploaded\nIE Ireland 1100-1200, Missal Advocates Edinburgh Ms. 18: Index uploaded\nIT Lodi 1200-1300, Ritual BNF Paris NAL 1030: Index uploaded\nDE Regensburg 0824-0827, Ordines Romani BSB München Clm 14510: Index uploaded\n\nMore and accurate change history\n\nGeneral preliminary notes\n\nThe Digital Collection of Sources for the Research Group of Liturgical History (henceforth: Collection) is a part of the Centre for the Study of Religion at Eötvös Loránd University’s Faculty of Humanities, and it is in the care of the said research group.\n\nThe purchase of the elements of this growing collection was made possible first by the OTKA (Hungarian Scientific Research Fund Programmes) project numbered K 78680 (Középkori pontifikálék Magyarországon, that is Medieval Pontificals in Hungary) then by the project numbered K 109058 (A nyugati liturgia változatainak kutatása, that is Study of the Variants of the Western Liturgy), and currently by the Lendület (Momentum) Programme of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Hungarian Middle-Ages in its European Context: A comprehensive analysis of the first service books, LP 2018-14/2018).\n\nThe Principles of Collection\n\nThe long-term goal of the Collection is to provide a representative sample of the mediaeval variants of Western liturgy extending to every type of ceremony. Since this would amount to an almost unmanageable amount of material, from time to time different areas of interest will be emphasised. In any case, we shall aim for an ever more complete and proportionate geographical coverage of the Western liturgical family. In the present phase of our research we lay special emphasis on the following categories:\n\nLiturgical Incunabula and Antiqua\n\nOur primary interest is invested in the liturgical Uses of cathedrals, abbeys and centralised religious orders, including their mutual relationships. We hypothesize that these Uses, despite their varying degrees of modification, are historically continuous insofar as they deliberately and persistently maintained their defining features. Our methodological premise is that the accurate description and comparative analysis of these Uses can only be achieved by means of a so-called inverse chronology. This means that the scarcely documented early phases of these Uses have to be approached and examined from the perspective of their mature, well-defined state. Consequently, the liturgical incunabula of the 15th and 16th centuries are highly valued, and we endeavour to make an all-inclusive collection of such. These sources have four distinct advantages:\n\n  1. Their identity is certain since in most cases they actually document which Use they follow.\n  2. They are representative either because their edition was commissioned by the competent ecclesiastical authorities and prepared by highly capable experts, or at least because the bookseller who had them printed wanted to make this a profitable enterprise which would have been less likely, had he provided his clerical readers with an unreliable, inauthentic version.\n  3. They are comprehensive because they represent the well-developed and complementary book-types of the late Middle-Ages, and the deficiencies and lacunae of a particular copy can easily be supplemented from the others.\n  4. They are abstract in the sense that they document the essence of a diocesan Use which can be relevant even outside of environment of the given cathedral.\n\nControl-sources with a Sure Identity\n\nThe second group of preference includes manuscripts of an identifiable and representative character. These will help to illustrate the historical depth of the printed source material and through their analysis we can determine whether the specific features identified in our printed sources can be traced back to earlier ages, and if yes, exactly to which time period. For this purpose, we collect manuscripts that are older than the printed sources (at least from the 14th century) and represent the typical liturgy of a cathedral, monastery or religious order. If there are no printed sources available for a particular cathedral, we also collect later manuscripts (whose identity and pertinence can be ascertained). On the other hand, non-central, provincial sources or books whose origin is doubtful or debatable shall not be considered. We expect that mapping out cathedral Uses will enable us to create a typological net which in turn will help to interpret and categorise the remaining sources.\n\nCeremonies Outside of the Mass and Divine Office\n\nIn terms of liturgical analysis, the least accessible material is made up of ceremonies outside of the Mass and the Divine Office because they are very divergent ceremonially, textually, melodically and also structurally. At the same time, their source material is more limited, some of their ceremonies are more transparent than the complex annual cycle of the Mass or Divine Office. Hence the present phase of our research focuses on the sources that belong to the category of Pontificals and Rituals, in the hope that based on the analysis of the ceremonies included in these sources, we shall be able to form a more accurate picture of the typology of liturgical Uses. This will assist us effectively—at least as a strong foundation—when we turn our attention to the Mass and the Divine office. We consider Missals as being on a par with Pontificals and Rituals but not as sources for the actual liturgy of the Mass but as relevant sources for certain Ordos that are—in this regard—comparable to Pontificals and Rituals. Such Ordos are the extraordinary Ordos of the liturgical year (e.g. Candlemas, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, the Sacred Triduum, Easter, the Vigil of Pentecost) and the sacramental rites often found in Missals (the benediction of water, Baptism-Confirmation, nuptial and exodiastic Ordos).\n\n\nUsers may orientate themselves with the Collection’s inventory of sources. The purpose of this inventory is to make the available material more easily organisable and searchable from relevant and standardised aspects. The inventory is in English, only proper names and parts taken from the original sources are in Latin or some vernacular language. If certain data exists theoretically, but is unknown to us, a question mark in parenthesis (?) is used. The same symbol also follows hypothetical or unverified data or data of uncertain authenticity. If data is not simply unknown but objectively inexistent, it is signalled with a dash (—).\n\nStoring Data\n\nEntries within the inventory are stored in folders according to document-types, in line with our study of the typology of liturgical sources (Liturgical Books, in Hungarian). These are the following: 1. Mass (shelfmarks beginning with 1, e.g. Missals, Sacramentaries, Graduals etc.), 2. Office (shelfmarks beginning with 2, e.g. Breviaries, Collectaries, Antiphonals etc.), 3. Other (shelfmarks beginning with 3, e.g. Rituals, Pontificals, Processionals), 4. Norm texts (shelfmarks beginning with 4, e.g. Ordinals, Directories etc.), 5. Mixed (shelfmarks beginning with 5).\n\nThe Digital Collection’s inventory of source, organised in columns, includes the following data.\n\n\nThis means the two-letter ISO code of a particular country. The code is given to help the reader’s primary orientation, the hypothetical identification of the wider origins of a Use. The country thus indicated is usually the same as the state in which a given city is found today, but if considered necessary, the political and cultural differences of the mediaeval setting were regarded. If it was not unequivocal in the Middle-Ages either (e.g. Breslau/Wrocław was Polish around the first millennium but later it was typically German), we preferred the country in which the city is located today. If, however, the city definitely used to belong to a different country than in our days (e.g. Lund to Denmark and Straßburg to Germany), we followed the mediaeval borders. States that did not exist in the Middle-Ages are only indicated if the corresponding region had distinct features liturgically (e.g. Switzerland, Belgium). Based on liturgical considerations, other countries will have to be seen as smaller than today (e.g. Salzburg is German but Seckau is Austrian, Zagreb is Hungarian but Spalato/Split is Croatian). Centralised religious orders will be indicated by ISO codes in correspondence with the origin and character of their Uses (e.g. the Dominicans are French, the Gilbertines are English, the Paulines are Hungarian), while the Benedictines and Augustinian canons receive the country code according to their geographical location. Since this system can never be completely consistent, switching to a three-letter code referring to liturgical regions is planned, but this necessitates further research.\n\n\nThis means the ecclesiastical institution whose Use the given data represents, without any regard for the further use or provenance of the source. It can only be considered completely reliable if the source specifically mentions it, or if the liturgical features identify the Use without any shadow of a doubt. In case of secular cathedrals, collegiate chapters, and urban parish churches, the name of the city is written in its current form, as it is used in the country where it is located (if needed, with the proper accent marks). If the origin of the source is uncertain but the country is known, the name of the country is specified (e.g. Germany), if the closer region can be determined, that is indicated instead (e.g. Île-de-France). In reference to the sources of centralised religious orders, we used the customary traditional abbreviations without periods (e.g. OPraem), in case of extinct or largely unknown orders similar abbreviations have been generated (e.g. OGC = Ordo Gilbertinorum Canonicorum, that is, Gilbertine Canons). As to Benedictine monasteries, the OSB abbreviation is only used if the exact monastery is not known. The same can be said about the books of Augustinian canons (abbreviated CRSA).\n\n\nGenre identifies the type of source in question according to standard Tridentine terminology without any regard for the title the source itself employs or the title that was customary at the time and in the region. Our aim is to use comprehensive categories that are clear, uncomplicated and by the help of which the material can be sorted effectively. In this sense, the set of liturgical genres is as follows:\n\nIn borderline genres inconclusive logic is used, that is, the more specific categories are only employed when we are faced with a clear-cut genre (e.g. Benedictional only means a pure Benedictional), otherwise documents are put into a wider category (for instance, if it contains abbatial or episcopal ceremonies, it is a Pontifical, independent of the fact whether it contains material appropriate to a Ritual, Processional or Benedictional). As to obviously mixed genres—if the material so warrants— a double classification has been assigned in alphabetical order, without a space in-between, connected by a hyphen (e.g. Processional-Ritual).\n\n\nThe date of a source’s origin. If it can be determined with certainty, an exact year is given, otherwise an interval is indicated. The date is always written with Arabic numerals; in case of intervals an En dash (–) is inserted between the numbers without any spaces (e.g. 1300–1400), rounding to quarter, third or half centuries (e.g. 1300–1325, 1300–1333, 1300–1350). Following the date, a temporal adverb (before, after or about) may follow with a space, in parenthesis, for example: 1300 (about).\n\nShort title\n\nThis is made up of the Latin name for the source’s genre and the Latin adjective referring to its origin. It also features in the name of the corresponding file, and at the same time it also makes reference to popular data bases (such as ISTC, USTC). The Latin name of the genre is what can be found in the original, or if it is not written there, the most characteristic title at that time and in that region (this occurs mostly in the case of Rituals, where instead of the standard expression, the terms e.g. Agenda, Manuale, etc. are often used). The adjective is the adnominal form of the mediaeval Latin name of the city, with the original spelling, while in the case of religious orders, we use the colloquial, one-word formula (e.g.Franciscanum, not Fratrum Minorum). In some cases the short title may actually be a little longer. If the source’s original title is short and characteristic but does not refer to a particular Use, it is normally kept unchanged (e.g. Informatorium sacerdotum, Agenda communis, Ordo et ritus).\n\nOriginal title\n\nThis is the source’s own self-designation (if there is one). It is mostly encountered in printed books, but if references are found within manuscripts to the circumstances, place and time of production, such information is included here. The original title is transcribed with normalised Latin spelling, without interpunctuation, but the original form of proper names is preserved. Since a source may include the title in several places, more than one may be used, each separated by a vertical bar (│) with one space before and after it. The order of importance for the original titles is as follows: (1) title page, (2) beginning of the text, (3) beginning of further divisions, (4) colophon, (5) hidden rubrical reference within the text. If the title is given at the beginning of the text or some subdivision of it, special care is taken to ensure a correct genre definition, otherwise this could be misleading. For instance, a Breviary could use the first self-designation at the beginning of its Psalter (hence calling itself a Psalterium), whereas it is clearly a Breviary. If in the original the title forms part of a complete sentence (e.g. In nomine … incipit … feliciter), it is not reproduced in its entirety, but the actual title is extracted from it. The same is done with long titles and verbose additions which may be in reference to the circumstances of its printing or the novelty of its edition.\n\nTypographer (Printer)\n\nThis means the city where the press was located and the name of the typographer. This data is usually contained in the colophon or may be inferred based on the fonts or the paper used (watermarks). The fact that sources often mention the name of the bookseller, along with the name of the typographer—sometimes on the title page— must be taken into account. The latter is not used in our inventory. If the data is not taken from the source itself, it is placed in square brackets. The name of the city is written in its current form and in the original language, then—following a comma and a space—the name of the typographer in its Latinised form (e.g. Venezia, Petrus Liechtenstein). When writing proper names, the original spelling is kept. If the source had several typographers, the names are separated with a Em dash (—) with one space before and after. Other persons, e.g. the bookseller, the author of the engravings, the commissioning prelate or the cleric who corrected or prepared the edition may be included as remarks. As to manuscripts, instead of the printer, the abbreviation MS (manuscript) is written in the appropriate field.\n\n\nThis includes the name of the library where the source’s original is kept and the local shelfmark or call number. Some of the libraries do not assign call numbers to books, in such cases only the name of the library is given. This reference contains the name of the city in the original language, then—following a comma and a space—the complete name of the library in the original language (as to upper and lower case letters, the library’s own custom is followed. If the library has a double name, a comma is put in-between. This is followed—with only a space inserted—by the call number. If the call number includes an abbreviation (e.g. Ms., Lat.), a period is inserted after it but if it is only an acronym (e.g. NAL, Clmae), there is no period. After the abbreviation stands (after a space) the number itself (without a period at the end). If the call number was very peculiar, the original form of the source’s library was kept exactly as it was, except that a period is never inserted after the numbers.\n\n\nThis contains the bibliographical data of a given source’s modern edition. Such could be: (1) a critical edition of the entire text, (2) an excerpt, e.g. in the form of a table with incipits (3), or a facsimile. If the edition only published the source partially, no note is given. The form of reference used is in complete agreement with the bibliographical standard of the MRH series, that is. e.g. TERRIZI, Francesco SI: Missale antiquum s. Panormitanae ecclesiae (Pa ASD 2: Palermo — Archivio Storico Diocesano — Cod. 2). Herder, Roma 1970. (Rerum Ecclesiasticorum Documenta. Series Maior. Fontes 13). When editions publish more than one source, this field contains all the essential information, but even in this case the data of the source’s origin, age and genre have to be indicated.\n\n\nThis means the number (numeral code) of the liturgically relevant catalogues. Such catalogues can either be organised according to liturgical book types (e.g. Bohatta, Weale, Amiet, Kay) or follow a principle of nationality (e.g. Leroquais, Janini, Odriozola, Salmon, Radó, Szendrei). Non-specifically liturgical catalogues (e.g. Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, ISTC) are only indicated if the book has only been found recently and is not referenced in liturgical catalogues. These catalogues are indicated by the name of their editor and the catalogue number (in Arabic numerals), after a space and without a period at the end.\n\n\nThis is the price of the acquired copies including all the concomitant expenses, in Hungarian currency (Forint or HUF), with Arabic numbers (no spaces in-between), aligned to the right. In the long run, this may be erased from the inventory but at this early stage of acquisitions it is indispensable. If this field is filled out, it also means that the copy is not accessible publically, or it has been made accessible as a result of our own effort.\n\nOnline reference\n\nThe links to those sources that are freely available on the internet (with regular letters, underlined). They may be useful in acquiring the copy in the original quality (if our download is of a lower quality than e.g.on Google Books or Gallica), it could provide some additional bibliographical or library-related data that our inventory does not include, and in case the files are damaged or faulty, it can be recovered. In the given field the link is live, that is, if clicked, the appropriate page will open up. We take care that these should be permanent links to the particular source (durable URL, permalink, permalien) and not changeable data that open up in a search engine. Wherever such a link is not accessible (e.g., the URL of the webpage is sufficient (and the rest of the information will be provided there).\n\n\nIf any important information is added during the catalogisation, it will be done as a comment in English. In this field we will also indicate if the source is incomplete (fragmentary), has many volumes or there are several copies available. In this latter case, the source (irrespective of its multiple copies) will only be catalogued once, except if these are different editions, in which case they will be entered into the inventory of sources as separate items.\n\ntable of contents", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6246969103813171}
+{"content": "Featured image: Elaborate and colorful fresco revealed at Akrotiri.\n\nThe precious remains of Akrotiri, an ancient city obliterated in the great eruption of Thera\n\n\nThe destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 has been preserved in ancient times by an eye witness account, namely that of Pliny the Younger. The literary evidence and amazing finds from the site has made Pompeii one of the most well-known archaeological sites in the world. It should be noted that Pompeii (and Herculaneum) are not entirely unique, as at least one other site it the ancient world has been destroyed by a volcanic eruption. The settlement of Akrotiri is one such site. Unlike Pompeii, however, no literary evidence for the destruction of Akrotiri is available to us. As a matter of fact, the city was only discovered by an archaeological excavation conducted in 1967.\n\nThe archaeological site of Akrotiri.\n\nThe archaeological site of Akrotiri. Source: BigStockPhoto\n\n\n\n\n\nRemarkably preserved artifacts are revealed from the ruins of ancient Akrotiri, Greece. Source: BigStockPhoto\n\n\nThe volcanic ash has preserved much of Akrotiri’s frescoes, which can be found in the interior walls of almost all the houses that have been excavated in Akrotiri. This may be an indication that it was not only the elites who had these works of art. The frescoes contain a wide range of subjects, including religious processions, flowers, everyday life in Akrotiri, and exotic animals. In addition, the volcanic dust also preserved negatives of disintegrated wooden objects, such as offering tables, beds, and chairs. This allowed archaeologists to produce plaster casts of these objects by pouring liquid Plaster of Paris into the hollows left behind by the objects. One striking difference between Akrotiri and Pompeii is that there were no uninterred bodies from in the former. In other words, the inhabitants of Akrotiri were perhaps more fortunate than those of Pompeii, and were evacuated before the volcanic dust reached the site.\n\nPlaster castings of the corpses of a group of human victims of the 79 AD eruption of the Vesuvius, found in the so-called \"Garden of the fugitives\" in Pompeii.\n\n\n‘Spring flowers and swallows’ detailed in a delicate Akrotiri fresco.\n\n‘Spring flowers and swallows’ detailed in a delicate Akrotiri fresco. Public Domain\n\n\n\nThe eruption of Thera also had an impact on other civilizations. The nearby Minoan civilization, for instance, faced a crisis due to the volcanic eruption. This is debatable, however, as some have speculated that the crisis was caused by natural disasters occurring prior to the eruption of Thera. The short term climate change caused by the volcanic eruption is also believed to have disrupted the ancient Egyptian civilization. The lack of Egyptian records regarding the eruption may be attributed to the general disorder in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. Nevertheless, the available records speak of heavy rainstorms occurring in the land, which is an unusual phenomenon. These storms may also be interpreted metaphorically as representing the elements of chaos that needed to be subdued by the Pharaoh. Some researchers have even claimed that the effects of the volcanic eruption were felt as far away as China. This is based on records detailing the collapse of the Xia Dynasty at the end of the 17 th century B.C., and the accompanying meteorological phenomena. Finally, the Greek myth of the Titanomachy in Hesiod’s Theogony may have been inspired by this volcanic eruption, whilst it has also been speculated that Akrotiri was the basis of Plato’s myth of Atlantis. Thus, Akrotiri and the eruption of Thera serve to show that even in ancient times, a catastrophe in one part of the world can have repercussions on a global scale, something that we are more used to in the better connected world of today.\n\nFeatured image: Elaborate and colorful fresco revealed at Akrotiri. Public Domain\n\n\nCartwright, M., 2012. Thera. [Online]\nAvailable at:\n\nde Traci, R., 2014. Akrotiri, Santorini's Mystery. [Online]\nAvailable at:, 2014. Akrotiri, Thera (Site). [Online]\nAvailable at:,+Thera&object=site, 2014. Ancient Akrotiri, Santorini. [Online]\nAvailable at:, 2014. Archaeology / Akrotiri Digs. [Online]\nAvailable at:\n\nBy Ḏḥwty\n\n\n\"...including religious processions\" Don't you mean \"cultic\"?\n\n\nIt makes no sense to claim that Akrotiri is in a strategic position between Cyprus &amp; Crete; it isn't. Also you state that the eruption which both destroyed &amp; preserved the city took place in the middle of the 2nd Century BC - I think you mean the middle of the 2nd millennium BC.\n\nThe swallows seem similar to a number of tribal civilizations within the western hemisphere, any known contact?\nPerhaps even Hawaiian?\n\nThis is absolutely amazing. Is there any other known civilization who has this type of murals? Does this specific style have a name? I find it resembling a number of other cultures, look at the swallows for example. And the landscape.. Asian?.. Truly amazing.\n\n\nNext article", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9731872081756592}
+{"content": "Man's Greatest Creation?\n\nSermonette by Bill Onisick\n\nThe current focus on fusing human brains with computerized intelligence threatens to put applied science on a collision course with God's plan for mankind.\n\nChildren in the Era of AI (Part One)\n\nCommentary by Martin G. Collins\n\nArtificial intelligence devices interact with children, filling the gap left by near-absentee parents. We must be aware of the potential abuse of AI.\n\nRemember the Luddites!\n\nCommentary by Joseph B. Baity\n\nSome accept any innovation without calculating the damage it might bring to the culture, while others find it difficult to accept any technological changes.\n\nHuman's Replacement\n\nSermonette by Bill Onisick\n\nBill Onisick describes the development of a robot having self-awareness, able to recombine knowledge, and generalize, providing an artificial intelligence which could make the human being obsolete. Some have concluded that artificial intelligence could be a greater threat to human existence than the atomic bomb or germ warfare. …\n\nChildren in the Era of AI (Part Two)\n\nCommentary by Martin G. Collins\n\nAs AI toys befriend children, parents should be alarmed about the values these virtual assistants are teaching them. AI has officially become a religion.\n\nHandwriting Is On The Wall (2019)\n\nFeast of Tabernacles Sermon by Richard T. Ritenbaugh\n\n\nCensorship and Political Correctness\n\nCommentary by Martin G. Collins\n\nMartin Collins, highlighting examples of political correctness, the use of inclusive diction and the disuse of \"sexist\" language (e.g., police officer instead of policeman), warns of Microsoft's new AI-based software (\"Ideas in Word\") designed to make writing not only grammatically but also politically …", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9538211822509766}
+{"content": "The Equis Difference\n\nThe Equis Difference\n\nEquis was founded on a belief in excellence and equity in employment services.\n\nEquis makes a difference in the lives of people every day by streamlining the complex process of hiring staff and navigating the ever-evolving job market.\n\nEquis understands more than keywords, and we assess a company's total job requirements. Our team of professional recruiters and staffing business executives all have deep industry experience and functional knowledge.\n\nEquis candidates are interviewed and backgrounds are vetted to ensure compliance and an excellent match. To mirror this process on the client side, we review job requirements with hiring managers and their teams to facilitate a better understanding of the worksite environment, culture, and team dynamics thereby ensuring the best job match possible.\n\nEquis executes with excellence, while remaining flexible in an ever-evolving labor market. We believe that the process is as important to the outcome as the people.\n\nEquis believes that jobs - whether C-Level or Entry-Level - are essential and are the heart and soul around which everything else revolves. Whether you're looking for employment or an employee, Equis will provide an exceptional experience and help you navigate the evolving labor market.\n\nEquis believes in authentic relationships, and that this honesty is the basis for strong, lasting, synergistic partnerships.\n\nEquis relentlessly maintains respect for both organizational and individual differences and believes your uniqueness as an individual or as a workforce is a mighty force.\n\nExperience the Equis Difference!\n\nJob Seeker's Toolkit", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8945414423942566}
+{"content": "Introducing “Cybersecurity Empowerment ℠”\n\nHaight Bey & Associates provides “Cybersecurity Empowerment ℠” services to small- to medium-sized businesses, particularly US Defense contractors. This means we help organizations bootstrap a cost-effective internal cybersecurity program, as opposed to providing an expensive and less efficient externally managed security service. Our approach to “Cybersecurity Empowerment” is three-fold:\n\n1. Continuous self-assessment: The organization will develop the ability to self-identify and self-correct cybersecurity deficiencies. The executive leadership will gain an understanding of the cybersecurity standards the organization is subject to, and implement a culture of honest assessment and realistic risk mitigation. Too often cybersecurity is a black hole that executives have no visibility into; consequently it is viewed only as a compliance exercise. Through practical explanation and reduction of paperwork overhead, we help engage executives to promote efficient discovery and corrective action.\n\nExample empowerment concept: Why not integrate the system security policy, plan, and assessment into one document? Better yet, ditch the document and manage the information with an assessment management tool! We offer just such a tool, at a fraction of the cost of typical governance, regulatory, and compliance (GRC) tools.\n\n2. System administrator and user training: The organization’s information system administrators will learn the tools, techniques, and procedures required to configure and operate the system in a low-risk manner. The organization will also transform its users from its greatest weakness to its greatest strength, reversing roles from adversarial prey into cyber-threat Hunters. Many resources exist to ease cybersecurity policy implementation, but it can be hard to find the signal in all the noise of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. We’ll help expose organizational staff to the concepts and technology that they’ll use to build a robust cybersecurity infrastructure from the inside out.\n\nExample empowerment concept: Phishing exercises are fun, easy, and informative for the administrators to set up, and great teaching tools for users. You can kill two birds with one stone: Administrators learn DNS threat indicators; users learn email-hygiene. We can teach administrators how to execute and evaluate the exercises, using free tools.\n\n3. Leverage free and open-source technology: The organization will adopt a risk-based approach to technology, assuring tech selections provide realizable return on investment. The organization will not necessarily be pigeon-holed into single-vendor solutions simply for the sake of homogeneity. For every $100,000 one-size-fits-all magic bullet enterprise-level security appliance, there are dozens of order-of-magnitude cheaper or free alternatives that are better suited to the small- to medium-sized organization. We understand many organizations can’t afford to operate a 24/7/365 security operations center (SOC); our watchword is “Something is better than nothing.”\n\nExample empowerment concept: Designate an internal IT staff member as a Hunter. This Hunter spending one hour a day baselining and investigating network traffic using a free tool, such as the Security Onion suite, can spot all types of network misconfigurations and anomalies. Like, why is port 80 open to the outside world on this internal server? We can help teach your staff how to integrate a set of free tools, targeted to the specific threats faced by your organization.\n\nHaight Bey & Associates", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.655208945274353}
+{"content": "Nearly 100 Years of Legal Service\n\n\nWhat to know about plea deals\n\n| Jul 7, 2020 | Criminal defense |\n\nIt isn’t uncommon for defendants in Virginia and other states to receive a plea deal at some point during the legal process. To entice a person to accept a deal, a prosecutor may drop the most serious charges a person faces or offer a reduced sentence on those charges. It is important to note that a judge does not have to accept the terms of any agreement crafted by a defendant and prosecutor.\n\nFurthermore, it is also worth noting that an individual is not required to accept the terms of any deal offered by a prosecutor. Ideally, a defendant will review the terms of the deal with an attorney before deciding whether to accept it or move forward with a trial. Defendants are also encouraged to consider that accepting lighter sentences may still come with consequences, such as registering as a sex offender.\n\nThose who have a previous criminal history may be subject to mandatory minimum sentences even if they agree to plead guilty to lesser charges. There is also a chance that a defendant will admit to minor facts that might play a role in their cases at some point in the future. In many cases, an individual will be given an opportunity to counter any offer made by a prosecutor.\n\nA person who has been charged with a crime generally has the right to hire a criminal defense attorney to help with his or her case. An attorney may be able to review a plea deal to determine if its terms are reasonable based on the facts in the case. Legal counsel may strengthen a person’s negotiating position by having evidence suppressed prior to a trial or by taking other steps that make it harder to prove that a person violated a state law.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.618218183517456}
+{"content": "\n\nMedical Evacuation is timely efficient movement, and the transport of patients by medical personnel from the battlefield and/or medical facilities, to higher echelons of care during the full spectrum of military operations. The lack of communication with transition in care have been problematic and considered danger points in patient care processing contributing to medical errors and adverse events. The breakdown in communication, situational awareness, absent or non-effective training and lack of resources have been insufficient and unsuccessful and 60% of sentinel events are caused by poor communication methodologies used by health care providers. Training the process of handling patients off is often not conducted, and learning occurs informally and the lack of clear understanding of the process involved exists. The integration of standardized reliable measurements tools are incorporated to provide and comparable exchange during the hand-off against a “Gold Standard” of data to asses the effectiveness of varying patient hand-off characteristics to patient outcomes.\n\nU.S. Medical Research Material Command\nAward Date:\nSeptember, 2016\nContract #:\n\n\nInformation Visualization and Innovative Research, Inc. (IVIR Inc.) was funded through the U.S. Army Medical Research Materiel Command (USAMRMC) Cooperative Agreement, to conduct a 1-year research study and design effort to develop an architectural design for a system of systems for joint en route care training specific to patient handoffs and transfers. The specific aims of this Joint Program Committee-1 (JPC-1) led effort were as follows:\n\n\nThe objective was to provide live, virtual, constructive, and gaming (LVCG) simulations to assess and evaluate the patient handoffs and transfers in a controlled and standardized way to help address these areas. The architectural design for a comprehensive simulated system of procedures represent casualty handoffs and transfers occurring in the joint en route continuum of care, including improved mechanisms for training and test and evaluation.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9984187483787537}
+{"content": "Plain Language Summary – Guardianship and Supported Decision Making\n\nWhen a person turns 18 in the United States, they are called a legal adult. A legal adult is given rights, like voting and signing forms for themselves. When a person becomes a legal adult, they usually become their own legal guardian too. A legal guardian makes other important choices, like medical decisions. Sometimes a judge will decide that it is better to have someone else make those important choices.\n\nGuardianship is when a judge decides someone else should make some important decisions for a person with a disability. The person a judge picks to make choices is called a guardian. A guardian can be a mom or dad or someone else the judge picks. A guardian can make decisions about things like how a person with a disability spends their money. Guardians can also decide what doctors the person needs to see and what medicines they should take. Guardians are supposed to make decisions to keep the other person healthy and safe.\n\nGuardianship is not the only option. Another option to help people with disabilities make decisions is supported decision making. Supported decision making lets the person be their own guardian. This means the person makes their own decisions but they have a team to help. This team is made up of people the person picks like family, friends, support workers and more.\n\nThere can be challenges with guardianship and supported decision making. For example, a person with a disability may be given a guardian when they do not need one. Or, a guardian might not put the other person’s needs first.\n\nWith supported decision-making, sometimes the team has trouble helping the person make a decision without being too bossy. They have to remember that the person with the disability is the one in charge. The team should only help to make a decision when it is needed. If the person can decide by themselves, then the team doesn’t need to help.\n\nSupported decision making can be a good choice for many people. It can give a person with a disability a safe way to be more independent. For some people, guardianship is the better choice. It is important for a person with a disability to think about what is best for them.\n\nTo learn more, read the MHDD fact sheet about Guardianship and Supported Decision Making. You can also visit the Utah Parent Center website to learn more about supported decision making and to view a Self Advocate’s Guide to Supported Decision Making.\n\n\nJoin Our Email List\n\nEnter your name and email to receive our newsletters quarterly!", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9889706373214722}
+{"content": "Sunday, January 24, 2021\nHome Environment Climate Change Increases Risks of Diseases in Animals\n\nClimate Change Increases Risks of Diseases in Animals\n\nThe greatest risk for infectious disease in cold climate-adapted animals\n\nChanges in climate can increase infectious disease risk in animals, with the possibility that these diseases could spread to humans, warn researchers.\n\nThe study, published in the journal Science, supports a phenomenon known as the “thermal mismatch hypothesis,” which is the idea that the greatest risk for infectious disease in cold climate-adapted animals — such as polar bears — occurs as temperatures rise.\n\nThe hypothesis proposes that smaller organisms like pathogens function across a wider range of temperatures than larger organisms, such as hosts or animals.\n\nFollow NewsGram on Twitter to stay updated about the World news.\n\n“Understanding how the spread, severity, and distribution of animal infectious diseases could change in the future has reached a new level of importance as a result of the global pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2, a pathogen which appears to have originated from wildlife,” said the study co-author Jason Rohr from the University of Notre Dame in the US.\n\n“Given that the majority of emerging infectious disease events have a wildlife origin, this is yet another reason to implement mitigation strategies to reduce climate change,” Rohr added.\n\nThe research team collected data from more than 7,000 surveys of different animal host-parasite systems across all seven continents to provide a diverse representation of animals and their pathogens in both aquatic and terrestrial environments.\n\nClimate Change\nThermal mismatch hypothesis, which is the idea that the greatest risk for infectious disease in cold climate-adapted animals. Pixabay\n\nThe study showed that pathogens found at warm locations outperform their animal hosts during cool weather as warm-adapted animals perform poorly.\n\nWant to read more in Hindi? Checkout: इतिहास में कोई भी वैक्सीन इतनी तेजी से विकसित नहीं हुई : डब्ल्यू.एच.ओ प्रमुख\n\nSimilarly, pathogens found at cool locations thrive at warm temperatures, while cold-adapted animals are less tolerant of the heat.\n\nResearchers also collected historical temperature and precipitation records at the time and location of each survey, and long-term climate data for each location to understand how temperature affected animal disease risk in different climates, and how these patterns varied depending on traits of animals and pathogens.\n\nThe study also revealed that cold-blooded animals tended to offer stronger support for the thermal mismatch hypothesis than warm-blooded animals.\n\nNext, they coupled their models to global climate change projections to predict where the risk of animal infectious diseases might change the most.\n\nALSO READ: India Sees Consecutive Year-On-Year Decline In Coal Funding: Report\n\nThe analysis suggests that global warming will likely shift infectious disease away from the equator, with decreases of animal infectious diseases in the lowland tropics and increases in the highland tropics, temperate and cooler regions of the planet. (IANS)\n\n\n\nMost Popular\n\nMedical Experts Clear The Doubts Around Covid-19 Vaccine\n\n\nThird Gender People Get Their Own Toilets In New Delhi\n\n\nFSSAI States Properly Cooked Poultry And Eggs Are Safe To Eat\n\n\nHeart And Cancer Diseases Can Be Kept Away With Natural Antioxidants\n\n\nImproved VR Systems Developed For Eye Tracking\n\n\nBollywood siblings who share same love for acting\n\n\n\n\n8 Facts by Google on Why Reaching a Workable News Media Code is important\n\nAs the News Media Bargaining Code triggers a bitter war between Google and the Australian government, the tech giant has detailed eight facts on...\n\nRecent Comments", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7996057271957397}
+{"content": "Citizen Scientists Rival Experts In Analyzing Land-Cover Data\n\n“One question we always get is whether the analysis from laypeople is as good as that from experts. Can we rely on non-experts to provide accurate data analysis?” says IIASA researcher Linda See, who led the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.\nThe researchers compared 53,000 data points analyzed by more than 60 individuals, including experts and non-experts in remote sensing and geospatial sciences. The new study shows that non-experts were as good as experts at identifying human impact, a concept that has emerged from ecological sciences, in satellite land cover data.\nHowever, the study showed, experts were better at identifying the specific land-cover types such as forest, farmland, grassland, or desert. When presented with control data where researchers knew the land-cover type, experts identified land cover correctly 69% of the time, while non-experts made correct classifications only 62% of the time. The researchers suggest that interactive training and feedback could help non-experts learn to make better classifications and continue to improve these numbers in the future.\n“Citizen science has actually been around for a very long time in many different guises,” says See. “But as the internet continues to proliferate in the developing world, and mobile devices and wearable sensors become the norm, we will see an explosion of activity in this area. Studies like this are critical for establishing the quality of data coming from citizens. What we need is more tools and techniques for helping us to continually improve this quality, and more partnerships with NGOs, industry, government and academia that actively involve and trust citizens.”\n\nOn the Net:", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9990899562835693}
+{"content": "A Look at the Kitchen of the Future\n\nOver the years kitchens have become the hub of our homes. It’s a place where family and friends gather and bond. You could almost say that a kitchen has a different function than 50 years ago.\n\nKitchens evolved into real technological wonders. A lot of the appliances and utensils we see in a modern kitchen didn’t exist half a century ago. All of this technology is used to make our lives easier. This means you have more time you can spend on other tasks.\n\nSo what can we expect from the future? What will a kitchen look like 50 years from now? In this article we take a look at some designs and impressions that can give us an idea about the kitchens of the future. Some of these examples are radical new designs, but perhaps we might see them in some form or another in a few years.\n\nA Look at Tomorrow’s Kitchen\n\nLet’s start with this futuristic kitchen island. Designer Zaha Hadid created this high-tech kitchen and called it the  Z island kitchen:\n\nkitchen island from the future\n\nIt has a built-in multimedia system, sound actuators and LED lights that enable users to create a specific ambiance. You can even us it to browse the internet, watch television or listen to music. I’m sure this is something we’ll see in the future. A couple of years from now, the internet will probably play an even bigger role in our lives. In a kitchen it could be used to find recipes, order ingredients or chat with friends during cooking.\n\nsmart kitchen countertop\n\nWe might also see a kitchen countertop with a built-in tablet. It effectively turns your entire kitchen into an interactive display. I sure hope the surface is scratch and water resistant…\n\nOn a similar note; Jaewan Jong designed this digital kitchen assistant. He calls it the ‘ultimate’ kitchen assistant.\n\nkitchen from the future: kitchen board\n\nThis board will serve as your cutting board, display recipes (including step-by-step directions) and even weigh your ingredients. After washing it, the board can tell you if it has been cleaned enough to avoid contamination.\n\nChances are our homes will be much smaller in the future, especially in cities (thanks to the continuous increase in population). That’s why we need to re-size our kitchens. Xavier Vitor imagine’s how a smaller kitchen would look like. The result is the compact but fully functional mini-kitchen:\n\nmini kitchen of the future\n\nOr if you want to make optimal use of your space, you can use this Silverline kitchen design. It’s a modular kitchen that combines a kitchen and a table. The table can slide out to reveal a kitchen sink and stove (funky green color optional).\n\nmodular kitchen\n\nmodular kitchen design\n\nBut what if you could turn your entire kitchen in a set of shelves? That’s the creative idea that popped into Mathew Gilbride‘s head. This kitchen has wall mounted appliances that range from a fridge, air-conditioner, lighting and cooking modules. A great solution for small rooms.\n\nkitchen made of shelves\n\nPerhaps the coolest kitchen appliance concept I found is the Electrolux Bio Robot Refrigerator. This fridge uses a non-sticky biopolymer gel, creating separate pods. This design has no doors or drawers and the items are cooled individually at their optimal temperature thanks to the artificial intelligence.\nbio robot fridge\n\nQumi was designed by Ilia Vostrov. It’s dubbed a “flexible cooking unit“. It’s an egg-shaped device that is able to fry, steam, or heat ingredients in a manner similar to today’s multicookers. However, unlike anything on the market today, it would be operated entirely via a mobile device.\n\nqumi cooker\n\nEven for those of you having trouble flavoring a dish, there’s a solution. Designer Christopher Holm-Hansen created ‘Tastee’, a device laced with receptors based on the human taste bud. Tastee will tell you if you need to add a pinch of salt or pepper.\n\ntastee concept tasting device\n\nMy Personal View\n\nPersonally, I have high hopes for the kitchen of the future. When we take a look at the evolution that has happened during the last half-decade I really think the next will be even better.\n\nOne of the things we’ll definitely see are connected devices. These are appliances or utensils that can communicate with each other or the internet. This means that they can work almost autonomously. Imagine that your fridge can automatically order milk when you use the last carton. Or that your oven knows exactly how long your apple cake should bake. Cooking would be so much easier.\n\nA kitchen that is connected to the internet also has several advantages. It would be much easier to follow recipes. Your kitchen might even be able to check for all the necessary ingredients before you start cooking. Thanks to the internet connection you can keep an online cooking-diary, get help from other chefs, etc. The possibilities are endless!\n\nSustainability will also play a crucial role in the kitchen of the future. Manufacturers will be focusing on products with the least impact on the environment. I believe that the kitchen will be more energy efficient and have environment-friendly materials. Moreover there will be an increased focus on recycled materials.\n\nAnd let’s not forget the design aspect. A rule of thumb for a lot of manufacturers is that the product doesn’t only need to function properly, it also needs to look good (we probably have to thank Apple for this). Product design will probably be as important in the future as it is today.\n\nYour Thoughts\n\nHow do you see the future of the kitchen? How will it look? Which devices will we be using? Unleash your creativity and tell us how you see tomorrow’s kitchen.\n\nRelated Posts\n\nLatest Stories\n\nSearch stories by typing keyword and hit enter to begin searching.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7754569053649902}
+{"content": "For one week in January, passengers aboard Le Boreal, a cruise ship operated by the French company Ponant, soaked up Antarctica’s wildlife. They stood on the ship’s decks to marvel at three types of orcas, or killer whales, swimming seamlessly in groups. They stayed up late to watch humpback whales perform bubble net feeding, working together to scoop up schools of fish in one swift movement. Hiking on the continent, they saw penguins waddling down “penguin highways” and nursing their young. On small boats, they got up close to leopard seals sunbathing on floating pieces of ice.\n\nThrough every adventure, guests took hundreds, if not thousands, of photographs, recording each scene from different angles and zooming in on the animals, including specific body parts. They were doing so not just to show off on Instagram but also to contribute meaningfully to science.\n\nThose who captured detailed pictures of whales sent them to Happywhale, an organization that tracks the migratory patterns of whales through photo submissions using the unique markings on the animals’ tails. “It’s just like tagging, but it doesn’t harm the animal,” said Ted Cheeseman, founder of Happywhale. “Getting answers to scientists’ questions takes a huge amount of data. Because of these photos, it seems likely we will be successful.”\n\nThis is what citizen science is all about.\n\nScientists are limited by time and money. A single day of research in Antarctica, for example, costs an average of $50,000. They also can’t be everywhere in the world at once. So a growing number of research groups have turned to the general public, including tourists, for help. Why not use travelers, with their iPhones and cameras and desire to take a lot of photos, to collect evidence?\n\nIt’s also a win for tourists who get to engage more deeply with their surroundings while on vacation. “You can be on deck enjoying the views while also being part of something greater than you,” said Alejandra Nuñez-de la Mora, a Mexican bioanthropologist who was a naturalist on Le Boreal. She taught passengers how to contribute to science. “It’s a hands-on approach.”\n\nSince Happywhale launched in 2015, the initiative has collected 150,000 photographs of whales in 40,000 encounters. Those photographs aren’t just going to Cheeseman, who is completing his PhD in marine biology at Southern Cross University in New South Wales, Australia. Scientific institutions, including the Cascadia Research Collective in Washington state and the International Whaling Commission, charged with the conservation of whales and the regulation of whaling, rely on them.\n\nScience also benefits when wide populations are interested in projects, said Nuñez-de la Mora. “We are lucky to have people on these voyages who are in positions of power or influence,” she said. “You never know who will decide they want to get involved more.” Protective policies could come from these projects; so could funding.\n\nParticipating in a citizen science project can become a habit. One of Happywhale’s most frequent contributors is Deana Glenz of Santa Cruz, Calif. She finds the experience so rewarding that she selects vacation spots only if they include whale watching. In January, she flew to Guerrero Negro, Mexico, to spot humpback whales. In February, it was Cabo San Lucas. In March, she headed to the Dominican Republic to swim with them.\n\nShe enjoys the challenge. “You are standing on a boat that is moving, trying to capture a clear photo of an animal that is also moving,” she said. “It’s super hard.” She’s paid such careful attention, she estimates she can identify 350 whales just from seeing their patterns. She’s also seen the same whale in different places around the world. “When I see a whale often, I give it a nickname,” she said. “There is one that I call Heart String. She has a marking that looks like a heart pendulum.”\n\nCheeseman finds inspiration in the fact that so many of his contributors are teenagers and children. “If you can turn on a kid, you never know what is going to happen,” he said. “We make sure to send contributors notifications when their whale has been found in other parts of the world to keep them engaged.”\n\nThe U.S. Forest Service has projects across the country aimed at families. With the Alaska Bat Monitoring Project, for example, families mount ultrasonic microphones to their cars before they drive into the forest. Children can later listen to the bat calls that they’ve captured.\n\nOrganizations have made it their focus to steer tourists to citizen science opportunities., a search engine for travel opportunities, has an entire section of its website that lists biological research volunteer programs. Its search engine gives you opportunities based on where you want to go in the world, how long you want to be abroad, and your interests. The National Geographic Society has a citizen science project search for people of all ages and skills.\n\nEarthwatch Institute connects travelers to scientific research expeditions that need extra hands. Its database lists opportunities worldwide, including in the Peruvian Amazon and Kenya’s Masai Mara game reserve. There are also initiatives in the heart of cities.\n\n“Choosing a location that appeals to your travel interests is important,” said Alix Morris, director of communications for Earthwatch. “You also have to look at activity requirements. While some of our projects involve sitting on boats or in vehicles while monitoring wildlife, others involve hiking long distances while carrying heavy packs.”\n\nOne of the most beneficial parts of traveling this way is that you can gain access to places tourists are not generally allowed. Last year, for example, Earthwatch launched a 10-day trip to the remote Lomas de Banao Ecological Reserve and Tunas de Zaza Wildlife Refuge in Cuba. Volunteers worked alongside scientists making audio recordings of unusual birds or searching for rare fungi. “Going there simply isn’t possible without a research permit,” Morris said.\n\nBiosphere Expeditions is another company that arranges trips focused on conservation efforts. One of its popular trips is a seven-day excursion to Lower Saxony in Germany, where travelers help scientists record wolf populations by looking for tracks and kills.\n\nThere are even citizen science opportunities for people who can’t physically travel and want to see the world from their computers.\n\nWhile doing field research, scientists often plant cameras to record videos and photos of wildlife over time. There is so much footage that experts need help going through it and identifying what the animals are doing. (Sometimes, it’s as simple as counting how many creatures are there at one time.) One popular project is Penguin Watch, in which volunteers go through digital images and mark penguins and their babies. It’s putting to work people who already love to look at adorable penguin photos for hours on end.\n\n“Machines have gotten better, but science still needs human eyes,” Nuñez-de la Mora said. “We’ll take as many eyeballs as we can get.”\n\nKrueger is a freelance writer based in New York City. Follow her on Twitter: @alysonbk.\n\nMore from Travel:", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.939963698387146}
+{"content": "The Charming Rental Prague offers an Airport/train station Pick Up Service\n\nOur Internationals\n\nAmericans / 75%\n\nAustralians / 8%\n\nCanadians / 7%\n\nOthers / 10%\n\nDid you know ?... the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. It is the fourteenth-largest city in the European Union. It is also the historical capital of Bohemia proper. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava River, the city is home to about 1.5 million people, while its larger urban zone is estimated to have a population of nearly 2 million. The city has a temperate oceanic climate, with warm summers and chilly winters.\n\nThe Czech state, formerly known as Bohemia, was formed in the late 9th century as a small duchy around Prague, at that time under the dominance of the powerful Great Moravian Empire. After the fall of the Empire in 907, the centre of power was transferred from Moravia to Bohemia, under the Přemyslids. Since 1002 it was formally recognized as part of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1212 the duchy was raised to a kingdom and during the rule of Přemyslid dukes/kings and their successors, the Luxembourgs, the country reached its greatest territorial extent (13th–14th century)\n\nVáclav Havel Airport in Prague is the main international airport in the country. In 2010, it handled 11.6 million passengers, which makes it the busiest airport in Central and Eastern Europe. In total, Czech Republic has 46 airports with paved runways, six of which provide international air services in Brno, Karlovy Vary, Mošnov, Pardubice, Prague and Kunovice.\nThe road network in the Czech Republic is 55,653 km (34,581.17 mi) long and 738,4 km of motorways and 439,1 km of expressways. The speed limit is 50 km/h within towns, 90 km/h outside of towns and 130 km/h on expressways.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.608364999294281}
+{"content": "WHO Director-General's opening remarks on the media briefing on COVID-19 – klooff.com\n\n\nThe virus that causes COVID-19 has also been detected within the stool of certain individuals. So we currently can not rule out the possibility of the infection being transmitted by way of food by an contaminated one that has not thoroughly washed their palms. In the case of scorching meals, the virus would likely be killed by cooking. This may not be the case with uncooked meals like salads or sandwiches. Widespread ongoing transmission of a respiratory sickness attributable to a novel (new) coronavirus (COVID-19) is happening globally.\n\nThis is because it’s possible for someone to have COVID-19 and spread it to others, even if they have no signs. Exposure could also be especially unsafe in case you are at higher threat for extreme problems from COVID-19 and are planning to be in distant areas, distant from medical care. Also remember that many native, state, and national public parks have been quickly closed as a result of COVID-19. That mentioned, the brand new coronavirus is a respiratory virus known to spread by upper respiratory secretions, together with airborne droplets after coughing or sneezing.\n\nDuring the COVID-19 pandemic you could be exposed to the virus whereas touring—from sick individuals at airports, or on airplanes, ships, trains, or buses. Some well being care systems have gotten overwhelmed and there could also be restricted entry to sufficient medical care in affected areas. Many nations are implementing journey restrictions and obligatory quarantines, closing borders, and prohibiting non-citizens from entry with little advance discover. Airlines have cancelled many worldwide flights and in-country travel could also be unpredictable. If you select to journey internationally, your journey plans could also be severely disrupted, and you may have to stay outside the United States for an indefinite length of time.\n\nReported signs in youngsters embrace chilly-like signs, corresponding to fever, runny nostril, and cough. There is far more to be learned about how the disease impacts youngsters. CDC recommends you keep home as much as potential and avoid close contact, particularly in case you are at greater risk of extreme sickness. Going camping at a time when much of the United States is experiencing community spread of COVID-19 can pose a threat to you when you are available in shut contact with others or share public facilities at campsites or alongside the paths.\n\nLearn extra about the spread of this coronavirus that’s inflicting COVID-19. Other coronaviruses have been found in North American bats prior to now, however there may be at present no evidence that the virus that causes COVID-19 is present in any free-residing wildlife in the United States, together with bats. In common, coronaviruses don’t trigger sickness or dying in bats, however we don’t yet know if this new coronavirus would make North American species of bats sick.\n\nPerson-to-particular person unfold was subsequently reported outdoors Hubei and in international locations outdoors China, including in the United States. Most international destinations now have ongoing neighborhood spread with the virus that causes COVID-19, as does the United States. Community unfold means some individuals have been contaminated and it’s not identified how or the place they grew to become uncovered.\n\nEarly on, most of the patients on the epicenter of the outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China had some hyperlink to a big seafood and stay animal market, suggesting animal-to-particular person unfold. Later, a rising variety of sufferers reportedly didn’t have publicity to animal markets, indicating individual-to-particular person spread.\n\nBased on the restricted info obtainable thus far, the danger of animals spreading COVID-19 to folks is considered to be low. A small variety of pets have been reported to be contaminated with the virus that causes COVID-19, largely after contact with people with COVID-19. However, children with confirmed COVID-19 have usually presented with mild symptoms.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6428046226501465}
+{"content": "An Analysis of Ipfilters, Ipchains and Iptables. Charles Moore. East Carolina University. Dr. Lunsford / DTEC 6823\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFull text\n\n\nRunning head: Ipfilters, Ipchains and Iptables\n\nAn Analysis of Ipfilters, Ipchains and Iptables Charles Moore\n\nEast Carolina University Dr. Lunsford / DTEC 6823\n\n\n\nThis paper will analyze and contrast three public domain firewalls. Those firewalls are ipfilters, ipchains and iptables. A firewall is a requirement for any business or individual that interacts with the Internet. These products represent the most wide spread applications to date and to a degree the continued maturity of the open source community. By looking at these products, one\n\ncan see how the open source community evolves driven by user requirements and developers trying to secure network resources.\n\n\nAn Analysis of Ipfilters, Ipchains and Iptables Introduction\n\nIt is important for all to realize that information security is more than just strong\n\npasswords, policies or technologies. Information security is about developing and implementing a strategy for information security to protect technology resources. One such strategy to protect network resources is called defense in depth. The goal of a defense in depth strategy is to\n\nincorporate a wide array of information security tools to protect your company or network assets. Today one of the key components of a defense in depth strategy is a firewall. In simplest terms, a firewall is a piece of software or hardware or both that stands in front of your network\n\nprotecting it from malicious threats that are present on the Internet. It performs these tasks by examining the flow of data into and out of your network. The firewall contains rules that determine what action to take based on the flow of packets. Several years ago, a firewall was considered adequate protection for protecting your network resources. However, today a firewall is part of a set of minimum requirements for using and operating on the Internet. Firewalls come in all different flavors and operating systems. This paper will examine and contrast three\n\ncommon types of public accessible Internet firewalls. The firewalls examined exist in the UNIX or Linux environment. This paper will neither consider Microsoft’s solution called Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA) nor any appliance or vendor specific firewalls, but will examine and contrast the foundation of many firewalls today. The publicly available firewall solutions offer a more flexible approach to network security. Often one can get away with implementing one of these firewalls without the acquisition of additional hardware. The three firewalls examined in this paper are ipfilters, ipchains and iptables.\n\n\nThere are currently two broad classes of firewalls. The first class is a packet filter\n\nfirewall and would be considered a first generation firewall. The second class of firewall is called a stateful inspection firewall and is deemed a fourth generation firewall. A packet filter firewall is an early elementary firewall where decisions by the firewall are made based on the source and destination addresses and source and destination ports of the packet arriving or leaving the network. The decisions are made on a packet-by-packet check. Using this method appeared, initially, to be very secure. For example, all web traffic is destined for port 80. If a company does not have a web server at their site this port, port 80, can be restricted to allow no access. Since the default policy of a firewall is to deny all incoming traffic this allows a person or company to keep out all traffic that has been determined to have no value for them. However, it became clear that hackers or attackers could take advantage of this weakness in packet filtering and direct packets to a company using a port that was allowed into the network and then, once behind the firewall exploit vulnerabilities at will. Due to the fact that the firewall rules allowed this particular traffic into the network, there were no further checks.\n\nA stateful inspection firewall performs all of the same functionality of a packet filter firewall, but it now includes the ability to follow the state of the packet. By tracking the state of the packets, the firewall can examine the entire session and keeps track of the entire connection of a transmission control protocol (TCP) session. The firewall tracks the status of the TCP header flags (SYN, ACK, and FIN). The firewall also tracks the actual TCP sequencing number. This enables the firewall to be able to apply the firewall rule sets more granularly. An example of this state tracking can be seen in a domain name server (DNS) query. When a client makes a request for a web page, the computer must query a DNS. This is handled by the client initiating a user datagram protocol (UDP) request on a random high port (greater than 1023) to the DNS\n\n\nserver, which is listening on port 53. The DNS server will then respond with the ip address of the web site. In a stateful firewall, the firewall will understand that the response from the DNS server is a legitimate response to a session that was initiated by a client behind the firewall. Further, you can tighten your rules down to only accept DNS replies from a specific DNS server and limit potential malicious traffic getting into your network\n\nOne of the biggest issues people have in adopting either of these types of firewalls is that the rules and rule sets can be quite complex. The complexity of the rules is usually driven by one’s organization. However, this complexity also makes analyzing and debugging very difficult. Here is a sample iptables rule; while ipchains and ipfilters may be a little bit different on syntax, the requirements are very similar:\n\nIptables –A input –t DENY –p tcp --destport telnet,ftp,shell\n\nTo understand fully this rule it is necessary to analyze it. The iptables is telling the system to use iptables, the –A input tells iptables to append a new rule on the input chain. The –t DENY will deny the action. The –p tcp refers to the TCP protocol. The\n\n--destport telnet,ftp,shell refers to the destination ports. In simplest terms, this rule is telling iptables to amend its rule set and deny any outgoing traffic destined for telnet, ftp (file transfer protocol) and the shell command. As one can see, working with the creation of these rules can be very tedious. It has possible that NMAP, and NESSUS,, can be good tools to have in your arsenal to debug rules. However, both of these tools can cause havoc on your network and network resources so care should be taken in their usage.\n\n\nDarren Reed originally designed Ipfilters as a packet filtering firewall for UNIX. It can be modified to support FREEBSD, OPENBSD, NETBSD, SOLARIS, IRIX, and Linux among\n\n\nother operating systems. In 2001, the creator of ipfilters made a move to clarify the licensing of ipfilters. The owner informed the public that ipfilters is not part of and was never part of open source software. By not allowing ipfilters to be part of the General Public License or GPL or any other similar software license, OPenBSD was forced to remove ipfilters from its distribution and replace it with something else. Apparently, the sticking point of the groups was that Darren Reed, the owner of ipfilters, wanted all changes to go through him prior to enhancements being released, and this directly contradicts the GPL (Weiss, 2001). From Mr. Reed’s perspective and the user community there is a plus to being able to maintain this level of control over your product. You can take advantage of a large community of developers while insuring the functionality and code remain solid and robust. However, this was not the design of the GPL. There is apparently still a tremendous following for the product, although this decision certainly limits adoption by other vendors and independent development on the product. While ipfilters started off as a packet filter it, it currently does offer stateful technology. Ipfilters is a very robust and flexible firewall. It currently uses the last match principle, although a user can change it. This means that the last rule the packet matches is the rule that will be applied (Zwicky et al, 2000).\n\nThere are some graphical user interfaces (GUI) for Ipfilters. Those include ISBA and Firewall Builder. FreeBSD uses a replacement called IPFW. IPFW was rewritten in 2002 and called IPFW2 (Korff et al, 2005). OpenBSD has had to develop a new firewall add-in. The new add-in is called PF. It is possible to use ipfilters in a Linux environment, but it is not native. IPF 4.x can run on Linux with the 2.6.x kernel. Due to the lack of adoption by the public of the above-mentioned operating systems, this paper will focus on ipchains and iptables. The most up to date information on ipfilters can be found at\n\n\n\nOn a separate path, Rusty Russell had worked on a Linux program that would provide the same functionality as ipfilters. This first product was called ipchains created in 1998 (Wikipedia Nefilter/iptables 2005). Ipchains got its name from the fact that it connects rules in the same manner as a chain (Shimonski et al. 2003). Ipchains is a packet filter firewall (Bueno, 1999), as stated above this type of firewall looks at the source and destination address or ports of the network activity. Ipchains can work as a network firewall or it can be configured as a host based firewall protecting just one machine. Ipchains has been included with the standard Linux\n\noperating system installation since Red Hat version 6 and the 2.2.x kernel (Liang, 2000). The premise behind ipchains is that there are three types of chains. They are input, forward, and output. The input chain examines incoming packets sent to the interface. The packets presented to this chain are forwarded to the next chain unless a rule match has occurred. The input chain can either drop or reject the packet. The forward chain decides what action to do with packets that are destined to another network or system. The forward chain only works if there are at least two network cards in the machine acting as a firewall. The final chain is the output chain. The output chain determines what to do with packets leaving the system. Any packet that is traversing an ipchains firewall will need to go through all of the chains. This is not very efficient.\n\nAt the time that ipchains was created there was a concern from many that the Internet would run out of IP addresses. While there are many that believe this is still any issue the original dire predictions has yet to happen. However, it is a matter of time when this will again become a problem. The Internet was created with basically three classes of addresses for public\n\n\nconsumption. At the time, the Internet started there was little thought to the number of addresses in the pool of available addresses. There were literally tens of millions of addresses and every one thought this would be plenty. Unfortunately, no one could see the explosive growth of the Internet and the distribution of addresses was not controlled very well. This led to a shortage of potential useable ip addresses. During this time there was a discussion concerning a new IP addressing scheme, which would allow almost an infinite amount of addresses. This new addressing scheme is called IPv6. The problem with this solution is that this new addressing scheme has to be backwards compatible and could not negatively affect the current operations of the Internet. IPv6 represented a great stride forward, but it became quite evident that this is a long-term solution and would take years to implement. A short-term solution was needed. The short-term solution had its roots in the original Internet, and it had been underutilized. This solution became known as network address translation or NAT. When the Internet was created there were three specific address ranges,,,, one in each class of numbers that were deemed private and any one could use them within their local network (Ippolito, 2004). The problem with these addresses was that the addresses were non-routable. This meant that the addresses were useable within a network, but one needs a public or routed address to go out onto the Internet. However, by using this technique a company could have thousands of machines behind a router or firewall and use only one public address. The router or firewall would keep a translation table of what internal or private address was destined to a particular Internet host. By incorporating NAT a company needs very few public addresses. Typically, a company would only need public IP addresses for their web sites, email servers, DNS servers or any other resources that some one on the Internet would need to access. This change led to a drastic reduction in the demand for public ip addresses.\n\n\nIpchains allowed the system administrator to easily incorporate network address translation. Ipchains use is limited to the following types of connections. The connections are point-to-point protocol (PPP), digital subscriber lines (DSL), cable modems, or T1 data circuits. There are a number of automated firewall scripts projects in the works. Often these scripts give the user the option of using a GUI without have to work on the command line. Some of these scripts are Firestarter, Mason, Knetfilter, Firewall Builder and Easy chains (Shimonski et al. 2003). For ipchains to work in the DNS example above it would be necessary to allow all ports above 1023 to be opened to be able to respond to the replies which is not a wise idea.\n\nIpchains and Ipfilters can offer the same similar functionality. The decision to use a specific program was usually based on the underlying operating system that the individual was using, as well as the users experience with a particular product. Ipchains does have some\n\nadvantages over ipfilters. Ipchains network address translation is much stronger. Ipchains is part of the Linux. There are no integration issues. Ipfilters is not dynamically updateable. However, ipfilters does provide more filtering options and more flexible options and responses for TCP packets. Ipfilters uses a single configuration file. Ipfilters checks all rules in sequence and the last rule that matches determines the action to take for the packet. On the other hand ipchains applies rules in the order that the rules are read. Once a rule is match that action is taken. If no action then the next rule is read. This process goes on sequentially.\n\n\nBased on the previously discussed limitations with ipchains as well as a desire to add more functionality, Rusty Russell in 1998 began creating the next generation Linux firewall.\n\n\nThis product was called Netfilter/iptables. The product is licensed under GNU general public license and was merged into the Linux 2.3 core kernel in 2000. Iptables is standard in the 2.4.x and 2.6.x kernel (Bandel, 2001). Iptables is standard with Red Hat versions 7.1 to 9.0 and Fedora 1, 2, 3, 4 (Ippolito, 2004). You can find more information out on this firewall at Iptables came out as a stateful firewall. The purpose of a stateful firewall is to monitor the state of connections and redirect, modify or stop packets based on the state of the connection not just the source or destination address, including port information (Suehring, 2005). Iptables also supports IPv6 in ip6tables. Iptables offers a tremendous amount of granularity in shaping the traffic that leaves and enters ones network.\n\nIptables also enhanced network address translation over ipchains. In ipchains source NAT was covered, but destination NAT was not handled natively. Another program had to be installed. Iptables provides these tasks natively. This is what allows iptables to forward address and ports to internal nonpublic addresses. This is called dynamic network address translation or DNAT. DNAT allows some load balancing to be performed.\n\nIptables can examine all six TCP flags (which include SYN, ACK, FIN, RST SYN, ACK), where ipchains is only aware of the SYN flag. Addresses can now be controlled based on the media access control address. Iptables also offers enhanced logging (Hoffman, 2003) and the ability to limit connection requests. This last functionality allows the end user to throttle\n\nbandwidth based on a potential denial of service or other suspicious activity. Iptables also offers type of service (TOS) prioritization. This becomes more and more important as more\n\napplications are pushed on the Internet that demand a minimum level of throughput to be effective. Examples of applications that need this type of robustness are the voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) and streaming media (H.323).\n\n\nIptables has expanded the ipchains and groups the chains into three tables. The tables are filter, nat and mangle (Bandel, 2001). Iptables also increased the number of chains from three in ipchains to five in iptables. Like ipchains, iptables has an input; output and forward chain, but prerouting, and postrouting were also added (Bandel, 2001). Each chain performs specific tasks that are particular to the table where it is located. All packets pass through the filter table. The filter table will block or allow packets through the device. All packets pass through one of the chains, input, and output or forward contained in the filter table. The nat table handles how network address translation is handled and sets up the packets for changes in the address or ports as required by the rules established. Only the first packet will pass through this table. This table uses the prerouting, postrouting and output chains. The final table is known as the mangle table and all packets will go through this table. This table is responsible for altering packet options such as quality of service. This table provides advanced options. The chains within this table are prerouting, input, forward, output, and postrouting chain.\n\nWhile the input, output and forward chains perform the exact same functionality as exists in ipchains, there are several new options. It is necessary to better understand these particular new chains. The chains are prerouting and postrouting. Within the NAT table the prerouting chain analyzes incoming packets to modify the packets before going to the local routing table. This is used primarily for destination network address translation or DNAT (Napier, 2005). DNAT is a process that writes the packets destination address or port (Bandel, 2001). This can be useful when a company has an internal web server with a private address that it wants to allow the public to be able to access. The postrouting chain performs the opposite tasks and packets are presented to this chain after the routing path has been determined. This chain is used for source network address translation or SNAT. SNAT enables the firewall to rewrite the\n\n\nsource address or source port (Bandel 2001). The SNAT would allow users on the internal network to use private ip addresses, but access the Internet when they desire.\n\nTo show the improvement of iptables the command referenced above, Iptables –A input –t DENY –p tcp --destport telnet,ftp,shell would have needed to be separated for each\n\ndestination port if used in ipchains (Napier, 2001). The user must use either iptables or ipchains. They will not work together.\n\nThere are several graphical user interfaces for iptables. They include fwbuilder, (, the turtle firewall project (, IPMenu\n\n(, and easy firewall generator ( (Andreasson, 2005).\n\n\nThis paper has focused on several different types of publicly available firewalls and to some degree on the evolution and the maturity of the products. From a user prospective it is possible to see the directions these products are taking. There are really two choices and each comes with\n\npluses and minuses. The two choices are ipfilters and iptables, while outside the scope of this paper PF for FreeBSD is a possibility. Ipfilters is also a stateful inspection firewall, but has less acceptance and support. Iptables is a robust, widely accepted and supported stateful inspection firewall. It is built into almost any of Linux distributions found on the Internet today. It well documented and the user can use command line rules or a graphical user interface. Each should\n\n\n\nAndreasson, Oskar, (2001-2005) Iptables Tutorial 1.2.0. Retrieved September 19, 2005, from\n\nBandel, David (2001), Taming the Wild Netfilter, Linux Journal, page 1\n\nBueno, Peter, (1999) Building a Firewall with IPChains, Linux Journal, ,page 1\n\nHoffmann, Daniel, & Prabhakar, Durga, 2003, IBM Centre for Advanced Studies Conference, Proceedings of the 2003 conference of the Centre for Advanced Studies on Collaborative Research, page 2\n\nIppolito, Greg, (2000 – 2004) YoLinux: Using Linux iptables or ipchains to set up an internet gateway / firewall / router for home or office. Retrieved October 7, 2005, from\n\nKorff, Yanek, Hope, Paco, Potter, Bruce, (2005). Mastering Free BSD and Open BSD Security. O’Reilly Media, Inc, page 314.\n\nLiang, Chuck, (2000), A Course on TCP/IP Networking with Linux, Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges, Proceedings of the fifth annual CCSC northeastern conference on The journal of computing in small colleges, pages 256-264\n\nMcKenna, Adam, The unofficial Linux ipchains-HOWTO (beta). Retrieved September 19, 2005 from\n\n\nNapier, Duncan (2001) IPtables/Netfilter – Linux’s Next-Generation Stateful Packet Filter, SysAdmin Magazine, retrieved September 23, 2005 from Netfilter/iptables. Retrieved September 19, 2005. from\n\nShimonski, Robert, Littlejohn Shinder, Debra, Shinder, Dr. Thomas, Carasik-Hemmi, Anne, (2003). Best Damn Firewall Book Period. Syngress Publishing, pp 128, 143, 146, 148, 149, 151, 171.\n\nSuehring, Steve, Zieglar, Robert, (2005). Linux Firewalls Third Edition. Novell Press, page 64. Weiss, Todd (2001). OpenBSD drops firewall program in licensing dispute. Computerworld. October 20, 2005, from\n\nZwicky, Elizabeth, & Cooper, Simon, & Chapman, D. Brent, (2000), Building Internet Firewalls, second edition, O’Reilly & Associates, pages 203-223", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5446341633796692}
