« The Story of Batching to Streaming Analytics at Optimizely | Main | Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For November 11th, 2016 »

How Urban Airship Scaled to 2.5 Billion Notifications During the U.S. Election

This is a guest post by Urban Airship. Contributors: Adam Lowry, Sean Moran, Mike Herrick, Lisa Orr, Todd Johnson, Christine Ciandrini, Ashish Warty, Nick Adlard, Mele Sax-Barnett, Niall Kelly, Graham Forest, and Gavin McQuillan

Urban Airship is trusted by thousands of businesses looking to grow with mobile. Urban Airship is a seven year old SaaS company and has a freemium business model so you can try it for free. For more information, visit Urban Airship now averages more than one billion push notifications delivered daily. This post highlights Urban Airship notification usage for the 2016 U.S. election, exploring the architecture of the system--the Core Delivery Pipeline--that delivers billions of real-time notifications for news publishers.

2016 U.S. Election

In the 24 hours surrounding Election Day, Urban Airship delivered 2.5 billion notifications—its highest daily volume ever. This is equivalent to 8 notification per person in the United States or 1 notification for every active smartphone in the world. While Urban Airship powers more than 45,000 apps across every industry vertical, analysis of the election usage data shows that more than 400 media apps were responsible for 60% of this record volume, sending 1.5 billion notifications in a single day as election results were tracked and reported.

Notification volume was steady and peaked when the presidential election concluded.

HTTPS ingress traffic to the Urban Airship API peaked at nearly 75K per second during the election. Most of this traffic comes from the Urban Airship SDK communicating with the Urban Airship API.

Push notification volume has been rapidly increasing. Key recent drivers have been Brexit, the Olympics, and the U.S. election. October 2016 monthly notification volume has increased 150% year over year.

Core Delivery Pipeline Architecture Overview

The Core Delivery Pipeline (CDP) is the Urban Airship system responsible for materializing device addresses from audience selectors, and delivering notifications. Low latency is expected for all the notifications we send, whether they go to tens of millions of users simultaneously, target multiple complex sub-segments, contain personalized content, or anything in between. Here’s an overview of our architecture, and some of the things we’ve learned along the way.

How We Started

What initially started in 2009 as a webapp and some workers has transformed into a service-oriented architecture. As pieces of the old system began to run into scale issues, we extracted them into one or more new services that were designed to satisfy the same feature set, but at a larger scale with better performance. Many of our original APIs and workers were written in Python, which we extracted into high-concurrency Java services. Where we originally stored device data in a set of Postgres shards, our scale quickly outpaced our capacity to add new shards, so we moved to a multiple database architecture using HBase and Cassandra.

The CDP is a collection of services that handle segmentation and push notification delivery. These services provide the same type of data in response to requests, but each service has that data indexed in a very different way for performance reasons. For example, we have a system that is responsible for handling broadcast messages, delivering the same notification payload to every device registered to the associated application. This service and its underlying datastore are designed very differently than the services we have that is responsible for delivering notifications based on location or user profile attributes.

We consider any long-lived process a service. These long-lived processes follow a general template regarding metrics, configuration, and logging for ease of deployment and operation. Typically our services fall into one of two groups: RPC services, or consumer services. RPC services provide commands to synchronously interact with the service using an in-house library very similar to GRPC, while consumer services process messages off of Kafka streams and perform service-specific operations on those messages.

To meet our performance and scale requirements we rely heavily on HBase and Cassandra for our data storage needs. While HBase and Cassandra are both columnar NoSQL stores, they have very different trade-offs that influence which store we use and for what purpose.

HBase is very good at high-throughput scans where the expected cardinality of the response is very high, while Cassandra is good at lower cardinality lookups where the response is expected to contain just a handful of results. Both allow for high volumes of write throughput, which is a requirement for us, because all metadata updates from users’ phones are applied in real time.

Their failure characteristics differ as well. HBase favors consistency and partition tolerance in the event of failure, while Cassandra favors availability and partition tolerance. Each of the CDP services has a very specific use case and as such has a highly specialized schema designed to facilitate the required access pattern as well as limiting the storage footprint. As a general rule, each database is only accessed by a single service, which is responsible for providing database access to other services via a less specialized interface.

Enforcing this 1:1 relationship between service and its backing database has a number of benefits.

  • By treating the backing datastore of a service as an implementation detail, and not a shared resource, we gain flexibility.

  • We can adjust the data model for a service while only changing that service’s code.

  • Usage tracking is more straightforward, which makes capacity planning easier.

  • Troubleshooting is easier. Sometimes an issue lies with the service code, other times it is a backing database issue. Having the service and database be a logical unit vastly simplifies the troubleshooting process. We don’t have to wonder “Who else could be accessing this database to make it behave in such a way?” Instead, we can rely on our application-level metrics from the service itself and only worry about one set of access patterns.

  • Because there is only one service interacting with a database, we can perform nearly all of our maintenance activities without taking downtime. Heavy maintenance tasks become a service-level concern: data repair, schema migration and even switching to a completely different database can be done without disrupting service.

It’s true that there can be some performance tradeoffs when breaking out applications into smaller services. However, we’ve found that the flexibility we gain in meeting our high scalability and high availability requirements more than worth it.

Data Modeling

Most of our services deal with the same data, just in different formats. Everything has to be consistent. To keep all of these services’ data up to date we rely heavily on Kafka. Kafka is extremely fast and is also durable. Speed comes with certain tradeoffs. Kafka messages are only guaranteed to be sent at least once, and they aren’t guaranteed to arrive in order.

How do we deal with this? We’ve modeled all mutation paths to be commutative: operations can be applied in any order and end up with the same result. They’re also idempotent. This has a nice side-effect that we can replay Kafka streams for one-off data repair jobs, backfills, or even migrations.

To do this we take advantage of the concept of a “cell version,” which exists in both HBase and Cassandra. Typically this is a timestamp, but it can be any number you’d like (there are some exceptions; for example, MAX_LONG can cause some strange behavior depending on your version of HBase or Cassandra and how your schema deals with deletes).

For us, the general rule for these cells is that they can have multiple versions, and the way we order versions is by their provided timestamp. With this behavior in mind, we can decompose our incoming messages into a specific set of columns, and combine that layout with custom application logic for tombstoning, taking into account the timestamp. That allows blind writes to the underlying datastore while maintaining the integrity of our data.

Just blindly writing changes to both Cassandra and HBase isn’t without its issues. A great example is the case of repeated writes of the same data in the event of a replay. While the state of the data won’t change due to the effort we put in to make the records idempotent, the duplicate data will have to be compacted out. In the most extreme cases, these extra records can cause significant compaction latency and backup. Because of this detail, we monitor our compaction times and queue depths closely as getting behind on compaction in both Cassandra and HBase can cause serious problems.

By ensuring messages from the stream follow a strict set of rules, and designing the consuming service to expect out-of-order and repeated messages, we can keep a very large number of disparate services in sync with only a second or two of lag on updates.

Service Design

Most of our services are written in Java, but in a very opinionated and modern style. We have a set of general guidelines that we take into consideration when designing a Java service:

  • Do one thing, do it well - When designing a service, it should have a single responsibility. It is up to the implementer to decide what’s included in a responsibility, but she or he will need to be ready to justify in a code review situation.

  • No shared operational state - When designing a service, assume there will always be at least three instances of it running. A service needs to be able to handle the same exact request any other instance can without any external coordination. Those familiar with Kafka will note that Kafka consumers externally coordinate partition ownership for a topic:group pair. This guideline refers to service specific external coordination, not utilizing libraries or clients that may coordinate externally under the covers.

  • Bound your queues - We use queues all over our services, they’re a great way to batch up requests and fan things out to workers that will end up doing tasks that block externally. All queues should be bounded. Bounding queues does raise a number of questions, however:

    • What happens to producers when the queue is full? Should they block? Except? Drop?

    • How big should my queue be? To answer this question it helps to assume the queue is always full.

    • How do I shut down cleanly?

    • Each service will have a different answer for these questions depending on the exact use case.

  • Name custom thread pools and register an UncaughtExceptionHandler - If we end up creating our own thread pool, we use the constructor or helper method from Executors to allow us to provide a ThreadFactory. With that ThreadFactory we can properly name our threads, set their daemon state, and register an UncaughtExceptionHandler to handle the case where an exception makes it to the top of the stack. These steps make debugging our service much easier, and spare us some late-night frustration.

  • Prefer immutable data objects over mutable state - In a highly concurrent environment, mutable state can be dangerous. In general we use immutable data objects that can be passed between internal subsystems and queues. Having immutable objects be the main form of communication between subsystems makes designing for concurrent usage much more straightforward, and makes troubleshooting easier.

Where Do We Go From Here?

With Urban Airship’s ability to send notifications through mobile wallet passes, its new support for web notifications and Apple News notifications, and its open channels capability to send notifications to any platform, device or marketing channel, we anticipate notification volume will grow exponentially. To meet this demand, we are continuing to invest heavily in our Core Delivery Pipeline architecture, services, databases, and infrastructure. To learn more about our technology and where we are headed please see GitHub, developer resources, documentation, and our jobs page.

Reader Comments

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):


Sunday, September 27, 2009

The Rules of Conflict

Conflict isn’t automatically negative, although it certainly can be.

