fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Never Still
By: Nicole Ivy
Tags: Memories, Death, Prose, Poetry, Life

Wavy Boardwalk by Nicole Ivy

I turn the corner and start slowly down the old worn waving boardwalk. I look down and many planks have names carved in the middle of them. Some have mini plaques mounted on the side with loving words for those who’ve past more than a few decades ago. I feel like I’m walking through time, curious about all these lives I haven’t lived and never knew. I wonder what this place was like when their names weren’t carved into the wood under my feet.

At the dock, I look out over the water rippling, just like the boardwalk. Never still.

Everything is always in motion. It may seem like things stop, but they don’t really. It’s constant transition. If you follow someone’s last breath out of their mouth, the molecules keep going out into the air. The air we breathe is just borrowed. Pieces of us are everywhere. The same goes for those who have past. A name carved into the boardwalk is just a reminder that for a while, molecules were arranged beautifully in a specific shape we grew to know and love, animated by something we don’t understand. They didn’t go anywhere. They went everywhere. We were lucky enough to share part of the human experience with them for a while.

And then we all go on. Never still.
Mindfulness
Tags: Mindfulness, Promises, Poetry, One Line

I promise to stay open

to the here and now

of me, everything,

everyone,

for little hints, signs

to become noticed

so I can seize the moment

and decide.
“Don’t invest in it, it’s a scam!”
By: David O.
Tags: Future, Cryptocurrency, Technology, Bitcoin, Investing

“Don’t invest in it, it’s a scam!”

The beautiful thing about setbacks

Photo by Nicolas Cool on Unsplash

Over the last 300 years, civilization has grown by leaps and bounds. It’s so interesting that what could not be achieved in 3,000 years was achieved in less than 300. There is a reason for that, but that’s not why I’m here. Consider how this change in the last 300 years have affected the lifestyle of people. And now look at today, and what kind of reality people have to face whether they like it or not.

There was a man I know who loved business. He is well invested in stocks and encouraged others to do so. He introduced brokers to a lot of people. Then the 2008/2009 financial crisis happened. This was not the USA, this was a country hit more strongly by the ripple effect. The stocks got crazily diluted and they have not recovered to the 2006/2007 levels till date. You know how the man must feel. Not just for himself but for those who made losses on his recommendation.

Fast forward a few years later, bitcoin came. He told me he knew about bitcoin when it was less than $5. He said no to it. Not a wrong call though, because he didn’t understand it and those who brought it to him couldn’t explain it properly. Perhaps if he did then, it would have been misplaced or hacked. But you know how volatile the crypto market is. After seeing some amazing drops, he concluded it was a scam. But there is a technology behind it! No one seems to care. The next thing I was hearing from my folks was:

Don’t invest in bitcoin, it is a scam!

When I asked them, how is it a scam? The only thing they can mumble is that it dropped so hard in value. Do you know what drives it? Do you know what problem it solves? Do you know how its value is determined? Do you know what the future holds concerning it? Do you know how it compares against other currencies? All they say is that it is a scam. And well, that’s fearful people for you. So here’s my question for them, now that you believe crypto is a scam, what are you going to invest in?

The cypto world has had it rough so far this year. I got into the ecosystem around September 2017. Owning bitcoin or any other coin in itself is not an investment and I knew this from the onset. My focus was on the passive income. And so far, I have no regrets; I am in it for the world of the future. However, it is just annoying when you find people who look at the setback in the crypto world and judge based on it. The setbacks are actually good because they separate those who are interested in the long term growth and development of the ecosystem from the short term speculators who came in because of the up-spikes in prices.

As for me, I plan to have 5 income streams before the end of the year. Only 2 are functional right now. Would add the third one this month. Strongly hope I can generate enough income to start travelling around the world from next year. Cheers!
Alphabetical Poetry.
By: Kira Dawn
Tags: Self Esteem, Rhymes, Poetry, Illumination, Alphabet

A Writer...memoirs of the journey that has led me to the Gorgeous Mess of Chaos that I am. One with God. I am merely a vessel. I will always be me.

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What does the future hold for RegTech?
By: The Up Group
Tags: Regulatory Compliance, Regtech, Fintech, Roundtables, Disruption

RegTech is one of the UK’s most nascent tech sectors, encompassing a whole range of different solutions — from identity verification, through to KYC and AML compliance and employee monitoring. We gathered a group of founders from some of the UK’s leading RegTech businesses, including Onfido, Behavox, ComplyAdvantage, DueDil, Suade Labs, TruNarrative, Trailight, along with representatives from financial institutions, investors and the Financial Conduct Authority — to discuss some of the key opportunities and challenges ahead.

A shared challenge for many scaling RegTech businesses is how to sell their solutions into large financial institutions, who are often tricky to navigate and risk-adverse (especially when presented with cloud-based technologies). The long on-boarding process which comes with winning a flagship client can potentially kill a startup. As an alternative, one strategy could be to focus on winning “Tier 2” customers, including more digitally-minded FinTechs and eCommerce businesses who must comply with the same regulations as incumbents. In doing so, RegTechs can build up a critical mass of customers which will eventually lead to the larger institutions coming to them.

The discussion also touched on the forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will affect how businesses handle and manage data. The RegTechs around the table were largely unfazed by this change, given that their businesses are inherently adaptable.