+{"content": "As part of our ongoing series of stay-at-home literature, Caine Prize-winning Sudanese author Bushra Fadil’s dizzying “Phosphorous at the Bottom of a Well” translated by Mustafa Adam, which previously appeared in THE EYE issue of ArabLit Quarterly:\n\nBy Bushra Fadil\n\nTranslated by Mustafa Adam\n\nSa’ad trudged toward his foreordained suicide, embodying his own version of Sudan. He’d experienced this version of Sudan just for a fleeting unconsummated instance on his return home, after a prolonged absence in Europe. He’d travelled to Europe during the tumultuous times of the Angry Young Men Movement. He’d been born in Omdurman, on the famous Arba’een Street. His father was a wealthy trader who was passionately involved in the activities of public life, even before the inauguration of the Graduates’ Congress.\n\nSa’ad arrived into this world in 1940, during political turmoil in the lower Nile Valley, which is why he was named after the famous Egyptian politician, Sa’ad Zaghloul. On finishing his college education, he opted to travel abroad, as he didn’t feel obliged to be tied to a regular job. He yearned for something bigger and better. He joined the European hippie movement, melting into that rebellious and rejectionist human herd, with their raw revolutionary zest. Within a few years, he’d earned tremendous fame in hippie circles, where they called him “Sade” instead of “Sa’ad,” an unvoiced echo of the notorious Marquise de Sade. Sa’ad didn’t change much. With the passage of time, his mind was drained of the fumes of the Youth Revolution, in which he was, deservedly, the sole representative of the Sudanese people. As such, that revolution has been reduced to a stereotype of thick, unkempt, uncombed, and fluffy hair. Since then, he’d indulged in the offbeat habits of pipe smoking, beer drinking, and listening to ‘60s music, about which he became an undisputed authority. His unrelenting indulgence in these habits discouraged Sa’ad from pursuing his previous intellectual concerns.\n\nHis rebellious old friends scarcely remembered him. His old Sudanese acquaintances, and many family members and close friends, had fallen one after the other, after which his thick hair started to fall, which perhaps is what prompted Sa’ad to find a way out of his predicament. For most of the past forty years, Sa’ad had gone on posting sporadic letters to his nuclear family, just to inform them of the new temporary destinations of his bee-like itinerant life, staying for a while in most of the big European cities, sucking down the nectar of their civilizations. But, unlike bees, which give and take, Sa’ad kept the knowledge he acquired to himself, at a distance from his own culture and people.\n\nHis parents passed away during the eighties, and some of his brothers, friends, and most of his teachers followed suit in the nineties. Long decades went by before some Sudanese immigrants made it to European countries. By that time, Sa’ad was temporarily settled in Finland, and some of his countrymen started to fall upon that small country. Because of his newly developed inclination to solitude, he was exasperated by the torrent of pestering questions from the new arrivals. That’s when the idea of committing suicide started to gnaw at his heart. Being obdurate as ever—one-of-a-kind—perhaps nobody would have been able to dissuade him from what he intended, and, for sure, he didn’t divulge his innermost intentions to anyone. So, toward the end of the nineties, he decided to go back to his homeland.\n\nSa’ad decided to celebrate the new millennia by committing suicide on the soil of his homeland. He packed his meager belongings and, because he had always been weird and intrigued by weird things, he meticulously planned how his final destination on earth should be in the bottom of an abandoned well along the ancient caravan route Darb al-Arba’een. He entered Sudan through the border checkpoint with Chad. The moment his feet touched the land in Darfur, he embraced the region’s beautiful, lush green landscape. Although it was surrounded by desert from all sides, it appeared to him as a virgin land, unmolested by urbanity. He noticed that the most entrancingly beautiful thing in this part of the world was the people of Darfur… their whole-hearted way of greeting total strangers, their unceasing open invitations to join in their meals or have a cup of tea wherever he went. Since he was bent on his suicidal plan, he declined such warm, unconditional friendly invitations, which enraged his prospective hosts and made them notice his unfamiliar skin-tight clothes with distaste. They must have decided that this creature did not belong to their world.\n\nHe started his journey along Darb al-Arba’een aided by maps obtained from European bookshops and libraries. He got a photocopy of a map, made by the English colonizers, in which they had pinpointed certain fixed stone landmarks in the desert, as well as locations of military areas and old battlefields. A spot in a torn map—and he didn’t remember from where he’d gotten it—marked the coordinates of the location of an old abandoned well along Darb al-Arba’een.\n\nAfter a strenuous journey, which Sa’ad had not expected to be so long, he arrived at the location of the abandoned well, as indicated on the map. He couldn’t recognize any signs there apart from the endless sea of sand. With the help of his maps, a compass, and other equipment, Sa’ad inadvertently stood only a few steps away from the exact spot of the ancient well. He couldn’t guess that those who’d dug the well had kept it protected by a cement cover, which stopped it from being filled up by the surrounding sand, until he walked right over the cover and felt the echo of his steps resounding in the hollowness beneath his feet. He spent the whole night atop his chosen well and then began to remove the piles of sand from the circular cement cover. It was slightly slanted. Perhaps the design was intentional, to make it easier for a single person to lift the cover. This was what Sa’ad finally did, essentially and inconsequentially at the end of his rope.\n\nSa’ad descended into the belly of the well by an iron ladder that was fixed to the concrete walls of the well and led to the very bottom of the well. The ladder was made of solid iron bars, each bar bent in a rectangular shape, with one end implanted into the wall of the well, while the protruding part represented a handle for climbing down to the bottom. Sa’ad descended, step by step, down the well. At step forty, he came upon a strong, thick, dangling rope. It was what his people called salaba in their dialect, the same word they had for stolen. For the last four decades, it had never occurred to him to use this word. He muttered: “I’ll go down to the water level, drink a sip of my homeland’s water, then return up to this rope and turn it into a noose around my neck.”\n\nAs soon as he descended another forty steps, Sa’ad found himself suddenly submerged in the water, and, within the next forty seconds, his body fell freely to the very bottom of the well. In fact, Sa’ad was astounded by his otherwise carefully planned suicide, because carbon dioxide efficiently carried out the horrendous task of taking Sa’ad’s life, even before his unexpected drowning. Sa’ad was already dead by the time his body returned to a standing posture, with his feet wedged in the mud at the bottom of the well. But his memory was quite fresh. He tried, desperately, by the agency of his active memory, to bring back life—his departing soul—to his dead body, but it was futile. Through his memory, he toiled hard to turn his head to the right or left, but it was to no avail. He remained fully awake during the forty seconds that followed his sudden death, and fully aware that a huge calamity had befallen him. He hadn’t planned to put an end to his life in such an abrupt manner, but rather through his own volition. He wanted to hang himself by the salaba but the well’s water and, before that, its poisonous gas had done the job, and another sort salaba had stolen Sa’ad’s life.\n\nSa’ad’s face remained transfixed, as if ready to be professionally photographed in a primeval photography studio. In the following forty minutes, Sa’ad’s active memory made a quick inventory of his personal history. It dawned on him that he’d been ungrateful to his homeland and his people. His decision to take his own life had been a mistake. What would he reap from such a decision? How was it possible for him to transfer the knowledge he’d accumulated in the last four decades to his fellow countrymen and friends? When the word “friends” occurred in his active memory, Sa’ad thought despairingly: “My friends? Are there any of my friends who still remember me in Omdurman?”\n\nThen and there, Sa’ad recalled his version of Omdurman, and he wept, perhaps for the first time in many decades.\n\nWith great difficulty, he tried to remember the names of some of the streets of his old city. If Sa’ad would return, in flesh, to his Omdurman, perhaps he wouldn’t recognize any of its main streets. He strained to recall the names of some of his friends: Khalid, Hafiz, Ali, Shawgi, Mahgoub, Salah…\n\nBy then, Sa’ad had been reduced to a fretful vigilant memory and two popped-out pupils, glued to the rusty well wall. The well water was pure and clear. He yearned for a sip of that clear water to quench a mirage of no-longer-existent thirst, but alas! The agony of suicide must have clenched his soul in this limbo. Another forty minutes had gone by, and his memory was turned into something like a moon hanging over the sky of his homeland. He recalled what had befallen his homeland since Independence Day, the first democratic general elections, the successive military coups, the mass demonstrations, prisons of political detention and life in exile. Sa’ad’s was self-inflicted, as part of his quest for a ready-made fully fledged homeland in Europe, with its modern infrastructure and fixed institutions. In the process of realizing his quest, he overlooked the fact that homeland is only the sum total of both its peoples and animals, especially goats. He’d just then realized that his disputes with virtual others, with whom he’d gone on arguing throughout his long stay away from his homeland, were utterly mundane, insignificant, meaningless. In assessing the performance of political parties, independent leading figures and military coups, his languid stand regarding his homeland had ended up, essentially, wrong.\n\nForty hours passed, and Sa’ad’s memory was a moon hanging over the perturbed sky of the African continent. He envisaged his entire homeland as a tiny block within that structure of systems. From that vantage, his memory turned continental, addressing its personal agonies, coming out from the deep recesses of the bottom of a well, forgotten for ages, in a forgotten expanse, secreted within the boundaries of a homeland, which is part of a continent. Then and there, a flood of unparalleled tolerance exuded from Sa’ad’s transfixed memory. His decision to put an end to his life was rendered irrelevant, but it was too late. Sa’ad’s departure from his homeland, forty or so years ago, seemed quite futile, as far as this stretched body, stuck to the wall of the abandoned well, was concerned, with its fixed eyes staring involuntarily at the vast nothingness of imperceptible algae. Sa’ad was transformed into mere memory.\n\nAnother forty hours passed before Sa’ad was metamorphosed into a sun hanging over planets and moons. Homeland was reduced, then, to a tiny space measuring not more than the one his body occupied in the deep bottom of his wretched well. His existential problems figured lucidly in his mind. If he’d had time before making his hurried decision, enough to shake or simply turn his head, perhaps he would’ve rescinded his decisions all the way back, but alas! His fate was sealed.\n\nIt appeared to Sa’ad that his suicide involved an unanticipated torture, as he repeatedly recalled, during the span of another forty hours, which he had just remembered. It dawned on him that he could recount the entirety of his life experiences in the span of a few hours, then a few minutes, or even seconds, if he kept repeating them time and time again. His memory began to run like Nano magnets: a hidden, barely perceptible memory, yet encompassing infinity.\n\nForty days elapsed. The mere existence of al-Arba’een Street, Sa’ad’s sixty years of toiling on the surface of the earth, the futility of living for forty years in the diaspora, and Darb Al-Arba’een were completely erased from Sa’ad’s memory. His memory turned into something like a black hole at the heart of the galaxy, with billions of solar systems orbiting around it. Thus his memory was trapped inside an abandoned well, on a godforsaken area in his homeland, itself in a huge continent, which was part of a planet, orbiting around its own solar system within its galaxy. By the end of the fortieth day, Sa’ad’s memory had become a super black hole, around which an infinite number of galaxies orbited. His memory was turned into a void self, knowing nothing of whatever happened, yet fully aware of how it was completely insignificant and immeasurably tiny. Its smallness could not be measured by mathematical science, as a result of the perpetual accumulation of universal time and the remoteness of its risks, and the momentum of its colossal incidents and calamities.\n\nWhat had been the urge that pressed him to seek refuge in Europe, yearning for pleasurable and ephemeral encounters, believing that this was the essence, the nectar, of meaningful life? What was the compelling force that drove him away, forsaking that overwhelming and captivating beauty, which he relished, sitting in their back garden in Omdurman? What an enchanting floral fragrance, tangled with the bodily odors of the gentle and caring people of his own family! What a soothing and warm voice his mother had, flowing gracefully from behind the curtains of decades of absence! He longed for her canny glance, brimful with unconditional humanity, when she bid him farewell on the day he departed. How on earth had he flagrantly committed this grave mistake of putting an end to his life? What was left of Sa’ad’s memory dwelled for a long time in such bottomless torments and heartbreaking laments, which began to widen and widen its circles, as if wanting to engulf the entire universe. And just before the final step of becoming one with the universal carbon cycle, Sa’ad’s memory recalled the lines of his favorite poet and sorrowfully yelled, without a voice:\n\n“We became like mud at the bottom of the well, incapable of seeing its face on the water’s surface”\n\nPromptly at this final non-utterance, at his last cognizance, Sa’ad’s memory exploded into millions of tiny pieces, ending up as a chaos of mixed-up cells of phosphorus and other organic matter. At that very last moment, Sa’ad heard a thunderous roar, which was actually his real suicide. Bubbles of air surfaced from the bottom of the well and were bonded with the fabric of the open air.\n\nSa’ad’s death was thus complete and perfect. No sorrows were felt by any of his loved ones, family members, friends, or acquaintances. No one took part in his non-funeral. No one was grieved at his departure. His whole being, which was, until that very final moment, existent on earth, was turned into undisputable nothingness. It wouldn’t have been possible to relate Sa’ad’s tragic incident to anybody, if not for this intergalactic narrator who volunteered to tell us this nihilistically bleak story.\n\nBushra Fadil is a writer and former lecturer in Russian literature at the University of Khartoum. He has published four collections of short stories. Born in Argi, a village in northern Sudan, he is currently based in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. His most recent collection of short stories, Above a City’s Sky, was published in 2012.\n\nMustafa Adam is a Sudanese English-language lecturer and translator, engaged in literary translation from both Arabic and English.\n\n\nOther translations in our stay-at-home series:\n\n‘A Street in the Pandemic’ & Other Poems by Jawdat Fakhreddine, tr. Huda Fakhreddine\n\nSpecial Limited Publication: Stories from Muhammad al-Hajj’s ‘Nobody Mourns the City’s Cats’\n\nBelal Fadl’s 2007 satire “Into the Tunnel,” tr. Nariman Youssef,\n\n\nTo support the ongoing work of ArabLit and ArabLit Quarterly, consider buying an issue for yourself or a friend, or helping us out by donating through Patreon or PayPal, or, if you have one, by asking your institution to take out a subscription to the magazine.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6399052739143372}
+{"content": "John Longden\n\nBorn in England in 1907, he epitomized the story of the American Dream. He arrived to Canada from England as a small boy, and in time would make his way to the United States. When he began racing in Utah twenty years after his birth, John Longden was in the early part of a career that reached nearly four decades and would make him one of the true immortals of the sport.\n\nIn time, Longden made his way onto the California circuit, developing into a top rider. Between the late 1930s and middle part of the 1950s, Longden was the riding champion on multiple occasions at Santa Anita, Del Mar, and Hollywood Park. Those years also saw the man dubbed \"The Pumper,\" (due to his ability to urge horses) win several runnings of the Hollywood Gold Cup, Santa Anita Derby, and Santa Anita Handicap. Those were just a small sampling of the stakes he won in California over the years (he had more than 150 between Hollywood Park and Santa Anita alone). The San Juan Capistrano was another race Longden did well in, winning five times. One of those came in 1955 with St. Vincent, who was trained by none other than Longden's son, Vance, who was also a part-owner of his charge. The father and son duo would also team up to win the 1953 Hollywood Gold Cup with Royal Serenade.\n\nAlthough he was a force out West, Longden was no stranger to the national stage, either. During the 1943 season, he rode Count Fleet to victories in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes, thus securing the Triple Crown at the age of 36. During the 1952 season, Longden rode his 4,000th career winner, making him just the second jockey to reach that number (and first in North America). Five years later, not long after he turned fifty, Longden reached 5,000 victories, the first rider to accomplish that feat. In between those milestones, he captured the record of most wins by a jockey in Thoroughbred racing, succeeding Sir Gordon Richards.\n\nThe 1966 season would be Longden's final one as a jockey. He retired in the spring, but not before going out a champion. The scene was Santa Anita. The race was the San Juan Capistrano, and his mount was George Royal. The duo was back to defend their title in the race, but were not favored to do so. But, Longden had one last victory in him. Living up to his nickname, he urged George Royal in the stretch before a monstrous crowd, getting up to win in the final jumps for his 6,032nd victory, and retiring a winner with the crowd paying tribute to him.\n\nRetirement from riding did not mean retiring from racing, though. Longden set up shop as a trainer, and had success with that chapter of his life in the sport. He also found another Kentucky Derby triumph, saddling Majestic Prince to the title in 1969. That gave Longden the unique distinction of being the only person to win the prestigious event as a jockey and trainer.\n\nIn addition to his thousands of wins, Longden's career featured multiple achievements:\n\n-During the 1930s and 1940s, Longden led all jockeys in overall wins.\n\n-On two occasions in the 1940s, Longden was the top jockey in terms of earnings.\n\n-He was heavily involved in the formation of the Jockey's Guild in the early 1940s.\n\n-He was among the first recipients of the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award, which he won in 1952.\n\n-Induction into the National Racing Hall of Fame in 1958.\n\n-Induction into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame as one of its first members in 1976.\n\n-A Special Eclipse Award in 1994.\n\n-At now defunct Bay Meadows, the turf course was named after Longden.\n\nAlthough Longden passed on in 2003, he is still very much a presence in California racing. From his retirement until Hollywood Park's closure in 2013, Longden ranked among the top ten jockeys in wins at the track. As of February 2019, he is also in the top ten in career wins at Santa Anita. Track patrons move past a bust of the iconic rider each day at Santa Anita, not far from the walking ring. Although he has not ridden in a race in Arcadia in more than fifty years, Longden is still at Santa Anita.\n\nHe is also a part of racing in the Golden State in the 21st century, and that will continue into the 22nd century and beyond.\n\n\nMedia Guides of Del Mar, Hollywood Park, and Santa Anita.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7820072174072266}
+{"content": "Janet Wright is an English actress best known for portraying Emma Leroy on the Canadian sitcom Corner Gas. She passed away on November 14, 2016.\n\nEarly life\n\nWright was born in Farnborough, Hampshire, England. Wright grew up as the eldest of four siblings (the others being Susan, John, and Anne) who have all participated in Canadian theatre.\n\n\nWright, along with her sister Susan, co-founded the Persephone Theatre company in Saskatoon in 1974. Wright's first husband, Brian Richmond, became the theatre's director. Wright later worked at the Vancouver Arts Club Theatre where she appeared in and directed more than 40 productions. She also appeared in several other productions in live theatre across Canada, and at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. Her theatre work eventually led to television and film roles in Canada and the United States.\n\nIn 1991, she performed at the Stratford Festival with her sisters Anne and Susan in Les Belles-soeurs, to positive reviews. In 1995, she was the first woman to play the title role in King Lear, for Canadian Stage in Toronto. Wright acted in the film Bordertown Café, for which she received a best actress Genie Award in 1992. In 2003 she was named best supporting actress in a dramatic program or miniseries at the Gemini Awards for her role in Betrayed.\n\nFrom 2004 to 2009, she played Emma Leroy in the television series Corner Gas. In this role she won a 2006 Canadian Comedy Award for Pretty Funny TV Female. The show also won a Gemini Award in 2007.\n\nWright continued her involvement with the Vancouver Arts Club Theatre, directing several contemporary American plays, including Katori Hall's The Mountaintop and Ayad Akhtar's Disgraced in 2015. She continued acting from time to time at the Stratford Festival, lastly in 2011, when she played Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath.\n\n\nWright's sister Susan was killed in a fire in 1991 in Stratford, Ontario, along with their parents, Jack and Ruth (née Preston) Wright.\n\nIn January 2004, Wright's daughter Rachel Davis (aged 23) was fatally shot while intervening for a stranger who was being beaten in front of the Purple Onion bar in Vancouver, B.C. In July 2006, the shooter was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, five counts of attempted murder and five counts of aggravated assault. His first degree murder conviction triggered an automatic sentence of life imprisonment with no chance of parole until 2029.\n\nWright and her second husband, Bruce Davis, along with the rest of their family, started the Rachel Davis Foundation. The foundation presents an award to a young person (aged 17–23) who has demonstrated an outstanding act of kindness or compassion.\n\n\nWright died on the morning of November 14, 2016, in Vancouver, aged 71, from undisclosed causes.\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9933229684829712}
+{"content": "nick priyanka\n\nPriyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas, who are set to get married in Jodhpur in a few days, had a pre-wedding party with a group of friends including filmmaker Srishti Behl Arya, writer Mushtaq Sheikh and PC’s cousin and fellow actor Parineeti Chopra at a snazzy Juhu establishment on Monday night. Nick’s brother Joe Jonas and his fiancee Game of Thrones actor Sophie Turner were also present.\n\nAccording to a report, Priyanka’s pre-wedding dinner was interrupted by the Mumbai police as they received a complaint from the residents of Juhu. The report said, “Fans and paparazzi had crowded the area which caused chaos, and therefore, the Mumbai police had to intervene to stop the party.”\nA source told the leading daily, “An official from the Santacruz Police informed that the cops reached the location at around 1: 20 am. We then intimated the restaurant authorities about the timing guidelines that required them to shut shop by 1: 30 am, which they did.”\nThe Mehendi, Sangeet will start from tomorrow followed by their wedding ceremony on December 2 and December 3 as per Hindu traditions and Catholic style on respective days.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7521458864212036}
+{"content": "0.9 C\nSunday, January 24, 2021\n\nBreaching of 5km limit has led to 29 fines since Monday\n\nSince the introduction of the 5km travel limit, there have been 29 €100 fines handed out by gardaí. The fines were issued to people who travelled more than 5km from their homes and were unable to provide a reasonable excuse.\n\nThere were also 50 fixed charge notices issued by gardaí for illegal and dangerous parking in Wicklow last weekend.\n\nWhile urging people to stay at home and to only make essential journeys, Deputy Commissioner John Twomey stated that the restrictions will not apply to those in domestic violence incidents’ or people in fear or at risk of harm.\n\n\nEU says it will make Covid-19 vaccine companies respect supply contracts\n\nThe European Union will make pharmaceutical companies respect contracts they have signed for the supply of Covid-19 vaccines, European Council president Charles...\n\nCOVID-19: 1,910 new confirmed cases in Ireland\n\nHealth officials have confirmed a further 1,910 new cases of Covid-19 in Ireland. Seventy-seven further people diagnosed with the...\n\nStatus Yellow snow and ice warning comes into effect this evening\n\nFrom 6pm this evening, a Status Yellow snow and ice warning will come into effect\novercast clouds\n0.9 ° C\n1.1 °\n0.6 °\n91 %\n100 %\n1 °\n1 °\n8 °\n9 °\n10 °", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.866934061050415}
+{"content": "Quick Answer: What Is Style In Academic Writing?\n\nCan you use bullet points in academic writing?\n\nThere are some forms of writing (e.g.\n\nreports) where bullet points are allowed.\n\nSome subjects also allow bullet points in academic essays.\n\nCheck with the lecturer and ensure that you use the appropriate format and punctuation for using bullet points in that discipline..\n\nWhy is academic writing style important?\n\nThe purpose of academic writing, as with most other kinds of writing, is to communicate. … Therefore it is important that you learn how best to write in a way which will convince the marker that you understand what you are talking about. A clearly written assignment lets the thought show through.\n\nWhat are the 4 types of academic writing?\n\nThe four main types of academic writing are descriptive, analytical, persuasive and critical. Each of these types of writing has specific language features and purposes. In many academic texts you will need to use more than one type.\n\nWhat are the 10 features of academic writing?\n\nAs well as this it is in the standard written form of the language. There are ten main features of academic writing that are often discussed. Academic writing is to some extent: complex, formal, objective, explicit, hedged, and responsible.\n\nWhat are some examples of academic writing?\n\nSome are self-explanatory and some have a brief explanation.Books and book reports.Translations.Essays.Research paper or research article.Conference paper.Academic journal.Dissertation and Thesis – These are written to obtaining an advanced degree at a college or university.More items…\n\nWhat are the principles of academic writing?\n\nCLEAR PURPOSE. The key purpose in an academic writing is to persuade, analyse/synthesize, and inform about a given topic.PERSUASIVE PURPOSE. … ANALYTICAL PURPOSE. … OBJECTIVENESS (also called completeness of arguments) … SINGLE FOCUS. … COHERENCE AND COHESION. … LOGICAL ORGANISATION. … PRECISE & COMPLETE CONSCIOUS CHOICE OF WORDS.More items…\n\nWhat makes academic writing different from other writing?\n\nAcademic writing is generally quite formal, objective (impersonal) and technical. It is formal by avoiding casual or conversational language, such as contractions or informal vocabulary. It is impersonal and objective by avoiding direct reference to people or feelings, and instead emphasising objects, facts and ideas.\n\nWhat is an academic style?\n\nDefinition. Academic writing refers to a style of expression that researchers use to define the intellectual boundaries of their disciplines and specific areas of expertise.\n\nWhat is academic writing and its style?\n\nAcademic writing is clear, concise, focussed, structured and backed up by evidence. Its purpose is to aid the reader’s understanding. It has a formal tone and style, but it is not complex and does not require the use of long sentences and complicated vocabulary.\n\nWhat are the qualities of good academic writing?\n\nGood Academic WritingStarting with Good Ideas. … Having a Clear Sense of Audience, Genre, and Purpose. … Approaching the “So What” Question. … Using a Logical Progression of Ideas. … Using Sources Judiciously. … Writing Clearly and Directly. … Writing Specific and Detail-Oriented Prose. … Using a Consistent Tone and Style.More items…\n\nHow do you list academic writing?\n\nFormat for ListsUse a colon to introduce the list items only if a complete sentence precedes the list. … Use both opening and closing parentheses on the list item numbers or letters: (a) item, (b) item, etc.Use either regular Arabic numbers or lowercase letters within the parentheses, but use them consistently.More items…\n\nWhat are the advantages of academic writing?\n\nHere are only some benefits of it:It helps to develop strong writing skills. Any person can acquire good writing skills if he practices. … It stimulates intellectual development. In order to produce any research work, you have to make the intellectual effort. … It teaches a person to write according to rules.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9999975562095642}
+{"content": "Skip to content\n\nOur Privacy Statement & Cookie Policy\n\n\n\nThe Five Forces: A different way of looking at your firm’s practice\n\nThe first two blogs in this series looked at the market conditions facing firms wanting to compete in the post-COVID environment. They covered the need for a competitive strategy as well as how clients are going about securing legal services. Armed with that understanding, the next step is to build your strategy.\n\nCrafting a truly differentiated competitive strategy requires an objective evaluation of your law firm and the markets where you compete. This is not a task isolated to the marketing and business development teams. Competitive strategy also affects the way lawyers are compensated and incentivized to meet new firm goals. In fact, the impact of a new, or more focused, competitive plan will be felt across the firm.\n\nHarvard business professor Michael Porter offers what is widely considered the best model for analyzing a competitive environment. The Five Forces asks the user to consider five key elements in their competitive environment. While this model can be applied in any industry, its relevance for law firms is undeniable. Let’s examine each force in a little more detail:\n\n1. Threat of other lawyers and law firms: How difficult is it for a new lawyer or law firm to enter your market? How strong are your existing competitors? How likely are your current or potential clients to consider them?\n\nIt’s unlikely this force is weak in your market since the legal industry at all levels is facing increasing competition, but a high degree of strength among your opponents will have a significant impact on your strategic planning. If you enjoy a position of power due to your particular practice area, reputation, or client loyalty, you can spend more time addressing the other forces. If you find yourself facing a very high threat from other lawyers and law firms, you may need to do some additional investigation into their competitive advantages. While it’s unlikely that a new law firm will open during this tumultuous time, many existing firms are shifting to new practice areas that may see them encroaching on your territory.\n\n2. Threat of substitution: Where else can your clients go for some or all of the services you provide?\n\nGiven their changing legal needs and the need to get the best value in every aspect of their operations in this new environment, some clients may be more likely to switch to another provider that can offer the best outcome for the most reasonable fee. From online legal service providers to alternative legal solutions providers (ALSPs) and the Big Four, legal clients of nearly every stripe have non-lawyer options for their matters. This force encourages lawyers and firms to consider what is truly unique about their practice. Put simply, there will always be a viable alternative for many of the matters your clients bring you. For legal professionals in markets with a high threat of substitution, the path forward likely involves letting go of some of the work the substitutes are taking and refocusing your efforts on the services only you can perform for your clients.\n\n3. Client demands: How are your clients’ demands changing? Are you struggling to meet any of them? How much do their demands affect your pricing strategies, investments, and profitability?\n\nEveryone in the legal profession is working to meet and exceed client demands, especially considering the new post-COVID environment. But it’s important to take stock of this pursuit’s effect on your business. For instance, you may need to make technology investments to meet your clients’ demands. Even so, if they are unwilling or unable to pay the prices you require to make those investments, you’ll need to do some additional strategizing.\n\n4. Legal and business factors: How do changes in the law affect your practice? What impacts do changes in the economy, technology, and the legal workforce exert?\n\nEvery lawyer is accustomed to the evolution of the law. Keeping pace with these changes is table stakes for the profession, yet some practice areas change more frequently or dramatically than others and require constant scrutiny. This can be particularly important during times where an extremely fluid legal environment could see some unprecedented court decisions. It’s also important to consider the impact of the “business” forces on your practice alongside the legal ones. As the effects of the Great Recession linger, cost pressures may make it difficult to grow profits. Millennial and Gen Z lawyers bring new perspectives to and expectations for the profession. And as the pace of technology change accelerates, it is critical to have a technology roadmap in place.\n\n5. Competitive rivalry: This force can be treated as the sum of the other four forces you’ve evaluated. Unless you’ve already done so, consider the number of direct and indirect competitors to your firm and the qualitative or quantitative differences between them.\n\nWhile competitive rivalry is undoubtedly a separate force, the most useful application for the legal profession is as a single point of reference for the model as a whole. High rivalry is typically an indicator that many of the other forces are strong, while low rivalry likely indicates weakness in the other forces. Depending on your goals, this force can work as a starting or ending point for your analysis. In the current market, however, the increase in general competition for business will almost certainly keep competitive rivalry on the high side.\n\nFrom analysis to action\n\nWhile it’s impossible to predict the outcome of any individual firm’s analysis, it is vital to ensure the results translate into action. This may mean new business development strategies, reprioritizing practice area focus, new hiring guidelines, or new technology investments. Competitors are working every day to gain market share and establish dominance. Savvy firm leaders can use this framework as a practical tool to make impactful decisions for their firms.\n\nNow is the time to learn more about the solutions that can help your firm differentiate itself from the competition. Stay tuned for the final installment of this series, where we’ll discuss laying a solid foundation from which to launch your firm’s competitive strategy.\n\nMore answers", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8373475670814514}
+{"content": "The relation of sugar and diabetes\n\nBodies of persons affected with diabetes are not able to effectively process glucose, the sugar used by the body for energy. This leads to the glucose staying in the cholestrol the blood stream thereby causing blood glucose levels to go up and thus concurrently starving the body cells for glucose. Diabetes contributes to poor and late recovery of sores, higher hazards of infections, and several other associated problems.\n\nSince food consumption affects the human body’s requirement for insulin and how it can lower blood glucose, diet is the mainstay for diabetic remedy. Small volumes of sugar can be eaten infrequently as part of a well-balanced, appropriate diet not having a harmful influence on blood glucose. Nonetheless, bringing down consumption of sugary foods and drinks within the diabetic diet is appealing. A restriction of food items is vital for weight loss and general health. A balanced diet means intake of suitable varieties and sufficient amounts of foods and drinks to supply nutrition and energy for the maintenance of cells, tissues and organs and also to support normal growth and development. Picking a variety of foods across daily food groups is likewise significant.\n\nThe human body demands nutrients for its different functions that are provided by the food. Any lack of essential nutrients, over a time period, brings about loss of activity or decrease in some function that maylead to deficit diseases. Additionally, chronic age-related diseases, such as diabetes, osteoporosis, heart disease and cancer could result resulting from lack of nutrients. A proper diet helps satisfy body’s nutrient as well as energy requirements as well as helps in prevention of other illnesses.\n\nThus, a healthy diet plan should contain a wide variety of foods eaten moderately wherein fifty percent of the energy we require should come from the carbohydrates within the food whilst 30-35% should originate from fats and 15-20% should be given by proteins. A well-balanced diet consumed on a regular basis in addition to repair of ideal weight are critical factors in maintaining the emotional and physical well-being of the patient.\n\nThe diet for diabetes must be a balanced proper diet, low in fat, sugar and salt, with lots of vegetables and fruits and meals depending on starchy foods, Starchy foods like potatoes, bread, cereals, rice and pasta should be the foundation of all meals. It is because these types of food assist in keeping blood sugar levels stable.\n\nThe most significant part of diet management will be to stay away from sugar or food with extra sugar just like cakes, candies, pastries, chocolates, jams and jellies. Nevertheless, sugar may be consumed in limited quantities say approximately 10% of daily calorific intake and no more. Hence it’s important to check the label for foods with added sugar. Items that contain invert sugar, high fructose corn syrup, icing sugar, jaggery, honey, juice concentrate, molasses as well as white sugar too must be considered as added sugar. Thus it essential to understand that any added sugar in a food has to be checked if you are a diabetic.\n\nNon caloric sweeteners really exist that do not add calories and may give you the taste of sugar. Choose sweeteners that happen to be conveniently digestible and don’t offer any after taste.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.914156973361969}
+{"content": "With the US government failing to address the opioid crisis, one law firm has taken to a massive lawsuit. Head of that case is Mike Papantonio, who also won major lawsuits against big tobacco, chemical corporations and more. Abby Martin interviews him about this new suit, and why he is pushing for many executives to go to jail", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9567161798477173}
+{"content": "Computer Vision\n\nComputer Vision is the junction of image acquisition (ex: cameras) and the computer power that can make sense of the images coming from the cameras. Using Computer Vision (CV), systems can make some kind of sense of their world, which is in turn used to help machines operate in that world. For our purposes, CV is the creation of usable 3D models and recognition of the objects in that model for the purposes of ADAS or autonomous cars. On the sensory side, CV is not limited to cameras. Our meeting will include \"vision\" that goes beyond anthropomorphic sensory capabilities, to include things like laser, sonar, and light frequencies above and beyond our eyes' reach. Cars are not people, which can be used to their advantage to \"see\" so much more than we can. On the processing side, CV is dependent on the processing power of the underlying machine, and also on the AI of the software that powers it. The AI needs to take wireframe models of the car's environment, and \"understand\" what it is seeing through object recognition and machine learning: When is a child about to enter the road, and when is the child just standing on the shoulder? When is a fixie bike just balancing at standstill, and when is it about to cut in front of the car? CV means seeing these types of objects, understanding them, and making useful predictions about their physical paths and threat levels. Join 100+ Autotech Council members, OEMs, vendors, startups and VCs to take a closer look at the sensors, the computing hardware, and the software behind Computer Vision. For Members-Only: After lunch, Autotech Council will debrief the 2016 Telematics Update - Automotive among members. These debrief sessions mix news with opinions for those members who did not participate at either show and we encourage our participants to actively contribute their insights to each highlighted topic.\n\n  • Date: 6/10/2016 08:30 AM\n  • Location: Computer History Museum, Mountain view (Map)\n\nAgenda, Attendee List, & Presentation files now available to Autotech Council members in the library.\n\n\nThank you to our Sponsors", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.995272159576416}
+{"content": "Linde plc (EU)\n\n  • ISIN: IE00BZ12WP82\n  • Land: Irland\n\nNachricht vom 13.01.2021 | 12:00\n\nLinde to Build, Own and Operate World's Largest PEM Electrolyzer for Green Hydrogen\n\nDGAP-News: Linde plc / Key word(s): Miscellaneous\n13.01.2021 / 12:00\nThe issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.\n\n\nGuildford, UK, January 13, 2021 - Linde (NYSE: LIN; FWB: LIN) today announced it will build, own and operate the world's largest PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) electrolyzer plant at the Leuna Chemical Complex in Germany.\n\nThe new 24-megawatt electrolyzer will produce green hydrogen to supply Linde's industrial customers through the company's existing pipeline network. In addition, Linde will distribute liquefied green hydrogen to refueling stations and other industrial customers in the region. The total green hydrogen being produced can fuel approximately six hundred fuel cell buses, driving 40 million kilometers and saving up to 40,000 tons of carbon dioxide tailpipe emissions per year.\n\nThe electrolyzer will be built by ITM Linde Electrolysis GmbH, a joint venture between Linde and ITM Power, using high-efficiency PEM technology. The plant is due to start production in the second half of 2022.\n\n\"Clean hydrogen is a cornerstone of the German and EU strategies to address the challenge of climate change. It is part of the solution to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions across many industries, including chemicals and refining,\" said Jens Waldeck, President Region Europe West, Linde. \"This project shows that electrolyzer capacity continues to scale up and it is a stepping stone towards even larger plants.\"\n\nLinde is a global leader in the production, processing, storage and distribution of hydrogen. It has the largest liquid hydrogen capacity and distribution system in the world. The company also operates the world's first high-purity hydrogen storage cavern, coupled with an unrivaled pipeline network of approximately 1,000 kilometers to reliably supply its customers. Linde is at the forefront in the transition to clean hydrogen and has installed close to 200 hydrogen fueling stations and 80 hydrogen electrolysis plants worldwide. The company offers the latest electrolysis technology through its joint venture ITM Linde Electrolysis GmbH.\n\n\nAbout Linde\n\n\n\n\nInvestor Relations\nJuan Pelaez\nPhone: +1 203 837 2213\nMedia Relations\nAnna Davies\nPhone: +44 1483 244705\n\nThe issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.\n\nArchive at\n\nshow this\n\n\nNorthern Data: \"Waren zum richtigen Zeitpunkt mit dem richtigen Konzept am Markt\"\n\nKryptowährungen, allen voran Bitcoin, sind zuletzt mit deutlichen Steigerungen wieder in den Investorenfokus gerückt. Northern Data, ein Spezialist für High Performance Computing, zählt laut eigenen Angaben zu den weltweit führenden Anbietern für Infrastruktur im Bereich Bitcoin-Mining. Wir haben mit dem Gründer und CEO Aroosh Thillainathan über die Perspektiven für Bitcoin und die Wachstumsaussichten für die Northern Data gesprochen.\n\nNews im Fokus\n\nVOLKSWAGEN AG: Volkswagen AG veröffentlicht vorläufige Eckdaten für das Geschäftsjahr 2020\n\n22. Januar 2021, 11:02\n\nAktuelle Research-Studie\n\nHELMA Eigenheimbau AG\n\nOriginal-Research: HELMA Eigenheimbau AG (von GBC AG): Kaufen\n\n21. Januar 2021", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9485337138175964}
+{"content": "Ever since the COVID-19 outbreak happened, the entire world is on an edge. With hundreds and thousands of deaths worldwide, and millions of infections, many world countries have outright blamed China for not doing enough to contain the virus at its inception. The first case of coronavirus was reported in Wuhan, declaring China has the origin country. While many conspiracies have since spun out, in a bid to shift blame ahead of WHO's investigation into the origin of the virus, Beijing is saying the virus originated in India or Bangladesh.\n\nChina's propaganda efforts are popularly known when it comes to saving its own skin. Now, a small team of Chinese researchers is trying to keep China in the clear although the reality largely differs. The Chinese Academy of Sciences researchers have claimed that the virus likely originated in India in the summer of 2019 - jumping from animals to humans via contaminated water. Then it traveled to Wuhan unnoticed, where it was first detected, DailyMail reported.\n\nThe researchers used phylogenetic analysis to trace the origin of the COVID-19 and based on this, they claim coronavirus could not have originated in Wuhan. Instead, Beijing has a host of other countries besides India to shift the blame to, including Bangladesh, the USA, Greece, Australia, India, Italy, Czech Republic, Russia or Serbia.\n\nChina virus outbreak\n\nNarrowing down to India and Bangladesh is based on the argument that both countries are its neighbors and recorded samples with low mutations. China even went on to question India's healthcare system for the reason behind the virus spreading across the border unnoticed.\n\nBaseless accusations\n\nWhile it raises many questions like how the virus remained dormant all this while and didn't report a single case or symptoms/deaths until the pandemic broke, the fact that China easily and baselessly points fingers at others is a self-statement on its own. Earlier, Beijing had even blamed Italy, the US and Europe, of course without any evidence.\n\nIt is easier to call out other countries and try to shift the blame, but China, on an international platform, hasn't been able to convince the world of the same.\n\nIndia China relations\nChina now blames India for COVID-19Reuters\n\n\"I think it's highly speculative for us to say that the disease did not emerge in China,\" Mike Ryan said at a virtual briefing in Geneva after being asked if COVID-19 could have first emerged outside China. He further said WHO will send researchers to the Wuhan food market to probe the virus origins further.\n\nChina is clearly panicking as the world is closely watching and there haven't been any doubts about the origin of the virus. Beijing can hide behind these unproven theories, but it's unlikely to wash its hands off. US President Donald Trump has adamantly chosen to call COVID China virus or China Plague and many countries have advocated for stern actions against China for downplaying the risks of the pandemic in the early stages.\n\nIndia, China relations\n\nThe latest accusations come amidst increased political tensions between India and China. Armies from both countries are in the middle of a face-off in Ladakh since May this year, despite trying to diffuse the situation through diplomatic channels. In June, things got tense when 20 Indian Army personnel were killed in a violent clash and China lost its troops too. Both sides had pulled back troops from Patrolling Points 14 in Galwan Valley and 15 in Gogra-Hot Springs by an equal distance as part of the first step of disengagement.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7842642068862915}
+{"content": "InterviewBit Academy is now Scaler!\nLearn Tech Skills from Scratch @ Scaler EDGE\n\nGray Code\n\nThe gray code is a binary numeral system where two successive values differ in only one bit.\n\nGiven a non-negative integer n representing the total number of bits in the code, print the sequence of gray code. A gray code sequence must begin with 0.\n\nFor example, given n = 2, return [0,1,3,2]. Its gray code sequence is:\n\n00 - 0\n01 - 1\n11 - 3\n10 - 2\n\nThere might be multiple gray code sequences possible for a given n.\nReturn any such sequence.\n\nStart solving Gray Code on Interview Code Editor\n  • Hint 1\n  • Solution Approach\n  • Complete Solution\nAsked In:\n\n\nClick here to start solving coding interview questions", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8093591928482056}
+{"content": "President Kenyatta mourns Prof. Okombo\n\nNAIROBI, President Uhuru Kenyatta has mourned Prof. Okoth Okombo, who passed on last night at a Nairobi hospital, as one of Kenya’s most distinguished scholars.\n\nThe President paid tribute to Prof Okombo’s learning, noting that the Professor’s penetration and productivity had earned him the respect of his peers at home and abroad.\n\nIn linguistics and communication studies, he cut a niche for himself as a true patriot who ensured the growth of nationhood through his profession, said President Kenyatta.\n\nI am deeply saddened by his death, the President added.\n\nPresident Kenyatta praised Professor Okombo’s contribution to the development of sign language, which, he said, had helped ensure equity between Kenyans by removing undue hindrances.\n\nProf. Okombo leaves behind a large body of work. President Kenyatta expressed his belief that it would not be forgotten, and that it would remain a point of reference for scholars and practitioners both now and in time to come.\n\nThe President closed with a message of consolation for the family, telling them that his thoughts and prayers were with them in this moment of grief.\n\nThe President also sent a message of condolence to the family of the late Gilbert Kabere M’Mbijiwe who passed on today, and who served as a minister for Agriculture in President Moi’s government.\n\nPresident Kenyatta said the late Gilbert M’Mbijiwe was an astute politician who had placed his long experience of politics and public service at the disposal of Kenyans; who had contributed greatly to the growth of agriculture in Kenya; and who had served with dedication and zeal.\n\nThe President prayed that his family would be granted the grace to bear the loss.\n\nSource: The President", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.813782811164856}
+{"content": "Faceted Moldavite Goddess Moon Earrings Sterling Silver\n\nSorry, currently out of stock\n\nThanks! We will notify you when this product becomes available!\n\nClick here to be notified by email when Faceted Moldavite Goddess Moon Earrings Sterling Silver becomes available.\n\n\nGoddess Moon Celtic Earrings Faceted Moldavite\n\nThis pair of Sterling Silver earrings features a faceted Moldavite round in a Goddess Moon design. The crescent moon is detailed with a Celtic Knot and the Goddess with a spiral. The backs are stamped 925. These earrings are the perfect gift for birthdays, anniversaries or just a present for yourself.\n\nEarring Specifications:\n\n  • Design: Celtic Goddess Moon\n  • Moldavite Dimensions: 3.5 mm round\n  • Overall Dimensions: 17 x 30 mm (W x L)\n\nWhat is Moldavite?\n\nMoldavite is the product of a meteor collision with Earth nearly 15 million years ago. The prevailing theory is that the meteorite impacted the Earth with enough mass and velocity it vaporized itself and the surrounding material almost instantly. Those vapors were ejected back up into the atmosphere where they solidified and rained back down as a solid. The strewn field can be found in what is now called the Moldau River Valley in the Czech Republic. These green gems are among the most rare minerals on earth. They have been prized by humans for thousands of years and are still given as gifts from royalty to royalty. In legend, it is believed Moldavite was the green stone in the Holy Grail and has the power to quicken one's spiritual evolution.\n\nMetaphysical Properties\n\nPeople not sensitive to the energies of stones often feel the energy of Moldavite. Many sense it as heat, tingling or a pulsing sensation in their hand. Others feel a rush of energy through their body, usually upwards out the top of their head. Moldavite's high vibrational energy is a powerful chakra opener, particularly at the heart and above. Sleeping with Moldavite activates the dream state and can precipitate lucid dreaming. Wearing it helps manifest positive life change.\n\nCustomer Reviews\n\nBased on 2 reviews\nItem not yet arrived\nMoldavite Goddess Earrings", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9938976168632507}
+{"content": "Source: Slate\n\nJudging from the coverage surrounding this week’s blockbuster case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, it might seem that the legal clash between religious liberty and discrimination in public spaces is a modern controversy that the Supreme Court is just catching up to. But more than 50 years ago, John W. Mungin, a black Baptist minister, was threatened with deadly force and told to leave a famous South Carolina barbecue restaurant—all because its owner held to the belief that the races should be kept strictly separated.\n\n“He put a pistol to my head,” said Mungin, 84, as he recalled the time he tried to eat at Maurice’s Piggie Park, a chain of drive-in restaurants renowned for its bright mustard-based sauce and the views of its founder, Maurice Bessinger, who in life was an avowed white supremacist. Mungin, who is now retired and living in Brooklyn, New York, doesn’t remember exactly who met him with a shotgun at the Piggie Park on Main Street, a few blocks away from the South Carolina statehouse in downtown Columbia. But he was determined he’d one day assert his right to eat there. “I left, but I said, ‘I’ll be back,’ ” he told me recently.\n\nThe law happened to be on Mungin’s side. He was shunned in July 1964, just days after Congress passed Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Legally and literally, the law opened the door to blacks in all of the United States, but particularly in the South, “to the full and equal enjoyment” of places like Piggie Park. “Plaintiff was not served and was required to leave the premises solely because of his race and color,” read Mungin’s lawsuit against Bessinger in federal court, filed months later with the help of local South Carolina attorneys and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.\n\nRead the full article here.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6617502570152283}
+{"content": "Building Python on macOS with LTO, Up-To-Date SQLite, and GUI Compatibilitychain link icon indicating a link to a heading\n\nI use pyenv to build, install, and manage multiple versions of Python on my system at once. At some point recently, I needed to link my compiled Python against a newer version of SQLite than was shipped with the version of macOS that I was using at the time.\n\nThis need caused me to look through the available options in CPython’s ./configure script, and I noticed a few that I thought would be good to enable, including --enable-optimizations (who doesn’t want optimizations?), --with-lto (Link-Time Optimization, even more optimizations!), and --enable-ipv6 (why not?). The --enable-framework option was also new to me, and some research showed that a Framework build was what was necessary to have the tkinter module and Matplotlib’s GUIs work on Mac, so I decided to figure out how to make that happen as well.\n\nAfter a good amount of time spent fussing with various environment variables and compiler arguments, this is the script I came up with,\n\n#!/usr/bin/env sh\nset -x\n\nsdk_path=\"$(xcode-select --print-path)\"\nsqlite_path=\"$(brew --prefix sqlite)\"\ntcl_tk_path=\"$(brew --prefix tcl-tk)\"\nllvm_path=\"$(brew --prefix llvm)\"\n\nexport PYTHON_CONFIGURE_OPTS=\"--enable-optimizations --enable-ipv6 --with-lto --enable-framework\"\nexport PKG_CONFIG_PATH=\"${sqlite_path}/lib/pkgconfig:${tcl_tk_path}/lib/pkgconfig\"\nexport CPPFLAGS=\"-I${sdk_path}/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include -I${sqlite_path}/include -I${tcl_tk_path}/include\"\nexport CFLAGS=\"-I${sdk_path}/usr/include -I${sqlite_path}/include -I${tcl_tk_path}/include\"\nexport LDFLAGS=\"-L${sqlite_path}/lib -L${tcl_tk_path}/lib\"\nexport LLVM_AR=\"${llvm_path}/bin/llvm-ar\"\n\npyenv \"$@\"\n\nThere’s a few things going on here:\n\nSo, using this script will require SQLite, Tcl Tk, and LLVM installed from Homebrew.\n\nI can then invoke this like ./ install 3.9.0 and all the variables will be set and pyenv will execute as desired.\n\nThere is one bit of weirdness with this: because it creates a Framework build, the various paths may not be what you expect:\n\nBasically, this is a “Macification” of all the paths, which could mess up things like shell configuration files that expect things to be in certain places. This shouldn’t be hard to fix, though, and a small price to pay if the benefits of the Framework build are worth it to you.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9249700903892517}
+{"content": "Every move counts: launch of the WHO guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour\n\n\nOn 26 November, Sport and Citizenship took part in the Every Move Counts webinar organised by the WHO. This event launched WHO’s 2020 Guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour and was a great occasion to learn about the latest evidence supporting WHO’s global action plan to promote physical activity.\n\n\n\nThe latest evidence by WHO shows that that all activity, no matter the frequency, intensity, and duration, has a positive impact on our health and wellbeing, and is better than none. This key message was captured in the name of the webinar and brings light to the fact that every day and household activities such as cleaning, gardening, and playing can also be considered physical activity.\n\nPhysical activity is beneficial not only for the body, but also for the minds and hearts. New evidence confirm once again that it canreduce depression and anxiety symptoms, help prevent chronic illnesses such as cancer and improve cognitive functioning.\n\nThe recommended amount of moderate aerobic activity for adults is 150 to 300 minutes per week. This includes subpopulations such as people with chronic conditions or disability, and pregnant and postpartum women. For children and adolescents, the average is 60 minutes per day. Physical activity is also beneficial for older adults (65 years+), especially muscle strengthening exercises which help prevent falls. These new guidelines show that although there is a range of optimal amount according to specific categories of people, there is no longer a minimum threshold to reach for physical activity to be beneficial.\n\n\nAnother important addition to the guidelines is the concept of sedentary behaviour, defined as a waking behaviour with very low energy expenditure while sitting, reclining or lying. The benefits of reducing sedentary behaviour are supported by the science behind the guidelines. This applies to all ages and shows once again the importance of physical activity. By being more active, we can reduce the risk of sedentary behaviour.\n\nThe panellists and moderators discussed the importance of the guidelines but also emphasised the need to include and adopt them in national policy frameworks in order to achieve behavioural change. The way we use these guidelines to make a difference in policymaking and to guide practice is key to reach the 15% target.\n\n\nThe WHO global action plan to promote physical activity mentions the creation of active societies, environments, people and systems to reach the goal to reduce physical inactivity by 15% by 2030. Through our project Promoting Active Cities Throughout Europe (PACTE), Sport and Citizenship reaffirms its commitment to this target. Our matrix for change was officially launched, designed to help European municipalities to build their action plan in order to become active cities.\n\nSport et citoyenneté", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9999239444732666}
+{"content": "How can I prevent cybercrime?\n\nYou can’t control whether someone engages in cybercrime. However, you can control how you choose to protect yourself. That being said, knowing how to protect your personal information is key. \n\nThe following are the three simple tips you can follow to prevent cybercrime: \n\n  1. Educate yourself: Knowing the latest cybercrime schemes is key to controlling cybercrime. Think about phishing. It’s a newer phenomenon than some other cybercrime ploys, but is incredibly prevalent today. If you read up on the latest phishing schemes, you’re more likely to recognize if someone tries to trick you.\n  2. Practice safe clicking habits: Before you click on a link or attachment, be sure you know exactly what it is. If you don’t know what it is or if it didn’t come from someone you know, don’t click.\n  3.  Use strong passwords: This one may seem obvious, but it’s so simple. Don’t use obvious words or phrases as your passwords, like your last name or your birthday. Even if you have complicated passwords, be sure you change them every few months. The best practice is to avoid using the same password for every account too.\n\nThere are other, more advanced strategies you can implement. However, even these basic steps are a simple way for you to control cybercrime and protect yourself.\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7477227449417114}
+{"content": "How Does X-Ray Serp Resolve Conflicts with Settings?\n\nX-Ray Serp gives you the option to save different settings for price, term, and scope (scope is Page/Posts, Categories, and Site). Sometimes these settings overlap, for example if you save a default pricing structure but specify a different structure for specific pages.\n\nHow Does X-Ray Serp Decide Which Pricing Structure To Use?\n\nX-Ray Serp will always give priority to more specific settings, from the page/post level, to the category level, to the whole site, or default, level. Default pricing settings can be updated from the X-Ray Serp > Settings > Payments & Checkout settings page.\n\nTo add specific pricing settings for Pages, Posts, and Categories, add a new pricing structure from X-Ray Serp > Pricing > +\n\n*X-Ray Serp does not currently support Tag-based pricing or overlay.\n\nArticle Details\n\nArticle ID:\nRating :", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9102722406387329}
+{"content": "Who can get a virtuous wife? This question is bothering men since time immemorial. In modern day days, a large number of people are actually asking this dilemma about their potential partners. However , the answer to the question basically depends on the perception and personal preferences.\n\nBasically, a virtue is usually something you are naturally or according to your traditions or religion. Honesty, sincerity, integrity, and respect are all important virtues that lead to a happy married life. On the other hand, you can also get some habits which you should certainly avoid since they are actually harmful to your married life. Besides being bad impact to the modern culture and your hubby, being dishonest, deceitful, aggressive, and revengeful are vices. When as long as you perform them within the limit of the capacity, you shouldn’t worry much because such character flaws planning to get you in trouble in the near future.\n\nAn effective wife, alternatively, is a person that can deliver her husband and the family wherever it is necessary. She https://avocacottage.online should be fair in all the things she does, she can be a good fan base, she could be a good housekeeper, a good homemaker, and someone who can support her husband monetarily and in any other case. It is not best for the marriage in the event there are concerns, but a fantastic married life requires harmony regarding the two partners.\n\nRequired would be, “How can you find a good wife? inch What actually makes a good wife for a selected person is certainly her interior attitudes and character. If you think about it, you are likely to realize that the one who can truly keep up with your standards and ideals could be the one you are really drawn to. In addition to, you should also consider other activities that come into play. The one thing would be to discover someone who can accept you for exactly who you happen to be.\n\nWho are able to find a good wife isn’t difficult to find when you understand how. It’s a couple of using your mind and your cardiovascular to make the search. Remember to browse through the two aspects properly because that they affect one another. You should also remember that a great wife is merely attainable should you yourself are excellent. This means that your inner simply being must be well positioned in order for your wife to be good in your eye.\n\nIt may be a mistake, despite the fact if you just take anyone at their term. It would not be good in case you just take the word of anyone who wishes to seal the offer in your marriage, especially when considering your marital vows. No person is infallible so don’t think that the vows would maintain unless you rear them plan actions. Perform yourself plus your spouse a favor and do not count on good fortune or “the big bang” when it comes to marriage.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9439841508865356}
+{"content": "National Stovall Family Association Inc.\n\nThe Stovall Association  is a non-for-profit organization and is organized for the following purposes:\n\n\nTo strengthen the ties of fellowship and kinship between living descendants of Bartholomew Stovall, the immigrant, who came to America in 1684;\n\nTo bring into contact all those persons who are genealogically, historically, or biographically researching Stovalls and allied families;\n\nTo maintain family unity to promoting regional and national Stovall family reunions;\n\nTo keep all members of the corporation fully informed of events and occurrences appertaining to the corporation by the publishing of a quarterly periodical or an appropriate newsletter as the Board of Directors my direct;\n\nTo unify all genealogical, historical and biographical research and publish same from time to time in the form of genealogies;\n\nTo determine ways and means of preserving family records, photographs, genealogies, and official documents of all types in a central location so as to facilitate continued genealogical research;\n\nTo provide genealogical aid to any Stovall descendant;\n\nTo further engage in any lawful activities for which nonprofit corporations may be formed.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9996682405471802}
+{"content": "Most Viewed Articles\n\n24-7 Medcare Sick man calling on phone to doctor\nNov 24, 2020\n\nWhat is Influenza?\n\n24-7MedCare Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)\nNov 24, 2020\n\nWhat is a Panic Attack?\n\n24-7MedCare ADHD-Children\nNov 24, 2020\n\nADHD in children\n\n24-7 Medcare Acne\nOct 27, 2020\n\nWhat is Acne?\n\nAcne is a skin condition that affects both males and females. While acne normally starts when a person reaches\nFood Poisoning\nSep 19, 2020\n\nFood Poisoning\n\nFood poisoning is caused by the ingestion of any food or drink which is contaminated with certain types of viruses, bacteria, parasites...\nMan blowing nose / Hayfever\nOct 26, 2020\n\nWhat is Hay Fever?\n\nHay Fever or otherwise called “Allergic Rhinitis”, is a natural allergic response by your immune system when you are exposed to an...\nSep 20, 2020\n\n\nConstipation is one of the commonest medical complaints in Australia and occurs in adults and children. Almost everyone gets constipated at some...\nDr testing leg\nOct 27, 2020\n\nWhat is Ingrown hair?\n\nIngrown hair is an uncomfortable and somewhat embarrassing skin condition that is caused by hair or hairs that had previously been cut,...\n24-7MedCare Woman talking on phone and looking out of window\nNov 24, 2020\n\nWhat is Depression?\n\nAt times, we can all feel sad, unhappy, moody or low but this may not mean you suffer from depression. These emotional...\nringworm sores\nOct 26, 2020\n\nWhat is Ringworm?\n\n24-7MedCare Woman checking her body\nNov 24, 2020\n\nWhat are Eating Disorders?\n\nAn Eating disorders is a severe mental health condition where a person has an unhealthy obsession with food\ntooth ache\nOct 27, 2020\n\nOral Thrush\n\nCandida albicans is the main type of fungus responsible for the mouth infection commonly referred to as Oral thrush. The mouth is...\n24-7MedCare Desperate lady suffering anxiety attack at subway station, feeling helpless\nNov 24, 2020\n\nWhat is Anxiety?\n\nAnxiety disorders are the most common group of mental health conditions in Australia affecting 1 in 4 Australians at some stage in...\nLady holding tummy\nOct 27, 2020\n\nWhat is a Urinary Tract Infection\n\nA urinary tract infection, sometimes referred to as a UTI, is an infection of any part of the urinary system,\nman scratching sock\nOct 27, 2020\n\nWhat is Tinea?\n\nTinea also known as “Ringworm” is quite a common infection of the skin, hair or nails  caused by a variety of  fungi...\nLaryngitis / cold\nOct 26, 2020\n\n\nLaryngitis is a medical condition characterised by the inflammation or swelling of your larynx or voice box as well as your vocal...\nCoronavirus Symptoms\nOct 19, 2020\n\nWhat are the symptoms of coronavirus?\n\nRecovery from the symptoms of COVID-19 will vary from one person to another.\nWoman scratching back\nOct 20, 2020\n\nHeat Rash\n\nHeat rash which is also known as prickly heat or miliaria  is a medical condition characterised by a painless, but itchy skin...\nWoman scratching hand / eczema\nOct 19, 2020\n\nEczema - What is it?\n\nEczema is a very common condition characterised by an irritation or inflammation of the skin.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8059885501861572}