Conflict can also be an opportunity for greater understanding, a way to resolve problems, or in some trivial cases, something to be ignored or dismissed.

Conflict involves actual or perceived clashes of needs, wants, values, and interests, and ranges in intensity from polite conversation all the way to war. Conflicts can cause varying amounts of damage, and may be resolved well or poorly.

Project management is a field where conflict is inevitable and common. Stakeholders have needs, wants, values, and interests. Resources are limited. Your goal is to manage inevitable conflict in the most effective way possible.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) identifies various strategies for managing conflict: smoothing, withdrawal, compromise, forcing, and confrontation. Of these, according to PMI, confrontation (I think “negotiation” is a better word) is the strategy normally preferred by project managers.

I think that’s dangerously misleading. In fact, every single one of these strategies has a time and place for which it is the best solution. Two variables should influence your decision. First, how important is achieving your goal to you? If life and death are at stake, your goals are very important to you. If the question is where we’re going to have lunch today, your goals may matter a lot less.

The second question is a little more subtle: how important is the other person’s goal to you? If the conflict is with someone you care about, making them happy may be very important to you. Keeping customers, bosses, and co-workers happy is normally worth some minor concessions on your part. Other times, what the other person wants may not matter to you.

If you plot the PMI categories on a grid, you get the picture above. Let's look at the categories that fall inside the box.

  • Smoothing. Sometimes winning isn’t the issue. You’re having Thanksgiving dinner with the extended family, and someone brings up one of those appropriate dinner table conversation topics—like abortion. No matter how passionate your beliefs, this isn’t the time and isn’t the place, so you avoid the conflict by changing the subject.
  • Withdrawal. Sometimes, as noted, the other person’s needs are more important to you than your own, and you can withdraw or surrender. If you really hate Thai food that much, let’s go somewhere else, even though it’s my favorite cuisine. Conversely, if we’re going out to dinner with a large group and I’m the only one who likes Thai food, I know I’ll be outvoted, so I surrender to the majority graciously.
  • Compromise. Or maybe you don’t like Thai food and I don’t like sushi, so we compromise and decide to go to an Indian restaurant instead. If we both like Indian food well enough, even though we each might like our own choice better, we can have a nice dinner anyway. But if neither of us like Indian, we’re making two people unhappy instead of making only one of us happy, so compromise isn’t always a winning solution.
  • Forcing. I could insist that you join me for Thai food. Perhaps I have a food allergy or dietary restriction that makes it impossible for me to go along with your preference. It’s my way, or no group dinner tonight. Sometimes there's no choice.
  • Negotiation. Finally, we could talk about what we each like about our favorite cuisine and try to find a restaurant that will serve something we each would like to eat. If we’re successful, neither of us has to compromise. We both win.

None of these strategies is inherently right, none inherently wrong. Negotiation is the route to the most satisfying long-term answer, but it takes time and skill, and sometimes there’s not enough at stake to go through the exercise.

When conflict stays within the box, it’s manageable. When conflict breaks out, we call it war.

The opposite of war, you see, isn’t peace. Peace (preferably on your terms) is the goal of war. Pretending the conflict isn’t there doesn’t work. If the stakes are that high, the real opposite of war is negotiation.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

A New Political Lexicon

The “loony left,” right “wing nuts,” fanatics, extremists, terrorists — how we define these people normally grows from our own political beliefs and positions. Is it possible to define these categories objectively? Let’s start with the big, general categories:

Categories of Principled People

  • Principled people. While some principles vary depending on political belief or position, other principles are generally accepted across the spectrum. These generally accepted principles include character, integrity, commitment, and hard work. Other principles come from our beliefs and positions, and we call others “principled” when they share and practice those same values.
  • Indifferently principled people. This category, alas, is one most of us fall into at least some of the time. When we don’t live up to the principles we ourselves believe in and advocate, we usually know it.
  • Differently principled people. When people share those generally accepted values of character and integrity, but hold opposing views on political issues, they’re “differently principled.” They may (or may not) be wrong on the issues, but they are consistent and thoughtful on the topic.
  • Unprincipled people. Unprincipled people are centered around self rather than principle. They evaluate their choices and situations in terms of what maximizes personal (and usually short-term) benefit. They are not necessarily evil (but may commit evil acts), but they are almost by definition immoral.
  • Passionate people. What passionate people have in common is a belief their cause is so important it justifies breaking at least some social rules. Passionate people cover a wide spectrum that starts with argument and ends in violence, but that’s not to say that all passionate people are cut from the same cloth. There’s a big difference between someone who insists on trying to win you to their cause verbally and someone who thinks killing a lot of random civilians is a great way to make a point.
  • Kooks. “[T]he fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses,” wrote Carl Sagan. “They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” Believing something outside the mainstream doesn’t by itself make you a kook. To be a kook, you have to believe that the mainstream has to prove itself to you, rather than the other way around.

Passionate people. As noted, passionate people cover a wide spectrum. The best way to segment them is by the type and severity of the rules they feel entitled to break.

  • Argumentative/persuasive people simply bring up their topic even when other people disagree or don’t want to hear it.
  • Deliberately rude people believe showing bad manners to the opposition is a good strategy. Public shouting, interruptions, ad hominem attacks, and name-calling fall into this category.
  • Civil disobedient people are willing tobreak laws they consider immoral or unjust, typically in a non-violent way.
  • Extremists use violence or the threat of violence in support of their goals.

At different times or on different issues, we may occupy any of these categories ourselves, so it’s important to point out that even being an extremist isn’t always or necessarily wrong.

It is, however, wrong to confuse passionate people with unprincipled people. Unprincipled people are only out for themselves. Passionate people believe in what they’re doing. That dramatically influences their behavior, and if you confuse the two types, you’re likely to make huge tactical and strategic mistakes in dealing with your opposition.

Kooks. Extreme beliefs aren’t the same thing as extreme behavior. The extremes are determined by the norms – the opinions held by the majority of educated people on a given topic. If there is no strong and overwhelming consensus for a specific opinion, then the contrary opinions are also mainstream. When there is an almost universal consensus among educated people, contrary opinions are not mainstream. (The key is determining in each case who are the “educated” people. Shakespeare's dominance of English letters doesn't rest on whether ordinary joes like his writing, but on whether the consensus of English scholars do.)

But disagreeing with the majority doesn't automatically make you a kook. Believing it's the job of the educated majority to justify itself to you, rather than the other way around, does. “Burden of proof” is a very useful legal concept. Which side owns the burden of proof? In a criminal trial, the prosecution has the burden. Ties go to the defender. What is the burden of proof? Do you have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, or only by the preponderance of the evidence?

When it comes to extreme beliefs, the burden of proof lies with those who challenge conventional opinion, not those who support it. If you want to patent a perpetual motion machine, you can’t make the Patent Office prove your invention can’t work. It’s your job to prove that it can. Intelligent people who want their unconventional and extreme positions to change the world know they have to do it the hard way, by winning over educated opinion.

Kooks are people who believe the burden of proof falls on the mainstream, not on themselves. The world is full of people who walk around with detailed manuscripts “proving” that the Freemasons are secretly behind the Trilateral Commision and crop circles, and insist that opposing opinion is proof of a conspiracy.

It’s the insistence, not the claim itself, that is the gold standard of kookdom. Intelligent out-of-the-mainstream opinion understands and accepts the burden of proof, and works to establish it. Although social inertia makes change a slow process, in time the truth tends to win out.

* * *

This is a work in progress. I’d love to hear your comments. Do these categories seem objective? Is it clear how to categorize today’s controversies? Is it fair and reasonable? Is it useful? What have I missed?

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Brand New, Completely Original, and Just Like Everything Else

At the American International Toy Fair in New York City one year – the year the Cabbage Patch Kids were the hot new toy – my boss (a former Hasbro executive) and I were standing in a knockoff importer showroom looking at (no kidding) Broccoli Patch Kids.

I made a predictably sarcastic remark, but in return my boss grinned.

“You’re missing the point,” Jack said. “Intellectual property theft is what the toy business is all about. Yes, this is a stupid knock off, but there’s a brilliant Cabbage Patch knockoff at the show. See if you can find it.”

Armed with the challenge, I peered at every doll and piece of plush in the show. I found plenty of other knockoffs, but none I would call “brilliant.” I gave up eventually.

“You’ve got to understand what the retailer wants,” Jack said, “He wants a brand-new and completely original product that’s just like everything else.”

"Huh?" I said. It still didn't make much sense to me.

“It’s got to be brand-new and completely original, or the retailer can’t sell it,” he continued. “But if it’s not like everything else, he doesn’t know where to merchandise it.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, “so how exactly do you do that?”

“What’s the essential Cabbage Patch gimmick?” he asked.

“You adopt them,” I said.

“What else do you adopt?”

And with that, the lightbulb finally went off. “Pound Puppies!”

He nodded. “They’re just like Cabbage Patch, only completely different. That’s the essence of business creativity.”

Apparent paradoxes exist many places. Because they appear unresolvable, people naturally ignore them. But at least some of these paradoxes can be resolved, and the way to do that is by facing them.

What, for example, would a perfect test look like? Well, a perfect test provides an honest, complete evaluation – and never fails anything. An apparent paradox, but look again.

We don’t want to cheat on the quality of testing because we need to know that the product or service is of good quality. However, we don't really want things to fail testing, because it's costly to do the rework.

Can these apparently contradictory aims be resolved?

