Women's Volleyball

Staying the Course: Volleyball Season Recap

Dec. 14, 2016

The Florida Atlantic University volleyball team posted 15 wins in 2016, the third season in a row that the team had at least that many. It's the first time since 1992 that the Owls have recorded three consecutive 15-win campaigns.

The season opened with a dominant 3-0 win at home against Bethune-Cookman as part of the FAU Invitational. The Owls swept all three of their matches at the USF Invitational, sharing the team title with the host Bulls. Freshman Sigourney Kame was named co-MVP of the tournament.

Despite their success at the USF tournament, the Owls had a 5-10 record halfway through the season, although they played well in their Conference USA opener, a loss to then No. 25-ranked WKU on the road. That loss proved to be a turning point for the season, as FAU won their next eight matches, including back-to-back five set victories over conference foes North Texas and Rice. Over the course of that winning streak, seniors Ristic and Viera were named C-USA Offensive Player and Setter of the Week, respectively, and the Owls clinched a spot in the conference tournament for the fourth straight season. That momentum shift coincided with the decision to make Brianne Wojciakowski and Genesis Viera full-time starters.

"Brianne was amazing all four years in terms of leadership, but she really stepped up this season as a player. She worked really hard to show that she belonged in the starting lineup," said Nelson. "And Genesis was ready to run the offense the way we expected her to run it."

Nelson credits all four seniors (including Nathalie Rosado and Maja Ristic) for their leadership.

"When you bring in seven new players, you have to have help from your seniors. That process started over the summer. The way they got this group ready to work and not treating (the newcomers) as freshmen helped. We're going to miss them a lot."

After losing three matches in a row, FAU rebounded to win its final two regular season matches, sweeping both UAB and Charlotte in the final appearance for the senior class at FAU Arena.

The Owls advanced to the C-USA tournament, dropping a hard fought four-set match to UTSA.

In spite of the loss to the Roadrunners, there were still plenty of positives to draw from the season. Ristic was named First Team All-Conference for the second year in a row. She was also named to the conference All-Academic team for a second consecutive season.

"It's going to be hard to replace Maja because of her work ethic. I joked with her after the season that she had one bad practice in two years. She went through injuries and pushed through for her teammates. That is amazing to have. "

Sophomore Abbi Reid joined Ristic as First-Team All-Conference, despite playing out of position at middle blocker.

"Abbi bought in to playing (middle blocker) immediately. Right away when I said 'Hey, Abbi, we need your help in the middle,' she turned to me and said 'I'm ready. I'll do whatever it takes for the team.' We're very excited for her."

Kame, who finished second on the team in kills, made the C-USA All-Freshman team.

"Siggy has a unique personality. She's so focused on being the best volleyball player and student she can be. It's amazing how fast she adjusted to everything on and off the court. I couldn't be more proud of her."

FAU will have a good foundation for the future, with a dozen players from this year's squad expected to return. That stability also extends to the coaching staff, as Nelson has signed a contract extension through the end of the 2021 season. All of that gives Nelson plenty of reason to be optimistic.

"We have the right group of girls. They're ready to win. We already have a winning culture, and they're ready to put in the work. It's not going to happen by accident and they understand that. They have the work ethic and they enjoy being around each other."

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comment by desolateone
desolateone  ·  2214 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What is the greatest song that ive probably never heard?

Here's a great song, by one of my favourite metal musicians: Devin Townsend. Upon hearing this though.. You would not think he is one. At all. Enjoy!

DeusExLabor  ·  2213 days ago  ·  link  ·

this was incredibly relaxing, thank you

vinyl  ·  2214 days ago  ·  link  ·

He's a bad ass, fo-sho. I first heard of him when he sang on some of Steve Vai's stuff in the 90's. Otherwise, I'd never of heard of him. Good call.


3 Intentional Mindfulness Exercises for Restful Sleep

Restful Slumber

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) sleep deprivation is a public health epidemic, self-reports showing that a third of adult Americans get less than the recommended seven to nine hours a night. Their research shows a host of restful sleep challenges are “linked with many chronic diseases and conditions such as: type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and depression”. With estimates of up to 6,000 fatal crashes each year likely caused by drowsy drivers, not to mention the number of other accidents and injuries, the wake-up call is loud and clear. Yikes!

We try so hard to fall asleep — so why doesn’t it work?! Seems like the more effort we put into making ourselves go to sleep the more awake we become.

So what options are there? Let’s explore mindfully allowing the process to happen on its own.

Ever notice how babies fall asleep? There is a point when their bodies just turn off the lights. Ta da! The body knows intuitively that sleep is essential. By mindfully listening to what the body communicates to us, we begin to allow it to guide the sleeping and waking process on its own — without us having to figure it out.

Unfortunately, over time life creates habit patterns that for various reasons — binge-watching, work schedules, our family’s sleep schedule — conflict with our body’s natural rhythm. On top of that, life delivers conditions and experiences that can make restful sleep feel impossible.

Restful sleep

By mindfully paying attention to the body and mind, we can re-discover our natural relationship with sleep. Mindfulness reminds us that we are human beings who benefit from pausing. Sleep is the most significant pause we take each day from the go-go-go, do-do-do, think-think-think pattern of daily life. It’s releasing the burden of unresolved challenges in conscious awareness for several hours by letting go of control and need for immediate action to rest, recharge and refresh.

So, what are some mindful practices to renew our trust in and appreciation for the body’s innate wisdom allowing sleep to occur?

Intentional Exercises for Restful Slumber

1. Intentionally Paying Attention to the Breath

One way to do this is by allowing your attention to rest on the belly, noticing the belly rise and fall with each inhale and exhale. A great reminder that our bodies are designed to breathe naturally without the “thinking mind”, right?

Another approach is to slowly accept the inhale through the nose, deliberately pausing for a moment and then slowly releasing the breath out of the mouth maybe even with an audible “ahhh”. This regulates the pace of the nervous system and provides an opportunity to mindfully experience the feeling of letting go of what is no longer serving the body.

2. Intentionally Paying Attention to the Mind

The mind loves being in busy-ness and problem-solving mode. But we have the ability to redirect its focus and even slow it down. One direction might be to acknowledge what went well during the day. If it happens to be the result of something we did, said or didn’t do or say, spending some time noticing it. This increases their prominence and space in the mind, reducing the space available for the “shoulds”, “ought-tos” and other judgmental thoughts.

Sharing gratitude is another possibility. Narrowing our attention to what we appreciate — the beautiful sky, an adorable animal, someone allowing you to merge into a lane — and purposefully dwelling on them. Gently reminding ourselves that what we pay attention to makes a difference.

Self-compassion practice is a way to provide well wishes for ourselves at the end of the day or any time. We often hope for someone else to provide kindness and encouragement to us when we need it. The good news is that we can be the most consistent provider of the sentiments that feel the most valuable to us in the moment — appreciation, acceptance, confidence, care, patience … you name it.

3. Intentionally Paying Attention to the Body

The body scan is observing and listening to what our bodily sensations are communicating in the moment. There are a variety of ways to facilitate this practice. One is to notice areas of tension and tightness in the body and give an invitation to these areas to release the grip of the holding, maybe saying in a gentle way “releasing” or “loosening”.

Another practice is firmly tightening body parts, one at a time, and then releasing them, one at a time. Purposefully creating stress in the body and then systematically releasing it provides a vivid reminder for us. Our bodies have the power to ride the waves of increased pressure and resiliently come back into balance, again and again. How amazing is that?!

For Rest - the body scan

Mindful Rest Takes Practice

Learning how to take a pause and focus your attention on the here and now, strengthening the mind/body connection takes practice. With eM Life you have access to guided meditation sessions, on-demand content and the support of expert instructors. Harness the power of the present to build healthy sleep habits. Log on to eM Life today and begin to experience the many benefits of mindfulness and how meditation can lead to a restful nights sleep.

About the author

Read more on the topic of Self-Care

Originally published at eMindful.


MS Windows Operating System MCQ Questions

MS Windows Operating System MCQ Questions

Home | Ccc | Introduction To Windows

CCC MS Windows Operating System MCQ Questions and Answers: We provide lots of multiple choice questions and answers where you can learn windows operating system quiz questions.

If you want to download CCC PDF Click Here

Page: 23/28

221) System files allocated at

222) ____ transforms one interface into other interface

223) _____ interface consists of thing like program counter, register, interrupts and terminal

224) ______ show characteristics with both hardware and software

225) Which of the following command is used to switch between the window programs?

226) To prevent the addition and deletion of files on a disk or tape we use

227) During the boot process, the ..... looks for the system file

228) Which of the following resources must be protected by the operating system?

229) What are the two types of Semaphore?

230) Font folder is located on


These Personality Traits Help People Who Work From Home, New Research Says

Andrew Zaeh for Bustle

The future of the workplace may not be an office at all. Current trends indicate that every year more of us are working from home or using flexible working arrangements; 3.9 million Americans work from home at least half of the time in 2018, making up 2.9 percent of the entire U.S. workforce, according to data from Flexjobs. And as working remotely becomes easier, with technologies like Skype and portable WiFi hotspots, more of us are asking: should I try working from home? According to a groundbreaking new study published in The European Journal Of Work And Organizational Psychology, the answer depends on these two personality traits.