+{"content": "ESG: assessing business practices.\n\nAt Lombard Odier, we take a three-tiered approach to understanding the sustainability of a company’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices, considering long-term metrics, short-term metrics and impact metrics.\n\n\n6. ESG-approach_EN.jpg\n\nSource: LOIM. For illustrative purposes only\n\n\nLong-term metric: A multi-lens perspective on long-term sustainability\n\nWhile simple ESG scoring methodologies can be a useful guide to assessing which companies have more sustainable practices than others, we find they do not generally reveal who is making real, measurable progress over time. They can also naturally favour larger companies with the resources to spend on creating transparency around their social and environmental practices. In order to understand these dynamics better and generate a more meaningful outcome, we introduced our proprietary ‘CAR’ methodology in 2012. \n\n\nCAR scoring methodology\n\nCAR stands for ‘Consciousness’, ‘Action’ and ‘Results’. It sorts through vast amount of raw ESG data to better differentiate between the talkers, the do-ers and the real achievers. We place a greater emphasis on the ‘R’ when arriving at the final score to give our investment teams a much deeper understanding of genuine corporate sustainability.\n\n\n7. CAR-graphic.png\n\n\nShort-term metric: Controversy scoring to understand short-term sustainability risk\n\nSerious corporate responsibility failings tend to materialise, in the short term, in the form of controversies. The impact of these events can be meaningful for investors because they create reputational issues, often leading to lower market performance.\n\nTo understand this risk in the short term, we look at companies’ exposure to controversies and gauge the severity of these issues, applying a “Controversy Score” from 0 to 5, where 0 is no concern and 5 is a major concern. Companies with scores of 4 and 5 can be screened out of portfolios as a way to limit portfolio risk. We have implemented an internal policy under which trading in level 5 controversy companies is restricted without further explanation and validation at CIO level. \n\nWe also seek to engage with companies featured on the controversies’ list as a way to mitigate risk.\n\n\nClassification of incidents following standards by United Nations Global Compact Principles \n\n\n8. Incident_classification_EN.jpg\n\nSource: LOIM. For illustrative purposes only\n\n\nImpact metrics\n\nIn analysing how well companies are positioned for the transition to a CLIC™ (Circular, Lean, Inclusive, and Clean) economy, we believe it is important to understand the impact they have from a socio-economic context. The level of opportunity a company faces in terms of growth or competitive advantage will be materially affected by its impact and warrants close analysis. We also believe it is important for investors to easily understand what impact they are accountable for.\n\nWe have developed a series of impact metrics relating to carbon emissions and water consumption to address two specific needs: to help portfolio managers pick the right stocks; and to help end investors more easily understand what they are accountable for.\n\nOn carbon emissions, we look at the total production and emissions scope of a company including production, energy usage and its supply chain. Our methodology for reporting carbon emissions is aligned with the final recommendations of the Taskforce for Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD).\n\nFor water we look at both how much the company has purchased as well as its direct withdrawal from water sources.\n\nWe then calculate two different ratios for each metric: first, the intensity ratio, which is the level of carbon emissions or water consumption per revenue unit which can be used to compare the carbon and water intensity of a company versus its peers; second, we calculate the investment ratio, which is the level of carbon emissions or water consumption per investment unit as a way of identifying a company’s accountability.\n\n\n9. Production-and-emissions-scope.jpg\n\nSource: LOIM. For illustrative purposes only\n\n\nCarbon metrics\n\n  • Absolute carbon emissions: measures the amount of greenhouse gas emitted by a company over a year. At a company level, we look at its scope 1 carbon emissions and First Tier indirect emissions. At a portfolio level, we look at its scope 1 and scope 2 carbon emissions. When aggregating the carbon footprint of a portfolio, one cannot just calculate a weighted average of the absolute emissions of the underlying companies, it needs to be proportional to the total amount of all investments held in the company (both debt and equity). Therefore, we use the carbon investment ratio.\n\n  • Carbon investment ratio: this is equal to the absolute carbon emissions of a company per unit of market capitalisation + debt (or in other terms: Enterprise Value minus Cash). Therefore, when measuring the carbon footprint of a portfolio, the weighted average of the carbon investment ratios of the underlying companies are calculated. This figure is the carbon emission per million US dollars invested in the portfolio and multiplying it by the amount invested will provide the carbon footprint of the portfolio.\n\n  • Carbon intensity: the amount of greenhouse gas emitted per unit of revenue generated by a company. The intensity of a portfolio is the weighted average intensity of its underlying companies. We consider the portfolio as a company composed of the weighted average of its positions. We look at the direct and First Tier indirect carbon emissions at both the level of a company and the level of a portfolio to avoid any risk of double counting. \n\n\nHowever, it is important to recognise that overtime, static measures for carbon emissions - whether they related to absolute levels of intensity - don’t always give the best overview of trajectory. This is why we have developed the LO Portfolio Temperature Alignment Tool. We believe it is vital to monitor the ‘temperature trajectory’ of individual companies to assess how well they are aligned to the decarbonisation pathways implied by the goals of the Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit global warming to 1.5-2°C.\n\n\n  Click here to find out more about the LO Portfolio Temperature Alignment Tool.\n\n\nSovereign bonds: In order to calculate the impact metrics for sovereign bond portfolios, we calculate carbon emissions at a country level using Bloomberg data. Additionally, we use annual World Bank data to measure the absolute level of carbon emission within a country. We obtain the intensity ratio by dividing this amount by the GDP (current USD). In order to calculate the country’s carbon investment ratio we will apply the following formula:\n\n(Country total CO2 emissions x government revenues in % of GDP) / (GDP x government debt in % of GDP)", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9995647668838501}
+{"content": "Is Upsc Harder Than NEET?\n\nCan a average student crack CLAT?\n\nAverage is just an illusion.\n\nYou can be a topper amongst poors , and you can be average amongst average , and a poor amongst topper.\n\nIt all depends on your interest.\n\nSo , if youbreally want to crack CLAT and you folloe the correct strategy , nobody can stop you from cracking it..\n\nWhy do IITians go for IAS?\n\nHowever, the social impact of working in a corporate is quite low even if it offers you big money. Hence, IITians with conscience who really want to make a difference to the society go for IAS and IPS posts that place them in a better position to make welfare decisions for the people.\n\nWhich is more difficult JEE or NEET?\n\nJEE has limited attempts (only two) whereas one can appear for NEET for a slightly more no. of attempts. JEE Advanced is considered as one of the toughest entrance examination of India. The difficulty level of the paper is very high as compared to NEET paper.\n\nIs IAS tougher than IIT?\n\n\nWill neet 2020 be harder?\n\nSo, for NEET, the NTA frames the question paper and syllabus. … Since the paper will be set by the NTA, candidates must not worry. Paper will not be going to be tough.”\n\nWhich is toughest exam in India?\n\n\nHow many hours study for UPSC?\n\nThere are some aspirants who claim to study 15-16 hours per day while preparing for the UPSC exam. And, there are others who clear the exam studying just for 6-7 hours in a day….Also, read.UPSC Calendar 2021UPSC BooksUPSC 2021UPSC NotesHow to Ward off Distractions While Studying for UPSC Exam?\n\nIs CA tougher than MBBS?\n\nBoth courses have a vast syllabus to be learnt. But MBBS final exam is not so tough. … But ca final exam is a way more tougher.\n\nIs Upsc tough for average students?\n\n\nWhat is world’s toughest exam?\n\n\nHow can I start my IAS at home?\n\nHow to prepare for IAS at home?Understand the UPSC pattern and procedure first.Go through the UPSC syllabus thoroughly.Start reading a few books and watch video lectures online for a few basic subjects like polity, history, geography, etc.Read the newspaper regularly.More items…\n\nWill questions repeat in NEET?\n\n\nIs CA easier than IIT?\n\n\nCan IAS have beard?\n\n\nWhat if I fail in IAS interview?\n\n\nCan we crack NEET in 20 days?\n\nWith NEET being just around the corner, candidates must give it their all to prepare for the exams, knowing the fact that time is a constraint now. 20 days is not much of time, yet candidates can make the most of these days with sheer dedication.\n\nWhich is the easiest exam in India?\n\n\nIs 400 a good score in NEET?\n\nYes, 400 is considered a good score in the NEET exam. With a 400 score, there are chances that you may make it to government medical college. … Therefore, a score between 450-500 is considered a good score in NEET.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6098212003707886}
+{"content": "Scientific Programme\n\n\nAstrobiology is a rapidly evolving field of study. One major development has been a wealth of Exoplanet observations that inform the probability of forming earth-like planets in a habitable zone, while another has been the potential for life to occur well outside of traditional habitable zones under the surfaces of ice-covered moons, such as Europa and Enceladus.\n\nThe dynamics of bodies in evolving planetary systems result in planet growth, the delivery of water and organics to favourable environments and planetary migration, moon formation and planetary destruction, all of which have significant consequences for the development and sustainability of life. Formation of the organic constituents of biological systems in pre-solar clouds, in the proto-solar nebula or in planetary environments are essential steps on the path to life where significant new knowledge has emerged over the past decade.\n\nThe evolution of more complex life, and the emergence of intelligence, may require environmental extremes such as those resulting from asteroidal and cometary impacts, as well as from more prolonged events such as ice ages or massive, global-scale volcanism.\n\nAstrobiology 2020 will trace the pathway to life on Earth and beyond from the simple chemistry established in astrophysical environments, through the formation of planetary systems, to beyond the beginnings of life as informed by studies of the very earliest terrestrial fossil record, taking into account the latest advances in all of these areas.\n\nScientific sessions and session chairs / keynote speakers\n\n\nSession 1\n\nChemistry in Molecular Clouds and in Proto-Planetary Nebulae\n\nMaria Drozdovskaya (Switzerland)\n\nAre the basic building blocks of Life established in the cores of Giant Molecular Clouds before a star begins to form? What chemical processes occur during cloud collapse? How does the chemical composition of a stellar nebula evolve during planet formation and as a function of the mass of the central star? Is the chemistry in each forming stellar system unique or do the same basic chemical processes play out in every stellar system in our galaxy? These are some of the basic questions that will be addressed during this session from the perspective of observations, laboratory experiments and/or modelling.\n\n\nSession 2\n\nFormation and Evolution of Planetary Systems: Our Earth in the Exoplanetary Context\n\nDaniel Apai (US)\n\nPlanetary systems are observed to span an extremely wide range of morphologies compared to our own Solar System. Jupiter-scale planets orbit central stars in days at distances measured in stellar radii. Earth-scale planets orbit millisecond pulsars. Multiple Earth-scale planets orbit within the Habitable Zones of their central stars. Almost all stars have planets. This session will focus on understanding the processes that produce planets and build the wide variety of planetary systems observed today in order to put the one planet, Earth, known to harbor Life into context. Contributions to understand these processes and their outcomes are welcome.\n\n\nSession 3\n\nImpacts and their role in the evolution of life\n\nPhilippe Claeys (Belgium)\n\nEarth has been subjected to asteroid and cometary impacts throughout its history, as have all bodies in our Solar System. If an impact does not destroy the target, then how do the multiple environmental stresses effect extant Life? This session will examine the terrestrial record to understand the magnitude of the stresses induced by impacts and the response of the terrestrial ecosystem to such stresses. We welcome contributions to address the many questions in this area such as; what are the characteristics of robust lifeforms? How do ecosystems respond after massive extinction events? Are extreme stresses required to force the evolution of more advanced lifeforms?\n\n\nSession 4\n\nEarly Earth (interactions between the lithosphere, atmosphere, ocean & microbial world)\n\nAxel Hofmann, Nic Beukes (South Africa), Jana Meixnerova (USA)\n\nThe Earth surface has seen tremendous changes through time. Cooling of the Earth interior, secular changes in tectonic processes and the composition of the lithosphere, the evolution of the atmosphere and hydrosphere, and the appearance and radiation of life all left their imprint in the geological record. This session invites contributions that address the co-evolution of life with Earth’s surface environments over geologic time.\n\nIt investigates the geochemical, mineralogical, environmental and biological evolution of the Earth’s surface and immediate subsurface from its oldest volcanic and sedimentary record.\n\n\nSession 5\n\nWhen (and How) Does Life Arise?\n\nKamilla Muchowska (France)\n\nBefore we can address the question of the Origin of Life, we must first agree on what distinguishes life from sets of repeated chemical reactions. The most primitive of today’s terrestrial lifeforms are extremely sophisticated compared to the original organisms that must have depended upon environmental factors to perform some of their most basic metabolic functions. Are there multiple pathways to life or only one? Contributions are solicited to define the most basic functions of life, where (and when) conditions that support such functions exist in nascent planetary environments, and how might some set of chemical reactions incorporate natural environmental processes to become living organisms.\n\n\nSession 6\n\nEarly Traces of Life; Co-evolution of Earth and Life during the Archaean\n\nEmmanuelle Javaux (Belgium)\n\nThis session will examine the earliest fossil record to explore the relationships between life and the local environment. Changes in salinity, temperature, pH and solar insolation, among many other factors drive life to evolve or push it to extinction. The Archaean saw the development of multicellular lifeforms from single celled organisms, including a wide range of biological innovations that preceded and enabled this development. Contributions that address the relation of new biological innovations that enabled the development of more complex lifeforms to the changing environmental conditions throughout the Archaean or that examine the effects of life on the Archaean environment are welcome.\n\n\nSession 7\n\nExtremophiles and Extreme Environments\n\nDonald Cowan (South Africa), Ricardo Amils (Spain)\n\nThe session on Extremophiles and Extreme Environments aims to bring together a diversity of research on the diversity, functionality, adaptation and survival of microorganisms in a range of extreme environments, including those dominated by high and low temperatures, extremes of pH and salinity, extreme oligotrophy, high pressure and high radiation fluxes.\n\nSuch studies all contribute to defining the 'biological envelope', a critical parameter in the potential identification of habitable planets in the Solar System and the Universe.\n\n\nSession 8\n\nExoplanets and the Habitable Zone: What Makes a Planet Habitable?\n\nMichel Mayor (Switzerland)\n\nThe Habitable Zone was initially defined as the range of planetary orbits where liquid water is stable on planetary surfaces. The parameters of the Habitable Zone depends on the type of the central star and the atmospheres of the planets. Habitable Zones for binary and triple star systems can be much more complex but are still defined as a function of the temperature of the planetary surface controlled by exposure to stellar radiation and thermal blanketing by greenhouse gases. Recent models have led to suggestions that this definition should be broadened to include the potential for life to exist within ice-covered moons heated by internal gravitational energy dissipation. Observations over the last several decades have demonstrated a remarkable diversity of planetary systems, including observations of earth-sized planets within the traditional Habitable Zone as well as moons orbiting Jupiter-scale planets. Contributions to understanding the range and extent of habitable environments are encouraged.\n\n\nSession 9\n\nThe Search for and Evolution of Life in Our Solar System and Beyond\n\nKevin Hand (USA), Fabian Klenner (Germany)\n\nEarth is the only planet where life is known to exist and often serves as a model to evaluate where life might exist elsewhere. While we once believed that sunlight was essential for life, we have discovered chemotropic life in Earth’s deep oceans and in hydrothermal systems under continental landmasses. This has broadened the search for life from planets in the Habitable Zone to a more diverse array of environments. The first investigations to search for life on Mars were based on models of terrestrial metabolisms that may not have been appropriate for the chemical composition of Martian soils. Modern searches for life beyond Earth not only target possible hydrothermal ecosystems on Mars, but also look to subsurface oceans on the moons of giant planets such as Europa and Enceladus. Discovery of life in any or all of these environments would significantly expand understanding of the potential for life elsewhere in the universe by offering data to determine if life originated and evolved independently in each environment or shares a common biochemistry radiating from a single origin.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9873785972595215}
+{"content": "Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements\n\n\nThe Community Ideas Board isn’t just about requesting new features. It’s also about improving the features already in Spotify.\n\n\nTake our shuffle algorithm for instance.\n\n\nThe Idea “Implement an actual shuffle function” by Community user @RoninTheOrigina  gathered over 850 votes.  Users were vocal in their comments about what they wanted (and didn’t want) when it came to shuffling playlists.\n\n\nWe then passed this knowledge on and our teams got to work.\n\n\nThe result: an improved shuffling algorithm that avoids playing a couple songs from an artist too close together.\n\n\nshuffle algorithm.png\n\n\nIf you’re thinking, “that sounds kind of vague, what are these improvements” then fret no more.\n\n\nSpotify’s @lukasP  has written an extensive blog post on how we gathered user feedback on Shuffle, analyzed their comments, took a hard look at our previous algorithm and found the best way to bring the improvements users wanted.\n\n\nWe’re aware this doesn’t fix all shuffling issues forever. Rest assured we are still working on this though.  You’ll also see the new algorithm in other clients other than desktop soon.\n\n\nNow go hit shuffle on your favorite playlist and reap the benefits of your hard work clicking that Kudos button.\n\n\n\n\nCasual Listener\n\nHow about not playing songs with the same lead singer back to back, which happens on every playlist every single day?\n\n\nThe same singer in multiple bands and as solo frequently appear in close proximity (usually two tracks in a row).  This is statistically improbable from the size of my playslists and feels like poorly constructed shuffle logic.\n\nNot applicable\n\nI’m a programmer. I’m a mediocre programmer. A true shuffle program is computer science 101. It is 2019 and this has been a problem since at least 2014. It took years for Spotify to even agree to provide a simple sort by name function for playlists and albums and other categories. I don’t understand why Spotify cannot or will not implement these things quickly or, in the case of shuffle, at all.  But I’ve had enough. I’m closing my Spotify account. I simply do not understand how such a seemingly talented development team can be so incompetent. But I’m doing giving it any money. Good riddance. \n\nCasual Listener\n\nSpotfy's ability to shuffle/randomise remains a blight on the program and doesn't work *AT ALL*.  If the post that started this thread was actually implemented back in 2014, then it's a regression.  As others have said: this is computer science 101.  Your randomisation is irritatingly bad, and like the post before me, there's a good chance if this doesn't get fixed, I'll just cancel.  I even made a video of it.\n\n\nBefore I knew of this \"improvement\" I sent (today, July 28, 2019) this complaint to Spotify Support regarding the CURRENT Shuffle feature. Frankly, the Shuffle feature is still very inadequate. (note: the email was a request for 3 improvements to their app. Following is my second suggestion only):  2) Improved ‘Shuffle’ feature. This feature does a crummy job of shuffling, it only seems to shuffle a few tracks around but leaves most tracks in sequence.\n\n\n\nCasual Listener\n\nYour shuffle function still sucks.\n\n\nThis has been a reported issue for 7 years now, and the last update was \"we won't play the same author too close together.\"\n\n\nProper shuffle/randomisation is computer science 101. This means there is clearly some ulterior motive for Spotify's behaviour. I mean: your software sucks, but even a child can write shuffle functions.\n\n\nMy theory is that you get different amounts from different labels/studios for different songs, and you weight them according to the amount of money you can make cramming the same songs down our throats until we hate our own music selections.\n\n\nMy most played playlist has 600 songs in it.  I have heard dozens of them dozens of times.  Many of them I've never heard.  Not once.\n\n\nI think Spotify doesn't actually play songs in a playlist in a random way. I have a playlist with more than 1700 songs, with hundreds of artists. Often, Spotify plays the same artist if not in the sequence (which has already happened) with few songs between reproductions. It is also not uncommon to replay songs from a playlist that have been played before. And that, if we think about a universe of hundreds of artists, as in the case of my playlist, is not appropriate. Okay, if I were to think in a random order, that means \"any song\", but one has to imagine a minimum \"intelligence\" of a random reproduction, not repeating an artist before reproducing another one that has not yet reproduced. And repeating songs, then, is ridiculous. You could associate the user who is playing the song, and check which artists and which songs have already been played by the user, to avoid repetition (just like the iPhone does, for example).\n\n\nAfter trying every ridiculous troubleshooting option to fix \"shuffle\", I've concluded that Spotify plays the artists and songs SPOTIFY wants to play.  For a playlist with well over a hundred different artists and several hundred songs, I can predict which songs will play with nearly 95% accuracy.  I suppose they have valid business reasons for playing the same 3 David Bowie songs EVERY time I shuffle the playlist.  I'm sure Apple is guilty of the same, but hopefully their favorites are slightly different.  This thread is 4 years old, time to bail.\n\nAbout 4 weeks ago I noticed that I was hearing a lot fewer ads, but the playlist tracks on my free account kept defaulting to shuffle.  \nIf this is an incentive to switch to Premium, fine. But this is quite a major shift in Spotify's working model; has this been advertised at all? I've been going loopy this past few weeks wondering why my playlists weren't playing in order, trying to work out if my devices were faulty.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9623640179634094}
+{"content": "Great Cooking: Not As Hard As You Think!\n\nAre you a lover of many types of food? Do you mind yourself craving sweets? Are you crazy about unusual ethnic dishes? Would you like to be able to cook these dishes in your own kitchen? Well, stop day dreaming about it and start cooking! Use the following tips and learn how to make wonderful meals.\n\n\nApples are used in cooking mostly during the fall, but you must make sure they are properly kept so that they do not rot. To properly store them, you should keep them in a plastic bag and in a cool temperature. You must still keep an eye out on the apples because one apple that is rotten can spoil the whole bag.\n\nThey are known to soak up water like a sponge. Instead, get a wet, clean cloth and wipe off the mushroom by hand.\n\nIt is not always easy to remember the proper grilling times for all meats. It is recommended that you use a reliable meat thermometer to ensure proper cooking inside the meat; a digital thermometer would give you very accurate readings. Meat thicker than 1.5 inches should be cooked under a closed grill.\n\nWhen you are making chicken stock, think big. If you cook a big pot of stock, you can freeze it for later. Homemade chicken stock makes a great base for casseroles, soups, stews, and many other wonderful dishes. To store your homemade stock, let it cool, pour it into a freezer bag, and stick it in the freezer.\n\nSauteing vegetables in a little chicken broth is a healthful way to cook them. Broth adds flavor to the vegetables while reducing the quantity of oil necessary for sauteing. This makes for a delicious way to prepare veggies.\n\nAlways make sure you measure the cooking oil! To lower the fat you use when cooking, make sure to measure the oil you use as opposed to just pouring it straight into the pan. This way, you know exactly how much fat you are adding to your dish.\n\n\n\nPlace unripened fruits in a plastic bag that is perforated right after you buy them. As fruits ripen, ethylene gas is released. When they are placed in a perforated bag, the air can circulate, which ensures the ethylene gas is absorbed, so the fruit retains its great taste.\n\n\nIf you apply the tips you have just read, you will be able to cook much better meals. Be bold; experiment with new flavors and spices. You may even com across a food that will become your favorite while doing this. The ideas from these article, combined with your own innate creativity, will have you preparing interesting, savory dishes in no time!", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5780158042907715}
+{"content": "Washington Law Review\n\n\nAnn T. Wilson\n\n\nThe number of divorced parents has increased dramatically since 1970. Consequently, the number of custody disputes has risen. In our increasingly mobile society, it is not surprising that many of these disputes occur across state lines. Extended litigation creates additional uncertainty and instability for children involved in these disputes. In response to this growing problem, Congress enacted the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act of 1980 (PKPA). The PKPA requires that state courts enforce and not modify the child custody determinations of other states. The duty to enforce arises if the initial custody determination meets certain conditions. 6 Despite the existence of the PKPA, interstate custody disputes continue to be a problem, and parents have sought resolution of these disputes in federal court. Congress did not explicitly create a private, federal right of action to enforce the PKPA's provisions. The federal courts are divided over whether litigants are entitled to enforce the PKPA in federal court. Those courts concluding that the Act does not create a cause of action in federal court are correct in their interpretation of the PKPA. However, the states have not dealt effectively with interstate child custody disputes and the underlying problem remains unsolved. For these reasons, this Comment recommends that Congress amend the PKPA to allow federal court enforcement of custody determinations in limited circumstances.\n\nFirst Page", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9468927383422852}
+{"content": "January 4\n\nMidwest Book Review on The Soul of an Addict\n\n\nRead the entire review here.\n\nThen buy the book here!\n\nDecember 1\n\n“A Most Practical Book”\n\n\n–Suzy Kanode, Pastor and Spiritual Director\n\nCheck out The Soul of an Addict today!\n\nNovember 11\n\nDo You See This Person?\n\n\nNovember 4\n\nDeja Vu All Over Again\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChamberlain came crawling from Munich\nWith one piece of paper. He waved at the camera.\nPeace in our time, Oh thank you Herr Hitler.\nTell that to the Polish. Tell that to the Jews!\n\n\nNovember 2\n\n\n\nIt’s All About Me\n\n\n\n\nCultural Blindness\n\n\n\n\nA Nationwide Problem\n\n\n\n\n\nKeeping It Human\n\n\n\nWhere We Begin\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOctober 30\n\nHow Did We Get Here? Part 4: Cultural Differences\n\nOne of the aspects we rarely consider in American politics is culture. We ignore culture because of the myth that America is just one culture. But it isn’t. New England and New York, geographically close, are worlds apart culturally. And the South and the West are different again. California is it’s own unique collection of cultures, with the northern part of the state differing from the south.\n\nWhile it’s difficult to generalize America’s regional cultures, there is one distinct pattern: urban and rural cultures are very different from one another.\n\nTied to the Land\n\nAs my last post explained, many historical rural occupations are tied to the land. Agriculture, mining, manufacturing– even modern additions like prisons and casinos– are stationary. This has been true been ever since agriculture was invented. Rural people tend to be stationary. They develop cohesive communities where everyone knows everyone, and has for generations.\n\nWealth is often measured in land. Historically, this was because more land meant more income from production. But land has its own intrinsic value, too, and not just in financial terms. When you live in the home your grandparents built, or when your ancestors are buried nearby, there’s a psychological connection that cannot be duplicated.\n\nIn such an environment, change is not always welcomed. But the interstate system that began in the 1950s brought change, which continues to this day. Commuters from the city move to rural areas, bringing their urban culture, their urban demands, and sometimes their urban problems. One of the most difficult conflicts is when city folks who have relocated to rural community begin to demand city services like streetlights and sidewalks.\n\nYet there’s an even deeper conflict that often remains unspoken: “We don’t know these people.” Yes, we may meet each other. But we haven’t grown up together, known each other’s parents and grandparents, and developed a bond of respect and mutual responsibility that comes with facing survival together. Don’t get me wrong: there are feuds and judgements galore in a rural town. But when our roof cracked under four feet of wet snow when I was a kid, even neighbors we didn’t like came out in the middle of the night to shovel off the snow.\n\nBut our neighbors didn’t live too close,. They lived their lives, and we lived ours. If one of them wanted to put up a ramshackle building in their backyard, who cared? We might snicker, but we wouldn’t protest. Space offered protection from whatever eyesores they (or we) might erect. Your life was, at least ostensibly, your business. People might gossip, but were unlikely to interfere. Of course, anything too outrageous would be remembered and retold for at least two generations!\n\nNow imagine the relationship we had with our police– one part-time officer in those days. He was our neighbor. His job was to keep the peace– and generate revenue by writing speeding tickets for out of state tourists who were in a hurry. He knew everyone. He didn’t want trouble. I doubt he ever pulled his gun in the line of duty, except perhaps to deal with wayward wildlife.\n\nThis is not to say life was idyllic in a small town. Alcoholism and spousal and child abuse occurred, most often unseen. The school bus driver was having an affair with a local farmer– a badly kept secret. And poverty was rampant, even if most were too proud to admit it. These, too, are characteristics of rural culture: we keep up appearances, even when everyone knows the truth, simply because everyone knows you.\n\nUrban Transience\n\nThings were different in Los Angeles. I learned quickly that reaching for the glove box to have your registration ready when you got pulled over, the polite thing to do in a small town, was a bad idea in the city. That was the first time I had a gun pointed at my head. Because in the city, no one knows anyone. In 25 years and over a dozen moves, I rarely knew my neighbors. The cops didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them. And because they didn’t know me, I was a potential threat.\n\nTwo urban friends were shocked when they visited me in a small town some years later as I talked to a couple of sheriff’s deputies at my home. “That was amazing!” one said. “You talked to them for almost 20 minutes– and they never once put their hands on their guns!”\n\nThat was the response of two white-collar professionals. Perhaps you can imagine how people of color experience the police in a city. One friend, who is black, had her 15-year-old, honor student son put face down on the pavement in his own driveway because the police thought he didn’t belong in that neighborhood. Another, also black, was beaten with a baseball bat by her neighbors– and she got arrested.\n\nIn my years in the city, I didn’t know my neighbors because I gravitated toward people with common interests. That’s how it works. Surfers hang out with surfers. People who fish find each other. So do people who drink. Liberals hang out with liberals. There are literally millions of people in a relatively small space. You don’t have to be friendly with your neighbors.\n\nAnd people aren’t tied to the land. In fact since cities were invented, they have attracted the landless. This means people are more likely to move from place to pace for jobs or cheaper housing.\n\nBecause they don’t know each other– and because they are more mobile and can relocate if things get bad– they have less sense of responsibility to each other. I knew an accountant who was great at getting clients but terrible at doing the work. He remained successful because there was an endless pool of potential clients. And when I offered to help an old lady carry her groceries up the stairs, she gave me a quizzical look and observed, “You’re not from here, are you.”\n\nNot surprisingly, crime rates tend to be higher in urban areas. There are other contributing factors, including dense areas of poverty, despair that leads to drug and alcohol use, and greater availability of opportunity.\n\nAnd this leads to a strange paradox: people in the city want things to change for the better in a general sense, but are less likely to help their neighbor.\n\nThere are advantages to the city. The economics of scale make many things easier, including making a living. There are services that a small town can’t support, which is why, for example, autism rates are 10% lower and diagnosed at a later stage of development in rural areas as compared with urban, and autism services are more difficult to come by. And it’s why rural people often have to travel to a city for more specialized medical treatment.\n\nAnd in the city there are people with your interests, no matter how obscure they might be. Stamp collectors have huge gatherings. Model railroaders build modules and join to link hundreds together at a time. No matter your hobby, in a city of millions there will be at least hundreds with the same interest.\n\nThe Chasm Between Worlds\n\nI could write a book on rural-urban differences. But here’s one last example. In the city, if you don’t lock your door and someone breaks in, that’s your fault. Not locking your door is carelessness, and you’ll get very little sympathy. But in many rural communities, people still don’t lock their doors– and they don’t want to. They want their neighbor to be able to get an egg out of their fridge if needed. Some even leave their car running while the shop at the grocery store or pick up their mail. If someone breaks in and steals from them, they see it as an assault on their community and their culture. And neither group can comprehend how the other lives that way.\n\nHopefully this post has highlighted a few of the more important differences in culture. And these are important, because without understanding culture we can’t understand the political symbols being wielded. We have to know the underlying story behind the symbols.\n\nTake abortion, for example. To urban liberals, it’s a symbol of women’s freedom and casting off the strangling yoke of religion. But to rural conservatives, it is a symbol of instability for family and community. To even begin to discuss the issue, we have to understand what the it means to the person holding the opinion!\n\nOr guns: to an urban dweller, guns are scary because you don’t know the person who has one (because you don’t know anyone outside your own circle of friends). And you don’t trust them because you don’t trust anyone you don’t know. And gun crime tends to be higher to begin with. That’s reality in the city. But for a rural person, who lives in a place where gun crime may be almost unknown, banning guns says, “You don’t trust me!” And in a rural community, reputation and trust are everything.\n\nI could make this list much longer but I believe I’ve made my point: There is no single American culture. Much of our political divisiveness stems from a simple cultural misunderstanding– from the chasm between two worlds that neither recognizes is different.\n\nOctober 29\n\nHow Did We Get Here? Part 3: The Environment\n\nThe greatest threat to our nation just may be climate change. Yet many conservatives, especially rural conservatives, don’t believe it exists. Or they don’t believe it’s caused by human activity. With almost unanimous scientific consensus that climate change is real and human-caused, how can rural people deny it? The answer is simple: They can’t afford to.\n\nOf course, there’s a little more to it than that. They are skeptical of science, and for good reasons. Environmentalism in general has often taken a combative approach to rural America, sometimes from woefully-uneducated viewpoints. Economic policy, supposedly based in science, has left them poorer. And there’s also been a shift in conservative values from preservation to short-term gain.\n\nThe Remaking of Conservatism\n\nAs a child, I grew up in one of the most conservatives states. Back then, conservatives believed in preservation– of tradition, resources, community, and wealth. You saved your money. You preserved the land for your children. And you helped your neighbors because they would help you when you needed it. These are values at least as old as the first European settlements.\n\nBut that changed. President Reagan ushered in an era of deficit spending, self-centeredness, and short-term profits. The reasons for this exceed the scope of this post. But they changed the landscape of American politics, in part by changing the economic landscape.\n\nSince 1980 the economy has generally been more favorable to resource exploitation for profit of major corporations. This hasn’t always been a partisan issue, either. President Obama, a Democrat, lifted the ban on offshore oil drilling.\n\nLikewise debt, rather than something to be avoided unless absolutely necessary, has become a good thing. President Reagan was the first big spender, almost tripling the national debt. This was the largest non-war increase in American history. But Presidents Bush (43) and Obama also raised the deficit by historic amounts (54% and 74% respectively). President Trump, despite his promise to eliminate the national debt, has added 36% in just the three years before Covid hit.\n\nAmerican consumers are also encouraged to spend more than they make. The Federal Reserve panics when Americans save too much. That’s how the economy stays afloat: it only works if we all spend more than we have.\n\nThis leaves those at the bottom of the economic pyramid struggling to survive. Environmental preservation becomes a luxury they cannot afford.\n\nBad Environmentalism\n\nIll-conceived environmental policies haven’t helped matters. One of the best known is the campaign to save the wild mustang. It’s a campaign that sells well: wild, majestic horses being removed from their land and slaughtered for dog food at the behest of evil cattle ranchers. But of course it’s not that simple.\n\nThe wild mustang is an invasive species, introduced (like so many others) by European colonists. It consumes range land that would otherwise be available not only for cattle, but for native species. Managed grazing can actually improve rangelands. In balance, wild mustangs could coexist on the range with other species. But they are not in balance. The Bureau of Land Management, which is responsible for maintaining the herds, estimates that 72,000 mustangs live on land that can support only 26,000. The result: range land can’t support other species like antelope and deer, much less managed grazing by small ranchers whose living depends on access to these federal lands.\n\nThis is a good place to recall that the federal government owns most of the land in the American West, including 87% of Nevada, 65% of Utah, 62% of Idaho, and 53% of Oregon. Federal land use policies remain a huge issue in these states and others.\n\nBut wild horses aren’t the only issue. Other local issues feed contempt for environmental policies. For example, the Utah Prairie Dog is listed as an endangered species. By law, any prairie dog on your land cannot be killed, but must be relocated. Where they can be relocated remains a mystery, and there is no money to pay for relocation. Yet an infestation can ruin grazing land in a matter of months. Over the course of two years, I watched a breeding pair move to a 20 acre field and expand into a colony of dozens, devastating all the vegetation on what had been healthy range land.\n\nExamples like this abound: decisions driven by passionate but uninformed people with little knowledge of or regard for local realities.\n\nClean Energy\n\nJohn was a computer expert who lived in a small rural town. For years, he did computer repairs and other small jobs. His wife worked as a waitress. They barely scraped by supporting their four children. Then the oil boom started in North Dakota. He began commuting, three weeks on and two weeks off. And he made four times as much money as he had before.\n\nA year later, a company began putting in solar panels on plots of land ranging from 10 to 40 acres. They hired hundreds of employees to put them in. The jobs lasted up to two years. Then they ended. It takes far fewer employees to maintain solar panels than it does to install them.\n\nThis is the dilemma of clean energy. It doesn’t require constant extraction. From an environmental standpoint, that’s great. But from an employment standpoint, it’s a problem– especially in rural areas already short on jobs.\n\nConsider the campaign against coal, often considered one of the dirtiest fuels. Coal mining employs about 52,000 people nationwide– not a significant number. But 30,000 of these are in West Virginia alone, and coal contributes over $6.5 billion to the state’s economy. That’s roughly 10% of the state’s GDP!\n\nSimilarly, 20% of Wyoming’s employment is in the oil industry, along with 12% in Alaska and 10% in New Mexico.\n\nWhen we talk about a shift to clean energy, the obvious question is, “What are these folks going to do?” There are vague promises of tech jobs and retraining, which may or may not be practical for the education level of those involved– if these jobs materialize at all. But, in an environment where non-energy jobs are scarce, people worry not so much about the future as about putting food on the table today. A call for clean energy is a call to devastate the economy of several states and eliminate good-paying jobs in the areas that most need them.\n\nShifty Science\n\nWe should not forget that many of the policies that have challenged rural America were touted as based in science. From globalization to endangered species, from clean energy to the deficit economy, science– at least as it has been wielded by those with political power– has not been kind to rural people.\n\nAre many rural people skeptical? Yes, for obvious reasons. They’ve been burned already. But more importantly, they are desperate and afraid. And the answers they’ve been given by those who promote these policies fail to address their needs.\n\nOctober 28\n\nHow Did We Get Here? Part 2: The Economy\n\nA 108-foot yacht docked at Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles.\n\nAs our population shifted from rural to urban, so did our economic profile. Two main shifts were at play. First, the national economy overall shifted from production to services. Second, as tax rates dropped, the wealthy became wealthier much faster than the rest of us. Whether we like it or not, both of these trends contributed to where we are now.\n\nThe Service Economy\n\nConsider the change from production to services. A production economy requires a large investment in fixed assets: land, buildings, and equipment. It’s stationary, which means it is tied to the land. This is obviously the case for farming and mining. But even manufacturing plants are difficult to relocate. A production economy tends to favor a geographically fixed population and availability of land, which fits the profile of rural America.\n\nA service economy, on the other hand, tends to require fewer assets. Yes, there are cars, vans, and trucks– all mobile by definition. There may be certain pieces of large equipment. But in general a service business can be relocated much more easily than a factory, farm, or mine. And service businesses require less money to start. What they need most is a ready market of customers, making them ideally suited to an urban environment. Service jobs have tended to grow faster and be more lucrative in urban areas than in rural places where there are fewer customers to service.\n\nGlobalization has also affected job distribution. Yes, it has flooded our markets with cheaper goods, which is good. Unless you’re competing with them for a living. The same asset-heavy businesses most often found in rural areas– manufacturing, farming, and mining– now have to compete with goods produced with far cheaper labor overseas. A typical worker in a Mexican maquiladora plant makes 80 cents an hour. A typical worker in a clothing factory in Sri Lanka makes $2 per day. Workers in some other countries make even less.\n\nThis trend has helped drive the shift toward a service economy, which provides for needs that cannot be filled from a distance. But for rural workers, globalization has meant falling incomes. Manufacturing has moved overseas, and locally-owned stores are replaced by Wal-Mart, Staples, and Home Depot. Those who once worked for themselves and employed others now work for minimum wage at the local chain store.\n\nWealth Concentration\n\nAt the same time, wealth has migrated upward to the wealthiest Americans. As the graph below shows, the share of income among the poorest Americans has dropped by about 10%. But the most dramatic change is that the share of income taken home by the wealthiest families has almost doubled, while the share belonging to the middle class has fallen by a third.\n\n\nIncomes overall are gradually rising, so this hasn’t made as much difference in service industries. But in rural areas, where wealth is measured in assets, this has created a concentration not just of money but of land as well. The resulting power imbalance has had far-reaching effects. Farm subsidies, supposedly intended to help the average American farmer, flow overwhelmingly into the pockets of a handful of giant agricultural corporations. This gives them an unfair advantage over the family farm.\n\nNot surprisingly, the number of small farms has shrunk, often absorbed by these corporate farmers. This shift away from farming represents a massive change in rural economics. In 1953, nearly half of all rural Americans lived on farms. By 2003, that had fallen to 5%.\n\nThis shift away from small farms has left an employment vacuum, and led to a search for new sources of jobs. Three major sources have been casinos, prisons, and the military. According to a report by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), “There are now casinos in 140 nonmetro counties in 23 states… ”  The report also documents the rise in prison construction in rural areas. And, they report, rural people are 30% more likely to serve in the military than urban dwellers.\n\nWhat it means\n\nThese economic shifts have had significant impacts on rural Americans. Poverty rates are higher in rural areas, although nearly half of those who are poor work. Disability rates are also higher. PRB reports,\n\nPoverty hangs on in 444 nonmetro counties at levels higher than 20 percent. That means… that a fifth or more of the population lives in economic distress.\n\nThere is significant poverty across all ethnic groups. But the largest ethnic group among America’s poor is one we hear little about: non-Hispanic whites, who comprise 44% of America’s poor. It’s easy to overlook the magnitude of white poverty. As a percentage of ethnic group, only 10% of whites are poor compared with 25% of blacks, 24% of Native Americans, and 23% of Hispanics. But whites as a whole are a much larger group. That 10% translates to 19 million people!\n\nIt is easy to see how these economic shift begins to impact political views. Less corporate regulation (especially “morality” regulation), a justice system focused on incarceration rather than rehabilitation, and a well-funded military are not just planks in a platform for those living in rural America. They are the difference between employment and unemployment, between surviving and not surviving.\n\nOctober 25\n\nHow did we get here? Part 1: Where It Began\n\nAs the 2020 election approaches, tensions are rising. Each side is convinced that their party’s victory is the key to saving the nation. Unfortunately, both sides are wrong. Neither has an answer that will save us, because neither understands the needs of their opponent. Whoever wins, we face an increasingly divided nation that is, quite literally, unable to hear one another.\n\nHow do we move forward? We can’t, until we understand how we got here. This is the first in a series of posts to address exactly that.\n\nSo let’s start with some background. First, there has always been diversity in the vision for this nation. Ever since the Puritans settled in New England, bringing a vision of utopia based on social organization along religious lines, contrasting with the business-oriented approach of the early Virginia settlements, there has been no single vision for the future of this nation. (One might add that the Native Americans’ vision had little in common with that of either group of settlers.) Anyone who looks backward and sees a unified vision is mistaken. It’s a myth.\n\nThis divergence has become apparent several times over the course of our history. From the War for Independence, in which as many colonists opposed independence as supported it, to the Civil War, conflicting visions have occasionally flared to violence. And yes, the visions have evolved over the years. Few now seek a religious utopia in which only church members can vote, and fewer still favor a return to an economy based on enslaved labor.\n\nBut let’s move forward to the modern era when our own reality began to change. The most significant shift is that of rural to urban. According to the Census Bureau, in 1900, only 40% of Americans lived in urban areas. By 2010, that had increased to 80%. Yet the amount of urbanized land remains a tiny fraction: 82% of Americans live in just 2% of the nation’s land area.\n\nYet there’s a potential misunderstanding here: rural population is not shrinking. In fact, it’s growing— from 53 million in 1953 to 59 million in 2003. It’s just not growing as fast as urban population.\n\nSo What?\n\nWhat does this demographic shift have to do with where we’re at today? Everything. We may argue about health care, abortion, guns, and immigrants, but those aren’t really the issues. The most important thing I learned about conflict analysis during my time in Sri Lanka was this:\n\nIt’s never about what they say it’s about.\n\nSo what is it about? Jobs, money, culture, and above all, political power.\n\nIn a series of posts this week, I’ll explore the real issues that divide our nation. Because unless we understand what it’s really about, we can’t even begin to solve the mess we’re in.\n\nSeptember 26\n\nWhy We’re Losing the War on Drugs\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIs it even possible to stamp out the availability of drugs?\n\nI say no, and here’s why.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThere’s got to be a better way.\n\nAnd there is, but we’re not going to like it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDoing Something Different\n\n\n\n\n\nIt’s time to do something  different.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7105550765991211}
+{"content": "Russia vs Brazil 2011 Davis Cup World Group Play-off\n\nRussia vs Brazil 2011 Davis Cup World Group Play-off\n\nJune 16 - 18,\n\nThe teams competed for the World Group berth on 16-18 September. The match featured 5 plays: 4 singles and 1 doubles. The games were played during 3 days.\n\nAbout match\n\nThe second numbers of the teams played against the first players of the rivaling team on the opening day. The second day saw the doubles being played, and the first and second players of the teams faced each other on the final day. Every play consisted of 5 sets, and the final, fifth set was played without a tie-break. This way, according to the organisers, the suspense and intrigue remained till the closing day and kept spectators' interest.\n\n16 teams competed for the major trophy, Davis Cup Trophy. Throughout the calendar year, from March to December, the winner should have played four matches.\n\nDavis Cup is the major men's team tennis event. The winner is awarded a silver cup, Davis Cup Trophy, named after Dwight F Davis, student of Harvard University who in 1900 donated the Cup to the organisers of the first match. The cup is a bowl-shaped sterling silver trophy that weighs more than 70 kg.\n\nAll projects", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6551418304443359}
+{"content": "Net of Indra : Large-scale Structure of the Universe\n\nFar away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wondrous net which has been woven by the cunning artificer, much like a spider’s web in its intricacy and loveliness upon which clings drops of dew.\nIn accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the net is hung in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions, and the artificer has placed a single glittering jewel in each vertex of the net. And since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. The jewels, glittering as stars of the first magnitude, hang there, suspended in the net, a dazzling sight to behold.\nIn the polished surface of each multifaceted jewel are reflected all the jewels that surround it, on and on into infinity, so that all the jewels are connected through their mutual reflections.\n\nAnd thus we see the interconnectedness of the cosmos, and how a change in one jewel can be reflected on into infinity, and affect the whole.\n\nThe metaphor of Indra’s Net is from the Buddhist Avatamsaka Sutra, for which there is a stunning corollary in modern astro physics….\n\n\nIlluminating the Void: Astronomers Observe Cosmic Web Filament Between Galaxies for First Time\nNovember, 2013\n\nBy analyzing the light from a distant quasar, a team of astronomers has made the first direct observation ever of one of the largest of structures in the Universe: a cosmic web filament.\n\nDecades of observations have shown the Universe’s structure to be hierarchical in nature. Stars are grouped together to form galaxies, which in turn form clusters and superclusters, and those superclusters are grouped together to create filaments—long threads of matter running through intergalactic space, interspersed with gigantic spaces of empty void. All the matter and energy in the Universe can be traced inside these filaments, creating a structure that observed from afar can be described as a cosmic “web.”\n\n\nSpooky Galaxy Web Reveals the Largest Structures in the Universe\nNovember, 2014 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n…… know that you are a sparkling jewel in Indra’s Net, as is every person around you. Every jewel is connected with all the other jewels in the net; every person is intimately connected with all the other persons in the universe. Each has an independent place within the net and we all reflect and influence each other. A change in one jewel—or person—produces a change, however slight, in every other. Realize, too, that the infinite reflections speak to the illusory nature of appearances. Appearances are not, in fact, reality, but only a reflection; the true nature of a thing is not to be captured in its appearance. However powerful that appearance might be, it is yet only a reflection of what is real.\n\nIn addition, whatever you do to one jewel affects the entire net, as well as yourself. You cannot damage one strand of a spider web without injuring the entire web, and you cannot damage one strand of the web that is the universe without injuring all others in it, whether that injury is known or unknown to them. This can work for good or ill because, of course, just as destructive acts affect the entire net, so do loving, constructive, compassionate acts affect the entire net. A single helpful act—even a simple act of kindness—will send positive ripples across the infinite net, touching every jewel, every person in existence.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7963057160377502}
+{"content": "AI and Ethics Presentaton Powerpoint\n\nI require a powerpoint presentation using the following outline. Powerpoint must be a minumum of 6 Minutes in length\n\n\nDon't use plagiarized sources. Get Your Custom Essay on\nAI and Ethics Presentaton Powerpoint\nJust from $13/Page\nOrder Essay\n\n\n\n\n\n· Introduction\n\nTechnology has helped us to move on from overworking\n\nourselves to making it easy by creating robots that do almost everything that\n\nhuman beings can do. The Question that is mostly asked is whether they are safe\n\nfor humans even with all its benefits. Concerns raised are mostly quaint, for\n\nexample, people argue that trains are too fast and telephones will completely\n\nchange humans because they destroy personal communication.\n\n· Body Points\n\n1. Ø Artificial Intelligence\n\nis understood as the man-made computerized system that has an intelligent\n\nbehavior or is able to achieve the set goal.\n\n2. Ø Humans cannot record a\n\nwide range of experiences while machines do it easily.\n\n3. Humans have the ability to choose depending on the changing\n\nsituation and choose what is relevant (Yapo, 2018).\n\n4. Machines do specifically what they are programmed to do\n\nwhich may result to decisions that are not comprehensible to humans.\n\n5. Ø AI is not completely\n\nsafe for decision making because some decisions require collective experiences\n\n(Piano, 2020).\n\n6. Ø Decision making should\n\nnot be left on the hands of programmed machines no matter how intelligent they\n\n\n7. Ø The decisions made\n\nshould have high standard of fairness, trust and equalness rather than\n\nstatistical accuracy.\n\n8. Ø AI machines end up\n\nlacking accountability and robustness hence not able to make decisions right in\n\na society (Hauer, 2018).\n\n9. Ø AI applications are used\n\nin sensitive sectors like medical diagnosis, financial institutions and\n\nmilitary services (Dignum, 2018).\n\n10. Ø This is a world where\n\nthings are changing and where complex decisions are made.\n\n\n\nData-driven processes should not completely rely on AI\n\nalgorithms because it will lead to biased decisions against our ethical values.\n\nThese algorithms are created by human beings who themselves are biased hence\n\nend up passing it to the algorithms they have created. AI applications are\n\nbeneficial to human beings but should be reviewed frequently and still have\n\nsomeone to look over them.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDignum, V., Baldoni, M., Baroglio, C., Caon, M., Chatila,\n\nR., Dennis, L., … & Micalizio, R. (2018, December). Ethics by design: Necessity or curse?. In\n\nProceedings of the\n\n2018 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI,\n\nEthics, and Society (pp. 60-66).\n\nHauer, T. (2018). Society and the second age of machines:\n\nalgorithms versus ethics. Society, 55(2), 100-106.\n\nPiano, S. L. (2020). Ethical principles in machine learning\n\nand artificial intelligence: cases from the\n\nfield and possible ways forward. Humanities and Social Sciences\n\n\n7(1), 1-7.\n\nYapo, A., & Weiss, J. (2018, January). Ethical\n\nimplications of bias in machine learning. In Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System\n\n\nHomework Writing Bay\n\nCalculate the price of your paper\n\nTotal price:$26\nOur features\n\nWe've got everything to become your favourite writing service\n\nNeed a better grade?\nWe've got you covered.\n\nOrder your paper", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6414388418197632}
+{"content": "Management & Organization\n\nBecome more inspiring, successful and important – find your WHY\n\nBy examining why, you do what you do, why your company exists and what it is you are really passionate about, you will become, like other people that are aware of their WHY, more successful, inspiring and important. This is according to Simon Sinek and his book Start with Why (2009).\n\nThe golden Circle\n\nTo illustrate how to become more conscious about your WHY and how the human brain normally functions, this simple model has been created:\n\nThe _Golden _Circle\n\nThe model in all its simplicity attempts to illustrate how we act, think and communicate.\n\nWHY – your purpose, your vision or cause. Why does your company exist, and why is it interesting to others?\n\nHOW – Your values. How do you do things differently or better than everyone else?\n\nWhat – Your products and services, your marketing, PR and sales.\n\nBy far, most people and organizations start on the outside and work their way in towards the center of The Golden Circle, when they think, act, communicate, sell etc., and there is a logical explanation for this: This way you are working your way from what is the easiest to understand towards describing the things that are most unclear. Everybody knows WHAT they are doing, and most know HOW, but few are able to answer WHY.\n\nAnd this is where Sinek believes that you should begin. According to him it makes a big difference starting with WHY:\n\nHave a clear WHY. Your HOW’s and WHAT’s must be based on and be connected to – even be inseparable from – your WHY.\n\n  • Have a clear WHY. Your HOWs and WHATs must be based on and be connected to – even be inseparable from – your WHY.\n\n  • Be disciplined about your HOWs. Make your values coherent to your WHY at all times. Be disciplined and consistent in to sticking to your values and principles.\n\n  • Consistently stick to your WHATs. In your products and services, marketing, PR and sales there must also be a consistency between WHY and HOW. If you are not consistent, your company will appear unauthentic.\n\nThe celery test\n\nTo make it work it's important that you always test HOW and WHAT according to WHY.\n\nBut how do you find out which HOWs and WHATs fit your organization? By conducting the celery test. When you get good advice or an idea for something new in your company, you must expose the idea or the advice to the celery test.\n\nSinek illustrates the test with a small story:\n\nYou are at a party where you are offered several pieces of good advice from some of the other guests attending the party. The first one believes that your organization lacks M&M’s, the next one believes that you lack rice milk. The third one recommends cookies, and the last one recommends celery. You listen to all of this good advice and the next time you go shopping, you buy it all. But what if you did not need it all? Then you are wasting your money. And as you stand in line at the supermarket with your cart full, nobody is able to see what you believe is right.\n\nBut if you know your WHY before participating in the party, it is a whole other situation. For example, when you know that your WHY is to always do things that are good for your body, you will still get all the good advice at the party. The difference is that the next time you go shopping, you only buy rice milk and celery.\n\nWhen you filter your decisions through your WHY, you will spend less time at the supermarket and also save money. And you're certain to gain value from all of your decisions. And most importantly: When you stand in the line at the supermarket holding rice milk and celery, everybody can see what you believe in. You communicate what you believe in (your WHY) through your actions (WHAT).\n\nIf your WHY is clearly pronounced, everyone in your organization is able to make decisions just as clear and precise as you. A WHY is a clear filter that every decision can be filtered through; hiring, partnerships, strategies and tactics. All should pass the celery-test.\n\nLoyalty, identification and product independency\n\nAccording to Simon Sinek the approach works because people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. There are many ways of reaching success, but only through identification with your “cause” (your WHY) will you gain long-term business success.\n\nThis method has a at least three advantages:\n\nAdvantage number 1. Emotional attachment.\nGive your customers a reason for what you do and you will create an emotional attachment that'll potentially create loyal customers, which, in some cases, goes a long way to show that they share your WHY.\n\nTake Apple for example who have been able to create a loyal group of customers that one might be tempted to call fans. Many of them are willing to stand in line for their products just to be able to say that they had their tablet, phone etc. first.\n\n Or think of Harley Davidson-fans that get the company’s logo tattooed on their arm. They do this because they identify with the Harley values. By getting a tattoo they tell the world that they live by the same values.\n\nAdvantage number 2. Affiliation\nEverybody has a strong desire to feel that we belong. Just consider, how you react when you are abroad and suddenly run into a countryman. We feel a sense of familiarity even though we don't know this person. A feeling like this does not arise when you tell what your product is and how you make it. In order to experience emotional attachment our brain demands a cause – a WHY – that we share. As an example consider how Apple’s WHY speak to innovative, creative people.\n\nAdvantage number 3. Product addiction\nCompanies that are based on their WHY are able to sell a range of products as long as they work in accordance with their vision. Apple doesn't limit themselves to selling computers they have a variety of products.\n\nHow to find your WHY\n\nYour WHY doesn't emerge from trying to picture what you want to achieve or from planning the appropriate strategy for achieving it. It doesn't materialize from market research or interviews with customers and employees. To find your WHY, you must look in the opposite direction.\n\nYou'll find your WHY by looking back. Like Apple’s WHY, which according to Sinek, came from the youth rebellion in the 60s and the 70s. Likewise your company’s WHY dates back to something from the past. Your childhood education, your experiences etc. As Sinek writes: “Finding your WHY is a process of discovery, not invention” (s. 214).\n\nAny organization is founded by a person or a group of people who had a wish of creating something bigger than themselves. It is this wish, this passion, you must identify – either in yourself or within your organization. To find your WHY is about something as simple as trusting your gut feeling.\n\nSo what is your company’s WHY? Why do you do what you do? What is your reason for getting up in the morning? According to Sinek there are great advantages to be found in the answers of these questions.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7241133451461792}
+{"content": "Read Best Sc-fi fantasy fantasy Novels Online 2021\n\nSc-fi fantasy fantasy\n\nSort by\n\n\nMaliah is 21 years old countryside girls. She was usually a good girl but after she met her first love Sean, she has changed a lots. She met him at the college fresher festival of her graduation. Sean was also from the same hometown but he loves to travel around and he met new peoples from different areas. He is so extroverted which was definitely opposite to Maliah. From the first meeting, Sean always flirty around her and became his girlfriend. He changed her behaviour and made Maliah worried about a lots. It made Maliah clingy and anxious person. After they finished their graduation, Sean send the breakup text and hide from her. It was the first disaster for her life. She drop her grade and couldn't get into her dream university for Post-graduate. Every things turned into turn into despair and she became numb. She felt herself as a trash. She realised and regret her time spending unnecessarily on him after the breakup. One day she pray to God that if the God gave him the chance to go back at the past, she would definitely be in a relationship with another guy who would treat her better because she deserved better. Suddenly, she wake up in her 17 years old body. It was like a dream and god granted her prayer. At this moment, she tried to skipped the chance to Sean but she met Ryan at the torment incident. He save her. From that moment, Maliah want to be friend with him and gave him his kindness act again as he was the her savior. But she was transferred to another college by her parent. Luckily, Ryan was her classmate and they become friends day by day. But, Maliah didn't knew that Ryan was spy and to collect the data record by the Higher authority as the college was listed in the corruption list. Everything was successful happened in the past, before Maliah came to the past but she didn't get full information about the incident as she wasn't transferred to that college in the past. But Ryan was caught and framed as a fruad by the hired authority i.e. the government. Now, Maliah was the girl from future and Ryan was with him. As Maliah always tried to closed to Ryan, what will be the fate for Ryan as well as Maliah at this time... *ALL THE CHARACTERS AND INCIDENTS WERE FICTIONAL AND FANTASY. THEY ARE NOT RELATED WITH HISTORICAL NOR PRESENT INCIDENTS.*\n\nShinheibi_Mangang · Teen\nNot enough ratings", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8409306406974792}
+{"content": "Read Best Witch protagonist Novels Online 2021\n\nWitch protagonist\n\nSort by\n\nWitches' Brew: The Garden\n\nHer family has always cared for the rose garden deep in the forest. They are the protectors, the keepers, the witches. Calla has always known she would have to take up the task of keeping the garden contained and while that part had never interested her she is eager to learn the secrets that it holds.\n\nDarcy606 · Fantasy Romance\nNot enough ratings", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.948532223701477}
+{"content": "Connect with us\n\nEastern Europe\n\nA Conflict No Longer Frozen: Why This Time Is Really Different\n\n\n\nAs one of the four ‘’frozen-conflicts’’ in the post-Soviet space entered its fourth decade, an unprecedented eruption of violence threatens the status quo of the last decades, confirming the belief that Nagorno-Karabakh is actually nowhere near as ‘’frozen’’. More specifically, on September 27, the fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan once again broke out around the contested territory of Nagorno Karabakh. Azerbaijan declared state of war and Armenia martial law. This time, Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, named Armenia’s withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh as the only precondition for terminating the offensive. According to reports, more than 230 people have already lost their lives from both sides during the first week of the fighting. As of now, the presence of drones, missile strikes and the shot down of an Armenian helicopter have been reported. Unlike usual violations of the ceasefires, the situation has yet to be shifted back towards diplomatic means, and the fighting has been prolonged.\n\nA strained atmosphere\n\nThe status quo-imposed by the Russian brokered cease-fire in 1994, favored Armenia, since Yerevan managed to keep the disputed area and its surrounding districts under its control. All these years there were a plethora of ceasefire violations, and over the last decade at an increasing rate. The highlight of these violations was in 2016, when more than 120 people lost their lives from both sides, at an incident that reminded the volatility of the current status quo. In what is known today as the ‘’Four-day war’’, Azerbaijan managed to seize small yet strategically valuable land, and up to 200 people on both sides were killed.\n\nFor years, the momentum has been increasingly favorable for Baku, due to its rapidly rising economy. Despite its economic overdependence on oil and gas exports, accounting for more than 90 % of its total exports and 75% of government’s revenues, and the rapid decline of oil prices in the last decade, its GDP growth averaged 8.54% since 2000. This has been reflected on its massive military expenditure. Indicatively, in 2015 Azerbaijan become the 2nd highest arms importer in Europe. As a result, the balance has fundamentally shifted since 1994, with Azerbaijan enjoying the upper hand both in military and economic means. Moreover, Baku remains the least isolated actor, given its multidimensional foreign policy. On the contrary, landlocked Armenia suffers from economic exclusion from regional projects due to Azerbaijan’s blockade. Diplomatically, remains relatively isolated and defensively relied on Russia, thanks to the presence of 5,000 Russian military personnel in its territory.\n\nOverall, the rapid militarisation, the rise of war rhetoric by both sides and increasing fire violations have not only stalled the resolution process but also led into a toxic and increasingly volatile atmosphere.\n\nAn unprecedented situation\n\nNevertheless, the current conflict should be considered as the gravest event since the implementation of the ceasefire in 1994, having two fundamental qualitative differences that should not be omitted, compared to the ‘’four-day war’’ of 2016.\n\nFirst, even though Azerbaijan’s previous offenses, including the one in 2016, appeared to serve mostly political goals, attempting to press Armenia towards a more flexible approach in the negotiations, the ongoing clash seems to serve primarily military goals. It demonstrated an active attempt to terminate the deadlock, following the refutation of early hopes brought by Pashinyan’s rise in power as the prime minister of Armenia. Indeed, the large scale of the current operation and the accelerating pace of the fighting indicate the prioritisation of military over political goals, and the most possible goal is the recapture of the two territories surrounding the disputed area that have witnessed the heaviest fighting, the districts of Fuzuli and Jabrayil. \n\nSecond, Turkey has stepped up with a direct involvement in the conflict, departing from its previous restrained stance as a political and diplomatic backer of Azerbaijan. Armenia announced that a Turkish F16 shot down an Armenian SU-25 last Tuesday. Despite Ankara’s denial, President Macron himself has vocally condemned Turkey’s role, explicitly stating that Syrian rebel fighters have been deployed by private Turkish security companies in support of Azerbaijan’s forces, confirming the early reports of the Syrian observatory for human rights  . Turkey’s active role in South Caucasus should not be examined in a vacuum. Instead it should be analysed under the broader prism of its current ongoing military presence in three other regional theaters: Iraq, Libya and Syria. Likewise, Libya and Syria, Turkey finds itself supporting opposite sides with Russia. Nagorno-Karabakh is expected to be added as another bargaining chip in its transactional foreign policy vis-a-vis both EU and Russia.\n\nThe way forward\n\nThe current international context and the lack of serious and credible US involvement has emboldened Erdogan’s ambitious leadership. Meanwhile, the EU or OSCE, through its intergovernmental Minsk group, have yet to achieve any tangible steps towards a lasting resolution. The EU has avoided applying any conflict-related conditionality, when dealing with Azerbaijan and Armenia through its ENP. While Russia remains the primary mediator, in an area long considered part of its near abroad doctrine, Turkey will continue exploring ways of increasing its leverage and its regional influence, in line with AKP’s ambitious pro-Islamic doctrine. However, its leadership is aware of Russia’s primacy in south Caucasus and will avoid risking any direct confrontation. Instead, Ankara will keep relying mostly on hybrid warfare tactics, seeking concrete trade-offs in other open fronts by either EU or Russia in exchange of a more constructive role toward conciliation.\n\nAs the fighting continues, the absence of talks creates an unprecedented situation. Therefore, it is necessary for the international community, the major mediators (France, Russia, USA) but also the EU to step up and move beyond verbal condemnation, presenting both leaderships with the concrete incentives that will force them back to the negotiating table.  Long omitted by the West, despite its strategic interest in terms of energy, migration and counter-terrorism, the situation in the South Caucasus presents the EU with a unique opportunity for ad-hoc coordination and selective re-engagement with Russia, on the grounds of common interest and in line with EU’s newest doctrine of ‘’principled pragmatism’’ and without downplaying its unresolved issues with the Kremlin.\n\nIoannis Alexandris is a political scientist, holder of an MA in International Relations from King's College London and a BA in Political Science & Public Administration from the University of Athens. Currently, he is working in the field of migration and asylum. He was previously based in Brussels, following a traineeship at the Council of the European Union. He has also worked as a freelance researcher and independent consultant. Among his key topics of interest are Foreign Policy Analysis, Geoeconomics, the Conflict-Development nexus and International Migration\n\nContinue Reading\n\nEastern Europe\n\nThorny path towards peace and reconciliation in Karabakh\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nContinue Reading\n\nEastern Europe\n\nDawn of great power competition in South Caucasus\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Western stance\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGeorgia’s position\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAuthor’s note: first published in dailysabah\n\nContinue Reading\n\nEastern Europe\n\nAn Impending Revolution\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nContinue Reading", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8359597325325012}