Asking this question can lead one to a powerful insight that’s at the core of the modern quality movement: moving incremental testing far further up in the chain so that errors are caught and corrected long before the final test is performed.

We are frustrated because our business environment forces us to do more and more with less and less. “Paradox!” screams our common sense, and morale plummets. But what if we faced the question head on? Try thinking “both-and” rather than “either-or.”

That’s SideWise thinking.

Monday, September 7, 2009

The Three Americas

Abdul Aziz Al Saud, first monarch of Saudi Arabia, wanted his nation’s borders based not on geography, but on the migration of tribes. The British High Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, lost his temper and started yelling, but Ibn Saud had a good point: a nation is not necessarily the same thing as a state. A nation exists in the hearts of the people who belong to it by some combination of heredity and choice. A state, on the other hand, exists in physical space. The two can be as one (a nation-state), but they don’t have to be.

In many parts of the world, nations overlap in the same geography: Israel and Palestine; Turkey, Kurdistan and Iraq; and Tibet, China and Taiwan. Nations can overlap states, be contained within states, or be distributed in communities worldwide like the Chinese and Jewish Diasporas. Such relations tend to be uneasy, and sometimes (Yugoslavia, Rwanda) turn tragic.

What makes a group of people into a “nation”? Culture, common geographic or ethnic origin, religion, history, numbers, and political clout all combine. Nations can self-declare, but others eventually have to recognize them as a distinct population. The Kurds and Tibetans are generally recognized as nations even if not as states. Some nations (Native American tribes) get some limited privileges of statehood. Other self-proclaimed nations (Nation of Islam, Aryan Nation) get little recognition except from their immediate circle.

“Nation” can exist on a metaphorical plane as well. We can be members of more than one nation (if not more than one state) at a time. We might recognize our national, ethnic, or racial origins, or embrace the community of our religion or political movement. Regional differences form nations. In his 1981 book The Nine Nations of North America, the Washington Post writer Joel Garreau identified nine culturally distinct nations sharing our North American continent.

I’d like to propose three nations of my own. Three distinct motives drove Europeans to conquer and settle the New World.

  1. Business. New Romans came to conquer and build. The frontier was dangerous, but the potential rewards were great. “The business of America is business,” New Romans tell us, and pragmatically measure success in terms of wealth. It’s not an accident that Washington classical architecture is Roman in style, or that we have a Senate and do not have a king. Above all, it's no accident we maintain the world's largest military.
  2. Faith. New Israelites, from the Puritans of New England to the Baptists of Dixie to the Mormons of Utah, came here to settle a new Promised Land, to build anew the institutions and society of God.
  3. Society. New Athenians came from the explosive development of liberalism in Europe, which sparked a revolt against aristocracy and the divine right of kinds. Embodied by the intellectual elite that clustered around the hotbeds of political thought in great American cities like Williamsburg, Philadelphia, and Boston, they sought to build a pure Athenian democracy.
Each of the three nations has equal roots that stretch back before the founding of the United States of America. We share, but none of us owns outright, the state, even if from time to time we all wish we could.

We are fortunate that no group is powerful enough to dominate alone. In practice, the country is governed by a shifting and inherently unstable alliance of two out of the three nations. Traditionally, New Romans, pragmatic in orientation, find it easiest to unify in a common cause with either of the other two nations, although occasionally New Athenians and New Israelites have found common cause. And there's not a simple Athenian=liberal, Israelite=conservative pattern either: libertarians are New Athenian conservatives; utopian religious communities are New Israelite liberals. New Romans occupy the whole spectrum as well.

Viewed through this lens, here’s our recent pattern: New Athenians and New Romans united to conquer the Great Depression and World War II. Their alliance could not withstand the philosophical discord and disintegrated over Vietnam and civil rights. Inertia sustained the cause for a while, but by the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan, the foundation had clearly crumbled beyond repair, and a new alliance of Israelite and Roman led the country into a new era, which now too appears to be at an end.

(Some will argue that the Reagan Israelite/Roman alliance is merely suffering a temporary setback, but that’s not the way to bet. The fracturing and realignment is natural, and even if it can be staved off for a while, it can’t be stopped.)

Regardless of your national identification, there’s a lot to like about the well-known 30-year political cycle. Ideas, like fields, need to lie fallow from time to time to maintain healthy crops. A strategy that worked on one set of problems turns into a one-size-fits-all solution, working on the well-known theory that when the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems start to look like nails.

The success and the stability of the system require the three nation tribes to live with one another. The relationship among the three Americas too often resembles something in between a food fight and the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

When we share geography with people whose values we dislike or distrust, we have to accept that they are here, that they are not going anywhere, and that they have a right to be part of the public discourse. Nations that have not been able to recognize and accept their overlapping distant cousins as neighbors inevitably turn to the only logical alternative: get rid of them. While the United States has robust cultural and legal institutions that make such an outcome unlikely, it’s never impossible.

When I was young, my father made a point of paying attention to news sources and ideas he found stupid, repugnant, or just plain wrong. He wanted to make sure he understood them. I know he paid attention; I’ve even known him to change his mind. That's SideWise Thinking.

People who disagree with you can be opponents or enemies. Opponents are people with whom you have opposing interests, but a good relationship (trust, mutual respect.) Opponents keep you on your toes, make you think harder, and often stimulate your best work. Good opponents make your ideas better and your life richer. They can

When respect and trust are absent, opponents turn into enemies, and with enemies, it’s personal and negative. "Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer" doesn't mean what most people think. Contact provides opportunity, either to find common ground, or to build a better relationship. While success isn't always possible, it's usually worthwhile to make a reasonable effort.


e hënë, 16 korrik 2007

Buildings uploaded on July 16, 2007

Here are the buildings for today.

Osaka, Japan

The Westin Osaka

Virtual Umeda Project 2007 Update

Gate Tower Buliding

Osaka Central Post Office

Sydney New South Wales, Austraila

Wuppertal / Germany

Wirker Str. 37

Bismarckturm auf der Hardtanlage

Elisenturm auf den Hardtanlagen

Toelleturm - Barmer Anlagen

Neuer Hatzfelder Wasserturm

Wasserturm Nächstebreck

Katowice, Poland

Katowice - Spodek

Spodek is a multipurpose arena complex in Katowice, Poland, opened in 1971 in Korfantego street. Aside from the main dome, the complex includes a gym, an ice rink, a hotel and three large car parks. It is the largest indoor venue of its kind in Poland. It hosts many important cultural and business events. Music concerts are especially common non-sport events. Spodek can hold 11,500 people, although this number is in practice limited to 10,000 or even 8,000, due to stage set-ups obscuring the view. Its name means "saucer" in Polish, because it resembles a tilted flying saucer. Spodek is a major contribution to the cultural significance of Katowice in Poland, especially for the younger generations. It has played host to many up-and-coming bands, such as a performance by Pantera for the Metalmania festival and Chumbawumba in 1997 as well as dozens of world famous bands including Boney M., Deep Purple, Depeche Mode, Elton John, Genesis, Eric Clapton, Gary Moore, Green Day, Iron Maiden, Jean-Michel Jarre, Jamiroquai, Jethro Tull, Metallica, Pearl Jam, Rammstein, Robbie Williams, Slipknot, Sting, The Prodigy, Tina Turner, U2.

London, England

Tower Bridge, London

Built in 1894, Tower Bridge is one of the most recognisable structures in London. Standing 65m above its platforms it is the tallest bridge going across the Thames. When first built, steam engines would pump to drive the 1000 ton bascules up to full height in less than a minute. Today they are powered electrically. In 1952 a red London bus jumped a 3ft gap between the bascules after a traffic light was stuck on go. A number of pilots have attempted to fly under Tower Bridge with at least one hitting the Thames and dying. The space between it is only 65m x 30m.

Paris, France

Musée du Louvre

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Banco de la Nacion, Plaza de Mayo

biblioteca nacional de buenos aires

restaurantes de puerto madero (6 docks)

San Jose, California

101 San Fernando Apartments

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Walt Whitman Bridge

The steel suspension bridge spanning the Delaware river was constructed between 1953-1957. It is designed by master builder Othmar Ammann and Herb Rothman. The main span is 609 meters long and 45 meters over the river surface. The deck is held up by two suspension cables that consist of 18,666 individual wires, each. The deck has three road lanes to each direction and a seventh one that can be converted to either direction depending on demand. The total steelwork weighs some 57,674 tons and 36,500 tons of it is suspended from the cables.

New York, New York

17, State Street

17 State Street is a 42-story building in the Financial District of Manhattan. Completed in 1988, the building rises to 542 ft (165 m). It was designed by Emery Roth and Sons, and it is most noted for its distinct curved facade. The bottom floors of the skyscraper are home to New York Unearthed, an urban archaeology museum with approximately two million artifacts from local excavation sites. The museum was originally included as a concession to the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission, who had been unable to perform an archaeological survey of the site before construction began.

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

The Cambridge Lofts

Grant MacEwan College - Residence and Parkade

Grant MacEwan College - Alberta College Campus

Nuk ka komente:


Tender Pack

What is a tender pack?

Tendering is the process by which bids are invited from interested contractors to carry out specific packages of construction work. It should adopt and observe the key values of fairness, clarity, simplicity and accountability, as well as reinforce the idea that the apportionment of risk to the party best placed to assess and manage it is fundamental to the success of a project.