Scientists from Baylor University looked at over 400 adults who work remotely across two studies, looking both at how stressed or under strain they were, and what kinds of personalities they had. They used two personality measures that have been part of psychology for decades: autonomy, aka how independent a person is and how well they do without constant supervision, and emotional stability, aka how you respond to challenges.

The lead author, Dr. Sara Perry, explained in a press release that emotional stability measures how you respond to problems: "If something stressful happens at work, a person who is high on emotional stability would take it in stride, remain positive and figure out how to address it. A person low on emotional stability might get frustrated and discouraged, expending energy with those emotions instead of on the issue at hand."

It turns out that some of us deal better with remote work than others, and those who flourish score high on both autonomy and emotional stability. This makes sense when you think about it: Remote workers can't be constantly connected to their bosses and have to make decisions on their own and work independently a lot of the time. Without a strong sense of autonomy and the ability to "work on your own," as they say in primary school, working remotely is tough. (Believe me, I've done it since I was 19.)

Remote work could be your chance to really thrive.

Emotional stability is a bit trickier to figure out. It seems as if being in an intense office environment would be harder for people who are emotionally a bit less stable than sitting at home, taking a deep breath, having a cup of tea and then sorting out the issue. Not so, says the data. The people who combined emotional stability and high autonomy were the least stressed out by remote work, even if they did a lot. But those who were extremely independent and scored low on emotional stability were actually more vulnerable to strain. Having a greater sense of autonomy, it seems, doesn't save you from finding remote work stressful if you don't cope with problems well.

This study adds an important bit of information to your arsenal if you're considering going freelance or working from home, or even taking advantage of your office's flextime policy. If you have the right personality traits to make it work, remote work could be your chance to really thrive. If you don't, an office environment is probably where your talents shine.


Stand tall & healthy

Simple exercises to relieve knee pain.

Knee pain is a common complaint that you hear around you. Be it a sports person, sedentary individual or an older person, mobility is affected when all's not well with the knee. Let us understand what can actually go wrong.

The knee joint functions as a solid pillar for the legs during weight bearing activities, and allows a large range of motions for various daily activities. Two joints make up the knee: one between the thigh bone and knee cap and the other between the shin bone and thigh. The joint is stabilised by the ligaments and muscles. The cartilage called menisci helps to increase the joint area and also stabilise the joint.

When these ligaments lose their rigidity, or when the muscles are not strong enough, the knee joint becomes unstable and leads to pain while squatting, climbing or sitting.

A clinical examination can establish the exact reason for pain. Often, the knee cap displaces itself too high or too low, and rubs against the leg every time the knee is bent more than 30 degrees, resulting in pain. In addition, a rigid high arch or wrong walking technique can also cause knee pain.

A good doctor can tell you the remedy for your pain. However, you can get some relief with these simple, at-home exercises. It's all natural and all safe (if done the right way). Do them thrice a week for best results. Take care to exhale as you lift or exert and inhale while coming back to the starting point.

What you need
An exercise mat, 2-kg and 3-kg medicine balls, ankle weights and a 6-inch platform/stepper.

In addition to these exercises, cycle on a stationary bike to get relief from pain. Cycling is a low-impact cardiovascular activity that does not strain the knees too much, and improves muscle endurance. Bounding and figure-8 running also help to stabilise the knee dynamically. But do these after you are done with the above set of exercises. You can progress to jumps and hops after gaining strength. It is important to wear proper shoes and exercise on an even surface. Keeping eyes closed while exercising will improve joint stability and balance.

Caution: Don't increase the intensity, or make sudden direction changes. And stop exercising if you experience pain.

Move 1
1.Sit on a chair.
2.Place a 2-kg medicine ball between the knees.
3.Slowly extend and raise the legs while squeezing the ball between your legs.
4.Do 2 to 3 sets of 12 to 15 repetitions.

Benefit: Strengthens the medial muscles of the front of the thigh.

Move 2
1.Strap weights on your left ankle.
2. Lie on your side on an exercise mat, and prop yourself up on your elbow; right leg on top of left.
3. Bend the right knee and bring up the right leg to hip level.
4. Tighten the thighs and lift left leg up.
5. Do 3 sets of 12 to 15 repetitions each with both legs.

Move 3
1. Stand on a 6-inch platform.
2. Bend the right leg and drop the left foot to the floor.
3. Slowly rise up pushing through the heel of the right foot.
4. Do 3 sets of 12 to 15 repetitions each with both legs.

Move 4
1.Sit on the mat, legs stretched out in front. Strap weights on right ankle.
2.Place a 3-kg medicine ball under the right knee.
3.Slowly raise the right leg, pressing it against the ball. Hold for 10-20 sec.
4.Do 3-4 reps each with both legs.

Move 5
1.Stand next to a 6-inch platform.
2.Raise right leg, place it on the platform with the foot pointing up.
3.Bend from the hips and try to touch the right foot with the right hand while keeping the right leg straight. Place the left hand on your left thigh.
4.Hold the stretch for 10 to 15 seconds, repeat with the other leg.

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What is Perfect Competition

Pure or perfect competition is a theoretical market structure in which the following criteria are met: all firms sell an identical product (the product is a "commodity" or "homogeneous"); all firms are price takers (they cannot influence the market price of their product); market share has no influence on price; buyers have complete or "perfect" information – in the past, present and future – about the product being sold and the prices charged by each firm; resources such a labor are perfectly mobile; and firms can enter or exit the market without cost.

Perfect Competition

BREAKING DOWN Perfect Competition

Perfect competition is a benchmark to which real-life market structures can be compared.

Perfect competition is the opposite of a monopoly, in which only a single firm supplies a good or service and that firm can charge whatever price it wants, since consumers have no alternatives and it is difficult for would-be competitors to enter the marketplace. Under perfect competition, there are many buyers and sellers, and prices reflect supply and demand. Companies earn just enough profit to stay in business and no more. If they were to earn excess profits, other companies would enter the market and drive profits down.

Perfect Competition is characterized by the following attributes:

A Large And Homogenous Market

There are a large number of buyers and sellers in a perfectly competitive market. The sellers are small firms, instead of large corporations capable of controlling prices through supply adjustments. They sell products with minimal differences in capabilities, features, and pricing. This ensures that buyers cannot distinguish between products based on physical attributes, such as size or color, or intangible values, such as branding. A large population of both buyers and sellers ensures that supply and demand remain constant in this market. As such, buyers can easily substitute products made by one firm for another.

Perfect Information Availability

Information about the ecosystem and competition in an industry constitutes a significant advantage. For example, knowledge about component sourcing and supplier pricing can make or break the market for certain companies. In certain knowledge- and research-intensive industries, such as pharmaceuticals and technology, information about patents and research initiatives at competitors can help companies develop competitive strategies and build a moat around its products. In a perfectly competitive market, however, such moats do not exist. Information is equally and freely available to all market participants. This ensures that each firm can produce its goods or services at exactly the same rate and with the same production techniques as another one in the market.

Absence of controls

Governments play a vital role in market formation for products by imposing regulation and price controls. They can control entry and exit of firms into a market by setting up rules to function in the market. For example, the pharmaceutical industry has to contend with a roster of rules pertaining to research, production, and sale of drugs. In turn, these rules require big capital investments in the form of employees, such as lawyers and quality assurance personnel, and infrastructure, such as machinery to manufacture medicines. The cumulative costs add up and make it extremely expensive for companies to bring a drug to the market. In comparison, the technology industry functions with relatively less oversight as compared to its pharma counterpart. Thus, entrepreneurs in this industry can start firms with less to zero capital, making it easy for individuals to start a company in the industry.

Such controls do not exist in a perfectly competitive market. The entry and exit of firms in such a market is unregulated and this frees them up to spend on labor and capital assets without restrictions and adjust their output in relation to market demands.

Cheap and Efficient Transportation

Cheap and efficient transportation is another characteristic of perfect competition. In this type of market, companies do not incur significant costs to transport goods. This helps reduce the product’s price and cuts back on delays in transporting goods.

Do Firms Make Profits In A Perfectly Competitive Market?

The short answer to that question is no. Profits may be possible for brief periods in perfectly competitive markets. But the market’s dynamics cancel out the effects of positive or negative profits and bring them towards an equilibrium. Because there is no information asymmetry in the market, other firms will quickly ramp up their production or reduce their manufacturing costs to achieve parity with the firm which made profits. The average revenue and marginal revenue for firms in a perfectly competitive market is equal to the product’s price. As a result, the perfectly competitive market’s equilibrium, which had been disrupted earlier, will be restored. In the long run, an adjustment of supply and demand ensures all profits or losses in such markets tend towards zero.