+{"content": "\n\nChapter 5 Conventional Exponential Smoothing\n\n\nThe reader interested in the topic of the history of exponential smoothing, how it was developed and what papers contributed towards the development of the field, can refer to the reviews of (Gardner 1985) and (Gardner 2006). They summmarise all the progress in the area of exponential smoothing up until 1985 and then until 2006.\n\n\nGardner, Everette S. 1985. “Exponential smoothing: The state of the art.” Journal of Forecasting 4 (1): 1–28. doi:10.1002/for.3980040103.\n\nGardner, Everette S. 2006. “Exponential smoothing: The state of the art-Part II.” International Journal of Forecasting 22 (4): 637–66. doi:10.1016/j.ijforecast.2006.03.005.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9937835931777954}
+{"content": "Do Stock Splits Increase a Company’s Value? - Rodgers & Associates\n\nDo Stock Splits Increase a Company’s Value?\n\nI’m often asked if I know of any stocks about to split their shares. The investor asking the question is usually under the impression that the value of their stock holding should increase after a split. There are some who believe a stock split can poten­tially increase the value because more investors could be inter­ested in buying a stock at $50 per share instead of one trading at $100 per share. Therefore, a $100 stock splitting 2 for 1 should increase in value. I have not read any research to support this theory.\n\nA stock split is when a company decides to increase the number of shares outstanding. The stock price is adjusted to reflect the increased number of shares, so the market capital­ization is the same after the split. A stock dividend is when a company decides to distribute stock to share­holders, rather than cash.\n\nCompanies histor­i­cally announced stock splits when shares rose above $100 per share, but stock splits rarely happen these days. Stock splits by companies in the S&P 500 faded since 2000, while those by companies in the Dow Jones Indus­trial Average are even less frequent.  Today about 41% of companies in the S&P 500 Index currently trade at a share price of $100 or more, but only 3 companies have split their shares in 2020. The lack of stock splits along with the strong stock market perfor­mance has combined to raise the average share price of companies in the S&P 500 Index to a record high.\n\nSome analysts believe the lack of stock splits is largely due to fewer retail investors. Most insti­tu­tional investors believe stock splits do nothing for the value of the company. They also worry that lower stock prices could encourage day traders. Keeping the stock price above $100 per share may lower volatility if the day traders look elsewhere.\n\n\nOrigi­nally published October 2013", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9254000186920166}
+{"content": "Вы находитесь на странице: 1из 11\n\n\n\n\n5.1 Definition of Q.A. 5.2 Microbiological testing 5.3 What are the other options? 5.4 The HACCP concept 5.5 The ISO-9000 series certification of the International Standards Organization\n\n5.1 Definition of Q.A.\n\nFrom the outset, a distinction needs to be drawn between Quality Assurance and Quality Control as the difference between them has been blurred due to indiscriminate use of these two terms.\n\nAccording to the International Standards Organization (ISO), Quality Assurance (Q.A) consists of all those planned and systematic actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that a product or service will satisfy given requirements for quality. In other words it is a strategic management function which establishes policies, adapts programmes to meet established goals and provides confidence that these measures are being effectively applied. Quality Control (Q.C) on the other hand consists of the operational techniques and activities that are used to fulfil requirements for quality. It is a tactical function which carries out the programmes established by Q.A. Proper handling of fish between capture and delivery to the consumer is a crucial element in assuring final product quality. Standards of sanitation, method of handling and the time/temperature of holding fish are all significant quality factors. With a few exceptions, fish are considered free of pathogenic bacteria of public health significance when first caught. The presence of bacteria harmful to man generally indicates poor sanitation in handling and processing and the contamination is almost always of human or animal origin. Salmonellae have been found in fish washed with polluted water and from fish-holds washed with polluted water. Contamination may take place when the fish are gutted at the quayside in a dirty harbour. In many BOBP countries, shrimp are sun-dried at the landing place and are targets for contamination by bird droppings and animal excreta. Sun-dried materials are known to have a high rate of contamination with salmonellae.\n\n5.2 Microbiological testing\n\n5.2.1 Microbiological standards to be met\n\nA number of microbiological tests of fish and fish products are used by authorities to check that the microbiological status is satisfactory. The purpose of these tests is to detect pathogenic bacteria (Salmonella, Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli) or indicator organisms of fecal pollution (fecal coliforms, fecal streptococci) or other types of general contamination or poor handling practices (coliform bacteria, faecal streptococci, total viable count). Microbiological testing can be costly and time-consuming. Estimation of bacterial numbers in fish is frequently used to retrospectively assess microbiological quality or to assess the presumptive safety of the product. The number, size and nature of the samples greatly influence the results and even the most elaborate sampling cannot guarantee the safety of the product. However, it is still worthwhile; if substandard consignments are found, the psychological effect on the seller is high, especially if the consignment is deemed for export to countries that have established microbiological criteria.\n\n5.2.1 Microbiological standards to be met\n\nSampling plan and recommended microbiological limits for seafood (ICMSF 1986)\n\nTable 5-1 Plan Case Class 1 4 2 5 1 4 2 5 8 2 6 9 3 6 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 3 3 2 2 2 no. of samples 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 no. of positive results 3 3 2 2 3 3 2 2 0 2 1 0 0 0 Limit per gram or per cm2 m 5 x 10 11 5 x 10 11 106 11 5 x 10 11 10\n3 5 5 5\n\nProduct Fresh and frozen fish\n\nTest APC E. Coli\n\nM 107 500 107 500 107 500 107 500 106 500 -\n\nPrecooked breaded fish APC E. Coli Frozen raw crustaceans APC E. Coli Frozen cooked crustaceans APC E. Coli S. aureus Cooked, chilled, and frozen crabmeat APC E. Coli S. aureus Fresh and frozen bivalve molluscs APC E. Coli\n\n105 11 10\n\n5 x 105 16\n\n\nSource: Import food. 1990, Japan Food Hygiene Association (1991)\n\nTable 5-3: MICROBIOLOGICAL TESTS INCLUDED IN THE MICROBIOLOGICAL STANDARDS AND REGULATIONS OF A TYPICAL EU COUNTRY France Raw fish, fillets, fresh/frozen 1, 2, 7, 10, 11* Semi preserves pasteurized non-pasteurized Smoked salmon Crustacean raw cooked 1, 3, 7, 11 1, 3, 7, 11 1, 2, 7, 10, 11 1, 2, 7, 10, 11 1, 2, 7, 10, 11\n\ncooked and peeled Molluscs live raw pre-cooked\n\n* The figures refer to tests for: 1. Aerobic plate count (TVC) 2. Coliforms 3. Fecal coliforms 4. Fecal streptococci 5. Enterococci 6. E. Coli 7. Salmonella 8. Shigilla sp. 9. Total enterobacteriaceae 10. Staphylococcus aureus 11. Anaerobic sulfite red.\n\n1, 3, 7, 10 11 3, 4, 7 1, 3, 7, 10, 11\n\nTable 5.4: STANDARDS AND CRITERIA OF FISH AND FISHERY PRODUCTS UNDER THE FOOD SANITATION LAW, JAPAN. CLASSIFICATION Fish paste products (fish sausage and ham) STANDARDS AND REMARKS CRITERIA - Coliform organism: There are also processing & negative/g preservation standards - Nitrite radical: 0.05 g/kg or less - Nitrite radical: 0: 005 g/kg or less - Viable Bacteria count: 1.0 x 105/g or less - Coliform organism: negative/0.01 g Only frozen octopus. There are also processing & preservation standards*\n\nSalted salmon roe Boiled octopus\n\nRaw oyster for uncooked\n\n- Viable Bacteria count: There are also processing & 5.0 x 104/g or less preservation standards - E. coli MPN/100 g: 230 or less\n\nTable 5-5: COMPILATION OF LEGAL LIMITS FOR HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES IN FISH AND FISHERY PRODUCTION IN JAPAN ITEMS Mercury (Hg) STANDARDS 0.4 ppm (Total Hg) 0.3 ppm (Methyl Hg) * weekly intake is supposed not to be above 170 g methyl Hg for an average adult weighing 50 kg. Diets of pregnant women and children should be more strictly controlled. PCB Dieldrin (including aldrin), pesticide Paralytic shellfish poison, Diarrhetic shellfish poison, (shellfish poison) Offshore fish (edible portion): 0.5 ppm Inland sea fish (edible portion): 3 ppm 0.1 ppm (hard-shelled mussels only) 4 MU 0.005 MU * 4 Mouse Unit (MU) _ 80 ug/100 g (saxitoxin)\n\nThe following table will serve as a guide for the harbour manager. Table 5-6: GUIDELINES FOR PATHOGENS Total viable count Not to exceed 100,000 per gram Salmonella E. Coli S. aureus Not to be detected in 25g of meat Less than 10 per gram Less than 1000 per gram\n\nFaecal coliforms None While cost considerations and the availability of testing facilities locally may preclude the establishment of microbiological testing in the fishery harbour complex, other methods should be used by the harbour master to assure a reasonable degree of protection for both consumer and supplier against risks associated with microbial contamination within the harbour complex.\n\n5.3 What are the other options?\n\nPreventive strategies based on thorough analysis of prevailing conditions are much more likely to provide an assurance of fish quality. The Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system is one such strategy. In recent years a number of other quality systems have been introduced, such as certification under an Internationally Accepted Standard (ISO 9000\n\nseries) and Total Quality Management (TQM). The main reasons to implement such quality systems are:\ni. To improve the efficiency and profitability of their operations and the quality of the product.\n\nii. To satisfy a requirement from the customer/importer. iii. To provide defence in legal actions iv. To keep up with the competition.\n\n5.4 The HACCP concept\n\n5.4.1 HACCP system for fresh and frozen fish products 5.4.2 Application of HACCP system in fishery harbours 5.4.3 Checklist for ensuring seafood safety 5.4.4 Advantages of the HACCP system\n\nThe system is based on the recognition that microbiological hazards exist at various points, but measures can be taken to control these hazards. The anticipation of hazards and the identification of control points are therefore key elements of HACCP. The system offers a rational and logical approach to control food hazards and avoid the many weaknesses inherent in the inspectional approach. Once established, the main effort of the quality assurance programme will be directed towards the Critical Control Points (CCPs) and away from endless final product testing. This will assure a higher degree of safety and at less cost. The main elements of the HACCP system are:\nIdentify potential hazards. Assess the risk of occurrence. Determine the Critical Control Points (CCPs) Establish criteria to be met to ensure that each CCP is under control. Establish a monitoring system. Establish corrective action when CCP is not under control. Establish procedures for verification. Establish documentation and record-keeping.\n\nIdentification of potential hazards: Hazards have been defined as the unacceptable contamination, growth or survival of bacteria in food that may affect food safety or quality (spoilage) or the unacceptable production or persistence in foods of substances such as toxins, enzymes or products of microbial metabolism. In other words a hazard is a biological, chemical\n\nor physical property that may cause food to be unsafe for consumption. For inclusion in the list, hazards must be of such a nature that their elimination or reduction to acceptable levels is essential for the production of safe food. Hazard analysis requires two essential ingredients. The first is the appreciation of the pathogenic organisms that could harm the consumer or cause spoilage. The second is a detailed understanding of how these hazards could arise. In order to be meaningful, hazard analysis must be quantitative. This requires an assessment of both severity and risk. Severity refers to the serious consequences when a hazard occurs, while risk is an estimate of the likelihood of a hazard occurring. It is only the risk that can be controlled. Determine the CCPs: A CCP is a location, procedure or processing step at which hazards can be controlled. CCP1 is that which will ensure full control of a hazard and CCP2 is that which will minimize but not assure full control. Within the context of HACCP, the meaning of \"control\" at a CCP means to minimize or prevent the risk of one or more hazards by taking specific preventive measures. If an identified hazard has no preventive measure at a certain step then no CCP exists at that step. Establish criteria, target levels and tolerances for each CCP: To be effective, a detailed description of all CCPs is necessary. This includes determination of criteria and specified limits or characteristics of a physical, chemical or biological nature which ensure that a product is safe and of acceptable quality. Establish a monitoring system for each CCP: The monitoring should be able to detect deviations from specifications or criteria for corrective action to be taken. When it is not possible to monitor a critical limit on a continuous basis, it is necessary to establish a monitoring interval that will be reliable enough to indicate whether the hazard is under control. Periodic verification of sanitation controls and random microbiological tests of fish can be very valuable as means of establishing and verifying the effectiveness of control at CCPs. Corrective actions: The system must allow for corrective action to be taken immediately when monitoring results indicate that a particular CCP is not under control. Action must be taken before the deviation leads to a safety hazard. Verification and documentation: Verification is the use of supplementary information to check whether the HACCP system is working. Procedures may include review of CCP records, review of deviations, random sample collection and analysis. Inspections should be conducted routinely or unannounced, when the fish originating from the harbour complex is implicated as a vehicle of food-borne disease, or when requested on a consultative basis.\n\n5.4.1 HACCP system for fresh and frozen fish products\n\nThe hazard analysis for these products is fairly straightforward and uncomplicated. The live animals are caught in the sea, handled and processed without any use of additives or chemical preservatives and finally distributed with icing or freezing as the only means of preservation. Contamination with pathogenic bacteria from the human/animal reservoir can occur when the\n\nlanding place is unhygienic or when the fish are washed with contaminated water. Most fish and crustaceans are cooked before eating although a few countries have a tradition of eating raw fish. Cooking the product before consumption usually eliminates the risk from contamination with pathogenic bacteria. However, an indirect hazard exists if contaminated products are polluting the working areas and thereby transporting the pathogens to products which are not cooked before eating (cross contamination). Cooking will not, however, eliminate the growth of heatstable toxins (histamine). Time and temperature conditions at all steps from capture of fish to distribution constitute a CCP1 in preventing growth of pathogenic bacteria and spoilage bacteria. Below 1C, no growth of pathogenic bacteria takes place. Therefore a maximum time at temperatures over 5C must be specified in the criteria for this CCP. Exposure for only a few hours of fatty fish to the sun, air and ambient temperature during fish handling on the vessel or at the harbour is sufficient to introduce severe quality loss and cause early spoilage. A sensory assessment (appearance, odour) of the fish when landed is a CCP2 for ensuring that until this point the material has been under control, and that spoiled fish or shrimp and potential toxic species can be discarded. Personal hygiene as well as fishery harbour sanitation are CCPs preventing contamination of products with micro-organisms and filth. The seriousness of the hazard varies, depending on the intended end-use of the product (cooking or no cooking). Occasionally a microbiological check of the cleanliness of working surfaces can be made. This control procedure must be carried out on a weekly basis. When the routines are well established, microbiological control of cleanliness can be carried out monthly. Water quality is a CCP1 in preventing contamination from this source. Where in-plant chlorination is used, chlorine levels must be measured and recorded. Chlorine levels should be measured daily.\n\n5.4.2 Application of HACCP system in fishery harbours\n\nHarbours vary a great deal in size and the quantities of fish they handle. Accordingly the hygienic requirements and the design of fish handling areas may vary considerably. Quite obviously the requirements of a small harbour or landing place where fish is landed, repacked in ice and distributed to the local market are different from the hygienic requirements of a large complex which includes fish processing of a variety of seafood and cold storage. In most fishery harbours where there is no seafood processing other than handling of fresh fish, all that is needed may be temperature and water quality controls besides encouraging a cleanliness ethic.\n\n5.4.3 Checklist for ensuring seafood safety\n\n1. Landed fish should not be exposed to the sun and should be iced.\n\n2. Inspect fish for appearance and odour and reject fish of unacceptable quality.\n\n3. Periodically perform bacteriological tests on representative samples. 4. Follow a cleaning schedule for all work areas and surfaces, using water containing 5 to 10 ppm of free chlorine. 5. Remove all fish slime and blood by hosing down with chlorinated water. At the end of the day, rinse all surfaces with clean water having 5 ppm of chlorine. 6. Apply personal hygiene rules strictly to prevent contamination of fish. Smoking and spitting in work areas should not be permitted. Hands must be washed with bactericidal soap prior to handling fish and after a visit to the toilet. 7. Check that water supply and treatment systems are in order. Water and ice samples should be analysed as per testing schedule by ISO certified laboratories for levels of chemical and bacteriological contamination and potability certificates obtained. 8. The harbour should be free from litter and other wastes. 9. Check to ensure that all drainage systems are in good working order. 10. The harbour should be free of animals, rodents and pests. 11. Ensure that there are no bird nests in the fish handling area. 12. Check that wastes are being disposed of sanitarily. 13. Check cold storage equipment to ensure that the right temperature is being maintained. 14. Ensure that all precaution and warning signs are readable.\n\n5.4.4 Advantages of the HACCP system\n\nThe HACCP system is an ideal tool when resources are scarce. The general principle of the HACCP concept is to direct energy and resources towards areas where they are necessary and most useful. The main advantages can be summarized as follows:\nControl is proactive in that remedial action can be taken before a problem occurs.\n\nControl is through features that are easy to monitor such as time, temperature and appearance. Control is cheap in comparison with detailed chemical and microbiological analysis. The operation is controlled by persons directly involved with the fish product.\n\nIt can be used to predict potential hazards.\n\n5.5 The ISO-9000 series certification of the International Standards Organization\n\nFor seafood processing establishments, the most relevant standards of the ISO 9000 series are the ISO 9001 and 9002. The former is a quality system standard that lays down requirements for product development, production, delivery and after sales functions. The latter concerns only production and delivery. The ISO 9003 deals with quality system requirements for final inspection and testing. ISO 9000 standards comprise many elements. Of these, management responsibility and commitment is the first and most important element. The next element is the presence of a documented quality system organized in three levels comprising the Quality Manual, Procedures and Instructions. Process control is another requirement to ensure that all processes influencing the quality of the final product are specified and documented in detail. The schedule of testing and inspection and the test equipment used should demonstrate acceptable compliance with the defined specifications. A corrective action system concerned with revising work operations should be in place to try and eliminate the causes of failure. Quality records including inspection reports, analytical results and corrective action reports should be maintained. Internal quality audits on a regular basis is another requirement. Training of staff, personal hygiene, cleaning and disinfection are a vital part of the ISO 9000 standards with particular reference to the food industry. The work involved in establishing and implementing a quality system like ISO 9001 or 9002 should not be under-estimated. It is a very demanding project in terms of time and resources. (See Figure 63). The time required is often 1-2 years even for a medium-sized establishment. Marketing merits, reduced quality costs and higher efficiency are the main advantages of the quality system that contribute to a higher profitability. The main objective of quality management according to the ISO 9000 series is meeting the agreed requirements of the customer. This underlines that the quality of a company's products is the key factor in a company's performance. Quality systems such as the ISO 9000 series serve to establish confidence in the customer. Once confidence is established, entry into world markets is simplified. Table 5.7: PHASES OF A QUALITY SYSTEM APPROACH Formation of a quality management group | Hazard Analysis | Audit of present system elements |\n\nEstimation of resources and total period of time required for the project including certification | Formation of project organisation | Preparation of Quality Manual (levels 2 and 3) to be included in departmental manuals i.e. table of contents | Decision on time schedule for preparation of departmental manuals | Establishment of working groups for the preparation of the individual procedures and instructions | Commenting, reviewing, approving and issuing procedures and instructions | Implementation of procedures and instructions | First approach to certifying body | Internal auditing | Corrections, adjustments etc. Further training of staff | Certification Figure 63: Time schedule for establishing and implementing a quality system in a small-size food processing plant\n\nAnother site where u get table of pathogen & list of character & limit http://www.tpub.com/content/armymedical/MD0151/MD01510039.html", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8407272696495056}
+{"content": "#pubdate 2010-02-07 00:48:02 +0100 #author Émile Armand #SORTauthors Émile Armand #title Mini-Manual of Individualist Anarchism #lang en #date July 1st, 1911 #SORTtopics affinity groups, Anarchist Encyclopedia, egoist, individualist #source Retrieved on February 7, 2010 from [[http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com/2009/07/tale-of-two-mini-manuals.html][libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com]] #notes Essay written in 1911 and published in l’Encyclopédie anarchiste (1925–1934), work in four volumes edited by Sébastien Faure. #centerchapter 1 #centersection 1 *** I To be an anarchist is to deny authority and reject its economic corollary: exploitation — and that in all the domains where human activity is exerted. The anarchist wishes to live without gods or masters; without patrons or directors; a-legal, without laws as without prejudices; amoral, without obligations as without collective morals. He wants to live freely, to live his own idea of life. In his interior conscience, he is always asocial, a refractory, an outsider, marginal, an exception, a misfit. And obliged as he is to live in a society the constitution of which is repugnant to his temperament, it is in a foreign land that he is camped. If he grants to his environment unavoidable concessions — always with the intention of taking them back — in order to avoid risking or sacrificing his life foolishly or uselessly, it is because he considers them as weapons of personal defense in the struggle for existence. The anarchist wishes to live his life, as much as possible, morally, intellectually, economically, without occupying himself with the rest of the world, exploiters or exploited; without wanting to dominate or to exploit others, but ready to respond by all means against whoever would intervene in his life or would prevent him from expressing his thought by the pen or by speech. The anarchist has for enemy the State and all its institutions which tend to maintain or to perpetuate its stranglehold on the individual. There is no possibility of conciliation between the anarchist and any form whatever of society resting on authority, whether it emanates from an autocrat, from an aristocracy, or from a democracy. No common ground between the anarchist and any environment regulated by the decisions of a majority or the wishes of an elite. The anarchist combats for the same reason the teaching furnished by the State and that dispensed by the Church. He is the adversary of monopolies and of privileges, whether they are of the intellectual, moral or economic order. In a word, he is the irreconcilable antagonist of every regime, of every social system, of every state of things that implies the domination of man or the environment over the individual and the exploitation of the individual by another or by the group. The work of the anarchist is above all a work of critique. The anarchist goes, sowing revolt against that which oppresses, obstructs, opposes itself to the free expansion of the individual being. He agrees first to rid brains of preconceived ideas, to put at liberty temperaments enchained by fear, to give rise to mindsets free from popular opinion and social conventions; it is thus that the anarchist will push all comers to make route with him to rebel practically against the determinism of the social environment, to affirm themselves individually, to sculpt his internal statue, to render themselves, as much as possible, independent of the moral, intellectual and economic environment. He will urge the ignorant to instruct himself, the nonchalant to react, the feeble to become strong, the bent to straighten. He will push the poorly endowed and less apt to pull from themselves all the resources possible and not to rely on others. An abyss separates anarchism from socialism in these different regards, including there syndicalism. The anarchist places at the base of all his conceptions of life: the individual act. And that is why he willingly calls himself anarchist-individualist. He does not believe that all the evils that men suffer come exclusively from capitalism or from private property. He believes that they are due especially to the defective mentality of men, taken as a bloc. There are not masters because there are slaves and the gods do not subsist because some faithful kneel. The individualist anarchist loses interest in a violent revolution having for aim a transformation of the mode of distribution of products in the collectivist or communist sense, which would hardly bring about a change in the general mentality and which would not provoke at all the emancipation of the individual being. In a communist regime that one would be as subordinated as presently to the good will of the environment: he would find himself as poor, as miserable as now; instead of being under the thumb of the small capitalist minority of the present, he would be dominated by the economic ensemble. Nothing would properly belong to him. He would be a producer, a consumer, put a little or take some from the heap, but he would never be autonomous. *** II The individualist-anarchist differentiates himself from the anarchist-communist in the sense that he considers (apart from property in some objects of enjoyment extending from the personality) property in the means of production and the free disposition of the product as the essential guarantee of the autonomy of the person. Being understood that that property is limited to the possibility of putting to work (individually, by couples, by familial groups, etc.) the expanse of soil or the engine of production indispensable to the necessities of social unity; under condition, for the possessor, of not renting it to anyone or of not resorting pour its enhancement to someone in his service. The individualist-anarchist no more intends to live at any price, as individualist, were that as exploiter, than he intends to live under regulation, provided that the bowl of soup is assured, clothing certain and a dwelling guaranteed. The individualist-anarchist, moreover, does not claim any system which would bind the future. He claims to place himself in a state of legitimate defense with regard to every social atmosphere (State, society, milieu, grouping, etc.) which would allow, accept, perpetuate, sanction or render possible: a. the subordination to the environment of the individual being, placing that one in a state of obvious inferiority since he cannot treat with the collective ensemble as equal to equal, power to power; a. the obligation (in whatever domain) of mutual aid, of solidarity, of association; a. the deprivation of the individual and inalienable possession of the means of production and of the complete and unrestricted disposition of the product; a. the exploitation of anyone by one of his fellows, who would make him labor on his account and for his profit; a. monopolization, i.e. the possibility for an individual, a couple, a familial group to possess more than is necessary for its normal upkeep; a. the monopoly of the State or of every executive form replacing it, that is to say its intervention — in its role as centralizer, administrator, director, organizer — in the relations between individuals, in whatever domain; a. the loan at interest, usury, agio, money-changing, inheritance, etc., etc. *** III The individualist-anarchist makes “propaganda” in order to select individualist-anarchist dispositions which he should have, to determine at the very least an intellectual atmosphere favorable to their appearance. Between individualist-anarchists relations are established on the basis of “reciprocity”. “Comradery” is essentially of the individual order, it is never imposed. A “comrade” which pleases him individually to associate with, is one who makes an appreciable effort in order to feel himself to live, who takes part in his propaganda of educational critique and of selection of persons; who respects the mode of existence of each, does not encroach on the development of those who advance with him and of those who touch him the most closely. The individualist-anarchist is never the slave of a formula-type or of a received text. He admits only opinions. He proposes only theses. He does not impose an end on himself. If he adopts one method of life on one point of detail, it is in order to assure more liberty, more happiness, more well-being, but not at all in order to sacrifice himself. And he modifies it, and transforms it when it appears to him that to continue to remain faithful to it would diminish his autonomy. He does not want to let himself be dominated by principles established a priori; it is a posteriori, on his experiences, that he bases his rule of conduct, nevertheless definitive, always subject to the modifications and to the transformations that the recording of new experiences can register, and the necessity of acquisition of new weapons in his struggle against the environment — without making an absolute of the a priori. The individualist-anarchist is never accountable to anyone but himself for his acts and gestures. The individualist-anarchist considers association only as an expedient, a makeshift. Thus, he wants to associate only in cases of urgency but always voluntarily. And he only desires to contract, in general, for the short term, it being always understood that every contract can be voided as soon as it harms one of the contracting parties. The individualist-anarchist proscribes no determined sexual morality. It is up to each to determine his sexual, affective or sentimental life, as much for one sex as for the other. What is essential is that in intimate relations between anarchists of differing sexes neither violence nor constraint take place. He thinks that economic independence and the possibility of being a mother as she pleases are the initial conditions for the emancipation of woman. The individualist-anarchist wants to live, wants to be able to appreciate life individually, life considered in all its manifestations. By remaining master meanwhile of his will, by considering as so many servitors put at the disposition of his “self” his knowledge, his faculties, his senses, the multiple organs of perception of his body. He is not a coward, but he does not want to diminish himself. And he knows well he who allows himself to be led by his passions or dominated by his penchants is a slave. He wants to maintain “the mastery of the self” in order to drive towards the adventures to which independent research and free study lead him. He will recommend willingly a simple life, the renunciation of false, enslaving, useless needs; avoidance of the large cities; a rational diet and bodily hygiene. The individualist-anarchist will interest himself in the associations formed by certain comrades with an eye to tearing themselves from obsession with a milieu which disgusts them. The refusal of military service, or of paying taxes will have all his sympathy; free unions, single or plural, as a protestation against ordinary morals; illegalism as the violent rupture (and with certain reservations) of an economic contract imposed by force; abstention from every action, from every labor, from every function involving the maintenance or consolidation of the imposed intellectual, ethical or economic regime; the exchange of vital products between individualist-anarchist possessors of the necessary engines of production, apart from every capitalist intermediary; etc., are acts of revolt agreeing essentially with the character of individualist-anarchism.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.573427677154541}
+{"content": "Social Media\n\nSocial Media\n\nHarness the power of social media – utilise Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to keep your social networks up to date with your fundraising efforts.\n\nCreate a Facebook event for your fundraiser and invite all your friends and family. Re-post official event updates and follow every post with a call to donate. If people can see how hard you are working, they will be more likely to offer their support.\n\nJust a Heading\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9715069532394409}
+{"content": "OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is often associated with obsessive cleaning. However, there are 4 different types of OCD that exist.\n\nOCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is a disorder that involves a person having irrational thoughts and fears that lead to compulsive behaviours.\n\nThis includes obsessive cleaning, arranging and organizing things, the need to wash hands constantly, etc. Now because people with OCD commonly obsess over cleanliness, the disorder has been largely associated with this behavior. However, that’s not the case. Did you know that there are actually 4 different kinds of OCD that exist? Today, we shed light on the same.\n\nOCD Type 1: Contamination And Washing\n\nIn this type of OCD, people are concerned about contracting an illness/disease due to being physically unclean. Contaminants such as dirt, germs, viruses, and sometimes even blood, household chemicals, and sticky substances, scare people with this kind of OCD. They may go to extreme lengths to avoid visiting public places (bathrooms) or coming in contact with any sort of contaminants.\n\nPeople with this type of OCD typically have the habit of sanitizing themselves as well as their surroundings constantly and getting rid of contaminated objects.\n\nThey may also keep changing their clothes frequently. Coming in contact with an ill person can result in feelings of fear, discomfort, disgust, etc in people with this type of OCD.\n\nOCD Type 2: Accidental Harm And Checking \n\nPeople with this type of OCD are extremely fearful about accidentally causing harm to themselves or others. As a result, they have a habit of constantly checking up on things such as whether the stove is switched off, whether they have kept sharp objects at a safe place, etc.\n\nThey are constantly filled with negative thoughts and concerns about causing damage or being a victim of it. Those battling this type of OCD are often doubtful about themselves and are uncertain about the future.\n\nOCD Type 3: Symmetry And Arranging  \n\nThose having this kind of OCD are often termed as “perfectionists.” They have a habit of arranging and organizing things around them and won’t rest until their objective is met.\n\nFor example, if they see a stack of papers piled up haphazardly, they will take the time out to arrange it properly, making sure the papers are aligned and placed at an angle that appears neat and satisfactory.\n\nAny sort of disorganization makes people with this kind of OCD feel uncomfortable instantly. They could also hone irrational beliefs related to their compulsive behaviours.\n\nFor example, “if I don’t reorganize my cupboard today, my mother is going to die crossing the road.” As a result, they feel obligated to complete certain tasks in order to make sure no harm is caused to them or their family. However, this kind of thinking is not commonly found in people having this type of OCD, but most certainly does exist.\n\nOCD Type 4: Taboo Thoughts \n\nThis is a very unique type of OCD where individuals are consumed with taboo and dangerous thoughts. These include- molesting children, having sexual relations with family members, causing physical harm to others, indulging in offbeat religious practices, etc.\n\nWhat’s strange is that people with this kind of OCD do not typically have a history of violence or abuse. It is just that their mind is filled with these thoughts that they are constantly having to battle.\n\nBecause people with this OCD recognize that their thoughts are dangerous, half their time goes into suppressing them and converting negative thoughts into positive ones. They also have a habit of reassuring their own behaviours and seeking validation from others.\n\nFor example- an individual may keep asking his/her loved ones about whether what they did was alright and in synch with social norms. They constantly obsess over whether their actions are acceptable and seek reassurance from others for it.\n\nThough people with this OCD don’t act upon the thoughts that they have, they do tend to avoid situations where these thoughts can be triggered. For example, if a person has taboo thoughts of molesting children, he/she would avoid going to children’s’ birthday parties.\n\nWhat causes OCD? \n\nIf you look up the causes of OCD online, you’ll come across the common ones such as hereditary, or the disorder being an outcome of other mental health illnesses such as depression and anxiety. But have you ever wondered about what really happens in the brain that causes OCD?\n\nThe research of neuroscience behind OCD shows that the root problem of this disorder lies in the communication gap between three brain areas- the cortex, striatum, and thalamus. The pathways that connect these areas of the brain are responsible for carrying out both the initiation and termination of behaviour.\n\nTherefore researchers believe that it is an imbalance within these pathways that may cause obsessive thoughts and behaviours in individuals, thus resulting in OCD.\n\nSSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) can be helpful in treating OCD, and therefore it has been hypothesized that serotonin may play an important role in the disorder.\n\nHowever, some researchers also believe that an imbalance in both serotonin, as well as dopamine levels, may be the root cause of OCD as the latter is also used by the pathways connecting the three brain areas mentioned above.\n\nBrain training as the solution to managing OCD \nBrain training technology Neurofeedback can restore the imbalances in the brainwaves, thus reducing the symptoms and making a person’s OCD manageable. It is a USA-FDA-approved and NASA-inspired technology that is used to eliminate and manage mental illnesses.\nTo learn more about this groundbreaking technology, visit https://wetrainbrains.com/how-it-works/", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9378368854522705}
+{"content": "Main menu\n\n\n\nI'm crying \n\nWhat makes someone or something likable? It are often their adorable face, bubbly personality, cheerful nature or anything in the least that appeals to others. Unfortunately, of these traits we discover admirable fades over time, as we get older .\n\nHumans and pets alike, we both face an equivalent fate. As we get consumed by age, our movements are restricted, we contract illnesses and that we become physically weak. During times like these, we'd like someone to require care folks but what percentage are willing to genuinely care?\n\nA touching picture shared by a netizen on Facebook shows an old man pushing a dog during a stroller on their hospital visit.\n\nThe grandfather, despite being old himself, cared for the furry companion enough knowing that he's weak and can’t walk on his own.\n\nThe photo was amid a caption that roughly translates as below:\n\n“When i used to be taking my dog to the hospital, I saw a grandfather pushing an old dog step by step during a stroller. this is often what true love seems like . He won't leave it side until the very end.”\n\nThe netizen also made a couple of observations of the touching incident.\n\nThe grandpa was seen to bend over from time to time to see if the old dog was doing alright within the stroller.\n\nHe even gently wiped off the dirt from the corner of his eyes and adjusted his position within the stroller to form sure he's comfortable.\n\nHis every move are often seen filled with care and love and it had been so unconditional. The comments under the post read how touched netizens were watching such an act of affection . Here are a couple of .\n\n“This is that the concept of living life to the entire .”\n\n“A beautiful picture of the gorgeous world.”\n\n“As long as you’re alive, I won’t hand over on you.”\n\nLucky are those that are loved, and therefore the dog is one lucky being.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5796892046928406}
+{"content": "Tesla shares soar to new all-time high\n\nTesla shares soar to new all-time high\n\nAugust 28, 2020 0 By autotimesnews\n\nAhead of the 1:5 split, Tesla Inc shares continued to skyrocket, setting another record on Aug. 27 and further increasing the distance between the Silicon Valley electric car maker and its traditional rivals in the auto industry.\n\nTesla shares soared to $ 2,290 in the middle of the day and then leveled off to $ 2,240, the highest price since the company went public in 2010 when it was valued at $ 17 a share. As a result, since the beginning of 2020, the shares of the American brand are up more than 420%, turning some retail investors into millionaires.\n\nWhile other automakers are forced to invest billions of dollars to overhaul their internal combustion engines and build battery-powered vehicles, investors are confident that Tesla will be able to grow from a niche automaker to a global leader in green transportation.\n\nTesla became the world’s most valuable automaker by market capitalization when it overtook the previous leader in July, Toyota Motors Corp. The company now accounts for 41% of the total market capitalization of a group of 12 of the world’s largest automakers. However, Tesla accounts for only a small fraction of global car sales.\n\nIn 2019, Toyota and Volkswagen AG sold 10.46 million and 11 million vehicles, respectively. For comparison, Tesla delivered 367,200 vehicles during this period. Tesla executives say the company will deliver at least half a million vehicles by the end of 2020, which is less than 5% of Toyota and Volkswagen’s annual sales.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.865382194519043}
+{"content": "My paintings deal with the notion of care, abstracting the human body to be a minimal form that is infantile, still forming and vulnerable. We care for our bodies in order to increase the longevity of our lives and I wanted to turn this to the care I take of my paintings as well.\n\n\nToday we are living longer than ever before as a result of medical research as well as a higher quality of life and I want to highlight the importance of taking care and attention to our bodies. The paintings are nurtured from the beginning, from the first coat of acrylic and throughout the process of making decisions of how I want the forms to socialise and co-exist in the space of the canvas. Colour palettes that are commonly used in skin care packaging predominantly inform the aesthetic alongside everyday inspiration from clothing and interiors that our bodies exist within. Acrylics are used to achieve flatness as well as a softness of colour, relating to a gentleness that resides within the space the forms exist in.\n\n\nThe interaction of the developing forms create a language. How the forms learn to co-exist by intertwining, curving around, lying on top or below of each other. Holly Hendry's flesh toned sculptures influence the softness of my paintings through the flatness of colour and bodily connection in both of our practices. Hendry breaches the traditional boundaries of sculpture through displaying her sculptures hung upon walls or laid flat on the wall and floor. The play on traditional display techniques for painting and sculpture resonates with my practice by seeing how I can push the notion of care further into how I display my paintings using the surrounding space.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9192730188369751}
+{"content": "Great Managers Do One Job Well\n\n\nI hate articles where the headlines are provocative, but you have to read all the way to the end for the answer. So I’m going to give you the answer right now, and then explain why.\n\n(Well, technically I supposed that is two but they are so closely related I consider them one)\n\nThat’s it. Let me tell you how I got to this.\n\nA friend of mine left a big company recently. And one of the most-recognized devs in the organization told him how unhappy he was about his departure, as he thought of my friend as one of the best managers. My friend asked him why. The dev told him exactly this: “You gave me clear directions and were always there to remove any roadblocks I was facing.”\n\nThis stuck with my friend. When my friend told me this story, the explanation stuck with me, too. Why? Because it summarizes it all.\n\nWhat does it mean exactly?\n\nA clear direction\n\nA direction includes many things. It could be:\n\n  • SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, Time-related)\n  • The problem to address for a feature (instead of the solution, if you want your team to participate in the solution definition)\n  • The why behind the product decision made (here's a great video by Simon Sinek on why you should start with why)\n\nMy goal is not to deep dive. The main point is that as a manager, having clear communication is central to your job.\n\nRemove any roadblock\n\nRoadblocks can be internal to a person, a team or a company. But they can also be external to the team and the company. For instance, roadblocks could be:\n\n  • A dependency on another team’s progress: the manager needs to sync priorities between both teams so there is no bottleneck.\n  • A too limited budget to move forward on the team’s project. Again, it is the manager’s role to address this problem and communicate with the right stakeholders within the company.\n  • Lacking some competency within your team for the project. The manager is responsible for the timely hire of a new team member to get this competency.\n\nThe manager’s goal is to ENABLE his or her team members, but also the team as a whole, to perform at its best. That also means the manager needs to be on the lookout for roadblocks that the team might not have seen themselves. That’s where one-on-one meetings become handy. But again, these meetings’ goals are the same: clear direction, remove any roadblock.\n\nSure, there may be personal roadblocks that can’t be removed. For instance, an employee that lost a family member or is going through a hard personal ordeal. In that case, the manager’s role is to help and support the team member in any way possible.\n\nLet your team do their work\n\nSomething implied in the definition of the manager’s one role is the absence of anything else. What I mean here is that managers need to not get in the way of their team to become a roadblock themselves and not do their job. They need to let them do their work. You, as a manager, should only be an enabler. That’s how you grow your team’s individual talents.\n\nThis role applies in all contexts\n\nLet’s check a few different cases and see how the “one job” applies. You will see, it’s always a matter of direction and/or roadblock.\n\nIf you have other cases, please add them in comments; I’ll be happy to add them to the article.\n\nNon-autonomous junior employees\n\nNon-autonomous, in general, means they lost track of the direction you gave them. So you might need to repeat it again. But if those employees lose track often, they have become their own roadblock. And you need to coach and train them to remove their own internal roadblock so that doesn’t happen again.\n\nSure, if you can’t remove an individual’s internal roadblock, he or she may become a roadblock for your entire team. And you might need to remove this person from your team because he or she has become an obstacle to the team itself.\n\nPoor performers\n\nPoor performers are their own roadblocks. As a manager, you need to train them or pair them with better performers to remove their roadblocks.\n\nSimilarly, if their own internal roadblock can’t be solved, and they become a roadblock to the whole team, it’s the manager’s role to make the hard choice.\n\nGood performers\n\nThat’s an easy one. In general, they have no internal roadblocks, just external ones.\n\n If they have clear direction, and they’re completely autonomous, let them do their work; they will be thankful for it.\n\nDoing it right makes you a great manager\n\nIf you do it right, you’ll get your team’s approval and best productivity, thanks to the motivation they receive from you. And that’s what all managers aspire to do.\n\nIndeed, as a team member, you will be as motivated and productive as ever if you understand clearly why you do things and what needs to be done, and if you feel you have your manager’s trust and that you have room for your own decision-making.\n\nSometimes, managers might not be able to remove a roadblock because of some larger constraint, such as the company’s culture or environment. They face two options then: try to influence the constraint to remove it, or explain clearly the constraint and which direction to take accordingly. Well, there is another option: change jobs. \n\n  • John Lafleur, co-founder of Anaxi\n\n    John Lafleur, Co-Founder of Anaxi\n\n    John is a serial entrepreneur (3 startups, 2 times CEO, 2 exits). John is now the co-founder of Anaxi, which mission is to fix software project management.  Prior to Anaxi, John was the CEO of CodinGame, a platform where developers practice their coding skills while playing games. CodinGame nowreaches a community of more than 1 million…", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7325466871261597}
+{"content": "PROPEL partners with Title I schools to identify students who would benefit the most from participation.  PROPEL provides after-school programming for approximately 76 high risk/low income students during the school year.  Each day, participants are transported by PROPEL from their school to the program site and then in the evening are transported home, eliminating the burden of transportation cost and logistics for working parents and caregivers.  PROPEL understands that all hard-working students deserve a real opportunity to earn an affordable, high-quality degree or credentials that offer a clear path to civic engagement, economic security, and success.\n\nPROPEL students receive tutoring and homework help in a positive learning environment equipped with computer and internet access. PROPEL’s goal is to launch students with the capacity to lead an authentic life and leave their own unique mark on the world.\n\nPROPEL has a full program calendar; offering physical activities, Leadership Council and Financial Literacy Education. PROPEL’s High School students are offered Post-Secondary support; including Scholarship application support College Tours and Internship placement.\n\nPROPEL rising Juniors and Seniors participate in SAT test strategy and preparation classes. On average participating students have increased their SAT scores to 1100; a requirement for college admission and scholarship opportunities. PROPEL tracks academic progress and each student receives an Individual Success Plan (ISP) to address their unique strengths and learning style.\n\n\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8428357243537903}
+{"content": "Select Page\n\nStudent Counseling\n\nTreamis counseling program is designed to enhance independence and confidence and encourage optimal learning of both academic and life skills.\nIt ensures an environment that is inspiring and rewarding by implementing research based, effective programs that create awareness and prevent problems such as bullying or victim of bullying.\n\nLearning Support\n\nTreamis focuses on holistic development of each child. Some children can reach their potential on their own; some will get there with support through counselling and special education.\n\nTreamis Special Educators help children with learning difficulties. After detailed discussion with parents, an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is prepared for each child.\nIntervention is provided through one-on-one sessions and in small groups. Assessments are conducted according to each student’s needs and potential. The reports are discussed periodically with parents.\n\nThe members of Special Education Department are qualified and trained as Rehabilitation Council of India norms.\n\nThe department organizes monthly workshops for teachers to identify and manage students that require special needs.\n\nCounselling is also provided for age related issues, emotional and behavioural challenges faced by students The department also conducts quarterly seminars for parents on issues related to parenting.\n\n\nTreamis MUN empowers the students with diplomacy, ingenuity, debating skills and directs their passion in a meaningful way that allows them to become the best version of themselves.\n\nThis is an opportunity for the partakers to engage in constructive debates, formulate their creativity and derive sustainable solutions to the real world problems. It will develop students’ abilities with their positive attitude to unleash their full potential and attain success in life. It will also make them responsible citizens who are aware of the real world issues.\n\nThey express their ideas confidently and creatively they collaborate effectively paying attention to the perspectives of others. They are also encouraged to use their critical and analytical thinking skills to arrive at responsible actions on complex problems, they are also motivated to act with integrity & honesty with a strong sense of fairness & justice taking responsibilities for their actions and their consequences.\n\nPeer Teaching\n\nHigher-level students take on a teaching role and share their knowledge with the junior students. They act as teacher’s assistants during their free time and help teachers in developing activities, manage assessments, etc. They also teach other students in their own class. With this activity, students review their own learning, which allows them to strengthen their own knowledge and skills.\nIt also boosts self-confidence because students realize that the classroom teacher perceives them as experts and trusts them enough to share their expertise with a peer. The teacher is able to assess students’ understanding of the material based on their ability to share their knowledge and skills with a fellow peer or a junior, that could not be accomplished using a paper and pencil test.\n\nCommunity Service\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9963481426239014}
+{"content": "• Veeva\n\nThe Truth About Adrenal Fatigue (And What It REALLY Is)\n\nUpdated: Mar 14, 2020\n\nThis guest post is written by Brie Wieselman, a Functional Medicine Practitioner, hormonal expert and gut specialist. You can learn more about her at her website https://briewieselman.com/ or join her community on Instagram.\n\nIn the last 10 years, adrenal fatigue has gone from virtually unheard of to something everyone has heard of (and has an opinion about).\n\nAnd while I think that more people knowing about adrenal fatigue is a good thing, there is a problem: most people (and practitioners) actually misunderstand it.\n\nWhat Adrenal Fatigue Isn’t\n\nFirst things first: Adrenal Fatigue is not a disease.\n\nIt’s actually a syndrome that occurs as a consequence of chronic stress without relief.\n\nThe name is misleading because it sounds like your adrenals (the glands that sit on top of your kidneys and produce a variety of hormones) get worn out and stop producing hormones - most importantly, cortisol aka “the stress hormone.” But that’s not actually what happens: you adrenal glands don’t get tired - they can actually be working overtime!\n\nInstead, adrenal fatigue is truly caused by miscommunication between the brain and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system caused by stress. Because the name “adrenal fatigue” is so misleading, many practitioners now call it “HPA Axis Dysregulation.”\n\nBut whatever name you use, the cause is the same.\n\nAdrenal Fatigue Is Really A Brain Problem\n\nThe HPA Axis is our body’s central stress response syndrome. When your brain perceives stress (and that can be anything from physical danger, to emotions running high, to chronic low grade inflammation from a gut infection, to having low blood sugar!) the hypothalamus shouts at the pituitary to do something about it. The pituitary in turn signals the adrenal glands (by releasing a hormone called ACTH) to crank up the production line on cortisol, to help deal with the situation.\n\nWhen stressors are short-term, this system works really well: when the stressor is gone, the signaling stops and cortisol levels can return to normal. But when you’re faced with chronic stressors, this system is thrown off and the brain can’t communicate properly with the adrenal glands. Cortisol production either stays too high or shuts down entirely.\n\nThe symptoms of adrenal fatigue are caused by a breakdown in the signalling from the brain to your adrenal glands. In other words, the problem is in the software, not in the hardware!\n\nTreat The Brain - Not The Adrenals!\n\nLots of practitioners want to treat adrenal fatigue by looking at the adrenal glands themselves - but that’s not really where the problem is originating. Instead, I like to look at the brain and stress management first.\n\nThe modern world is rife with chronic stressors: everything from your kids, to your job, to the food you eat and the air you breathe. We can’t control the stressors, but we can control HOW our brain (and body) react.\n\nLearning how to manage your body’s stress response is the key to preventing and healing adrenal fatigue.\n\n(It’s the old adage about how we can’t control what happens to us - but we CAN control how we react.)\n\nSo what can you do to manage your stress response? Finding a way of moving and eating that supports your health is the first place to start. Using known adaptogens (like lemon balm, ashwagandha and rhodiola, and specific nutrients) is the second step. If you find yourself still not feeling up to par, you might benefit from advanced testing for circadian adrenal hormone levels, with a trained Functional Medicine Practitioner who can help you personalize a treatment plan to reach your goals.\n\n467 views0 comments\n  • Facebook - Black Circle\n  • Instagram - Black Circle\n\n© 2021 by Veeva Inc.\n\n\n285-5527 Island Hwy\n\nUnion Bay, BC\nV0R 3B0, Canada", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8640121817588806}
+{"content": "Why Do We Need Quantum Mechanics? | Quantum Mechanics Course, Part 1 | Dr. Brant Carlson (Video)\n\nBeing Aware of esoteric Earth Science is a gateway to begin comprehending ET Science and Metaphysical Knowledge.\n\nContent Source: Geek's Lesson\n\nVideo direct urlhttps://youtu.be/xnt2xSNRNn0\n\nDuration: 8 hrs 😁\n\nThis course was given in Carthage College, Spring 2013 and this video was published on this channel on Jun 25, 2019.\n\nAuthor: Brant Carlson\n\nVideo Notes:\n\nQuantum mechanics (QM; also known as #quantum #physics, quantum theory, the wave mechanical model, or #matrixmechanics), including quantum field theory, is a fundamental theory in physics which describes nature at the smallest scales of energy levels of atoms and subatomic particles.\n\nIn this course you will get exposed to the following topics of Quantum Mechanics in details:\n\nIntroduction to quantum mechanics (0:00)\nThe domain of quantum mechanics (16:21)\nKey concepts in quantum mechanics (28:00)\nA review of complex numbers (37:00)\nComplex numbers examples (1:05:00)\nProbability in quantum mechanics (1:18:00)\nProbability distributions and their properties (1:29:00)\nVariance of probability distributions (1:55:00)\nNormalization of the wavefunction (2:9:00)\nIntroduction to the uncertainty principle (3:04:00)\nKey concepts of QM, revisited (3:17:00)\nSuperposition of stationary states (4:23:00)\nInfinite square well example computations and simulation\nQuantum harmonic oscillator via ladder operators\nQuantum harmonic oscillator via power series\nFree particles and the Schrodinger equation\nFree particle wave packets and stationary states\nFree particle wave packet example", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5942078828811646}
+{"content": "Bug Report: Tuning to trans*feminist Xystem.Crash\n\non 31 October 2020 at ZAK Zitadelle Berlin with Katrin Köppert and with bug reports by Edna Bonhomme, Mario Guzman, Femke Snelting and Pinar Tuzcu\n\nEngaging the bug report as a trans*feminist practice of affirmative critique that tunes to conceptual, political or material problems within existing systems. We invited writers to describe and problematize bugs at the intersection of computation, magic and decolonial theory. A bug report within computational practice is a document detailing what is observable about a piece of software that is not performing a dedicated task. In 1946, programmer Grace Hopper invented the term when operators found a moth in the Mark II computer. We engage the bug report as an anti-racist and trans*feminist practice of affirmative critique that tunes to conceptual, political or material problems within existing systems. Borrowing from Mozilla's bug report writing guidelines, we have distilled key trans*feminist debugging techniques towards naming problems within the processes that produce glitches, crashes and violences.\n\nJoin us for an evening of reading bug reports, discussing further implications and giving time and attention to collective bug finding on 31 October 2020 at Zitadelle Berlin\n\nTo Be Black, Free, and (En)raged A Film Collage by Edna Bonhomme\n\nFlickering esoteric properties of executable code corrupts Full HD rendering of software culture potential by Mario Guzman\n\n\nFlickering esoteric properties of executable code corrupts Full HD rendering of software culture potential.\n\nComponent: (in which context does this problem exist?):\n\nExecutable code's flickering representation affects software development and its capability to be observed as an imaginative and critical thinking scenario. This perspective is visible through research on software culture (code studies) and digital artistic practices (creative coding, esolangs).\n\nVersion (historical background of the bug):\n\nSoftware is not only the spinal cord of the technologies it enables, but all cultural practices involved in its development: interaction with political, economic, and socio-technical systems, development of creative solutions, metaphorization, writing, rewriting, configuring, hacking, erasing, debugging, etc. These practices also make up software, and consequently, software is both a semiotic and material/practical activity. These sets of practices did not start with the appearance of modern computers. In fact, the technical principle of computer software, controlling matter through manipulation of symbols, is also the technical principle of magic, understood as an esoteric practice (Cramer, 2005). Therefore, executable code possibilities were already available in spells, religious encoded texts, numerical musical composition, combinatory literature, and philosophy. As science rivaled and marginalized magic and religion, software development partially abandoned its correspondences between computation and its esoteric practices. For example, the harmonious link between macrocosm and microcosm, as Pythagoras understood it, or the divine mathematical correspondences of divinity, as performed in the Kabbalah. These developments were concealed in favor of using algorithms as efficiency, productivity enhancement, and exploitative tools.\n\nDescription including (larger detailed summary of the bug):\n\nComputation’s history is full of nonexclusive contradictions. Algorithms can be perceived as an aesthetic material for poetic experimentation (Oulipo) or represent natural language acquisition parameters (Chomsky); computation can explore philosophical divination through randomized values (I Ching) or used as a statistical prediction development tool. These connections between computing and a wide range of speculative imagination embracing art, language, philosophy, religion, and magic are generally not recognized. On the contrary, the more restrictive elements of these mystical practices have embedded themselves into the industry's behavior and programming's social representation. Obscure writing, elitism, decreased accessibility, opaque inner workings only understood or intended to be understood by a small number of people with unique and secret knowledge. The initiated standing in an impenetrable realm. The chosen ones. The mysticism of programmers and their immutable machines. These representations are poured into our technology and end up configuring Artificial Intelligence' black boxes as a new kind of new demi-gods of logic, efficiency, and neutrality. But technology and algorithms are not neutral. Under this perspective, software culture's image appears to be flickering, oscillating between its enhanced imagination and its obscure practices. This bug corrupts software culture's full HD resolution, allowing low aspects ratios to render only its exploitative characteristics, instead of displaying the full spectrum of its explorative features. Nevertheless, this glitchy signal may show us that behind its secrecy, software is a cultural construct, an intellectual and social activity that enables us to produce knowledge through speculative imagination.\n\nAdditional Builds & Platforms (which other contexts are affected? what other positions does this have implications for?)\n\nThis bug skips version 19.70.s; 19.80.s. Popularization and accessibility to computers and programming boosted computation's cultural potential in the late 70s and early 80s. Software culture proposed a seemingly magical realm of possibilities. A single line of code and a floppy disk could destroy/save the planet. In the retro version of this Build, #hackerman could travel through time and change history (Kung Fury, 2015).\n\nSteps to reproduce:\n\nSelect Preferences -> Cultural History -> Speculative Imagination -> Critical Perspective\n\nHow to trigger the bug.\n\nYou can trigger the bug by raising questions about software development practices, documentation, inclusivity, and diversity. Is this software challenging to read? Does it allow contributions? Who is it leaving out? Is this algorithm increasing social integration, community, and relations? Does this code enable thought or dilutes it? How can your software promote reciprocal, balanced relationships with technology, nature, other living beings?\n\nActual results (what are the consequences of the bug)\n\nLoss of a microcosm-macrocosm sight to balance the relationship between technology and social, political, economic, and environmental interaction. Developers from peripheralized geographies and industry spaces are marginalized in the technosphere.\n\nExpected results (what should have happened without the bug)\n\nProgramming could become a common social practice. In it, an open witches' sabbath or a collective of shaman-distributed-coders could perform hallucinatory code exercises and explore new machine-human-nature interaction protocols.\n\nAlphabetic normalization depletes trans-discursive possibilities by Femke Snelting\n\nSummary (describe the problem in less than 60 characters)\n\nAlphabetic normalization depletes trans-discursive possibilities.\n\nComponent (in which context does this problem exist?)\n\nThe Alphabet Issue affects all networked computational devices, infrastructures and platforms, especially those connected to and with the internet. Or as font engineer Behdad Esfahbod phrased it, “any 1 who reads on computer”.\n\nVersion (historical background of the bug)\n\nThe Alphabet might already have become an Issue when in late medieval times, Western Europe saw the emergence of an efficient solution for reproducing Latin languages: the printing press. The Gutenberg Galaxy assumes that language is made up of a limited set of autonomous, unchangeable elements; the letters of the alphabet. These atomic elements can be treated as a recombinable and reproducable set, ‘movable type’. A subtle consequence of introducing this pre-runner of agile computing, is that characters can be treated as separate from their rendered expressions, meaning that ultimately their semantic meaning is not anymore tied to a specific form or typographic rendering. Both principles had deep implications for computation as they form the basis of the ASCII table, a reduced alphabetic interface that also in contemporary devices regulates communication between hardware input and programmatic events. Decades later, The Unicode Consortium tasked itself to mitigate the limitations of ASCII both on an institutional and on a technical level. Unicode promises to “provide a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, program, or language is” but effectively, and in addition to the assumptions above, still reduces language in the digital domain to a variation or extension of English. These processes of literally ordering the alphabet radiate out into national standardization bodies, Open Type specifications and Open Type Formats. Over the years, these bodies have found more and less successful solutions to patch the many issues with so-called non-Latin writing systems, but not at any moment are the colonial assumptions underlying the system of encoding being questioned.\n\nOS (within which legal~societal~computational~material system is this problem)\n\nThe Alphabet Issue formats computational logic as a specific form of logo-centrism, it powers an extractivist understanding of language, it keeps colonial structurings in place and fuels capitalist hubris.\n\nDescription (larger detailed summary of the bug)\n\nThe Alphabet Issue operates on many levels. A non-exhaustive list:\n\n  • With English as an exception, many writing systems use special combinations of letters and accents. Only with some effort can they fit into a single character based paradigm. As a result, most languages other than English struggle with the standard to some degree.\n  • The basic organizational grid of the Unicode standard is completely alien to combinatory writing systems such as Arabic or Persian. It takes additional software solutions to make these writing systems work.\n  • Computational devices assume and actively promote alphabetic language as the basis of all communication; in other words, computation is bound to a logo-centric drive. While the possibilities for life are increasingly impacted by what computers do, the bandwidth to communicate is narrow.\n  • It binds device- and software-development to a particularly Euro-centric perspective on language. This cultural bias is convenient because when language is imagined as a limited set of independent, recombineable codepoints, it becomes extractable like any material resource for Natural Language Processing, Machine learning, Big Data etc.\n  • In computational devices, the characters in the alphabet are understood as in essence detached from their letterform. The Unicode codepoint U+0041 can be rendered as A or A or A and actually also as A. This u) dematerializes language because it assumes that language and its representation can be separated and e) ignores the interdependencies between letterforms that are at the basis of many writing systems.\n  • This also means computing as it stands is badly situated for coming to terms with its own implications and worldings because de-situating and anti-materialism are at its core. When the relation between character and glyph, or worlding and language are structurally disentangled, digital communication is ultimately a techno-colonialist force.\n  • The Alphabet assumes a normalized order (a, b, c) that is almost without exception figured as-easy-as-abc. This empowering simplicity is reiterated in many alphabet songs such as the Jackson 5 lyrics “A B C / It's easy as, 1 2 3 / As simple as, do re mi / A B C, 1 2 3 / Baby, you and me girl”. Or think of the way Frrrench philosopher Gilles Deleuze omits to question the arbitrary rigid order of the alphabet that organizes the interview which Claire Parnet titled L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze. It also structures trans*feminist dictionary works like Bug Report: Tuning to trans*feminist System.Crash, to which this text is a contribution.\n  • Trans-discursive possibilities are limited since any interspecies conversation needs to stay out of computation or accept at best a translation from and to alphabetic norms.\n  • The internalization of these norms is intensified by the promise of their all-encompassing completeness and universal openness. It is this universalistic arrogance posing as innocence that spawned the outrageous renaming of the Google’s subsidiaries into The Alphabet Companies.\n  • \"build ID\" (which non/humans does this effect most)\n\n    Humans speaking and writing in other languages and scripts than English. Additional Builds & Platforms (which other contexts are effected? what other positions does this have implications for?) Non/humans communicating in other ways than with the help of alphabetic language.\n\n    Steps to reproduce: how to trigger the bug\n\n    The issue with this particular bug is that in the current state of computational ubiquity, it is always already triggered. The consequences of The Alphabet Issue are therefore as invasive as they are invisibilised. Did I already bring up how many instances of the Alphabet Issue are operating around the filing of this bugreport? The Alphabet hardly ever raises an Issue and is extremely difficult to address. It covers up and is covered up by deeply colonial, Euro-centric and damaging assumptions about communication, computation and culture. actual results (what are the consequences of the bug)\n\n    See above.\n\n    expected results (what should have happened without the bug)\n\n    It would still matter how letters arranged, but not everywhere and not always in the same way. We would invent numerous ligatures and diacritics without end; form and codepoint would amalgamate instead of s e p a r a t e , rendering trans*feminist orientation tangible. With effort, focus, and energy, spelling shifts from ortography into casting spells, now making arrangements that definitely definitly definitely defiantly would change what can be circulated by and between interdependent entities.\n\n    P.S. This bugreport is based on research with Peggy Pierrot and Roel Roscam Abbing for Modifying the universal, and also OSP’s Dingbat Liberation Fests. The Alphabet Issue was sparked again by the recent emergence of critiques on the coloniality of font systems and digital typography as documented by Pierre Huyghebaert.\n\n    bug in my dictation app by Pinar Tuzcu\n\n\n    My keyboard dictation app does not recognize so many words when I am talking to it. It either crashes or puts punctuations like ‘!’ or ‘?’ As I am not able to write without dictation, this is frustrating. The error occurs especially when I say ‘heteropatriarchy’ ‘gender equilibrium instead equality’ ‘colonial destruction on ecology of gender in colonized societies’.\n\n\n\n\n    This bug existed in early Version of Mac OS such as 10.11: \"El Capitan\" and now I have Mac OS Catalina version 10.15, it still exists. I hoped for some improvement, but I see that despite of the fast developments in technology, such bugs remain integrated in the system.\n\n\n    All Operating Systems\n\n\n    My keyboard dictation app does not recognize many expressions that I am voicing. It either crashes or puts punctuations such as ‘!’ or ‘?’ instead. As I am not able to write without dictation this is frustrating. The error particularly occurs when I use the words or expressions such as ‘heteropatriarchy’ ‘gender equilibrium instead gender equality’ or ‘colonial destruction on ecology of gender in colonized societies’. When I dictate, for instance, “colonialism did not improve the colonized societies in terms of gender equality, this claim is just a white lie” the app puts a question mark in the sentence, arbitrarily. Or when I dictate “in fact, European colonizers irrecoverably damaged the ecology of gender, that is the equilibrium existed among diverse sexes in these communities in pre-colonial times” then the app inserts exclamation marks in the sentence. Once I said, “a Nigerian anti-colonial feminist Funmilayo Ransome-Kunti wrote in her book For Women and The Nation of Nigeria that ‘we had equality till Britain came’” and the app collapsed completely.\n\n    Build Id:\n\n    This bug affects my bodily integrity because I need the dictation app to be able to ‘write’. On the other hand, I feel like the system does not recognize what I am saying. Or maybe, as I am not a native English speaker, it is the matter of how I am saying it. I don’t know. But there is definitely a recognition problem. Yes, what kind of trouble in the recognition system might cause such problem? A system that executes my ‘sayings’ not understandable.\n\n    Additional Builds and Platforms:\n\n    The vocabularies, speeches and accents that do not fit into the heteronormative patriarchal syntax and Eurocentric prescripts are considered to be unrecognizable, marked as unsayable ‘?!’. Such a bug erroneously decides what is intelligible what is not; what counts as ‘appropriately expressed’ and what does not.\n\n    Steps to Reproduce:\n\n    I turned on the app and start to dictate: “The European colonizers ‘empowered’ only a small group of people in these communities, those whom they identified as ‘man’ through their hetero-patriarchal white gaze and according to their European binary standards of gender. They armed those whom they took as ‘men’ with weapons in order to build military troops for both integrating the colonial orders in these societies with violence and defending their colonial settlements against other countries. This ignited violence within the communities since the armed group of ‘men’ felt powerful over the unarmed and other genders. Moreover, the colonizers redistributed the land after stealing it from its real owners to the local and indigenous ‘men’ by ignoring the fact that the land in these communities was hand down from generations to generation according to the maternal-kinship-line. After destroying the ecology of gender, the equilibrium existing among different sexes, in these communities, the colonial settlers forced the local and indigenous population to adapt, what they called, ‘gender equality.’\n\n    Actual Results:\n\n    The application crashed.\n\n    Expected Results:\n\n    Voice recognition apps such as dictation apps should be able to detect the alternative ways of telling stories that do not fit into the heteropatriarchal neocolonial pretext. It should be attentive to the codes, to the words, and to the social worlds that did not make it into language; to the accented expressions that did not pass from one language into another. The app should make our wor(l)ds survive, if not, then let it collapse.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9235135316848755}