The outlook for RegTech seems bright, with UK regulators widely praised for their attitude towards FinTech, which has also produced a fertile environment for cultivating RegTech. We look forward to watching this burgeoning sector progress.
Forgive Yourself the Bad Days
By: Zach J. Payne
Tags: Writing, Art, Productivity, Wellness, Creativity

I have to admit, I’ve not been as productive as I’ve wanted to be this month.

We’re a week into NaNoWriMo, and my word count hasn’t broken 10,000 yet. While I’ve been working on it every day, I’ve been doing pathetically little each day. In addition to my work and keeping my blog going, I’ve just been worn out.

Today was a complete bust. Not only did I sleep most of the day, when I woke up, I got into the shower and straight to the ER. (Weird rash on my leg. It’s fine. Probably a cellulitis infection. I’m home now.) That, in conjunction with the wounds on my other leg. . . well, I’m feeling like crap.

And it’s dragging my work down. It feels terribly lazy and horrible to say this, but, mostly, I feel the draw to just lay down in bed and put on an audiobook.

That’s not to say I don’t want to work. Because I do. And this isn’t an up-swell of my depression: I want to work. I want to get my writing done. I want to be able to go down to the gym and start working out. I’ve lost nearly 100 pounds over the last few months. I’m excited and encouraged by that, and by everything else.

But my body is dragging me down.
Lisk ICO Passphrase Generation & Validation Deadline
Tags: ICO, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Lisk, Bitcoin

If you participated in our Initial Coin Offering (ICO) you had to generate and validate a passphrase for every crypto-currency exchange initiated.

The Lisk Academy provides guides on How to Generate your Lisk ICO Passphrase and How to Validate your Lisk ICO Passphrase. If you haven’t followed these steps yet we urgently advise you to do so as soon as possible.

In order to finalise the ICO account database and have ample time for testing the mainnet genesis block, we have decided on placing a deadline for the generation and validation of ICO passphrases.

As of May 9th, 2016, the generation and validation of ICO passphrases will be discontinued.

The deadline is also effective for lost passphrases as we will not be able to reset them beyond May 9th. If you currently lost your validated passphrase, make sure to send us a support ticket requesting a passphrase reset before May 9, 2016.

In the case you lose your validated passphrase after May 9th, you will lose access to your LISK; resulting in a total loss of your funds.

Attention! We will not include any Lisk account ID in the genesis block which is not validated! If you fall under this category (you still have time to validate your passphrase until May 9!) you can only receive your LISK manually from us after launch. In this case you will have to send us a support request specifying your ICO email address and a newly generated Lisk account ID.

Thank you very much.

Kind regards,

Max Kordek, CEO of Lisk
MiiX•ASCH Hackathon 2019
Tags: Blockchain, Blockchain Technology, Aschnews

MiiX, together with 2050 Conference, ASCH Platform, CSDN, etc., invites you to participate in the hackathon in Hangzhou, China!

Event: 2050 Conference: MiiX• ASCH Hackathon

Organizers: 2050 Conference, MiiX, ASCH Platform

Location: Yunqi Town, Hangzhou, China

Time: April 26–28, 2019

Competition Theme: Get together to create remarkable dApps and explore the future!

What is 2050 Conference?

2050 Conference was initiated by Hangzhou Yunqi Science and Technology Innovation Foundation. It is a conference aimed at young people. It will allow young people to stand in the spotlight, talk about innovation, look towards the future and face the challenges with a young mind.

From May 25 to 27, 2018, the first 2050 conference was held in Yunqi, Hangzhou, gathering tens of thousands of young people around the world who embrace science and technology.

Dr. Wang Jian, Founder of Alibaba Cloud & Yunqi Science and Technology Innovation Foundation, said that 2050 is a reunion rather than a conference. 2050 allows the young generation to show their responsibility to the world and their promise for the future.
My Friend, the Squirting Expert
By: Ena Dahl
Tags: Sex Tips, Sex, How To Squirt, Female Ejaculation, Interview

If I was to get super-specific:

Get her ready to burst

Warm-up

Start how you’d normally have sex, and do everything you do to get your partner wet: relax and arouse her with lots of kissing, touching and foreplay.

Turn on the faucet

You want to give her pussy your full attention for a while; rub her clit and use your fingers for manual stimulation.

Don’t start with the squirting moves too soon, as the friction will make her dry up if she’s not ready.

Make her as wet as you possibly can; turn her into a waterfall.

Add lube, spit or whatever you need, and turn her on in every way you know—body and mind.

Be hands-on

Your hand-technique is important. Everyone should, in theory, be really good at fingering because it’s the first place where we’re allowed to begin when we start having sex.

For many, using their hands is their main way of bringing their partners to orgasm.

Without good manual skills, you won’t make anyone squirt.

As a woman, if your partner can’t bring you to orgasm with their hands alone, squirting will be hard. You don’t need a squirt master, but you need someone who can do this.

There are many ways to learn, and women can also teach their partners what motions they like, how many fingers, and so on.

Climb to the summit

If you’re dexterous enough to finger her, while playing with her clit, using either one or two hands, you’re on the right path; you know when to speed up and slow down, and you’re familiar enough with the vagina to know how it feels at its peak wetness.