Why have a tender pack?

A tender pack can be given out to different contractors to obtain a like for like quote for their construction fees.The principle of tendering is to ensure that true competition is achieved, as it is evaluated by applying certain criteria. These criteria may be expressed in terms of financial matters, comprising a simple assessment relating to tender sums, or more complex financial evaluation, including consideration of projected costs over the life cycle of the completed project.Providing contractors with just building regulation drawings you will not be able to obtain an accurate quotation as each contractor will specify different finishes therefore having you end up with very varied fees.

Extension Architecture can help specify for and with you the most suitable finishes which will be followed out at the construction phase so that you can be on top of the project and have no hidden charges sprung on you. It could also address other non-financial factors such as time and proposed methods or levels of capability; or sometimes a mixture of both – collectively referred to as a ‘quality/price balance’ or ‘matrix’.


Twenty Eighth Lecture - James Anaya

Twenty Eighth Lecture - April 17, 2008

Today I’d like to talk about indigenous peoples and the contribution they have made to the international human rights system. These contributions have come about within the context of a worldwide indigenous movement, in which indigenous peoples have engaged states and international institutions in discussions about their aspirations to survive as distinct communities in control their own destinies. Powerful forces have long ignored these aspirations and, worse, have actively suppressed the bonds of community and connection with place that define indigenous peoples. The history of misdealing and atrocities committed against the indigenous peoples of the American continents ever since Christopher Columbus found himself on a Caribbean island, miscalculated his location, and called his hosts “Indians,” is well known.

Much less widely known among many are the present day legacies of this sad history and the steps indigenous peoples have been taking to reverse that history.

For indigenous peoples of the Americas and elsewhere, historical acts of oppression are not just blemishes of the past, but rather translate into current inequities. Peoples indigenous to many parts of the world have been deprived of vast landholdings and access to life-sustaining resources, and they have suffered historical forces that have actively suppressed their political and cultural institutions. As a result, indigenous peoples have been crippled economically and socially, their cohesion as communities has been damaged or threatened, and the integrity of their cultures has been undermined. In both industrial and less-developed countries in which indigenous people live, the indigenous sectors are almost invariably at the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder, and they exist at the margins of power.

In North America the myth of the “vanishing savage” was created to embolden white settlement. But his myth has only partially been embraced by reality. Although vastly reduced in numbers, and in many case concentrated in pockets of relative geographic isolation, the indigenous peoples of the American continent are still here, as we seen manifested by the many representatives of indigenous peoples at the OAS today. In the face of tremendous adversity, indigenous peoples have long sought not just to survive physically, but to flourish as distinct communities on their ancestral territories. They have endeavored to roll back the inequities that linger from the experiences of the past. This “blood struggle,” as the author and scholar Charles Wilkinson calls it in the title of his most recent book, is one that draws its major source of strength from the remarkable resilience of indigenous peoples and from the cultural and social patterns that bind them into communities.

Drawing on this strength, indigenous peoples have employed a number of strategies, including those that enlist the law and the legal processes of the world beyond their communities as agents of change. However, the limitations of the domestic legal orders of states that have emerged from colonial patterns, have all too often become apparent. Faced with legal and political barriers in their own countries, indigenous peoples worldwide have extended their legal advocacy into the international arena. Over the last three decades especially, they have been appealing to the international community and looking to the international legal system to advance their claims.

But the international legal system has its own set of limitations, which indigenous peoples have also had to confront. First and foremost, it is a system of rules, institutions, and procedures in which states are the primary actors and beneficiaries. Further, international law doctrine historically was complicit in patterns of colonization, ultimately upholding the sovereignty asserted by colonizing states over indigenous peoples and the suppression of their societies. But things change.

Since the middle of the twentieth century, the structure and normative parameters of international law and relations have evolved significantly. Contributing to among the most radical changes in the character of the international is the development of an international human rights regime. Human rights were brought definitely within the fold of the international legal system in the aftermath of World War II and the adoption of the charters of the United Nations and the Organization of American States. The growth of the human rights regime takes international law and policy beyond its traditional focus on the rights and duties of states, and establishes an international concern and legal competency over matters once deemed within the exclusive domain of states. Furthermore, the international human rights regime has provided individuals and other non-state actors with access, albeit limited, to avenues of international decision-making.

Indigenous peoples have seized upon the institutional and normative regime of human rights that now figures prominently within international law and politics. Responding to indigenous peoples’ demands is a human rights imperative that is now widely recognized within the international system, including the inter-American system.

And with this recognition has come a sustained level of international institutional activity focused upon indigenous peoples’ concerns and a corresponding body of developing norms that build upon long-standing human rights precepts. Just last year, on September 13 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples, affirming a constellation of rights grounded in the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination and calling on states and the international community to make these rights reality. This week, here at the OAS, negotiations are ongoing on the proposed American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in another important example of the international activity responsive to indigenous peoples’ demands.

Full Speech


QuickBooks Equity Accounts – Understanding Them

What is Equity anyways? For you that may not understand it completely, equity is the difference between your assets and liabilities (A-L =E). Say you sold off all your assets and paid off all your liabilities, using the funds you received from the sale of your assets, equity would be the money you have left. This would also mean that your total assets equal the sum of liabilities and equity (A=...

Read More


Mugai ryu (??? Mugai-ryu ? ) is a Japanese koryu martial art school founded by Tsuji Gettan Sukemochi (? ???? ? ) in 23 June 1680.

The founder of Mugai ryu, Tsuji Gettan Sukemochi ??? ?? was born to Tsuji Yadayu descendant of Sasaki Takadzuna, in the second year of Keihan (in 1649, the beginning of the Edo period), in the Miya-mura-aza village area ??? of Masugi ??, in the Koka-gun district ?? ? of Omi ??; what is now Shiga Prefecture. When he was 13 he went to Kyoto to study Yamaguchi-ryu swordsmanship under Sensei Yamaguchi Bokushinsai, and at the age of 26 he received kaiden (full transmission) and opened a school in Koishikawa ??? in Edo; what is now Tokyo. In order to cultivate, train and improve his spirit, mind and body, he went to study Zen and Classical Chinese literature under Zen monk Sekitan Ryouzen ???? at Kyukoji temple ??? in Azabu Sakurada-cho ?????. At the age of 32 he reached enlightenment and received from his Zen teacher a formal poem taken from the Buddhist scriptures as an acknowledgment and proof of his accomplishment.

Tsuji Gettan Sukemochi used the word Mugai from this poem to represent his school of swordsmanship. It is recorded that among his pupils were Ogasawara Sado-no-kami* Nagashige, a very powerful feudal lord, Sakai Kangeyu* Tadataka, a feudal lord of a castle in Maebashi, Yama-no-uchi Toyomasa, a powerful feudal lord of the Tosa area, as well as 50 daishomyo, high level samurai having a status slightly lower than that of a feudal lord level with stipends above 10 000 koku, 150 jikisan-no-shi, the Shogun's direct vassals with stipends below 10 000 koku, and 932 baishin, the vassals of feudal lords. (* These names were given to these feudal lords by the emperor and are symbols of their very high status.) Tsuji Gettan Sukemochi was unmarried and it is assumed that he had no offspring as he took the eldest son of Head priest Sawatari Bungo-no-kami ?? ?????, of Okunitama ????? Shrine in what is now known as the Tokyo provincial government area, as his successor. Shinkan Sawatari (Bungo-no-kami)'s eldest son took the name **Tsuji Kimata Sukehide ??????? after Tsuji Gettan Sukemochi and thus became Nidai, Tsuji the II. Kimata opened the dojo in Kojimachi ?? (** Although the kanji for ?? is different from the original ? the pronunciation is the same and represents a succession.) Tsuji Gettan Sukemochi was known not just as a master of the sword, but as an enlightened philosopher and scholar, and his writings Mugai Shinden Kempo Ketsu ? ????? is recognized as a superb and unique book in Japan's martial arts literature for its depth, flowing style and elegant composition. Tsuji Gettan Sukemochi died on June 23 in the 12th year of Kyo-ho ?? (1725) at the age of 79. The tombs of Tsuji Gettan Sukemochi's successors are kept at the Buddhist priest's cemetery for Nyoraiji temple ???, which is in the town of Nishioi ???? in the Shinagawa ??? area. The school retains both iaijutsu and kenjutsu in its curriculum, and has a strong connection with Zen due to Gettan's belief that the "sword and Zen are the way of the same Truth". [1] The name "Mugai" comes from the following poem: Ippou jitsu mugai
Kenkon toku ittei
Suimo hou nomitsu
Douchaku soku kousei
"There is nothing other than the One True Way Heaven and Earth profit from this single Virtue The fluttering feather knows this secret To be settled during confusion is to be enlightened and pure"

Today Mugai-ryu has splintered into several lines and there is no one soke . [2] Nakagawa Shiryo Shinichi is generally considered the last soke. He did not appoint a successor, but awarded several menkyo kaiden, and his students continue to teach the school and several new lines have been established, each with their own soke. Mugai ryu nichiryukai iaido renmei india follows its teachings under the jyu Rokudai (16th) Soke Kazo Inoue Nichiryu 8th Dan Japan Kendo Renmei and teacher of Shoshihan Mehul Vora the pioneer of Mugai Ryu Iaido in India.