+{"content": "The phrase «despite» can also create another type of confusion, as Pronschinske Trust shows March 21, 1995 at Kaw Valley Co., 899 F.2d 470 (7th cir. 2018). In 2012, a landowner signed a mining lease agreement with a mining company that authorized it but did not require the extraction of various sand, stone and rock products. The mining company agreed to pay option fees and key money, but did not commit to mining. She was free to give up the property. In this example, one clause imposes the obligation of compensation of Part A in favour of Part B, while another clause describes a clause of the commitment of Part A. Best Practices – lex specialis. Consider not using despite the endmierohne. Often, a draughtsman uses, regardless of a contrary means, to protect a significant provision of a contradictory provision, regardless of the destination.\n\nIn many cases despite the dismissal is redundant. As on the other hand, it would be difficult for one party to argue that a clause inserted notwithstanding another provision should not, despite its clear wording, serve as a derogation or restriction to the other provision. The argument would be that a given rule takes precedence over a general principle (lex specialis derogat legi generali). In a paragraph of the payment agreement, the mining company agreed to pay production royalties based on the amount of material it obtained. In the paragraph that covered the licence fee, it stated, «Notwithstanding the contrary provisions of this section, the tenant pays the landlord a minimum annual licence of $75,000.» Id. at 472. The paragraph adds that the mining company would make a catch-up payment at the end of the year if royalties fell below $75,000 in any given year. The following example, however, refers to the above sentence, which is then limited to the notion in which errors must be reported (i.e. not monthly but immediate): notwithstanding all the contrary means, despite all the clauses that might conflict with this provision or statement. In another clause, you can say that, whatever the contrary nature, the customer is responsible for paying a termination fee of 100 $US.\n\nLong-time Fans of Ruminations know how often we insert the need to read an entire chord in the «context.» This is especially important if you intend to «cancel» anything that might contain the agreement. Context is always important, and there is no clearer example than if we write «just the opposite.» This is the basis for a third reason why both courts ruled in favour of the tenant. In the words of the Court of Appeal: in this example, the author must ensure that the current provision departs from section 5 of the contract and uses «any other contrary provision» as a possibility of evasion to protect that clause from other unintentional conflicts in the treaty. Whenever a lawyer is tempted to include a clause «despite everything» in an agreement, he should resign and figure out how to take stock correctly, once and in a way that every reader (i.e. the court) will understand. And if the lawyer still cannot resist the temptation, he should at least make it clear what «here» means. However, this sentence allows you to include in the treaty challenges of interpretation or ambiguities. Pronschinske claimed $US 400,000 as part of the lease as a royal spice credit and royalty production minimum by Kaw Valley.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6018444895744324}
+{"content": "Dark Matter May Actually Be A Smooth Matter\n\ndark matter\n\nDark matter may actually have a smooth distribution according to a new survey.\n\nDark matter may actually have a smooth distribution as the matter is now believed to be more evenly spread and to be less dense.\n\nThe conclusion was reached during a new study on the subject. Dark matter still is a quite controversial subject which sparked its number of debates.\n\nA new study released earlier this week may spark a new controversy. The team of researchers behind the study is made of university researchers from all over the world.\n\nSuch an international team had two lead researchers, Hendrik Hildebrandt and Massimo Viola. Hendrik Hildebrandt is a researcher of the Argelander-Institut for Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.  Massimo Viola is part of the Netherlands-based Leiden Observatory.\n\nThe research was based on data gathered by the KiDS or Kilo Degree Survey. KiDS was carried out in Chile with the help of the ESO VLT Survey Telescope.\n\nAnalysis was based on data survey covering five patches of sky. These spanned over a total space area which encompassed about 15 million galaxies. The galaxies are spread over a total area which is almost 2,200 times bigger than our full Moon’s size.\n\nSuch gathered data was used so as to determine how light was affected by the matter’s gravitational influence.\n\nMore specifically they sought to observe the matter’s effects on the 15 million distant galaxies light. This offered an analysis of the dark matter’s influence on the largest universe scales.\n\nResearch results, however, could cause a new disagreement. Previously held, Planck satellite-based results indicate that the dark matter is distributed in dense, clumpy manner.\n\nBut the VST gathered high-quality images garnered a different result. Coupled with new and innovative computer software, a highly precise measurement was carried out. The measurement, as yet the most precise one, calculated the effects of the cosmic shear.\n\nA cosmic shear effect of this size refers to the following. Light emitted by distant galaxies may be warped by the gravitational effect of large scale structures.\n\nAs they contain large amounts of matter, they lead to a weak gravitational lensing or its subtle variant.\n\nSurveys such as KiDs have to be very deep and wide so as to measure the weak cosmic shear signal. Such measurements are used by astronomers in mapping out the distribution of gravitating matter.\n\nThe current study covered the as yet largest space area to be mapped with the help of this technique. However, its results were somewhat different from the Plank mission.\n\nPlanck is the European Space Agency’s leading satellite in charge of probing the universe. As the mission seeks to discover the fundamental properties of space, it registered different values.\n\nWhen determining the consistency of dark matter, KiDS data presented a significantly lower value than the Planck-derived data.\n\nThe aforementioned lead, Viola, went to explain the difference’s significance. According to him, the key cosmological parameter, dark matter, may be less clumpy than believed.\n\nAs it makes up for almost one-quarter of the cosmic web, the discovery could have significant consequences in space studies.\n\nDark matter is one of the most elusive space elements. Its existence and presence are measured based on its gravitational effects.\n\nStudies such KiDS or Planck are used so as to determine its shape, distribution, and scale.\n\nThe different results garnered by the two studies may lead to a rethinking of current space models if the dark matter is demonstrated to actually be smoothly distributed.\n\nAccording to the other lead, Hildebrandt, the recent discovery could lead to a refining of the current theoretical models. These models seek to determine the evolution of the Universe. As such, they are studying the changes that took place since its inception.\n\nKonrad Kuijken, the KiDS principal investigator, concludes that further studies should be carried out. Future research should be able to clear the discrepancies by repeating the measurements.\n\nAs such, they could help offer a clearer view as to what the Universe is trying to tell us.\n\nImage Source: Flickr", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9691125750541687}
+{"content": "Quick Answer: Does Unemployment Count As Income For HUD?\n\nWhat is the maximum income to qualify for HUD?\n\nA family making $28,100 would be very-low income, and a family making $44,950 would be low income.\n\nThose income limits are then adjusted based on family size with the upward limit being eight..\n\nDoes unemployment count as income for Section 8?\n\n\nHow do I know if I qualify for HUD?\n\nPublic housing is limited to low-income families and individuals. An HA determines your eligibility based on: 1) annual gross income; 2) whether you qualify as elderly, a person with a disability, or as a family; and 3) U.S. citizenship or eligible immigration status.\n\nWhat percentage does HUD pay for rent?\n\nIn most circumstances, your rent will be 30 percent of your monthly adjusted income; HUD covers the other 70 percent. The amount of rental assistance you qualify for is calculated by dividing your AGI by 12 and then multiplying it by 30 percent. The result of which is called the total tenant payment.\n\nCan HUD find out your income?\n\n\nDoes free housing count as income?\n\nThe following is a list of 35+ things that are “excluded” — i.e., not counted — as income in the CalFresh program: “In-kind” income (benefits received other than cash, such as free housing, public housing, child care, Woman, Infants and Children (WIC) benefits or food).\n\nCan HUD take my tax refund?\n\nFAILURE TO PAY: If you do not make the full payment or enter into an acceptable repayment plan by [INSERT 30 DAYS FROM DATE OF THIS NOTICE], HUD may: offset your Federal income tax refunds. offset any eligible Federal funds that may be due you, including Social Security Benefits. garnish your wages.\n\nDoes Social Security count as income for low income housing?\n\nOne big difference between state and federal housing is if you receive a deferred amount from SSI or SSDI (generally in a lump sum), it is counted as income in state public housing, but not in federal housing.\n\nCan HUD check your bank account?\n\nIn order to verify your eligibility for HUD assistance, administrators from the Department have the authority to review your bank account information. … You must give HUD permission to review your accounts during the application process.\n\nDo I have to report unemployment to HUD?\n\nHowever, regular unemployment payments issued by the state that are not part of the CARES Act stimulus package are counted as income and should be reported to the housing authority. State paid unemployment benefits have always been considered as annual income for the Housing Choice Voucher and Public Housing Programs.\n\nWhat’s the difference between HUD and Section 8?\n\nHUD housing units are federally owned for lower-income families, but the Section 8 lower-income housing program allows tenants to rent private residences approved by local housing authorities.\n\nDoes HUD use gross or net income?\n\nA family’s anticipated gross income determines not only eligibility for assistance, but also determines the rent a family will pay and the subsidy required. The anticipated income, subject to exclusions and deductions the family will receive during the next twelve (12) months, is used to determine the family’s rent.\n\nIs unemployment considered income for housing?\n\nWILL RECEIVING UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE AFFECT MY HOUSING ASSISTANCE? Yes. Unemployment insurance is counted as unearned income. However, the weekly $600 PUC payments are not counted as income and are not used in determining housing benefit eligibility or amount.\n\nWhat income is excluded from Section 8?\n\n\nWhat counts as income for HUD?\n\n§ 5.609 Annual Income. … (b) Annual income includes, but is not limited to: (1) The full amount, before any payroll deductions, of wages and salaries, overtime pay, commissions, fees, tips and bonuses, and other compensation for personal services; (2) The net income from the operation of a business or profession.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9462682008743286}
+{"content": "英文最好 希望可以自己想出來 因為這是報告要交給老師 還有他們倆個人的相同之處以及不同之處 (有英文最好)\n\n以及他們作品 謝謝\n\n1 Answer\n\n  • nt\n    Lv 5\n    1 decade ago\n    Favorite Answer\n\n\n    Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (pronunciation (helpinfo)), April 15, 1452–May 2, 1519) was a Tuscan (Italian) polymath: scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, poet and writer. Born at Vinci in the region of Florence, the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant girl, Caterina, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan where several of his major works were created. He also worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice, spending his final years in France at the home given him by King Franois I.\n\n\n\n    Raphael Sanzio or Raffaello (April 6, 1483–April 6, 1520) was an Italian master painter and architect of the Florentine school in High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings. He was also called Raffaello Sanzio, Raffaello Santi, Raffaello da Urbino or Rafael Sanzio da Urbino. He died at the age 37.\n\n    Source(s): 英文維基百科\nStill have questions? Get your answers by asking now.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.870753824710846}
+{"content": "Aurora Magazine\n\nPromoting excellence in advertising\n\nPublished in May-Jun 2019\n\nCasting inspiration\n\nHow VCast Online is creating a digital platform that resonates with both audiences and advertisers.\n\nWhat happens when a content marketing specialist with a background in advertising and a media professional, who has worked at one of the largest media agencies in Pakistan, collaborate? The answer is VCast Online – a digital platform that showcases the achievements of Pakistani entrepreneurs and thought leaders.\n\nThe duo in question are Irfan Aamir, Director, VCast Online (he previously headed O2 Communications and Idea Simple) and Mansoor Ahmed Ali, CEO, VCast Online (he worked in a senior capacity at the Starcom Media Vest Group as well as the Project Manager for Coke Studio). Together, they established VCast Online in January 2018.\n\nThe idea for VCast, according to Ali, stemmed from the notion of visibility economics, which purports that visibility and interaction are necessary for economic growth. This is the mandate VCast have set for themselves; to provide inspiration and ideas to audiences by highlighting individuals who are doing something that stands out and creating a platform for them to make connections.\n\n“A friend introduced us to the science of visibility economics; his point was that it is really important for businesses and entrepreneurs, especially in the developing world, to improve their visibility, because if they are not known to their community, it will be difficult for them to compete in the long run.”\n\nAnother factor that led to the creation of VCast is the fact that business TV channels such as Business Plus and CNBC have closed down, leaving a vacuum in the market.\n\n“In our opinion, good stories that merited coverage are not receiving sufficient media attention, unlike politics, entertainment and sport,” says Amir.\n\n“I used to write for several newspapers and if I mentioned anyone in business by name, I was told I am giving them ‘free publicity’; that is why we decided that our focus should be on such stories.”\n\nHe adds that having this narrow focus enables VCast to differentiate itself from other online publishers and works to their advantage.\n\nAlthough the start-up is a little more than a year old, VCast have published over a hundred videos, many of which have garnered a significant number of views and are being talked about.\n\nVCast produces two categories of videos. The first is people based, where the focus is on entrepreneurs and thought leaders and individuals who have made a name for themselves, be it a tilemaker or a footballer from Lyari. The second is concept based, where the focus is on producing short videos that explain complex concepts such as Pakistan’s circular debt. The objective here is to provide audiences with information regarding how such things affect them, so “they can make informed decisions.”\n\nCurrently, VCast publishes at least two videos every week, which vary in duration between seven and nine minutes. Although there is no specific reason for this, what is important is that the content should be strong enough to retain viewers’ attention. While Millennials form an important component of the audience, people interested in business news, furthering their careers or entrepreneurship, or who “seek inspiration” are also part of the audience mix; approximately 70% are based in Pakistan and the rest in countries such as the UK, the US and Italy (quite surprisingly).\n\nVCast’s small team, which also includes journalists (to provide content that is authentic), are able to produce content “end-to-end” – i.e they can conceptualise, shoot, edit and script videos and have a handle over animations and graphics. While finding such people did pose a challenge, VCast have managed to retain their team members, most of whom have been there from the start.\n\nAli adds that VCast place a lot of emphasis on ensuring that their content does not demean anyone, is gender-sensitive and steers clear of religion or politics.\n\n“We create content that inspires, motivates and gives people ideas and even their ‘a-ha’ moment which make them say \"let’s do this\".”\n\n“There is a strong market for content marketing. Brand love increased for Coke, thanks to Coke Studio. People heard the music and it created a positive association for them; there is a strong correlation between that and sales. Our clients understand this and realise that when we create high quality content for them based on genuine stories, it gives them credibility.”\n\nAlthough VCast can be viewed on several social media platforms, Facebook is the primary one at this point. The content is modified to accommodate different platforms; on Instagram the posts are more photo/visual based, while videos predominate on Facebook and YouTube. VCast also plan a stronger presence on Twitter and LinkedIn once they acquire more manpower.\n\nA self-funded start-up, VCast was created with “personal savings and credit from family and friends.” Although some efforts were made to secure external investment, the duo realised that to handle investors, they would require resources which they did not have; more importantly, they did not want an investor who would compromise their content.\n\nSays Amir: “We walked out of an offer last July; we thought adding a reporting layer above us would compromise our content.”\n\nHowever, they do plan to go for a seed round once they have a more concrete business plan with proven revenue sources. Furthermore, the start-up is now able to recover at least 50% of their costs via advertising, of which they offer two types. The first are sponsors; this allows advertisers to have their logos featured on the thumbnail of a video, as well as throughout its duration. For example, McDonald’s sponsored a video series produced by VCast and which, according to Ali, has so far received 140,000 views. The second is paid placement, which usually features a personality from an organisation and is paid for by an organisation or brand. A recent example is an interview with Ayesha Samie Cashmirie, Owner, Lush Crush.\n\nAli adds that VCast maintain their editorial independence even when they create sponsored content, and this makes them stand out.\n\n“Although the sponsorship header is visible, a lot of people do not realise that it is paid content, because of the quality.”\n\nHe adds that VCast have been known to refuse offers if, in their opinion, the individuals proposed did not fulfil their criteria. He emphasises that VCast send the final version of the videos to the clients only for fact checking and do not let them control the content.\n\nBrands that VCast have aligned with so far include Alkaram Textiles, JS Bank and TPL and the team is confident more brands will come on board given that content marketing is increasing rapidly in Pakistan.\n\n\nAs for future plans, the team plan to continue what they are doing. As revenues increase, they hope to widen their reach across more platforms, gain a larger audience base and increase the number of videos they publish. In the meantime, they are set to continue to pursue their “passion to publish” content that is inspiring – and devoid of masala.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8542063236236572}
+{"content": "Acyl Carnitine - Deuterated\n\nAcylcarnitines are acyl esters of the quaternary ammonium compound carnitine. These esters are essential for the catabolism of fatty acids and maintenance of energy homeostasis in the human body. Acylcarnitines transport acyl groups from fatty acids into the mitochondria to generate energy. These molecules are capable of moving through the mitochondrial and cell membranes via a carnitine shuttle. There are several disorders that have been linked to acylcarnitine metabolic defects including various acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiencies. These defects typically manifest as encephalopathy, cardiomyopathy, and myopathy. Milder acylcarnitine abnormalities have been detected in diseases such as insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer's disease. Avanti offers deuterated acylcarnitine derivatives for use as standards when studying these molecules and their biological roles.\n\nGerald Liew, Benita Tse, I-Van Ho, Nichole Joachim, Andrew White, Russell Pickford, David Maltby, Bamini Gopinath, Paul Mitchell, Ben Crossett; Acylcarnitine Abnormalities Implicate Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Patients With Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. 2020;61(8):32. doi:", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9996070265769958}
+{"content": "Version classiqueVersion mobile\n\nEncyclopédie des historiographies : Afriques, Amériques, Asies\n\nNathalie Kouamé\nÉric P. Meyer\nAnne Viguier\n\n\nRajatarangini of Kalhana (The): Sanskrit Kavya as History\n\nRajatarangini de Kalhana (Le) : un Kavya sanskrit comme histoire\n\nShonaleeka Kaul\n\n\nLe Rajatarangini est un poème épique (mahakavya) en sanskrit qui contient près de 8000 vers répartis en 8 livres ou parties. Il fut composé au Cachemire (Inde), en 1148‑50 apr J.‑C. Kalhana, le poète et auteur, était brahmane lettré. Le Rajatarangini est un texte qui rend compte des nombreuses dynasties royales qui régnèrent dans l’ancien royaume du Cachemire, depuis ses origines mythiques jusqu’à l’époque du poète. Il a acquis un statut emblématique depuis que les savants des xixe et xxe siècles l’ont labellisé comme étant le premier texte traitant spécifiquement d’histoire de toute la littérature sanskrite. Ils le considérèrent ainsi à cause du respect dont fait montre le texte pour la chronologie, les causes historiques et pour son objectivité (supposée).\nCependant, l’interprétation positiviste de cette œuvre met entre parenthèses et rejette les aspects du texte qui ne correspondent pas à la conception empiriste de ce que doit être un ouvrage d’histoire. C’est le cas notamment de ce qui concerne les mythes ainsi que des aspects rhétoriques et didactiques du texte, qui occupent pourtant la majeure partie de la Rajatarangini et qui sont typiques d’un discours poétique traditionnel. Corrigeant ces interprétations incomplètes du texte indien original, des approches récentes ont tenté de replacer le Rajatarangini au sein du genre parent des kavya et de la culture littéraire qui le caractérise. En adoptant cette perspective, l’historicité du Rajatarangini apparaît davantage comme la résultante de sa structure poétique et de sa narrativité que de son contenu factuel. En outre, envisager ensemble le texte lui‑même et ses stratégies littéraires comme l’usage du mythe, de la rhétorique et de la didactique, permet de découvrir, ce qui, d’une manière culturellement spécifique mais potentiellement universelle, peut constituer une « vraie » connaissance du passé et des actions humaines.\n\nTexte intégral\n\n\n1The Rajatarangini (literally, River of Kings) is an epic poem (mahakavya/prabandha) composed in the classical language, Sanskrit, in 1148‑50 in Kashmir (part of the modern state of Jammu and Kashmir, India). It was composed by a Kashmiri Pundit, or member of the ancient Indian learned class, named Kalhana. He is said to have been the son of a former minister by the name of Campaka in the court of a Kashmiri king, Harsha. Kalhana himself, however, does not seem to have worked for any king.\n\n2The Himalayan region of Kashmir is an intermontane valley formed by the river Jhelum (ancient name Vitasta), a tributary of the river Indus. Running into nearly 8000 verses that are unequally distributed among eight books or sections, the Rajatarangini is an account of the royal dynasties that ruled the kingdom of Kashmir from its putative origins to the poet’s own time: In other words, it narrates nearly two millennia of the ancient and early medieval history of the Valley.\n\n\n3One of the outstanding features of the Rajatarangini is that it is self‑reflexive. It begins with a prolegomena clearly stating its purpose (prayojana), its method, and its vision or philosophy of history. To begin with, it tells us that it was certainly not the first such work of Kashmiri history to have been written. Indeed, the Rajatarangini based itself on consultation and emendation of at least eleven similar Sanskrit texts composed before itself. Though only one of these older texts (Nilamata Purana, 8th century) has survived and only the author of another (Kshemendra 11th century) is historically well known, this indicates a long and well‑established premodern tradition of writing history.\n\n4Moreover, in shaping its contents and message, the Rajatarangini also draws extensively on other, pan‑Indian Sanskrit literature like shastra (prescriptive treatises on statecraft and law), niti (political and moral parables), and itihasa (narratives on the past), even as the basic fact of chronicling dynasties king by king is in the vamshavali (genealogy) tradition. Indeed, the Rajatarangini may be seen to migrate among these genres and kavya (highly aesthetic poetry and prose), making it a composite text. All of this suggests a strong intertextuality at work in this Kashmiri epic which seems to have brought together a number of Sanskrit literary and philosophical traditions rather than departed from them. This is important to note, given that the dominant scholarship on the Rajatarangini has controversially believed it to be unique among all Sanskrit literature (more on this below in the section on historiographical assessment).\n\n5Another aspect of interest is that the poet Kalhana claims to have consulted rock and copperplate inscriptions (shasana), that recorded royal land grants and had evidently survived from ancient times. This is an interesting palimpsest of sources, giving insight into the materials that went into the making of the text that is today itself considered a source‑material of history. Kalhana used these epigraphs to record the large number of donations made by kings, queens, ministers and generals to religious institutions of different affiliations, like Buddhist, Shaiva (worshippers of Shiva), Vaishnava (worshippers of Vishnu), and Saura (solar worship).\n\n6Regarding the philosophy of history‑writing, Kalhana states that “shedding both attachment and aversion, the voice of the poet should be unwavering when recounting matters of the past” (RT I.7). Modern scholars have read this as a statement recognizing impartiality or objectivity as a virtue in a historian. It is worth noting however that Kalhana presents this as a poetic virtue and it may refer to the state of equipoise that Sanskrit poetic theory (alamkarashastra) of the times recommended to poets composing certain kinds of works.\n\n\n7Significantly, the Rajatarangini gives a continuous chronology for the region, using traditional Indian calendars or eras, such as kaliyuga and shaka samvat, to assign dates to the ascension and end of the reign of every king or queen of every dynasty that ruled early Kashmir. These dynasties included the Gonandiyas (5th‑6th century?), the Karkotas (7th‑9th century), the Utpalas (9th century) and the Loharas (10th century‑12th century). Some of the important rulers of Kashmir whom we know about because of the Rajatarangini are the Mauryan king Ashoka (4th century), who also presided over an empire that spanned nearly the entire Indian subcontinent, the Kushana king Kanishka (2nd century) and the Huna kings Toramana and Mihirakula (6th century) all of whom also ruled over, and integrated Kashmir into, transregional Indian kingdoms. Hordes of gold, silver, copper and alloyed coins found in the Valley attest to the presence of these rulers in Kashmir.\n\n8The text also documents some more local but nonetheless powerful Kashmiri kings chief among whom was Lalitaditya Muktapida (8th century) who reportedly undertook extensive conquests and raids, reaching into eastern India on the one hand, and central and western Asia (Sinkiang, Iran), on the other. We also hear of King Avantivarman (9th century), famous for undertaking effective measures to control floods in the Valley, and Didda (10th century), one of the few strong female rulers we get in the ancient world.\n\n9The Rajatarangini recounts in detail a host of primarily political events that occurred during these regimes, and the policies, deeds and struggles of successive rulers and courtiers. It does not merely describe these; it seeks to explore the general and individual causes thereof and provide a range of plausible historical explanations for these. In doing so, Kalhana claims, as we have seen, to be detached in his evaluation.\n\n10In fact, however, contrary to his stated dispassion, Kalhana’s style indicates a deep personal involvement when narrating the good or evil deeds of Kashmiri kings and queens. The Rajatarangini is a highly judgmental piece of work and constantly moralizes the events and actions it describes. This takes the form of praise and adulation for righteousness and denunciation and contempt for wrongdoing, the latter expressed even in obscene or scatological terms at places, something that is highly unusual in Sanskrit poetry. Espousing ethics was clearly a defining part of the Rajatarangini’s textual and historical agenda.\n\n11The Rajatarangini is not a tale of only the elites, however. It also dwells centrally on the condition of the subjects under just and benevolent as well as tyrannical and exploitative kings, who alternated in Kashmir’s long history. Indeed, in this work, people’s welfare (prajanupalanam) is a frequent refrain and an important crucible for evaluating the rule of any king.\n\nHistoriographical Assessment\n\n12In the main, it is for three reasons, namely the text’s deference to chronology, causation, and (alleged) objectivity, that European Orientalist scholars who studied the text from the early 19th century onwards, called the Rajatarangini the first and only work of history proper to emerge from ancient India. They believed that this late work was a unique exception in three thousand years of Sanskrit literary culture, which they accused of otherwise completely lacking a sense of history even as it abounded in scripture and mythology. Scholars who arrived at this characterization of the Rajatarangini as the first work of history in India included Harold Wilson (1825), George Buhler and Marcus Aurel Stein (1892, 1900), the last mentioned bringing out the critical edition of the Rajatarangini and its full English translation which is read to this day.\n\n  • 1 Majumdar, 1961, p. 14‑25.\n\n13Their (flawed) assessment of the uniqueness and historical character of the text was embraced and echoed throughout the 20th century by Indologists like Arthur Lewellyn Basham (1961) and Indian historians of different ideological persuasions, like the Nationalist scholar Ramesh Chandra Majumdar (1961) and the Marxist historian Romila Thapar (1983). In perhaps a scramble for coevality with Western disciplinary parameters, they issued laudatory statements such as the following, which became canonical for generations of later historians studying or teaching the Rajatarangini: “Even a modern historian should have little hesitation in ranking Kalhaṇa as a great historian…. [for his] correct appreciation of the true ideals and methods of history”.1\n\n14In so valorizing the empiricist qualities of the text, however, 150 years of influential scholarship on the Rajatarangini essentially applied post‑Enlightenment Rankean positivism to a 12th century traditional Sanskrit poem. In the process, they bracketed out and disowned as “failures” and “imperfections” such aspects of the text that did not fit their idea of what history should be. This included all aspects of figuration, like myths, rhetoric, and didacticism, that were proper to a poetic discourse and so prominent in the Rajatarangini’s own scheme of things as a mahakavya.\n\n  • 2 Ibid., p. 22‑24.\n\n15For example, Marcus Aurel Stein (1900) thought the rhetoric and didactic parts of the Rajatarangini that were in kāvya style were simply unconnected with the narrative proper, which was historical, while Buhler indicted the resort to legend and myth as rendering the chronology of a large part of the text “valueless” and its author suspect. Following suit, despite christening Kalhana “a great historian”, Ramesh Chandra Majumdar2 spoke of his “very defective” method consisting in the inclusion of mythical or legendary kings, “a blind faith in the Epics and Puranas (ancient Indian genres narrating the past)”, a belief in witchcraft and magic, explanation of events as due to the influence of fate “rather than to any rational cause”, a general didactic tendency inspired by Hindu views of karma, and “mere display of poetical and rhetorical skill”. Romila Thapar also dismissed Kalhana’s moralism and didacticism.\n\n16Thus, to be accepted as history, the Rajatarangini had to cease to be traditional Sanskrit poetry. Though entirely inspired from modern objectivist notions of history in the West, rather than from any indigenous or ancient approaches to treating of the past, the underlying belief in the opposition of “factual” (true) history and “fictive” (false) literature was new even to nineteenth‑century Europe, and belied the practice in Classical (let alone Indian) antiquity where history was considered but a form of fine literature with no prejudice to its truth value. The Rankean turn in European historiography imprinted itself on world historians, additionally through the agency of imperialists like James Mill who as early as 1817 launched a scathing attack on Indian literary and historical traditions for not measuring up to their Judeo‑Christian counterparts. Positivism mingled with imperialism to end up downgrading and delegitimizing indigenous Indian narratives of the past. Ironically, in being isolated as a flawed exception in all of Sanskrit literature, the Rajatarangini as history was both the creation and victim of an intellectual approach that sought to simultaneously appropriate and undermine a traditional Sanskrit text.\n\nRecent Approaches\n\n17In the last couple of decades, a new line of thinking has sought to rehabilitate the Rajatarangini in its own literary culture and thereafter investigate it as a work of history. In the process, there has been a move away from an empiricist understanding of the discipline of history towards its literary qualities and to the alternative historical modes that may spring from texts and genres of premodern India.\n\n18Thus, privileging the search for a particular poetic style as a historical marker, Sanskritist Whitney Cox (2013) has recently argued that the occurrence of Sanskrit verses in a “terse, tense” register in the later sections of the Rajatarangini “is able to capture the ebb and flow of the world’s congenital instability by rendering itself dense and rich enough to capture something of it.” This suggests a formal mimesis as the substance of Kalhana’s engagement with history.\n\n19Perhaps more urgently, other Sanskritists like Walter Slaje (2008) and Lawrence McCrea (2013) have returned to indigenous Sanskrit categories of generic analysis, like rasakavya, to gauge the nature and purpose of the Rajatarangini. Rasa refers to the nine aesthetic flavors or essences, like the heroic, the erotic or the compassionate, with at least one of which every work of Sanskrit poetic composition was required to be suffused.\n\n20Walter Slaje, for example, in his analysis of the preamble/prolegomena of the poem, has argued for the Rajatarangini’s pursuit of aesthetic and ultimately soteriological, rather than historical, ends. He points to the evocation of the shanta rasa or state of equipoise that Kalhana claims to have infused his poem with, and which in turn would facilitate the attainment of moksha or liberation by the reader. He says that this was Kalhana’s main endeavour via the narration of the lives of Kashmir’s kings past. In other words, the Rajatarangini’s appeal to historical reality was a necessary means - but merely a means - to enhance, as only an appeal to verity can, the aesthetic effect. Lawrence McCrea also focuses on the shanta rasa but suggests that it was Kalhana’s pessimistic belief in moral decay as the rule of the cycle of time and history that led Kalhana to choose this genre and this literary flavour for his history of Kashmir. Thus, while Slaje sees the historical aspect of the Rajatarangini as subserving and subordinate to aesthetic objectives, McCrea argues for vice versa.\n\n21A comprehensive reinterpretation of the Rajatarangini by historian Shonaleeka Kaul (2014, 2017) demonstrates that a clear theoretical enunciation of poetry (kavya) as history is to be found in Sanskrit poetics, which needs to be taken on board when considering the range of historical modes that flourished in the premodern world. Further, the practice of this theory may have consisted in developing an ethico‑political discursivity that frames the understanding of historical knowledge and defines, in a culturally specific yet potentially universal manner, what “true” knowledge of time and human action may be.\n\n22Kaul points to kavya’s long‑standing and cherished tradition according to which the poet (kavi) was a seer (rishi), who possessed spiritual omniscience and divine sight (divyadrishti). With these powers, which arose from his poetic intuition (pratibha), he could gauge the real nature of things and even apprehend the different dimensions of time “things that no one before had seen”. This claim to epistemic authority, however conventional, qualified the poet to speak on matters gone by and, as one of Kalhana’s successors put it, rendered kavya as “a lamp that illuminates past realities” (kavyadipam bhutavastuprakasakam).\n\n23Echoing this self‑understanding of the genre, Kalhana writes that the world would be in darkness without the illumining work of the good poet (satkavikrityam andham jagattvam vina) (RT I. 47). Particularly the deeds of kings would be lost forever were it not for the poet who resurrects, vivifies and embodies their glory. Kalhana writes:\n\n  • 3 RT I. 46.\n\nRenowned [and mighty] kings would not even be remembered without the favour of the poet’s work, which is sublime and to which we offer salutations.3\n\n24There can be no doubt that in these statements we find a concrete assertion of the epistemic authority of poets. But that’s not all. In a strikingly constructivist approach to the past and to the pursuit of its knowledge, the poet is understood to be not just the “knower” but even the “creator” of the past. Hence Kalhana calls him kavi‑prajapati or kavi‑vedhas, that is, poet‑creator (RT I.4). He writes: “Who else is capable of making visible (pratyakshatam) bygone times except the poet‑creator who can make delightful productions (ramyanirmana)?” Here again, then, is Sanskrit kavya’s belief in the poet’s creative ability to make the unobservable past perceptible - the quintessentially historical function- and indeed a statement on the past itself so rendered as a construction or production (nirmana).\n\nHistory as Ethical Instruction\n\n25Kaul further argues that the poet’s ontic access to history was inflected by kavya’s didactic mandate to provide instruction (upadesha) on a range of human goals and affairs, like piety (dharma), power (artha), and pleasure (kama). For a text like the Rajatarangini, the area of instruction was specifically political morality (rajadharma). Accordingly, the primary enterprise of the Rajatarangini was not merely penning a factual record of Kashmir’s past but representation of Kashmir as a discursive political space mediated by an ethical paradigm.\n\n26Thus, governance and kingship in the Rajatarangini are evaluated according to certain moral principles. Good conduct, righteousness, generosity/liberality, discriminating intellect that could tell right from wrong and which encouraged men of merit, character and learning, and the will to enforce justice (dharma) and absence of fear among the subjects ‑ these constituted the highly prescriptive list of personal and political values that drew on a conception of moral order to which the king’s commitment was expected.\n\n27Then, these values were plotted through a series of exemplars that Kalhana identified in Kashmir’s past kings, clubbing them in pairs elucidating their comparative morality. Thus, the hedonist king Vibhishana was succeeded to the throne by his son, Siddha the puritan. The violent monarch Mihirakula was followed by the righteous Baka. The just Chandrapida was assassinated and replaced on the throne by the tyrannical Tarapida. And the debauched father and son, Kalasha and Harsha, were followed tellingly by the high‑minded king Ucchala. These were all historical kings separated by centuries but connected by the poet’s hermeneutical scheme.\n\n28Indeed, declaring the organizing principle of his textual and historical vision Kalhana states early in his work:\n\n  • 4 RT I. 46.\n\nFrom time to time, due to the spiritual merit of the subjects, kings appear who organize a kingdom that is sunk deep in disorder. Those who are intent on harassment of their subjects perish with their families; on the other hand, fortune waits on even the descendants of those who reinstate order where there is chaos … this [is] the feature of each tale (prativrittantam lakshanam)…4\n\n29In this way, instead of being interpreted at face value alone for the facts and dates of history it reported, the entire River of Kings can be understood as a flow of ethical exemplars. This schematic organization of the text and of time, articulating the poet’s ethicized vision of history, is striking. It is here that the Rajatarangini displays narrativization or the configuration of historical “facts” around a plot‑structure that endows otherwise random data with a unified structure and meaning, thereby rising above mere seriality. This reading of the text conforms to Hayden White’s post‑modern theory of history as narrative. Narrativity in the Rajatarangiṇi embodied the poet’s vision of the past, endowing that past with culturally sanctioned meanings that etched a profound understanding of historicity in early India.\n\n30In this traditional understanding, didactic and historical functions coalesced via poetry. This in turn meant that the model of epistemic truth generated by the Rajatarangini was both transcendent, in invoking higher ethical ends, and contingent in so far as it was located in a referentially adduced historical past.\n\n31Furthermore, didacticism in the Rajatarangini also offered a larger critique of power by pointing to the impermanence of royal sovereignty and of human life itself. To give just one example, in a moral and mortal take on the evanescence of the perquisites and pomp of kingship, the poet writes:\n\nThere is perhaps no man who, having been at first shown favour [by Royal Fortune, the sweetheart of kings], has later not been harassed by her, as by the friendship of the vulgar… She, who is without affection, has never followed kings in death when they, without friends or provisions, are en route for the next world… Gold vessels of the banquet and other articles collected in the treasury rooms - how is it that those kings who have departed for the next world [no longer] own them? … Torn from the necks of those [enemies] about to die … the necklaces, accursed and unholy, for whom are they an attraction? Predecessors have left the ornaments behind after defiling them with hot tears of anguish when about to die; while touching them, who does not have a qualm?\n\n  • 5 RT. V.6‑15, VIII.358‑9.\n\nOn the same path of death is every individual plunging headlong. I am the slayer and he the slain - the notion of a difference [between the two] lasts but a short while… He who but yesterday exults while slaying his foe, at the end sees an enemy gloating over him when he is himself about to be killed. How awful! Fie on this illusion!5\n\n32The themes of mortality and evanescence of human life and action can be seen as the Rajatarangini’s deposition on temporality itself and its ever‑attendant quality, change. A recognition of this fundamentally historical character of time frames the text in that it begins, too, with describing itself as a balancing remedy, an antidote as it were, for kings who may be seized by change - prosperity or decline - across space and time (nṛpanam ullase hrase va deshakalayoh) (RT I.21). A certain universality and inevitability, then, attach to the march of history in this vision.\n\n\n\nMarcus Aurel Stein, (ed. & transl.), 1960 [1892, 1900], Kalhaṇa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī or Chronicle of the Kings of Kashmir, 2 vols, Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi.\n\nKaul Shonaleeka, 2017, The Making of Early Kashmir: Landscape and Identity in the Rajatarangini, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 222 p. [9780199482924]\n\nWhite Hayden, 1987, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 264 p. [9780801841156]\n\nPapers and Contributions to Books\n\nBasham Arthur Lewellyn, 1961, “The Kashmir Chronicle” in Phillips Cyril H. (ed.), Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon, Oxford University Press, London, p. 57‑65, 552 p. [9780197135204]\n\nLawrence McCrea, 2013, “Śānta rasa in the Rājataraṅgiṇi: History, epic, and moral decay”, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 50, issue 2, p. 179‑99.\n\nMajumdar Rameh Chandra, 1961, “Ideas of History in Sanskrit Literature” in Philips Cyril H. (ed.), Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon, Oxford University Press, London, p. 13‑21, 552 p. [9780197135204]\n\nThapar Romila, 1983, “Kalhana”, in Mohibbul Hasan (ed.), Historians of Medieval India, Meenakshi Prakashan, Delhi, p. 52‑62.\n\nKaul Shonaleeka , 2014, “’Seeing’ the Past: Text and Questions of History in Kalhana’s Rajatarangini”, History and Theory, vol 53, Issue 2, p. 194‑211.\n\nSlaje Walter, 2008, “In the Guise of Poetry: Kalhaṇa Reconsidered” in Slaje Walter (ed.), Śāstrārambha: Inquiries into the Preamble in Sanskrit, Harrassowitz Verlag, Weisbaden, p. 207‑44, 255 p. [9783447056458]\n\nWilson Harold H., 1825, “An Essay on the Hindu History of Cashmir”, Asiatic Researches, vol. 15, p. 1‑119.\n\n\n1 Majumdar, 1961, p. 14‑25.\n\n2 Ibid., p. 22‑24.\n\n3 RT I. 46.\n\n4 RT I. 46.\n\n\n\nJawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi\n\n© Presses de l’Inalco, 2020\n\nConditions d’utilisation :\n\nRechercher dans OpenEdition Search\n\nVous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5701566934585571}
+{"content": "Question: How Long Is The Waiting List For IVF On NHS?\n\nHow do I get on the NHS waiting list for IVF?\n\nCCGs may have additional criteria you need to meet before you can have IVF on the NHS, such as:not having any children already, from both your current and any previous relationships.being a healthy weight.not smoking.falling into a certain age range (for example, some CCGs only fund treatment for women under 35).\n\nHow much does IVF cost on the NHS?\n\nAccording to the NHS, one treatment cycle of IVF costs around £5,000. However, despite being regulated, fertility clinics are completely free to set their own price lists, meaning patients can pay differing amounts for the same treatment depending which clinic is used.\n\nWhat is the maximum age for IVF on the NHS?\n\nThe age limit for IVF on the NHS is 42 years, but your local CCG may have stricter criteria than this and may only fund treatment to women who are under 35 years.\n\nWhat is the cut off age for fertility treatment?\n\n\nHow many rounds of IVF is average?\n\n\nHow quickly can you start IVF?\n\nFor the woman, however, the IVF process actually starts weeks earlier. IVF is not a single treatment but a series of procedures. An average IVF cycle takes about 6 to 8 weeks from consultation to transfer, but depending on the specific circumstances of each the path is similar for every patient.\n\nHow much does it cost for IVF in UK?\n\n\nHow much does IVF cost per round?\n\nOn average, nationally, a “fresh” IVF cycle costs $12,000, before medications, which typically run another $3,000 to $5,000. In a “fresh” IVF cycle, eggs are harvested transvaginally after a closely monitored period of ovulation-inducing medications and then “mixed” with fresh sperm.\n\nHow many times can you do IVF in a year?\n\n\nWhat is the best IVF clinic in UK?\n\nCRGH consistently delivers top IVF success rates in the UK, making us one of the best fertility clinics in London and the UK. We currently have the highest live birth rate for IVF/ICSI treatment per embryo transferred than any other IVF clinic in London (latest HFEA data).\n\nHow long does it take to get IVF on the NHS?\n\nYou can generally expect to have a wait time of up to or around 4 months, if you’ve been able to receive funding for IVF on the NHS. The Human Fertility & Embryology Authority (HFEA) suggests that how long you wait for treatment really depends on your local area – and its Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).\n\nCan I get IVF on NHS if I have a child?\n\nA handful of CCGs will offer IVF on the NHS if one partner has a child from a previous relationship, but this is not standard practice within England. And nowhere offers IVF on the NHS for couples wanting a second child. Secondary infertility, it appears, is not classed as a valid issue in the UK.\n\nDoes IVF work first time?\n\n\nHow many times should you try IVF before giving up?\n\n\nHow can I increase my IVF success rate?\n\n\nIs IVF free on the NHS?\n\n\nCan’t afford IVF now what?\n\n\nHow can I make my first IVF successful?\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5740851163864136}
+{"content": "skip to Main Content\n\nEverything your school community needs for student-centric learning on a single intuitive platform\n\nVirtuoso is a new category of learning enablement solutions that’s designed around the concept of “knowing” each student, emotionally, culturally, cognitively and academically. This is made possible by harnessing the collective wisdom of all those who interact with students into a single view.\n\nImagine a platform that is capable of considering each student’s interest and skill level during their learning, not only within the confines of the physical classroom, but beyond, as students access and interact with learning content and teacher designed experiences from any location. Imagine a platform that integrates assessment with learning and reporting in a customised way, providing in-context insights, useful for teaching, learning and assessment, on a daily basis. Imagine educators having more time to facilitate the collaboration with and among students, as well as collaborating amongst themselves within a community of practice.\n\nWith a clear understanding that “no single size fits all” in education and that diversity is the norm, Virtuoso’s, array of integrated processes enables a genuine paradigm shift in education, empowering educators with the ability to consistently deliver customised experiences, equitable learning, and more importantly, at scale, for all students.\n\nVirtuoso – built for education with students, teachers and parents in mind.\n\nTeaching and learning innovation with Virtuoso\n\nPowered by research and best educational practice, Virtuoso enables forward-looking institutions to continuously innovate and transform teaching and learning for each and every student.\n\nHelps design and deliver engaging learning experiences through collaboration and a deeper understanding of individual students.\nProvides powerful tools and resources to gain actionable intelligence and move education forward.\n\nGet a single view of individual students for more personalised learning\n\nWith Virtuoso, your school community can work together to identify each student’s learning needs. This leads to the development and implementation of timely strategies to address these needs and cultivate areas of interest.\n\nKey Features\n\nDevelop and share individual student goals and milestones, implement a timely learning plan, and foster self-directed education. Capture and analyse learning behaviour insights and generate reports for teachers and school psychologists to develop the right intervention plan.\n\nKeep detailed records of each student in one place: basic student profile, ePortfolio, exit and transfer records, welfare and support record, and more.\n\nCollaborate seamlessly to co-create more engaging student experiences\n\nVirtuoso connects everyone in your school community as partners of learning transformation. Timely communications, resource and information sharing, and professional learning communities enable this.\n\nKey Features\n\nFacilitate the co-creation and sharing of learning content between teachers and students, using the intuitive design canvas that empowers students to develop their own learning approaches.\n\nCreate a professional learning community for teachers, with a shared resource portal that provides access to peer knowledge, experience, and resources in the co-creation of course content.\n\nBring students, teachers, and parents together to share resources, provide feedback, and form groups of common interest, using Cisco Webex Team’s messaging and video conferencing tools.\n\nMake smarter decisions faster with evidence-based insights\n\nImprove your educational return on decisions with our cutting-edge data analytics and reporting. Virtuoso captures and analyses a broad range of data and uses analytics expertise and intuitive tools to visualise actionable insights into your students and school.\n\nKey Features\n\nHelp your teachers and educational leaders understand, interact with, and use data every day, through the intuitive dashboard and reports that incorporate smart visualisation.\n\nEmpower teachers and parents to quickly discover important trends or develop a deeper understanding of student learning. Integrate external sources (e.g. NAPLAN) into your data for more advanced insights.\n\nProvide data analysts with a comprehensive set of tools to engage with data at a deeper level using our computer adaptive testing tools, learning style inventory, and social network analysis of user engagement.\n\nMake learning more memorable with immersive classroom technology\n\nIntegrate immersive learning activities and content into lessons to increase engagement using Haven, our virtual and augmented reality learning environment that provides detailed information on students’ actions during immersive experiences to help identify strengths and weaknesses.\n\nWith Haven, educators can readily design and embed immersive learning activities into their lessons with the captured data providing further basis for both directive feedback during the scenario, as well as detailed post-performance feedback and identifying areas users need to work on in accordance with a mastery learning approach.\n\nBetter learning outcomes for the entire school ecosystem\n\nLearn how Virtuoso’s research informed processes supports enabling and empowers students, teachers, parents and education leaders.\n\nBook a demo of our learning enablement platform.\n\nLearn how we can help you transform teaching and learning.\n\nBack To Top\n\nPin It on Pinterest", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9505910873413086}
+{"content": "Incorrect runway direction at JFK 22R?, moving speed of flaps\n\nI just noticed that there is a difference between the runway heading indicated in the Cockpit’s ‘ILS-window’ and the direction one has to fly to stay on the centerline. Runway course displayed for 22R at KJFK is 221 deg, but i had to fly 225 deg. Is that a bug?\n\nSecond thing is about the time needed for flaps to change their positions. It’s hard for me to believe that the 737’s flaps in reality go from 0 to 40 deg in under 10 seconds as they do in the game.\n\nThis post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.\n\n3 kts headwind from 30 deg right…this is almost nothing.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.995959997177124}
+{"content": "\n\n\n\nPeople with HD find it difficult to discard possessions regardless of their actual value, consequently the things overflow the living space and hinder living function\nGenerally has onset before age 40 years, increased in severity after middle age, and is linked with social isolation, depression (14-54%), anxiety, AD/HD and PTSD were also found\nIn children with ADHD hoarding symptoms mediated the relationship between ADHD and oppositionality\nHoarding behaviors may present in up to 3.7% in children, 7.5% in college students, 25% of older adults\nBehavior is a form of communication\nPeople with HD often perceive themselves to be significantly more impaired with respect to their ability to tolerate emotions, pay attention and remember things than they actually are (Low self-efficacy)\nFeeling fearful and being in a cluttered room were both associated with a decreased number of discarded items in people with low self efficacy and low distress tolerance. The opposite was true as SE and DT increased.\n\nAllCEUs courses for counselor continuing education are accepted in most states because we are an approved education provider for NAADAC, the States of Florida and Texas Boards of Social Work and Mental Health/Professional Counseling, the California Consortium for Addiction Professionals and Professions, the Australian Counselling AssociationCRCC, Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association and more.\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7434405088424683}
+{"content": "$ 0.000 0.00%\n\nZipper (ZIP) Rank 3294\n\nMarket Cap $0.000\nVolume 24H 0 ZIP\nOpen 24H $0.000\nLow/High $0.000 - $0.000\nCompare to\n\nMkt.Cap $ 0.00000000 Volume 24H 0.00000000 ZIP\nMarket share 0% Total Supply 100 B ZIP\nProof type N/A Open $ 0.000066\nLow $ 0.000066 High $ 0.000066\nDate Price Volume\n\nHow to Fix Every Zipper Issue\n\nThe Pickstitched Lapped Zipper\n\nAnother thing to be cautious of is that they tend to “stick” a bit more than the others. Meaning the slider doesn’t move as smoothly up and down the teeth as the other two, especially when compared to the coil.\n\nThe texture of the teeth is a lot more subtle than the plastic or metal zipper teeth as well which may make it a good choice for bags and pockets where you don’t want your zipper standing out. Invisible zippers have the teeth hidden behind a tape, so that the zipper is invisible. The tape's color matches the garment's, as does the slider's and the puller's. This kind of a zipper is common in skirts and dresses. They are also seeing increased use by the military and emergency services because the appearance of a button down shirt can be maintained, while providing a quick and easy fastening system.\n\nFinished zippers feature a starter box and pin at one end of the zipper tape and stops at the other end. Finished zippers are used for applications where you want the sides of the zipper to separate completely like on a coat, a genoa sleeve, or the side panels of a cockpit enclosure. Coil zippers feature plastic teeth that, as the name implies, look coiled. The teeth are sewn on to the side tape with polyester thread. Coil zipper teeth are stronger and more flexible than Vislon zippers, making coil a great choice for curved applications like a smile window on an enclosure.\n\nZipper description\n\n\nIn 1851, five years after patenting the revolutionary sewing machine idea, Howe submitted a patent for an “Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure”, which today we recognise as a zipper today. Possibly pre-occupied with trying to get his sewing machine idea into mass production, Howe never really pursued this idea, and nothing came of it. This is why he missed out on being known as the “inventor” of the zipper. It just takes a tiny bit of crimping, too much, and you will lock the slider in place and not be able to move it at all.\n\nIn the picture below I have two different metal zippers in different sizes. Before we really break down the anatomy of a zipper, you’ll need to understand the two basic classes of zippers – closed bottom and separating.\n\nZipper description\n\nA regular invisible zipper uses a lighter lace-like fabric on the zipper tape, instead of the common heavier woven fabric on other zippers. And, at the very beginning of the process, there are people sewing zippers into the fly, adding sliders to the zipper chain. Continuous and finished are terms that refer to the length and style of the zipper as a whole. Finished zippers are sometimes also called ‘jacket zippers’ because they are most commonly used on coats and jackets.\n\n\nFor the tent fly, you are replacing it from the top end, not the bottom hem of the fabric. (It stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha–far too long to print on a zipper.) It’s got about half of the world’s zipper business.\n\nMolded plastic zippers have the teeth molded and melted directly onto the zipper tape. This construction uses very cheap materials which usually make them the most cost-effective option. The shape of the teeth makes them a bit stiffer than the coil zippers. Molded plastic zippers are great for children’s clothing, tote style bags and more.\n\nIf a zipper fails, it can either jam (i.e. get stuck) or partially break off. Types of teeth of plastic zippers are much diverse compared to the metal ones.\n\nWhat is a nylon coil zipper?\n\nClosed Bottom Zipper. Next is the Closed Bottom Zipper. This zipper is typically used when the zipper will not separate. A pant fly zipper is an example. A bottom stop is used to stop the slider from going off the zipper chain.\n\n\nHow to Measure a Zipper\n\nThe modern zipper was eventually designed in 1913 by Gideon Sundback, who worked at the Universal Fastener Company in Hoboken, New Jersey. He received a patent for his “Separable Fastener\" in 1917. If you go on a camping trip, zippers play an important role, too. Your suitcase or backpack might spill its contents everywhere if it wasn't zipped shut.\n\nWhat is a YKK metal zipper?\n\nZippers let you put on warmer clothing quickly, something that's important for people working in extreme conditions. Zippers are also important for people with certain disabilities because buttons can be frustrating if you have problems with your hands or arms.\n\nWhat Does the Number on the Back of My Zipper Mean?\n\nZipper description\n\nGeneral idea was to two sew reinforcements to two edges of cloth and connect them with small metal clasps. Clasps would be connected to each other with a strip of wool and separated from each other. When the strip is pulled it would drag strips along, separate them from each other and close opening between the clothes. Pushing of clasps together would open the opening again. Because of success of sewing machine, Elias Howe didn’t market his invention too much.\n\nZipper description\n  • Heck, you can even put on a dress or a pair of pants without having to do the hokey pokey.\n  • Same part of the machine claps a tooth onto the cloth tape.\n\n\nZipper description\n\nMost of the time, the zipper teeth or coil are fine, and all that needs to be replaced is the zipper slider itself. On the other hand, if the coil or teeth pull off of the woven tape, then the entire zipper must be replaced. Non-locking sliders, on the other hand, allow the zipper to separate by pulling on any part of the zipper slider or even by pulling the zipper teeth apart. This is useful for an application where you would want to be able to quickly separate the zipper, like on a genoa sleeve.\n\nZipper description\n\nThe slider joins or separates the elements when the zipper is opened or closed. Various types of sliders are available depending on use. The exterior metal segments clamp the waterproof sheeting over the concealed zipper teeth. The zipper teeth are not visible in this image (obscured by the edges of the waterproof sheet).\n\nUnless the zipper slider is brass, the metal used is rather soft and misuse will damage the largest one as quickly as the smallest. Locking and non-locking zippers are available for both coil and Vislon zipper teeth. When selecting a slider, be sure you choose a slider that is compatible for your zipper chain in both size and type. For example, a #5 Vislon zipper will need a #5 Vislon Slider, and so on. Then you can select the slider material (plastic or metal) and locking or non-locking.\n\nCan you lock a zipper?\n\n\nThe number on the back of the zipper slider is most often tied to the gauge size of the zipper. The gauge size refers to the size of the teeth, as the number gets larger, the teeth get bigger. There are #2, #5, #8 gauge size zippers and go as high as #15 here in our factory. If you measure the teeth in “mm”, that indicate what gauge the zipper is. The patent for the \"Separable Fastener\" was issued in 1917.\n\nZipper description\n\nSewing In a Zipper\n\nThe invention of plastic zippers also meant they could be created in any colour, making then another tool in the fashion designers arsenal. The zipper not only makes it more convenient to fasten clothing, but plastic zippers are also wind, dust and waterproof, and don’t snag, stick or rust. F. Goodrich Company decided to use Sundback’s invention on their new rubber boots. An executive at the company named them zippers after the noise they made, and the name stuck.\n\nZipper description\n\nToday there are many different types of zippers. Just a tiny bit of spread between the two halves of the slider can cause the zipper teeth (or plastic coil) to not engage. Dirt and sand can also damage the inside of the zipper slider, grinding away at the innards, again, causing the teeth not to lock into each other. These two things will cause ANY size zipper to fail. A larger size zipper will fail just as quickly as a smaller one.\n\nZipper description\n\nWhat is a closed bottom zipper?\n\nTRIM YOUR ZIPPER With the bar tack sewn, trim off the excess zipper teeth and tape using a pair of non-fabric scissors. For invisible and plastic zips, you can simply cut through the zipper teeth and tape. For metal zippers, gently maneuver the scissors between the zipper teeth until you've cut through the zipper.\n\nThey are hard to open and close because the zipper anvil must bend apart teeth that are being held under tension. They can also be derailed (and damage the sealing surfaces) if the teeth are misaligned while straining to pull the zipper shut. These variations are achieved by sewing one end of the zipper together, sewing both ends together, or allowing both ends of the zipper to fall completely apart.\n\nWhat is a reverse coil zipper?\n\nZipper sliders (also known as zipper pulls, zipper pull tabs, or zipper heads) for virtually any type of zipper! When your zipper pull or zipper slider breaks, it can be a real drag. These zipper pulls and sliders are great items for sewing professionals to keep on hand for when zipper repair jobs are needed.\n\nTwo way open-ended zippers Instead of having an insertion pin and pin box at the bottom, a two way open-ended zipper has a puller on each end of the zipper tape. Someone wearing a garment with this kind of zipper can slide up the bottom puller to accommodate more leg movement without stressing the pin and box of a one-way open-ended zipper. Plastic-molded zippers are identical to metallic zippers, except that the teeth are plastic instead of metal. Metal zippers can be painted to match the surrounding fabric; plastic zippers can be made in any color of plastic. Plastic zippers mostly use polyacetal resin, though other thermoplastic polymers are used as well, such as polyethylene.\n\nCan you fix zippers?\n\n\nZipper description\n\nAn invisible zipper foot are made specifically for invisible zippers and are not necessary for other zipper types. Invisible zippers are a little different than the others. The teeth of an invisible zipper are on the backside of the zipper. This means that once it is sewn into your project, the zipper itself should not be visible from the right side. These are commonly used in formal wear and many styles of dresses.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7455273270606995}