Locate the g-spot

When you reach that point, you’re right between an orgasm and something else—that’s when you can go for the squirt.

If you haven’t already been stimulating it, now is when you have to find the g-spot. Point your fingers up, towards her belly and find an area that has a slightly different texture.

There’s a bump that you can almost ‘hook’ behind. While you’re moving vigorously, you also have to be sensitive to what you’re doing because you don’t want to hurt her. Doing this, she’ll get wetter and wetter.

“Where’s all this liquid coming from? Who knows? Who cares?”

Go!

Then you just keep building. If she’s willing to go there and you’re sensitive enough to read her, you can adjust, and you’ll make her squirt.
Sorrow: Self-Discovery Oracle Card
By: Jordin James
Tags: Mental Health, Psychology, Self Improvement, Self, Spirituality

Be still and experience the sweet healing that comes from fully feeling your sorrow.

You will not get stuck in it. The tears always stop when you’ve cried all you need to cry.

Let that lump in your throat express itself through sobs. Let the pain of your broken heart wash over you and out your eyes.

The very tears you cry from pain are the holy water that heals it.

Your sorrow is where god meets you. It is where you meet yourself.

Sorrow is only ever leading you back to the peace within you on the other side of your tears.

Don’t keep your sorrow trapped inside. Let it come out.

Let yourself heal.
Our desert waits still
By: Vaishali Paliwal
Tags: Love, Relationships, Poetry

How should we write of illusions

Lingering in the backyards of

Our slipped stories of love

That tried to connect continents

Destined for lives of islands

Growing as piles of mud

Surrounded by deep deep water

Just water

Seas die too

We are irrecoverable now

We are pink moons no longer existing

In the song of a dead guitarist

Of another time

We are torn pages never read

All grand stories of love end

But

Our desert waits

Still

—

Vaishali Paliwal
I Love Coding Tutorials, but…
By: Yazeed Bzadough
Tags: Learning To Code, JavaScript, Analysis Paralysis, Front End Development, Web Development

We’ve all heard the complaints. JavaScript’s been knocked countless times for having too many

Frameworks Build tools “Utility” libraries Ways to do anything

While all valid points, they don’t concern me like this one:

Javascript Tutorials Are Everywhere

JavaScript’s evolution has only been outpaced by its explosion in the education scene. We see a new framework every week but JS bootcamps, courses, and tutorials are collectively conceived by the second!

Navigating our vibrant ecosystem has never been easier…or harder.

We’re fortunate to have so much learning content, but I foresee even more confusion in our dear newbies’ futures. The beginner’s natural question, “Where do I start?”, will evolve into “Who do I start with?” followed by questions like

Which bootcamp should I join?

Which courses should I buy?

Which videos should I watch?

Whose blog should I follow? (I recommend this one 😉)

That’s what happens when we’re given too many options, resulting in the ever-fatal

Paralysis Analysis

This already torments developers, including myself, and I fear it’ll worsen. Here’s Wikipedia’s definition if you’re new to the term.

Analysis paralysis or paralysis by analysis is the state of over-analyzing (or over-thinking) a situation so that a decision or action is never taken, in effect paralyzing the outcome.

Think back to your school days when the teacher said, “Your essay can be on any topic!”.

Photo (without text) by Mikhail Vasilyev on Unsplash

And what happens? Your motivational fire’s doused, freezing all progress and leaving you out in the cold. Learning something new makes you equally susceptible to this paralysis.

The Cure

The only cure is structure–a schedule of what, when, and how to learn. Bootcamps shine in this regard. Their dense curriculums rigorously cover exactly what you need to begin job-hunting in 3–6 months. Online courses are of a similar nature as they’re analogous to smaller, less-encompassing bootcamps.

Whatever the road, structure’s your vehicle. Otherwise you‘re riding down a dangerous path. Disorganization begets chaos. As I wrote in How to Learn Anything:

Set a target, learn just enough to hit it, teach someone, repeat.

Follow this process while you’re attending Hack Reactor, watching a YouTube video, or reading someone’s Medium article.

I love JavaScript and everyone using and contributing to it. My livelihood’s been made through this language. Let’s keep growing our community, but also assist anyone wondering what, or with whom to start learning JavaScript.

Until next time!

Take care,

Yazeed Bzadough
Why we should care about heirloom grains and Anson Mills
By: Callie Cavanaugh
Tags: Agriculture, Food, Seeds, Heirloom

Anson Mills specializes in handmade mill goods from organic heirloom grains. The first time I heard of Anson Mills was on a menu that mentioned their Carolina Gold Rice, although it wasn’t until the Mind of a Chef episode starring Chef Sean Brock that I understood how special this company is.

Glen Roberts, the founder, is an avid food historian motivated to preserve heritage and quality grains. Glen has instilled his passion in his company which values and engages in seed saving, which is the process of storage and reproduction of heirloom grains that are in low supply and have the potential to go extinct. They take immense pride in each of their products, especially their famous Carolina Gold Rice.

“In some ways, we hope to restart the Carolina Rice Kitchen cuisine itself — a cuisine that depends on a complex agricultural system suited to local conditions and cultural needs. It is an effort that requires extraordinary research into planting practices, seedsmanship, and preparation.”