Examples of Perfect Competition

As mentioned earlier, perfect competition is a theoretical construct. As such, it is difficult to find real life examples of perfect competition but there are variants present in everyday society. Consider the situation at a farmer’s market, a place characterized by a large number of small sellers and buyers. Typically, there is little differentiation between products and their prices from one farmer’s market to another. The provenance of the produce does not matter (unless they are classified as organic) in such cases and there is very little difference in the packaging or branding of products. Thus, even if one of the farms producing goods for the market goes out of business, it will not make a difference to average prices. The situation may also be relatively similar in the case of two competing supermarkets, which stock their aisles from the same set of companies. Again, there is little to distinguish products from one another between both supermarkets and their pricing remains almost same.

Another example of perfect competition is the market for unbranded products, which features cheaper versions of well-known products. Product knockoffs are generally priced similarly and there is little to differentiate them from one another. If one of the firms manufacturing such a product goes out of business, it is replaced by another one.

The development of new markets in the technology industry also resembles perfect competition to a certain degree. For example, there was a proliferation of sites offering similar services during the early days of social media networks. Some examples of such sites are Sixdegrees.com, Blackplanet.com, and Asianavenue.com. None of them had a dominant market share and the sites were mostly free. They constituted sellers in the market while consumers of such sites, who were mainly young people, were the buyers. The startup costs for companies in this space were minimal, meaning that startups and companies can freely enter and exit these markets. Technologies, such as PHP and Java, were largely open-source and available to anyone. Capital costs, in the form of real estate and infrastructure, were not necessary. (Facebook Inc.’s (FB) Mark Zuckerberg started the company from his college dorm).

What Are the Disadvantages of Perfect Competition?

Perfect competition establishes an ideal framework for establishing a market. But that market is flawed and has a couple of disadvantages. The first one is the absence of innovation. The prospect of greater market share and setting themselves apart from competition is an incentive for firms to innovate and make better products. But no firm possesses a dominant market share in perfect competition. Profit margins are also fixed by demand and supply. Hence firms cannot set themselves apart by charging a premium for their product and services. For example, it would be impossible for a company like Apple Inc. (AAPL) to exist in a perfectly competitive market because its phones are pricier as compared to competitors. The second disadvantage of perfect competition is the absence of economies of scale. Limited to zero profit margins means that companies will have less cash to invest for expanding their production capabilities. An expansion of production capabilities could potentially bring down costs for consumers and increase profit margins for the firm.

But the presence of several small firms cannibalizing the market for the same product prevents such an occurrence and ensures that the average firm size engaged in the market remains small.

Does Perfect Competition Exist In The Real World?

Real-world competition differs from this ideal primarily because of differentiation in production, marketing and selling. For example, in agriculture, the owner of a small organic products shop can talk extensively about the grain fed to the cows that made the manure that fertilized the non-GMO soybeans – that's differentiation. Through marketing, companies seek to establish "brand value" around their differentiation and advertise to gain pricing power and market share. Thus, the first two criteria – homogeneous products and price takers – are far from realistic. Yet, for the second two criteria – information and mobility – the global tech and trade transformation is improving information and resource flexibility. While reality is far from this theoretical model, the model is still helpful because of its ability to explain many real-life behaviors.


In an opinion addressing enablement under 35 USC 112, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit concluded that an asserted claim was invalid because the specification failed to enable its full scope, even though enablement as to the majority of claimed embodiments was undisputed. Trustees of Boston University v. Everlight Elecs. Co., Ltd., Case Nos. 16-2576, -2577, -2578, -2579, -2580, -2581, -2582, -2591, -2592, -2593, -2594, -2595 (Fed. Cir. July 25, 2018) (Prost, CJ).

Boston University (BU) sued Everlight for infringement of a patent directed to the preparation of monocrystalline gallium nitride (GaN) films via molecular beam epitaxy. The patent teaches providing a buffer layer between the desired GaN film and a substrate to prevent defects arising from a lattice mismatch between the GaN film and the substrate. During claim construction, the district court construed “a non-single crystalline buffer layer” to mean a layer of material that is either polycrystalline, amorphous, or a mixture of polycrystalline and amorphous. After a jury determined that Everlight infringed and had not proven the asserted claim’s invalidity, Everlight renewed its petition for judgment as a matter of law that the claim was invalid for lack of enablement, and the district court denied the motion. Everlight appealed.

Before the Federal Circuit, Everlight argued that the asserted claim was invalid because the specification does not teach one of skill in the art how to grow the monocrystalline GaN film directly on an amorphous buffer layer. At trial, Everlight’s expert testified that such an arrangement was impossible, and BU’s expert agreed. BU responded that others had grown monocrystalline GaN film directly on an amorphous buffer layer, so such an arrangement was not impossible. However, the Federal Circuit explained that the question presented was not whether the arrangement was possible, but whether the specification teaches one of skill in the art how to make the claimed device as of the patent’s effective filing date.

BU argued that the disclosure was sufficient because there was no dispute as to the enablement of five out of six permutations. The Federal Circuit disagreed, explaining that the specification must enable the full scope of the claims. While an artisan’s knowledge of the prior art and routine experimentation can fill small gaps, one of the claimed embodiments here required undue experimentation. The Court further noted that for purposes of infringement, BU had sought a construction that included the amorphous layer. Since BU wanted to exclude others from practicing what it regarded as its invention, the enablement requirement demanded that its patent teach the public how to make and use that invention.

Practice Note: Patentees should exercise caution when seeking a broad construction where the desired construction may ensnare embodiments not contemplated in the specification.


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16 Jul 2018

NEET is letting in students with zero/negative marks into MBBS

Not all is well with the NEET

Be careful when you visit unknown doctors: someone you have trusted with your life might have gotten admission into a medical course with zero marks.

As many as 110 students who made it into MBBS through the NEET 2017 scored zero, or even negative marks, in physics and chemistry.

At least 400 scored in single digits, TOI reports.

So how are they even clearing the exam?

In context

Not all is well with the NEET
How did the NEET start?

How did the NEET start?

The NEET (National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test) replaced the All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT) in 2013 and started determining admission into graduate/postgraduate medical courses in colleges under the Medical/Dental Council of India.

Initially, a general candidate needed 50% marks in individual subjects, or at least 360 out of 720, to make the cut.

A reserved-category candidate needed 40%, or a total of 288.

New rules

So what's happening now?

In 2016, NEET introduced the percentile system and dropped the minimum marks requirement.

Now, a general candidate simply needs to be in the 50th-percentile.

Percentile refers to what proportion of the population falls below that level. Someone securing 90th-percentile means 90% candidates scored lower.

So if 10 students scored 100/720, the highest marks, it would place them in the topmost-percentile, but with 13% marks.

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So how did it affect marks?

So how did it affect marks?

As a result, last year, 1,990 students cleared the NEET for admission into MBBS with less than 150/720 (20.8%).

Of these, 530 had either single-digit marks, or zero, or even negative in physics or chemistry.

General cut-offs stood at a lowly 131 (18.3%) and reserved-category cut-offs at 107 (14.8%).

This was worse than 2016, when general and reserved category students needed 145 (20%) and 118 (16.4%) respectively.

Money power

But that wasn't the only impact

There were other repercussions too. Due to the low scores, as many as 6.1L out of 10.9L candidates cleared the NEET last year, leaving people fighting for seats.

TOI found 507 of the aforementioned 530 had taken admission in private colleges, with an average tuition fee of Rs. 17L per annum- a testament to how poor students are being left out.

Despite criticism, percentile method to stay for now

Despite criticism, percentile method to stay for now

"Students are expected to get a minimum 40-50% to get into medicine. With this flawed criteria, we saw students with low scores getting into medical colleges," Dr Raj Bahadur, VC, Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, had said.

Other eminent personalities too criticized it, but this criterion seems set to continue.

However, human life is too precious to be handed over to incapable professionals.

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Interpreting your content: perception

What you meant to say on your webpage is rarely what visitors understand. Perception is a tricky thing and what matters most is controlling how your content and images are interpreted by your visitor's brain to avoid confusion that creates cart abandonment.

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Juvederm® Voluma

Juvederm® VOLUMA® is the first and only filler FDA-approved for deep injection in the cheek area to correct age-related volume loss. This dermal filler is made of hyaluronic acid that replenishes lost skin volume to regain a youthful curve to the cheeks and can be used to enhance the overall shape of your face. Adding instant volume to the cheek area, Juvederm® VOLUMA® provides a subtle lift to restore a more youthful profile for up to two years!

The major difference between Juvederm XC® and Juvederm® VOLUMA® is the area in which it is placed. Juvederm XC® is indicated for moderate to severe wrinkles and folds around the nose and mouth, while Juvederm® VOLUMA®  adds volume to the mid-face or cheeks and is placed deep within the tissue to add support to the overlying skin.


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Designing Earthquake Resistant Buildings : Tips and Tricks

Earthquakes are dangerous phenomena. People are vulnerable to the destructive power of earthquakes. Earthquakes have unleashed their destructive power on humans time and time again. But today, with the advancement of construction technology, man has learnt to protect himself from earthquakes. Designing Earthquake Resistant Structures is indispensable. Every year, earthquakes take the lives of thousands of people, and destroy property worth billions and not everyone has home insurance, so many really suffer and have a hard time to recover. It is imperative that structures are designed to resist earthquake forces, in order to reduce the loss of life. Structural design plays an important role. Here, we will discuss different tips and techniques used in designing Earthquake Resistant structures.