+{"content": "Updated date:\n\nRegenerative Architecture | Beyond Sustainability - Design to Actively Heal the Environment\n\n\nWhat is regenerative architecture?\n\nRegenerative architecture, and the regenerative mode of thinking is to move beyond the linear throughput model of inputs-consumption-waste that characterize all of our current development. Beyond being zero energy or being carbon neutral, it is a fundamental repositioning of the question. Regenerative seeks to go beyond doing no harm - it is the co-evolution of human and natural systems, to design to actively heal the environment.\n\n\n\nThe current dominant industrial development model is a linear throughput one. This process generates waste and results in environmental pollution and degradation when the waste generated is greater than the capacity of the sinks. This has pretty much been the way human consumption patterns have ever been, but waste from our current consumption patterns are now breaching the capacity of Earth to absorb. There is habitat destruction, resource depletion, watershed degradation and waste generation.\n\nNature in contrast, presents a very different model of production and consumption. It is a closed loop model where the effluents of one organism serves as the raw material of another organism. This is a cycle where material flows are constantly exchanged and renewed.\n\n\nThe Sustainability Equation\n\nThe primary difference between these two models lie in their end goals. To much of human consumption and production, the primary objective has been efficiency as the end goal. Even in the current sustainability drive, efficiency has very much been the main focus of efforts. What regenerative thinking seeks to overturn is this concept of efficiency.\n\nIn contrast, regenerative systems have a very different focus. Rather than asking the question of \"Is it efficient\", the primary question that regenerative systems ask is this -\"is it EFFECTIVE?\" For example, we keep seeking to produce more and more fuel efficienct cars, but ultimately that is a zero sum game. Instead, the 1st question we should have asked is whether cars are good, whether cars are an effective mode of transport in the first place!\n\nThus, for regenerative systems and architecture, the key principles are the following:\n\n  • Effectiveness as end goal\n  • Close loop system\n  • Integrate human processes with natural processes\n  • Symbiosis between different elements\n  • Multiple pathways to the same goal\n  • Within renewal capacity\n\nPrinciples explained\n\n  1. Effectiveness - This is mainly concerned with making good decisions. 'Good' is not defined as for the sole benefit of the human species, but good in terms of all species. We are not detached from the ecosystem and we need to start to recognize what is good for us may not be good at all for the ecosystem.\n  2. Closed looped system - We need to design and remake our production processes to form closed loops where material flows are cycled and remove the concept of waste. This field of study is termed industrial ecology. An industrial ecosystem is a system in which the consumption of energy and materials is optimized, waste generation is minimized and the effluents of one process serves as the raw material for another process.\n  3. Integrate human processes with natural processes - We are very much part of nature, as much as we don't realize it. Plants covert carbon dioxide to the oxygen that we breathe. The hydrological cycle constantly replenishes our freshwater supply. We need to start to redesign our processes to be aligned with natural processes, to protect, reinforce and strengthen them where possible. For example, rather than building seawalls to protect against erosion and flooding, it's far more effective to use natural vegetation to do the same work!\n  4. Symbiosis between different elements - We nee to start designing our systems to take advantage of share linkages that would provide mutual benefit. This is similar to processes in nature where bees and flowers for example share are mutually dependent.\n  5. Multiple pathways - Like ecosystems, we need to redesign our systems to have multiple means to the same goal. This makes our system resilient. Going by the efficiency theory, only one method should be the best, but viewing from the lenses of effectiveness, it creates a dynamic web of flexible, mutually supporting relationships. Using the same example of bees and flowers. Although flowers depends on bees to pollinate, alternative pathways exist like the hummingbird, which also fulfill the same function.\n  6. Within renewal capacity - Any system, when overloaded, will degrade over time. Hence, regenerative systems must work within the carrying capacity. Hence, the role of the designer is to decide what is appropriate development and how much is optimal development.\n\nStrategies for Regenerative Design\n\nJohn Tillman Lyle proposes the following strategies for regenerative design in his book \"Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development\"\n\n  1. Let nature do the work\n  2. Consider nature as both model and context\n  3. Aggregate, not isolate\n  4. Seeking optimum levels for multiple functions\n  5. Matching technology to need\n  6. Using information to replace power\n  7. Providing multiple pathways\n  8. Seeking common solutions to disparate problems\n  9. Managing storage\n  10. Shaping form to guide flow\n  11. Shaping form the manifest process\n  12. Prioritize for sustainability\n\nThese design strategies encompasses the 6 key principles discussed above and any designer would do well to implement the strategies into their designs.\n\nTo understand regenerative design\n\n\nCase study: Center for Environmental Studies, Oberlin College, Ohio (2000)\n\nFeatures: Campus, Higher Education, Library, Auditorium\nArchitect: William McDonough\nBuilt up Area: 1206 sqm, 2 Storey\nOccupancy: 80\nAnnual energy purchased: -4.23 kBtu/sqft\n\nThis is an energy POSITIVE building which is powered by sunlight, producing more energy than it consumes. (Matching technology to need)\n\nA Living Machine, a series of tanks with plants and aquatic wildlife, treats wastewater for irrigation. This closes the hydrological cycle and returns water to the local environment at the outdoor pond. The pond becomes a natural habitat for wildlife and becomes a living classroom. (Let nature do the work, managing storage)\n\nThe local ecosystem is also being restored and biodiversity is preserved. The apple trees and vegetable gardens produce food. (Seeking common solutions to disparate problems)\n\nIn addition, there is a monitoring network for all the critical parameters to provide information feedback so as to have appropriate and optimized management. (Using information to replace power)\n\nThe community is also involved as the architecture becomes a living classroom. The whole design disinvents the concept of waste while building prosperity within ecological limits. (Shaping form to manifest process)\n\nBuilding features\n\nBuilding features\n\nView of pond and living machine\n\nView of pond and living machine\n\nEcosystem restoration Source: http://www.oberlin.edu/\n\nEcosystem restoration Source: http://www.oberlin.edu/\n\nRelated hubs\n\n\nArchitects North Wales on February 17, 2011:\n\nA very good read, packed with quality content.\n\nSustainability is becoming a major factor in all new builds in this day and agew for the reasons you highlighted. Our previous government labour issued they wanted all new housing to reach a code 4 level of sustainability by 2013 and Code 5 level by 2016. I don't know if these targets will still be reached with the conservative cuts however the fact that it's on the governments radar is enough to show that sustainable housing is going to start been a mainstream fixture throughout the construction industry.\n\nThank you for reading\n\ngreenginga on July 07, 2010:\n\nGood stuff,\n\nMy sustainability research of the last 8 years, directed me towards regenerative technologies, systems and designs as the place we should be aiming, beyond sustainability, it is really good to see it's public perception expanding...\n\nKeep up the good work.\n\nThank you for your time\n\nThe Rope from SE US on November 17, 2009:\n\nWOW! A lot of info - it's technical but bet it will do well in Google. I am going to have to revisit this hub and spend some time really working through it - I think it could really expand my knowledge! THANKS!", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6237952709197998}
+{"content": "Mujje Tulye from Uganda/A special dish of the Ankole tribe: the karo\n\n\nAnkole is one of four traditional kingdoms in Uganda. It is located in southwestern Uganda, East of Lake Edward. It was ruled by a monarch known as The Mugabe. The kingdom was formally abolished in 1967 and is still not officially restored. The people of Ankole are called Banyankole (singular: Munyankole) in Runyankole language, a Bantu language.\n\n\nKalo (or karo) dishEdit\n\nKalo mu kasero (millet bread)\n\nKalo (or Karo) is a dish well known among the ethnic agrarian tribes in the western part of Uganda including the Bakiga, Banyankole, Batooro and Banyoro as well as some tribes from eastern Uganda including the Bagwere. However, some traditions have it that it originated from the tribes of northern Uganda during the Gipiiri and Labongo Luo migration before spreading southwards.\n\nMillet flour is often not considered suitable for a meal unless cassava flour is added to it in a ratio of 1:3 to 1:5 (cassava flour:1 millet flour:5) by weight of millet. The reason is that millet on its own is not only coarse but it is also difficult to turn into a paste due to its 'stiff' reaction to water. The cassava element brings both a sticky and a soft texture, making the mixture relatively easy to prepare. However, others claim the introduction of cassava is due to modern efforts in trying to make kalo more appealing to the young generation as well as to people who traditionally did not appreciate it.\n\nKalo is extracted from dried millet grains either by using the traditional means of grinding with a smooth stone or using modern ways of a grain milling. After grinding, the millet is ready for making kalo. The cooking of kalo starts with boiling water (the amount of water used depends on the quantity of kalo one wants to cook. For example three litres of water to a kilo of flour). \"With the water boiling in a pot, a handful of millet flour is sprinkled onto the water to create an initial reaction between the water and the flour. It reduces the air in the water, which interferes with the paste formation by creating hard particles. After the initial reaction, the water is reduced by a half to create space for the flour. The deducted water is put into a separate container. The flour swallows up the remaining water and forms a single bulging ball as it is stretched up. Often, more water is added. Cold water should not be used at this stage because the flour will become stiff. The actual mixing takes about 30 minutes depending on the amount of kalo to prepare. The kalo is ready when it turns elastic.\n\nAfter mixing and squeezing the kalo into a dome, a basket matching the size of this dome is prepared. Raw flour is sprinkled onto the walls of the basket before the entire blob of kalo is hurled into the basket. The raw flour is meant to prevent the Kalo from sticking onto the basket's walls.\n\nAfter cooking, it is good to leave the kalo covered up for 10-15 minutes before serving so that it tastes tender. In a family setting in Ankole, there is a special basket (endiiro) used by the head of the family and other baskets for the rest of the family members. In other settings, sliced pieces of kalo are held in one hand and one keeps pulling off a small piece, moulding it, using a thumb to make a hole in this piece to accommodate the sauce and then dipping it into the sauce.\n\nThe dish is often a must for many traditional ceremonies such as child naming or marriage.\n\n\nStep 1: Mingling of the karo (boil water, add millet flour mixed with a little cassava flour then mingle)\nStep 2: Put the karo in the busket where it is served from.\nStep 3: Shake the karo so that it can settle in the basket.\nStep 4: Enjoy your karo and dry fish mixed with ground nuts\n  • Boiling water\n  • Millet flour\n  • Cassava flour\n\nPreparation processEdit\n\nPreparation of a traditional meal (karo) of Ankole culture in western Uganda\n\n  • Mix the millet flour and cassava flour in a ratio of three to one respectively (or buy pre-mixed flour)\n  • Put water in a pan and let it boil.\n  • While it boils, add the flour as you mingle.\n  • Continue mingling till it gets ready (the karo will not be sticking to the mingling stick at this point)\n\n\nThe karo is usually served with Eshabwe, a sauce (with beans or beef) and leafy greens along with water or a glass of fruit juice.\n\nEshabwe (ghee sauce)Edit\n\nEshabwe condiment\n\nEshabwe is a class of clarified butter that originated in Ankole and is commonly used as condiment. Eshabwe, also known as ghee sauce, is a traditional dish prepared in Ankole. The dish is usually prepared for special ceremonies or occasions.\n\nEshabwe is served as a condiment with the main course meal e.g. karo (milletbread), potatoes, matooke, beans and others.\n\n\n  • Ghee\n  • Rock salt\n  • Cold water\n  • Salt\n\n\nInitially ghee is washed clean in cold water. A mixture of rock salt and water (rwabarire) is added to the ghee. The mixture is stirred until the ghee changes from yellow to white in color. While adding cold boiled water, which has salt dissolved in it. The formed eshabwe is stirred until you get the desired thickness. After the eshabwe is formed, it is sieved to remove particles or impurities. Eshabwe is served with any main course meal e.g. millet bread, matooke, sweet potatoes etc.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7752950191497803}
+{"content": "It would be impossible\n\nthis May Eve, at this time of pandemic, not to speak of the second plague in the tale of Lludd and Llefelys. Of the dragon’s scream heard this night which ‘pierced people’s hearts and terrified them so much that men lost their colour and their strength, and women miscarried, and young men and maidens lost their senses, and all animals and trees and the earth and the waters were left barren.’\n\nIt would be impossible not to recall how Lludd dug a hole in the centre of the Island of Britain, filled it with mead, laid a sheet of brocaded silk on top. How he called down our screaming red dragon, battling with the white dragon, spiralling, spiralling, spiralling down, through the forms of bulls, wolves, boars, into two little pigs who drank the mead and fell asleep before he wrapped them up in the brocaded silk like two little babies and buried them in a stone chest at Dinas Emrys.\n\nIt would be impossible not to think of how the image of the serpentine bodies of the dragons intertwining looks like two strands of DNA and one alone like a single strand of RNA and to be reminded of the structure of a virus with its strand or strands carried within the stone chest of its capsid. Of how, like the dragons, viruses shift through a countless series of mutations before they sleep.\n\nIt would be impossible not to call to Lludd, to pray to that he, with his serpent-staff propped in the corner of his laboratory as he bends over a microscope, silver as his silver hand, will help us find a vaccine.\n\nIt would be impossible not to ask him to bring an end to our being locked up, like Creiddylad in her father’s house, which for some is a dream and for others a nightmare they fear is never going to end.\n\nIt would be impossible not to wonder who unlocked the stony chest and set the dragons free. To desire to find some perpetrator, some key, some rational explanation, some meaning to these events. Vengeance by the angry hordes of monstrous animals locked in stone chests or by the gods. The laws of evolution. Science. A balancing act of the Earth as a result of human excess. But it would be impossible.\n\n*The image is from 14. Balance in the Wildwood Tarot.\n\nNodens Silver Hand\n\nSilver Hand of Nodens Med\n\nNodens ‘the Catcher’ was worshipped across Britain in the Romano-British period. This is evidenced by his temple at Lydney, an inscription at Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall, and two silver statuettes found in Lancashire on Cockerham Moss suggesting the existence of a nearby shrine.\n\nIn medieval Welsh literature Nodens appears as Lludd Llaw Eraint. Lludd originates from Nudd ‘Mist’ and ‘Llaw Eraint’ means ‘Silver Hand’. A bronze arm found in Nodens’ temple in Lydney supports this link. His iconography and identifications with Mars and Neptune suggest he was a sovereignty figure associated with hunting, fishing, war, mining, healing, water, weather, and dreams. Many of these skills would have depended on his catching hand, which was lost and replaced in silver. Sadly we have no Brythonic stories explaining how Nodens/Nudd/Lludd got his silver hand.\n\nTherefore we must turn to the Irish myths and the story of Nodens’ cognate Nuada Airgetlám ‘Silver Hand’ in The Battle of Moytura. This opens with the Children of Nemed departing from Ireland to escape the oppression of the Formorians, their exile in Greece, and return to Ireland to reclaim their land as the Fir Bolg at the time ‘the children of Israel were leaving Egypt’ (around 1000BCE*).\n\nThe Lebor Gabála Érenn informs us that the Children of Nemed split into three groups – the Fir Bolg, one that went to Britain, and one that went North and became the Tuatha Dé Dannan. It is amongst the Tuatha Dé Dannan, ‘People of the Goddess Danu’, that we find Nuada as High King.\n\nIn The Battle of Moytura we are told the Tuatha Dé Dannan returned to Ireland from the North to reclaim their share of the land from the Fir Bolg ‘in a cloud of mist and a magic shower’. Nuada made the demand: ‘They must surrender the half of Ireland, and we shall divide the land between us.’\n\nThe Fir Bolg refused and this led to a fearsome battle. Nuada played a central role. He ‘was in centre of the fight’ with ‘his princes’, ‘supporting warriors’ and ‘bodyguard’ and took on Sreng, the Fir Bolg’s champion. Sreng ‘struck nine blows on the shield of the High-King Nuada, and Nuada dealt him nine wounds.’ During this combat Nuada lost his hand, which is described dramatically in vivid detail. ‘Sreng dealt a blow with his sword at Nuada, and, cutting away the rim of his shield, severed his right arm at the shoulder; and the king’s arm with a third of his shield fell to the ground.’\n\nNuada was carried from the battlefield. This is followed by a striking and grotesque scene: ‘His hand was raised in the king’s stead on the fold of valour, a fold of stones surrounding the king, and on it the blood of Nuada’s hand trickled.’ What to make of this? I’ve heard of severed heads put on stakes and revered due to the belief the soul resides in the head, but not of severed limbs raised on folds of stones. Perhaps this represents a tradition where a ruler or warrior’s strength was believed to reside in his sword arm/hand. For this reason the hand/arm received reverence whilst its mutilated owner was seen as lacking in strength (this would explain Nuada’s later demotion).\n\nAfterwards the Tuatha Dé Dannan gained ascendancy. A truce was called and the Fir Bolg were given three options: to leave Ireland, share the land, or continue fighting. Sreng decided to fight and challenged Nuada to single combat. ‘Nuada faced him bravely and boldly as if he had been whole.“If single combat on fair terms be what you seek, fasten your right hand, as I have lost mine; only so can our combat be fair.” This shows Nuada was seen as unwhole yet still acted bravely and fairly.\n\nSreng refused. Taking counsel, the Tuatha Dé Dannan decided to offer Sreng ‘his choice of the provinces of Ireland’. ‘A compact of peace, goodwill, and friendship’ was made and Sreng chose Connacht.\n\nBecause he was not whole Nuada was forced to step down from his position as High King. He was replaced by the half-Formorian half-Dannan prince Bres. Bres oppressed the Tuatha Dé Dannan: ‘their knives were not greased by him… their breaths did not smell of ale; and they did not see their poets nor their bards… nor did they see their warriors proving their skill at arms before the king.’ Ogma was forced to carry fire-wood and the great father-god, the Dagda, served as a rampart-builder.\n\nDuring this period a silver hand was made for Nuada through the combined efforts of the physician, Dian Cecht, and the brazier, Credne. It seems both an intimate knowledge of human anatomy and skill at silver-work were required for this process. Successfully crafted, it ‘moved as well as any other hand’. This scene is uncannily reminiscent of modern bionic technologies.\n\nWhat follows is even more uncanny. Credne’s son, Miach, felt an inexplicable disliking for Nuada’s silver hand. We are told ‘he went to the hand’ (here, frustratingly it is not clear if he is speaking to the severed hand or to the silver hand) ‘and said “joint to joint of it, and sinew to sinew”; and he healed it in nine days and nights. The first three days he carried it against his side, and it became covered with skin. The second three days he carried it against his chest. The third three days he would cast white wisps of black bulrushes after they had been blackened in a fire.’\n\nHere we find a complex ritual for the regeneration of a flesh-and-blood hand! Again, this seems to predict modern stem cell research; scientists are still struggling with complex processes of decellurisation and recellurisation in order to grow ‘ghost limbs’. Another example of a regenerating hand from the Welsh myths is the monstrous appendage that snatched Pryderi and Teyrnon’s foal and was chopped off by Teyrnon no doubt to reappear the next Calan Mai for more victims.\n\nSimilar miraculous healings took place in The Battle of Moytura. Both the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha Dé Dannan dug Wells of Healing. The Fir Bolg’s physicians ‘brought healing herbs with them, and crushed and scattered them on the surface of the water in the well, so that the precious healing waters became thick and green. Their wounded were put into the well, and immediately came out whole.’\n\nThe Tuatha Dé Dannan’s well was called Slaine. Dian Cecht and his sons Octriul and Miach chanted spells over it ‘to kindle the warriors who were wounded there so that they were more fiery the next day.’ It not only healed the wounded, but the mortally wounded and brought the dead back to life! ‘They would cast their mortally-wounded men into it as they were struck down; and they were alive when they came out.’ It shares qualities with the Cauldron of Regeneration in the Welsh myths.\n\nReturning to the narrative, Bres was deposed. Nuada, with his flesh-and-blood sword hand, now whole, and thus seen as capable of rulership, was returned to his position of High King, now ruler of Ireland. Bres journeyed to the lands of his Formorian father and raised an army, led by Balor of the Piercing Eye.\n\nAs they approached, ‘making a single bridge of ships from the Hebrides to Ireland’, ‘terrifying’, ‘dreadful’, ‘a handsome well-built young warrior wearing a king’s diadem’ arrived at the gates of Nuada’s court. Cue the entry of Lug Lormansclech, ‘the son of Cian son of Dian Cecht and of Ethne Daughter of Balor’. Lug was half Danann and half Formorian. ‘Lormanslech’ means ‘Long-Handed’. It was revealed the youth is Samildanach, ‘many-skilled’. Like Nuada, many of his talents, such as building, smithing, fighting, playing a harp, were dependant on his sword-hand.\n\nNuada welcomed Lug and, perceiving his superior skill in combat, surrendered his kingship to him on the condition he released the Tuatha Dé Dannan from the oppression of the Formori. In the following battle Nuada was defeated and killed by Balor. Lug avenged Nuada by slaughtering Balor, his grandfather, by shooting a stone into his single eye with a sling and became the High King.\n\nThis epic story speaks clearly of Nuada’s bravery in combat, the slicing off of his arm and its raising on a fold of stones, the crafting of his silver hand and the magical regeneration of his flesh-and-blood hand, his loss and regaining of his sovereignty, his special friendship with Lug, and his death.\n\nWe might expect to discover a parallel mythos in ‘The Fourth Branch’ of The Mabinogion, which tells the story of the House of Dôn, who are cognate with the Tuatha Dé Dannan. Lleu Llaw Gyfes ‘Skilful Hand’ is a central figure and his story shares similarities with his cognate, Lug**. However, Lludd is not mentioned at all. Math is the sovereign of the House of Dôn and the grandfather of Lleu.\n\nWill Parker suggests a parallel with the battle against the Formorians may be found in the ‘The Battle of the Trees’, from The Book of Taliesin, where the House of Dôn took on the forces of Annwn, the Otherworld. According to Triad 84 this ‘Futile Battle’ was initiated when Amaethon stole a lapwing, a dog, and roebuck from Arawn, King of Annwn. Gwydion enchanted the trees*** and Lleu was the battle-leader, ‘Radiant his name, strong his hand, / brilliantly did he direct a host’.\n\nAmongst the enemy were ‘a great-scaled beast’, a ‘black-forked toad’, and ‘speckled crested snake’. Two englyns**** suggest Brân the Blessed, a gigantic son of Llyr previously associated with moving woodlands, now dead, fought amongst the people of Annwn. Once again, frustratingly, Lludd is conspicuous by his absence. If this was the battle where he lost his hand, his story has been lost.\n\nLludd appears instead in Lludd and Llefelys. He is introduced as Lludd Llaw Eraint, King of Britain. He already has his silver hand. The narrator presupposes the audience know the back story. We are told Lludd was a son of Beli Mawr, the father of Caswallon, who usurped the throne from Caradog, son of Brân, in ‘The Second Branch’. Assuming Lludd’s mother was Dôn this places him in a medial position between the Houses of Dôn and Beli. His power of mediating forms the heart of the tale.\n\nWe learn that, with advice from his brother, Llefelys, King of France, Lludd defeated three plagues, which bore some resemblance to the oppressions of Bres and the Formorians. The first was a people called the Coriniaid who were undefeatable because they could hear everything. The second was the scream of a dragon that blighted the land, causing loss of strength, miscarriages, barrenness, and crop failure. The third was a ‘powerful magician’ of ‘enormous stature’ who carried off Lludd’s provisions.\n\nLludd defeated them, not in epic battles, but through wit and magic. He banished the Coriniaid with a poison made from insects mixed in water. He calmed the two battling dragons by luring them into a well filled with mead, wrapped them in silk, and buried them in a stone chest. He caught the magician, who used a sleep spell, by standing in a tub of cold water to stay awake, defeated him in combat, then made him his vassal. Lludd then ruled Britain ‘in peace and prosperity’ until his death.\n\nThis story is set during the time of the Roman invasions. The Coriniaid (or Caesariad) were the army of Caesar who invaded in 55BCE and were driven from Britain by a wintry storm. Lludd’s dragon screamed because it was battling the dragon ‘of a foreign people’. Lludd’s calming of the dragons possibly represents him making peace between the Britons and Romans many years later. These historicised stories, particularly that of the battling dragons who fight again during the Anglo-Saxon invasion, are likely to have a deeper mythic basis. The magician was a purely otherworld figure.\n\nLludd mediated between threats from other lands and from the Otherworld and made peace with Llefelys’ aid. Their relationship bears similarities to the special friendship between Nuada and Lug.\n\nIn Britain Lludd’s role as a peacemaker rather than as a warrior was emphasised. The focus of his temple was not war but healing dreams. It’s my intuition his associations with healing may stem from his wounding, from the loss of his hand, his status as a wounded king. Silver-handed, he is whole-and-not-whole, and occupies a liminal and dreamlike position between Thisworld and the Otherworld.\n\nIt is of interest that Nodens/Nudd/Lludd’s son, Gwyn ap Nudd, is a ruler of Annwn. His role is to contain the fury of the spirits of Annwn to prevent their destruction of Thisworld. Gwyn is also a mediator.\n\nPutting the evidence together we can conclude that Nodens lost his hand in a battle against some form of oppressor, possibly an Annuvian giant with a single eye, during ‘the mythic foretime’. His severed hand was raised on a fold of stone or paraded through the land with reverence and solemnity. Somebody, perhaps Gobbanus the smith-god, with the help of a physician, crafted him a silver arm. During this process he lost and regained his sovereignty. In the face of another threat Lugus arrived at his court and, in the ensuing battle, Nodens was killed and Lugus took his place.\n\nResurrected as King of Britain at the time of the Roman invasion Nodens/Nudd/Lludd worked with Lugus/Llefelys to bring peace to the island. Both deities were revered by the Roman Britons. After their veneration died their stories lived on and form an important part of the text we know as The Mabinogion.\n\nAnd this was not Lludd’s only rebirth. In the name of King Lud, the eponymous leader of the Luddites, who struggled against the oppression of the Cotton Lords, we find echoes of Lludd’s name.\n\nAgain, as we are faced with oppression from right-wing groups and governments, he is invoked: “No King but Lludd!” As the sovereignty of the gods is affirmed against the corrupt rulers of Thisworld a fitting symbol of this time might be a silver hand; dealing blows, healing, bringing peace.\n\n*Scholars have traced the story of the exile of the Israelites to prophets in 700BCE and suggest it may have happened around 1000BCE, although no archaeological evidence has bd een found to support.\n** The attempts of Arianrhod, Lleu’s mother, to prevent him from winning a name, arms and a wife share parallels with Balor trying to stop Lug gaining a name and wife in order to prevent his prophesied death. Lleu’s defeat of his rival in love, Balor, with a spear-blow is similar to Lug killing Balor with a sling-shot or, in some cases, an enchanted spear.\n***In The Battle of Moytura, Be Chuille and Dianaan, Lug’s ‘two witches’ said: “We will enchant the trees and the stones and the sods of the earth so that they will be a host under arms against them; and they will scatter in flight terrified and trembling.”\n****These englyns are found in the Myvyrian Archaeology:\n\nSure-hoofed is my steed impelled by the spur;\nThe high sprigs of alder are on thy shield;\nBran art thou called, of the glittering branches.\n\nSure-hoofed is my steed in the day of battle:\nThe high sprigs of alder are on thy hand:\nBran by the branch thou bearest\nHas Amathaon the good prevailed.\n\n\nEdwin Hopper (transl), ‘The Battle of Moytura’, Edwin Hopper\nJohn T. Koch (ed), The Celtic Heroic Age, (Celtic Studies Publications, 2003)\nRobert Graves, The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, (Faber & Faber, 1999)\nCad Godau’, Mary Jones Celtic Literature Collective\n\nNodens and the Serpents of the Deep\n\n\n\nMosaic from Nodens' temple\n\n\n\n\nPlate XIII Bathurst\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRing of Silvianus - Wikipedia Commons\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCaitlin Matthews and Jane Dagger, ‘Temple of Nodens Incubation’\nSylvia Victor Linsteadt, ‘The Return of the Snake’\nWilliam Hiley Bathurst, Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park,\n‘The Forest of Dean and Wye Valley’s Celts and Romans’\n\nGwyn, Gwythyr and Creiddylad: A Story from the Old North\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGreen, Thomas Concepts of Arthur (Tempus Publishing, 2007)\nHeron (transl) ‘Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’\nParker, Will The Four Branches of the Mabinogi\nSikes, Wirt British Goblins (Lightning Source UK, 2011)\nSquire, Charles Celtic Myths and Legends (Parragon, 2000)", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8013903498649597}
+{"content": "Hand and Talon\n\nHand and Talon\n\nHand and Talon\n\nSteal the bag. Don’t get caught. Repeat.\n\nNot the most glorious existence, but Krea likes it just fine.\n\nWhen Sorin, a cranky old soldier, barges in and decides to take over her life, Krea is less than enthused. Sure, he saved her from a brutal death at the hands of the guards, and he did stop decrepit faerie monsters from eating her. But declaring she isn’t human and dragging her through a cursed forest to the Royal City is going too far.\n\nNow, she is eyeball deep in magic wielding nobles, shapeshifting dragons, assassins and an ancient elf war that could destroy the Empire. Her cloak is too small. Her horse thinks she wants to eat it and her companion resents her very existence.\n\nAnd then there’s Dane.\n\nRead Chapter 1\n\nHand and Talon now available for Kindle, iBooks, nook, Kobo, and many more…", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9141508936882019}
+{"content": "Emmanuel Levinas’ Challenge to the Modern European Cultural Identity\n\nEmmanuel Levinas’ Challenge to the Modern European Cultural Identity\n\nPrint Friendly, PDF & Email\n\nAlso check out Deconstructing Europe, Emanuel Paparella’s new weekly column in the Global Spiral.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTo be sure, Kierkegaard had also criticized this Hegelian tendency, countering it with his existentialist philosophy. Those who understood his critique only too well, promptly proceeded to relegate his thought to the theological within a false dichotomy of philosophy/theology (shown absurd by Thomas Aquinas way back in the 13th century). This insured that Kierkegaard would never be as influential as a Hegel or a Heidegger.\n\n\nIn this domain we are challenged by “the otherness of the other person.” It is this “otherness,” which is an integral characteristic of human life, that the Western philosophical tradition has overlooked and even negated, thus contributing to the dehumanization of Man.\n\nLévinas’ life and thinking were deeply affected by the trauma of the Nazi genocide, better known as the Holocaust. But what is unique about his thinking is that it refuses to make those monstrous events its core subject matter. As Derrida, who admired Lévinas’ philosophy, aptly expressed it once: the danger of naming our monstrosities is that they become our pets.\n\nLévinas’ writings provide no extensive discussion of the Holocaust itself; therefore, the assumption on the part of those who were thinking and writing on it, has often been that Lévinas could not be considered a valid source of philosophical insight into this dark period of human history. But that is an erroneous assumption, just as invalid as the assumption that he unreservedly admired Heidegger’s philosophy because he happened to have translated it into French. As a matter of fact, Lévinas’ thinking is a reaction to the Holocaust by the mere fact that it asks the crucial question: What does it mean to be a human being?\n\nWere one to encapsulate the whole of Lévinas’ philosophy in two succinct words, they would be “being human.” This philosophy insists throughout that an extreme, unbalanced rationality devoid of imagination, feelings, senses and spirit, unconcerned with the ethical dimensions of life, is the equivalent to a refusal to be human, to allowing oneself to become a monster.\n\nA little personal anecdote may be illustrative here: many years ago I took a course on Heidegger with a professor who was a staunch admirer of Heidegger’s philosophy. The students were made to read Being and Time on which the professor in question would offer in class brilliant comments and interpretations. Not once during the entire duration of the course was it ever mentioned that Heidegger, for a short while, had joined the Nazi party and had heard echoes of “the voice of Being” in the speeches of Hitler; somehow that particular existential detail was not considered essential by the professor for any valid appraisal of the ponderous rational scheme of Being and Time.\n\n\n\nIndeed this ethical capacity seems to come from another place than our rational powers of analysis evidenced within the Cartesian ego. Even if we grant that such an ego is adequate in identifying the truths of philosophy, it somehow remains unable to acknowledge a domain where there is no choosing of the connection with the other. In fact, the other way around may apply: the other chooses me. One is “already responsible” for the other prior to any rational analysis.\n\nAnd here is the philosophical paradox: Lévinas’ task becomes that of using rationality to take the Cartesian ego beyond rationality, somewhat similar to what Vico does with his concepts of fantasia, which for him precedes rational reason, and the concept of Providence who guides human events and is both immanent within history but also transcendent. Which is to say, the rational ego has to be brought to recognize a sort of enigmatic “ethical” truth which Lévinas calls “pre-originary,” i.e., arising outside, prior to the usual time-line of the reflective ego.\n\nIn attempting this operation, Lévinas will proffer statements such as: ethics is “older” than philosophy, it is “first philosophy,” on the scene before the arrival of rational philosophical thinking; something ingrained in being human. Within purely classical categories, that may be equivalent to the Socratic preoccupation with dying well by living a life of integrity and devotion to truth, as exemplified in Plato’s Apology. It is this ancient voice of goodness, which even Vico’s pre-historical “bestioni” possess to a degree, a voice often overlooked by rationalist philosophers, but powerfully present in Talmudic texts, that Lévinas finds strangely silent in the modern Western philosophical tradition.\n\nIn mytho-poetic language, it’s as if Lévinas were to come face-to-face with the goddess Europa, as she is being abducted by a black bull (Zeus in disguise), to journey to another shore, there to assume a different persona, and he were to ask her, “Europa quo vadis?” after warning her to remember her original identity: “nosce te ipsum”; which is to say, go back to the future and know yourself holistically: Know your Greco-Roman origins, yes, but also know the Biblical tradition (the foundation for Christianity), the Christian heritage, the Humanistic synthesis of Graeco-Roman and Christian civilizations, Celtic and Germanic cultures with their ideas of freedom, the universalizing Enlightenment rooted in the democratic-scientific tradition born in ancient Greece, and the Islamic influences. Voltaire and Descartes yes, but Vico and Novalis too are part of your identity. Your unity will be a chimera if it is only a unity of a bank and neglects its spiritual elements.\n\nUndoubtedly this hermeneutics, or re-interpretation of the Cartesian ego, placing at its core an non-refusable responsibility for the other without granting the ego any time to think it over and choose, so to speak, challenges some of the most basic assumptions of modern, and in some way classical, rationalistic philosophy. Not since the times of Mamonides in the 13th century had a Jew dared such a fundamental challenge from within the Western philosophical tradition. It is the challenge of Paul to Greek culture revisited. For indeed Lévinas is saying nothing short of this: the knowing ego does not exhaust what it means to be human. Some have called his philosophy one of “ethical subjectivity,” as a way of dismissing it as the raving of a lunatic, just as the ancient Greeks dismissed Paul in the agora. For the serious reader, however, it is rather a re-definition of subjectivity face to face with a totalizing kind of Cartesian reflection.\n\nWhile Lévinas does not write directly about the Holocaust, other thinkers, who influenced Lévinas, were nevertheless reflecting upon the philosophical implications of this dark event of human history. One such was Berel Lang who wrote an essay titled “Genocide and Kant’s Enlightenment,” which appeared in his Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide. In this essay Lang uncovers certain lines of affinity between some classical aspects of Enlightenment thought and the Nazi genocide. His conclusion is that there are two important aspects of the Enlightenment that formed the intellectual heritage, which needed to be in place for genocide to occur in the heart of civilized Europe: namely, the universalization of rational ideals and the redefinition of the individual human being in terms of its possessing or not possessing such a universal rationality. The genocide, Lang argues, was aimed at those groups who stuck to their own ancient pre-Enlightenment sources of particularistic identity, considered “irrational.” Hence the racial laws and racial exclusion were an expression of ingrained Enlightenment prejudices. Which is to say, the Enlightenment sheds light on everything except itself; it remains to be enlightened.\n\nThis powerful essay leads many cultural anthropologists comparing civilizations, to begin to wonder: Which, in the final analysis, is more obscurantist: religious fanaticism and fundamentalism, or a so called “enlightened” era that throws out the window the baby with the bathwater and arrogantly refuses any suggestion that it ought to enlighten itself, and not with its own light?\n\nThis conjures up that terrible face to face encounter of Dante with the poet Bertrand Del Bornio in a cave in hell doing “light to himself” with its own decapitated head. There we have reason eating its own tail; internal logical thinking and assuming the grammar of lunacy. I dare say that such a question has not been satisfactorily answered yet. In that question lies the challenge of Lévinas’ philosophy: in its displacing of the centrality of Cartesian thinking within modernity in order to re-center it around ethics (the face-to-face encounter with another human being which is always hopeful—unless it occurs in hell).\n\nEverything we have discussed above begs this particular question: Is Lévinas’ challenge to the Western philosophical tradition philosophically tenable? To answer the question adequately we need to be first aware that Emmanuel Lévinas, as well as Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenweig (the author of Echoes from the Holocaust: Philosophical Reflections in a Dark Time, 1988), are representative of learned European Jews with great familiarity with the texts of both the Jewish and the Western philosophical tradition. They challenge the latter exactly because they are so knowledgeable in both. Lévinas is fully capable of confronting the intellectual traps of those rationalists who would relegate him to the sphere of theology.\n\nTo the contrary, he insisted on writing in both spheres and claimed that Jewish religious textuality contains hitherto unexplored philosophical insights. For this is a tradition which puts great emphasis on interpersonal, social and familial relationships; phenomena not contemplated in traditional Western philosophy.\n\nWhich is to say, the challenge is to Western philosophy’s totalizing pretense, beginning with Plato, that it can gather everything up in one synchronic whole. It is that challenge that irritates control freaks, thought policemen, rationalists and mysologists galore. It goes a long way in explaining their attempt to relegate Lévinas’ philosophy to the sphere of the merely mystical.\nFinally, let us briefly examine how Lévinas develops this fundamental challenge to Western rationalism. He names both the texts of Jewish tradition and philosophical discourse “the said,” while calling the living activity of interpretative struggle (its hermeneutics) with the texts, and the self which suffers for the other, “the saying.”\n\nThe said always tries to capture the saying, which may partly explain the ancient grudge of Plato towards poets (see Plato’s Republic, book X, on Homer). In any case, it is the saying which launches the said and puts it into circulation. The saying echoes outside of space and time destabilizing the comfortable, rationally secure positions rationalists take up in the said, in conceptual truths (thought to be universal and eternal), in a secure totalizing kind of knowledge.\n\nYet it is this very destabilizing process that injects the ethical outward-directness into the said. Lévinas will often contrasts the saying’s vulnerable openness to the other (which he calls “being ex-posed) with the said’s relative security (which he calls “exposition”). He asserts moreover, that there is a rich unexplored relationship between the way we are “ex-posed” in ethics, and the life “exposition” we use to analyze and order the world.\n\nIndeed, this is a new, essentially Jewish, philosophical reflection which places into question the claim to totalizing completeness, by an appeal to the priority of ethics. It insists that any person that confronts me needs to be placed outside the totalizing categories seeking to reduce her/him to an aspect of a rational system. Basically, what Lévinas is doing is relocating our dangerous ability to deny others their legitimate sphere of difference; an ability which is capable of destroying our own humanity.\n\nThis is nothing short than the core struggle for the achievement of moral humanity which was also the root ethical aim of Vico’s New Science. Like Vico, Lévinas shows us the way to keep the benefits of universal Enlightenment ethics while avoiding its perils. For, his ethics is not based on a totalizing sort of universalism, but on the particular concrete needs and demands of each unique individual, every “other’ that I meet within time and space. Every time I meet the other, she/he constitutes an ethical challenge to my self, a challenge as to who I am as a human being.\n\nThis kind of philosophy is a challenge to each one of us to go beyond nostalgic returns to Greek classicism, as important at that may be, in the understanding of Western Civilization; to establish intellectual-background-assumptions which are different from those of the Enlightenment; to search for urgently needed new cultural paradigms, new ways of thinking appealing to the priority of ethics and the importance of the particular as a category of thought, a place in thought wherein genocide and hatred of the other becomes inconceivable; in short to prepare new wineskins for the new wine which is a “Novantiqua Europa.”", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8685157299041748}
+{"content": "Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle (Family Chrysomelidae)\n\nMembers of the leaf beetle family Chrysomelidae (more than 1,700 species north of Mexico) are often named after the plants they specialize on. The Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetles prefer Swamp milkweed, but they’re found on other milkweeds as well. Multiple eggs are laid under milkweed leaves; multiple larvae hatch out and feed together on milkweed leaves for a while before going their separate ways. Adults also feed on milkweed, enjoying both the leaves and the flowers.\n\nBlister Beetles (Family Meloidae)\n\n\nTwo Long-horned Borers (Family Cerambycidae)\n\nLong-horned Beetles are a bunch of often-brightly-colored beetles of all sizes that may sport astonishingly-long antennae (horns). There are more than 10,000 (maybe more than 20,000) species of long-horned beetles worldwide, and about 1,000 of those occur in North America. The larvae of some species get into mischief by boring in trees, whether living or lumber.\n\nFire-Colored Beetle (Family Pyrochroidae)\n\nBoth the head and thorax of the Fire-Colored Beetles are narrower than the elytra, and there’s a neck-like constriction behind the head. Most species of FcBs have antennae that are mildly pectinate (comb-like), but in some species the antennae have evolved spectacularly into dramatic, even antler-like fringes.\n\nGreen June Beetle (Family Scarabaeidae)\n\nThe Green June Beetle range extends from New York (and sometimes even farther north) west to Kansas, just nicking the edge of Wisconsin, and then it plunges south through the Gulf Coast. Look for it at the intersection of agriculture, grass-scapes and fruit trees.\n\nGrapevine Beetle (Family Scarabaeidae)\n\nGrapevine Beetles are nocturnal, oval, chunky, possessed of sturdy front legs that are widened and toothed for digging, and plates at the ends of their antennae. The color of GBs varies from pale broom-straw yellow to rich saffron. There’s a spot on each side of the thorax, and three on the side of each elytron. Look for GBs east of the Great Plains, in woodlands, thickets, vineyards and gardens—places where rotting wood/stumps are found near grape vines.\n\nWedge-Shaped Beetle (Family Ripiphoridae)\n\nThe Wedge-shaped Beetle (Macrosiagon limbata) doesn’t seem to have a common name. There are 11 species of Macrosiagon north of the Rio Grande. The extremely ephemeral adult females hang out on flowers, where they deposit their eggs and where they may do a little nectar feeding. Like tachinid flies, WSBs lay their eggs on flowers in hopes that their newly-hatched young will intersect with another insect and hop on board.\n\nTwo Big Beetles\n\nThe White-Spotted Sawyer Beetles are not favorites of the lumber industry because their wood-boring habits decrease usable wood, stain it, and open the door for decomposers. Hermit Flower Beetles are found around the edges of woodlands. Like the WSS, the HFB’s larvae are found in the wood of dead trees—the eggs are laid in damp, rotting wood and within that wood the large, whitish larvae feed for three years. WSSs and HFBs are found from coast to coast across the northern half of North America.\n\nCrawling Water Beetle (Family Haliplidae)\n\nCrawling Water Beetles live in ponds and lake edges and can be found scrambling through the water column or feeding in mats of aquatic plants, especially algae. Where there is a current, look for them in crevices between rocks.\n\nBug Mysteries\n\nThe BugLady takes lots of pictures as she moseys around—flowers, landscapes, a surprising number of people, and, of course, all manner of bugs. Bug pictures may stall in the BugLady’s X–Files, awaiting identification—some for a long time. Here is a selection from the X–Files. In some cases the BugLady knows part of the story; in others, even less.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8390930891036987}
+{"content": "• code 09766\n  • course 1\n  • term Anual\n  • type OB\n  • credits 1\n\nMain language of instruction: English\n\nOther languages of instruction: Spanish\n\nTeaching staff\n\nHead instructor\n\n\nOffice hours\n\nBy appointment via e-mail to Dra. Mariana Ponte:  \n\n\n\nGraduates in dentistry have a direct responsibility in the prescription and administration of medications commonly used in dental practice. You should thus be prepared to select the drug which is most appropriate for each patient in the correct administration regime, assess its effects, both therapeutic and adverse, and educate the patient on its use.\n\nThe aim of this subject in this Master is to go further insight into the most commonly used drugs prescribed in dentistry, with special emphasis on the pharmacological interactions and side effects.\n\nPre-course requirements\n\nThere are no pre-requisites    \n\n\nTo reinforce the knowledge of the students on the main groups of drugs and medicines prescribed specifically for dental disease: indications, action mechanisms, side effects and contraindications.\n\nTo identify the main types of drug interaction between the medication of the patient and that specifically prescribed for dental disease.\n\nTo analyse potential problems related to the medication in patients, by using drug databases, clinical trials and critical papers in pharmacology.\n\n\n\nUnderstanding the basics of action, indications and efficacy of pharmacological interventions based on available scientific evidence.\n\nAbility to prescribe the appropriate medication for the patient and the various pathologies\n\nIdentifying adverse drug reactions and drug interactions\n\nKnow how to use databases available drugs\n\nAbility to work in groups\n\n\nLearning outcomes\n\nAt the end of the Master, the student should be able to:\n\n1. Identify the characteristics of drugs that are relevant to their safe and effective use.\n\n2. Make use of agile and reliable sources of information about medicines.\n\n3. Understand the methods of study in clinical pharmacology.\n\n4. Identify the pharmacological group to which each drug belongs.\n\n5. Identify the effects, indications and contraindications of common group therapies.\n\n6. Describe the precautions and most important aspects to consider when prescribing and administering medication.\n\n7. Identify the precautions in the pharmacological treatment of patients regarding their dental disease and concomitant medication.\n\n\n\nLesson 1. Sedative drugs in dentistry.\n\n\nLesson 2. Medication-related osteonecrosis of the jaw\n\n\nLesson 3. New oral anticoagulants\n\n\nTeaching and learning activities\n\nIn person\n\nThe content will be taught using different teaching and learning activities:\n\n- Short lectures: During the lectures, the lecturer will transmit knowledge in the classroom setting to the entire group of students.\n\n- Case study method: Students will be separated into groups to solve the clinical cases and activities provided. In the classroom, the students will present their findings with the active participation of the lecturer.\n\n\nEvaluation systems and criteria\n\nIn person\n\nActivities/case method and class participation will be evaluated every day (100% final mark).  \n\nBibliography and resources\n\n  • Tripathi. \"Farmacología en Odontología\" Ed. Panamericana\n  • J.Florez \"Farmacología humana\" Quinta edición. Ed. Elsevier-Masson.\n  • Ensayos clínicos en España. Ética, normativa, metodología y aspectos prácticos. Concepción Martinez Neto.\n\nOther books:\n\n  • P. Lorenzo, A moreno, y otros. \"Velázquez. Farmacología básica y clínica\". Editorial Panamericana, 2004.\n  • Enid A. Neidle, John A. Yagiela \"Pharmacology and therapeutics for dentistry\" . Ed. Mosby- 4th edition\n  © 2021 Universitat Internacional de Catalunya | Contact us | Privacy and data protection | Intellectual property\n  Campus Barcelona. Tel.: 93 254 18 00 | Campus Sant Cugat. Tel.: 93 504 20 00", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6219479441642761}
+{"content": "The Magic Boy (The Magic Boy series) (Volume 1) Paperback – April 15, 2018\n\nby Dorina Van Hauen (Author)\n\nCan be ordered on at\n\nArthur is being bullied in school, and his life is split between living part-time with either his mom or dad, who are divorced. Yet, he is a boy with a rich inner imagination. In his inner world, he goes on many adventures and receives the inspiration, strengths and insights that he needs in order to get through daily life. In his imagination, he meets creatures that he did not even know existed. He also meets people in ordinary life who make him realize things about himself and everything that he can achieve in life. Arthur's day-to-day life reflects challenges that kids and teenagers might relate to, especially with regard to bullying and other challenges in school. Some of his experiences will take you on an exciting and very different journey. Join his adventures and see where you end up. | Bullying | Out of Bullying | children and young people | schools | The Magic Boy\n\nDorina van Hauen\nForfatter, Coach, rådgiver og healer\nTelefon:+45 2344 4340\nCopyright © 2017 - DORINAVANHAUEN | \nCoaching, Rådgivning i forbindelse med 1-1 eller gruppesessions: \nDeltagelse på Meditation arrangementer: \nVed tekniske spørgsmål om hjemmesiden, shoppen, eller lydfiler: \nsend mail til\n\nDorina van Hauen\nAmaliegade 36, 1256 København \n\nBankoverførsel Nordea Bank Charlottenlund\nReg: 2135\nKonto: 4389647565\n\nMærk betalingen:\n\nDit navn og hvilken session /forløb du betaler for", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9991599917411804}
+{"content": "Dust Off Those Pandemic Plans: Addressing Human Capital in Business Continuity Planning\n\nJune 1, 2020\n\nBy Caitlin B. Houlton Kuntz and Edgar R. Ocampo\n\nBanks are required to maintain Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plans (BCPs) to ensure continuity of business operations in the event of significant business disruptions. BCPs often focus largely on a bank’s core technology systems and processes. Recently, however, COVID-19 reinforced the need for banks to consciously plan for disruptions of their most valuable (and sometimes taken for granted) asset—human capital.\n\nThe following are operational and legal considerations for bank boards and management to address when planning to mitigate a compromised workforce:\n\nReview Regulatory Guidance\n\nThe FFIEC’s Business Continuity Management Booklet outlines regulatory expectations for preparing for staffing challenges in the event of situations like pandemics or national emergencies. Additionally, federal and state regulators have periodically issued guidance addressing particular situations (including pandemics) that the bank’s board and management should take into account.\n\nIncorporate Human Capital Risks into the Bank’s Business Impact Analysis and Plan Accordingly\n\nThoughtfully consider the impact a personnel compromise would have on the bank’s overall business operations. Banks should take stock of “key man” problems – ensure that employees are cross-trained on critical functions and that leadership succession plans are in place. Further, establishing staffing levels necessary to perform critical functions in order to identify risks associated with employee absenteeism is essential. Finally, examine customer needs and banking habits to determine what adjustments to customer service operations would be possible or necessary in the event of a staffing crisis.\n\nPlan for Alternative Work Arrangements\n\nIn emergency situations, financial institutions are likely to be considered “essential services” and must generally remain open to the extent possible. Banks should ideally have in place plans to facilitate employees working remotely, including establishing the necessary technology, systems, and support. For example, consider outfitting essential employees with home office equipment (such as laptops), and determine which critical systems can be accessed and controlled remotely. Additionally, coordinate with key vendors to ensure critical services, infrastructure, and system capabilities (including remote network access, online banking, phone systems, and ATMs) are sustainable, and periodically stress test these functions to ensure they can handle increased traffic.\n\nFor employees who perform essential or regulated functions that cannot be moved offsite, develop alternating work schedules and social distancing guidelines to avoid close contact among staff. Finally, educate employees and customers on best practices issued by the Centers for Disease Control and other public health authorities to help keep everyone safe and informed.\n\nKeep a Current Communications Plan\n\nMake sure your bank has procedures for keeping the board, management, employees, customers, and regulators abreast of changes in the bank’s policies and operations, as appropriate. Banks should ensure their senior leadership has access to up-to-date contact information for each group.\n\nBe Mindful of Legal Implications\n\nVarious laws come into play when developing and implementing BCPs to address the challenges of crises such as pandemics or national emergencies. The Americans with Disabilities Act; Title VII and other anti-discrimination laws; federal, state, and local leave laws; workers’ compensation laws; HIPAA and other privacy laws; OSHA; and evolving laws and orders specific to the current crises or emergency—all likely do not prohibit measures banks and financial institutions can use to address such crises, but banks should consult with legal counsel to ensure compliance and mitigate legal risks.\n\nLikewise, safeguarding the well-being of employees plays an important role in keeping a bank operational during uncertain times. While practices implemented by banks and financial institutions may delve into control measures and mitigation of the effects of a crisis on business operations, challenges in maintaining employee morale are often not discussed with the same fervor. Some important issues to consider in BCPs include how to handle fear, anxiety, or even xenophobia in the workplace, as has been a concern for some industries during the COVID-19 crisis. BCP designated personnel need to consider how to manage these realities in the workplace, even over scenarios that would be benign during normal times. Consideration for the mental well-being of employees needs to be factored in alongside these practices to ensure retention of a workforce.\n\nRemain Flexible—and Empathetic\n\nThe impact, scale, and duration of crises that threaten a bank’s human capital, such as pandemics, are uniquely unpredictable. At its core, the BCP’s approach to human capital challenges should incorporate an element of agility to help the bank respond to variable and evolving circumstances, as well as account for the humanity of the workforce. Employees’ personal and professional circumstances will differ greatly and require mindful responses and accommodations. Therefore, supporting human capital means finding constructive ways to remain empathetic and support employees through the emotional strain these crises can cause.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.996338427066803}
+{"content": "An Uninterruptible Power Supply Keeps Your Dental Practice on Track\n\nWritten by Nite and Day Power on .\n\nOf all the different businesses that can benefit from uninterruptible power supply, a dentist office has some of the clearest advantages. Although you might not suffer from outages on a regular basis, just one brief outage can have a lasting impact on your business.\n\nIf your electrical supply is interrupted, you’ll end up having to postpone treatments for some patients. In rare but serious instances, there could be an interruption when someone is in the middle of a major procedure or being overseen by an anesthesiologist.\n\nYes, these sorts of emergencies are rare. But even when an outage is not life-threatening, it can still have a long-term impact. Patients will worry if they see an outage. That could cause them to draw conclusions that will harm your business in the long run.\n\n Let’s look at the possibilities:\n\n1. Negative Reviews on Sites Like Yelp\n\nMost dentists have many competitors in their local area. It is difficult for the average patient to tell which dentist is best for them, so they look at reviews. Unfortunately for businesses like yours, people are much more likely to share negative experiences than positive ones!\n\nAn outage may only be a slight inconvenience that has no real effect on a patient. Still, they are likely to spread the word. That could reduce foot traffic and send your customers to your rivals.\n\n2. Problems With Dental Anxiety Patients\n\nMillions of Americans from all walks of life suffer from some degree of dental anxiety. It can take weeks, months, or even years for people to make the difficult decision to go to the dentist. Sometimes, people wait until they have a severe problem to treat.\n\nThese patients already worry about dentistry in a big way. Imagine how they will feel if the power goes out while they’re in the chair? At the very least, you can assume they will never come back. That can cost you a life-long patient.\n\n3. Complaints to Professional Associations\n\nDentists don’t generally need to carry malpractice insurance, and often choose not to do so, so they must be especially alert to complaints they receive. Patient complaints arising from a power outage can have a ripple effect that might endanger your professional standing.\n\nThere is little you can do about an outage after the fact. The key to protecting your interests is to be proactive. Contact Nite & Day Power for uninterruptible power supply advice.\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5201613903045654}
+{"content": "Call 0161 423 4208\n\nHuman Factors Tuition Package\n\n\n\n\n\nYou will note that we have also made some changes to the scale used to answer each section to simplify the process for investigators.For the questions below, please estimate on a scale of 0 to 5, where 0 is none and 5 is total cause:\n\n\nAll the rating scale questions have some further explanatory examples as ‘tool tips’ which can be viewed on the SHOT database whiule completing the questionnaire bu hovering the mouse pointer over the question. The new questions can be viewed by clicking on the thumbnail image:\n\nSHOT has recognised how difficult it can be for reporters to score the human factors aspects of an incident, so we have prepared this self-learning material:\n\nNew for 2021 we suggest watching 2 short videos produced by SHOT for more information about human factors. Please copy and paste this link SHOT HF videos link into your internet browser to access the videos, which are each approximately 6 minutes long. These will be available in mid-January.\n\n[Videos coming soon!]\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9981145858764648}
+{"content": "• Zoe\n\nCarrying is for all!\n\nI have wanted to blog about this for a while, as there seems to be some misconceptions about carrying your baby or child and needing to be a certain type of parent to use slings or carriers.\n\nPosting the above image on Instagram resulted in two people commented using specific phrases,\n\n\"I couldn't have survived without babywearing especially with my second but wouldn't describe myself as the \"crunchy\" type\" and \"People seem surprised that I still carry and feed S, I'm not an \"earth mother\" type but these 2 things keep me & S close, esp since I returned to work\"\n\nI do find people can be self-conscious around carrying their child, and seem to think you have to be a certain type of person to carry. That is simply not the case.\n\nSometimes I hear this at sling library sessions, or in passing from people who see us carrying, as a way to justify why they don't carry their children. I like the phrase \"my choices are not a judgement of anyone else's choices they are simply my choices\". If you don't want to carry your child then that is fine, that is your choice, I am here to help those that do and support others that perhaps are unsure as to why carrying is so useful and normal from an evolutionary point of view.\n\nWe carry for lots of different reasons, as do many people. It is not about one thing or another, or about being a better parent. Many carry for convenience, for financial reasons, as you don't need to use a pram or buggy which are more expensive than some slings/carriers. To be able to explore the world, to connect with an older child whilst being able to meet the needs of your baby at the same time, to be able to climb stairs securely, to have 2 hands free for the shoppings bags, for speed on the school run, for naps, The list goes on.\n\nI think some of the issue is due to the use of the terms \"Attachment Theory\" (AT) and \"Attachment Parenting\" (AP) often used about carrying. In fact, they are not the same thing. AP describes an approach that may include carrying whereas AT is not about carrying at all, however carrying would help to facilitate a secure attachment, but it is not necessary to do so to have a secure attachment.\n\nAttachment theory states that a strong emotional and physical attachment to at least one primary caregiver is critical to personal and social development. Bowlby coined the term after his research involving the development of children from various backgrounds. The premise is that a strong attachment to a caregiver (usually parents) provides a necessary sense of security and foundation. A baby who is attached securely to a caregiver has several of his or her most immediate needs met. Consequently, they are able to spend more time observing and interacting with their environments and therefore learning and developing.\n\nMany studies have found a positive relationship between secure attachment in childhood and social competence as an adult[i]. Securely attached children are more independent, more confident, more intelligent, more socially adept, more curious about the world, better at adjusting to change, have more friends, do better academically, better at focusing on learning and on tasks, and have higher self-esteem than those who are insecurely attached[ii].\n\nAttachment parenting is defined as a philosophy that suggests ways to promote the attachment of mother (or primary caregiver) and infant not only by maximal maternal empathy and responsiveness but also by continuous bodily closeness and touch.\" (Wikipedia) It was a term created by the American paediatrician William Sears.\n\nThe 7 B's are:\n\n- Birth bonding\n\n- Breastfeeding\n\n- Baby wearing\n\n- Bedding close to baby\n\n- Belief in the language value of your baby’s cry\n\n- Beware of baby trainers\n\n- Balance\n\nYou do not have to follow every one of these. It is about going back to a natural way of parenting, following our instincts and more about an ethos, a way to live and parent, rather than something that you do. Rosie Knowles states in her book \"Why Babywearing Matters\" \"Followers were often not mainstream and were frequently marginalised or labelled \"hippies\".\" This seems to still be prevalent today based on the comments on the post on Instagram above.\n\nSo whilst there is overlap, you don't have follow \"attachment parenting\" to carry your child. If you want your child to grow up to be an independent happy adult, and quite frankly who doesn't, then carrying is for you!\n\nAlso from an evolutionary point of view we are meant to carry our young. James McKenna, Professor of anthropology and director of the Mother-Baby Behavioural Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame, spoke to the Huffpost and he states that from biological anthropology informs us that:\n\n\"the human infant is the most vulnerable, contact dependent, slowest developing primate mammal....because humans are born neurologically premature....born with only 25% of its adult brain volume. This means that its physiological systems are unable to function optimally without contact with the mothers body\" (or another human)\n\n\"Touching infants changes their breathing, body temperature, growth rate, blood pressure, stress levels and growth itself\"\n\nIn terms of evolution your baby does not know it is 2017 and as such in a westernised country is expected to sleep in a basket or cot, and ride in a box on wheels. Your baby is evolutionary primed to be close, think of it as being the Stone Age, baby would not be left alone for that would be life threatening, we lived in hunter-gatherer groups of people, all sleeping in the same environment, living together moving around nomadically.\n\nRosie Knowles discusses this in her book \"Why Babywearing Matters\" which I highly recommend reading if this topic interests you as it covers all this in great detail and more but in a very easy to read accessible way, providing links and evidence without being academic and difficult to read.\n\nShe says \"Modern babies spend more time physically separated from their parents than at any other time in history\" and that the increase of industrialisation has led to a decrease in frequency and duration of closeness and contact than is biologically normal. in terms of human evolution for 99% of it we have carried our babies and children. The last few hundred years have eroded what is normal.\n\nThere is a push for children to become independent at a very early age, far more so than is biologically normal as that the adults can be productive and work longer hours, The Victorian age continued to erode the biological norms, the notion that children had to be in strict routines to be trained and not to be involved in adult life, to not interfere with the social pleasures of adults.\n\nAs we do not now live in close knit groups or communities that would support new families and children as our fore-bearers would have. There is a need to continue our lives, we need money to live now and are invested in the \"system\" so have very little choice in reality with some societies offering better maternity/paternity benefits than others. Carrying can help to bridge the gap between continuing our lives and meeting the needs of our babies/children as often these are at a discourse.\n\nCarrying can help us to continue to work, carrying can help us to reconnect when we have been absent, carrying can make the food shopping easier or the school run easier. Carrying means we can hold our older children's hands whilst being able to meet the needs of the baby too.\n\nI love this quote from Rosie\n\n\" Using a carrier does not mark you out as a particular type of parent, who subscribes to particular cultural beliefs; it simply means that you are choosing to keep your child close, according to your biological instinct and their biological needs, making life work the best way you can\"\n\nThis is all we are doing.\n\n\n[i] Coleman, P. K. (2003). Perceptions of parent-child attachment, social self-efficacy, and peer relationships in middle childhood. Infant and Child Development, 12, 351–368.Lieberman, M., Doyle, A. B., & Markiewicz, D. (1999). Developmental patterns in security of attachment to mother and father in late childhood and early adolescence: Associations with peer relations. Child Development, 70, 202–213. [ii]Sroufe, L. A., Carlson, E., & Shulman, S. (1993). Individuals in relationships: Development from infancy through adolescence. In D. C. Funder, R. Parke, C. Tomlinson-Keesey, & K. Widaman (Eds.), Studying lives through time: Personality and development (pp. 315–342), Washington DC: American Psychological Association.Kerns, K., Klepac, L., & Cole, A. (1996). Peer relationships and preadolescents’ perceptions of security in the child-mother relationship. Developmental Psychology, 32(3), 457–466.Crittenden, P. M. (1992). Treatment of anxious attachment in infancy and early childhood. Development and Psychopathology, 4, 575–602.Jacobsen, T., & Hofmann, V. (1997). Children’s attachment representations: Longitudinal relations to school behavior and academic competency in middle childhood and adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 33(4), 703–710.Wong, E., Wiest, D., & Cusick, L. (2002). Perceptions of autonomy support, parent attachment, competence and self-worth as predictors of motivational orientation and academic achievement: An examination of sixth and ninth grade regular education students. Adolescence, 37(146), 255–266.O’Conner, E., & McCartney, K. (2006). Testing associations between young children’s relationships with mothers and teachers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98(1), 87–98.\n\n#consultant #babywearing #carrying #attachmenttheory #attachmentparenting #attachment", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9871295094490051}
+{"content": "Types Of Disabilities\n\nWhen people think of different types of disabilities, they think of paralysis, blindness, and those that are mentally handicap; however, this is not an all inclusive understanding. The dictionary defines disability as anything that places an individual at a disadvantage. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognizes the World Health Organization’s (WHO) system of disability classification: the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF).\n\nThe ICF’s primary purpose is to define a universal and standardized language for the classification of any change in activity, body structure and function, participation levels, and any other environmental factors that influence an individuals health or ability to participate in society. This is inclusive of any factor that is prohibitive or assistive to a person. The ICF clearly defines activity, activity limitations, body functions, body structures, environmental factors, functional limitations, health conditions, participation, participation restrictions, and personal factors. These definitions provide a more unified means of determining and classifying types of disabilities.\n\nVarious types of disabilities can affect a person’s mental health, vision, hearing, social relationships, thinking, movement, learning, communication, and memory. An activity is simply an action. This can be the most basic function of eating to more complex actions like writing and mathematical calculation. Walking, talking, and jumping would also be considered activities. When an individual is unable to perform, or has difficulty in performing, an activity it is considered an activity limitation.\n\nA body structure is a physical component of the human body. Body function is the way all the parts and systems in the body work together. A functional limitation is when a person is incapable or has difficulty in completing an activity because of a health problem. A health condition is any disease, injury, or illness. Participation refers to an individuals involvement in life and society, and participation limitation occurs when a person has difficulty in life or society. Personal and environmental factors refer to experience, age, access to technology, and socioeconomic status.\n\nThese definitions are used to identify types of disabilities. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity-Disorder (ADHD) prohibits an individual from concentrating and controlling impulsive behavior. Most people with ADHD suffer from being overly active. Complete, or partial, hearing or vision loss are disabilities that restrict a person’s ability to navigate the world around them. These impairments can affect social skills, language development, and communication.\n\nAutism is a group of spectral disorders affecting development, socialization, communication, and behavior. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) occur when a mother consumes alcohol during pregnancy. Cerebral Palsy affects balance and posture. As science and medicine advance, certain disabilities are becoming more prevalent than they were in the past. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) was once associated with incredibly high mortality rates. Today the number of TBI survivors is increasing, alongside spinal cord injuries (SCI) and children with birth defects.\n\nApproximately one in thirty-three children is born with a birth defect. These defects include: cleft lip, cleft palate, a variety of congenital heart defects, down syndrome, encephalocele, gastroschisis, hypospadias, omphalocele, and spinal bifida. Other types of disabilities include: Fragile X syndrome, hemochromatosis, hemophilia, sickle cell disease, paralysis, kernicterus, deep vein thrombosis (DVTs or blood clots), intellectual disabilities, Duchenne/Becker muscular dystrophy, torette syndrome, Von Willebrand disease, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9956733584403992}
+{"content": "Excluded Value\n\nHow to find the excluded value of a rational expression: 1 example and its solution.\n\n\n\n\nThe excluded value of a fraction\nis the x value\nthat makes the denominator 0.\n\nThe denominator cannot be 0.\nSo the excluded value\ncannot be the solution.\n\nRational Equation\n\nRational Inequality\n\nSee the given rational expression.\n\nThe denominator is 3x - 2.\n\nSo set\n3x - 2 = 0.\n\nSolve 3x - 2 = 0.\n\nMove -2 to the right side.\n\nDivide both sides by 3.\n\nThen x = 2/3.\n\nSo the excluded value is 2/3.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 1.0000083446502686}