If you watch the Mind of a Chef episode, you can observe their old school harvesting production process. They aren’t just saying handmade…they mean it! First, each grain variety has been hand-selected for quality and preservation. Their farming system is based upon sustainable rice horticulture, and follow the sustainable rice-crop rotation. Their harvesting process includes chopping each stalk by hand. “Glenn himself farms 160 acres by hand — and that acreage grows every year.”

Their product line ranges from corn, rice, wheat, rye, oats, buckwheat, faro, benne, and beans. On their website, each product is introduced with the history and special flavor profile. There are numerous recipes that correspond to each product and they encourage you to use them, not because they think you can’t cook, but because they are special products. “We’ve spent hundreds of hours developing the recipes we offer on this website. These recipes follow the stream of authentic foodways and work beautifully with our products.”

The care and precision for each grain is felt in the natural, simple packaging that each product is wrapped in. Simple, little brown bags hold each variety of Anson Mills grain. It is like receiving an old school package through the post, ensuing the authenticity of each product. When you open each bag, the product shines against the natural brown exterior…you can tell it is all about the quality of the product even before cooking it. Then you cook it, and instantly understand the beauty of Anson Mills.

Check them out here
How to build a microservice with AWS Lambda in Groovy
By: Benoit Hediard
Tags: AWS, Microservices, Groovy, Tech

At AgoraPulse, we love to focus on building our applications and pushing new features instead of managing/scaling infrastructure. That’s why our tech stack relies heavily on:

AWS managed services (Elastic Beanstalk, S3, SQS, DynamoDB, Kinesis, etc),

(Elastic Beanstalk, S3, SQS, DynamoDB, Kinesis, etc), Groovy ecosystem (Grails, Gradle, Spock, GPars, etc).

When AWS announced Lambda in November 2014, I got pretty excited but only nodejs/javascript runtime was supported at that time.

AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the compute resources for you, making it easy to build applications that respond quickly to new information.

In June, AWS finally expanded Lambda programming model to support Java 8 runtime and therefore various JVM languages such as Groovy. Shortly after that, in July, they introduced API Gateway which tightly integrates with AWS Lambda to allow you to create completely server-less APIs.

Amazon API Gateway is a fully managed service that makes it easy for developers to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale.

Yesterday, I finally took the time to experiment with all of this by building an HelloWorld microservice (nanoservice?) example in Groovy.

Do you remember my post on The evolution of software architecture (italian food perspective)?

In this article, we are going in 100% ravioli mode.

Bon appétit !
Instagram Filter Marketing｜為什麼行銷．品牌．自媒體都需要有一個IG濾鏡？
Tags: Instagram Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Ig Filter, Instagram Filter, Ig濾鏡行銷學

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Algorithmic Glass Ceilings and Gendered Echo Chambers: “Bias Amplification” in Social Networks
By: Jon Pincus
Tags: Diversity, Research, Social Media, Computer Science, Algorithms

A pair of recent papers highlights how today’s social networks not only reflect societal biases, but can actually amplify them.

Ana-Andreea Stoica et. al.’s Algorithmic glass ceiling in social networks: the effects of social recommendations on network diversity looks at the effect of “social recommendations” such as friend suggestions and people to follow, both at the theoretical level and empirically on Instagram. The authors find that “prominent social recommendation algorithms can exacerbate the under-representation of certain demographic groups at the top of the social hierarchy.” More specifically:

Our mathematical analysis demonstrates the existence of an algorithmic glass ceiling that exhibits all the properties of the metaphorical social barrier that hinders groups like women or people of colour from attaining equal representation. One would a priori expect similarity metrics, usually the basis of recommender systems, to contribute to sustaining disparities among various groups. We show much more: using empirical evidence from newly collected data on Instagram and a rigorous analysis of mathematical models, we prove that prominent recommender algorithms reinforce the rate at which disparity grows.

The first couple of sections of the paper are a quick read, after which it gets into some heavy-duty math. Fortunately, Kim Martineau’s How Social Networking Sites May Discriminate Against Women on Columbia News, is a good summary; and Adrian Collyer, on the ACM’s The morning paper, walks through the paper in detail.

The underlying dynamic here of homophily — people’s tendency to prefer to interact with people similar to themselves — isn’t new. Neither is the idea of a “glass ceiling” in social media,* or realization that algorithmic recommendations reflect societal biases.** What’s important about this paper is both the formal model and the experimental results showing bias amplification.

Meanwhile, Nikki Usher et al’s Twitter Makes It Worse: Political Journalists, Gendered Echo Chambers, and the Amplification of Gender Bias, looks at “beltway journalists’ peer-to-peer relationships on Twitter — or how journalists use the platform to legitimate, amplify, and engage each other,” and similarly finds substantial evidence of gender bias. In particular:

Most alarming is that male journalists amplify and engage male peers almost exclusively, while female journalists tend to engage most with each other. The significant support for claims of gender asymmetry as well as evidence of gender silos are findings that not only underscore the importance of further research but also suggest overarching consequences for the structure of contemporary political communication.

Hey wait a second, I’m noticing a pattern here!
Nokia begins selling black and red E71s
By: Justin Cauchon
Tags: E71, Symbian, Nokia, Red E71, Black E71

Just when you thought the E71 was old news, Nokia decides to bring it back. Nokia introduced two new colors to the E71 line. Starting today, you will be able to get your hands on a black E71 or a white and red E71. This is a nice change from the old grey or white they offered before.