  Introduction | About Us | Affiliations | Aiki-Jujutsu | Jojutsu | Kenjutsu | Zazen | Instructor | Contact Us | Press | Links
  Copyright © 2008-2009 All Rights Reserved.


Charged With DUI In Denver

DUIMany people know that the “legal limit” for blood-alcohol content (BAC) in Colorado is 0.08%. What many people don’t understand is the science behind why this is, how it’s measured, and whether that number is appropriate. Many people also don’t realize that you can be charged with, and convicted of, DUI even if you have a lower BAC. The law was designed around the idea that the average person, if their blood contains 0.08% alcohol, will be impaired to the point where it is unsafe for them to drive. When you are pulled over for suspicion of DUI, and you test .08 or higher, you will probably be charged with DUI. This means that they can assume that you are drunk based on your BAC. However, even without this test, you may be charged with and convicted of DUI if other evidence suggests that you were drunk.

Have you been charged with DUI in Denver? Speak with an experienced Denver DUI attorney immediately to protect your rights.

There are some flaws in the investigation of DUI. In some cases, DUI investigations are begun without what is known as reasonable suspicion. This means that the officer has some actual reason, and not just a hunch, to suspect that you are drunk. While there are a number of ways to establish reasonable suspicion, sometimes officers conduct investigations without it, which is generally a violation of your rights. Additionally, there may be concerns with the accuracy and validity of your BAC test results. The fact is, if you have been charged with DUI, you need to speak with an attorney immediately. DUI is a big deal; don’t let it ruin your life.

Denver Criminal Defense AttorneyContact the dedicated Denver DUI attorneys at the Steven Louth Law Offices today to discuss your options if you have been charged with DUI or DWAI. Steven and Zachary Louth have helped countless Coloradans to get the best possible outcome to a terrible situation. They understand how DUI investigations are conducted, what problems to look for, and how to expose the flaws in your investigation. Whether you have made a terrible mistake, or have been accused of a crime that you did not commit, don’t put your future in jeopardy. Steven Louth, as a former prosecutor, understands how investigators and prosecutors assemble cases, and he can design the strongest possible defense for you. For more information and a FREE CASE EVALUATION, contact Steven Louth Law Offices today at (303)442-2297.

View Larger Map
2523 Broadway, Suite 201
Boulder, CO 80304

By appointment 303.442.2297
Contact Us
Get started today with a
Free Case Evaluation.

Your Name:*

Your Email:*

How Did You Find Us:

Preferred Method Of Contact:
Email Phone

  I have read and agree to the Terms.*

How many fingers are on one hand?

*Required Fields

Criminal Defense
Legal News Feed
Steven Louth Law Offices
Legal Videos
Connect With Us
On Social Networks


Thank you for deciding to take this journey with me! I appreciate your desire to optimize your health.

Fill out the form below and I will get to work on providing you with detailed and valuable feedback. It generally takes between 7-10 days for me to get back to you with your answers and protocol as a PDF file.

Please understand that I cannot accept any questions related to medical conditions.

I look forward to assisting you with your top 10 health related questions and I hope you enjoy the Integrative Health Protocol Series of books!

Tristan Summerfield, MA


Andy Middleton: Nomad’s Notebook

Saxophonist Middleton has assembled a truly stellar band for his third Intuition release. Guitarist and pianist Ralph Towner and bassist Dave Holland pretty much define the soundscapes in which Middleton’s compositions unfold-and why not? Their sense of interplay would be ample inspiration for any improviser-and Middleton shows signs of being more than “just any” improviser. Drummer Alan Jones rounds out the core group, which is augmented by the acute percussionist Jamie Haddad on three tracks, two of which also feature Noah Bless on trombone. Middleton finds compositional inspiration in his travels: Afghan caravans, Muslim prayer calls, the Canadian Rockies and Tolkien’s mythical Lothlorien are among the starting points for Middleton, who writes in a broadly euphonious harmonic language, with a natural tunefulness that engages the ear with exotic airs, but never strays too far from home.


Archbishop of Canterbury’s personal address to General Synod

The Church of England’s General Synod is meeting this week. As has been reported in the press, the Archbishop of Canterbury made a personal address. As is always the way, the reporting of the address doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual meaning or context. Whenever possible, we should listen to what people have actually said, rather than repeat things second or even third-hand. Anyway, here is what he actually said.


From Nuclear Fusion That Ended February to the Wobble That Begins March!!

infernox880_fusion-core-v2 Given all the information and understandings that came thru from February 25th thru the 27th, I was not all that surprised when I poked my antenna out into the field on the 28th and could not see anything.  I am equally grateful that that was the only antenna taken off-line by my team, because as I was searching around for the energy that would turn light into vision, I heard my precious lady's team say, no seeing today, this is a day of "fusion."  The energy spirit wrapped around the word "fusion" was intense.  I went to handy-dandy google to understand what they really mean by "fusion."  Thank you wikipedia, the explanation made total sense:

In our case, it would be the collision of the spiritual body with the physical body forming a new type of atomic nucleus.... US!!  March 1st couldn't arrive fast enough for my nosy spiritual self!!

Just waking up out of sleep yesterday morning different.  It was as if I had two camera's sitting on my chest and I was viewing both things at once.  One of the viewing screens was my oldest daughter whom I have not spoken to since my diagnosis of cancer back in October of 2012, not for the lack of trying, but her anger and judgement is like sticking your hand in fire and pulling it back with massive blisters on it.  Not my cup of pain!  But my viewing screen was back to a time when it wasn't like that.  It was when she visited me here in New Mexico, fun and loving.

While I was straddling that screen, I was also straddling another one playing at the same time.  Two clients, a husband and wife who recently moved to the USA from another country.  I seen them life ants, constantly in motion to serve the queen, never taking their eye off the task at hand... service to the queen.  In this viewing screen, my conversation was with the wife while the focus was on her husband.

What a strange and intense way to wake up!!  My bladder was louder than the dual images unfolding on the screen on my chest, so I got up and started to process.  I popped an email to my clients explaining what I had just experienced.  I thought about the USA and what the queen of energy is here... money.  But I wasn't sure that is what it was referring to with them, until she wrote back.  Their work has them totally engulfed within their lives.  To the point, they do not even have the time to make for their sessions and we changed it to email readings (something I have not done in a good many years.)

I started to wonder what the readings are going to be like this day.  I so wanted the party zone to unfold!!  I also kept remembering what came thru one of the readings this past week.  Spirit said the first several days of March is going to create a "wobble" in the field.  What could that possible mean/represent for us??

I think I really understood after my first connection of the day, given my two viewing screens I woke up with.

The first thing I could see thru my lady on the field, were all these figures marching into her newly heightened magnetosphere.  People and places, even thoughts and idea's from her past, moving into her magnetosphere, circling around from the south entry (past) to the east to the north (present and future energy.)

Free will still reigns!!  What I do understand, especially this morning, all of these "old" energies and ways of life will be amplified as well, creating perfect storms and earthquakes to finally recognize it and free it once and for all.  During this "wobble time" however, we can free any aspect of chaotic relationships, thoughts, alignments that can and will block your own light of True Self from you.  Even with those who have thrown themselves into constant work, I hear clearly "All work and no play..." of course it trails off.  Pesky spirit!!

On the other side of the spectrum...

My second lady came thru with such intensity, exactly what I was hoping to experience with March's big focus.  The moment we connected, I heard a clip of a song while the energy came down with something that really looked like Thor's Hammer.  The song was "it's like thunder, and lightning, the way you love me is...."  (the song stopped their.)  As the hammer made contact with the top of her magnetosphere, cathedral of creation, the billowing energy of brilliant red and blue released itself like intense flames licking upwards.

I was able to move my vision into her cathedral of creation and seen her sitting on a chair in her center, looking very contemplative with her eyes trained forward.  I could so relate to the feeling I was getting from her, knowing we have arrived Here and having very little clue what to do with Here Now!! lol  I even told her, move over, I will sit with you a while! lol

Her biggest question in her contemplative moments was about abundance.  She keeps feeling like she sabotages abundance for herself.  First of all, I could not even come close to picking up any sort of lack of abundance in her energy field, until a tiny light bulb went on in what she was really talking about... Money.

Our (human) version of abundance and spirits true feeling/gifting of abundance not a money thing.  In spirits eyes, abundance is love, support, being cared for and provided for in each day.  Money is only a tiny element in their gift of abundance, enough to be cared for and to care for others with.

So, just to be clear here, if you need or desire more money, ask for more money.  Cuz if you ask for abundance, you will get it, usually in the form of a lot of smaller things that create an abundant day/life... less about money, all about more ways to feel and express love!!

Suddenly as she and I were talking, I was completely distracted by a bird I had never heard before out in the field, my back yard.  It was so loud and so consistent in its cawing I could not take my ears off of it.  I never heard this bird before, so I went a looking.  In the deep east field (new beginnings) and to the right/north (near future) were these 3 massive birds all talking to each other in the neighbors tree.  Turkey Vultures.  Stunning and loud!!  We looked up turkey vultures and what they mean to her and it was exactly what she first started talking about when we said hello.  These precious and insistent birds are her alley's (beyond a totem) into her new world of experiencing life.  Once we ended out connection, the birds flew away and have not returned.  They flew here for her!!  I love when that happens!!  Our incredible, conscious, co-creative universe!!