+{"content": "Month: September 2020\n\nEnvision the Internet on the off chance that they edited it and the majority of the media and other data was constrained by the United States Government. It would be a duplicate of the mistreatment the Chinese public live under. Their Internet is blue-penciled by the Chinese government such a great amount of that around 2003-2005 the well known web index Google surrendered activity in China as opposed to be exposed to so much oversight. A significant part of the client driven media and substance would be crossed out and prohibited. Individuals could be blue-penciled for transferring pictures and slideshows that some undetectable individual sitting in an administration office self-assertively chooses is a break of government guidelines, what sort of reasonable equity is that? Recordings on the popular YouTube site would be dependent upon extreme oversight. Document sharing of any kind would not be conceivable. Numerous sites would be closed down on account of supposed copyright misuses and substance they regard unsatisfactory.\n\nIt would spell calamity for likely 1,000,000 sites now on the web that utilization snippets of data they gather from different sources that are not an enormous copyright issue, however acquire bits of data from this webpage and that website. This is an enormous issue for people worldwide and spells debacle for many individual presently making aspect of their salary from a site they work on the web.\n\nSOPA, PIPA, and ACTA are popular bills that are supportive of web restriction. Here is a concise conversation of the three bills in the United States senate:\n\n· SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill that would build up a framework for bringing down sites that the Justice Department decides is a copyright encroachment.\n\n· PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) is a bill that has expressed an objective of giving the administration and copyright holders extra devices to control admittance to “maverick sites committed to the offer of encroaching or fake products.”\n\n· ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is a worldwide economic alliance to “stop the multiplication of copyrighted material”, and would make global principles for protected innovation rights laws, more like a joined SOPA and PIPA.\n\n\n\n\n\nThe White House reported for the current week intends to venture up authorization of licensed innovation laws by constraining countries to close down theft sites and require all administration temporary workers to check for unlawfully gained programming. In a 65 page report, the White House Office of the U.S. Licensed innovation Enforcement Coordinator additionally delineated its goal to discover unfamiliar sites dealing pilfered merchandise and make an information base of its licensed innovation examinations to be utilized by all fitting law requirement organizations.\n\nThe legislature likewise expects to secure US licensed innovation through different economic accords, including the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which a few advanced rights bunches have griped was drafted stealthily. Numerous authorities have contrasted IP encroachment and robbery. Fake drugs and car parts are hazardous and the administration expects to pursue the individuals who produce them.\n\nAdditionally on the plan for what’s to come is broad preparing for neighborhood and state law authorization, just as unfamiliar governments. Classes and preparing programs on IP implementation will be led to raise everyone to an acceptable level. Likewise, new prerequisites for drug organizations will be executed. They will be needed to put electronic labels on prescriptions which will make falsifying basically outlandish.\n\nThe report, named the Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement, additionally asks site proprietors, web access suppliers, sponsors, and other online-based organizations to help out specialists to restrict copyright encroachment. Prior in the year, the Department of Justice organized an IP requirement team. In April, that organization made 15 new US lawyer positions just as 20 new FBI operators who will zero in on IP violations, both homegrown and worldwide.\n\nThe new measures have been commended by both the US Chamber of Commerce and the Information Technology Industry Council. The Computer and Communications Industry Association, in any case, voiced worries over the new IP implementation plan. The exchange bunch says the administration should zero in on getting hazardous items far from American customers, yet fears that a portion of the measures in the report could be unsafe to US web and tech businesses.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6604757308959961}
+{"content": "simple present past and future tense worksheet\n\nGracing the occasion, ever charming and enigmatic beauty Simi Garewal talked exclusively about O7 as well as importance to keep one’s skin structure young and radiant with the ages. Imminent dignitaries from the realm of cosmetic, dermatology and skincare, socialites and a strong media presence added dazzle on the alluring night. Darkness and light are themes that run heavily through Van Gogh's work. Darkness and lightweight reflected his wish create beauty, his feelings of inadequacy, and his desire to touch the souls of men. For instance, Starry Night draws the viewer to the painting of a sleeping village with its swirls of light as well as rich evening sky. While it is understandable that you must consider your budget and select an economical option, remember that you will get what you buy. An amateur photographer may get the project done in a significantly lesser charge than what a specialist asks however the lack of skill and experience is going to be visible of their work. If you want outright ideal results, only a professional event photographer ought to be hired. Here are some benefits of getting professionals to pay your event: To imagine a social world before photography, we might need to make a world without picture IDs; without portraits of ordinary people; one without pictures as souvenirs of travel; one without celebrity pictures; one without advertising photographs; one without X-rays or views of outer space; a global without views of foreign and exotic peoples; one without pictures of sports, wars, and disasters; the other the location where the great numerous people had no method to visually record giving her a very events of these lives. Listening to music is very soothing for many people. Regardless of our culture and background people throughout the world want to listen to songs and sing along or hum the melodies. Music often puts things into perspective as it expresses emotion and strikes certain chords that we never knew existed. People react differently whenever they hear certain songs or beats of music.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8057211637496948}
+{"content": "Product Ingredients\n\n\nFormaldehyde is a natural substance. Every living organism produces it, including the human body. It is present in every breath we exhale. Formaldehyde is also present in fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, and many beverages including alcoholic beverages and coffee.\n\n\nHyaluronic acid is also known as hyaluronan. It is a carbohydrate, or more specifically a mucopolysaccharide found in abundance in almost every cell of the body. It is a very large molecule and can be several thousand sugar molecules long. \n\n\nLanolin is an ointment like material isolated from sheep wool. Actually, it is produced by the sebaceous gland of the sheep. Lanolin can be seperated into a liquid oil or a solid wax form. If heated, a mixture of organic lanolin acids and lanolin alcohols can be produced.\n\nThese lanolin derivatives are frequently found in skincare products as they impart a smooth soft feel to the skin and act as conditioning agents in hair products. They are lubricants. In addition, lanolin helps the water and oil phases of skincare products to blend. So they also act as emulsifiers.\n\n\nThe hottest trend in skincare today, stem cells! (By the way, there aren't really any live stem cells in skincare products because in the presence of preservatives and without appropriate growth medium live cells cannot survive in these emulsions.) Skincare company Research & Development departments are excited to jump on board as \"Stem Cell Technology\" has become a part of the beauty industry's pop-culture. Claims that stem cell creams can rejuvenate the skin are not hard to find and the marketing benefit of labeling a facial cream with the words \"Stem Cell Cream\" is astronomical.\n\n\nWhat are preservatives? Preservatives are compounds that when added to a skincare product, prevent the growth of microorganisms like bacteria, mold and fungus within that product. \n\n\nA growing number of consumers are opting for \"natural\" skincare products. The media loudly and aggressively sends the message the \"natural skincare products are good and synthetic products are bad\". They imply that standard facial moisturizers and cleansers are filled with poisonous cancer-causing chemicals. As a result, many people understandably opt for \"natural\" skincare items that seem \"better\". In truth, the term \"natural\" found on skincare product labels is simply an example of brilliant marketing.\n\n\nParabens, phthalates, much concern about skincare product ingredients. Yes, skincare product manufacturers must produce safe products and be held accountable. But don't let the fear-mongering articles that are so frequently seen in health and beauty magazines make you panic. Remember, sensationalism sells! And keep this in mind:\n\n\nYes, vitamn C is good for you. As an essential vitamin, one that the human body cannot manufacture or store, it must be included in your daily diet, acquired from natural sources, like citrus fruits and green leafy vegetables, or taken as a supplement. Adequate vitamn C is necessary for the formation of connective tissue, for the absorption of iron, and important in wound healing. Too little vitamin C leads to bleeding gums and general muscle weakness. Too much vitamin C results in diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, even kidney stones.\n\n\nAlthough they contain the same exact ingredients, generic skincare products are NOT necessarily the same as \"brand\" products.\n\nAccording to the FDA's Cosmetic Labeling Guide and the cosmetic labeling regulations themselves (21 CFR parts 701 and 740), all over-the-counter (OTC) skincare products must have a listing of the ingredients contained in that product in descending order of predominance. And although the ingredients themselves are listed, the exact recipe or formulation is not. The information that is not listed includes:\n\n\nSubscribe to RSS - Product Ingredients", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7220404148101807}
+{"content": "Space Brains Press Kit\n\nFact Sheet\n\nSpace Brains is a fortnightly podcast that discusses what is good and what is great about science fiction movies.\nHosts Surrey Hughes and Mark Regan love science fiction films and aim to share that love with the audience. This is not a show that dishes dirt or talks to a negative point.\n\n‘Science-brain’ Surrey, is a published author and IT professional.\n\n‘Cinema-brain’ Mark, is a filmmaker and media teacher. Together they share the science and cinematic elements of each movie they review.\n\nThe podcast explores classic, recent, blockbuster and cult films. The hosts occasionally interview special guests such as Hamad AlSarraf who wrote and directed “In Paradox” (2019).\n\nThe space brains are from a wondrous and heart-warming part of the galaxy and hence they joy-watch. This means when they watch science fiction films, they deliberately look for the positives and try to get the most from the experience they can.\n\nSpace Brains began in 2019. All episodes are recorded, edited and published in Mandurah, Western Australia.\n\nWho is it for?\n\nIf you like to talk through movies with your friends but you want to learn a little more or gain a bit of extra insight, then Space Brains is for you. You might be a script writer and movie director, an author or a fan. Regardless your background, if you like insightful and positive discussion of science fiction movies, you will like Space Brains.\n\n\nEach episode of Space Brains focuses on one movie and follows the same basic format. Every 5th episode covers a “classic” movie that has demonstrated particularly endearing or enduring traits.\n\n  1. Introduction to the movie.\n    When it was released, who wrote, directed and starred.\n  2. The number 1 take-away.\n    What stood out as interesting or unusual (often light-hearted)\n  3. Hope, Warning or Experiment?\n    Each movie is categorised as one of hope, warning or as an experiment. A movie of hope tends to show humanity succeeding against external forces or disasters. A warning serves as a cautionary tale about meddling with forces unknown while an experiment is a movie that puts people into a “what-if?” scenario to see what might happen.\n  4. Co-host catch up.\n    Mark is a film-maker and script writer while Surrey is an author and podcaster. During the catch up they discuss relevant projects or lessons they have learned. It is also a chance to learn more about them.\n  5. The ladder.\n    While the ladder isn’t about comparing one movie to another, it is about each host’s relative preference. All the movies reviewed are worth watching for one reason or another.\n  6. Plot discussion (spoilers).\n    An in-depth walk through of the plot taking note of unusual or interesting points and highlighting the best scenes and their impact.\n  7. The science behind the movie.\n    Surrey discusses some real-life science that inspired or is depicted in the film.\n  8. Film making technicalities.\n    Mark, a film and media teacher by trade and  director by passion, discusses some of the technical film making aspects. Things like the use of lighting, framing, sound and editing.\n  9. Next episode’s movie.\n\nRelease Schedule\n\nSpace Brains endeavours to release an episode every two weeks on a Saturday.\n\nCast and Crew\n\nSurrey Hughes (Space Brain One)\n\nSurrey has watched and read his way through an impressive amount of science fiction.  His background as a software engineer and solution architect place him firmly in the “nerd” camp and he loves it.  His father, a PhD of nuclear physics, introduced him to the scientific method, Scientific American and New Scientist at an early age.  His mother introduced him to creative pursuits and fantasy novels encouraging him to write. So other than Space Brains Surrey also writes and produces Exit Plan, a contemporary fantasy audio drama podcast and is writing novelisations of Exit Plan while putting the finishing touches on his epic fantasy series The March of Duthaan.\n\nExpect more science oriented podcasts, fantasy musicals and novels in the near future.\n\nSurrey Hughes\n\nMark Regan (Space Brain Two)\n\nMark Regan is a fan of film. He is a filmmaker, photographer and writer. Mark fell in love with science fiction at a young age and started to create short films with his siblings. In fact, his first script writing experience as a teenager was writing fan fiction, an entire episode of The X-Files (Mark still believes Chris Carter should make his episode).\n\nHe studied and experimented with creating films at university. He has being writing and producing short films his whole adult life, with the goal to make science fiction feature films one day. . Mark loves the way science fiction can take an audience to an altered version of reality but still deliver a meaningful learning experience for the audience.\n\n\nMandurah podcast Space Brains achieves international reach\n\n\nMandurah podcast Space Brains reaches film feature directors", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9967632293701172}
+{"content": "Schools closed for the foreseeable, pubs, clubs and restaurants closed, job losses, financial worries and childcare issues.\n\nSupermarket shelves bare, queuing outside and at a distance from one another. News and social media full of worry and panic, and every day we are experiencing more and more.\n\nAs a solution focused therapist, I really wondered if I should start this post in this way, however I really wanted to get the point across… This worldwide virus is spreading day by day and we hear the horror stories from the plethora of news sources available to us.  Of course, it is vital to take all the necessary precautions, by following the government’s advice by social distancing, staying at home and washing your hands regularly but there is something even worse spreading than this virus or the new stories that go hand in hand.  \n\nPeople’s feelings of fear, anxiety and stress.\n\nWhenever fear, anxiety and stress are present in our lives, we are in the primitive (safeguarding) part of our mind. Primitive, as this part of the mind was developed millions of years ago and was designed to protect us from life threatening wild animals, poisonous berries and aggressive tribesman. This part of the brain is undeveloped, there is no Windows 10 update for this part of the brain, we are still stuck on DOS (for those who remember!). The central and most influential part of this region of the brain is what we call the amygdala, and the amygdala is like our security officer, it is constantly alert and always looking for any little thing that may be perceived as a threat or danger. Now when I cover brain revision in my sessions, I say the amygdala is our best friend, but can also be our worst enemy. In the days when all we had to worry about was survival day to day, our amygdala would almost certainly have prevented us from being eaten alive. However, in modern day life our amygdala reacts to every day issues that now affect us, such as this pandemic and all the issues that go alongside (at the start of this article).\n\nWhen the amygdala senses a perceived threat, it calls on other parts of our primitive brain to produce chemicals and hormones to prepare our bodies for “Flight, Fight or Freeze” response.  One of these hormones is cortisol and cortisol is our “Stress Hormone”.\n\nHowever, when cortisol levels are too high for too long, this hormone can harm you more than it helps. Interestingly, high levels of cortisol may cause weight gain and high blood pressure, disrupt sleep, negatively impact mood, reduce our energy levels and affect our digestive system.\n\n But cortisol also lowers our immune system and when our body is pumped full of Cortisol to assist in the flight, fight or freeze response our bodies consume an enormous amount of energy, everything pulling together for the sole aim of survival, (running from that tiger) and using all that energy causes our bodies to become weak and vulnerable, our immune system no longer wards off the infections or viruses.\n\nSo, fear, worry, anxiety and stress actually make us more likely to become prone to illness.\n\nAlso, when we are in our primitive mind, our thought processes change too, we lose empathy and adapt an almost selfish attitude, we have to look out for ourselves and forget everything else, (that’s why the toilet roll shelves are empty in the supermarket). What happens now is we start thinking negatively, we become obsessed and we start thinking about the worse case scenario.\n\nIt’s easy for me to say keep positive, sometimes we feel we can’t when our mind is in this state, but what we can do is allow our mind to relax and put our body into a natural REST & RELAX mode (our parasympathetic nervous system) and take our body out of the flight, fight or freeze mode.\n\nSo why not try some of the following methods and start to engage your natural rest and relax functions.\n\n  • Try a little relaxation\n\nHypnosis – Hypnosis is a very effective way of engaging our bodies natural rest and relax mode (parasympathetic nervous system) Hypnosis improves your attitude towards others, benefiting in a big positive effect on your health, immune system and reducing stress and anxiety.\n\n\nBreathing – Breathing is crucial to allowing that rest and relax response. 7/11 breathing means you breath in for the count of 7 and out for the count of 11. Try breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, slowing down the outward breath by closing your lips tighter as if you are blowing through a small straw.\n\nHobbies and Pastimes – Focus on the things you like to do, reading, writing, craft-work, gardening, exercise etc.\n\nWatch a film – Watch a great film with your family and enjoy some interaction.\n\n  • Limit your access to the news or social media\n\nLimit yourself – Limit your access to the news, and concentrate only on official channels for information, avoid fake news or scaremongering.\n\nFocus – Focus on the positive stories in the news, perhaps the recovery toll as opposed to the fatality toll. \n\nSocial Media – Join groups and pages that focus away from the situation, perhaps a joke telling group, or hobby or craft group, maybe a local or well-known musician doing an online performance. There are also lots of resources for relaxation and exercise online such as Yoga, Pilates etc.\n\nUse social media to interact with friends and family.\n\n  • Keep positive and notice the positive things in your life  \n\nPositivity – Write down in a book the positives of the day and what you’ve noticed has been good\n\nGratitude – Be grateful for what you do have and live for the moment, again write a list of things you have to be grateful for.\n\nEmpathy – Understand others, spend time laughing and enjoying their company, tell those you love how you feel and send your love to those who may not be coping as well as you.\n\nWhat we tell ourselves really does affect our daily lives and determines how we feel, so if we tell ourselves that we feel fearful, anxious, worried and fed up, then that’s exactly how we are going to feel. Whereas if we tell ourselves that we are going to feel calm, relaxed and in-control then guess what? That’s exactly how we will feel, shifting away from that flight, fight or freeze mode by being calm, relaxed and fearless.\n\nJohn Lowson HPD DSFH is a Solution Focused Clinical Hypnotherapist he is a member of the National Council of Hypnotherapists and is a member of the Complimentary and Natural Healthcare Council.  follow him on Twitter  Facebook Instagram or Linkedin", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9613627195358276}
+{"content": "Marcos Mauro\n\n\nPasionaria represents the consequences of our current way of life, as conceived by choreographer Marcos Morau. A future where human beings would have lost their vitality through individualism and transhumanism. The gloomy universe of the spectacle thus seems sanitized of all affect, all passion, and consequently, humanity. All that remains is the labor force that is tirelessly busy vacuuming or handling packages of products. Ringing phones, doors or other objects constantly capture the attention of the protagonists who have become puppets. Manipulated by outside forces, instead of being driven by their deep desires, the humans of this dystopia merge into simple working robots.\n\nKid Koala and K.K. Barret\n\nKid Koala’s celebrated “live animated graphic novel”. Directed by oscar-nominated production designer K.K. Barrett (Her, Lost In Translation, Being John Malkovich). Performed, filmed, edited and scored in real time by a team of 15 performers including puppeteers, cinematographers, a string quartet and Kid Koala on piano/turntables. A romantic story about a robot on the verge of obsolescence.\n\n\nCity of Drones\n\nCity of Drones is an interactive digital environment developed by musician John Cale, speculative architect Liam Young and digital artists FIELD. Charting the story of a lost drone drifting through an abstract cityscape, players are invited to pilot a virtual craft and remotely explore this imaginary world. Samples from Cale’s original soundscape compositions echo across the landscape as we see the city through the eyes of the drone, buzzing between the buildings, drifting endlessly, in an ambient audio visual choreography. The City of Drones digital environment accompanies Loop, 60hz, an immersive live music and drone performance. John Cale, known for experimenting with different industrial sounds in his practice, once tuned his instruments to the hum of refrigerator motors. Cale in collaboration with Liam Young now explore the soundscape of a new generation, the distant rumble of drone propellers, to be set against the visual spectacle of Young’s choreographed flying machines. Typically associated with militarised applications, each drone is repurposed here as both disembodied instrument and dynamic audio infrastructure.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9996802806854248}
+{"content": "Tips on writing a book fiction infidelity\n\nTrust me, you get better every time. Think of it as the difference between watching a movie and having a friend describe a movie to you.\n\ntips on writing a book fiction infidelity\n\nWas this page helpful? Are you an expert in the Norse weather-and-fertility gods?\n\nFiction writing examples\n\nThe heart soars at being wanted or desired, the mind is flooded with feel good chemicals. Ah, you say, but you sometimes write stories with ghosts and fairies — how believable is that? Stick to the main plot. It works if you make it believable in the universe of the book. Visit her website or connect with her on Twitter. Drawing on her 35 years as a clinical psychologist, infidelity expert Janis Spring offers her proven strategies to deal with issues such as why affairs happen, whether forgiveness is possible, and how to rebuild love and intimacy. Finish the story. Choose a point of view. Revise your story. Impulse takes over and caution and good judgement are shoved out the back door.\n\nRevize, revize, revize. Stick with it the project.\n\nHow to write fiction for beginners\n\nThe Unhappy Adulterer In this scenario, the foundation for adultery was built long before the act itself. Their target is usually someone weak, needy or in a position of powerlessness. The Opportunist In this situation, adultery is an unplanned, opportunistic act, and usually the product of ego. Begin with character. All of this research adds up to recommendations you can trust. Know your genre. I think the work comes out better when we leave all that behind; when the only thing to be true to is the writing. Ultimately, you should value your own judgment over that of others. So why do people cheat? A supernatural romantic thriller, for example, could end up alienating fans of all three genres. Including mine. With fact-backed research as well as examples of real couples and their struggles, \"Not 'Just Friends'\" can help with understanding points of view of all people involved, as well as affirming your own emotions. Let her live and breathe and give her the freedom to surprise you and take the story in unexpected directions.\n\nThis book also details the most common types of affairs, why they begin, and ways to affair-proof your marriage.\n\nDo you recognise one of your characters in any of these types? Have a wonderful week, Tamar Did you know…? Once you accept that, you can focus all of your energy on writing for the readers who will appreciate your hard work that much more.\n\nfiction books about cheating husbands\n\nCreate real characters. Revise your story.\n\nhow to write a fiction novel step by step\nRated 9/10 based on 85 review\nAbeBooks: Deception Between the Covers: Literary Infidelity", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.6538187265396118}
+{"content": "The fisher's daughter\n\n\n\n\nWhat she didn’t realise was she was a pearl; a rare sight who had the power to create tsunamis within hearts and storms to be talked about. She belonged to the oceans where she was wild and set free.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9740989208221436}
+{"content": "Tag: Erg Chegaga Dunes\n\nMorocco’s Great Deserts, Your Morocco Tour Guide\n\nAlthough, compared to neighbouring Algeria, Morocco has only a fraction of the Great Sahara Desert within its territory, yet Morocco offers the safest and best-organized access to the Sahara of the whole of North Africa. Whether you want a quick glimpse of the magnificent dunes on camelback, the thrill of sand boarding down the dunes, an overnight experience under the vast starry skies in a nomad’s tent, or a longer excursion to explore the expanse of the dune complex and the people who inhabit it, Morocco has it all. There is nowhere else where you could be in some of Africa’s highest snow-tipped mountain ranges and in the depth of the sandy expanses of the desert in the same day. And your trip to Morocco’s Great Deserts will take you through centuries-old oases on route. Along the way, you will meet local nomads and villagers whose families have worked this land and survived its hardships for generations.\n\nExploring Morocco’s Sahara Desert, Your Morocco Travel Guide\n\nThe Sahara Desert is a region worth exploring in Morocco. Morocco’s Sahara Desert is vast and extensive comprising of four peak desert dunes referred to as Merzouga, Zagora, M’hamid and Erg Chegaga. Each part of Morocco’s Sahara Desert offers travelers a unique experience. Merzouga is known for it’s vast and golden Erg Chebbi Dunes that are hundreds of meters high. The regions of Zagora and M’hamid are known for longer, rolling more rustic and earthy colored dunes. Their sister Sahara Desert, Erg Chegaga has a legend of being primarily for the die-hard Morocco adventure traveler who wants to say they made it to one of the last regions. Regardless of which dunes are visited on a Morocco Sahara Desert trip any traveler is guaranteed to be enchanted with the region they choose to visit.\n\n\n\nPasha Glaoui’s Legacy & Kasbahs in Morocco, Your Morocco Travel Guide\n\nPasha T’hami Glaoui was the most powerful man in Morocco between 1953 and 1956, in addition to being one of the richest men in the world at that time. The title Pasha means Governor. Glaoui was the Pasha of Marrakesh (since 1912), Ouarzazate, and most of the Moroccan south during the time Morocco was under French rule. The most important Kasbahs’ in Morocco that were occupied by the Pacha Glaoui during his reign and are frequented by Moroccan travelers today are Kasbah Taouirt, located in the center of Ouarzazate, Ait Benhaddou, located 15 kilometers outside Ouarzazate and Kasbah Telouet which sits in the village of Telouet nestled outside the Onilla Valley.\n\nThings to Do in Ad Dakhla, Morocco, Your Morocco Travel Guide, Part II of II\n\n\n\n\nMorocco Sahara Desert Dream Tour, Your Morocco Travel Guide\n\n\n\n\nSahara Desert Tours & Camel Treks from Marrakech, Your Morocco Travel Guide\n\nTraveling Morocco’s Sahara Desert for a Morocco vacation is a once in a lifetime magical experience. When considering a Sahara Tour & Camel Trek from Marrakech there are several Sahara Tour options. Travel Exploration Morocco is an Ouarzazate Travel Agency based in New York City & Ouarzazate that offers three different Sahara Tour & Camel Trek itineraries from Marrakech. 4×4 Travel to Morocco’s Sahara through Travel Exploration Morocco guarantees an authentic Moroccan Sahara journey.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9694532752037048}
+{"content": "SRI methods double rice yield\n\nsri method yiels compared to traditional methods\nA farmer in Lombok, Indonesia, holds two rice plants of same variety. The plant on the left was grown with SRI methods and the one on the right with conventional methods.\n\nSRI not only greatly increases yield, it uses less water and emits vastly less CO2 than rice grown in the traditional way by being flooded.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8365428447723389}
+{"content": "Whats new\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nConference Philosophy\n\nAnd Methodology\n\nILAT models learning as it should be. Short, stimulating sessions that are highly interactive, capturing highlights in a learning journal.\n\n10 Key Benefits\n\n1. Attend ILAT and sharpen your ability in “learning how to learn”\n2. Learn from 10 facilitators from 10 countries on 10 important aspects of learning.\n3. Benchmark best practices of cultural relevence in teaching and learning globally.\n4. Compare own challenges and experiences with around 300 other professionals.\n5. Share,learn and network with peers and learning specialists from around the world\n6. Update yourself on findings from latest research into brain, learning and thinking\n7. Learn some new facilitation techniques that you can use professionally\n8. Bring back some useful books, materials and earn 20 credits towards a post graduate certificate/diploma or Master’s degree\n9. Establish a new network of people who can become a life long resource\n10. Finally, you deserve a break! Have fun learning. Renew and Return. Re-energised to introduce Learning Innovations that work", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.7147617340087891}
+{"content": "Skip to content\n\nShape Your Future with AMETEK STC\n\nAMETEK STC is a global company with a professional and ambitious culture in a friendly atmosphere. \n\nOur working processes are dynamic, and our products are developed and manufactured at our four Centers of Excellence based in the United States and Denmark. Additionally, we have sales offices based in China, Singapore, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. Our work environment is therefore highly international but with a strong local flavor. \n\nWe are pioneers and industry leaders in most of our businesses, and we are this because of our skilled employees who all contribute to the development, manufacturing, delivery, selling, and marketing of our products. We believe that all employees are equally important, and we believe in developing talent. This is why our employees stay with us for many years, and many even for several decades. \n\nWhen working with AMETEK STC you learn every day. We are a dynamic company, and we change as the world changes so we can continue to help our customers shape the future. The dynamic nature of our company means that our employees are continuously challenged to develop their skills and stay up to date with the latest trends, so they can help us stay in front of our competitors and the market needs. You will be surrounded by some of the best experts within their fields in a culture where everyone who shows a willingness to learn and grow, will get a chance to do so. This is how we have been working for almost 100 years and it has become pivotal in our mission: to help customers shape the future.\n\nWho Are You\nAt AMETEK STC we are always looking for new, talented colleagues who can contribute to our company’s further growth and development. We have many different positions and therefore also a need for many different types of employees. Maybe you just graduated as an Engineer, have very steady hands that would be perfect for assembling our machines, are an experienced Sales Manager, a hardcore Software Engineer, or a Finance expert. Most important to us is that you:\n\n- Are skilled within your field.\n- Have a positive, go-getter attitude.\n\nIf you are most of this, and a lot more, including open-minded and smiling, then apply for one of our open positions and let’s shape the future together! You find the open positions here. \n\nChoose one of our “Meet a Colleague” sections below.\n\n     AMETK STC Quality Assurance", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.920074462890625}
+{"content": "Bible Review 13:5, October 1997\n\nA Biblical Spice Rack\n\nBy Devorah Emmet Wigoder\n\nThe Bible reflects an intimate knowledge of herbs and spices, which perfumed the Jerusalem Temple (2 Chronicles 2:4), sweetened the home (Song of Songs 7:13) and seasoned meals during the Exodus (Numbers 11:5–6). Repeated references to herbs and spices indicate that the people of the Bible knew how these plants tasted, smelled and looked, where they grew and what medicinal value they provided.\n\nThe Bible never gives a specific word for spices, the aromatic vegetable products derived from the bark, root or fruit of perennial plants. In the Bible spices are used primarily for religious purposes—especially as incense. “Spiced wine,” literally wine of a mixture (of spices), in Song of Songs 8:2 is the only biblical mention of spices used as a flavoring.\n\nIn ancient times, herbs—the edible leaves, blossoms and soft stems of annuals and perennials—were used primarily as medicine. According to the apocryphal Book of Jubilees,a angels revealed to Noah all the illnesses of the world and their remedies so that he could “heal by means of the herbs of the earth” (Jubilees 10:12). Noah diligently recorded the cures in a book. On the following pages, I, like Noah, record the herbs and spices of the Near East throughout history.\n\nJoin the BAS Library!\n\nAlready a library member? Log in here.\n\nInstitution user? Log in with your IP address.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9995166063308716}
+{"content": "Ragnarok was only the beginning...\nBuried in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, is the massive Bunker One. Long conquered by the spawn of the xenovirus, it is now the mission of Alex Keener, Samuel Neth, and Makara Angel to find the fallen Bunker, or die trying. Contained within are the mysterious Black Files, which may be the key to stopping the xenovirus before it is too late.\nFor growing in the south in the wake of the expanding Blights is the mysterious Empire, who will stop at nothing to secure the Bunkers' resources, technology, and information...and Bunker One is at the top of their list.\nAnd in the Great Blight, the monsters get bigger. Much, much bigger.\n\n\n\nPas de note\n\nAvis des utilisateurs\n\nPas d'entrée", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9983053803443909}
+{"content": "Getting off the ground\n\n\nPhilip Mason talks to deputy director of the Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme Steve Whatson about the recent ESN air to ground procurement, UK emergency services’ eventual move to 5G, and his role on the TCCA board.\n\nWhy is it necessary to implement an ‘air to ground’ [A2G] solution for the Emergency Services Network? \nAir to ground is a firm requirement from our user groups, in order to replicate the network overlay which they currently have with Airwave. We had to do it. \nHow is the work broken down?\nIt’s split into two pieces, the same as the other parts of the ESN solution - the network and the devices.\nIn terms of the network, we made the decision to build-out rather than rely on what we had with the commercial EE solution on the ground, due to the level of interference we would have experienced above 500 feet. There would have been 4G signal, but we wouldn’t have been able to use it - the percentage chance of holding and making a call would have been too low for our users to accept. \nWe undertook a series of test flights using a company called P3 at the beginning of this year. They took place from London to Cornwall, with flights also around Manchester and in the highlands and islands of Scotland.\nWhat will the A2G network look like in terms of infrastructure?\nWe’ll be using around 86 sites to provide the air overlay network, covering England, Scotland and Wales. There are fewer sites required for A2G compared to the ground network simply because the capacity doesn’t need to be as much, and the larger site spacing reduces interference. For the vast majority, we’ll be using existing locations and just bolting our equipment on top of the mast.\nIn terms of frequency, we looked at 800 MHz, as well as 1800. We also did a little bit of work with 2600 MHz, but again that was discounted due to the level of interference, as well as the fact that use of 2600 MHz is not allowed by OFCOM, as it can interfere with air navigation radar. The 2600 MHz signal is there, but the higher up you go - in terms of frequency -, the more base stations you can see, and the more difficult things become. \nWe’ve already agreed to lease spectrum at 2345 MHz, which is 4G, and that’s what we’ll be using. It all hooks back into the EE network, so the backhaul transmission is the same as the ground one. From a User perspective, the air network is a seamless part of ESN.\nWho will be using the A2G network? \nWe support four sets of users in relation to this, which are the National Police Air Service, the Air Ambulance programme, as well as Scottish Police and Scottish Ambulance. We currently have a commitment to purchase 66 devices, which may rise to over 100 if the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, and Ministry of Defence, decide to fit out their aircraft as well. \nWhat happens once Airwave is switched off if the latter two agencies don’t choose to do that? \nThey’d have to go back to using VHF. That would be the only option when it came to talking to air traffic control, and they also wouldn’t be able to interact with the other emergency services. The Maritime and Coastguard agency are likely to be working with the police and Air Ambulance on an increasing basis, so it would be an issue. \nThose two are not core stakeholders when it comes to the current system or ESN, but they are obviously an important part of the working groups we’ve been holding.\nMoving onto devices, why did you award the contract to Cobham? \nThere were a variety of factors, ranging from price to the technological side of the solution. It was weighted according to the technology - obviously, we didn’t want to buy the cheapest, just to find that it didn’t do what we wanted. Cobham is the supplier of the current Airwave solution when it comes to air to ground. \nWhat will be the level of crossover between the A2G devices and the ones being used on the ground?\nThe aircraft devices will be built using a Linux operating system, onto which will be ported the Kodiak application. The latter will also have to be integrated when it comes to the screen, enabling it to be used while wearing accessories such as gloves and night vision goggles.\nFundamentally, it’ll be the same as using a handset with Kodiak, with the same interface - albeit tailored to the specific aircraft type -, access to talkgroups and so on. The aircraft device will have full interoperability with devices on the ground, as they will both be running on the same network.  \nWhat’s the timescale for the A2G roll-out? Will it take place in parallel with the terrestrial network? \nWe’re looking to do some testing in the first quarter of next year, with full deployment planned for Q3 2021 up until the end of 2022. \nMost of the terrestrial network is pretty much complete now, at least in terms of upgrading the existing commercial sites. EE has built around 300 new sites as well, and they’re just gap filling at this point. We’ve also now got something like 50 extended area services sites built in the most rural areas, but there’s plenty more of those still to do.\nIn terms of the progress of the programme more broadly, we’re on the verge of awarding the contract around the fixed vehicle devices. That’ll be on the 4th of October. We’ve also run the first phase of trials on the network inter-working product, and we’ll soon be doing acceptance testing on that as well.\nStaying on the subject of the network as a whole - bearing in mind the delays to the project - what should have been done better?\nHonestly, I think we should have gone for a more staggered or iterative approach to the deployment, which is exactly what we’re doing now. A series of releases that added functionality as we went would have shown progress, and also made the technology available to the users much earlier.\nRegarding incremental delivery, I wouldn’t want to suggest it’s a huge number of users at the moment but the interest is certainly there, and the project is moving. The second phase of coverage testing [using the ESN Assure product] is about to begin, and we’ve got Connect available as a proof of concept.\nDid you ever lose faith in the project? \nNo, because I’m certain that it’s the answer to what the UK emergency services require when it comes to their communications. In fact it’s the only answer, given that TETRA’s now 20 years old.\nThe idea is to move onto a platform which can evolve with the users, so they won’t have to make this kind of jump again. \nWhich you have to assume includes 5G...\n5G is certainly in the discussion, and the aim now is that once the supplier - whoever it is - moves onto their next generation network, we’ll be able to do the same with a minimal period of change to the users. \nAs the technology evolves, we want to be in a position where we can move with it, so the aim would be to take advantage of any 5G offer almost immediately, although we’ll wait until it’s widely rolled out.  \nChanging the subject slightly, what made you want to become a TCCA board member? What do you think you can bring to the role? \nI was very pleased to stand and get elected earlier this year, representing not only the UK Home Office but also national government departments within the organisation. My presence – alongside people such as Nina Myren and Tero Pesonen – keeps the board nicely balanced between industry and government.\nWhat can other countries learn from the UK when it comes to rolling out emergency services broadband? What can the UK learn from them? \nThere’s a lot of lessons, for instance around timescale, procurement, and how you might want to design the business case. We can certainly learn from governments who are going along that path, and hopefully they can learn from us. \nGoing back to TCCA and its remit, when more governments are involved and active in this process, it also helps drive standards more quickly. That in turn helps stimulate the market, because suppliers see an increasing level of opportunity around the world.\nWithout the work we’ve done, there would be no 4G device that can fit into a helicopter. We’re happy to share that experience and knowledge.\n\n\nPhilip Mason\nEditor, Critical Communications Portfolio\nTel: +44 (0)20 3874 9216", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.899929940700531}
+{"content": "Israel Examines Using Grenade-launched Mini Drones\n\nAt $2,000 a pop with a 2-5 kilometer flight range, Israeli company Spear’s smallest drone weighs less than 250 grams and can be fired from a grenade launcher\n\nSend in e-mailSend in e-mail\n\nThe Defense Ministry is examining the use of miniature drones that can be fired from a grenade launcher. The new technology has recently been developed by Spear, an Israeli startup company.\n\nThe IDF, like other armies around the world, has been equipping troops with miniature drones for surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence in recent years. The soldiers equipped with the drones can use them to get a bird’s eye view of the battlefield, or of the goings on beyond a hill or structure, and gather immediate tactical intelligence.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9802551865577698}
+{"content": "Search Our Essay Database\n\nStrategic Management Essays and Research Papers\n\nInstructions for Strategic Management College Essay Examples\n\nall the lecture notes on\nID: 30081273\nPW: welcome41\n\nExcerpt From Essay:\n\nEssay Instructions: Strategic Management\n\nCase analysis #29\nImplementation of the balanced scorecard as a mean of corporate learning: The Porsche Case\nPage# 761\n\nThere is no single correct answer to a case analysis, You can add as many exhibits, tables and figures as necessary\n\nThe key to a good case analysis is to carefully analyze the situation, apply relevant conceptual materials, and evaluate possible courses of action before selecting remendations. Although each case is unique and may require a different approach and analysis, The write-up should include the following two elements:\n\n1. An assessment of the current situation of the firm. This includes - 1\nThe environment in which the firm operates, the industry\nThe petitive situation and strategies of the firm including its financial results with the objective of identifying the key issues that must be addressed\n\nThis is not a summary of the case but rather your personal evaluation/critique of the\nsituation using the relevant tools developed in the textbook.\n\n2. A description of the alternatives to address the issues identified, followed by detailed remendations. This is a very important and potentially the most difficult part of the case analysis. The search for alternatives must be broad and should consider significant redirection, reorganization or disposition of parts or all the business. Also, changes in business and petitive strategies are expected here. Be specific in your remended solution. Describe the (new or modified) strategies, the financial objectives and the implementation plan.\n\nUseful frameworks for doing case analysis can be found in Chapters 3 and 4 (Internal and External Analysis). Also, pages 470-473 ( Preparing for case discussion ) in the text can be used to understand the basics of case analysis.\n\nThe full book for this assignement is available at http://www.coursesmart./\nClick on ? My bookshelve? . then ? Sign In?\n\nEmail: Carol.\nPassword: password\n\nExcerpt From Essay:\n\nTitle: Krafty\n\nTotal Pages: 5 Words: 1515 Works Cited: 0 Citation Style: APA Document Type: Essay\n\nEssay Instructions: Strategic Management Process/Vision, Goals, Objectives\n\n\nThe Case in this course is an ongoing exercise, meaning that we will be taking an intensive look at one company over the course of our five modules. This session, we will be conducting a strategic analysis of the Kraft Foods Group. The best preparation for doing well on the Case Assignments is to complete the Background information readings and the SLP before writing the Case.\n\nMost companies have something that resembles a vision, mission, or set of values; or stated goals/objectives that define who the company is and how the company plans to do business. However, organizations may not always label these statements properly?calling a vision a mission, or calling their values a set of beliefs. Sometimes they do not have a mission at all, operating instead on a set of goals.\n\nRequired Reading\n\nHammonds, K. (2007). Michael Porter's Big ideas, Fast Company, 44, Retrieved on November 6, 2012, from:\n\nCase Assignment\n\n\nKeys to the Assignment\n\nAfter studying the background materials and completing the SLP, you are in an excellent position to evaluate a company's published mission, vision, values, and objectives/goals. This Case asks you to begin your strategic analysis of the Kraft Foods Group by evaluating the company's mission, vision, values, and goals. To do this, observe the following procedure:\n?Step 1: Visit the official website of the Kraft Foods Group, and identify the company?s vision, mission, values, and goals. (Hint: You'll need to do some exploring and a certain amount of speculation?as the terms \"vision\" and \"mission\" (and sometimes even the term \"company goals\") are used interchangeably. Explore the \"About Us,\" and \"Investor Center\" links. Also, look closely at the most recent Annual Reports.\n?Step 2: Critically evaluate the mission, vision, values, and goals (again, you'll likely need to make decisions as to which is which). Use the criteria in the background materials as well as the readings related to the SLP to support your assessment of the quality of the company's mission, vision, and values.\n?Step 4: Consider what changes are needed to improve the vision statement, the mission statement, the statement of company values, and the company's objectives and goals.\n?Step 5: Write a 5- to 7-page paper addressing the above requirements. While you must meet minimum length requirements, you must also address the above requirements with precision and with appropriate breadth and depth.\n\n1.Use of proper APA style is required in this course. Therefore, prepare your Case with proper documentation of sources, using in-text citations and a complete reference list. Refer to the Well-Written Paper guide if you are not familiar with APA style.\n2.Consider the Case as a formal business report that you are developing for the Board of Directors and CEO as the Kraft Foods Group's consultant. This is a professional document. Follow the format below:\n6.Note: You mustuse section headings to respond to all major requirements in all papers. Your section headings should appear similar to the following: ?Introduction\n?Company's Mission Statement and Analysis\n?Company's Vision and Analysis\n?Company's Values and Analysis\n?Alignment of Company's Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals with Stakeholders' Interests\n?Recommended Changes\n\nAssignment Expectations\n\n\nExcerpt From Essay:\n\nTitle: Strategic Management\n\nTotal Pages: 3 Words: 929 Bibliography: 3 Citation Style: MLA Document Type: Research Paper\n\nEssay Instructions: Strategic Management ??\" online\n\nProject outline\n\nYour final project due before midnight on 5/5/08. Be sure to include a title page, table of contents (listed below) and do use this as a guide for your headings in your operational/strategic plan. Lastly, be sure to follow-up with a concluding paragraph or two at the end of the plan. Examples of two different plans are listed on our home page as well.\n\n\n1. Organization or company overview (background of when company was founded, number of employees, industry, etc. (chapter 1)\n\n2. Company Mission Statement (chapter 1)\n\n3. Social Responsibility & Profitability (public image, how they want the public to perceive them and their philosophy on corporate/organizational citizenship, chapter 1)\n\n4. Short term and Long term objectives (chapter 2)\n\na. Goals or activities to achieve objectives\n\n5. SWOT (include table, internal and external, chapter 2 & 3)\n\n6. Strategies (chapter 4)\n\n7. Action Plan (chapter 4 & 5)\n\n8. Functional Tactics (chapter 5)\n\n9. Policies (chapter 5)\n\n10. Implementation (review and reread chapter 6)\n\n11. Restructuring, reengineering or Reorganization (chapter 7)\n\n12. Strategic Control and Continuous Improvement (chapter 7)\n\n13. Follow-up (feedback, future planning, chapter 7)\n\nExcerpt From Essay:\n\nRequest A Custom Essay On This Topic\n\n\n\nTiffany R\n\n\nCharlotte H\n\n\nBill K", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9763451218605042}
+{"content": "Paulus Orosius, Seven Books of History Against the Pagans III.8\n\n\nThat Christ was responsible for the Pax Romana\n\nName of the author: \nPaulus Orosius\n416 CE to 417 CE\nStridon, Dalmatia?\nLiterary genre: \nTitle of work: \nSeven Books of History Against the Pagans\n\nThe Spanish Christian presbyter Paulus Orosius (385-420 CE) was a student of Augustine, and is best known for his Seven Books of History Against the Pagans. In the aftermath of the sack of Rome by the Visigoth king Alaric in 410 CE, Orosius’s work attempted to counter claims that Rome had fallen due to imperial adoption of Christianity (a theory which pagan writers forwarded, suggesting that the traditional gods were no longer protecting the city). Augustine had also written his City of God in response to these criticisms, and it was on Augustine’s request that Orosius composed his history (see, for instance, Augustine’s City of God II.3, and his Sermon 296.9, which argues that two previous sacks of the city of Rome occurred even before Christianity was its dominant religion). The book was the first world history to be composed by a Christian author, and utilised the works of writers such as Livy, Caesar, Tacitus, Justin, Suetonius, Florus, and Eusebius. Orosius argued that Christianity had benefited the empire more than it had harmed it, and gives examples of disasters that had occurred long before Christianity had arisen in the empire. Part of his argument was to suggest that the sack of Rome had not actually been especially violent (see Fear, “The Christian Optimism,” p. 9-10, and Jamie Wood, Politics of Identity, p. 151, who demonstrates the influence which Orosius had on the later account of the sack of Rome written by Isidorus of Seville). One of the most important aims of Orosius’s work was to persuade his audience that Rome’s history had always truly been intertwined with Christianity, even if it was not always consciously aware of this. As such, the present extract argues that it was Christ who was truly responsible for the Pax Romana, not Caesar. Moreover, Orosius comments on the idea that the entire world has adopted the law of the Romans, even preferring to accept them rather than resist with violence: “[they] preferred the laws of the Romans to their own arms.”\n\nWe will turn first to the presentation of the Pax Romana, or Roman peace, in the present extract. Orosius, like other Christian authors before him synchronises the birth of Christ with the reign of Augustus and his bringing about of the Pax Romana (see, for instance, the anonymous Commentary on Daniel; Origen, Against Celsus II.30; Melito of Sardis, Apology; see also VI.22.5-8 of the present work). This serves to enforce Orosius’s message that Rome is an essential part of God’s plan. As Andrew Fear remarks, Christ’s birth being timed to coincide with the establishment of world peace is quite deliberate, and shows that the “Pax Romana…is a Pax Divina” (Fear, Orosius, p. 20). Peter Van Nuffelen discusses the influence upon Orosius of Ammianus Marcellinus, the famous Roman soldier and historian whose Res Gestae recorded Roman history from the accession of the emperor Nerva to the death of the emperor Valens in 378 CE, and was written only just over twenty years prior to Orosius’s text (on Ammianus, Orosius, and Augustine’s versions of history, and the latter two authors’ aims at conceptualising a Christian empire within a universal historical framework, see John Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, chap. 3). Van Nuffelen notes that one of the things they share is the suggestion, illustrated in the present passage from Orosius’s work, that the present age knows peace. The difference is that Orosius attributes this explicitly to Christ, rather than Augustus. For Orosius, it is not Augustus’s empire which “prepares the peace in which Christ could be born: it is the empire which is elected by God to be prepared for Christ” (see also VI.20.4 of Orosius’s work). Van Nuffelen argues that for Orosius, it is God and the Church only who can claim agency in history; the peace and progress enjoyed by the empire is not due to its own efforts, but rather, the empire is merely a tool for God’s greater plans (Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, p. 151). Indeed, VI.22.5 makes this explicitly clear, stating that the stable peace which Caesar had established prior to Christ’s coming was itself “a servant” to him. Orosius argues that the widespread peace which is now enjoyed by the “whole world” due to Roman hegemony, even those presently inclined towards blasphemy (i.e. all non-Christians, a reference to the ‘barbarian’ peoples), will be forced to recognise its true source as Christ, not the emperor.\n\nOrosius’s conception of Rome’s relationship with the barbarians is one of the most intriguing features the Seven Books of History. In what is sometimes termed as an overly “optimistic” view, he suggests that the invasion of the empire by barbarian peoples could in fact serve the positive function of gathering more followers for Christ. Indeed, Orosius argues that pagan Romans are the real threat to the empire’s stability, not barbarians. In the current passage, invasion is not at issue, but the idea that those outside the empire are receptive to God’s message (here carried via the medium of the Pax Romana) is very much present. In this sense, Roman expansion and subjugation of foreign peoples is not only represented as something which promotes universal peace under one empire, but more importantly for Orosius, something which aids the spread of Christ’s message (Christian authors before Orosius had been highly critical of Rome’s expansionist aims, arguing that Roman hegemony was fuelled by arrogant violence and brutality, quite the opposite of promoting peace. See, for example, the Ocatavius of Marcus Minucius Felix XXV; Tertullian, Apology XXXV.12-17; Arnobius, Against the Pagans I.5).\n\nA connection between Roman hegemony and the spreading of Christianity, however, is also made in the Commentary on Daniel IV.9, where it is argued that the bringing of many nations and languages together under Romans rule has the effect of enabling a new ‘Christian race’ composed of numerous peoples. Orosius understands the universal peace which foreign, formerly disparate peoples enjoy as being something uniting and worthy of celebration. Indeed, whilst previously there was discord (discordia), with not a single city, or, he exaggerates, even a single household able to maintain peace and common good, Roman rule had brought serenity. It was only a matter of time, however, until these nations which attributed their stability to Rome recognised its true source as being in Christ. The other important connection that Orosius makes in this regard is that between Roman hegemony, the Pax Romana, and Roman law. He argues that because the Romans had achieved peace where other nations had failed, the “whole world” now accepted Roman law as a peacekeeping tool, even favouring Roman judges to their own leaders. This vision is somewhat anachronistic of course, but as early as the first century CE (at least) we see cases of non-Roman citizens trying to get their cases heard by Roman governors.\n\nUltimately, the Roman empire is merely a vessel for God’s peace, but while Rome is the agent of God’s divine will, it is still an earthly kingdom which will eventually come to an end. This is illustrated quite poetically by Orosius; just prior to the passage of focus here, in III.8.1-2, the numerous wars in which the Romans have participated in are described, with the misfortunes of these conflicts described as “glow[ing] as if pressed down at noon from the entire sky” (translation by Roy Deferrari, The Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, p. 88). In contrast, the present passage describes God as being like “the rising sun [who] pervades the day with light.” The implication of this contrasting imagery is that Rome is declining, while Christianity is at its most “fertile beginnings” (Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, p. 151).\n\nBibliographical references: \nFear, Andrew T., “The Christian Optimism of Paulus Orosius”, in From Orosius to the Historia Silense: Four essays on Late Antique and Early Medieval Historiography of the Iberian Peninsula (ed. David Hook; Bristol: University of Bristol Press, 2005), 1-16\nRealized by: \n\nHow to quote this page\n\nAuthor(s) of this publication: Kimberley Fowler\nPublishing date: Sat, 04/13/2019 - 18:25\nVisited: Sun, 01/24/2021 - 07:01\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8671337962150574}
+{"content": "Writer’s choice\n\nWrite a paper 15-20 pages in length with appropriate research citations using the APA method, integrate readings, class exercises, and discussions on leadership for which the paper is assigned paper should be formatted use double spacing and 12-point Times New Roman font. Use appropriate 12-15 research sources.Use the concepts you covered in your previous 5 leadership plan papers. Develop leadership competencies by examining the behaviors, skills and styles of effective leaders and use them as benchmarks to access their own strengths and needs for improvement. Include topics include such as: participative leadership, coaching and empowerment; power and influence strategies; contingency models of leadership; and innovation-oriented leadership. Develop a personal leadership action plan for yourself that focuses on influence strategies you will use throughout your career in leadership roles.\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9999992251396179}
+{"content": "Theory of God Particles Could by Polytheistic\n\nIt seems the world of God Particles may soon be a polytheistic one as evidence of multiple God Particles has been suggested by the Tevatron particle accelerator in the United States.  The DZero experiment is run by Fermilab in Illinois and the ten billion dollar LHC's \"rival\" experiment.  The ultimate goal of both projects, however, is to provide information that either supports or refutes the current \"big picture\" of physics known as the standard model.\n\nIf the experiment run at Tevatron is confirmed, it may mean the God Particle is not one single type of particle, but rather five.  If there are five Higgs Boson type particles, then there will be considerably more data for the scientists at the CERN Large Hadron Collider to uncover before their work is complete.  The results come at a time when the very existence of Dark Matter has come under serious scrutiny thanks to recent observations by John Moffet and Joel Brownstein of the University of Waterloo in Canada.  So the ultimate truth has at least three major studies attempting to get to the truth first by different avenues.  The ten billion dollar CERN project has been rumored for a long time to have the potential to end the world by opening up a stabilizing black hole if it is set off according to several people, but no scientists involved directly with the project.  CERN has been a subject of intense scrutiny in other areas of the media too after a suggestion by scientists that there was a reverse wave of energy travelling back through time to ensure it never achieved fruition.  Meanwhile Tevatron has been declared as a cheaper alternative to CERN, and its scientists have claimed a great deal of success in the field without any need for the massive amounts of funding appropriated to the CERN project which is funded by multiple countries and organizations.\n\nBut what does this mean in concrete scientific terms?  It's not clear as yet exactly how the potential discovery of multiple god particles will affect the standard model, but the Dzero experiment suggests massive gaps in the logic of the standard model as there is a considerable amount of observed asymmetry between matter and antimatter.  That is unless there are multiple Higgs Boson particles, according to Dr. Martin.  Martin was interviewed by the BBC News and suggested to them that this was the only way to explain the results of the DZero experiment, saying \"In models with an extra Higgs doublet, it's easy to have large new physics effects like this DZero result... What's difficult is to have those large effects without damaging anything else that we have already measured.\"  To view Dr. Martin's interview with the BBC check out: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10313875.stm\n\nBut this does raise an important question about the potential experiment at CERN if the very existence of Dark Matter comes into dispute.  There's no question that the project itself may be important in confirming the findings of the Canadian experiment, but if it finds the Dark Matter may not exist, then was the project really worth the billions spent on it?", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5912995338439941}
+{"content": "Summis desiderantes\nSummis desiderantes affectibus (Desiring with supreme ardor) was a papal bull\nPapal bull\nA Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a Pope of the Catholic Church. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end in order to authenticate it....\n\n issued by Pope Innocent VIII\nPope Innocent VIII\nPope Innocent VIII , born Giovanni Battista Cybo , was Pope from 1484 until his death.-Early years:Giovanni Battista Cybo was born at Genoa of Greek extraction...\n\n on December 5, 1484.\n\nThe bull was written in response to the request of Dominican\nDominican Order\n\nThe Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the \"fight against heretics\" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...\n\n Heinrich Kramer\nHeinrich Kramer\nHeinrich Kramer also known under the Latinized name Henricus Institoris, was a German churchman and inquisitor....\n\n\nThe bull recognized the existence of witches:\n\nand gave full papal approval for the Inquisition to proceed \"correcting, imprisoning, punishing and chastising\" such persons \"according to their deserts.\" The bull essentially repeated Kramer's view that an outbreak of witchcraft\nWitchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...\n\n and heresy\n\nMainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...\n\n, Cologne\n\n, Trier\n\n, Salzburg\n\n and Bremen\nThe City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany. A commercial and industrial city with a major port on the river Weser, Bremen is part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area . Bremen is the second most populous city in North Germany and tenth in Germany.Bremen is...\n\n, including accusations of certain acts.\n\n\n\nDespite this threat, the bull failed to ensure that Kramer got the support he had hoped for, causing him to retire and to compile his views on witchcraft into his book Malleus Maleficarum\nMalleus Maleficarum\nThe Malleus Maleficarum is an infamous treatise on witches, written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer, an Inquisitor of the Catholic Church, and was first published in Germany in 1487...\n\n, which was published in 1487. Summis desiderantes affectibus was published as part of the preface of the book, signaling papal approval for the work.\n\nThe bull, which synthesized the spiritual and the secular crimes of witchcraft, is often viewed as opening the door for the witchhunts of the early modern period. However, its similarities to previous papal documents, emphasis on preaching, and lack of dogmatic pronouncement\n\n complicate this view. The Catholic Encyclopedia\nCatholic Encyclopedia\n\ndismisses the importance attached to the encyclical in the context of the ensuing witch hunts as \"altogether illusory\".\n\nSome scholars view the bull as \"clearly political\", motivated by jurisdictional disputes between the local German Catholic priests and those of the Inquisition who answered more directly to the pope.\n\nExternal links\n\n  • The Bull of Innocent VIII as published in the Malleus Maleficarum\n    Malleus Maleficarum\n\n    translated by Montague Summers\n    Montague Summers\n    Augustus Montague Summers was an eccentric English author and clergyman. He is known primarily for his scholarly work on the English drama of the 17th century, as well as for his idiosyncratic studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe...\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9806711077690125}
+{"content": "Understanding Your Thyroid\n\nYour thyroid controls your hormones and can affect nearly every area of your body, from how fast you burn calories to how fast your heart beats.\n\nJanuary is designated Thyroid Awareness Month, a month set aside for healthcare providers to educate the public about thyroid health, diagnosis and treatment. The specialists at Lake Ear, Nose, Throat And Facial Plastic Surgery explain how this tiny gland has such a big effect on our health.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8034186959266663}
+{"content": "WP 4: Müller\n\nDr. Iris Müller (University of Magdeburg, Faculty for Natural Sciences)\n\nGABAergic and dopaminergic interaction in cognitive flexibility\n\n\nDr. Iris Müller\n\nUniversity of Magdeburg, Faculty of Natural Sciences\n\n    Gamma-amino butyric acid utilizing (GABAergic) interneurons control regional excitability, information flow and plasticity, as well as the generation of specific network activity patterns in the frontal cortex and associated brain regions. The GABAergic system consists of heterogeneous subclasses, differing in morphology, expression of neuropeptides and electrophysiological properties. For example, somatostatin- and parvalbumin expressing cells target preferentially dendrites and somata of pyramidal neurons, respectively, and thereby control information input and output.\n\n    In this project, we investigate how the function of different subpopulations of these GABAergic interneurons are modulated through dopamine during cognitive information processing, and how these cells contribute to cognitive flexibility and executive functions.\n\n    To this end, we examine the use and effectiveness of different learning strategies as well as the ability for reversal learning, decision-making and strategy shifting in mice. Appetitive and aversive learning tasks are used which require different levels of cognitive processing and interaction of particular frontal cortex regions with the hippocampus, striatum and amygdala. Using molecular markers and high-resolution gene expression analysis we will investigate the regional activation patterns and adaptive molecular changes in GABAergic interneurons that are induced by these tasks. Based on these findings, we will target relevant subpopulations with transgenic and pharmacogenetic tools to control their activity and responsiveness to dopaminergic modulation. We thus expect to identify GABAergic interneurons that mediate the dopaminergic control of cognitive functions and adaptive behaviour.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9847726821899414}
+{"content": "Water-soluble anti-infection medical fabric disposal bag\n\n- Feb 09, 2020-\n\nShanghai Yifu Packaging's water-soluble medical fabric anti-infection treatment products are mainly composed of water-soluble medical fabric anti-infection treatment bags, medical fabric collection vehicles and water-soluble quantitative washing / disinfectant packaging products. The products are mainly used for packaging, disinfection, and washing A large number of reusable fabrics with potential biological (or chemical) contamination risks generated during the daily work of hospitals (or workplaces with occupational hazards). Products can minimize the pollution and spread of viruses, bacteria and chemicals. Reduce the risk of cross-contamination between operators, patients and pollutants, effectively reduce the harm to people and the working environment, and apply water-soluble medical fabrics to prevent infection treatment products to treat packaging medical (or occupational hazard factor workplace) repeatable The use of fabric is an internationally-required process and standardized operation requirement. Environmental protection is valuable, and the price of life is higher. I can be responsible for life and the environment!", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.993337869644165}
+{"content": "Instructions For Hand Beaten Egg Whites\n\n- May 16, 2018-\n\n  To begin the process of beating egg whites by hand, add a pinch of cream of tartar per egg white or about 1/4 teaspoon for every four egg whites. This will help to stabilize the egg whites and prevent the foam from losing its volume after the beating has stopped. Cream of tartar is not required if a copper bowl is used.\n\n  Grasp the balloon whisk firmly and begin whipping the egg whites slowly, using a circular motion at about 2 strokes per second. When the egg whites begin to foam, usually after 30 seconds or so, increase the speed to about 4 strokes per second. The goal is to keep the egg whites in constant motion, whipping as much air into the whites as possible.\n\n  After 2 to 3 minutes of vigorous beating, the egg whites should begin to increase in volume.\n\n  When an additional 2 minutes or so has elapsed, the egg whites should reach the maximum volume possible.\n\n  You can test beaten egg whites for the desired volume regardless if the whites are beaten manually or beaten with a machine. Pull some of the beaten whites from the bowl on the end of a whisk or spoon to determine whether the egg whites form peaks. You should be able to hold the whisk or spoon upside down without the egg whites falling off. If the egg whites drop off the whisk or spoon, continue beating; however, don't over beat the egg whites because too much beating will cause the whites to break down and become watery, in which case, the egg whites will not blend properly with other ingredients in the recipe.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.993983805179596}
+{"content": "Tag Archive: CXADR\n\nKinases are heavily pursued pharmaceutical focuses on for their mechanistic function\n\nKinases are heavily pursued pharmaceutical focuses on for their mechanistic function in many illnesses. analytical toolbox, we chosen using cross-validation a combined mix of feature selection and design recognition methods: Kolmogorov-Smirnov/T-test cross types being a univariate filtration system, accompanied by Random Forests for feature selection and Support Vector Devices (SVM) for design identification. Feature selection discovered 21 kinases predictive of MNT. Using the matching CGP 60536 binding affinities, the SVM could accurately anticipate MNT outcomes with 85% precision (68% awareness, 91% specificity). This means that that kinase inhibition information are predictive of SMKI genotoxicity. While in vitro examining is necessary for regulatory review, our evaluation identified an easy and cost-efficient way for testing out compounds previous in drug advancement. Equally essential, by determining a -panel of kinases predictive of genotoxicity, we offer medicinal chemists a couple of kinases in order to avoid when designing substances, thereby offering a basis for logical drug design from genotoxicity. Writer Summary Little molecule kinase inhibitors (SMKIs) certainly are a course of chemicals which have effectively been employed for the treating several oncological illnesses that are now pursued by the pharmaceutical sector for inflammatory illnesses, such as arthritis rheumatoid. SMKIs are usually designed to particularly inhibit one kinase, but that is challenging because of the structural similarity from the ATP binding pocket amongst different associates from the kinase family members. The shortcoming to selectively inhibit just one single kinase could be difficult, as kinases play crucial roles in several cellular processes. Therefore the undesirable inhibition of extra kinases can result in unwanted toxicities that may halt medication CGP 60536 development. One kind of toxicity frequently noticed with this course of compounds can be harm to chromosomes, that may happen when CGP 60536 kinases associated with cell routine development or chromosome dynamics are inhibited. CGP 60536 Right here we demonstrate that numerical modeling may be used to determine kinases that correlate with chromosome harm, information that may assist therapeutic chemists to avoid particular kinases when synthesizing fresh chemicals. Generation of the type of info is among the 1st steps in starting to decrease toxicity-based attrition because of this course of compounds. Intro Toxicity is a significant reason behind attrition in medication development. While determining liabilities and potential toxicity can be difficult and expensive, protection issues may become markedly more technical when kinases will be the pharmaceutical focus on. Kinases control many basic features in regular cells. When their activity can be altered, kinases could possibly be the mechanistic reason behind a cell to obtain an irregular phenotype. In metabolic, oncologic, viral, cardiovascular and inflammatory CGP 60536 illnesses, over 150 different kinases, from the over 500 known proteins kinase family, are believed putative drug focuses on CXADR [1]. Marketed little molecule kinase inhibitors (SMKIs) possess suitably demonstrated the potency of this restorative strategy for oncologic signs [2]. SMKIs designed for non-oncologic illnesses, however, are significantly represented in a variety of phases of preclinical and medical development [1]. Many SMKIs exert their pharmacologic impact by getting together with the ATP binding pocket [3], inhibiting the power from the kinase to phosphorylate the meant substrate, and obstructing downstream sign transduction. Due to the evolutionarily conserved character from the ATP binding pocket, a SMKI designed to inhibit a specific kinase may potently inhibit a large number of additional kinase people across the human being kinome [4]. Off-target kinases could be a potential protection liability of the restorative course and hinder medication development. The systems where different toxicities occur due to off-target inhibition aren’t well characterized. Sutent, an extremely nonselective inhibitor of multiple tyrosine kinases and Gleevec, a comparatively selective Bcr-Abl inhibitor, both raise the threat of cardiotoxicty [5]C[7], though extra, much less publicized toxicities, may also be common for SMKIs. Kinases are fundamental regulators of mitosis, because they are intricately associated with specific signaling as well as the coordination necessary for correct replication and segregation of chromosomes into little girl cells [8]C[10]. While kinases could be targeted because of their function in pathways connected with a disease appealing, inhibition of kinases could also disrupt regular cellular procedures. A frequently noticed toxicity for SMKIs is normally an optimistic result for chromosomal harm within an assay of DNA integrity, which most likely occurs as the consequence of inhibiting kinases involved with mitosis or chromosomal segregation. The micronucleus check (MNT) is broadly seen as a delicate assay for hereditary toxicity since it is a way to identify either parts and/or entire chromosomes that show up being a micronucleus in.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9671104550361633}