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Web Services of Information Technology
By: Ventura It
Tags: Information Technology, Web Desiging, Web Development, It Solution Company, Ventura It

Ventura IT is one of the oldest active web design companies in Los Angeles and providing services from before the start of the Internet.

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Dreaming Dragons
By: Susannah Mackinnie
Tags: Poetry, Fiction, Poetry On Medium, Fantasy, Dreams

A fragment of light

Flickering golden shadows

Magical being

In the night, amidst fire and wind, he cast an enchantment over me, a thick weaving of harsh guttural words that caught and held me fast, hiding me, thread by thread, within luminous scales and smoldering eyes. For a moment, a young girl’s shadow remained. Then it too became dragon.

The surrounding sands changed into the unyielding, glimmering glass.

The folk in the town said I was guarding the hidden riches in the lofty spire. Little did they suspect that I was the secret treasure in the tower.
This is What it’s Really Like to Retire as a Stripper
By: Erin Taylor
Tags: Work, Sex Work, Mental Health, Self, Sexuality

This is What it’s Really Like to Retire as a Stripper

It’s never easy to walk away from money and freedom, and leaving the strip club is no exception.

Photo by Alfonso Scarpa on Unsplash

Weeks before I started stripping, I turned down a corporate job opportunity after finishing business school. I walked away from a steady income and the generous accolades that come with a corporate lifestyle and reputation because I was desperate to find genuine satisfaction in my life; one I knew I wouldn’t find among my conservative friends and professional circle.

I never truly felt like I could be myself around the people I grew up with or the men I dated. I was a sex-positive young woman living in hiding — afraid of being discovered as someone who supports sex workers and consumes porn regularly.

So I moved across the country and I gave up my old life to become a stripper.

It was the best decision I ever made as a young adult for many reasons, but the biggest one being that I found what I was looking for in stripping.

Stripping allowed me to let go of a repressed upbringing and sex-negative attitudes.

Stripping gave me permission to love my naked body unapologetically and accept myself as sex-positive, porn-consuming, sex worker-loving, open-minded woman from a conservative family.

This job opened my eyes to people from all walks of life. It erased any harmful stereotypes I ever learned about people who work in sex work and the patrons who keep the industry booming.

As a stripper, I was a happy, healthy, 23-year-old making a lot of money, erasing financial debt, and traveling the world with other sexually liberated people.

I lived my early twenties in total bliss.

But even from the beginning, I was realistic about the shelf life on this job. I knew this kind of lifestyle wouldn’t be shiny and pretty forever. And I knew stripping wouldn’t make me happy long term. It couldn’t.

After four years of stripping, I felt it in my heart that it was over. I was as miserable in the club as I was outside of it.

That was the most important sign that told me my time was up and I had to stop denying it: the money and freedom couldn’t make me happy anymore.
Fall.. Fall Asleep
By: Yaman Nimer
Tags: Love, Heartbreak, Poetry, Life

it is when you’re on the cusp of

sinking in, of slipping away

right when you feel safe enough to

close your eyes, and loosen your grip

that all your delicate reasons,

like beads from a broken necklace

come undone.

the truth is a devious, sly bastard..

to the uneasy souls living lies,

it comes knocking at that moment

when you feel like a child again,

only to remind you of the monsters

in your head

when you’re bare to the night.

yet you always seem to forget how useless it is

to keep pleading with the truth —

“my hands were tied”, you said

“my mouth was sewn shut”, you said

yet one step after another, you took.

you might as well have

slowed down a little bit to enjoy the view

of the destruction in your wake..

or you might as well just slip away

and fall… fall asleep.
Authentically Us Screens at World VR Forum #WVRF in partnership with VRRoom.
By: Fovrth Studios
Tags: Jesseayala, Virtual Reality, Updates, LGBTQ, World Vr Forum

Authentically Us: We’re Still Here showcased at the 2018 World VR Forum for the series Swiss Premiere. World VR Forum is the world’s foremost gathering of VR creators and a forward looking festival on all things immersive. The film was presented in partnership with VRROOM, a leading voice in VR and immersive news.
Gene ID mapping using R
By: Gitanjali Roy
Tags: Biotechnology, Genomics, Programming, Protein, R

Gene ID mapping using R

How to overcome problems faced during mapping gene IDs?

Image by LionFive from Pixabay

Inter-conversion of gene ID’s is the most important aspect enabling genomic and proteomic data analysis. There are multiple tools available each with its own drawbacks. While performing enrichment analysis on Mass Spectrometry datasets, I had always struggled to prepare the input files required for each of the packages in R. It takes some data tweaking and cleanup to enable the R tools or packages to accept them as an input. The struggle is more in case of UniProt id’s as very few applications accept them as input. Although UniProt provides the retrieve id mapping function, it does not take into account the number of rows which means any protein or gene id which cannot be mapped is simply omitted from the output file. This makes combining the datasets difficult.

There are numerous tools available for such kind of ID mapping. Here I am laying out a few R packages that I have used and worked smoothly.