What is an Earthquake?

generated forces acting upon it. By de-coupling the structure from seismic ground motion it is possible to reduce the earthquake-induced forces in it. This can be done in two ways:   Increase natural period of structure by "BASE ISOLATION". Increase damping of the system by "ENERGY DISSIPATING DEVICES".

Earthquake Resistant Building Design Philosophy
a) Under minor but frequent shaking, the main members of the buildings that carry vertical and horizontal forces should not be damaged; however buildings parts that do not carry load may sustain repairable damage. b) Under moderate but occasional shaking, the main members may sustain repairable damage, while the other parts that do not carry load may sustain repairable damage. c) Under strong but rare shaking, the main members may sustain severe damage, but the building should not collapse.

Protection from Earthquakes
There are various new techniques which help in reducing the impact of earthquake forces on buildings. Most of these techniques are expensive to implement. Here is a list of Earthquake Resistant Techniques…

1. Base Isolation for Earthquake Resistance
The concept of base isolation is explained through an example building resting on frictionless rollers. When the ground shakes, the rollers freely roll, but the building above does not move. Thus, no force is transferred to the building due to the shaking of the ground; simply, the building does not experience the earthquake. Now, if the same building is rested on the flexible pads that offer resistance against lateral movements, then some effect of the ground shaking will be transferred to the building above. If the flexible pads are properly chosen, the forces induced by ground shaking can be a few times smaller than that experienced by the building built directly on ground, namely a fixed base building. The flexible pads are called base-isolators, whereas the structures protected by means of these devices are called base-isolated buildings.

2. Energy Dissipation Devices for Earthquake Resistance

3. Active Control Devices for Earthquake Resistance
The system consists of three basic elements:

a. Sensors to measure external excitation and/or structural response. b. Computer hardware and software to compute control forces on the basis of observed excitation and/or structural response. c. Actuators to provide the necessary control forces.
Thus in active system, it has to necessarily have an external energy input to drive the actuators. On the other hand passive systems do not require external energy and their efficiency depends on tunings of system to expected excitation and structural behavior. As a result, the passive systems are effective only for the modes of the vibrations for which these are tuned. Thus the advantage of an active system lies in its much wider range of applicability since the control forces are worked out on the basis of actual excitation and structural behavior. In the active system when only external excitation is measured, system is said to be in open-looped. However when the structural response is used as input, the system is in closed loop control. These techniques have been successfully employed in many projects across the world. They are most widely used in Japan. These techniques are also being used in earthquake prone areas of California, Indonesia and other such places. Source :

Earthquake engineering
Earthquake engineering is the study of the behavior of buildings and structures subject to seismic loading. Eminent authority on seismic risk mitigation, Caltech professor George W. Housner is widely considered as the 'father' of the modern field of earthquake engineering. Stanford University professor John Blume’s contributions to the dynamics of structures have earned him the title of the 'father' of earthquake engineering too. The main objectives of earthquake engineering are:
  

Understand the interaction between buildings or civil infrastructure and the ground. Foresee the potential consequences of strong earthquakes on urban areas and civil infrastructure. Design, construct and maintain structures to perform at earthquake exposure up to the expectations and in compliance with building codes.

Seismic loading
Seismic loading means application of an earthquake-generated agitation to a structure. It happens at contact surfaces of a structure either with the ground, or with adjacent structures, or with gravity waves from tsunami. Seismic loading depends, primarily, on:
   

Anticipated earthquake's parameters at the site Geotechnical parameters of the site Structure's parameters Characteristics of the anticipated gravity waves from tsunami (if applicable).

Seismic loads, sometimes, exceed ability of a structure to resist them without being broken, partially or completely. Due to their mutual interaction, seismic loading and seismic performance of a structure are intimately related.

Seismic performance
Earthquake or seismic performance is an execution of a building's or structure's ability to sustain their due functions, such as its safety and serviceability, at and after a particular earthquake exposure. A structure is, normally, considered safe if it does not endanger the lives and wellbeing of those in or around it by partially or completely collapsing. A structure may be considered serviceable if it is able to fulfill its operational functions for which it was designed.

Basic concepts of the earthquake engineering, implemented in the major building codes, assume that a building should survive the most powerful anticipated earthquake though with partial destruction.

Seismic vibration control
 

passive control devices have no feedback capability between them, structural elements and the ground; active control devices incorporate real-time recoding instrumentation on the ground integrated with earthquake input processing equipment and actuators within the structure; hybrid control devices have combined features of active and passive control systems.

to dissipate the wave energy inside a superstructure with properly engineered dampers; to disperse the wave energy between a wider range of frequencies; to absorb the resonant portions of the whole wave frequencies band with the help of so called mass dampers.

 

Portrait image of Taipei 101 from Songzhi Road, Taipei, Taiwan. It is the world's second tallest skyscraper, after the Burj Dubai. For earthquake and wind protection, the building is equipped with the tuned mass damper

However, there is quite another approach: partial suppression of the seismic energy flow into the superstructure known as seismic or base isolation. For this, some pads are inserted into or under all major load-carrying elements in the base of the building which should substantially decouple a superstructure from its substructure resting on a shaking ground.

Mausoleum of Cyrus, the oldest base-isolated structure in the world The first evidence of earthquake protection by using the principle of base isolation was discovered in Pasargadae, a city in ancient Persia, now Iran: it goes back to VI century BC. Below, there are some samples of seismic vibration control technologies of today.

Dry-stone walls control

People of Inca civilization were masters of the polished dry-stone walls, called ashlar, where blocks of stone were cut to fit together tightly without any mortar. The Incas were among the best stone masons the world has ever seen, and many junctions in their masonry were so perfect that even blades of grass could not fit between the stones. Peru is a highly seismic land, and for centuries the mortar-free construction proved to be apparently more earthquake-resistant than using mortar. The stones of the dry-stone walls built by the Incas could move slightly and resettle without the walls collapsing which should be recognized as an ingenious passive structural control technique employing both the principle of energy dissipation and that of suppressing resonant amplifications.

Lead Rubber Bearing

LRB being tested at the UCSD Caltrans-SRMD facility

Tuned mass damper

Tuned mass damper in Taipei 101, the world's tallest skyscraper

Friction pendulum bearing

FPB shake-table testing

  

articulated friction slider; spherical concave sliding surface; enclosing cylinder for lateral displacement restraint.

Snapshot of a shake-table testing of FPB system supporting a rigid building model is presented above.

Building elevation control
Building elevation control is a valuable source of vibration control of seismic loading. Thus, pyramid-shaped skyscrapers continue to attract attention of architects and engineers because such structures promise a better stability against earthquakes and winds. Besides, the elevation configuration can prevent buildings' resonant amplifications due to the fact that a properly configured building disperses the shear wave energy between a wide range of frequencies.

Transamerica Pyramid building

Simple roller bearing
Simple roller bearing or Earthquake-Protective Building Buffer is a base isolation device which is intended for protection of various building and non-building structures against potentially damaging lateral impacts of strong earthquakes. This metallic bearing support may be adapted, with certain precautions, as a seismic isolator to skyscrapers and buildings on soft ground. Recently, it has been employed under the name of Metallic Roller Bearing for a housing complex (17 stories) in Tokyo, Japan. Earthquake-Protective Buffer

Elevated building foundation

Bottom view of the Municipal Services Building sitting on abutments of its elevated building foundation, City of Glendale, CA

Elevated building foundation (EBF) is a kind of seismic vibration control technology which remains an integral part of a building superstructure. It is conceived to shield the building's superstructure against potentially destructive components of the anticipated earthquakes including both lateral and vertical shaking. This goal can be achieved by means of a proper choice of building materials, dimensions, and configuration of EBF for the particular construction site and local soil conditions.

As a result of multiple wave reflections and diffractions, as well as energy dissipations of the seismic waves in a process of their vertical propagation through horizontal strata of the EBF, any transmission of seismic wave energy into the building superstructure furnished with EBF will be decreased considerably which will decrease seismic loads and enhance seismic performance of the structure

Springs-with-damper base isolator
Springs-with-damper base isolator installed under a threestory town-house, Santa Monica, California is shown on the photo taken prior to the 1994 Northridge earthquake exposure. It is a base isolation device conceptually similar to Lead Rubber Bearing. One of two three-story townhouses like this, which was well instrumented for recording of both vertical and horizontal accelerations on its floors and the ground, has survived a severe shaking during the Northridge earthquake and left valuable information for further learning.

Springs-with-damper close-up

Hysteretic damper
Hysteretic damper is intended to provide better and more reliable seismic performance than that of a conventional structure at the expense of the seismic input energy dissipation. There are four major groups of hysteretic dampers used for the purpose, namely:
   

Fluid viscous dampers (FVDs) Metallic yielding dampers (MYDs) Viscoelastic dampers (VEDs) Friction dampers (FDs)

Each group of dampers has specific characteristics, advantages and disadvantages for structural applications. Source:

Building Safety and Earthquakes
Earthquake Resisting Systems

This describes the types of structural systems and lateral-force-resisting elements used in buildings and how they can be used in combinations.