My next lady on the field, we actually got so look into the realm beyond today... our upcoming near future.  I was sooooooooo excited to see energy outside of the magnetosphere, giving her a heads up about how important an upcoming meeting she has scheduled with a couple other ladies is to her future.  I could see a white energetic line moved deep into her physical life aspect in her near future, a meeting that showed three women together and how much it will effect her future movements.  What no one would tell us, because they (spirit) do not know, is the outcome and affect it will have.  But the string of energy moved back to her center and connected to the spring equinox.  OMG I didn't even get this yesterday... lol, I can be so slow on the uptake sometimes... a lot of times!!  I could see her center path and the line of energy from this meeting intersect further out in her timeline.  Time has no sense to it any longer, not like in did in the years prior.  I could see her on a pole with a tightly wound spring that was attached to her back.  Depending on what she chooses to do with the energy of this meeting, that spring will release itself and fling her forward into her future bliss!!

Haha.... spring forward.  Spring... equinox... we change our clocks around there too and our time literally springs forward by an hour.  Hmmmmm... they were showing me the timeline all along, then finally gave up cuz I didn't get it, and told me outright they were showing the energy around the spring equinox.

This morning, i realize, we ALL have this incredible potential to spring forward with such a force, depending on what we do now to align ourselves with it.

I was so excited to see all this and what we have laying ahead of us in this month, even without any real details, the energy is so exciting!!  And then she asked a question, and her energy changed on a dime.  Like so many of us, we have taken on more fat cells than we care to carry around and gain, like so many of us, no matter what we try to do, it just doesn't release itself from our frame.  This has her feeling trapped, as she explains it with some intense energy "trapped in a prison."  Equally, that is how she feels her current life is too, trapped in a place she does not want to be.

Remember always.. the creative energy of all Life has zero bias.  It is not saying well this is good or this is bad, it all IS and it creates, makes manifest in our life what we feel the strongest about in our core energy.  If we feel imprisoned, we will create more prisons for ourselves, because we are loved THAT much.

For our own sakes, we must release the remnants of old beliefs that keep is in the hellish aspect of our creative mind, and embrace every iota of our Being, fluffy or skinny... its love of ALL parts of ourselves that has spring ready to fling us forward in that love!!

On that note, I must start my day of further understandings thru you!!

Big big (((HUGZ)))) of nuclear fusion of bliss made manifest to ALL!!  I love you all soul soul much!!  More (((HUGZ))))  Shine on my Love's!

Lisa Gawlas


Doris McIlwain

Learn More
This paper presents the results of a comprehensive empirical study of the impact of integrating complex game characters in multi-player Role Playing Games across tabletop and digital formats. Players were provided with characters that had detailed background history, personality and goals. Player and character personality were assessed using the Extended(More)
0191-8869/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. A doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.01.014 ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: ( (D. McIlwain), Wayne.warburton@m 1 The ability to reflect and operate on mental states This paper profiles meta-cognitive (affect-dysregulation, empathy and identity-concerns) and(More)
Role-playing games (RPGs) are a well-known game form, existing in a number of formats, including tabletop, live action, and various digital forms. Despite their popularity, empirical studies of these games are relatively rare. In particular there have been few examinations of the effects of the various formats used by RPGs on the gaming experience. This(More)
I introduce the seven papers in this special issue, by Andy Clark, Jérôme Dokic, Richard Menary, Jenann Ismael, Sue Campbell, Doris McIlwain, and Mark Rowlands. This paper explains the motivation for an alliance between the sciences of memory and the extended mind hypothesis. It examines in turn the role of worldly, social, and internalized forms of(More)
This study focuses in on a moment of live performance in which the entrainment amongst a musical quartet is threatened. Entrainment is asymmetric in so far as there is an ensemble leader who improvises and expands the structure of a last chorus of a piece of music beyond the limits tacitly negotiated during prior rehearsals and performances. Despite the(More)
Why is another measure of disturbed eating necessary? While there is a growing literature identifying links between certain emotion regulation styles and eating disturbances, much contention and contradictory evidence exists regarding the distinction between different specific eating disorder (ED) diagnoses in such relationships. This is possibly due to the(More)
Managing type 1 diabetes mellitus is an ongoing and challenging process; we investigated children's experience of different treatment regimens. Interviews with 17 children (7-15 years) at two time points were analysed using the grounded theory approach. Illness phase and treatment regimen shaped how bodily cues were interpreted. Insulin pump therapy allowed(More)
Overgeneral memories are associated with a history of depression, and are produced even when a person is not currently depressed. Whether they are antecedent or scar of depression, they are linked to poor prognosis and are thought to be markers of underlying causal processes. Such processes include difficulties experienced in depression with executive(More)
  • 1


Joshua Sunshine

Learn More
Objects model the world, and state is fundamental to a faithful modeling. Engineers use state machines to understand and reason about state transitions, but programming languages provide little support for building software based on state abstractions. We propose Plaid, a language in which objects are modeled not just in terms of classes, but in terms of(More)
Electron cryo-microscopy of 'single particles' is a powerful method to determine the three-dimensional (3D) architectures of complex cellular assemblies. The pyruvate dehydrogenase multi-enzyme complex couples the activity of three component enzymes (E1, E2 and E3) in the oxidative decarboxylation of pyruvate to generate acetyl-CoA, linking glycolysis and(More)
Though immutability has been long-proposed as a way to prevent bugs in software, little is known about how to make immutability support in programming languages effective for software engineers. We designed a new formalism that extends Java to support transitive class immutability, the form of immutability for which there is the strongest empirical support,(More)
Writing concurrent applications is extremely challenging, not only in terms of producing bug-free and maintainable software, but also for enabling developer productivity. In this article we present the Æminium concurrent-by-default programming language. Using Æminium programmers express data dependencies rather than control flow between(More)
Programming languages can restrict state change by preventing it entirely (immutability) or by restricting which clients may modify state (read-only restrictions). The benefits of immutability and read-only restrictions in software structures have been long-argued by practicing software engineers, researchers, and programming language designers. However,(More)
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) often define object protocols. Objects with protocols have a finite number of states and in each state a different set of method calls is valid. Many researchers have developed protocol verification tools because protocols are notoriously difficult to follow correctly. However, recent research suggests that a major(More)
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) often define protocols --- restrictions on the order of client calls to API methods. API protocols are common and difficult to use, which has generated tremendous research effort in alternative specification, implementation, and verification techniques. However, little is understood about the barriers programmers(More)


Anakin, Luke, Rey, Kylo Ren & Balancing the Force: Why Love is the Answer, Not Hate

It astounds me that there are people who still believe that in order to bring balance to the force it means killing all Sith/dark side force users.

Time and time again throughout canon Star Wars depictions this is seen as a misunderstanding to balancing the force. However, as it is never explicitly stated exactly how one brings balance to the force in the films (just the Jedi assumptions), I can also understand why people don’t know that in order to bring balance to the force, both the dark side and the light side must exist in unison with each other (as told by cosmic entities). I also find it confusing when people brush off the importance of balancing the force in the new trilogy, when one of the very first lines of dialogue we hear in TFA introduces us to the concept and need of balance in the Force. The Force is integral to the Star Wars films, as integral as it is to Star Wars’ own universe, and the concept of balancing the Force has been prevalent throughout the instalments of the franchise. They are not going to just drop the concept in the new trilogy, especially not when they’re trying to tie all the films together by the end of it.

This meta will attempt to explain what I believe, according to what canon evidence we’ve been given, it means to “bring balance to the force”. I will also discuss Anakin’s involvement and prophecy, and then what this could all mean for Rey and Kylo Ren going forward as “dual protagonists”. Disclaimer: this isn’t to say the other lead characters aren’t protagonists, but merely that we are being told that Rey and Kylo Ren are “two halves” of a protagonist’s story, together, in conjunction with the other protagonists. It is my belief that the new trilogy will most definitely touch on this ‘balancing of the force’ based on J. J. Abram’s claims that they are meant to bring the entire saga full circle, and that Anakin’s story (as the Chosen One who will bring balance to force) will play a crucial part in this circle that Episode IX will tie into - but that will be discussed in more detail later on. I would also like to say that I believe the importance of this ideal explains Luke’s withdrawal and belief that “the Jedi must end” in Episodes VII & VIII.

Keep reading

Irreversible consequences

I’ve noticed an interesting detail in the Russian version of the trailer. Instead of saying “This is not going to go the way you think”, Luke says: “Пойми, последствия будут необратимы” (“You have to understand that the consequences will be irreversible.”) I tried hard to figure out how, HOW could one translate Luke’s phrase the way it was translated (and I couldn’t), and then it occured to me that it might not be a translation, but a totally different phrase provided to the Russian film distributor for translation by Disney.

What if it is the next line Luke delivers? What if it complements what we heard in the English language trailer?

“This is not going to go the way you think. You have to understand that the consequences will be irreversible.”

Now I’m dying to know, what will go the wrong way? What will be irreversible?

Rogue One/Star Wars AU | Glee

There was a choir group in Alliance High School, named Rebel Alliance. But it was abandoned because no one joins the group. Until the Latin teacher, Bail Organa, revives the group again. He recruits his goddaughter, Leia, to become the first member of Rebel Alliance. They spread the news and forms around the school.