The org.Hs.eg.db package or the org.Mm.eg.db package is to be used for human and mice respectively. mapIds can take any input form like UniProt id, HGNC symbol, Ensembl id and Entrez id and interconvert them.

library(‘org.Mm.eg.db’) ensembl<-mapIds(org.Mm.eg.db, keys=rownames(df), column=’ENSEMBL’, keytype=’SYMBOL’, multiVals=”first”) entrez<-mapIds(org.Mm.eg.db, keys=rownames(df), column=’ENTREZID’, keytype=’SYMBOL’, multiVals=”first”) entrez<-mapIds(org.Mm.eg.db, keys=rownames(df), column=’UNIPROT’, keytype=’SYMBOL’, multiVals=”first”)

mapIds() returns a named vector of id’s.

The output can be merged to the original dataset using `cbind` for further downstream analysis. The one advantage that I have noticed with mapIds is that it matches the gene id’s row by row and inserts NA when it can’t find gene names or symbols for certain UniProt id’s. This is a huge lifesaver when working with huge datasets.

2. biomaRt package

require(biomaRt) mart<-useMart(biomart = “ensembl”, dataset = “mmusculus_gene_ensembl”) mart <- useDataset(dataset=”mmusculus_gene_ensembl”, mart=mart) mapping <- getBM(attributes=c(“mgi_symbol”,”ensembl_gene_id”,”entrezgene_id”), filters = “mgi_symbol”, mart=mart, values=data, uniqueRows=TRUE, bmHeader = T)

For human hgnc_symbol and for mouse mgi_symbol is to be used.

Generally, with biomaRt, extra work is required after you perform the initial mapping. You will note that biomaRt does not even return the genes in the same order in which they were submitted.

3. bitr from ClusterProfiler package

The ClusterProfiler package was developed by Guangchuang Yu for statistical analysis and visualization of functional profiles for genes and gene clusters. The org.Hs.eg.db or the org.Mm.eg.db package is to be used for human and mice respectively. The key types can be obtained by typing keytypes(org.Mm.eg.db) .

Apart from the R functions listed above there are various tools for gene ID conversion like DAVID, UCSC gene ID converter etc. for non-programmers.
Submitting to My Pubs and Celebrating Your Own
By: Gretchen Lee Bourquin, Pom-Poet
Tags: Publication Spotlight, Medium, Guidelines, New Publication

Vagabond Roads is one one three publications I am open to taking new writers. The others are Brave&Inspired — stories of personal courage. And The Platform and Picklings — Stories about the Medium Journey and celebration of smaller publications on the platform. I wrote an article in P&P that helps explain it all. I’m still a little fish, but I’m looking to help my fellow small fry on Medium.

Vagabond Roads is intended to be more literary in nature, with poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. Following a prompt is a good place to start. I will add writers via the comments but may delete if work is not the right fit.
The Guilt That Comes From Rest
By: Rachel Riendeau
Tags: Self Care, Mental Health, Anxiety, Rest, Work Life Balance

Photo by nine koepfer on Unsplash

It rises up from the depths of my stomach into my chest and takes root. It spreads across my shoulders and into the base of my neck, my skull, behind my eyes. My mind whirrs like a machine, spinning, chugging, clicking with a million of thoughts.

Am I doing enough?

Did I do that well?

Am I enough?

I try and rest and find I am unable. My body cries out and aches with the soreness of constant movement. Movement in my head, my heart, my stationary position in front of screens. It screams at me to rest and I cannot. There is so much more to do, to write, to create.

If I do not do it, the guilt will choke me. Resting isn’t an option when you have so much to do. The guilt reminds me of that.

Will there ever be a time where I can rest without the guilt? Where I can truly practice what I preach and donate my time to self care? Not donate, perhaps, but assign, commit, devote.

How does anyone avoid the guilt? Is it a secret? Another language? A magic trick or perhaps a rusted key to a locked door? Tell me. I beg of you.

My breath is all I have to relax me. I let myself breathe and the breath helps. My body is soothed and reminded it is alive and can do this work. It must do this work.

What has happened to us where rest gives birth to guilt?

How can we change the narrative?

I often wonder what Death will ask. Will they ask if we did enough? Will they ask if we are satisfied with our effort? Will they be pleased we never rested?

Will we?
Winging it as a Trolley Dolly in the Persian Gulf
By: Edel Quinn
Tags: Middle East, Travel, Cabincrew

VIP Life

My new home during the first six weeks of cabin crew training was the luxurious 5 star Gulf Hotel & Spa in Manama. My fellow trainees and I had full board including use of the pool and gym on a daily basis. We had our pick of all the hotel restaurants and spent most of our nights flirting with handsome US Navy officers and sipping cocktails in the hotel bar, The Sherlock Holmes. Our VIP lifestyle was about to begin and we were going to milk it for what it was worth!

One of the hardest daily adjustments was being awoken at the crack of dawn by the sound of the muezzin from the mosque summoning the faithful to prayer. Even when I used ear plugs I could still hear it! The day begins early in Bahrain and our transport was waiting to collect us at 6.45am to bring us to the Gulf Air headquarters for our training.
BEST OF SPEAKING OF CRYPTO 2018 — PART TWO
By: Shannon Grinnell
Tags: Business, Blockchain, Blockchain Technology, Bitcoin, Leadership

Best of the Speaking of Crypto podcast 2018 — Part Two

The best of the best — 2! Blockchain experts share their ideas, their big picture thinking around what’s going on in the blockchain ecosystem.