Structural Systems Defined
The Uniform Building Code (UBC) earthquake provisions define three basic types of building structural systems: bearing wall systems, building frame systems, and moment resisting frame systems. Bearing wall systems consist of vertical load carrying walls located along exterior wall lines and at interior locations as necessary. Many of these bearing walls are also used to resist lateral forces and are then called shear walls. Bearing wall systems do not contain complete vertical load-carrying space frames but may use some columns to support floor and roof vertical loads. This type of system is very common and includes wood-frame buildings, concrete tilt-up buildings and masonry wall buildings. Building frame systems use a complete three dimensional space frame to support vertical loads, but use either shear walls or braced frames to resist lateral forces. Examples of these include buildings with steel frames or concrete frames along the perimeter and at intervals throughout the interior supporting vertical loads from floors and roof. Building frame systems typically use steel braced frames or concrete or masonry shear walls to resist lateral forces. A building frame system with shear walls is shown in Figure 1(a).

Building Frame System with Shear Walls (a)

Moment Resisting Frame System (b)

Figure 1. Building frame systems. Moment-resisting frame systems can be steel, concrete, or masonry construction. They provide a complete space frame throughout the building to carry vertical loads, and they use some of those same frame elements to resist lateral forces. Shear walls (and braced frames) are not used in this system, as shown in Figure 1(b). Occasionally buildings are defined as dual systems when they have a complete space frame that supports vertical loads and combine moment-resisting frames with either shear walls or braced frames to resist lateral loads.

Lateral-Force-Resisting Elements

Lateral-force-resisting elements must be provided in every structure to brace it against wind and seismic forces. The three principal types of resisting elements are shear walls, braced frames, and moment-resisting frames. Shear walls can be made of sheathed woodframe walls, reinforced masonry, or reinforced concrete. Steel braced frames are often used in combination with concrete shear walls or masonry shear walls. Braced frames are essentially vertical, cantilevered trusses and may be either concentric or eccentric in configuration. Concentric frames have diagonal braces located so that the lateral forces act along the direction of their longitudinal axis. Eccentric braced frames use both axial loading of braces and bending of sections of horizontal beams to resist the forces. Figure 2 shows typical braced frame configurations.

Chevron Brace

Eccentric Brace

Figure 2. Types of braced frame elements. Moment-resisting frames can be constructed of steel, concrete, or masonry. Moment frames consist of beams and columns in which bending of these members provides the resistance to lateral forces. There are two primary types of moment frames, ordinary and special. Special moment-resisting frames are detailed to ensure ductile behavior of the beam-to-column joints and are normally used in zones of higher seismicity. Because of damage observed following the 1994 Northridge earthquake, steel momentresisting frames have been under intensive study and testing. The goal is to determine the causes of the damage and to recommend changes in steel moment-resisting frame design and construction to ensure ductile behaviour of the joints. The selection of the type of lateral-force resisting elements to use in a building is often based on economics. A single type of resisting element is commonly used in most building types, such as in houses where wood-framed shear walls are used, or in concrete tilt-up buildings where concrete shear walls are used. However, other types of buildings may need to use combinations of more than one type of seismic element. The building code allows combinations to be used but they are also subject to very specific structural design rules. For example, if concrete shear walls that are also bearing walls are combined with braced frame elements along one axis and ordinary moment-resisting frames are used along the other axis, the braced frame elements need to be designed using slightly larger forces than if they were the only type of resisting element used along that axis. On the other axis, the moment-frame elements also need to be designed for forces larger than if they were the only type of resisting element in the building. These adjustments in design forces are required to account for the differences in strength,

stiffness, and ductility among the three types of resisting elements when used in combination. References ICBO, 1997, Uniform Building Code, International Conference of Building Officials, Whittier, California. Source:

Strengthening Buildings for Earthquakes
Earthquakes cause sideways forces on buildings, sometimes making them sway from side to side. The forces on a building during an earthquake produce a similar effect to horizontal (or sideways) forces trying to push the building over.

A model building swaying on the shaking-table during an artificial earthquake.

The same model being pushed sideways by somebody.

Notice how the model bends in the same way for both forces. These are some of the structural systems used to resist sideways forces.

Horizontal structural systems
Usually floors and roofs. They share the sideways forces on the building between its vertical structural members. They include:

Vertical structural systems
Made up from columns, beams, walls and bracing. They transfer the sideways forces on the building to the ground. They include:
  

Braced frames Moment resisting frames Shear walls

Braced Frames
Braced frames use trussing to resist sideways forces on buildings. Trussing, or triangulation, is formed by inserting diagonal structural members into rectangular areas of a structural frame. It helps stabilise the frame against sideways forces from earthquakes and strong winds. In a braced frame, bracing is usually provided in every storey of the building.

Braced Frames - Single Diagonals

If a single diagonal, or brace, is used, it must be able to resist tension (stretching) and compression (squashing) caused by sideways forces in both directions on a frame.

Single diagonals in a 3-storey frame.

Cross Bracing
If two diagonals are used, in the form of cross-bracing, they only need to resist tension. This is because one brace is in tension for the sideways force in one direction on the frame, while the other brace is in tension when the force is reversed. Steel cables can be used for cross bracing, as they can be stretched, but not squashed.

Cross-bracing in a 3-storey frame

Braced Frames - Miscellaneous Methods

Knee Bracing

K Bracing

V Bracing

Inverted V Bracing

Moment Resisting Frames
In moment resisting frames, the joints, or connections, between columns and beams are designed to be rigid. At a rigid joint, the ends of the columns and beams cannot rotate. This means that the angle between the ends of the columns and beams always remain the same. Rigid joints should be designed carefully to make sure they do not distort. This causes the columns and beams to bend during earthquakes. So these structural members are designed to be strong in bending. Moment resisting frames simply means frames that resist forces by bending.

Shear Walls
Shear walls are vertical walls that are used to stiffen the structural frames of buildings. They help frames resist sideways earthquake forces.

The earthquake forces are transferred to the ground mainly by shear forces in the walls. Imagine a wall is made up from a stack of horizontal layers all stuck together. Shear forces on the wall will try and make these layers slide over one another.

It is better to use walls with no openings in them. So, usually the walls around lift shafts and stairwells are used. Also, walls on the sides of buildings that have no windows can be used.

Isolated Buildings
Base Isolation systems reduce building vibrations during earthquakes. This means that the building distorts less, reducing the chance of damage. Normally, a building is supported directly on its foundations, and it is said to have a fixedbase. When base isolation is used, special structural bearings are inserted between the bottom of the building and its foundation. These bearings are not very stiff in the horizontal direction, so they reduce the fundamental frequency of vibration of a building. The frequency becomes so low that the building does not vibrate as strongly during an earthquake. During an earthquake, a fixed-base building can sway from side to side. When a base isolation system is used, the sideways movement occurs mainly in the bearings, and the building hardly distorts at all. There are many types of bearings used for base isolation. Here are two of them. 1. Rubber Bearings 2. Friction Pendulum Bearings

Rubber bearings
Rubber bearings are made from layers of rubber with thin steel plates between them, and a thick steel plate on the top and bottom. The bearings are placed between the bottom of a building and its foundation . The bearings are designed to be very stiff and strong for vertical load, so that they can carry the weight of the building. However, they are designed to be much weaker for horizontal loads, so that they can move sideways during an earthquake. Rubber bearing in place before the building is constructed above it.

Rubber bearings have been used to protect the Museum of New Zealand from large earthquakes.

Museum of New Zealand

Friction Pendulum Bearings
Friction pendulum bearings are made from two horizontal steel plates that can slide over each other because of their shape and an additional articulated slider. The bearings are placed between the bottom of a building and its foundation . They are designed to be very stiff and strong for vertical load, so that they can carry the weight of the building. However, the fact that they slide means that earthquake movements will occur mainly in the bearings.

friction pendulum bearing F between a column of the building and it's foundations.

Friction Pendulum Bearing

Friction pendulum bearings have been used in the San Francisco Airport International Terminal. The building has been designed to resist a magnitude 8 earthquake occurring on the San Andreas fault.

San Fransisco Airport Terminal

Adding Dampers
Dampers can be installed in the structural frame of a building to absorb some of the energy going into the building from the shaking ground during an earthquake. The dampers reduce the energy available for shaking the building. This means that the building deforms less, so the chance of damage is reduced. There are many types of dampers that can be installed in buildings. Here are some of them:    Metallic Dampers Friction Dampers Viscous Fluid Dampers

Metallic Dampers
Metallic dampers are usually made from steel. They are designed to deform so much when the building vibrates during an earthquake that they cannot return to their original shape. This permanent deformation is called inelastic deformation, and it uses some of the earthquake energy which goes into building.

X - Plate Metallic Damper

There are different types of metallic damper. One type, the X-shaped Plate Damper, is used where two braces meet. As the building vibrates, the braces stretch and compress, pulling and pushing the damper sideways and making it deform.

Friction Dampers
Friction dampers are designed to have moving parts that will slide over each other during a strong earthquake. When the parts slide over each other, they create friction which uses some of the energy from the earthquake that goes into the building.