The first members of the Alliance are having different backgrounds. Jyn moved from London but she can’t adapt in America. Cassian is a good musician and singer but he quits because of the death of his older sister. Han doesn’t want to join the Alliance but he joins it in order to get a good grades for extracurricular.

When the Alliance is in trouble, Bail encourages them to sing their best for the sake of the club. And their club becomes popular because their successful performance in the school talent show and some of students enroll themselves to become the members of The Rebel Alliance. From the nervous Bodhi Rook to the cheerful Luke Skywalker.

The Rebel Alliance enrolls for choir competition for the first time since 5 years but they must face their old rival, the Empire Voice from Empire Academy.


NJIT's Kamalesh Sirkar Wins a Coveted Award for Innovation in Membrane Science and Technology

Written by: Tracey Regan,

Kamalesh Sirkar, a chemical engineer acclaimed for his innovations in industrial membrane technology used to separate and purify air, water and waste streams and to improve the quality of manufactured products such as pharmaceuticals, solvents and nanoparticles, won the 2017 Alan S. Michaels Award for Innovation in Membrane Science and Technology.

The award, given every three years by the North American Membrane Society (NAMS), is named for Alan Michaels, a pioneer in the field credited with breakthroughs in ultrafiltration technology and major contributions to controlled-release drug delivery systems, among other areas.

In honoring Sirkar, a distinguished professor of chemical engineering, the membrane society pointed to his “long and distinguished career that has included making fundamental contributions to the field of membrane science and engineering, from membrane fabrication to transport processes and performance of membrane systems, and his lifelong service to the membrane separations community.”

Sirkar holds 31 U.S. patents and three in Canada. He is best known for developing the concept of membrane contactors, a process that permits two phases that do not mix, such as two liquids or a liquid and a gas, to contact each other at the pores of a membrane – without dispersing into each other – in order to introduce or extract specific compounds across it. The technology is used, for example, to introduce carbon dioxide into beverages, to produce concentrations of oxygen at much less than 1 part per billion in ultrapure water needed for semiconductor production, and to extract valuable pharmaceuticals in aqueous-organic extraction systems, among other separation or purification processes.

He also developed a novel membrane distillation technology capable of converting sea and brackish water into potable water with a considerably higher water recovery rate than the standard method, reverse osmosis.

NAMS cited his service to the community, including his “seminal contributions” of two books “that serve as references to the community.” He co-edited with Winston Ho the “Membrane Handbook” in 1992, considered a standard for membrane separations, and recently wrote the more general “Separation of Molecules, Macromolecules and Particles: Principles, Phenomena and Processes” in which he integrates membranes with classical chemical engineering processes. He has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Membrane Science since 1989 and is the founding editor-in-chief of “Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering” since 2011.

Sirkar, who was elected to the NAMS board of directors in 1996 and served a one-year term as president beginning in 1998, worked with Michaels, who was also a member of the board.

“He was a towering figure in our young membrane community who invented a series of membranes for ultrafiltration-based separation of proteins and macromolecules having different molecular weights,” Sirkar recalled. “That was the second big breakthrough in the field of membrane technology, the first being the Loeb-Sourirajan reverse-osmosis membranes for desalination.”

He added, “He appeared to be particularly fond of the membrane solvent extraction technique that I developed. In fact, he published a paper utilizing that technique in 1992.”

Looking back on the evolution of his field, Sirkar pointed to a number of successes in addition to reverse osmosis desalination and ultrafiltration, including kidney dialysis, membrane separation of air, natural gas and organic vapors, electrodialysis and the development of membrane bioreactors for water treatment, among others.

The award consists of a $10,000 prize and lifetime membership in NAMS.


DBSJeyaraj.com on Facebook

Vimukthi Jayasundara Becomes First Sinhalese To Direct an Indian Film and First Sri Lankan to Make a Bengali Movie

By P.K.Balachandran

Born in the sylvan surroundings of Ratnapura in 1977, Vimkuthi did not want to be a doctor or engineer but a painter. “Eventually I settled for film making, which in many ways, is like painting,” he said.

And he was in love with India.

“I used to go to India frequently. I drew spiritual sustenance from it as a disciple of Jaggi Vasudev at his Isha Yoga ashram in Coimbatore. I travelled far and wide in India and made many friends in the film world. As a student at the Film and Television Institute in Pune, I saw a lot of films and was particularly fond of Bengali film makers Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak,” Vimukti said.

Back in Sri Lanka, the war was on. Vimukthi made a documentary film for the government on wounded soldiers. In the process of making the film he realized how some people are made to sacrifice their lives and limbs for somebody’s else cause.

As for the idea of making a film in India, it came up at a meeting with his long standing friend, Bappaditya Bandhopadhyay, a producer and director of Bengali films, in Kolkata. Bappaditya said he could rope in Vinod Lahoti, a Kolkata film enthusiast and financier, to fund the venture.

“The subject and story line were left to me. But Bappaditya was always around to tell me what is not correct. He would also point his finger at cinematic clichés, and tell me to knock them off,” Vimukthi said.

On choosing the subject and story he recalls: “I hadn’t clue about what to portray. So, I decided to roam the streets of Kolkata day after day, observing the lives of the people in various parts of the city at various times. What struck me at the time, was the mushrooming of posh high rise buildings in sharp contrast to the squalor around. I saw the sharp differences existing between the rich and the poor and how the poor were duped into parting with their agricultural land for small sums of money on the promise of jobs on the construction sites.”

From the middle classes he learnt about their aspirations and problems. I also found that at least a section of Kolkata society was aware that people were being taken for a ride, but others were indifferent.

“There is a scene in the film in which an old man is trying to wake up a younger man sleeping under a bridge by telling him how the British bought the three villages which became the nucleus of the imperial city of Kolkata for a mere Rs.1,300 and that a similar thing is happening now,” he pointed out.

Vimukthi also saw how, despite grinding poverty, lack of employment, insanitary conditions and the mad rush to modernize Kolkata, people stuck to traditions tenaciously as seen in the annual Durga Puja celebrations. Beg or borrow, the puja had to be conducted is a grand way. The puja’s cathartic effect on the participants was brought out vividly in Chatrak.

In the story, the main facets of Kolkata’s physical and socio-economic landscape were portrayed through the lives of the successful but troubled architect, his independent minded working girl lady love, and the deranged younger brother. Vimukthi has portrayed India in all its complexity, both gross and nuanced.

Asked why the architect does not die even after jumping from a multi-storied building, for her eventually open his eyes, Vimukthi said: “ I wanted to suggest that there could be renewal of hope,”

As Rahul re-awakens, a tortoise at the construction site which has been in hiding because of the destruction of its habitat, also emerges from its shell, symbolically.

Courtesy:New Indian Express


Teacher's Values and Professionalism in the Classroom

To teach ethics to teachers is a revitalization of the correct attitude in the workplace. These professionals are taught with manners, values, and the proper behavior expected from them. Therefore they are expected to share good manners, practice democracy and fairness in the classroom. Failure to display incorrect professionalism can cause disrespect and may produce distorted values among students.

Personal values evolve from situations with the external world and can change overtime. His integrity in the application of values refers to its continuity; persons have integrity if they apply their values appropriately regardless of arguments or negative reinforcement from others. But if Filipino teacher loses his values, moral problems come in. Why? Because there will be no values to hold him from doing what is not good. So ultimately, moral problems will arise.

Philippine legal system provides due process to every person. This means that every person is given the opportunity to be notified of the accusation against him. Under our laws, before the person is convicted, he must be given the chance to defend himself by informing him of the corresponding charges in which he is obliged to answer. Generally, the burden of proof lies on the person making such accusation. Therefore, innocence of the accused is more preferred. Although discipline is an issue to deal with among teachers, corporal punishment is never an answer to discipline the students. We have to find better, more effective ways than beating to enforce discipline.

Corporal punishment is of limited effectiveness and has potentially side effects. Studies show that the more children are spanked, the more anger they report as adults, the more likely they are to spank their own children, the more likely they are to approve of hitting a spouse, and the more marital conflict they experience as adults. Spanking has been associated with high rate of physical aggressive, more substance abuse, and increased risk of crime and violence when used with other children and adolescents.

Having known these negative outcomes, one must not afford to support nor appreciate corporal punishment no matter how grave the offense is. It is an act provided for the establishment to give proper discipline to all and maintenance of an integrated system of education. It is the policy of the State to establish and maintain a complete, adequate integrated system of education relevant to the goals of national development. Toward this end, the government shall ensure, within the context of a free and democratic system, maximum contribution of the educational system to the attainment of the following national developmental goals.

The Essay above is written by High School student.

Related Post
Benefit of Team Building to the Professionals
Suggested Project for Art Education
Towards BPO Capital of the world

Add to Google

4 Komento ng Ulirang Guro:

as they say, "a good leader is a good follower". In a classroom,obviously, the teacher is the leader and the students are the followers. And in order for the followers to obey the rules implemented by the leader, the leader must first observed those rules him/herself.

hi frnd, pr4 here... I have added u on my blog…… please link me back and buzz me!!! thank you……..

Values are principles, qualities, or objects that a person perceives as having intrinsic worth. Every individual has a personal hierarchy of values that may include success, wealth or monetary comfort, love/companionship, a sense of accomplishment or achievement, and of course, survival. When a teacher spends time after school to help a student, he may feel he has sacrificed his own needs to the needs of the student.