This show covers some of the most thought-provoking moments from the past year on Speaking of Crypto.

If you haven’t heard it yet, please take a listen to the first of this two part, end of year, wrap up! This second episode of compilation of clips contains some of the best content of the podcast from all of 2018.

Part Two of this end of year wrap up features the following guests:

1:40 Sandra Ro, Global Blockchain Business Council

Social impact and education

Giving people around the world financial options

5:36 Matthew Spoke, AION Foundation

Decentralized infrastructure

The monetary value of the internet

8:56 Hartej Sawhney, Hosho

What Fortune 500 companies are up to with blockchain

the future of wearable tech and data collection

11:55 Bruce Silcoff, Shyft Network

digital IDs

people around the world with no official formal identification

14:20 Michael Hyatt, BlueCat

Companies have to be real with a product, cash flow, profit

Security tokens are backed by a real product

17:36 Susan Oh, Blockchain For Impact

Blockchain transparency

giving away our personal data

20:00 Dr. Jane Thomason, Abt Associates

A gap in funding for startups esp for social impact

Global collaboration in overcoming inequalities across the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals

24:29 Leon Gerard Vandenberg, Solara

Solar punk mash up of motivated citizens who care about the environment and who want to use technology to help

Financial inclusion through solar energy sharing and transparency

28:05 Sam Kazemian, Everipedia

Useful Dapps and stablecoins

Getting through the unglamorous part of founding a startup

30:42 Bill Ottman, Minds

Decentralized architecture and open source software’s value

Freedom of information and free speech

35:33 Mann Matharu, Stark Technologies

That a ha moment with bitcoin and blockchain technology

Creating a fairer world

37:49 Betsabe Botaitis, AIKON
humor microfiction
Tags: Humor, Short Story, Fiction, Funny, Microfiction

Micro-humor

Son’s Bully

A hundred-word microfiction

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

“Dad. Today I bravely confronted my bully and punched him squarely on his nose.”

“Whoa! I’m proud of you, my boy.”

“But the principal suspended me for three months, and my bully was set free, dad.”

“How dare he? I will sue him if he doesn’t take you back immediately.”
What is Chlorophyll Water?
By: Shao Zhou
Tags: Health, Water, Lifestyle, Food, Wellness

Going over a decade strong, green juice is sworn by celebrities, wellness enthusiasts, and fitness buffs. If it’s green, it must be good. The marketing is so sticky that my fridge remains stocked with Whole Foods or Evolution pressed juice bottles. Forget the $5 latte — I’d rather make coffee at home and throw down double at Joe & the Juice.

Green juice has been a way to sneak in nutrients versus munching on an entire salad every day (not today, sad salad!). What’s the difference between a regular versus cold-pressed juice? Cold-pressing juice is the process of separating the fiber from the cells of fruits and vegetables. The machines that do this use hydraulic power to crush the juice out of plants. While the process of cold-pressing takes longer and produces less juice at once, it's the inefficiencies of cold-pressing that make it so sought after.

Theoretically, cold-pressed juice is richer in quality content than its centrifugal counterpart. Centrifugal juicers are faster and retain some of the plant’s pulp. It’s probably what was used to make your mom’s fresh-squeezed orange juice growing up. Its speed produces heat that causes oxidation (the same process that ages us) and breaks down the juice enzymes. Cold-pressed juice uses little-to-no heat and thereby minimizes oxidation and extracts juice in its purest form.
Queer
By: Allied Writers
Tags: India, Queer, Poetry, LGBTQ, Solidarity

My queer self has been

mislabelled

Miss taken

for many things

since birth

She

has been assumed

Straight

Away

to be the same

perfectly. Same.

My queer body has tried on

every size

has grown too far

to fit any

narrow

mind

Has been cloaked

in lies woven into

the very fabric

of history,

of your imaginations

for me

My queer tongue

has spelt out words

incorrectly

for my self

for my safety

for your comfort.

Has been held

to not displace

your sense of security.

Your privilege.

My queer feet

have danced in shoes

placed before me

that would not fit,

could not be my own.

Have tried to hide

the scars of my journey

that only begin there,

curling upwards in embrace

tracing each

story

over razor’s edge

till the million blades

of my hair.

My queer soul has raged

screaming

within the walls of my body

A form

inherited at birth.

It has longed

for escape

Banging against the insides

It has torn

away at the fiction

of my changing

realities.

My queer heart

Has been broken

Rebuilt

Broken

Rebuilt, endlessly

by many hands

In the search for a truth

I am creating

Every day, re inventing

My queer ness

has become

and is done

with

You
Perempuan dan Teknologi
By: Astrila Ikhlasia Eprina
Tags: Purwadhikastartupschool, Women In Tech, International Womens Day

a place for startup and tech enthusiast to grow with Purwadhika Digital Technology School

Follow
COVID-19 Requires More Democracy, Not Less
By: Harvard Ash Center
Tags: Democracy, Covid 19, Government

In a pandemic it is natural to wish for decisive leadership from big government authorities guided by the best science and medical expertise. It is tempting to set aside democratic niceties — questioning authority, raising alternative perspectives, vigorous debate, disagreement, and experimentation — in favor of trusting leaders and experts. Echoing this widespread notion, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote recently in the Atlantic that “what matters” to success in dealing with COVID-19 is “whether citizens trust their leaders, and whether those leaders preside over a competent and effective state.”