This is a Pall Friction Damper installed in the Webster Library of Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. The damper is connected to the centre of some cross-bracing. The damper is made up from a set of steel plates, with slotted holes in them, and they are bolted together. At high enough forces, the plates can slide over each other creating friction. The plates are specially treated to increase the friction between them.

Viscous fluid dampers
Viscous fluid dampers are similar to shock absorbers in a car. They consist of a closed cylinder containing a viscous fluid like oil. A piston rod is connected to a piston head with small holes in it. The piston can move in and out of the cylinder. As it does this, the oil is forced to flow through holes in the piston head causing friction. When the damper is installed in a building, the friction converts some of the earthquake energy going into the moving building into heat energy. The damper is usually installed as part of a building's bracing system using single diagonals. As the building sways to and fro, the piston is forced in and out of the cylinder.

Viscous fluid damper installed in building Source:


Oregon Gubernatorial Race Rated Likely Democrat for 2018

This post originally appeared on Oregon Catalyst.

In 2016, Oregon Republicans broke their statewide losing streak. Dennis Richardson became the first Republican elected statewide since Gordon Smith won re-election to the U.S. Senate in 2002.

Richardson’s win led to rampant speculation about the potential of electing a Republican governor. Oregon’s last Republican governor — Vic Atiyeh — was first elected in 1978 and was re-elected in 1982.

Decision Desk HQ, an independent election results site started in 2014, has set the proper baseline for the 2018 Oregon Gubernatorial Race:

The GOP has actually been competitive in most recent Governors races here, but Democrats always seem to win in the end. Fresh off winning the office in her own right last year, we see Brown as having a clear advantage but wouldn’t consider her completely safe. Thus, LIKELY DEMOCRATIC makes the most sense.

Here are the results from the past five gubernatorial elections in Oregon:

The median outcome of the last five gubernatorial elections in Oregon is a Democrat win of six points. The 2016 election was a special election that occurred in a Presidential year. Oregon gubernatorial elections occur in midterm elections. If we remove 2016 from the data, we see a smaller (but still sizable) 4.5 point median win for Democrats.

2014 was a good year for Republicans nationally but was a no good, very bad year for Republicans in Oregon.

2010 was a Republican wave election which allowed Republicans to split the Oregon House 30–30 and almost made Republican Chris Dudley the governor of Oregon.

2006 was a wave election for Democrats that re-elected Kulongoski and gave Democrats full control of Oregon government for the first time since 1990.

2002 was a decent year for Republicans nationally. In Oregon, Republicans made slight gains in the Oregon House that year while taking a small loss in the Oregon Senate.

There are two major factors that will influence the outcome of the election. First, Republicans must recruit a strong candidate. It would help if this person is a strong fundraiser and has some statewide name ID. Second, national political trends must not work against the GOP.

Republicans are expected to lose some number of seats in Congress based on historical trends. A Democrat wave year would make it impossible for a Republican to win the governorship here in Oregon. Republicans must nominate a competent candidate and desperately pray that Democrats don’t benefit from a wave in 2018.

Reagan Knopp is a digital political consultant and Editor-in-Chief of Oregon Catalyst.

Reagan Knopp


Oracle Insights

Tales of the Oak Table

Book Description:

* Encapsulates the knowledge and experience of some of the foremost experts in Oracle development, the vast majority of whom are also established and successful authors.

* Covers landmark software and techniques (invented by the authors) that have changed the face of Oracle development.

* A broad ranging, anecdotal and humorous title that will appeal to anyone (developers, DBAs, manager, architects etc) involved with and Oracle-based project.

* Simplified code snippets, the book provides real solutions that people can then build upon themselves.


Job Detail

Business Analyst

Job ID:
12 months
Mon-Fri, 40 hours per week.
Client Industry:
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Washington, DC 20049
Pay Rate:
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APR has been engaged to identify hard working Business Analyst.

LOCATION: Washington, DC

CONTRACT: 12 months

The VOC Measurement Analyst will identify and quantify opportunities to improve the customer experience, increase customer loyalty, and ingrain customer centricity into all business decisions. The analyst will support the Voice of the Consumer Measurement team, will be responsible for ad hoc customer data analysis, and will collaborate with other AARPx team members to support active projects.

How You Will Make An Impact

• Supports the approach of providing insightful and actionable recommendations for improvements based on VOC feedback and business metrics.

• Assists with the tracking/reporting of data on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to assess campaign performance and recommend related strategies. Translates results from data into clear and actionable insights that are relevant to defined goals.

• Researches and recommends what additional data should be tracked in order to establish actionable customer experience metrics that represent what matters most to AARP members.

• Ensures that customer insights are disseminated, understood, and used as the basis for development and enhancements of innovative products and services. Working with the Senior Advisor, VOC Measurement, measures improvements resulting from those enhancements.

• Works closely with data and technology teams to determine primary and secondary data sources to enhance analysis, insights and takeaways.

• Assesses trends and insights using multiple data sets and large amounts of data; synthesizes direct and indirect data into a cohesive, actionable story for internal teams.

Key responsibilities include: • Communicate and collaborate with groups internal and external to AARP • Ensure adherence to project schedules and deliverable timelines • Conduct data analysis and interpretation • Ensure data integrity and accuracy • Develop insights reports and dashboards • Incorporate advanced analytics into customer insights and properly package business insights and findings for consumption • Clearly and succinctly communicate the findings and insights with proper verification and validation techniques • Use best practices around categorization, sentiment and insights principles • Implement and manage pipeline of new channels and data feeds • Identify early warning signals and opportunistic approaches from insights gathered • Bachelor's degree in Business, Statistics, Analytics, Economics, Data Science or comparable • 2+ years of analytic experience • Experience with data visualization software (including, Qlikview, Tableau, Domo, etc) • Experience with text analytics and analyzing voice of the customer findings to identify actions that improve customer experience (specifically, Clarabridge Text Analytics Platform) • Ability to identify and tell a story using data • Ability to manage multiple tasks simultaneously within a continually changing environment • Excellent problem solving skills and ability to navigate challenging situations • Strong written, analytical and verbal communication skills • Advanced proficiency with MS Excel and PowerPoint

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Accelerate Industry 4.0 by Extending the Secure ICS Edge

December 20, 2018 Erik Halthen, Analog Devices

Cyber security in industrial control systems (ICS) is poised to delay the adoption of Industry 4.0. Many business leaders find it hard to understand ICS cyber security challenges as there are many factors contributing to their complexity. Furthermore, the engineers developing ICS solutions have likely not seen significant cyber security requirements at the device level.

Traditional methods for securing industrial control systems have relied on limiting access to networks and devices, and monitoring network traffic through information technology (IT) solutions. A product lead working on devices in a factory will find it easy to dismiss cyber security as an IT problem. However, the traditional methods for securing industrial control systems will no longer be sufficient as Industry 4.0 looms on the horizon.

The challenges of ICS cyber security will ultimately delay the adoption of Industry 4.0 if companies don’t have a strategy to address device security at the Edge. To adopt and capitalize on Industry 4.0, cyber security must be a critical part of the business plan.

Although the industrial market has traditionally been slow to change, the adoption of Industry 4.0 has occurred at a pace that exceeds expectations. With these changes, cyber security is becoming one of the most challenging obstacles to the adoption of Industry 4.0. ICS cyber security standards and guidelines are in place or being established to secure the factory, but they don’t provide guidance on how to accelerate Industry 4.0 initiatives.

1. Edge devices require transition to adopt for Industry 4.0

There is a reason why Industry 4.0 is changing the ICS cyber security problem. The very nature of Industry 4.0 is to increase access and control of the devices in the factory. This means increased access to the data to expand transparency, reduced network planning, lower CapEx and OpEx, improved bandwidth, and optimized machine interworking. Increasing access and control means that the factory’s cyber security risk assessment is changing. ICS cyber security solutions must adapt to address the changing risk, and traditional countermeasures applied to the system, such as firewalls and placing a device behind a locked door, are counterintuitive to Industry 4.0 goals. This means devices will need to be security hardened to enable increased functionality in a secure method. Identity and integrity will be at the core of every device in the field to enable trusted data and secure operation.

There are many different standards in the industrial market that provide guidance on implementing ICS security. For example, NIST provides security guidance with U.S. governance. IEC 62443 is a security standard in draft form for the international market with governance in Europe. These are two of the most predominant standards, providing useful guidelines for implementing security and assessing one’s security posture for industrial control systems; however, they don’t provide guidance on how to accelerate the adoption of Industry 4.0. IEC 62443 is currently absent any guidelines for implementing security below the PLC and an ISA99 working group has recently been established to address cyber security at the bottom layers of the factory within the IEC 62443 framework.

Today, to meet a system’s acceptable security posture, countermeasures must be applied to devices that don’t reach a sufficient security level. These countermeasures typically rely on methods like firewalls to limit access and section off or isolate vulnerable devices. In the future, devices will need to reach higher security levels to enable the transition to Industry 4.0.

Analog Devices is positioned to extend the secure edge. The company’s traditional market space is at the physical edge, where the real world is translated into digital signals and data is born. This provides an opportunity to establish trust in data by providing identity and integrity earlier in the signal chain and establishing a new definition of the secure Edge. Traditionally, the secure Edge has originated at gateways, PLCs, or even servers in the ICS security framework.