I know corporal punishment is not allowed but we need to discipline our students. ans it is different from just punishing them. If an act is wrong then proper disciplinary actions should be given. It has to be understood by the child. In the Bible, in the Book of Proverbs It is said that "Spare the rod spoil the child" I believe that there is truth there. Only adults don't know the proper way of disciplining children.


How do Distributed Antenna Systems Increase Public Safety?

A DAS, or Distributed Antenna System, provides an increased public safety benefit by improving First Responder radio coverage within a a structure or building.

Construction techniques and materials can block or obstruct wireless communication channels. Dropped calls or spotty internet service can be an inconvenience, but inadequate radio coverage for First Responder signals can be a matter of life or death. The tragic events of 9/11 emphasized the need for reliable in-building coverage, and subsequent fire codes have been revised to increase the safety of large buildings.

The International Building Code was updated in 2009 to better meet the need for increased public safety. Section 510 of the IBC deals specifically with Emergency Responder Radio Coverage, outlining optimal coverage requirements. Section 510 has been adopted (or will be adopted) by over 60% of American states to improve the safety of new construction. Radio signal strength requirements must be met in 95% of all areas on each floor of the building, a feat best achieved by the use of a Distributed Antenna System.

HetNet Wireless priod


How it Works

How soon can I expect results?

Instantly! Immediately upon injection when treated to full correction, BELOTERO BALANCE® Dermal Filler plumps the skin and smoothes away lines and wrinkles.

Does it hurt?

As with all needle injections, there can be pain associated with the procedure. Your health care provider can discuss ways to manage any discomfort during the procedure.

How long does it last?

Individual results may vary, but BELOTERO BALANCE® Dermal Filler may last about 6 months or more.

How is the treatment performed?

Is it safe?

Are there any side effects?

Just like any injection, you may experience mild irritation, swelling, itching, redness, bruising or tenderness at the injection site. If any of these side effects persist, call your doctor immediately.

How long is the recovery time?

There is very little to no downtime associated with a BELOTERO BALANCE® Dermal Filler procedure. Most patients return to their normal daily activities right after their visit. Be sure to discuss your plans with your doctor during your consultation.


Home » An Explanation Of What Is Biomass?
An Explanation Of What Is Biomass?

In ecological studies, biomass is the mass of living organisms present in a particular area or ecosystem. The measurement of the amount of biomass present is handled differently based on the reason for the measure and exactly what the measurement is supposed to mean. However, this definition does cover the more conventional uses of the term. We will, therefore, attempt to answer the question, "What is Biomass?" as it relates to energy production.

In the world of energy production, the term biomass refers to renewable sources of energy that come from living organisms as well those that have recently died. This eliminates the fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum because, while produced from ancient biomass, these fuels are bound in the earth's crust and are not part of the carbon cycle. Burning biomass does not release carbon into the atmosphere that adds to the amount of carbon already present in the normal carbon cycle. However, combustion of biomass to produce energy does put the carbon into the atmosphere faster than natural processes can accommodate and reabsorb.

Different substances meet the definition of biomass. These include wood, both directly harvested and waste products from other processes, grasses, grains, oils produced from trees or vegetables, household garbage, and more. Industries are typically more selective when they define biomass to mean only that which is useful to their particular type of business.

One example would be ethanol used to produce fuel. This particular alcohol comes almost exclusively from corn, though experiments have shown that it can be harvested from other plants and grains. Vegetable based oils that are used in the production of the fuel, biodiesel, are also biomass products. Wood used to produce heat meats the definition.

Another type of biomass that is being researched as possible sources of energy is known as landfill gas or biogas. The primary ingredient here is methane gas, which forms naturally when plant and animal matter rot. It is also the main ingredient found in natural gas. Any plant or animal waste that produces a foul smell as it rots is producing methane.

The primary advantages of biomass lie in the fact that it is a renewable source of energy. Unlike fossil fuels, which exist in finite amounts, biomass is generated everyday in the form of household garbage, yard clippings, waste from industrial processing of natural fibers such as wood, and harvesting trees and agricultural products.

Biomass has been shown to be useful in almost all methods of producing energy that fossil fuels can be used for. Increased use of biomass has, and will continue to result in reduced dependence on fossil fuels to meet the energy needs of the human race. As new techniques for harvesting the stored energy in biomass become available, it is possible that mankind's dependence on fossil fuels will be eliminated completely and replaced with completely renewable energy sources.

At the present time, biomass energy production only accounts for less than two percent of the energy used in the US each year to produce electricity. It is, however, becoming a more major source of fuel in the forms of biodiesel and flex fuel, a combination of gasoline and ethanol.


1. Title 3

Personality Disorders

What are Mood Disorders?

A personality disorder is a type of mental illness in which you have trouble perceiving and relating to situations and to people — including yourself.

In general, having a personality disorder means you have a rigid and unhealthy pattern of thinking and behaving no matter what the situation. This leads to significant problems and limitations in relationships, social encounters, work and school.

In some cases, you may not realize that you have a personality disorder because your way of thinking and behaving seems natural to you, and you may blame others for the challenges you face. There are many specific types of personality disorders and because there are too many identified types of personality disorders to explain in this context, we will only review a few.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

These individuals generally have great difficulty with their own sense of identity. They often experience the world in extremes, viewing others as either “all good” or “all bad.” A person with borderline personality may form an intense personal attachment with someone only to quickly dissolve it over a perceived slight. Fears of abandonment may lead to an excessive dependency on others. Self-multilation or recurrent suicidal gestures may be used to get attention and/or to manipulate others. Impulsive actions, chronic feelings of boredom or emptiness, and bouts of intense inappropriate anger are other traits of this disorder, which is more common among females. It is a mental health disorder that generates significant emotional instability. This can lead to a variety of other stressful mental and behavioral problems.

If you have borderline personality disorder, or love someone who does, don't get discouraged. Many people with this disorder get better with treatment and can live productive and satisfying lives.

Antisocial Personality Disorder

Antisocial Personality Disorder is a type of chronic mental illness in which a person's ways of thinking, perceiving situations and relating to others are abnormal — and destructive.

People with antisocial personality disorder typically have no regard for right and wrong. They may often violate the law and the rights of others, landing in frequent trouble or conflict. They may lie, behave violently, and have drug and alcohol problems. And people with antisocial personality disorder may not be able to fulfill responsibilities to family, work or school.

Antisocial personality disorder is sometimes known as sociopathic personality disorder. A sociopath is a particularly severe form of antisocial personality disorder.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder:

Most people who have OCD are aware that their obsessions and compulsions are irrational, yet they feel powerless to stop them. They suffer from unwanted and intrusive thoughts that they can't seem to get out of their heads (obsessions), often compelling them to repeatedly perform ritualistic behaviors and routines (compulsions) to try and ease their anxiety such as excessive hand washing, placing things in order, repeatedly having to check the lights or stove are off before they leave the house, counting, etc. :

These can interfere with a person's normal routine, schoolwork, job, family, or social activities. Several hours every day may be spent focusing on obsessive thoughts and performing seemingly senseless rituals. Trying to concentrate on daily activities may be difficult. Left untreated, OCD can interfere with all aspects of life. If you suspect you or a loved one may be suffering from OCD please seek the assistance from your health care provider or mental health specialist.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Narcissistic personality disorder treatment is centered around psychotherapy.

Avoidant Personality Disorder.

Dependent Personality Disorder.

Treatment of the Personality Disorder

There is Hope


D Media is the ideal resource to meet creative challenges. How do we benefit our clients?

• We are adamant about meeting deadlines. Whether needed items are missing, feedback becomes delayed, or heavy workloads complicate the process, we are diligent about creating production schedules, asking for what we need, and staying on task to complete the project in a timely manner.

• We focus on listening to client and project needs, understanding those needs, putting conventional thinking aside, and translating the necessary information to create a successful end product.

• We produce materials that not only radiate creativity but also communicate key messages and achieve business objectives.

• We understand the importance of flexibility to partner with clients—meeting deadlines, working within budgets, keeping clients informed, and delivering highly creative work during each step of the process.

A thumbprint for your company


Qualities of the Best Car Rental Deals in Dubai

To begin with, one would need to make sure that the price of the car rental in question is affordable. While some car rentals in Dubai pose in the market as cheap, one would need to make sure that he or she evaluates them to figure out whether they have any hidden costs. Figuring the full cost of a car rental in Dubai is essential for anyone who values quality offered by his or her money. You would need to make sure that you know whether you are allowed to carry a passenger in the car or whether there is a maximum mileage by the company in question.

One would also need to make sure that the car rental company he or she settles for is known for offering quality services. You may need to make sure that the car rental in Dubai you go for is fast and friendly when it comes to hiring. You would also need to figure out whether there are return customers by the company in question. It would also be essential for one to make sure that he or she goes for easy to book car rentals in Dubai. .One would only need to get online and book a car or even just call the rental company in question and book a car The more the efficiency by a car rentals in Dubai the higher the chances you will enjoy the car.

One would need a car rental that can schedule him or her a car right as he or she arrives from abroad. A good car rental in Dubai would ensure that you don’t have trouble going to where the company is located so that they can offer you the car. Rather, they should ensure that they deliver the car to you right at the airport or at the hotel as agreed. The best Dubai rental cars also ensure that they have insured their cars such that the car and the client are insured just in case of an accident.

Quotes: http://markets.financialcontent.com/