+{"content": "classes ::: chapter, Sri_Aurobindo, The_Life_Divine,\nchildren :::\nbranches :::\n\nInstances, Classes, See Also, Object in Names\nDefinitions, . Quotes . - . Chapters .\n\nobject:1.26 - The Ascending Series of Substance\nauthor class:Sri Aurobindo\nbook class:The Life Divine\n\n0:There is a self that is of the essence of Matter - there is another inner self of Life that fills the other - there is another inner self of Mind - there is another inner self of TruthKnowledge - there is another inner self of Bliss. Taittiriya Upanishad.1\n\n0:They climb Indra like a ladder. As one mounts peak after peak, there becomes clear the much that has still to be done. Indra brings consciousness of That as the goal.\n\nLike a hawk, a kite He settles on the Vessel and upbears it; in His stream of movement He discovers the Rays, for He goes bearing his weapons: He cleaves to the ocean surge of the waters; a great King, He declares the fourth status. Like a mortal purifying his body, like a war-horse galloping to the conquest of riches He pours calling through all the sheath and enters these vessels. Rig Veda.2\n\n1:IF WE consider what it is that most represents to us the materiality of Matter, we shall see that it is its aspects of solidity, tangibility, increasing resistance, firm response to the touch of Sense. Substance seems more truly material and real in proportion as it presents to us a solid resistance and by virtue of that resistance a durability of sensible form on which our consciousness can dwell; in proportion as it is more subtle, less densely resistant and enduringly seizable by the sense, it appears to us less material. This attitude of our ordinary consciousness towards Matter is a symbol of the essential object for which Matter has been created. Substance passes into the material status in order that it may present to the consciousness which has to deal with it durable, firmly seizable images on which the mind can rest and base its operations and which the Life can handle with at least a relative surety of permanence in the form upon which it works. Therefore in the ancient Vedic formula Earth, type of the more solid states of substance, was accepted as the symbolic name of the material principle. Therefore, too, touch or contact is for us the essential basis of Sense; all other physical senses, taste, smell, hearing, sight are based upon a series of more and more subtle and indirect contacts between the percipient and the perceived. Equally, in the Sankhya classification of the five elemental states of Substance from ether to earth, we see that their characteristic is a constant progression from the more subtle to the less subtle so that at the summit we have the subtle vibrations of the ethereal and at the base the grosser density of the earthly or solid elemental condition. Matter therefore is the last stage known to us in the progress of pure substance towards a basis of cosmic relation in which the first word shall be not spirit but form, and form in its utmost possible development of concentration, resistance, durably gross image, mutual impenetrability, - the culminating point of distinction, separation and division. This is the intention and character of the material universe; it is the formula of accomplished divisibility.\n\n2:And if there is, as there must be in the nature of things, an ascending series in the scale of substance from Matter to Spirit, it must be marked by a progressive diminution of these capacities most characteristic of the physical principle and a progressive increase of the opposite characteristics which will lead us to the formula of pure spiritual self-extension. This is to say that they must be marked by less and less bondage to the form, more and more subtlety and flexibility of substance and force, more and more interfusion, interpenetration, power of assimilation, power of interchange, power of variation, transmutation, unification. Drawing away from durability of form, we draw towards eternity of essence; drawing away from our poise in the persistent separation and resistance of physical Matter, we draw near to the highest divine poise in the infinity, unity and indivisibility of Spirit. Between gross substance and pure spirit substance this must be the fundamental antinomy. In Matter Chit or Conscious-Force masses itself more and more to resist and stand out against other masses of the same Conscious-Force; in substance of Spirit pure consciousness images itself freely in its sense of itself with an essential indivisibility and a constant unifying interchange as the basic formula even of the most diversifying play of its own Force. Between these two poles there is the possibility of an infinite gradation.\n\n3:These considerations become of great importance when we consider the possible relation between the divine life and the divine mind of the perfected human soul and the very gross and seemingly undivine body or formula of physical being in which we actually dwell. That formula is the result of a certain fixed relation between sense and substance from which the material universe has started. But as this relation is not the only possible relation, so that formula is not the only possible formula. Life and mind may manifest themselves in another relation to substance and work out different physical laws, other and larger habits, even a different substance of body with a freer action of the sense, a freer action of the life, a freer action of the mind. Death, division, mutual resistance and exclusion between embodied masses of the same conscious life-force are the formula of our physical existence; the narrow limitation of the play of the senses, the determination within a small circle of the field, duration and power of the life-workings, the obscuration, lame movement, broken and bounded functioning of the mind are the yoke which that formula expressed in the animal body has imposed upon the higher principles. But these things are not the sole possible rhythm of cosmic Nature. There are superior states, there are higher worlds, and if the law of these can by any progress of man and by any liberation of our substance from its present imperfections be imposed on this sensible form and instrument of our being, then there may be even here a physical working of divine mind and sense, a physical working of divine life in the human frame and even the evolution upon earth of something that we may call a divinely human body. The body of man also may some day come by its transfiguration; the Earth-Mother too may reveal in us her godhead.\n\n4:Even within the formula of the physical cosmos there is an ascending series in the scale of Matter which leads us from the more to the less dense, from the less to the more subtle. Where we reach the highest term of that series, the most supra-ethereal subtlety of material substance or formulation of Force, what lies beyond? Not a Nihil, not a void; for there is no such thing as absolute void or real nullity and what we call by that name is simply something beyond the grasp of our sense, our mind or our most subtle consciousness. Nor is it true that there is nothing beyond, or that some ethereal substance of Matter is the eternal beginning; for we know that Matter and material Force are only a last result of a pure Substance and pure Force in which consciousness is luminously self-aware and self-possessing and not as in Matter lost to itself in an inconscient sleep and an inert motion. What then is there between this material substance and that pure substance? For we do not leap from the one to the other, we do not pass at once from the inconscient to absolute consciousness. There must be and there are grades between inconscient substance and utterly self-conscious self-extension, as between the principle of Matter and the principle of Spirit.\n\n5:All who have at all sounded those abysses are agreed and bear witness to this fact that there are a series of subtler and subtler formulations of substance which escape from and go beyond the formula of the material universe. Without going deeply into matters which are too occult and difficult for our present inquiry, we may say, adhering to the system on which we have based ourselves, that these gradations of substance, in one important aspect of their formulation in series, can be seen to correspond to the ascending series of Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind and that other higher divine triplicity of Sachchidananda. In other words, we find that substance in its ascension bases itself upon each of these principles and makes itself successively a characteristic vehicle for the dominating cosmic self-expression of each in their ascending series.\n\n6:Here in the material world everything is founded upon the formula of material substance. Sense, Life, Thought found themselves upon what the ancients called the Earth-Power, start from it, obey its laws, accommodate their workings to this fundamental principle, limit themselves by its possibilities and, if they would develop others, have even in that development to take account of the original formula, its purpose and its demand upon the divine evolution. The sense works through physical instruments, the life through a physical nerve-system and vital organs, the mind has to build its operations upon a corporeal basis and use a material instrumentation, even its pure mental workings have to take the data so derived as a field and as the stuff upon which it works. There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so limited: for the physical sense-organs are not the creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not the creators of life's action and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Life-force; the brain is not the creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material universe which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and law of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and determining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated by the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.\n\n7:In the next grade of substance the initial, dominating, determining fact is no longer substantial form and force, but life and conscious desire. Therefore the world beyond this material plane must be a world based upon a conscious cosmic vital Energy, a force of vital seeking and a force of Desire and their self-expression and not upon an inconscient or subconscient will taking the form of a material force and energy. All the forms, bodies, forces, life-movements, sense-movements, thought-movements, developments, culminations, self-fulfilments of that world must be dominated and determined by this initial fact of Conscious-Life to which Matter and Mind must subject themselves, must start from that, base themselves upon that, be limited or enlarged by its laws, powers, capacities, limitations; and if Mind there seeks to develop yet higher possibilities, still it must then too take account of the original vital formula of desire-force, its purpose and its demand upon the divine manifestation.\n\n8:So too with the higher gradations. The next in the series must be governed by the dominating and determining factor of Mind. Substance there must be subtle and flexible enough to assume the shapes directly imposed upon it by Mind, to obey its operations, to subordinate itself to its demand for self-expression and self-fulfilment. The relations of sense and substance too must have a corresponding subtlety and flexibility and must be determined, not by the relations of physical organ with physical object, but of Mind with the subtler substance upon which it works. The life of such a world would be the servant of Mind in a sense of which our weak mental operations and our limited, coarse and rebellious vital faculties can have no adequate conception. There Mind dominates as the original formula, its purpose prevails, its demand overrides all others in the law of the divine manifestation. At a yet higher reach Supermind - or, intermediately, principles touched by it - or, still higher, a pure Bliss, a pure Conscious Power or pure Being replace Mind as the dominant principle, and we enter into those ranges of cosmic existence which to the old Vedic seers were the worlds of illuminated divine existence and the foundation of what they termed Immortality and which later Indian religions imaged in figures like the Brahmaloka or Goloka, some supreme self-expression of the Being as Spirit in which the soul liberated into its highest perfection possesses the infinity and beatitude of the eternal Godhead.\n\n9:The principle which underlies this continually ascending experience and vision uplifted beyond the material formulation of things is that all cosmic existence is a complex harmony and does not finish with the limited range of consciousness in which the ordinary human mind and life are content to be imprisoned. Being, consciousness, force, substance descend and ascend a many-runged ladder on each step of which being has a vaster self-extension, consciousness a wider sense of its own range and largeness and joy, force a greater intensity and a more rapid and blissful capacity, substance gives a more subtle, plastic, buoyant and flexible rendering of its primal reality. For the more subtle is also the more powerful, - one might say, the more truly concrete; it is less bound than the gross, it has a greater permanence in its being along with a greater potentiality, plasticity and range in its becoming. Each plateau of the hill of being gives to our widening experience a higher plane of our consciousness and a richer world for our existence.\n\n\n11:Nor can this evolution end with the first meagre formulation of life, mind, supermind, spirit conceded to these higher powers by the reluctant power of Matter. For as they evolve, as they awake, as they become more active and avid of their own potentialities, the pressure on them of the superior planes, a pressure involved in the existence and close connection and interdependence of the worlds, must also increase in insistence, power and effectiveness. Not only must these principles manifest from below in a qualified and restricted emergence, but also from above they must descend in their characteristic power and full possible efflorescence into the material being; the material creature must open to a wider and wider play of their activities in Matter, and all that is needed is a fit receptacle, medium, instrument. That is provided for in the body, life and consciousness of man.\n\n12:Certainly, if that body, life and consciousness were limited to the possibilities of the gross body which are all that our physical senses and physical mentality accept, there would be a very narrow term for this evolution, and the human being could not hope to accomplish anything essentially greater than his present achievement. But this body, as ancient occult science discovered, is not the whole even of our physical being; this gross density is not all of our substance. The oldest Vedantic knowledge tells us of five degrees of our being, the material, the vital, the mental, the ideal, the spiritual or beatific and to each of these grades of our soul there corresponds a grade of our substance, a sheath as it was called in the ancient figurative language. A later psychology found that these five sheaths of our substance were the material of three bodies, gross physical, subtle and causal, in all of which the soul actually and simultaneously dwells, although here and now we are superficially conscious only of the material vehicle. But it is possible to become conscious in our other bodies as well and it is in fact the opening up of the veil between them and consequently between our physical, psychical and ideal personalities which is the cause of those \"psychic\" and \"occult\" phenomena that are now beginning to be increasingly though yet too little and too clumsily examined, even while they are far too much exploited. The old Hathayogins and Tantriks of India had long ago reduced this matter of the higher human life and body to a science. They had discovered six nervous centres of life in the dense body corresponding to six centres of life and mind faculty in the subtle, and they had found out subtle physical exercises by which these centres, now closed, could be opened up, the higher psychical life proper to our subtle existence entered into by man, and even the physical and vital obstructions to the experience of the ideal and spiritual being could be destroyed. It is significant that one prominent result claimed by the Hathayogins for their practices and verified in many respects was a control of the physical life-force which liberated them from some of the ordinary habits or so-called laws thought by physical science to be inseparable from life in the body.\n\n13:Behind all these terms of ancient psycho-physical science lies the one great fact and law of our being that whatever be its temporary poise of form, consciousness, power in this material evolution, there must be behind it and there is a greater, a truer existence of which this is only the external result and physically sensible aspect. Our substance does not end with the physical body; that is only the earthly pedestal, the terrestrial base, the material starting-point. As there are behind our waking mentality vaster ranges of consciousness subconscient and superconscient to it of which we become sometimes abnormally aware, so there are behind our gross physical being other and subtler grades of substance with a finer law and a greater power which support the denser body and which can by our entering into the ranges of consciousness belonging to them be made to impose that law and power on our dense matter and substitute their purer, higher, intenser conditions of being for the grossness and limitation of our present physical life and impulses and habits. If that be so, then the evolution of a nobler physical existence not limited by the ordinary conditions of animal birth and life and death, of difficult alimentation and facility of disorder and disease and subjection to poor and unsatisfied vital cravings ceases to have the appearance of a dream and chimera and becomes a possibility founded upon a rational and philosophic truth which is in accordance with all the rest that we have hitherto known, experienced or been able to think out about the overt and secret truth of our existence.\n\n14:So it should rationally be; for the uninterrupted series of the principles of our being and their close mutual connection is too evident for it to be possible that one of them should be condemned and cut off while the others are capable of a divine liberation. The ascent of man from the physical to the supramental must open out the possibility of a corresponding ascent in the grades of substance to that ideal or causal body which is proper to our supramental being, and the conquest of the lower principles by supermind and its liberation of them into a divine life and a divine mentality must also render possible a conquest of our physical limitations by the power and principle of supramental substance. And this means the evolution not only of an untrammelled consciousness, a mind and sense not shut up in the walls of the physical ego or limited to the poor basis of knowledge given by the physical organs of sense, but a lifepower liberated more and more from its mortal limitations, a physical life fit for a divine inhabitant and, - in the sense not of attachment or of restriction to our present corporeal frame but an exceeding of the law of the physical body, - the conquest of death, an earthly immortality. For from the divine Bliss, the original Delight of existence, the Lord of Immortality comes pouring the wine of that Bliss, the mystic Soma, into these jars of mentalised living matter; eternal and beautiful, he enters into these sheaths of substance for the integral transformation of the being and nature.\n\ncontact me @ integralyogin@gmail.com or via the comments below\nor join the integral discord server (chatrooms)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n1.26 - The Ascending Series of Substance\n\n\n--- QUOTES [2 / 2 - 0 / 0] (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)\n\nKEYS (10k)\n\n   2 Sri Aurobindo\n\n\n1:Matter is the last word of the descent, so it is also the first word of the ascent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine 1.26 - The Ascending Series of Substance,\n2:There is no such thing as absolute void or real nullity and what we call by that name is simply something beyond the grasp of our sense, our mind or our most subtle consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine 1.26 - The Ascending Series of Substance,\n\n*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***\n\n\n\n1.26_-_The_Ascending_Series_of_Substance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga\n  object:1.26 - The Ascending Series of Substance\n\nchange font \"color\":\nchange \"background-color\":\nchange \"font-family\": 51427 site hits", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9266250133514404}
+{"content": "Franciacorta sparkling wines\n\nAll sparkling wines are champagne, right? Wrong! There is the methode champenoise or methode traditionelle, but there are also other methods. Crucial is the 2nd fermentation in the bottle that adds the bubbles. Some additional sugars and yeast are added to the wine after its regular fermentation (hence the second fermentation). Different is how long this 2nd step lasts. The longer it takes, the smoother the taste.\n\nChampagne has to ripen at least 9 months “sur lie” but almost all good champagnes give it longer. 12-18 months is common. The longer, the more time the oxidation process involving an alcohol molecule has to oxidize all kinds of other molecules naturally present in wine. I like to think this is what removes the “sharp taste” of young wine and produces a smoother texture, smaller bubbles, new flavors.\n\nFranciacorta region in Northern Italy\n\nFranciacorta is a region between Bergamo and Brescia in Northern Italy and it is home to Italian “Champagne”. Ricci Curbastro ripens his wines at least 25 months in the bottle and this makes the sparkling wine very smooth. Also relatively cheap when compared to “younger” champagnes!\n\nAnother difference with French Champagne is that Franciacorta sparkling wines use 2 white grapes and one blue grape (Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Noir) where the French traditionally use 2 blue grapes: Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir. Blue grapes have more tannins and this makes for “heavier”, more robust flavors. Since this is often more appealing to men than to women, I tend to call them “manly wines”.\n\nConclusion: Franciacorta is a great alternative to Champagne. It’s smoother without the need to extra sugar (Brut is fine) and it is a crowd pleaser because it is smoother. Women will love it, I’m sure of it. And if they are happy, men usually are too…", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8524986505508423}
+{"content": "Do COVID-19 vent protocols need a second look?\n\n\nI’ll describe what Gattinoni was saying, which is that really what we’re seeing in ARDS are two different phenotypes: one in which the lungs display what you call high compliance, low elastics; and one in which they have low elasticity and high compliance.\n\nTo say it simply for people who are not pulmonologists, if you think of the lungs as a balloon, typically when people have ARDS or pneumonia, the balloon gets thicker. So not only do you lack oxygen, but the pressure and the work to blow up the balloon becomes greater. So one’s respiratory muscles become tired as they struggle to breathe. And patients need pressure.\n\nWhat Gattinoni is saying is that there are essentially two different phenotypes, one in which the balloon is thicker, which is a low-compliance disease. But in the beginning they display high compliance. Imagine if the balloon is not actually thicker but thinner, so they’d suffer from a lack of oxygen. But it is not that they suffer from too much work to blow up the balloon.\n\nAs far as how we’re going to switch, we’re going to take our approach differently from the traditional ARDSnet protocol in that we are going to do an oxygen-first strategy: We’re going to leave the oxygen levels as high as possible and we’re going to try to use the lowest pressures possible to try to keep the oxygen levels high. That’s the approach we’re going to do, so long as the patients continue to display the physiology of a low elastance, high-compliance disease.\n\nVIDEO: Medscape\n\nGATTINONI LETTER: Am J Resp + Crit Care Med\n\nGATTINONI EDITORIAL: Intensive Care Medicine\n\nmap of europe\n\nICU mortality in COVID-19 vs other viruses\n\nMortality in COVID-19 vs other viruses (UK). Mortality in ICU patients with COVID-19 (n=690) as compared to pneumonia caused by other viruses (2017-2019, n=4434). ‘Resp’ = non-invasive support, including oxygen 50%+ or mask BiPAP. ‘Vent+’ = endotracheal ventilation or ECMO.\n\n\n\nCOVID-19 mortality ICU in UK\n\nFluid overload, “de-resuscitation”, and outcomes in critical illness\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSOURCE: Anaesthesiol Intensive Ther\n\nmap of europe", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5859270095825195}
+{"content": "How Long Does It Take Poop Bacteria To Die?\n\nWhat happens if you eat poop?\n\nWhat happens to a person when they eat poop.\n\n\n\nCan you get sick from smelling old urine?\n\n\nAre poop germs everywhere?\n\nAn infectious disease expert says bacteria is everywhere all the time but we shouldn’t worry about it as long as we regularly wash our hands. We and everything around us are pretty much covered in fecal bacteria, but it’s nothing we should get worked up about, according to an infectious disease expert.\n\nIs it bad to touch poop?\n\n“People spread whatever they have on their hands – like feces, which can be transmitted very easily.” … coli] where it does make us sick, it’s thousands and thousands of bacteria from feces that cause illness,” he added. “Trace amounts of bacteria are not going to make you sick.”\n\nDoes dried poop have bacteria?\n\n\nCan you get sick from breathing in human feces?\n\n\nIs Poop full of germs?\n\nIt also contains bacteria and a relatively small amount of metabolic waste products such as bacterially altered bilirubin, and the dead epithelial cells from the lining of the gut. It is discharged through the anus during a process called defecation.\n\nIs it possible to throw up poop?\n\n\nHow do you get rid of human poop smell?\n\nPlace a small bowl or vase of baking soda or white vinegar somewhere in the room, suggests Lily Cameron, a cleaning expert at Fantastic Services. “They’ll absorb most of the smell in the air,” she says.\n\nIs human feces considered hazardous waste?\n\nHuman and animal feces/urine are bio-hazardous waste, and sanitizing a home or business that has been exposed to these materials requires expert help. … If not treated professionally, human and animal feces/urine—and other body fluids like blood and vomit can cause diseases and spread viruses.\n\nHow long do poop germs live?\n\n\nHow long does it take for bacteria to die?\n\nBut if we assume that the global bacteria population is stable, then it follows that one bacterium must die for each new one that is produced. Bacteria divide somewhere between once every 12 minutes and once every 24 hours. So the average lifespan of a bacterium is around 12 hours or so.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.901710033416748}
+{"content": "Switchback Energy Will Electrify the Market With Its ChargePoint Merger\n\nSwitchback Energy Acquisition Corp. (NYSE:SBE) announced on Sept. 24 an electrifying merger with ChargePoint, the electric vehicle (EV) charging company. Since that time SBE stock has been on a tear.\n\na chargepoint charging station\nSource: Michael Vi / Shutterstock.com\n\nFor example, at the time of the announcement the stock was at $12.46 per share, and today it’s at $16.88, up 35.5%. But I suspect it has much further to go, as I wrote in my last article on ChargePoint on Oct. 6.\n\nIn fact, since then SBE stock is up 21.4%. I believe that by the time the merger closes the stock will be even higher.\n\nRecent Catalysts\n\nOn Oct. 7, 2020, Hayman Capital disclosed a 9.083% stake in SBE stock through a 13-G SEC filing. Hayman Capital is a hedge fund run by renowned Dallas-based investor Kyle Bass.\n\nHe is well-known for his shorting subprime mortgages in 2008. In addition, he seems to gravitate to the contrarian style of investing, often going against the trend. For example, at one point he had a huge short trade on the Chinese yuan, according to Bloomberg.\n\nThe Bloomberg article also goes at great lengths to point out some of Kyle Bass’s failures as an investor. Therefore, one might assume that just having Kyle Bass as a significant investor in the stock may or may not be a boon.\n\nHowever, let’s look at the specifics more closely. The 13-G filing indicates that Hayman Capital actually owns 2.853 million shares.\n\nHowever, if you look on page 33 of ChargePoint’s slide presentation you will see something different. That page shows the total number of shares after the merger closes is 304.9 million. Therefore, Hayman Capital will have just less than 1% of the total post-merger shares (i.e., 2.853 million divided by 304.9 million = 93.6 basis points).\n\nSo maybe his stake in the company is not that big a deal after all.\n\nExpected Growth at ChargePoint\n\nChargePoint expects “hockey stick” growth rates in revenue, according to its own forecasts in the slide presentation. For example, on page 28, the company projects its revenue will climb from $135 million in 2020 to $2.069 billion by the end of 2026.\n\nTherefore, over that six-year period revenue is forecast to spike 15.3 times. That works out to a compounded 57.6% annual rate of growth. That is an incredible spike.\n\nThis has very important implications for the SBE stock value (i.e., ChargePoint’s pro forma market cap after merging with Switchback Energy).\n\nValuing SBE Stock\n\nThere simply is no way that the market quite fully realizes this yet. For example, SBE stock has a pro forma market capitalization of $4.9 billion. That is seen by multiplying its pro forma 304.9 million shares by today’s price of $16.11.\n\nHowever, that means that in six years, assuming SBE stock stays level, the market cap would be less than 1 times sales. There is no way a company experiencing that kind of growth will have a $5.1 billion market value.\n\nSo how do we adjust the value and see what SBE stock is worth today?\n\nOne way to calculate its value is to use the present value of the 2026 $2.069 billion revenue. Using the present value formula, it works out to 33.5% of the future value using a 20% compound discount rate. Alternatively, the present value is 43.2% of the future using a 15% discount rate.\n\nThese discount rates represent the opportunity cost for investors. They can make 15% to 20% on their money if it is not tied up in SBE stock (ChargePoint, post-merger).\n\nTherefore, the present value of ChargePoint’s 2026 revenue is between $693 million (33.5% times $2.069 billion) and $894 million (42.3% times $2.069 billion). Let’s call it $800 million.\n\nThat implies that SBE stock, at its $4.9 billion market cap is trading for just 6x revenue. But is this a fair multiple?\n\nComparing SBE Stock With Its Peers\n\nIt turns out that ChargePoint did the peer analysis for us. On page 37 of the slide presentation, it shows that the median EV-revenue multiple of its peers is 6.1x.\n\nIn other words, today the stock is fairly valued. However, there are two points of view about this. First, the market does not just stay at fair value. Often it overshoots the value market.\n\nAnd second, we can forecast the value in one year, and estimate what will happen. For example, using a little math, the present value in one year at 15% is $1.029 billion. That implies that in one year the stock will be at an EV-revenue ratio of just 4.76x.\n\nTherefore, its upside in one year will be 28%. This can be seen by dividing the median multiple of 6.1 times (the median peer multiple) by 4.76 (the present multiple) i.e., 28% higher.\n\nI suspect therefore that SBE stock will continue to rise as the company’s huge spike in revenue plays out over the next several years. This is despite the fact that, at least now, the stock is at fair value.\n\n\n\nArticle printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2020/11/sbe-stock-electrify-market-chargepoint-merger/.\n\n©2021 InvestorPlace Media, LLC", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9155255556106567}
+{"content": "Torts and Tort Reform - Dixon Gahnz\n\nAttorney Dixon Gahnz explains what torts are in lawsuits. He discusses with Sly how the tort reform that many politicians are promoting limits a plaintiff's ability to seek justice or get justice in a court of law. Tort reform limits access to justice, which is really an attack on your constitutional rights - the 7th Amendment. Attorney Gahnz dispels the myth that Wisconsin is a litigious society. Whereas business litigation and contract disputes are increasing in number, lawsuits filed by individuals has either remained level or decreased over the past years.\n\naudio/x-m4a Dixon Gahnz Torts and Tort Reform.m4a — 19516 KB", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9850272536277771}
+{"content": "Engineers use a knowledge of mathematics and physics to design structures that are strong enough to withstand environmental hazards such as wind pressure and salt water erosion. Much of a marine engineer's work can be performed in the office, but there are times when sea trials are part of the job. As marine technology advances, engineers with computer skills and electronics expertise have the best chances of landing steady employment with research and development institutions. Key skills and qualifications of a Marine Chief Engineer: You must be educated to degree level and hold any other qualifications associated with Maritime engineering. They may use computer-aided drafting programs to design systems and conduct simulated tests of their efficiency. Marine Design Engineer. The Marine Chief Engineer delivers general daily operation of the engine room to their primary assistant. Use our Job Description Tool to sort through over … Wikibuy Review: A Free Tool That Saves You Time and Money, 15 Creative Ways to Save Money That Actually Work. What you are describing more accurately reflects the work of a naval architect. - Steering or control systems Learn about a little known plugin that tells you if you're getting the best price on Amazon. Visit PayScale to research marine engineer salaries by city, experience, skill, employer and more. Amazon Doesn't Want You to Know About This Plugin. Job description and duties for Marine Engineer. What is the workplace of a Marine Engineer like. This includes creating blueprints, designing engines and propulsion systems, testing prototypes, and supervising the construction of full size ships. A Marine Chief Engineer must be organised to efficiently maintain the engine room and must also be able to work under pressure and … Within the Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), the combat engineer supports ground forces by removing obstacles, building causeways, constructing bunkers, and other civil engineering roles. He or she might create blueprints, design engines and propulsion systems, test prototypes, and supervise the construction of full size ships. A marine engineer is someone who designs, builds, tests and repairs ships, boats, underwater craft, offshore platforms, and drilling equipment. Is Amazon actually giving you the best price? When working on smaller recreational vessels, such as sailboats, speedboats, and fishing boats, marine engineers will design new models, improve different types of on-board systems, experiment with different types of fuels and fuel systems, navigation systems, steering systems, propulsion devices, outboard and inboard motors, and other important equipment. Marine engineers are responsible for designing on-board systems such as: Marine Engineers job description, what do Marine Engineers do, typical day for Marine Engineers, what is it like to work as a Marine Engineer, how many hours do Marine Engineers work, day to day work of a Marine Engineer. The life of a Marine engineer is amazing(with a bit of pause, I am a Marine engineer myself). Would you make a good marine engineer? - Propulsion systems (gas turbine, diesel engine, or nuclear reactor) Take our free career test to find out if marine engineer is one of your top career matches. Marine engineers are also known as marine design engineers or marine mechanical engineers and are responsible for the internal systems of a ship, such as the propulsion, electrical, refrigeration, and steering systems. Marine engineers' work supports key activities like naval defense, environmental research, international trade, and resource extraction. For instance, you might focus your efforts on the maintenance of engines and propulsion systems when ships are in dry dock. My job involves very little design work. They frequently work in teams with other engineers and military personnel to create very complex, technologically advanced crafts in state-of-the-art naval facilities. They work closely with naval architects who create the basic design of vessels. Marine engineers design the vessels that we use to navigate and explore the world's lakes and oceans. To become a marine engineer, a person must typically obtain at least a master's degree, though some individuals are able to find employment with bachelor's degrees in engineering. I am a chief on an ocean going tug. 48 % above national average Updated in 2019. A marine engineer might experiment with different types of fuels and fuel intake systems, outboard and inboard motors, navigation systems, propulsion devices, steering systems, and other pertinent equipment. A marine engineer engages in the research, development, and construction of new marine vessels and their component parts. They tend to be investigative individuals, which means they’re intellectual, introspective, and inquisitive. They are curious, methodical, rational, analytical, and logical. Most states and countries require new engineers to become licensed before practicing their trade independently. The engineer is very involved with the construction process, and has specialized knowledge of large-scale power supply systems and propulsion devices. $92.4k Median. Wages typically start from $65,440 and go up to $147,710. The average salary for a marine engineer in the United States is around $92,400 per year. Marine engineers who specialize in offshore drilling often spend time on the oil rig to oversee maintenance or repair efforts involving the rig's mechanical systems. It is a shame because my son does love math and is obsessed with ships in general. An offshore structural engineer designs or finds ways to enhance or modify marine based structures. He or she often oversees the construction of prototypes and helps to test and tweak finished boats. Avg SalaryShow avg average hourly wage. There is generally a steady demand for qualified marine engineers in most specialties. Such marine engineers usually receive extensive training in military schools to learn about defense systems and the integration of nuclear power.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9987970590591431}
+{"content": "Question: What Size Shoe Is A Womens 9?\n\nWhat’s the difference between 9.5 and 10 shoe size?\n\n\nHow do I know what shoe size my baby is?\n\nFrom your baby’s big toe, measure to the tip of the shoe. The longest toe should be between the width of your pinkie and the width of your thumb from the tip of the shoe.\n\nAt what age should babies wear shoes?\n\nLook for the signs that tell you your baby is ready to walk (this may happen somewhere from 7 to 18 months of age). As soon as you register that your baby is moving unaided, you may make the transition from pre-walking shoes to walking shoes.\n\nHow fast do baby feet grow?\n\nThe younger the foot, the faster it grows. On average, a child will grow up to 9 sizes in their first three years. Here’s a breakdown: From birth to 12 months, they will grow an average of 5 sizes, (from a 0 to a 5). Then from 12 months to 24 months, the average child will only grow two shoe sizes.\n\nWhat shoe size is 8.5 inches?\n\n\nIs size 7 shoe small for a woman?\n\nEuropean Shoe Size Conversion WomenFoot Length (Inches)US Women’sEU Women’s9 1 ⁄ 66.5379 1 ⁄ 3737.59 1 ⁄ 27.5389 2 ⁄ 383920 more rows\n\nWhat is 9 inches in women’s shoe size?\n\nWomen’s Shoe Size ChartUSE.U.Inches7.5389.375838.59.58.5399.75939.59.87513 more rows\n\nWhat size shoe is a size 9?\n\n\nWhat size shoe is 9 months?\n\nShoe SizesApproximate Age AgeEUUSA0-3 month1613-6 month1726-9 month1839-12 month1941 more row\n\nWhat women’s shoe size is 9 1 2 inches?\n\nWomen’s Shoes Length and Width ChartsLength (inches)Length (centimeters)US Size9 1/2″24.1 cm89 11/16″24.6 cm8.59 7/8″25.1 cm910″25.4 cm9.511 more rows\n\nIs it OK to wear a half size bigger shoe?\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5539606213569641}
+{"content": "Faster Hair Growth Tips\n\nThere are a number of factors that can influence how fast your hair can grow and some of these include your diet, your state of health, any medication you’re taking, hormonal influences, environmental influences and even your stress levels. Hair growth tends to slow down the older you get so age is also a consideration and of course your genetic blueprint plays a role too. Normal hair growth is therefore very difficult to define as it will vary considerably from person to person but on average, the hair on our head grows at a rate of around one centimetre a month.\n\nAll this said, there are some things you can do to maximise your hair growth potential and encourage it to grow faster but first it helps if you first have an understanding of the hair growth cycle and how the hair actually grows.\n\nThe hair growth cycle\n\nOn average, the human head contains around 100,000 hairs, 90% of which are actively growing at any one time. This growth phase is known as ‘Anagen’ and is one of three stages in the hair growth cycle. It lasts anything from a couple of years to about six or even ten years in total before the hair enters the second stage, ‘Catagen’. This is where over the next few weeks the hair follicle is degraded and the hair stops growing. Finally, the hair enters into the resting phase or ‘Telogen’ which lasts for several months and during this part of the cycle it is perfectly normal to shed a certain amount of hair, which can be as much as 100 hairs a day.\n\nIf we want to give our hair the best chance to grow faster and healthier then we need to take full advantage of the growth phase of the cycle and make sure that we are doing everything we can to minimise hair follicle damage and maximise hair growth potential.\n\n\nHealthy hair growth relies on a number of nutrients to feed the hair follicle so in the first instance, faster hair growth starts from the inside and with your diet. Any nutritional deficiencies in your diet will show up as dull, lifeless looking hair, poor hair growth, thinning of the hair and even hair loss so making sure you have a balanced diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables is essential. Fruit and vegetables contain important antioxidants which can help protect the hair and promote faster hair growth.\n\nHair is composed of a protein known as Keratin so not surprisingly, a diet lacking in protein can hinder hair health and growth. Many people are still unaware of the importance of getting enough Omega 3 fatty acids in their diet, a lack of which will show up in the health of your hair. Omega 3 fatty acids can be found in oily fish or fish oil supplements and have powerful anti-inflammatory properties and so can alleviate any inflammation in the scalp and as they help the blood flow more efficiently they also help to nourish the scalp.\n\n\nTry to massage the scalp on a daily basis. Massage helps to stimulate the circulation of blood to the hair follicle and removes dead skin and helps to unclog pores all of which allow the hair to grow more freely. A good time to do massage your scalp is when washing your hair.\n\nWhat to avoid\n\n• Avoid any pressure on the scalp from tight pony tails, clips and clasps, elastic bands or anything that restricts your hair, your hair should be left as free as possible as much as possible. Don’t brush your hair too harshly, this can damage your hair as well as irritate your scalp.\n\n• Hair colouring, blow drying, straightening, using heated rollers and perming your hair can damage the hair follicle and hinder growth as well as make the hair dry and brittle and more prone to falling out so refrain from subjecting your hair to any of these.\n\n• Excessive washing of the hair, particularly with shampoos containing harsh chemicals can remove the natural oils in the scalp, so it is important to use a good quality shampoo and conditioner and avoid washing the hair every day if you can.\n\n\nThe best way to encourage faster hair growth is to adopt a two-fold approach. First, make sure everything is right on the inside by eating a healthy and balanced diet and the second is to try to eliminate most or all the factors that can damage your hair or scalp and slow down the growth rate. Together this will give your hair the best opportunity to grow to its full potential, not only faster but healthier too.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.906345784664154}
+{"content": "Question: Is Dating Harder For Guys?\n\nDo guys love harder?\n\nThis is backed up by Marissa Harrison, a psychologist from Pennsylvania State University who thinks that women are much more cautious when it comes to love, while men tend to fall in love harder and faster.\n\nStudies show that a man’s requirements to fall in love are significantly less stringent than those of a woman..\n\nDo guys get attached after kissing?\n\nMost guys do not get emotionally attached simply from kissing; however, it is one of the signs of an emotionally connected relationship.\n\nIs online dating depressing?\n\nAs some research has found, dating apps can chip away at our self-image or maybe even feed depression. … While users may argue that some have helped them find better matches or dates, the risk of developing a low self-esteem and symptoms of depression remain the same across the board.\n\nWho hurts more after a breakup?\n\n\nAre dating apps harder for guys?\n\nNew data from the Pew Research Center reveals men feel less satisfied with the amount of attention they receive on dating apps. The dating app experience is a different game for men than it is for women.\n\nCan a man fall in love after a kiss?\n\n\nWhat guys feel when guys hug a girl?\n\n\nWhy do guys push against you when kissing?\n\n\nDo dating apps work for guys?\n\nThe apps definitely work for plenty of men (attractive or not). Bumble and Tinder generally work great for me.\n\nDo men regret divorce?\n\n\nWhy is online dating so hard for guys?\n\nOnline dating is hard for most guys because of incorrect platform choice and false expectations. Other common issues are too general profiles, and having a short-term approach to online dating.\n\nAre breakups harder for guys?\n\nBut a new study from researchers at Binghamton University and University College London reveals that breakups actually hit men harder than women. … Whereas women usually have strong support systems to get them through difficult times, it’s rarer that men will express vulnerability with their friends.\n\nHow a man falls in love?\n\n\nIs tinder harder for guys?\n\nThere is a reason why Tinder seems to have a higher difficulty setting for men, and it’s not just because women tend to be pickier. … But while there are certainly things you can do to improve your standing with Tinder’s algorithm and increase your match rate, you’ll never have it as easy as the other side does.\n\nCan guys forget their ex?\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5007325410842896}
+{"content": "The Polio Murders\n\nSpearhead Analysis – 21.12.12\n\nttp-gunmen-kill-six-polio-workersA series of attacks on anti-polio vaccinators with several killed and injured has led to a halt in the UN and WHO backed drive to eradicate polio from Pakistan. Pakistan is one of the very few countries in the world where polio still exists as a threat to children. Till these attacks the resistance to the vaccinations was limited to remote backward areas of the country mostly in the north and west where ignorance led to suspicions about motives. In the rest of the country polio had been almost eradicated. The new violence puts thousands of children at risk besides badly eroding the already tarnished image of the country in the world.\n\nThe pattern of attacks is eerily similar. Motor cycle riding armed men carrying out carefully targeted killings of the mostly female vaccinators and their drivers in selected areas so far confined to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Karachi areas, though at least one threatened attack has been reported in Lahore. This attack pattern is similar to the sectarian attacks that have been taking place in Baluchistan and Karachi areas. The victims are soft targets – the foot soldiers of the well funded and organized campaign to eliminate polio. Those carrying out the attacks are obviously doing so as part of an orchestrated and planned strategy with a definite objective. These are not random killings.\n\nThe motive could be to bring the foreign funded campaign to a halt just because it is foreign funded. This does not make sense because there are other foreign funded projects that are not threatened so far. There could be objections to the vaccination on religious grounds by people who have their own interpretation of religion but no such views have surfaced. Like the sectarian attacks these killings could be to destabilize the country, destroy its image as a country that is fully governed and project the helplessness of the government against those with radical views and their own agendas. If true this would make these killings part of the overall process of destabilizing Pakistan and link these to the other violence in the country including kidnappings for ransom. The immediate impact has been to bring the campaign to a halt and this goes against the country on many counts but especially because Pakistan starts looking like a country that does not have the capacity to sustain funded projects. This has far reaching implications therefore an answer has to be found to make sure that the campaign restarts and continues. This means confronting and defeating the threat – something that has not been done so far.\n\nPakistan is in the unenviable position of being a country in which the cracks and fissures that are kept latent through effective governance have widened to near uncontrollable proportions.  Besides tearing the fabric of society apart these have become exploitable vulnerabilities blurring the line between internal and external threats. Internal security, of which human security is an inseparable part, must be accorded the highest priority in our risk assessment and response options.\n\n(Spearhead Analyses are collaborative efforts and not attributable to a single individual)", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8033353686332703}
+{"content": "Ceremony :Novel Summary: Introductory Matter\n\nSummary of Introductory MatterThe book is dedicated to Silkos grandmothers and to her two sons.A poem tells about the Creator, Thought-Woman, who with her two sisters created the universe, this world and the four worlds below. She is a spider spinning her web, and as she names things they appear.Another poem, “Ceremony” here is spoken by a “he” to an audience in the first person. The speaker is explaining that stories are not entertainment; they are life and protection against the enemy. The evil of the enemy is great but not as great as the native stories. The enemies try to destroy the stories, but the speaker keeps them in his belly where they are growing.Another speaker identified as “She” says that the only cure is a good ceremony.A single word on the next page is “Sunrise.”\nCommentary on Introductory MatterThe introductory material signals a shift to another culture and way of seeing the world. In this world there is wisdom and continuity from one generation to another but no personal, egotistic point of view.Silko dedicates the book to her grandmothers who told her native stories, and to her sons, the next generation to whom the stories must always be passed. Native Americans are very aware of passing knowledge from one generation to the next for the welfare of those who come after them.The introductory poems give the whole Laguna culture as one continuing cycle. The Creator is female, and she creates a never-ending web of life. As she names things, they appear in the world. The speaker of the poem says Thought-Woman is even now thinking a story, and the author (“I”) will tell the story she is thinking. This implies an author/ storyteller who is a seer, who can see what the creative powers are doing. It also makes creation an ongoing present and unfolding moment, not something done and finished in the past. This story then is a true and alive story with the author not making it up but bringing it out to the world.The “he” in the next poem is another storyteller or maybe a tribal shaman who tells the audience of listeners that the traditional native story he tells them is more powerful than the evil the whites bring to wipe them out. The whites know the stories are powerful because they try to make the Indians forget the stories that tell them who they are. The stories are their protection as a people. He keeps the stories in his belly where they continue to grow. This refers to the oral tradition in which wisdom is kept in the tribe by a storyteller who relates it verbally to those who should hear it. It is not in a book that can be destroyed, but in the people themselves. By saying the stories are in the belly, he says that it is a living tradition that keeps growing. It is not dying or stagnant. The stories are in their life blood that feeds them.The “She” might be the Creator, Thought-Woman, or it might be Old Grandma who first recommends a ceremony for Tayo. Tribal women are powerful and this one speaks the wisdom of tradition. Ceremony is the cure for someone like Tayo, the main character, who comes home damaged from his war experience.The single word, Sunrise, not only implies hope of a new day, but is an important part of Tayos ceremony of healing that the book represents.Text: Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony, Penguin, 1977.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8470711708068848}
+{"content": "Notes Psychology\n\nChapter 5: The Psychoanalyst Kierkegaard (The Denial of Death)\n\nImage result for adam and eve\"\n\nReligion and psychoanalysis are related. Kierkegaard can be considered a psychologist, even though he was a theologian and a philosopher.\n\nThe foundation of Kierkegaard’s philosophy is the Fall in the story of Adam and Eve.\n\nThis myth contains the basic insight of psychology, that man is a union of opposites – self-consciousness and the physical body. The fall into consciousness from a carefree life came with a grave penalty: anxiety.\n\nKierkegaard observed that one cannot find dread in the beast, since the beast does not have a spirit (or a “self” in psychoanalytic language).\n\nIf man were a beast or an angel, he would not experience dread, but it is his ambiguity that dooms him. Since he cannot reconcile his paradoxical nature. He cannot forget about his fate, and at the same time, he cannot take full command of it.\n\nBut the real cause of dread is not the ambiguity itself, but the judgment on man, that if Adam eats of the fruit of the tree of knowledge God tells him “Thou shalt surely die.” It is the knowledge of one��s own death that is the final terror of self-consciousness.\n\nKierkegaard describes the man who limits himself from possibility, a closed personality, and says that this type is the inauthentic man. He is the one who avoids developing his uniqueness, he follows uncritically the modes of living that he was taught as a child. They are inauthentic because they do not belong to themselves, they do not see reality for what it is, they are completely immersed in social games. This is the corporate man in the West, the bureaucrat in the East, and the man of tradition in the tribe, they shy away from the possibility of thinking for themselves. This is the immediate man.\n\nThe philistine (the immediate man) to Kierkegaard was the man who is lulled by simple pleasures – a city dweller in his time. In today’s world, they content themselves by buying cars, going to shopping centers, or taking a two-week summer vacation.\n\nWhy would man accept to live a trivial life? Because there is danger in the full horizon of experience. Philistinism celebrates triumph over possibility and freedom. The real enemy is freedom because it threatens to pull you into a void, while giving it up too much would make you a prisoner of necessity. The safest thing is whatever is socially possible. Kierkegaard understood that too much possibility can put you in a madhouse, and he understood that psychosis is just the extreme version of neurosis.\n\nThe truth about man is that he has two natures. If he ignores the symbolic self and the boundedness of his finite body, then he will live a lie, fail to realize his own nature, and be “the most pitiful of all things.”\n\nThe ideal man for Kierkegaard was the one that acted from a unified center, that acknowledged one’s dualism, that understood one’s own limitations, and combined it with possibility. The person that goes too extreme in exploring without limitations becomes schizophrenic, while the person is constantly chained by what is possible, and refuses to explore, becomes depressed. And the depressed person, because they cannot act or move or draw breath, appear dumb.  \n\nThere are two types of men, who are opposites. The immediate man lives for trivial things and distractions, and they are enough to keep his mind away from existential dread, and self-contradiction. He may lead a normal life, have a job, and a family, and he will hope for awards and victories, with the secret that only he knows, that he has no “self.”\n\nThen, Kierkegaard describes the introvert, and he is someone who withdraws from the world, reflects on his true nature, and what unique talents he might have that he could offer the world, he is not like the immediate man, he cannot content himself with trivialities. Unlike immediate man, the connection to family, or his country’s flag, are not enough for the introvert, since he feels within himself something deeper that has not yet been realized or discovered, but he does not always find it. For this reason, the introvert is described as a “real man” only in appearance, but not necessarily in reality.\n\nKierkegaard describes the introvert type who can lead a normal life, he can become a university professor and start a family, and have some quiet moments, and content himself with a feeling of slight superiority to others, but he will not go further, since he is afraid of where that may take him. But this is not a sustainable position, since self-awareness even in small doses can get you in trouble. This person, if they are strong, may not be able to bear it, they may drown themselves into the world desperately in the rush of experience.\n\nAnd then there is the final type of man.\n\nThe one who asserts himself out of defiance of his own weakness, who tries to be a god unto himself, the master of his fate, a self-created man. He will not be merely the pawn of others, of society; he will not be a passive sufferer and secret dreamer, nursing his own inner flame in oblivion. He will plunge into life. into the distractions of great undertakings, he will become a restless spirit… which wants to forget…. Or he will seek forgetfulness in sensuality, perhaps in debauchery.\n\nKierkegaard did not claim to know what a healthy life was, but he knew that it had possibility and freedom, and he knew what it was not. It was not being a “normal cultural man” for this was a sign of sickness. There is such a thing as “fictitious health.”\n\nThis idea was also recognized by Nietzsche. Mental health is not typical, it is ideal-typical. It is not in being oneself, but in overcoming oneself. The ideal man is something to be achieved. The healthy man, and the true man is the one who has transcended himself.\n\nHow does he transcend himself?\n\nBy recognizing the truth of his situation, by breaking away the lie of his character, and running free from his conditioned prison. Like Freud, the problem for Kierkegaard was the Oedipal Complex, the defenses that protect self-esteem against terror. They are the very defenses that allow him to move forward in life with self-confidence – these are his life-long trap.\n\nKierkegaard knew that it was difficult to break out of one’s routines, to explore life with its possibilities and accidents and choices. In the prison of one’s character one can pretend and feel that the world is manageable, that there is a reason for one’s life. The truth of man’s condition is that he is an animal, and this is where the anxiety comes from.\n\nBut this flood of anxiety is not the end, it is the school that provides man with the ultimate maturity. It is a better teacher than reality, because the latter can be twisted and distorted by culture, but the feeling of anxiety can never be a lie.\n\nThe curriculum in this school is the unlearning of repression, and this includes the fear of death. The key is to face one’s own finitude.\n\nKierkegaard’s whole argument now becomes crystal clear, as the keystone of faith crowns the structure. We can understand why anxiety “is the possibility of freedom,” because anxiety demolishes “all finite aims,” and so the “man who is educated by possibility is educated in accordance with his infinity.” Possibility leads nowhere if it does not lead to faith.\n\nTo summarize his argument, the task of man should be to break free from the chains of the social fictions he has been indoctrinated with, and to go on a journey of self-discovery. In this journey, he will encounter the feeling of dread, because of his dualistic and paradoxical situation, because of his finitude, and it is at this point that he must resist using character defenses that have worked for him in the social world. Once he has accepted this anxiety, he can allow himself to be open to possibility, and the destination for man is faith. The truly open person who has shed his character armor is beyond the help of “science” or any social standard of health.\n\nHe is alone, and on the brink of oblivion. Only faith can give him the support he needs, and the courage to renounce dread without any dread. This is not an easy way out, and not a solution for everyone, but since man is an ambiguous creature, he will always experience anxiety, he cannot get rid of it.\n\nWhat he can do is to use this anxiety as an eternal fountain that produces new dimensions of thought and trust.\n\nFaith poses a new life-task, the adventure in openness to a multi-dimensional reality.\n\n", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.5007582306861877}
+{"content": "\n\nDurham University\n\nDepartment of Geography\n\nDepartmental Research Projects\n\nPublication details\n\nWilliams, J.G., Rosser, N.J., Hardy, R.J. & Brain, M.J. The Importance of Monitoring Interval for Rockfall Magnitude-Frequency Estimation. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface. 2020;124:2841-2853.\n\nAuthor(s) from Durham\n\n\nThe frequency distribution of rockfall sizes ('magnitude-frequency') is important for erosion and hazard modeling. This typically follows a power law, with few larger rockfalls compared to more numerous small events.\nAdvances in LiDAR hardware and algorithms have improved our ability to detect small rockfalls, which in sum contribute significantly to overall erosion. However, improvements in spatial resolution have outstripped improvements in the temporal resolution of monitoring. If the interval between surveys exceeds the return interval of rockfalls, neighbouring rockfalls within a single interval are incorrectly recorded as one.\nWe examined the timescales of rockfall occurrence to identify suitable monitoring intervals to discretize rockfalls. Monitoring interval has a considerable impact on the frequency distribution of measured rockfall volumes. An order of magnitude increase in rockfall numbers and a threefold decrease in mean volume is observed over hourly intervals, compared to 30 d. Below ~12 h, these changes increase nonlinearly with more frequent monitoring. Similarly, average rockfall size measured over timescales < 4 h falls is comparable to the scale of individual discontinuities, indicating that fragmented detachments may drive much of the increase in small events. Such analysis is required to constrain the timescales of rockfall evolution and to attribute specific drivers.\n\nDepartment of Geography", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.8983049392700195}
+{"content": "“All That IT Gibberish” – Part 2: Confidentiality and Data Security\n\nMarch 2, 2020\n\nBy Caitlin B. Houlton Kuntz and Nadja Baer\n\nPart 1 of this article reviewed overlooked information technology (IT) and intellectual property (IP) provisions in bank vendor agreements. Part 2 focuses on the “big cheese” of any bank contract – confidentiality and data security.\n\nA bank’s data is precious, not only because of its value to both the bank and the bank’s customers, but because it is heavily regulated by federal and state law. Not all vendor agreements are drafted with financial institutions in mind. While most vendors will at least nod at data privacy and security in their standard agreements, many vendors simply are not aware of the particular regulatory obligations that directly affect banks. Merely including standard confidentiality obligations and general compliance-with-applicable-laws provisions is not enough. Before entrusting a vendor with confidential data, it is critical that banks review and negotiate contractual rights and obligations with respect to data.\n\n1.  Understand the Exposure\n\nWhen reviewing and negotiating data security provisions, take stock of what the relationship entails and what categories of data are in play. Will the vendor have access to or control over customer information? What about any sensitive financial data, confidential supervisory information, or personally identifiable information? Will the vendor have contact with customers? Does the vendor operate overseas or outsource any of its obligations to third parties? Answers to these questions will help establish the depth and breadth of appropriate data security provisions.\n\n2.  Definitions Matter\n\nTerms like “Confidential Information,” “Customer Data,” and “Personal Information” must be properly defined. The use and disclosure of certain types of customer information is restricted by law (such as “nonpublic personal information” under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)), and all parties should clearly understand how certain data will be treated. Note, however, that simply using these regulatory definitions may not be sufficient, as they are generally geared toward consumer customer information. Banks should ensure their commercial customers’ data is covered by the same protections.\n\nWhile protection of customer data is indeed crucial, don’t overlook the bank’s own confidential information. Business plans, financial data, information security plans, and other proprietary information should all be kept confidential, and the bank should have remedies for any security compromise or impermissible disclosure.\n\n3.  Data Ownership and Non-Disclosure\n\nIP provisions typically address which party owns which aspects of the services, including both the data that is provided to the vendor and the data that is produced using the software. Banks should retain ownership of their input and output data (particularly customer data) and prohibit the vendor from using, selling, or otherwise transferring such data for purposes other than as specifically permitted by the contract. Disclosure should generally be limited to when necessary to provide the services covered by the contract (to subcontractors and service providers, for example), and such disclosure should be covered by suitable confidentiality agreements. Further, banks should look carefully at any language that allows the vendor to de-identify and aggregate the bank’s data.\n\nVendors typically include provisions protecting and restricting the disclosure of their own data. Since regulators will expect unrestricted access to information regarding the bank’s third parties, double-check such language to ensure the bank may share proprietary vendor information with its regulators.\n\n4.  Information Security Programs\n\nBanks must maintain rigorous information security programs to protect their systems and data, and vendors who have access to sensitive data should do the same. Vendors who handle customer information or have access to the bank’s critical systems should give assurances that they will maintain reasonable information security programs consistent with regulatory requirements, including GLBA and the Interagency Guidelines Establishing Information Security Standards. Vendors who store or process payment card data should be compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). Beyond implementing such measures, vendors should regularly test and maintain them. Look for provisions requiring vendors to conduct regular security audits, provide copies of the resulting reports, and address any problems discovered.\n\n5.  Security Breaches – The Nightmare Scenario\n\nFor no industry is a security incident a bigger headache than for financial institutions. A laundry list of state and federal notification requirements, response protocols, and mitigation expectations can bring a bank’s operations to a grinding halt in the wake of a security breach. Because banks remain primarily liable to regulators and customers for security breaches within systems provided by vendors, ensuring contracts address them properly is key.\n\nFirst, define what constitutes a “security breach.” Ideally, it will include any situation in which a vendor knows, reasonably suspects, or has been threatened with the unauthorized disclosure of the bank’s confidential information. Next, make sure the vendor is required to notify the bank promptly in the event of a security breach and take steps necessary to mitigate any damage. Third, the vendor should agree to cooperate with the bank to meet any notice requirements to customers and regulators. Finally, the contract should clearly assign liability for costs.\n\nApportioning liability is important, as security breaches can become very expensive very quickly. Negotiate what expenses the vendor will cover (such as notification costs, regulatory fines, and credit monitoring expenses) and pay attention to any monetary caps on damages. Appropriate contractual remedies and insurance obligations should be negotiated based on the magnitude of the potential risk rather than the annual cost of the contract itself.\n\nSince regulators can and will hold banks liable for issues caused by third parties, contracts should be carefully evaluated and negotiated to limit the bank’s exposure. Vendors who regularly work with banks are accustomed to these conversations, and refusal by a vendor to negotiate reasonable confidentiality and data security provisions is a significant red flag. Confidentiality and data security provisions can be tricky, but bankers should not overlook or be intimidated by complex technical jargon. As with the IT/IP provisions discussed in Part 1, putting the time and effort into reviewing and negotiating confidentiality and data security provisions before signing a contract can avoid stress and expense later.", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9179718494415283}
+{"content": "الاثنين، 11 أغسطس 2014\n\nShireen wearing Fashion Clothing\n\nShireen clothes in party\n\nShireen wearing something very strange and new fashion\n\nReared singer Sherine Abdel Wahab recently appeared dressed in elegant during her concert in the lounge covered.\n\nIt was strange to wear them for the audience, not used to it from the artist Shireen, where he was involved in this concert almost 15 thousand viewers, where it was held in the concert hall covered, then at that ceremony was honored several Star\n\nليست هناك تعليقات:\n\nإرسال تعليق", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.9863037467002869}
+{"content": "Wilm’s Tumor can be defined as a rare type of kidney cancer that usually characterizes children often below the age of 5. Also known as Nephroblastoma, this type of childhood cancer can affect one or both kidneys at the same time. The Wilm’s Tumor is named after Dr. Max Wilms, who first discovered it.\n\nThe kidneys are a pair of organs found at the back of the abdomen that usually clean the blood by removing excess fluids and waste products, which are then converted into urine. Due to the proliferation of cancer cells, the kidneys stop functioning properly leading to the accumulation of toxins and wastes within the body. Also Read: What You Need to Know About Childhood Cancers\n\n\nWilms’ tumors can be categorized into two types:\n\nFavorable Histology\n\nIt means that there is no anaplasia. This type of tumor accounts for up to 90 % of Wilm’s tumor and is mostly curable.\n\nUnfavorable Histology\n\nUnfavorable histology usually suggests that the tumors have a nucleus in the cells which is quite large and distorted and is referred to as anaplasia. The more the presence of anaplasia, the harder the tumor is it to cure.\nwilm's tumour\n\n\nAlthough the exact cause of Wilm’s Tumor is yet undiscovered, it usually happens when there is a mutation in the genetic material that causes the normal kidney cells to grow abnormally and continue to live without dying. This causes abnormal cancer cells to accumulate to form tumorous growths. Thought to come from very specialised cells in the embryo known as a metanephric blastema, these cells are required for the development of the foetal kidney while in the womb. Although in most cases, there is no known connection between parents and children that may lead to cancer, in rare case scenarios, it can be hereditary in nature and transfer from parents to children. Also Read: Kidney Cancer: Causes, Symptoms And Treatment\n\nRisk Factors\n\nThe causative factors of Wilm’s Tumor include:\n\nGender: Wilm’s tumor is common in females than in males.\n\nRace: People from an African-American race have a slightly higher risk of developing Wilms' tumor than the Asian-American counterpart.\n\nHeredity: Children with a family history of kidney cancer are more prone to getting this tumor.\n\nBirth Abnormalities: Children born with certain birth defects or abnormalities like Aniridia (i.e. partially formed iris),  Hemihypertrophy (i.e. one side or part of the body noticeably larger than the other parts), Cryptorchidism (i.e. undescended testicles in boys) and Hypospadias (i.e. when the urinary opening is on the underside of the penis) are at a higher risk of getting this type of cancer.\n\nRare Health Conditions: Wilms' tumor can occur as part of rare syndromes like Dennis-Drash syndrome (i.e. Wilms' tumor, kidney disease and male pseudo hermaphroditism; a condition where a boy is born with testicles but still show female characteristics), WGAR syndrome (i.e. Wilms' tumor, aniridia, genital and urinary system abnormalities, and intellectual disabilities) and Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome (i.e. Children born with abnormally large organs). Other syndromes that increase the chance of Wilm’s Tumor include Frasier syndrome, Simpson-Golabi-Behmel syndrome, Perlman syndrome, Bloom syndrome, Sotos syndrome and Li-Fraumeni syndrome.\n\n\nAlthough some children don't show up obvious signs of the tumor in the initial stage, common signs and symptoms include:\n\n  • Feeling of an abdominal mass\n  • Abdominal pain and swelling\n  • Constipation\n  • Loss of appetite \n  • Fever\n  • Blood in the urine\n  • Nausea or vomiting or both\n  • High blood pressure\n  • Shortness of breath\n\nDiagnosis And Treatment\n\nOn noticing any of the above-mentioned signs and symptoms, do consult a doctor right away to get it checked and start the treatment at the earliest. The doctor usually does a thorough physical checkup followed by acknowledging the child’s past medical history and that of the parents to crosscheck the hereditary factor and also perform some diagnostics including:\n\n  • Blood and Urine Tests\n  • Imaging tests including Ultrasound, CT-scan or MRI-scan\n\nStaging of Wilm’s Tumor\n\nThis is usually done to analyze the spread of the cancer:\n\nStage I: The cancer is found only in one kidney.\n\nStage II: In this stage, the cancer has spread to the tissues and structures beyond the affected kidney.\n\nStage III: The cancer has spread beyond the kidney area to the nearby lymph nodes or other structures within the abdomen.\n\nStage IV: The cancer in this stage has metastasized outside the kidney to distant structures, such as the lungs, liver, bones or brain.\n\nStage V: Cancer cells are found in both kidneys as bilateral tumors.\n\n\nDepending upon the staging of cancer, the doctors decide upon the treatment option which includes: \n\n  • Surgery\n  • Chemotherapy\n  • Radiation therapy", "pred_label": "__label__1", "pred_score_pos": 0.806580126285553}