But the idea that we must sacrifice our democratic impulses in favor of strong central authority is dangerously misguided. Maintaining a robust participatory democracy is the best way for Americans to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and to rebuild our society in its wake. In a vibrant democracy, citizens oriented toward the common good do their part to make society work well. In this pandemic, that means that each of us needs to do our part to stop the disease and to help figure out the best ways for our communities to move forward.

Visit the Boston Review to read more
How to restore/view the balance of your paper wallet
By: Paul Bugnot
Tags: Tutorial, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Wallet

While we have a GUI wallet and CLI wallet available, some people prefer using cold wallets to create their X-CASH address.

Through this quick guide, we will show you how to generate an X-CASH paper wallet with our generator, and how to restore it to check your balance on an online wallet.

1. Generate a paper wallet

First of all, you need to generate a paper wallet to get your XCA public address and mnemonic seed. Go to the X-CASH paper wallet generator, and generate a wallet.

For increased security, we recommend you to download the page locally and run it offline.
Back
By: Christie Alex Costello
Tags: Poetry, Self-awareness, Love, A Cornered Gurl, Self Love

Get lost in the energy

but don’t lose your memory

The ways you came up

It’s never the same

when you change

it's for the better,

best, maybe.

The world wants you

to see,

but don’t look back

when you

look like that.

Darkness doesn’t hide

the light

You don’t have to

do that fight.

Sometimes to evolve

you have to find

deep resolve in the mess.

Promise me you won’t let them

give you less.

Do the best and

let recycled energy

do the rest.

-CC
Costa Rica Becomes the First Nation to Ban Fossil Fuels
By: In Kind
Tags: Climate Change, Sustainability, Renewable Energy, Environment, Costa Rica

Sustainability has become the focus of the world over the last decade, and many countries have made great strides in their efforts to combat climate change. Japan has achieved nearly zero waste in select towns, and over 40% of Denmark’s citizens commute by bicycle to work.

Today, Costa Rica took steps to eclipsing even these amazing countries in terms of sustainability. President Carlos Alvarado announced they would be banning fossil based fuels altogether. This makes Costa Rica the first country in the world to completely decarbonize.

“Getting rid of fossil fuels is a big idea coming from a small country. This is an idea that’s starting to gain international support with the rise of new technologies,” Costa Rican economist Monica Araya said.

As unlikely as going carbon-free in today’s modern world might seem, Costa Rica already derives 99% of its energy from renewable sources. Their biggest hurdle will be in the transportation industry, where there is very little in the way of development in that sector and demand for cars is growing.

Luckily, plans are already under way to help address the issues at a cultural level. Many Costa Ricans already appreciate the benefits if renewable energy, and Hyundais (a favorite vehicle in Costa Rica) are available completely fossil fuel free. Costa Rica Limpia, an organization helping to push the decarbonization efforts, plans to have these cars available for citizens to test drive and take a look at.

President Carlos Alvarado has set a goal of decarbonizing by 2021, which will mark 200 years of independence for Costa Rica. The goal is aggressive and may not be entirely feasible, especially with Costa Rica’s current financial issues.

Costa Rica has been operating on a deficit since 2009. 22% of Costa Rica’s revenue comes from taxing the auto industry, and a large portion of that goes to protection of forests and other forms of conservation. This could result in a heavy financial loss for their already strained financial situation, but rethinking how they get their money could resolve their issues over time.

Photo by Anna Jiménez Calaf

With fewer carbon emissions, they may save money in the form of reduced health care costs. Another option, which they will no doubt have to adopt at some point, is changing what they tax instead. A tax on carbon itself might help them to their goal and resolve their current financial situation as well.

Whether Costa Rica achieves its decarbonization goals on time or not, their efforts make a statement to the rest of the world. If a small country can make a huge difference to the world despite their size and lack of development, bigger countries can follow their example.

Globally, fossil fuels are the biggest threat to climate change, and a path to getting rid of them is one that all countries should make an effort to follow, regardless of size. As Araya put it in another statement, “Tackling resistance to change is one of the most important tasks we have right now.”

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How To Pass Microsoft Azure (AI-900) AI Fundamentals Exam
By: Bhargav Bachina
Tags: AI, Machine Learning, Data Science, Certification, Azure

How To Pass Microsoft Azure (AI-900) AI Fundamentals Exam

A Complete Guide for who wants to take this exam

Microsoft Azure is one of the leading cloud providers. This exam can be taken as an optional first step in learning about Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence and how those concepts are exemplified by Microsoft Azure. It can be taken as a precursor to Microsoft Azure AI Engineer. While it would be a beneficial first step, validating foundational level knowledge, taking this exam is not a pre-requisite before taking any other Azure role-based certifications.

Why should you take this exam

Any Prerequisites

About the exam

Where to register

How to train

Useful Tips and Tricks

Before the exam

During the exam

After the exam

Other Certifications To Consider

Conclusion

Why should you take this exam

You should definitely take this exam If you are a beginner to AI. If you want to learn what exactly AI is and what kind of services Microsoft Azure offers, this is the exam for you. You will learn and be familiar with all kinds of workloads that you should do when it comes to machine learning and Artificial intelligence by doing this certification.