This view is reminiscent of the traditional IT cyber security view of the factory but it persists throughout the industry. The prospect of driving the secure Edge lower in the signal chain is enticing because it enables higher confidence in the decisions that are being made from that data. The earlier that identity and integrity can be established in the signal chain, the more trust and confidence that can be placed in the data that’s driving decisions.

ICS cyber security can’t be addressed by a one size fits all solution and an in-depth defense approach must be adopted and applied based on the system’s risk assessment. One strategy is to extend the depth of ICS cyber security as Ethernet is adopted at the edge. Enabling Industry 4.0 requires the factory to adopt new connectivity methodologies. This means that Ethernet has taken, and will continue to take, a larger role in industrial control systems.

2. Enabling the highest confidence in decisions: where physical to digital conversion occurs

A sound security strategy is to focus on where there is Ethernet connectivity because this changes the impact any one device on the network. To this end, Analog Devices’ fido5000, RapID Platform provides two-port, multi-protocol connectivity whose security features provide key generation/management, secure boot, secure update, and secure memory access to protect against network bound attacks. Future devices will include single-chip solutions with a hardware root of trust, secure device lifecycle management, secure communications/mutual authentication, and tamper protection.

Erik Halthen, part of ADI’s acquisition of Sypris Electronics, has an extensive background in cyber security solutions. As part of ADI’s cyber security center of excellence, Erik has taken on the role of security systems manager for industrial solutions, focusing on developing security solutions for industrial IoT.

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Dear Schofield Week 9: Continued

Claudine 15(3)
Dear Schofield,
I’m a high school student, but it’s not easy for me. Studying is hard at home because I just want to goof off after a long day at school. My grades are OK, but I’m worried that if this continues they will slip.
Then there’s my eating habits and fitness. My lunch starts late in the day, so it’s hard to stay satisfied from breakfast. When I get home, I’m still hungry and eat whatever’s around, not usually healthy. And sitting all day at school doesn’t help my fitness. Recently, I decided to have only a cup of water or soda until dinner, but I’m not sure that’s healthy. Exercising at home doesn’t happen because I’m either goofing off or doing homework.
Finally, there’s my sleep habits. I go to bed at 10:30, but I have to wake up at 6:30 the next morning to be on time to school. How can I have good grades, be fit and be rested while having fun, too?
Not Multi-Tasking Well

Dear Not Multi-Tasking Well,

I’m not an expert on fitness, however, I do know studies show that at least 30 minutes of physical activity everyday will help you to lose weight or meet specific fitness goals. While at school take advantage of walking to your classes by speeding up your walking pattern. Because your lunch starts so late in the day, bring healthy snacks such as bananas, apples, or fruit snacks, which will help curb your appetite until lunch. I would stay away from sodas and drink water instead. Sodas are packed with sugar, and they literally add nothing to the diet except excessive amounts of sugar and unnecessary calories. When you get home before you begin doing your homework maybe you can walk a few miles in your neighborhood. If you’re not comfortable with doing that maybe walk around in your house. Turn your goofing off time into physical activity time.

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Gustav Born obituary

Prominent pharmacologist whose pioneering work on how the body stops bleeding improved the detection of thrombosis

In 1945, Gustav Born, a young and recently qualified doctor serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps, was among the first allied staff to witness the medical aftermath of the atomic bomb blast in Hiroshima. Among the horrific injuries he encountered, one struck him particularly forcibly: the tendency of the survivors to suffer from severe bleeding disorders. This, he surmised, was attributable to a lack of blood platelets caused by radiation damage. It was evidently a decisive experience, for it set the course of his future research and, indeed, his entire career.

After the war, Gus, who has died aged 96, began postgraduate research at Oxford University with Howard Florey (who developed penicillin for pharmaceutical use), gaining his DPhil in 1951. He subsequently researched various other topics, including histamine and acid secretion in the stomach, neonatal physiology, smooth muscle and catecholamine pharmacology. But he was soon lured back by the fascination of platelet biology.

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Source: theguardian
Gustav Born obituary


Concordance is engaged in civil war, leadership is in question and unknown, unnamed forces are popping up in a bloody fight for the throne. Who will win and who should win are two different questions that must be answered. Who’s side will our heroes be on?

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A homeowner that feels proud of his or her yard should make those acts that serve to protect a young tree part of his or her daily routine. After all, none of them demands lots of effort. In fact, each of them adds to the homeowner’s excuses for spending more time in the yard that surrounds the family’s home.

It can be heartbreaking to watch a beloved tree slowly die before your very eyes, which is why we want to help you learn how to handle this situation in the quickest and easiest way possible. To spare you from all the research and trial and error, we have put together this article which will help you make the right decision for your tree, and answer some questions you may have.

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With winter being the season in which trees lay dormant, and oftentimes also being the season of harsh weather conditions, you will want to ensure that your trees are in the best shape possible so they can withstand everything the harsh cold season throws at them. If you want to see your trees flourish once more in spring, you should start prepping early on in fall so you can check of every item on the check-up list. Additionally, you can consult with an arborist in San Jose to check on the trees, if you find any issues.

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Every year in large parts of the earth, people get to witness a change to nature. Slowly but surely over the course of a mere couple of months, all the leaves shift from green to vibrant yellows, reds and oranges. But why?

Any time you’re planning on landscaping or renovating your property, there are several factors that must be considered. Choosing design ideas, cost comparisons, and picking the right people for each job that your project entails are the more important ones. This includes one of the main and possibly the most expensive features on your property, namely your trees. All property landscaping and renovations start with the trees that are growing on it. As one of the more permanent features, the care and maintenance of your trees is best left in the hands of professional arborists or tree service in San Jose.

Any arborist service in San Jose will tell you that when trees fall or lose any of their limbs in unpopulated areas, that their structural development is not a problem since there is no risk of liability. However, it’s a completely different story when you’re talking about populated urban areas. Trees that are allowed to develop without being maintained by a tree care service in San Jose oftentimes develop structural defects and are much more likely to break and fall. However, there are steps that you can take to ensure reducing your liability and improving the safety of your trees.

If you’ve lived on your Bay Area property for a while and have healthy trees growing on it, you’ve probably done a good job of having them cared for and maintained by a local tree care company. Furthermore, depending on how long you’ve lived there, you’ve probably been faced with the decision to either prune and trim it one more time or just have it removed. No matter where you live, homeowners have to eventually decide whether they should call a tree pruning specialist in San Jose or a tree removal service in San Jose to handle matters.

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In an era where reimbursement is shifting towards quality care and patient outcomes, it is necessary for medical practice executives to take a fresh look at their business processes to ensure potential collections are not leaking throughout the revenue cycle.

Most physicians want to see patients, practice medicine, perform care that they were trained to provide and go home. The Administrator or practice executive is typically quite busy addressing staffing concerns, patient complaints, reviewing contracts, and responding to physician inquiries. It takes a great deal of dedicated focus, time, and energy to manage those critical tasks associated with converting patient visits into reimbursement.

It is our experience that many physician practices have really good teams behind the scenes that ensure patient insurance and benefits are accurate, charges are entered timely, and patients are treated in a professional and courteous manner when they have questions about their bills. It is also our experience that most physician practices have team members that are trained or skilled in only a small portion of the back-office responsibilities that are necessary to ensure high patient satisfaction and a profitable outcomes. Far too often, we observe that a practice has only one certified professional coder who is experienced in assigning the appropriate medical codes for their unique patient mix and related services. We hear of employees dreading taking time off from work because they know their wok will go undone in their absence. We see the trend lines associated with staff turnover related to charge entry, cash posting, and A/R follow-up on denials. These little things may seem trivial, but they add up financially over time and they can take a toll on employee morale and productivity.

While there is no single cure for ensuring all revenue is collected all of the time, there are five key areas that we routinely advise our clients to consider in hopes of improving financial performance and mitigating risk within the business office.

  • Conduct a medical coding and chart documentation review
    Almost any practice can greatly benefit from conducting a routine medical coding assessment of its claims. Whether the end result is confirming the appropriateness of your practice’s coding habits or identifying missed revenue or compliance concerns, a coding audit can be one of the most useful tools a practice does to improve performance and ensure consistency between providers.

  • Analyze patient balance amounts that are being transferred to bad debt
    Perhaps no single point of data more clearly demonstrates your practices’ success at collecting patient balances than reviewing what went uncollected and subsequently transferred to your bad debt collection agency. Dean Dorton recommends taking a deeper look at the details of what was transferred to collections for a recent twelve month period. In reviewing this data, look for trends associated with “frequent flyer” patients who rarely make payments or for those “common balance after insurance” amounts, such as $25, $50, and $100 that indicate a potential co-payment or patient financial responsibility amount that went uncollected. Identifying these patients can help the practice better collect them on the front-end.

  • Identify underpayments
    Also known as partial payments or partial denials, an underpayment can be difficult to identify without the use of a contract management system. Too many practices rely on their cash posting team members to identify underpayments and resolve them as appropriate. While that may be an effective approach for some practices, it leaves way too much risk in the hands of a select few employees. A comprehensive approach to underpayment identification and resolution should include resources from information technology, patient accounting, and finance. Top performing practices will reconcile expected reimbursement to actual on a continuous basis to ensure the appropriate payment is being received.

  • Cross-train business office staff
    Most practices cannot afford to have one coder, one Medicare biller, or one person that knows how to post electronic payments. It simply is too significant of a business risk to rely on a small number of employees to complete tasks with great financial consequence. With this type of staffing model and little to no cross-training of staff, backlogs are inevitable. This leads to sluggish cash collections, poor morale, and dependency on a select few. It is critical that business offices cross-train its team members on how to complete multiple tasks and/or contract with service providers to ensure critical tasks are completed when team members are absent.

  • Be proactive in follow-up efforts
    An efficient and high performing business office makes proactive account follow-up a daily routine. Charges must be entered and reconciled daily, payments must be deposited and applied to accounts daily, and unpaid open account balances must be proactively worked on a daily basis. Utilizing work queues or even an aged trial balance, practices’ must identify high value accounts that need follow-up in order to get paid. Working accounts in descending dollar order can have the most significant impact on a practice. Typically, 80% of a practice’s outstanding A/R is comprised of only 20% of the encounter volume. These accounts must get worked as part of the team’s daily responsibilities to ensure strong cash collections.

With the changes we’ve seen in the market due to hospital-physician integration and payer reimbursement, it is critical that practices’ continue to focus on those areas that ensure strong compliance, high patient satisfaction, and positive financial outcomes. Focusing on these five areas are just a small part of ensuring a practice is as effective and efficient it can be in converting patient visits to revenue.


Happy NEW perspective!

Seeker: Can you help me make a firm new years resolution and stick to it? Answer: At this junction in life [new years], most people run after resolutions or they sit and sulk about the past year’s resolutions that they did not keep up to. Haven’t you learnt a lesson from repeating the same cycle […]

Was Ravana enlightened?

Dispassion or Disinterest?

Wrong Karma or Right Karma?

Question: Didi – in everyday life situations if I start to ask myself ‘why am I put into this situation?’ and be with awareness and observe without attachments & listen to the inner voice – will I find the answer? ( trying to understand my karma or pattern n thereby just ‘being’ and not ‘doing’). […]

Can a liar meditate?

Question: Can a liar meditate? Answer: Buddha said that morality [Sheel] is more important than anything else. If your morals are loose, you will not be able to meditate. If you cannot meditate, inner wisdom will not arise. If inner wisdom does not arise, you will NEVER attain the TRUTH. That’s why Sheel was the […]

So many spiritual techniques! So much confusion!


Nietzsches will to power

This "Will," according to Schopenhauer, is never satisfied. Likewise, I now regard my having been a Wagnerian as eccentric. Altruism is not possible, according to Nietzsche, and therefore neither is morality. Daarnaast is dit ook voor de ethiek geldig en werkt Habermas een discoursethiek uit: Between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object, there is no causality, no correctness, and no expression; there is, at most, an aesthetic relation.

For him, however, human beings remain valuing creatures in the last analysis. Looking away shall be my only negation.

Those views would Nietzsches will to power that the basic conditions of cognition prevent our ever knowing things as they really are, independently of us see Anderson; Hussain ; and the entry on Friedrich Albert Lange.

Episode 11: Nietzsche’s Immoralism: What Is Ethics, Anyway?

This suggests that the will to power is stronger than the will to survive. Samenlevingen zijn voor Habermas modern wanneer zij het traditionele wereldbeeld — vaak gefundeerd op religieuze elementen — hebben losgelaten, samen met de mogelijkheid om hierop een normatieve standaard of levenswijze te baseren en daarbij in te zien dat zijzelf als maatschappij instaan voor het scheppen van de normativiteit.

In some remote corner of the universepoured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. Und auch ihr selber sid dieser Wille zur Macht—und nichts ausserdem! Feitelijkheid en geldigheid[ bewerken ] Bij de voorgestelde oplossing van Habermas in zijn magnum opus, het aanwenden van de communicatieve rationaliteit, was het in zekere zin nog wat vaag en onduidelijk hoe dit concreet moest gebeuren.

Gesamtausgabe Plan

Habermas spreekt dan ook over de kolonisering van de leefwereld door deze systemen. Nietzsche thought it was the job of philosophers to create such values BGEso readers have long and rightly expected to find an account of value creation in his works.

Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment, in which you would answer him: Social and political views[ edit ] This section possibly contains original research.

Martin BuberBetween Man and Manp. In zijn proefschrift uit over Das Absolute und die Geschichte: But while those are the immediate allusions, Nietzsche also endorses more general ideas with similar implications—e. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.

For Schopenhauer, this will is the most fundamental aspect of reality — more fundamental even than being. Nietzsche and Heidegger were both avowed enemies of modernity and of democracy.

As Nietzsche emphasizes, purified guilt is naturally recruited as a tool for developing asceticism. To say it once again: We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us.

Hans Morgenthau

If we are forced to comprehend all things only under these forms, then it ceases to be amazing that in all things we actually comprehend nothing but these forms. Representative Writingspp.Nietzsche ist eine Weiterleitung auf diesen Artikel.

Weitere Bedeutungen sind unter Nietzsche (Begriffsklärung) aufgeführt.

Will to power

The “will to power” is a central concept in the philosophy of 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It is best understood as an irrational force, found in all individuals, that can be channeled toward different ends.

Nietzsche explored the idea of the will to power throughout his. The will to power is the basic character of our drives or instincts. The essence of a drive is to assert itself. To do so successfully, to achieve expression, is for it to have power. Power is not a separate aim of the drives.

In asserting itself, each drive comes into. That is the secret of all culture: it does not provide artificial limbs, wax noses or spectacles—that which can provide these things is, rather, only sham education. Society and the Individual in Nietzsche's The Will to Power () Travis J.

Denneson I. Introduction. In The Will to Power, specifically the section entitled "The Will to Power as Society and Individual," Nietzsche's ideas concerning how his doctrine of the will to power is manifested in both societies as a whole and in individuals within a society are presented.

Jürgen Habermas

These are all manifestations of the will.

Nietzsches will to power
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Belgian National Orchestra

22/03/2019 - 22/03/2019

Belgian National Orchestra

The devil's pactEvil has the Klara Festival in its grip this year. The festival follows in the footsteps of Dr Faust and places its soul in Mephistopheles' hands. An appetite for comprehensive knowledge and disobedience plays a key role in this Faustian programme.Franz Liszt took Goethe’s Faust on all his travels. In his Faust Symphony (1857), Liszt paints the portraits of the three main characters, Dr Faust, his love Gretchen and Mephistopheles, in a sophisticated way. Blinded by lust and ambition, Faust sold his soul to the devil. Salvation comes through the eternal female — the purity of spirit is immune to the devil's temptations. Freed from Mephistopheles' grip, angels lead Faust to heaven.“My son, why do you hide your face in fear?” Werner Henze’s desperate father tries to protect his child from the grim spirit of the Erlköning (1996). The malicious Fairy King, who escapes from Schubert's eponymous song inspired by Goethe’s ballad, spreads his tentacles over Hans Werner Henze’s sinister composition. If we can believe Tchaikovsky, the devil took possession of his Rococo Variations. Without the composer's knowledge, cellist Wilhelm Fitzhagen made changes before the premiere in 1877. Tchaikovsky was furious!

Praktische Infos


Fischer's Turaco (Tauraco fischeri)

Fishers turaco

Fast facts

Status Near Threatened

Size 40cm in height

Weight Males: 230–269g; females: 227–283g

Gestation 22-23 days

Young 2 eggs are laid

What do I eat?

Fischer's turacos mainly eat fruits, especially figs and berries, but they also eat flower buds and young leaf shoots. They will occasionally eat insects if they come across them while foraging for food.

Where do I live?

This species occurs in Kenya, north-eastern Tanzania and southern Somalia. They live in forest and wooded thickets, preferring areas with mature fruiting trees.

Pairs of Fischer's turacos establish a breeding territory which they will defend fiercely against any mammals which get too close. They build a flat, fragile nest of twigs 3 to 10 metres from the ground in dense tree foliage. These turacos lay 2 off-white eggs which are almost spherical, and which both the male and female help to incubate. When the young hatch out they are covered in a thick coat of dark brown down. The parents feed them on regurgitated food. The young may start leaving the nest to clamber and hop in nearby branches at as young as 10 days old.

African goshawks are known to prey on turacos and their nests.

The main threats to Fischer's turacos are from trapping for the pet trade and the clearance of their forest habitat. They are protected by being on CITES Appendix II, which means that the trade in these birds or any of their parts is restricted. They are also found in at least one National Park.

Did you know?

Turacos are weak fliers, but their toes are specially arranged, with one which can be moved so it is pointing almost to the front or back of the foot or at a right angle, which helps them to move easily along branches and through foliage.

Turacos are the only species in the animal kingdom known to have copper pigments in their feathers. These pigments give them their bright colours.

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